Important matters regarding the overall gameplay...

[Spahbod]

Currently 0 A.D.'s gameplay is too slow compared to any other RTS game out there I know of. It makes the matches take much longer time and the main factor resulting this speed is the economic side of the game.

The economic side has the speed of a snail. Construction take a lot of time, costs are too high, and resource gathering is very slow considering the costs.

The military side is too fast if you don't take the siege into account soldiers die too quickly. But when you get into siege, it becomes a nightmare. Especially if your enemy has placed a good defensive line. In fact, you buildup a long time, for a fast paced action that doesn't satisfy you completely.

One of the reasons the balance is like this, is that we are trying to support 300 population cap, and each infantry unit takes exactly one. So we can have massive battles, and as we don't want such a battle to go around for half an hour, we make units die quickly (low health/armor, high damage). We make building stronger so that one cannot destroy another's town in half a minute with a large army. We make the costs and build times high and gather rates low, so that your 100 citizens or so won't be able to fill the whole map with buildings in 10 minutes. These can be great when you want a very long and slow game. I really don't like some of the new games that are more dependent on player speed than anything else. Omitting long-time plannings in favor of game speed. But we have to admit that we are falling of the other side. 0 A.D. is too slow. Just play a match of Age of Empires/Mythology, slow games in general, and play a 0 A.D. match to get what I mean.

The current balance of the game actually "dictates" a long match. You need a lot of siege weapons and soldiers to breach into a moderately defended base, you need a lot of gatherers (more than 50) to have a good economy and you need a lot of patience, a large army, to have an enjoyable battle. As someone who is usually a turtler, I was surprised at being a little bored in some matches. Think of those who usually prefer quick games!

0 A.D. by itself, has a lot of potential. It would be horrible if people download the game because they find the outline fantastic, play the game a few times, and get bored of it. In the other hand, there are people who'd love to play a long and slow game in some (or all ) occasions. We can't also loose this group of players.

What should we do? Well, let us go to another successful RTS game:Rise of Nations. In RoN, if you are in a mood for a long, sluggish game, you can set the beginning and ending ages into Ancient and Information age respectively, and set the cost/time option of technologies, which are the main factors of game speed, into "Very expensive and Slow". Then you can remove wonder and territory victory conditions and have a nice, long game. But for a quick game, you can do the opposite, and set the population limit into something like 100. You have your fast game!

So the suggestion is to have options for overall "Cost", "BuildSpeed" and "Hitpoint" of the structures, and "Hitpoint" of units in addition to the population cap which is already there. They'll be like 25%, 50%, 100%, 150% and so on. This will make the game quite customizable. Notice that they'll apply mainly to buildings, which are the main speed factors of the game right now. You may like longer battles, that's when you'll increase the hitpoint of units. That's not very critical. All options should stand at something average by default. For example, population cap should stand at 150 and the rest on 100%. We also have to decrease the build time and cost of buildings to have an "average" state, something like the state of Age of Mythology I suggest. This way people can customize their balance of the game to something they like. No one will be unhappy.

The implication of this system won't be hard. It can be finished for Alpha 13.

Other than that, Walls are too overpowered. We should at least make the wall towers shoot if there are units garrisoned in. I think many balancing issues will be solved by these.

There is another issue I want to address here. When playing a game of AoE/AoM/RoN, you have a small selection of units to train, and about six times a selection of technologies. This will make the game more interesting in the early and middle phases (I don't mean something like ages, a general phase) where the player is usually "waiting" for the economy to prosper. The later phase of the game is exciting enough as most of the action is taking place in it. So we have to give the player something to be occupied with before that. Some games like C&C Generals do it with a large selection of units in addition to a good amount of techs to be researched. But Many other games successfully do this by giving the player upgrades and researches to be concerned about. For 0 A.D. which doesn't have a very large variety of units, this looks like the best option. But we have a problem.

We have the tech pairs which make the time needed to research these half of what it could have been. Don't get me wrong. I love the concept. What I have problem with, is that we have too few "single paired" techs and some pairs, like "melee-attack_vs_ranged-attack" don't feel right. Each of those can be something like "melee-attack_vs_cost" and so on. Resource gathering techs like wood, stone and metal shouldn't be in pairs at all, and we must have more wood and food upgrades just like the other ones. We can have some infantry armor techs/pairs (even with more than one level), and some "infantry training" tech that increases the hitpoint, even changing the appearance.

When a unit is promoted, it goes into a "victory" animation that makes it invincible for a while. But this doesn't stop other units from attacking it. In large battles, this can be troublesome. What I suggest is that we should make the unit skip the animation if it is attacked/given a command and remove the invincibility of course. In short, it will only show the animation if there is no other thing to do at the moment.

And there is a suggestion to improve the game's appearance. If you remember the "infantry training" tech I suggested, you see that I said it can change the unit's appearance. Well, the idea came from Age of Mythology where units looked more grand when you researched a certain tech. Currently we have promotions that do the same. But what if we reserve this change for the "training" upgrade, and have other ways to distinguish promoted units from others (like new selection rings). Or alternatively, we can make the "training" upgrade enable the player to train promoted units (all of your current ones will be promoted too). The Spartans can have an additional "level" for this tech for further promotion. This is just a minor suggestion although it can give a better "feel" to the player after they research some stuff.

I had another suggestion that I forgot to mention in the main topic. It is about female and male citizens. Currently the only differences between a male and female citizen are:

1:males cost wood

2:males can fight, build better buildings and gather resources faster.

This makes the males much better than females in many cases, and whenever someone has wood, he/she would train males instead. I think we should increase the population cost of all males by 1. This way, you may be able to train a much better unit, but you could have trained 2 females instead. This would give us a reason to train females at all, regardless of wood cost.

[feneur]

I personally don't feel 0 A.D. is too slow, at least not in multiplayer against an opponent who knows how to raid But still, adding options to set the speed of the game in different ways is probably a good idea. I think we should begin with implementing an overall game speed setting though as that should just be to create the GUI for the already existing JS(?) command.

We have the tech pairs which make the time needed to research these double of what it could have been. Don't get me wrong. I love the concept. What I have problem with, is that we have too few "single paired" techs and some pairs, like "melee-attack_vs_ranged-attack" don't feel right. Each of those can be something like "melee-attack_vs_cost" and so on. Resource gathering techs like wood, stone and metal shouldn't be in pairs at all, and we must have more wood and food upgrades just like the other ones. We can have some infantry armor techs/pairs (even with more than one level), and some "infantry training" tech that increases the hitpoint, even changing the appearance.

Can you please explain how the tech pairs double the time needed to research?

[wraitii]

I feel like I agree 200%. The game starts slowly and finishes really fast ( Ai growth for example is basically exponential. At 10 minutes, hardly a village. At 20 minutes, a moderate town. At 30 minutes, the map is covered in TCs. This is a serious issue.) might be the playstyle, as you can still raid quickly, but I always get that feeling, which I did not get in aoe or aom

In particular, house building was (still is to an extent) notoriously slow.

I also agree about tech pairs, I feel like the choices aren't right. I love the idea of pairs, but I agree that cost vs power usually makes more sense than Melee vs ranged. Though a bit of both would be perfect (to allow more customization in-game.

Finally, I wouldn't mind slightly slower battles, really.

[Spahbod]

I personally don't feel 0 A.D. is too slow, at least not in multiplayer against an opponent who knows how to raid But still, adding options to set the speed of the game in different ways is probably a good idea. I think we should begin with implementing an overall game speed setting though as that should just be to create the GUI for the already existing JS(?) command.

Can you please explain how the tech pairs double the time needed to research?

Oh sorry. I meant half, not double. I've never been a good speaker/writer

[feneur]

In particular, house building was (still is to an extent) notoriously slow.

Is this after the changes quantumstate made yesterday? (Decreased build time for houses and mills)

[Yves]

There are people who like competitive gaming where a game is over after 20 minutes, but others prefer to play together with friends for hours, build up a base slowly and have some battles. I'd prefer a generally slower game too with as little advantage for super-fast clickers as possible.

Strategy should have a greater value than developing an automatism for getting your economy up as fast as possible and having the best micro managing skills. This also allows us to have greater differences between the civilizations.

The discussion about (sort of) removing the the Iberian walls is a perfect example. This and other special buildings, bonuses, techs, units and abilities make the game harder to balance and less attractive for professional gaming. On the other hand they bring more variety for the average player.

Having some adjustable options is probably a good idea for things like those you mentioned. However it's not a solution for everything and we'll have to make a basic decision what kind of gameplay we want.

That's the same thing I've tried to express in TheMista's balancing thread. Making little adjustments here and there will not be enough to achieve a coherent balancing and gameplay. We need a plan first!

Another argument in favour of varieties is that we have a lot of artists and programmers who are capable of creating this variety and like to do it.

In contrast, for a professional game development company the other approach is probably more interesting.

It means they get access to the pro-gaming market and they don't have to spend too much money creating the variety.

[Spahbod]

Before everything, I had another suggestion that I forgot to mention in the main topic. It is about female and male citizens. Currently the only differences between a male and female citizen are:

1:males cost wood

2:males can fight, build better buildings and gather resources faster.

This makes the males much better than females in many cases, and whenever someone has wood, he/she would train males instead. I think we should increase the population cost of all males by 1. This way, you may be able to train a much better unit, but you could have trained 2 females instead. This would give us a reason to train females at all, regardless of wood cost.

I personally don't feel 0 A.D. is too slow, at least not in multiplayer against an opponent who knows how to raid But still, adding options to set the speed of the game in different ways is probably a good idea. I think we should begin with implementing an overall game speed setting though as that should just be to create the GUI for the already existing JS(?) command.

Well, 0 A.D. is a game that has been able to bore someone who generally turtles (aka Spahbod) and that's quite an achievement! I personally would prefer a little faster economic part and a slower action. Something like AoE3. As for the speed, I think we should make the game as customizable as we can so I prefer to have more detailed options. It is even in the design document that the final version should have a large selection of options. It won't be much harder than creating a "general" speed option.

There are people who like competitive gaming where a game is over after 20 minutes, but others prefer to play together with friends for hours, build up a base slowly and have some battles. I'd prefer a generally slower game too with as little advantage for super-fast clickers as possible.

That is one of the good reasons to have these options. If we want to attract a large amount of lasting players, we should make the game to be as flexible as it can. And what I am suggesting doesn't require a very large change or something. It is just giving the players more options to shape the speed of the game into whatever they wish.

Strategy should have a greater value than developing an automatism for getting your economy up as fast as possible and having the best micro managing skills. This also allows us to have greater differences between the civilizations.

I understand what you mean. But think of people who prefer a faster gameplay. Should we drop them from our vision just because "we" "want" a slower, more strategical game? I prefer the latter myself. But many others don't.

Also, when we are creating a game with 12 different factions, we can't make very distinct civs in terms of gameplay. The technology part of my suggestions can play a major role in this case though, as we would have more options that can vary between different factions.

Having some adjustable options is probably a good idea for things like those you mentioned. However it's not a solution for everything and we'll have to make a basic decision what kind of gameplay we want.

The whole idea about my suggestion is that we (developers) should not impose our view of a game speed into the game. We shouldn't make a game that is only enjoyable to someone who prefers a certain speed. If someone wants weak but expensive buildings and larger armies (Battle for middle earth style), he should be able to customize the game for it. Same goes for someone who likes faster-and-cheaper-to-build structures but stronger units and slow battles or a very long game like what we have right now.

The discussion about (sort of) removing the the Iberian walls is a perfect example. This and other special buildings, bonuses, techs, units and abilities make the game harder to balance and less attractive for professional gaming. On the other hand they bring more variety for the average player.

We don't necessarily want a game attractive to professional gamers. But we want a game that many people can shape and adopt to their wishes and styles. I am generally in favor of more variation. But balance between civs is something, and a general balance between different phases of the game is something else.

That's the same thing I've tried to express in TheMista's balancing thread. Making little adjustments here and there will not be enough to achieve a coherent balancing and gameplay. We need a plan first!

True, but we are generally speaking of the speed. Maybe I couldn't express what I mean because of my poor English. But by balance, I mean the general balance of speed and attractiveness in different phases of the game.

[Pureon]

The game starts slowly and finishes really fast ( Ai growth for example is basically exponential...

Unlike other games our soldiers aid with resource gathering, allowing this exponential growth.

An option discussed previously is to have techs that gradually turn citizen-soldiers from 'villagers' into 'soldiers'. Without these techs citizen-soldiers would be very strong economically, and weak militarily. If you upgrade your citizens too early your economy would suffer, if you upgrade too late you could be attacked by a much stronger army.

[TheMista]

If you check the recent svn changes you would see that the game has changed towards that direction.

[Yves]

I agree that the speed becomes much faster quickly after a certain stage.

That's bad for people who prefer slower gameplay and also for those who prefer faster gameplay and should be improved.

Unlike other games our soldiers aid with resource gathering, allowing this exponential growth.

An option discussed previously is to have techs that gradually turn citizen-soldiers from 'villagers' into 'soldiers'.

That's true and I think the Idea isn't bad.

Another solution would be increasing the strength of the champion units. I think they are too expensive and too weak at the moment if you take into account that they can't gather resources and therefore are a loss the whole time they are waiting somewhere for an attack compared to citizen soldiers who can gather resources at that time.

If you check the recent svn changes you would see that the game has changed towards that direction.

That's true, but I think the point brought up by Pureon has much more impact on the game's speed difference in early and in late-game.

Reducing build-time for the buildings required early has some limits.

[Spahbod]

An option discussed previously is to have techs that gradually turn citizen-soldiers from 'villagers' into 'soldiers'. Without these techs citizen-soldiers would be very strong economically, and weak militarily. If you upgrade your citizens too early your economy would suffer, if you upgrade too late you could be attacked by a much stronger army.

It is something like what I said above:

And there is a suggestion to improve the game's appearance. If you remember the "infantry training" tech I suggested, you see that I said it can change the unit's appearance. Well, the idea came from Age of Mythology where units looked more grand when you researched a certain tech. Currently we have promotions that do the same. But what if we reserve this change for the "training" upgrade, and have other ways to distinguish promoted units from others (like new selection rings). Or alternatively, we can make the "training" upgrade enable the player to train promoted units (all of your current ones will be promoted too). The Spartans can have an additional "level" for this tech for further promotion. This is just a minor suggestion although it can give a better "feel" to the player after they research some stuff.

[wraitii]

I don't mind the slower growth (as long as it doesn't get boring. The beginning is a bit lacking in that aspect. Perhaps scouting could be made more important or something) . It's the fact that it suddenly goes in overdrive (and pureon is right) that's problematic.

Perhaps the solution is actually slowing down the late game. Making buildings costlier, units less efficient/costlier/longer to train. Perhaps most tech could lengthen the training time, making for an interesting possibility for tech pairs or something.

Perhaps smaller skirmish should be favored in the mid game (15-25 minutes on) before actually breaking out the big siege units and the big walls.

[TheMista]

I don't mind the slower growth (as long as it doesn't get boring. The beginning is a bit lacking in that aspect. Perhaps scouting could be made more important or something) . It's the fact that it suddenly goes in overdrive (and pureon is right) that's problematic.

Perhaps the solution is actually slowing down the late game. Making buildings costlier, units less efficient/costlier/longer to train. Perhaps most tech could lengthen the training time, making for an interesting possibility for tech pairs or something.

Perhaps smaller skirmish should be favored in the mid game (15-25 minutes on) before actually breaking out the big siege units and the big walls.

You should try the current svn build with my changes , you will find yourself suprised of how gameplay has improved.

[Sighvatr]

I like the idea to upgrade civilian soldiers by technology. I would think a rich economy would provide better civilian soldiers. An idea could be to only upgrade certain units depending on the civilization. Such as the Spartans only able unit to upgrade would be hoplites. That way we could help differ civilizations more, and not harm the economy by buying other civilian soldiers instead.

Im satisfied with the economical growth in this game. The fast technology research helps balance the long process of building. Which is the opposite of age of empire games. Though I do think it would help building the 5 population houses more quickly for the civilizations that have those. I am agreed that certain technologies shouldnt be paired, and rather split into better cost versus better statistics.

[Spahbod]

Perhaps the solution is actually slowing down the late game. Making buildings costlier, units less efficient/costlier/longer to train. Perhaps most tech could lengthen the training time, making for an interesting possibility for tech pairs or something.

Another solution would be using a smaller population cap, like 150. This way players will reach the limit mid-game and won't be able to have an economic boom later. But this has another problem. Less population limit = less troops = less likely to be able to breach a well defended base.

[Thanduel]

I have to say I agree with Spahbod, customisation is very important, pigeon-holing the game into a certain type of gameplay will only ostracise the game from many players and potential contributors.

Personally, I would agree with the game being too slow with too much time spent on the economy followed with fast battles that are not strategically satisfying. I think there is value in the battles being slower or lasting longer. The more time you have in battle the more time you have to think and react, to change your strategy or to respond to an opponents strategy, I've personally always loved the slow epic action of the total war games but obviously the total war franchise is a bit on the extreme side of slow and strategic. I think the formation feature implies gameplay more on this side of the RTS spectrum. I also think that this sort of gameplay puts less emphasis on APM and more on planning and strategy.

What I think would be great to see is the provision of a number of configurable options, say for example a global modifier on building hp, a global modifier on unit hp, a modifier on the rate of building/collecting, and a modifier on the overall gameplay speed. With these the game will likely settle into a popular subset of configurable options. These could then become game-play presets for different game types. However, the only way to find out what works is play to test the options.

A further advantage of having the ability to set health modifiers, is that it provides a way to handicap more experienced players playing against less experienced players.

I think what is clear when reading just these few posts is that choosing a set in stone game-play style for 0ad is going to leave many people dissatisfied.

[Spahbod]

Mythos: Can you give us your opinion?

[Mythos_Ruler]

Re: technologies

The current "technology tree" in the game is only temporary. I thought this was abundantly clear, but perhaps not, so I'll say it again. The current "technology tree" in the game is only temporary. It is very ad hoc. Techs have not been added to the game at this point according to any plan, the exception being many of the "special techs" which are mentioned in the civ profiles.

So, a real tech tree needs to be designed and implemented and tested before we can make any real determinations on that score.

Here is the discussion on the technology tree for the game: http://www.wildfireg...showtopic=16631

Re: exponential expansion

Part of the reason I don't see this as a huge problem is that it puts pressure on the other players in the match. Seeing the enemy snatch more and more land as you diddle with berry bushes and farming is a powerful incentive to get one's act together. Territorial borders are meant to push and pull against each other. However, I realize this incentivizes the 'Boom' strategy too much, so I could see unit upgrades as a side effect pushing citizen-soldiers more toward the combat role and less toward the economic role. In fact, I think that is something that can be agreed upon right now. Or even, perhaps upon each passing phase the trainable units go up one rank, meaning they fight better better but gather slower.

Re: building strength and build time.

This is very much in flux. I'm open to suggestions here, though, I would like buildings more along the strength of Age of Kings, rather than the paper mache buildings of Age of Mythology. My original idea for making buildings take a long time to build is to get away from the "one dude building houses, then joined by Bob and Harry later" syndrome. What I mean is, the name of the game would be about managing groups of builders and gatherers, rather than making the huge monumental decision to sent 1 dude off to build a building. I hope you catch my sarcasm.

Re: Match setup options for health, build time, game speed, etc.

Of course, I'd love if we had more setup options. That goes without saying.

However, let's endeavor to decide upon "standard" settings for different match types so we don't overwhelm people with options if all they'd prefer to do is play one of the standard match types. So, let's say there is Conquest (default mode), Classic, Death Match, Herocide, etc. If you want to alter the default settings, then a check box can be clicked, giving you a whole plethora of options.

THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND

• The current tech tree is only temporary.
  
• All stats are in flux.
  
• We don't yet have things like:
  
  • Tech trees
    
  • Hero auras and bonuses
    
  • Civ bonuses
    
  • Team bonuses
    
  • Female aura
    
  • Capturing of any kind
    

[FeXoR]

In my opinion most RTS games are to fast. Most don't even really have a build up phase of notable length. Just AoE had a similar feel of gameplay.

0 A.D. has the right speed of gameplay though the performance has to be raised (which is high priority right now).

I remember multiplayer games in AoE II where players swapped the island they occupied during the game. It was amazing! Something like that is not possible in most other RTS games.

[MoLAoS]

Slowing down RTS games is my calling in life. There WILL be a popular RTS game with matches that take over 2 hours. There WILL!

[sanderd17]

Things I've thought while reading this thread:

1. If the growth is exponential, we could limit this by slower resource gathering. I'm thinking about slowing down the walking speed when a worker is carrying something. That way, you start collecting close to the base, so walking speed isn't that important in the beginning, but later on, you're collecting further away.

To give this more effect, maybe let the ports be only a dropsite for food. So you really have to build mills or walk a while.

2. Every project has an ideal number of workers. You can paint a room with 5 painters, or with 50, it won't make a lot of difference in real life (you need to get the paint, the paint needs to dry, workmen start to collide, etc). Am I right that this isn't implemented currently in the game? By limiting the speed increase for each additional worker, you'll also make sure that players don't let too many workmen in their population, but that they invest more in soldiers.

I also like the techs that would allow citizen soldiers to become more powerful, but slower workers.

[Yves]

2. Every project has an ideal number of workers. You can paint a room with 5 painters, or with 50, it won't make a lot of difference in real life (you need to get the paint, the paint needs to dry, workmen start to collide, etc). Am I right that this isn't implemented currently in the game? By limiting the speed increase for each additional worker, you'll also make sure that players don't let too many workmen in their population, but that they invest more in soldiers.

If I remember correctly, this is already implemented for building.

[Spahbod]

From all the suggestions here, the idea of more powerful/less-gatherer as someone ages has been the best one I have seen. Should we do this by promoting all the current and the future citizen-soldiers per age or just making it the effect of a tech?

[wraitii]

Just to give another idea: how about a "global experience" sort of mechanism. The more you fight, the stronger all your citizen soldiers are and the slower they gather. This would automatically make the game slow down as time goes by.

[FeXoR]

Just to give another idea: how about a "global experience" sort of mechanism. The more you fight, the stronger all your citizen soldiers are and the slower they gather. This would automatically make the game slow down as time goes by.

This way citizen soldiers get even more powerful: At the beginning they are good gatherers and then become good fighters...