Move champion units back to Forts / Special Buildings?

[Seleucids]

Gameplay reasons

• Main cause of champs breaking the game is players being able to spam it too easily. If we move these units back to the fort, they cannot be spammed en mass.
• We would get a trickle of maybe 3 to 4 champions as an enhancement of our army but the strategy of letting your ally die just to build yourself a full champ army will not be possible. 
•  
• Forts are useless  / mostly idle for some civs: Gauls, Mauryas, Persians ...  Now we have an use for fortresses. 
• We can keep the OP stats of champs or make them even more OP, because the rate of production of these units is much lower - controls their impact on the game.
• Han and Carthage seem to have the correct use of champions at the moment. Other civs are just spamming till you run out of resources.
• Players who want to spam champs have to build extra special buildings which are costly and cannot be used for citizen units - less motivation to spam.

Historical / Logical reasons:

• Hell broke loose when champs were moved to barracks and stables: In A25, they spammed fire cav from stables, in A26 they spammed champ sword cav, in A27 is now spear cav. But in A24 and A23, this problem didn't exist because champs could not be spammed enough to break the game. 
• A23 had too few champs because fort was used for siege. Now we have a siege workshop so fort can be used as champion-special
• Champions (elite units) are being trained from the same place as pleb citizen soldiers. Not sure if that is accurate. 
• Some civs train from special buildings while others train from barracks - inequality
• We want to emphasise the elite quality of the units, not just let them be CS Pro plus

Proposed changes:

1. Cancel the "unlock champion" upgrade - You can get your champs as soon as you have a fort. 
2. Every civ which currently produce champs from barracks and stables get their champs moved to a fort. 

In detail: 

• Persians: barracks can produce immortals (but after researching an expensive unlock tech 1000 Food). Fortress produce champion cavs
• Kushites: champ cav back to fort, temple guards can stay in temples
• Gauls: Fanatics stay as they are or go to taverns; Trumpeter stay at their place; Champ cav and champ sword go to Fort. 
• Mauryas: Yoddha go to forts. Maidens stay where they are. 
• No change to Athenians, Spartans, Han, Carthage

 

I am currently working on a pull request for these changes. Please comment below if you have any objections. Thank you, balancing advisors.

@chrstgtr @real_tabasco_sauce @Atrik @borg- @Stockfish

Edited yesterday at 09:20 by Seleucids

[Atrik]

5 hours ago, Seleucids said:

Forts are useless  / mostly idle for some civs: Gauls, Mauryas, Persians ...  Now we have an use for fortresses.

I would prefer forts not to have a too a central role in 0ad. I actually like having the choice of not building any to go aggressive vs building it if I plan to defend. Putting units trainable in the forts reinforce the need to just build it whatever, and therefor you play a bit more every game with the same build.

Regarding balance, I think a framework for balancing should be worked on. It would be interesting to make relation graphs to have clear views on what are each unit role.
Below some example with some existing relationship between units in 0AD (A27 stats, they rounded but they are actually real).

Power is dps * hp (after converting armor to hp equivalent, so it does take into account armor, thoughts if hack and pierce armor value are different, a decent mitigation is to use the average of the two), so for jav above, it doesn't account for the accuracy gains. 

 

Edited 22 hours ago by Atrik

[ffm2]

In general something should be done against the champ masses. Either this, or make a limit on them, or make them require more pop.

The nisean war horse upgrade especially puts every other champs in the shadows.

On the other side I don't agree with a lot players claiming everything would be OP, elephants, siege etc.. As the game goes on one should be incentivized not to rely on citizen soldiers only. Although sadly one could rely on mass slingers atm..

[Seleucids]

4 minutes ago, ffm2 said:

Although sadly one could rely on mass slingers atm..

Melee will end you. 

43 minutes ago, Atrik said:

herefor you play a bit more every game with the same build.

I would argue that you are not forced into building the fort. If you want to attack early, you push before their fort is up or while they are building the fort. You would have an advantage, because they are investing building labour and huge quantities resources into the fort. Their units would also be in a bad formation and you can melt the builders if they don't react early enough. Since champion spam no longer exists, it's possible to win fights with a CS army + good micro. The champions will just be an icing on the cake for those who had a chance to build it. It would be more attractive to play aggressively, compared to the current meta of waiting for the champion unlock tech then spam broken units. 

 

Another idea is we give every civ a special building for them to produce champions from. But that is a lot more work than just moving back to fort. 

[Seleucids]

17 minutes ago, ffm2 said:

As the game goes on one should be incentivized not to rely on citizen soldiers only.

I agree with this, but sadly there is no balance when it comes to champions right now. Some civs just have better champions that counter other civ's champions. If you try to balance all of the champions, people will scream "historically inaccurate" or "boring"

Edited yesterday at 12:54 by Seleucids

[ffm2]

2 hours ago, Seleucids said:

2 hours ago, ffm2 said:

Although sadly one could rely on mass slingers atm..

Melee will end you. 

Ok, you'd still need melee units. But wouldn't you agree that britons and athens can be played without champions or siege without being up civs because of the slingers?

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

There is a limit when it comes to balancing units civ to civ. It is entirely fine that some civs champions counter another’s. What matters is the overall power of the civ. There will always be bad matchups bad maps for a given civ and that is a mark of good civ differentiation.

[Deicide4u]

7 hours ago, Seleucids said:

Proposed changes:

1. Cancel the "unlock champion" upgrade - You can get your champs as soon as you have a fort. 
2. Every civ which currently produce champs from barracks and stables get their champs moved to a fort.

I agree 100%. This will also need to be adjusted for the AI, and it will allow it to use the champions earlier (as soon as it builds a Fort).

The change is good for historical accuracy. Most soldiers were pretty average and 80% of them had lower-tier equipment. Elite soldiers were kept as a part of separate battalions/legions. Also, new players will adjust better to the gameplay, as the mental image will be:

1) Barracks/Stables are used for citizen soldiers,
2) Forts and other special buildings train champions.

I support this for Release 28.

[Deicide4u]

5 hours ago, Atrik said:

I would prefer forts not to have a too a central role in 0ad. I actually like having the choice of not building any to go aggressive vs building it if I plan to defend.

If you want to be aggressive, you can be aggressive with CS army. However, you shouldn't be allowed to mass OP army and stay aggressive. OP army is a late game army.

This has nothing to do with the build. If you want OP units, you'd have to build an OP building.

[Seleucids]

2 hours ago, ffm2 said:

Ok, you'd still need melee units. But wouldn't you agree that britons and athens can be played without champions or siege without being up civs because of the slingers?

You can play all slings, it's not weak, some players do that, but that's not as effective as a mixed army.  Playing Britons every day, I find that 40 slingers + 40 javs + 50 spearman is the best combination. Reason: pathfinding + dmg output + snipe

Athenians is also better when mixed with jav cav and merc javs.

In A27, siege weapons seem quite unecessary unless your enemy is ultra turtle with towers, forts and walls. You can capture CC with any army after they lose, no need for using slings to smash. I find beating their defence army more important than using siege to knock down buildings. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Forts should be effective for defense, not an expensive barracks. If they are “useless” right now, work should be done to make their use for defense more effective.

Forts should be for defense primarily, with some able to train heroes, unique units (champs), and unique, special technologies.

I remember alphas where people would make more than 6 forts just to spam champs, and it became frustrating trying to find space to place them because of the build distance requirement.

also let me stress this really important point: there are no complaints about infantry champions, save for immortals being a bit OP in the ranged form.

all the complaints are about champcav, so how about we calm down a bit and focus of the specific units that are problematic instead of “moving fast and breaking things” so to speak.

why are champcav OP?

- high damage, high hp? Sure, but it is not much more than infantry champions, and they cost a lot more. But really the comparison with champion infantry is flawed, champcav will almost never need to fight champion spearmen.

- mobility? I think this is the underlying cause as much as others want to deny it. We are talking about units that are double the speed of their supposed counter, units that may not be surrounded, trapped, or outplayed except by a larger or faster cav army. Because you can choose your fights endlessly, champcav players can bank up resources while raiding and retrain fast enough to justify taking bad fights. Additionally, since they move faster, they take less damage from buildings.

if you are really adamant to try this, why not set up a PR in the com mod to organize some play testing. I think I’ve seen enough of the current com mod changes to get an idea of what might work in the future regarding capture balance, so we can move forward with a new version if you like.

[Deicide4u]

As usual, @real_tabasco_sauce talking some sense

[Seleucids]

12 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

there are no complaints about infantry champions, save for immortals being a bit OP in the ranged form.

As soon as you nerf the champ cavs, the champ infs will become OP. It's only a matter of time. Naked fanatics are already en route to becoming the next broken unit but it's just that Gaul players have not spammed it enough for people to notice yet. 

13 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

why not set up a PR in the com mod to organize some play testing

ok this is good idea

 

14 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

- high damage, high hp? Sure, but it is not much more than infantry champions, and they cost a lot more. But really the comparison with champion infantry is flawed, champcav will almost never need to fight champion spearmen.

- mobility? I think this is the underlying cause as much as others want to deny it. We are talking about units that are double the speed of their supposed counter, units that may not be surrounded, trapped, or outplayed except by a larger or faster cav army. Because you can choose your fights endlessly, champcav players can bank up resources while raiding and retrain fast enough to justify taking bad fights. Additionally, since they move faster, they take less damage from buildings.

These are the exact reasons why champion cavs should exist why they should be made in a game. We don't want these strengths to vanish, at any means. My whole idea is to put a soft limit onto the number of these that can appear. That's all. 

The focus is actually not fortresses but the constraining the rate of production of champion units. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

2 minutes ago, Seleucids said:

These are the exact reasons why champion cavs should exist why they should be made in a game.

I’m not saying they should be the same speed as everything else, just that they don’t need to be so much faster. A gap of 50% faster would be perfectly fine, currently mace champ cave are 240% the speed of spears.

we need to do some more broad speed balancing tbh.

[Deicide4u]

7 minutes ago, Seleucids said:

The focus is actually not fortresses but the constraining the rate of production of champion units. 

Other games do this effectively by increasing the population cost of more powerful units. To be honest, I'm not sure why 0 A.D. doesn't do this.

For example, making Seleucid Cataphracts take up 3 population slots is a sensible solution to what's the most broken unit of the game at the moment. Just see my match against Rome, where I didn't lose a single one out of 41 (!) Cataphracts. Also, making other champion units take up at least 2 slots is a better option than re-purposing Forts.

[ffm2]

The speed in combination with the similar strength is in deed the point. They can ignore their counter. Also selecting wounded and pulling them out works good because of their speed. I also thought of having them slowly change the direction and having a fast end speed after a acceleration time or so.

Also on the topic of "dancing": I think running back in (small) zigzag is no abuse. Units don't have to run in a line back like Rickon Stark did under arrow fire. But of course this works great on fast units with sudden change of directions. Dancing in itself can be abuse though. But in this case it just makes sense

[Seleucids]

3 minutes ago, ffm2 said:

Dancing in itself can be abuse though.

Don't you worry, there is so much lag in networked games (especially more than 2 players) that dancing is non-existent. 

 

18 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

just that they don’t need to be so much faster.

Sadly they do need this speed to counter fire cav and archer. 

 

All in all, I think champions occupying 3 population each is probably agreeable. If you want to make 30 champion cavs then you bascially have no pop space for anything else. 

If there is objection to moving them to fort, maybe we can consider other special buildings.  I picked fort because that was the champion building in the past and was expensive enough to counter rich players spamming it. 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

When I was originally advocating to implement unit acceleration I was suggesting it only for cav. It seems people wanted it for infantry as well so here we are.

@Seleucids of course any nerf to cav speed would need to be proportional and take the full gameplay result into consideration, so forgetting to update archer and firecav move speed would be an obvious mistake rather than something inevitable.

[guerringuerrin]

Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I think all cavalry should get a slight speed nerf — or alternatively, pikes and spearmen should move a bit faster — so that cavalry players can't always choose when and where to engage.
Additionally, the damage multiplier of spears and pikes against cavalry should be increased to make them more effective counters.
I think cavalry should be a more tactical or support role unit, rather than being the main army core — unless a specific civilization or historical context justifies otherwise.

[Emacz]

4 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:

Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I think all cavalry should get a slight speed nerf — or alternatively, pikes and spearmen should move a bit faster — so that cavalry players can't always choose when and where to engage.
Additionally, the damage multiplier of spears and pikes against cavalry should be increased to make them more effective counters.
I think cavalry should be a more tactical or support role unit, rather than being the main army core — unless a specific civilization or historical context justifies otherwise.

too bad ur afraid to explore historical, they have slight speed nerf there

[Seleucids]

Why nerf the speed of cavs? The whole point of cavs is being fast. If cavs are slow then just use infantry instead. We do need strong units but at reasonable quuantities. 

[Emacz]

7 minutes ago, Seleucids said:

Why nerf the speed of cavs? The whole point of cavs is being fast. If cavs are slow then just use infantry instead. We do need strong units but at reasonable quuantities. 

becasue the walk speed comparrison of cav to infantry is not very realistic  

But then again how run is used in game is not exactly realistic either, but that is where cav have a much better advantage over infantry.

[Atrik]

I like other things in historical, but the slower cav speed there did make me realize that it is a exciting part of playing cavalry. Trying to get the most out of the mobility seems pretty normal. I'm not sure it will be well received by most players to reduce cav speed. Making counter damage actually punishing is probably all that's needed, and what will make the game more interesting. You shouldn't be able just rely on having a big number of champ cavs and bump into any army.

As they have mobility and strength, they need a weakness, and that weakness should be being mediocre at holding a front-line against inf spears.

Suggestion : restore old counter multiplier values (x3 inf spear vs cav and x2 spear cav vs cav).

[Emacz]

2 hours ago, Atrik said:

I like other things in historical, but the slower cav speed there did make me realize that it is a exciting part of playing cavalry. Trying to get the most out of the mobility seems pretty normal. I'm not sure it will be well received by most players to reduce cav speed. Making counter damage actually punishing is probably all that's needed, and what will make the game more interesting. You shouldn't be able just rely on having a big number of champ cavs and bump into any army.

As they have mobility and strength, they need a weakness, and that weakness should be being mediocre at holding a front-line against inf spears.

Suggestion : restore old counter multiplier values (x3 inf spear vs cav and x2 spear cav vs cav).

well we also slowed infantry down a little too, just not quite as much as cav, closed the gap slighlty since it does say "walk"speed

Plus again if you think of it in historical context and you have an army marching to a pitched battle location, they all march together same speed.  Now in some cases they would send the cavalry off to run in front, scout, distrupt etc. but otherwise it makes no sense for the cavalry to get to the battle first if your gonna fight with Heavy Infantry and then use the cavalry on the flanks and to attack heavy infantry from behind.