Capture rebalance poll

[Atrik]

I'm making this poll without knowing how relevant/appreciated it will be or if the proposed changes will be merged, but could still be interesting.

The problem :

In R28, the capture has been rebalanced to make harder to capture, especially for key buildings (civic center and forts). This was done by increasing drastically the base capture point regeneration of buildings.

The resulting effects vary across scenarios so let's take 2 examples.

1. A large army with high tier units capturing will still capture the building just as fast, the capture regeneration doesn't add resistance or delay in that case. So still rarely giving the defender the opportunity to react.
2. Smaller armies that seems to be able to capture the building have a hard time estimating how close they are to actually capturing a building, because capture point regeneration have a exponential effect on the time/difficulty to capture... Humans are not very good with exponential effects so it generally result in frustrations.

A gimmicky play is for example to get Marian reform with Romans and start capturing everything in a few second even if a whole army is attacking you, you can perfectly capture a fort in less then 5 secs.... Example bellow I had 3 secs before the fort full of champs had below 50% capture points vs 150 romans.

Proposed change :

Increase base capture point of key buildings instead (cc, fort), making it longer to capture across all scenarios instead of only when it was already the hardest.

Make towers Sentry tech, and Professional Garrison add capture points, making the tech more interesting.

 

[Deicide4u]

Or, and hear me out on this, we can actually fix the collision so that those 150 Marian Romans have to surround the building (thus exposing them to fire from multiple angles) in order to capture it? In the picture, I see that all units are on one side, and many are literally inside one another.

The collision system was annoying and buggy in A23, but it worked. If you sent 35 cavalry against enemy's 3 archers, the cavalry would still have to surround the archers, so they got in the way of each other.

In R28, those 35 cavalry would blend into each other, instantly vaporizing the poor archers with 1000% overkill rate.

Current system is:

- Physically impossible,
- Historically inaccurate,
- Looks terrible, especially with massed cavalry.

I know that this is a separate problem, but you aren't exactly supposed to keep those champions inside the Fortress. They should be outside fighting. Losing one Fortress while 150 enemy units are exposed to fire won't hurt you as much if the collision worked.

I voted for adding to base capture regeneration and for both added tech, btw.

Edited 13 hours ago by Deicide4u
Grammar

[Thalatta]

7 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

you aren't exactly supposed to keep those champions inside the Fortress. They should be outside fighting.

I agree with everything you say up to here, since, for making better use of fortifications (and historical accuracy), they should be inside and make capture more difficult. Can capture points increase with garrison, same as ram speed increases with it?

[guerringuerrin]

Nice poll, @Atrik.
Additionally, it would be good to address the exploit that allows capturing buildings in tight spaces using formations.

[Deicide4u]

5 minutes ago, Thalatta said:

for making better use of fortifications (and historical accuracy), they should be inside and make capture more difficult

They should, if you have other units that are to engage the enemy.

But, the issue here is that currently there is no soft cap on amount of units that can capture one building. That soft cap should be the size of the building, and when the enemy surrounds it completely, that's it. How many units can realistically surround the Fortress? Surely not 150.

[Thalatta]

1 minute ago, Deicide4u said:

They should, if you have other units that are to engage the enemy.

But, the issue here is that currently there is no soft cap on amount of units that can capture one building. That soft cap should be the size of the building, and when the enemy surrounds it completely, that's it. How many units can realistically surround the Fortress? Surely not 150.

Indeed, collisions solve that and other things. Cheaply massing troops becomes harder, as it should be, because the entry points to a fortification are limited.

Still, capture points increasing with garrison could help. Another question to understand everything better: when saying tower range 10 to 60 (+8), what does the +8 mean? A change because of garrisons, or possible techs?

[Deicide4u]

Here's another idea.

Capture attack -> Siege attack.
Buildings can be captured only if they have less than 50% of total HP (some techs could bring this percent down further).
Default action for units is now siege attack. Capture is possible as before, but only after a structure is below 50% of HP. Otherwise, the capture attack is disabled (has red X across the capture icon, to indicate it's disabled).
Siege attack animation is the same as the capture animation, but units are holding the torches up instead of their weapons.

Edited 12 hours ago by Deicide4u

[Atrik]

39 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

Or, and hear me out on this, we can actually fix the collision so that those 150 Marian Romans have to surround the building

20 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:

Additionally, it would be good to address the exploit that allows capturing buildings in tight spaces using formations

There are quite a few ways to do this but ideally first fix the limitations that this behavior tries to compensate for..

21 minutes ago, Thalatta said:

Another question to understand everything better: when saying tower range 10 to 60 (+8), what does the +8 mean

+8 is generally elevation bonus to range, aka the height of the turret itself.
If you look into the selection tooltip it will show you total elevation bonus, which include how high on terrain the tower is (on a hill for example), however I found out recently that this wasn't correctly applied (see proposed fix for it).
With arrow shooter tech it become 60base +8tech +9elevation total bonus (IIRC vanilla show them merged so +17). Stone towers also have higher base elevation bonus..

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, guerringuerrin said:

Nice poll, @Atrik.
Additionally, it would be good to address the exploit that allows capturing buildings in tight spaces using formations.

totally, there needs to be some pushing. Or just remove the option that stops formations from being disbanded as it is pretty much only useful for the exploit.

[Frederick_1]

I expected (before knowing about capture mathematics) that capture points of garrisoned units value with a bonus factor.  Defenders with fortification fight from advantageous ground so one soldier is of higher value. This would be one option to strongen Buildings.

Another possiblility would be to give a malus depending on the amount of attackers. So that capture points can not be massed the way it is possible now. Like the slower building process with more simultaneous workers.

(Just my 2 cent....; but yes at the moment 0ad is an attackers game)

[ittihat_ve_terakki]

Another potential solution that came to mind is increasing the number of units that can be garrisoned inside a fortress. Isn’t 20 soldiers too few for a fortress? Historically, 20 soldiers is already a very small number, it feels the same in game as well. A temple can hold 20 soldiers too. A fortress and a temple having the same capacity doesn’t feel right, maybe this could be adjusted.

(It’s also interesting that theaters, which historically hosted performances for thousands of people in ancient times, can only hold 5 units.)

[Emacz]

34 minutes ago, ittihat_ve_terakki said:

Another potential solution that came to mind is increasing the number of units that can be garrisoned inside a fortress. Isn’t 20 soldiers too few for a fortress? Historically, 20 soldiers is already a very small number, it feels the same in game as well. A temple can hold 20 soldiers too. A fortress and a temple having the same capacity doesn’t feel right, maybe this could be adjusted.

(It’s also interesting that theaters, which historically hosted performances for thousands of people in ancient times, can only hold 5 units.)

We have done that on Classical Warfare AEA.  Lowered dmg a little, but garrison is 35, up to 50 if you get the tech.

[Perzival12]

4 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

totally, there needs to be some pushing. Or just remove the option that stops formations from being disbanded as it is pretty much only useful for the exploit.

Remove disbanding formations… thereby turning formations into battalions. Bad idea. I personally have never encountered this exploit everyone is mentioning, and it doesn’t seem like it would be much of a problem if we just fixed collision.

[Deicide4u]

43 minutes ago, ittihat_ve_terakki said:

Another potential solution that came to mind is increasing the number of units that can be garrisoned inside a fortress.

That would be one of the easier balance corrections, but it wouldn't fix the issue. 

What if a player attacks you with 200 Marian Roman Legionaries? That are magically stacked in a corner of your Fortress. The end result would be the same.

No, the enemy needs to surround the Fortress, and you can't surround it with 200 units.

Edited 6 hours ago by Deicide4u
Reworded

[ittihat_ve_terakki]

38 minutes ago, Emacz said:

We have done that on Classical Warfare AEA.  Lowered dmg a little, but garrison is 35, up to 50 if you get the tech.

That’s a nice move. 35 and 50 with an upgrade sounds good. 

 

32 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

it wouldn't fix the issue. 

I’m not exactly sure which issue you’re referring to, but in any case, 20 is a low number. Increasing it would make sense. 

 

32 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

What if a player attacks you with 200 Marian Roman Legionaries? 

Let’s say it’s better not to stack all your hopes behind one fortress. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

9 hours ago, Atrik said:

Smaller armies that seems to be able to capture the building have a hard time estimating how close they are to actually capturing a building, because capture point regeneration have a exponential effect on the time/difficulty to capture... Humans are not very good with exponential effects so it generally result in frustrations.

This was already the case, adding regen rate just shifts the curve rightward.

Also, I don't get how adding 1000 points would help that much in the cases you bring up. 5 seconds to maybe 5.5 or 6 seconds?

[Deicide4u]

7 minutes ago, ittihat_ve_terakki said:

I’m not exactly sure which issue you’re referring to, but in any case, 20 is a low number. Increasing it would make sense. 

I agree with that. The issue of too many units capturing one building in the first place.

[guerringuerrin]

3 hours ago, Perzival12 said:

I personally have never encountered this exploit everyone is mentioning, and it doesn’t seem like it would be much of a problem if we just fixed collision.

This is what we are talking about with formation exploit:

And this:

 

4 hours ago, ittihat_ve_terakki said:

Isn’t 20 soldiers too few for a fortress? Historically, 20 soldiers is already a very small number, it feels the same in game as well. 

The problem with this approach is that, if you need to garrison, say, around 40 units to prevent your building from being captured, out of an average of 150 soldier units you might have in a 200 pop game, you end up dedicating 26% of your units just to guarding a single building. It makes more sense to increase capture resistance.

Edited 3 hours ago by guerringuerrin

[ittihat_ve_terakki]

33 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:

just to guarding a single building. 

Calling the fortress just a single building overlooks how central it can become in many matches. There are moments when players feel like they’ve lost the match the instant they lose it. Historically too, it is far from a simple building. It is a defensive structure placed in strategic locations, capable of shaping and altering the course of events.

Whether I choose to implement it or not is another matter but it would make perfect sense for such a defensive complex to be able to hold 40 or 50 units especially in a game where the single building Wonder can already accommodate up to 50. 

Here is The German Wonder, which is just a ruined Roman camp, can still garrison 50 units, roughly 33% of a 150 soldiers. 

 

P.S. I’m not against the idea of increasing capture resistance.

[guerringuerrin]

5 hours ago, ittihat_ve_terakki said:

Another potential solution that came to mind is increasing the number of units that can be garrisoned inside a fortress.

From this initial post you made, it doesn’t come across as an additional idea but rather as a solution to the problem of buildings being too easy to capture. That is: instead of increasing capture resistance, allowing more units to garrison inside. That’s why I responded the way I did.
 

24 minutes ago, ittihat_ve_terakki said:

Calling the fortress just a single building overlooks how central it can become in many matches. There are moments when players feel like they’ve lost the match the instant they lose it. Historically too, it is far from a simple building. It is a defensive structure placed in strategic locations, capable of shaping and altering the course of events.

What I mean is that, from a gameplay perspective, it seems much more interesting to improve the capture points of buildings and be able to keep more units outside, actively engaged in combat. If you garrison 40 or 50 units out of an army of 150, the enemy will most likely be able to wipe out the remaining forces due to overwhelming numerical superiority. I’m not opposed to increasing the garrison capacity of forts/CCs or other important buildings per se. But when it’s proposed as a solution to the issue of rapid capture, I think it’s better to directly strengthen capture resistance instead.

As for the historical aspects, I understand them, but this is a game and, as such, it relies on certain abstractions.

[Deicide4u]

22 minutes ago, ittihat_ve_terakki said:

just a ruined Roman camp,

If I recall correctly, Roman Army Camp used to be able to hold 40 soldiers.

Granted, when the collision issue (or just the formations exploit) is fixed, a full Fortress will be almost impossible to capture at full health, which might be a good thing lol. 

[Perzival12]

1 minute ago, Deicide4u said:

Granted, when the collision issue (or just the formations exploit) is fixed, a full Fortress will be almost impossible to capture at full health, which might be a good thing lol. 

You should usually have to raze a fortress to the ground, rather than capture it. While that may not be historically accurate, it makes sense given the style of RTS, rather than something like Total War.

[Thalatta]

2 hours ago, guerringuerrin said:

around 40 units to prevent your building from being captured, out of an average of 150 soldier units you might have in a 200 pop game, you end up dedicating 26% of your units just to guarding a single building.

Exactly. "Isn’t 20 soldiers too few for a fortress?" is not the correct approach, but "which percentage of your max population is 20 soldiers"? Then it's not a small garrison. Just increasing it doesn’t seem right. What is worse, if one increases the pop cap, leaving the garrison caps fixed, all considerations of what is big or small are out the window… unless collisions are used. This always fixes the max amount of units trying to take a building. It also helps in fixing capture points, after a decision is taken on how little time capture should take (it cannot be that it’s not known if 5 seconds will become maybe 5.5 or 6 seconds, things should be calculated the other way around, first deciding an acceptable minimum capture time, and working backwards). And it applies for buildings that don’t have any of the mentioned Fortress or Tower defensive techs. If there’s a formation exploit, then I guess better if that’s solved, instead of collisions removed. If I understand correctly what’s happening from the videos, couldn't formations be temporarily disabled when units are taking on any of those tasks? Whatever needed since collisions does seem a step in the right direction.

Collisions seem necessary, but maybe not sufficient, thus: I agree with 1. because of the regeneration problem pointed out, but disagree on how to exactly implement 2. because it doesn't seem very common that a given tech does more than one thing. On the other hand, someone said recently "the two techs for towers for greater range and more default arrows" "are also too expensive to be viable during the period of the game when towers matter", so I'd remove the Arrow Shooters tech and give that range increase to the Stone Tower for free, because, if I understand correctly, with no techs both it and the Sentry Tower have the same range (10 to 60 m, even when it’s taller). If Sentry and Professional Garrisons are not interesting enough, I’d make them do more of what they already do. Regarding increasing capture points +50% to Towers and +100% to Fortresses, I’d either give this for free, or have a mutual tech that gives +50% to both towers and forts, and from the start give forts for free whatever is needed to complete the +100% wanted.

Edited 37 minutes ago by Thalatta
Gosh, on 1. I voted the 1st option, and wanted to vote the 2nd. Can my vote be undone?

[ittihat_ve_terakki]

1 hour ago, guerringuerrin said:

From this initial post you made, it doesn’t come across as an additional idea

"Another potential solution" is the opening of my text, and it’s perfectly clear to any English speaker that it’s meant as an additional idea.

It doesn’t replace anything, it literally says “another.” It could have been “instead,” but it isn’t. You seem to enjoy these little internet arguments, don’t you? lol

1 hour ago, Deicide4u said:

If I recall correctly, Roman Army Camp used to be able to hold 40 soldiers.

The Roman Army Camp can hold 20 units. Strangely enough, when you destroy it, an additional capacity of 30 units appears.