First Impressions! (and some questions on gameplay)

[desyfer]

Gave the game a proper spin today. Think I spent a little too long looking at new features and trying to remind myself what's what, as when I eventually launched an 'attack' the AI totally caned me. I had the 'difficult' bots on though. Nonetheless, on next boot, I'll be seeking vegenance.

First off, the game really looks beautiful. I love how it feels I have freedom on the map as opposed to AOE2 where. every. thing. was. on. a. grid. At the same time, I feel like I'm back in an old-skool RTS game where I know what's what, without trying to be too clever.

Getting a little more in depth, a few things I noticed, which might be of use, or not:

1: Does hero always start on raised terrain? Second game in. First on the default scenario, second on skirmish - highlands map. Due to the zoom (especially on a laptop), it makes clicking units further away a little difficult as camera defaults to zoomed out due to terrain differences. Additionally, it feels too much of an artificial safe-haven - I want to build my own defenses and have a new challenge with terrain every time!

2: Sheep. With 50 cost for 100 return, is it really worth it? Especially given I need a whole new building for it (and IIRC I can't use this building as a drop off for farms when sheep run out). What's the benefits of killing sheep as opposed to knocking out farms?

Additionally, would it be possible to 'tag' the sheep like in AOE, possibly with the dog, to send them back to base? That way I can use dog as a scout (not sure how useful he is actually, he got killed early on) who can gather food resources at same time.

3: Is it possible to set a path for the scout? I tried shift to no avail. I want to send him on a circle around base, but it's too much micromanagement to do this in early stages, and ended up just sending him to 4 corners of map.

4: Think I love the territory feature. What happens when my territory eventually meets villains? Do I just have to knock down his civic centre to allow further expansion? I can imagine the map in later stages will look great when everything's carved up and people are fighting over bits of map for territory. Much better than TC in AOE which had little 'real' value on the map bar being a fancy lumbercamp,etc.

Again, maybe this already happens, but if it'd be possible for terrains to overlap for 10 tiles or so at borders, that could lead to some interesting development (people trying to knock out and defend towers, etc to get that stone mine).

5: Metal and stone looks very similar. Maybe that changes with replays however. And on the topic of resources, I've always wondered where - in game - all these ficticious resources are held? We have caps on population, would it be too complex if farmhouses gave +500 max food capacity, banks gave +500 metal capacity, etc? This way, we also need to make sure we defend our 'little' buildings to avoid being plundered. In terms of civs, 'more civilised' civs would be likely to hoard, whereas the 'barbarian' civs could be constructed to raid.

6: Being new to the game, I wasn't really sure which pictures represented what on the hud. Therefore I often made mistakes. It took me some time to realise that right clicking canceled the build. I'm not sure about others, but for me, 'escape' was my instinctive choice to cancel build.

7: Is there any benefit to being able to rotate buildings? I know I can do it, but it doesn't seem like there's any point to it. (Unless I can rotate map?!) Could entrances to buildings be drop points? Would mean rotating build towards resource saves a tile of travel.

8: Do we need to see what upgrades are available in the next age? Surely that's the excitement of upgrading to a new age for a new player? Also, for a new player, it's a little difficult to see what techs are avaialble now, and which later. Must've spend a fair bit of time checking around buildings to see what could be upgraded, and there always seemed to be something there.

9: I feel a little cut off during the game. I received no visits from villains' scouts, and had no idea about the progress of the enemy. Of course, the latter is realistic, but for a newbie, I had no idea if I'm getting left behind. Scouts without paths are on suicide missions, and I think they retaliate to attacks by default, which makes that unfavourable. Could we have updates on when the others advance an age? Maybe on upgrade a 'messenger' could be sent out to deliver the news to other players. It'd be an invisible unit which delivers the news in relation to the distance between civs.

As a final point, what's happening about online play? Much of a community putting together deathmatches yet? Is it reliable?

[Enrique]

Hello desyfer!

I'll try to answer some of your questions =)

1.- I didn't understand the question 100%. There is only one civ that starts being able to train heroes from the beginning of the match (Macedonians). I think there are some custom scenarios where you also start with some hero.

2.- There are some threads about the herding animals topic, and if it's worth it. Keep in mind that the game still in alpha and there are some features like this one that will be balanced/further discussed when we reach beta in order to balance the game. Right now, the best players I know don't use herding animals. It's better to hunt fauna animals in-game (and use cavalry to hunt, they are much quicker than other units)

3.- Yes, you can use waypoints for units to travel a desired path. First, right click on the starting waypoint, and then shift-rightclick to set the rest of them (it also works on groups of units)

4.- The territory borders do not overlap. You can build structures like fortresses and civic centres that have bigger territory influence in order to gain more bits of terrain when you reach the enemy territory. Of course, the best way to gain the territory is destroying the enemy's buildings which have bigger territory influence.

5.- I had the same problem when I started playing 0AD, I didn't distinguish the metal from the stone at a glance. We'll probably modify/upgrade the 3D assets to be easier to distinguish. IIRC, there were some suggestions of using big quarries with high amounts of metal/stone which would become a interesting strategic point to fight for, but still just an idea, nothing planned yet.

6.- I think right click to cancel building is easy and intuitive to use.

7.- Yes, you have the freedom to rotate them! and yes, you can rotate the camera in game with "Q" and "E" keys enjoy.

8.- I can understand that for a new player it may be a little confusing, but the techs are grayed out if you haven't reached the needed phase to research it. But overall, I think it's better to know if you have already researched the technology rather than wondering if you already did it or not.

9.- That's what scouts are for There has been some suggestions about making some buildings reflect which phase each player is on, but we haven't decided anything about it yet.

About online play, it works perfect! (I would say it runs even better than singleplayer) There's even support to re-join the game if you have been disconnected for whatever reason

Staff members organize a multiplayer match every week to have fun and test new features

If you are looking for a multiplayer match, I suggest you to join to IRC channel #0ad and/or #0ad-dev to ask if someone wants to play a match. People usually gather there to set up multiplayer matches.

Sorry for any grammar or spelling errors

[desyfer]

Hey Enrique, thanks for taking the time to respond.

Sorry for the confusion. By 'hero' I meant the player. Though after testing out a few other maps I've realised that you don't always start on top of a mini-mountain. Guess I just got (un)lucky...

Thanks for letting me know about Q and E; definitely something new for me, and allowed me to find a stone-mine tucked away behind some trees. I gave the paths another try; they work as you said. Before I was doing 'shift-rightclick' 'shift-rightclick' 'shift-rigtclick' and then 'rightclick' (without shift) to finalise the path. It turned out that the final rightclick without shift was cancelling everything.

Is there any talk on text updates appearing when something happens? When you have a big operation going on with a few civic centres, planning attacks, etc it's easy to lose track of when farms run out, buildings have been built, etc. I do realise there are sounds, but they can easily be drowned out by the music, and simply by not knowing what they mean!

2 other things I've wondered:

The requirements of upgrading to a town from a village seem a little superficial. I think there's only 4 buildings available at that time, and I need to build all 4 of them in order to upgrade. The same when upgrading to a city. It would be ok, but the cattle ranch, temple and rotary mill seem pretty useless for me, and I'm only building them just to do the upgrade. Maybe upgrading could be determined by population + resources? 25villagers + 500wood and food = town, then 75 villagers + 1000wood,stone,food = city.

The games are getting better and better though. My only concern now is that perhaps the enemy seems a little too passive. This is confirmed by the enemy's map discovery when I finish the game - maybe about 30 or 40% compared to my 80+%.

I'll join the IRC. Will look forward to getting taught a lesson or 2 online!

oh, and don't worry about the spelling and grammar! It's absolutely fine!

Edited December 9, 2012 by desyfer

[leper]

You can just build five houses to upgrade.

[Mythos_Ruler]

Yep, you only have to build 4 or 5 buildings from that phase. So, in Village Phase in order to unlock the Town Phase upgrade you can build 3 houses and 2 mills, or 5 houses, or 3 mills, a house, and a farmstead, or any combination of structures available at the start of the game (minus palisades, those don't count).

We wanted to try and allow players to experiment with their own build orders instead of forcing one way or another.

[serveurix]

2: Sheep. With 50 cost for 100 return, is it really worth it? Especially given I need a whole new building for it (and IIRC I can't use this building as a drop off for farms when sheep run out). What's the benefits of killing sheep as opposed to knocking out farms?

Have you tried to play "Savannah Ravine" with the celts ? Celts need a lot of wood (for buildings, especially), and forests are small on this map. As you can't afford to spend all your wood in farms (the enemy attacks very early and often, you need towers and strong troops quickly, and to advance in phase as fast as you can), sheep are definitely the best option.

4: Think I love the territory feature. What happens when my territory eventually meets villains? Do I just have to knock down his civic centre to allow further expansion? I can imagine the map in later stages will look great when everything's carved up and people are fighting over bits of map for territory. Much better than TC in AOE which had little 'real' value on the map bar being a fancy lumbercamp,etc.

One funny tip for oases maps (where the enemy's economy is focused on one point of the map) : expand fast and surround his territories with yours. Once he has consumed all his resources and sent his last army crash into your walls, you can feel the sadistic pleasure to raze his whole city to the ground with just a few units. Mwahahahahahaha. >:-D

7: Is there any benefit to being able to rotate buildings? I know I can do it, but it doesn't seem like there's any point to it. (Unless I can rotate map?!) Could entrances to buildings be drop points? Would mean rotating build towards resource saves a tile of travel.

As the terrain is not tiled like in old 2D strategy games, rotating a building can help to put it in confined places. It' helpul when you want to defend an acropolis, for example. An other point is that when units come out of a building, they always come out from the same side, and rotating a building can help if you don't want a unit to be stuck between structures (even if I think this behavior should be considered as a bug).

9: I feel a little cut off during the game. I received no visits from villains' scouts, and had no idea about the progress of the enemy. Of course, the latter is realistic, but for a newbie, I had no idea if I'm getting left behind. Scouts without paths are on suicide missions, and I think they retaliate to attacks by default, which makes that unfavourable. Could we have updates on when the others advance an age? Maybe on upgrade a 'messenger' could be sent out to deliver the news to other players. It'd be an invisible unit which delivers the news in relation to the distance between civs.

As Enrique said : that's what the scouts are for. ...And the outposts. City's line of sight is quite small in this game, so outposts are quickly essential to react quickly enough to repel attacks.

Edited December 12, 2012 by serveurix