General Improvements for the realism of the game

[Alendor_Mine]

I accidentally put this in the wrong section, I ask a moderator to move it please. Thank you and apologize.

Hi. I am pretty new in 0 AD and in the forums. In spite of that Im very impressed with the work you have done, specially the historical truthfulness and realism. So, since I started playing Ive been working in a list of features for feedback this wonderful game. I hope it helps, anyways its with the best intentions.

Asigning point of units

Units created (like civil-soldier units and women) need to be able to be assigned directly in its working point, life a tree or a mine, cause its not very nice to have to pay attention for each unit that pops out.

Women speed

Im not pretty sure of the working speed (taht also must be inferior to that of men) but in walking speed, women should be considerably slower, for more realism.

Infantry units attacking building by burning them

Without regarding the kind of damage that a infantry unit has (piercing, hack, crush) it should be able to attack a building by burning it for example with torches. Thats they way a infantry unit may be involved on a siege (like in AoE III) and it will be very reallistic. Since it somehow may turn innecesary the sieging artifacts, this may be implemented as an expensive upgrade and for a specific kind of units, like elite ones.

Blood in dying units

I see blood appears when I kill an animal, but theres not in the battlefield when a unit dies, so I thing this is absolutely necessay for the realism of the battle, at least as a quality of video option.

Unique heroes

Its wierd to be able to have more that one hero of the same kind alive at the same time. Its ridiculous to see for example see to Megas Alexandros...I mean WTF!?...this have to be fixed.

Herding animals

I thing the cost/benefit relation in herding animals is to low. I herd a goat for 50 food and it gives me 120, theres no functional benefit on that. A way to improve this would be fattening of the animals over time.

Animal sprites

A lot of animals, like elephants, wolves, bears and war dogs have static sprites when attack and even when die. Im pretty sure it is gonna be fixed in comming versions.

Same class units cant be selected by double click if ranks between them is different

Edited October 20, 2011 by Alendor_Mine

[Zeta1127]

Assigning point of units, you must mean a rally point, that is a staple of unit production buildings in most games and a good idea.

On a side note, the Brythonic Carbanto (Champion Cavalry Skirmisher) has an extraneous period at the end its name, only time I have seen this so far.

Edited October 20, 2011 by Zeta1127

[quantumstate]

This is a nice list. The suggestions are so good that most of the items are planned already .

The assignment/rally point has #745 (bug 745). Speed is due to be adjusted when charging/running has been implemented. Non siege units will be able to capture buildings (#996), so won't be able to destroy them. For blood I found Blood so it should be implemented at some point. I am pretty sure someone is planning to make heroes limited to 1 at a time. Herding animals and the corral are going to be fairly different, with you garrisoning herd animals in the corral for a steady income so the current version is temporary.

Currently triple click selects all units of a type ignoring rank. I would personally prefer double click to work like you said but I don't know is its likely to change.

[historic_bruno]

Asigning point of units

Units created (like civil-soldier units and women) need to be able to be assigned directly in its working point, life a tree or a mine, cause its not very nice to have to pay attention for each unit that pops out.

Yeah rally points are less than ideal currently, I would expect this feature at some point: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/745

Women speed

Im not pretty sure of the working speed (taht also must be inferior to that of men) but in walking speed, women should be considerably slower, for more realism.

I believe we temporarily increased unit speeds since the game felt too "slow", because we don't have game speed controls yet, but expect more changes for realism once we have running and stamina implemented.

Infantry units attacking building by burning them

Without regarding the kind of damage that a infantry unit has (piercing, hack, crush) it should be able to attack a building by burning it for example with torches. Thats they way a infantry unit may be involved on a siege (like in AoE III) and it will be very reallistic. Since it somehow may turn innecesary the sieging artifacts, this may be implemented as an expensive upgrade and for a specific kind of units, like elite ones.

We're planning to change the siege behavior, as quantumstate said, only certain classes of units will be able to attack buildings and the rest will capture them. Capturing may have benefits over siege in certain cases.

Blood in dying units

I see blood appears when I kill an animal, but theres not in the battlefield when a unit dies, so I thing this is absolutely necessay for the realism of the battle, at least as a quality of video option.

As eye candy this will have lower priority than some other missing parts of the game, but I wouldn't be surprised if we added a bit more bloodiness to the game (particles maybe or terrain decals).

Unique heroes

Its wierd to be able to have more that one hero of the same kind alive at the same time. Its ridiculous to see for example see to Megas Alexandros...I mean WTF!?...this have to be fixed.

We will introduce a limit of only one living hero per player.

Herding animals

I thing the cost/benefit relation in herding animals is to low. I herd a goat for 50 food and it gives me 120, theres no functional benefit on that. A way to improve this would be fattening of the animals over time.

We actually don't have herding behavior yet What you're seeing is just hunting. Herding will be capturing enemy or gaia animals (or breeding new animals) and moving them into corrals where they will generate food automatically. See the design document for a bit more detail.

Animal sprites

A lot of animals, like elephants, wolves, bears and war dogs have static sprites when attack and even when die. Im pretty sure it is gonna be fixed in comming versions.

We're missing animations for certain animals, namely because there is no official animator on the team.

Same class units cant be selected by double click if ranks between them is different

That's triple click.

[WhiteTreePaladin]

I'm seriously thinking that should just be double click. Triple click would still be nice to select off-screen units.

[Mythos_Ruler]

I'm seriously thinking that should just be double click. Triple click would still be nice to select off-screen units.

Didn't you always think that? Anyway, yeah, I'm starting to think that double-click should ignore rank.

[Alendor_Mine]

About heroes, It will be 1 per player, per kind of hero, for example 1 Leonidas per player, or 1 hero alive pero player at all no matter who?

[historic_bruno]

About heroes, It will be 1 per player, per kind of hero, for example 1 Leonidas per player, or 1 hero alive pero player at all no matter who?

I believe one per player, since they offer such a big advantage and also the heroes are "subfaction" specific. So in other words once you choose which subfaction to play, you will have a choice of one hero.

[feneur]

I believe one per player, since they offer such a big advantage and also the heroes are "subfaction" specific. So in other words once you choose which subfaction to play, you will have a choice of one hero.

Hmm, no, you'll have a choice between three heroes per sub-faction I think we have to find out by playtesting whether it's best to limit them to one hero at all per player alive at the same time or one of each hero per player alive at the same time. Most of them are designed to have local (i.e. aura) effects, so even if you have three you would not be able to use them everywhere at the same time.

[Mythos_Ruler]

I think the original idea was to allow a hero to live once and that was it. So, if you train Leonidas and he dies, then you can never train him again. You'd have to train a different hero. This method has appeal to me, because you then want to use the hero wisely. But then I think that having only 3 heroes available the whole game would kind of reduce the use of heroes in a long game. I think we want heroes to be relatively important. At least important enough to expend the resources and effort to use them correctly as intended. So, I think we'll allow you to retrain heroes but only 1 hero can be alive at any one time. I would go for the first option if we had more heroes per faction. Only our limited manpower prevents us from adding more heroes.

[Brendan_]

If heroes are meant to provide significant, unique tactical advantages, then the controlling and opponent players have reason to focus on them, no matter how their training-births and deaths are handled.

If heroes are "one per player at any time" then heroes are simply a super-unit, and the winning strategy is to spam heroes as often as affordable. Minus the training costs, hero deaths are actually an opportunity.

If heroes are "one per player the whole match" then heroes become secret weapons to be employed only when and where the player is confident of ultimate success ...or out of sheer desperation. The presence or absence of a hero is decisive in picking times and places in proportion to how much stronger heroes and their buffs are. The winning strategy then is to deploy them conservatively in raids and only to main battle during the endgame (or attempted endgame).

If heroes are "down but not out" when beaten as in AoE3, the player has a motivation to re-enter territory where the enemy proved stronger "sometime" and try to evac or stand the hero up again. Or heroes could auto-heal and "sometime" will be when the game says it is. But the hero's return to duty would be an option for the player throughout the game and a recurring danger for the opponent (corpse camping being the best control).

Alternatively, downed heroes could have a "bleed-out" counter, meaning that without a successful rescue mission in territory the player already lost one skirmish in, the hero dies with no option to get him/her back. This creates a strong motive for a game of capture the flag/corpse by the player and the opponent.

Again, this means it's wise to keep heroes away from fortified enemy positions until they're confident of crushing the enemy position.

As for economic oriented heroes (increased gathering rate during lifetime) the strategy is to train them early and keep them inside fortifications. If such a hero is downed, it's either "lights out" for that player because their base has been overrun, or a forced retreat to another town center and a hasty counterattack on the victorious enemy siege party to rescue the econo-hero.

Edited October 30, 2011 by Brendan_

[Mythos_Ruler]

If heroes are "one per player at any time" then heroes are simply a super-unit, and the winning strategy is to spam heroes as often as affordable.

Does not follow. "One per player at any time" precludes the possibility of spamming heroes, since you can only have 1 alive at any time.

[Brendan_]

A failure of terminology. What I mean is that heroes would be sent to fight and die so another can be made. The hero's death is actually good news provided the resource income to afford them in waves of attacks. Other than the limit of one alive at a time, they are strategically the same as regular units, who also are sent to fight whether they are expected to rout the enemy or just weaken them by kamikaze.

Although the hero is a single unit with unique buffs, the only reason to keep them in reserve is the same reason you keep any forces in reserve-- countering a possible enemy attack after sending main forces away on mission. Whether you can deploy 10 of a given hero or just 1 at any given time, the strategy will be the same for them as for any other unit.

If heroes can be downed for the duration of the match, if they cannot be replaced, that changes everything.

Players must then gamble on whether to employ their strongest units-- heroes-- in a grinding action where they expect the hero to survive each engagement, or to expend them in an effort to breach the enemy's defenses for regular units to exploit to victory. Likewise, players must wonder whether to plan the defense expecting a conservative or aggressive deployment of heroes.

A successful feint to lure an opponent into expending heroes could tip the balance of power in a more focused and permanent way than just massacring their replaceable regular units. That would demand a rapid follow up to K.O. the temporarily weakened defenses, whereas a permanent weakening of their offensive power by herocide would favor a booming strategy to hold off attacks while building up overwhelming force. And after permanently losing heroes, whatever one's strategy was before, it will require a rush to prevent the enemy's defenses from being strengthened enough to neutralize you and give them time to build up that overwhelming force.

Edited November 7, 2011 by Brendan_

[Mythos_Ruler]

Playtesting will solve all.

[Brendan_]

Indeed!

[fiasco]

mythos_ruler, in regards to play testing what do you have in mind? I do not want to sound too blunt, but I think its a good idea if relatively "pro" RTS players test the game for the official balancing of the game. I would not consider myself pro, but I am fairly good. This would not be meant to exclude anyone from testing, but rather to balance the game as best as could be.

By pro, I really just mean pretty good/extremely familiar with RTS play across a variety of games (like 1800+ if you know the AOM/AOT scale or like PR 34+ in AOE3).

Edited November 8, 2011 by fiasco

[Mythos_Ruler]

Well, we'll try it both ways with Hero lives, is what I meant.

[Android_]

Anyway, yeah, I'm starting to think that double-click should ignore rank.

I think this will depend on the role you want ranks to play. Currently they don't play any significant role apart from being cool in themselves. So at this stage "double click -> all units of the same type" would make much more sense. However, if you plan on introducing any features that make ranks more important than unit types, then "double click -> all units of the same rank" would be the right way. So it depends on what you're having in mind with ranks.

[Mythos_Ruler]

The ranks increase armour and attack and health, while decreasing speed and gathering rate. But yeah, not that big of a difference (seriously) as far as gameplay goes.

[Android_]

Well yeah but why stop there. I think I once read something on these boards along the lines of making highly ranked units more useful for combat and lower ones more useful as labourers (make sense historically right). That would maybe introduce a twist that could make ranks more important. [EDIT: Sorry that's what you were saying .] Or maybe you guys or the community will come up with something else that's cool.

Then again: Having different unit types and different unit types countering each other is at the heart of any RTS, much more than any rank system, so "double click -> all units of the same type" as a control mechanism is probably a must in any way.

Edited November 9, 2011 by Android GRRR

[Alendor_Mine]

I think the original idea was to allow a hero to live once and that was it. So, if you train Leonidas and he dies, then you can never train him again. You'd have to train a different hero. This method has appeal to me, because you then want to use the hero wisely. But then I think that having only 3 heroes available the whole game would kind of reduce the use of heroes in a long game. I think we want heroes to be relatively important. At least important enough to expend the resources and effort to use them correctly as intended. So, I think we'll allow you to retrain heroes but only 1 hero can be alive at any one time. I would go for the first option if we had more heroes per faction. Only our limited manpower prevents us from adding more heroes.

I think it's the very best option. For realism and game importance of such an advantageous unit.

[fiasco]

EDIT: Pretty much what Mythos_Ruler said in the latter part of his post -- you should put AOM Greek style heroes in the game. The first option Mythos mentioned is a bad idea IMO...after all, realism can only reach a certain point in a video game

I plan on posting a detailed pros/cons/what needs to be added list upon the next alpha release. I'll try to keep it to bullet points though since it doesn't help doing a 5,000 word post. Hopefully we could pin something to the forums here of stuff that should be added. This would make it easier to see; although not everything people want should be added, just core stuff (i.e. don't say you want dancing goats or flying pigs).

Edited November 11, 2011 by fiasco

[L'ethu]

Siege weapons looks odd without crew to operate.

[Pedro Falcão]

what about Alt+click for choosing ranks instead of unit types?

[Mythos_Ruler]

what about Alt+click for choosing ranks instead of unit types?

Another great idea. I like this multi-functionality of the Alt key. Double-Click a unit selects all the units of that type, regardless of rank. Alt-double-click to select just units of that rank.