Working on stuff for Alpha 14.

[Shield Bearer]

A player should be able to play how he wants. We only have to supply the methods of doing so. Whether he wants to build farms around his CC, he should be able to. We could discourage them for reality's sake, but we shouldn't forbid them. If a mayor wanted to build farms in his city, he very well could, even if it wasn't such a great idea.

[wraitii]

I think we should aim to make effective/doable as many different playstyles as we can, in fact.

(obviously as long as it doesn't infer with other realism/doability/fun rules)

[idanwin]

A player should be able to play how he wants. We only have to supply the methods of doing so. Whether he wants to build farms around his CC, he should be able to. We could discourage them for reality's sake, but we shouldn't forbid them. If a mayor wanted to build farms in his city, he very well could, even if it wasn't such a great idea.

OK, I admit you have a point there.

Discouraging it is then.

I keep my opinion on no winning without farms though!

Not literally of course: farms should not be a prerequisite for winning!

[Mythos_Ruler]

Well, we're already going to have infinite farms, so that wouldn't really work.

Yup, that's pretty much exactly the kind of thing we're going for. You'll have to decide which food source (corrals, farms, or fruit) that you'll go for. Each will have advantages and disadvantages.

I'm not really sure where hunting and fishing fall into this. I think they should be supplementary food sources, instead of primary ones like milk/farm/fruit.

I don't really like that idea, but I'm not entirely sure why. I feel like we should encourage farms to be built around farmsteads, instead of discouraging them being built around CCs.

One really convenient thing about building around the CC is that in case of a raid, the CC can be garrisoned to save farmers. Maybe farmsteads should be garrisonable too, just to encourage them a bit more over CCs (in addition to some other solutions).

Perhaps if we implement Farmland, CCs cannot be built on farmland but Farmsteads can. Just a thought. Also, I echo your thoughts that all food sources should be viable source of food, either if the player "specializes" in specific food sources or if the player wants to have a diverse "portfolio" of food income. The diverse method would be ideal as an overall food strategy in a game, while specialization would make sense at different points of the game depending on how much the player scouts, what techs they choose, etc. Also, Farmsteads being garrisonable makes sense. I wouldn't want them to shoot though. Just a weak preference of mine, or perhaps just shoot half the normal arrows.

[idanwin]

No, farmsteads should not shoot! (see what I did there? should/shoot, sorry xD)

I would even say only civilians/civ-soldiers should be able to garrison inside.

Not allowing CC to be build on farmland seems a bit strange. I would rather place a tooltip warning like: 'WARNING: Placing a civ center on this farmland will degrade the soil!' or something. And when you do decide to place a CC there you just lose the farmland bonus.

[alpha123]

With the 'auto-seed' button as presented before.

It's already been decided that auto-seed is out. We'll have actual infinite farms.

I don't want to see a single farm build around a CC anymore! I've gotten tired of those unrealistic cities in AoE where the inner city is all farmland. It just makes me sick.

Then... don't build farms around your CC? No need to force that preference on other people. I do think we should encourage building farms near a farmstead and not a CC though.

As for the rest of your post... I think you forgot this is a game. We're going for good gameplay, not 100% realism. Being totally realistic is not good for gameplay.

Perhaps if we implement Farmland, CCs cannot be built on farmland but Farmsteads can. Just a thought. Also, I echo your thoughts that all food sources should be viable source of food, either if the player "specializes" in specific food sources or if the player wants to have a diverse "portfolio" of food income. The diverse method would be ideal as an overall food strategy in a game, while specialization would make sense at different points of the game depending on how much the player scouts, what techs they choose, etc. Also, Farmsteads being garrisonable makes sense. I wouldn't want them to shoot though. Just a weak preference of mine, or perhaps just shoot half the normal arrows.

That's pretty much exactly my thoughts. Different methods would have different benefits. A micro player might go for maximum efficiency with bushes, while a macro player might use fields and corrals to have a steady income of food they don't have to manage. Corrals would take fewer population, opening up more for the army size, but fields might be more efficient. The tech tree should allow both specialization and generalizing.

I agree farmsteads shouldn't shoot. They also probably shouldn't be able to garrison too many, given that the models are fairly small. Maybe 5-10 each, but you'll probably have multiple farmsteads, so I think it doesn't give too much advantage to CCs.

[Zeta1127]

When corrals are set up as planned, garrisoning animals to gain a steady trickle of food and/or a discount on training mounted units, basically the animal nursery in Galactic Battlegrounds with some additional benefits, they will be a much more attractive alternative to farming. I for one would use corrals a lot more when they are set up like that.

[idanwin]

It's already been decided that auto-seed is out. We'll have actual infinite farms.

The auto-seed button as presented before was for infinite farms, it allowed people to have farms build all around a farmstead without having to place them one by one.

Then... don't build farms around your CC? No need to force that preference on other people. I do think we should encourage building farms near a farmstead and not a CC though.

As for the rest of your post... I think you forgot this is a game. We're going for good gameplay, not 100% realism. Being totally realistic is not good for gameplay.

I already said that I agree with you on not forcing people to build no farms around CC, just discouraging them.

I did certainly not forget this is a game, I just don't want this game to become totally ridicule by allowing people to get there food from bushes/corrals without farming. I talked with a few of my AoE2-playing friends last night and they all agreed that allowing other food sources than farming to be used as primary food sources during the late game was ridicule, not good for gameplay and unrealistic.

Not allowing CC to be build on farmland seems a bit strange.

I said this because custom made maps might have too much farmland and then you can't build CC's anywhere. I also don't know how you'll explain why a new player can't build his CC on farmland.

[greenlaser]

About Alpha 14:

It would be nice to have a new AI, that is specialized in having no CivCentre and that has some kind of timer when to attack enemy base! There are a few maps with invasion forces, but they don't attack. At least not with normal difficulty!

You could then also use this AI to make campaigns, where there is a siege of a town or where you have to prepare yourself for 20min and then the attack comes! I think it would be very nice

Oh!, and AI don't build walls?

[alpha123]

The auto-seed button as presented before was for infinite farms, it allowed people to have farms build all around a farmstead without having to place them one by one.

Oh, right, sorry. That won't be particularly useful though because you'll still have to manually task villagers to build the farms, right?

I did certainly not forget this is a game, I just don't want this game to become totally ridicule by allowing people to get there food from bushes/corrals without farming.

You DO know that there were great civilizations who didn't farm, right? Ever heard of hunter-gatherers?

Really, why is that so ridiculous?

I talked with a few of my AoE2-playing friends last night and they all agreed that allowing other food sources than farming to be used as primary food sources during the late game was ridicule, not good for gameplay and unrealistic.

1) That's a bit of a fallacy, appealing to other people who definitely aren't even authorities on game design, especially when you don't give their reasoning, and

2) I fail to see how extra options which have strategic implications are not good for gameplay.

I said this because custom made maps might have too much farmland and then you can't build CC's anywhere. I also don't know how you'll explain why a new player can't build his CC on farmland.

"Civic center cannot be built on farmland" tooltip would be enough, I think. Also... why would the map designer put so much farmland there isn't room for CCs? o_O

[wraitii]

Certainly in RTSs like AOE2/AOE3, there was an obvious early game food source: hunting, and an obvious late-game food source: farming, with hardly anything in between. I even recall a very detailed study on AOE3 which showed that whatever the situation, corral was useless. So that's bad.

Right now in 0 A.D. things play out much in the same way: the corral is generally worse than farming late-game, worse than gathering/hunting early game. Thus it never gets used, even if it's in itself in the game. So the game "apparently" has diversity, but in fact only two actual food sources (three if you count berries apart) instead of 3/4.

I'm not against having hunting better early game and farming better late game, it's "semi" realistic, a fairly basic mechanic, and it's still interesting. Furthermore the advantage from hunting/gathering really goes away because food gets scarce, so if you're motivated you can still do it later in the game right now.

Corrals however are problematic because they are basically a blend between farming and hunting: fairly micro-intensive, static, average gathering rate. So they're never the better choice.

So what could be done about this? Perhaps farms should be more limited in how you can use them: perhaps we could only allow them to be built on farmlands, which could be scarce. So you would fight for them and otherwise rely on corrals.

Other solution, as Alpha123 said: make farms require more workers or more space for the same efficiency (perhaps make their yields more diminishing). This would be trickier for players, but it could be interesting. Basically you'd need huge farm fields with a few workers on each, which would be harder to defend from raids (and obviously costlier to build)… than only having one or two corrals in your base.

Final solution: find a way to make corrals better in some specific strategies. A possibility here would be to rely on techs: through some clever playing around with stats we could probably make corrals more attractive if you want to rush for food in the beginning (like making them cost minimal wood, I dunno. This needs to be faster than hunting quickly, though), which would make them more attractive than farms to rushers. Then with techs we make the corrals even more attractive, but specializing on corrals (through linked techs) makes farming less interesting as time goes on and you never really switch back. For a slower player, farms could still be the way to go. So that would make corrals do something, allow farms to still retain a use, and also keep hunting/gathering as the early game gathering resource.

I'm saying this about rushes, but we could make it more interesting for some actually more daring of even more specific strategies, or some specific cases. At least, they should be different enough that they're attractive in some situation. For example, right now cavalry units hunt at an insane rate. If it's also true for sheeps, it could be interesting for an early all-cav rush.

I think the key here is to make corrals useful in different situations than farming. Not making it more or less equally good, as the players will always end up with one solution, the ever-so-slightly better one.

I don't really have an opinion on the farmstead vs city center thing. I'd be ok with them being required to build fields.

Perhaps simply a bonus to gathering rate of fields around farmsteads would make them more attractive than city centers to build farms around.

(afaik, hunting is basically always the best choice for food in terms of gathering rate right now, even late game, if you upgrade. However the hassle gets big. So I think that balances itself nicely.)

[historic_bruno]

Corrals however are problematic because they are basically a blend between farming and hunting: fairly micro-intensive, static, average gathering rate

I thought that was only temporary behavior, and eventually we'd have proper herding and corralling, where the animals would provide a steady stream of resources and civ-specific bonuses, without requiring any micro.

[Mythos_Ruler]

I thought that was only temporary behavior, and eventually we'd have proper herding and corralling, where the animals would provide a steady stream of resources and civ-specific bonuses, without requiring any micro.

Right. Corrals are not currently functioning anything like how they're supposed to.

[alpha123]

I think the key here is to make corrals useful in different situations than farming. Not making it more or less equally good, as the players will always end up with one solution, the ever-so-slightly better one.

I agree. I think corrals should be less efficient than farms, but since they require no pop to operate (we're assuming proper corrals, not the current one) it opens up more army space. Fruit should be very efficient, requiring more pop than corrals but less than farms, but also pretty micro-intensive. Farms should probably be the common food choice: reasonably efficient and easy to use (since they'll be infinite), but take up a lot of space and easy to raid. So each food source will have trade offs. Ideally you would use more than one food source, and the tech tree should reflect this, but it should also be possible to specialize in one (e.g. use almost entirely corrals if you're a very macro player, thus freeing up a lot of pop for your army). I'm not really sure where fishing falls into this, other than that it's not viable right now simply because maps don't have enough fish, and that needs to be fixed. I think fishing should be a viable supplementary food source, although if there was a civ that was known to fish a lot, perhaps they could use it as a primary one.

(afaik, hunting is basically always the best choice for food in terms of gathering rate right now, even late game, if you upgrade. However the hassle gets big. So I think that balances itself nicely.)

Unfortunately, it only seems that way, since the gather rate is fast, but in reality since it costs 50 food for each sheep, and they only harvest 100 food, it's not that effective. It requires a lot of food to get started, and even then you're not making that much. Not even TheMista used corrals, and his micro was insane.

[MoLAoS]

Just a thought:

Perhaps corrals could involve some sort of growth, but need to be sourced from the wild. So you need a specific sized herd to make much of a value, since you need to kill a lot to support yourself, sorta like relying on interest from a bank account. But since you can only get them from the wild you need to balance getting your production going with getting that early food from hunting. A rush might just burn out the wild population while an econ player would try to conserve as much as possible to jump start their herds.

And/Or:

If you limit farms to certain ground you will probably have extra space you don't need for the military once you expand to grab some new farms, which could then be used for the corrals, so they would exist in tandem. This is realistic, herds are put on grassy areas that can't support crops. And it makes herding more viable in comparison.

[WhiteTreePaladin]

I think Civil Centers (and other structures) should be able to be built on farmland. It doesn't really make sense to put any structures on farmland though. That would limit how many farms you could place.

If we don't want players to farm around their Civil Centers, I think we should potentially handle that with a "gathering speed" increasing aura for farmsteads.

[wraitii]

This would require severely limiting farming, though. I do agree with the Aura idea.

This all depends on if farmlands are implemented. If so it's obvious: make corrals better on non-farmland areas, and farms better on farmland areas (actually better than corrals). With a few twists, this will make farms hard to defend, farmlands interesting to have, and this will also create real diversity in food sources. It's a choice for the player, and it seems like it would be pretty fun.

I mean, that's at least a case for having farmlands. It would solve that issue very nicely.

[quantumstate]

My experience with non farm food resources is that I use everything that isn't hunting wild animals before starting on farms. Hunting is a massive pain right now because animals are too enthusiastic in running away making it really hard to hunt. Also the random maps are too random with the distribution of animals to hunt, you often don't have any nearby. So basically there isn't enough non farm food on maps and hunting is too difficult.

I don't have a problem with farms around CCs, people would probably just build their farmsteads close to the CC anyway. If you did want to restrict this then I prefer only being able to use farms within a certain distance of a farmstead, this is clearer for the player.

For village phase I was wondering if a barracks should be available with only the CC units being trainable in village phase. This would encourage more fighting and time spent in village. Town phase would then allow expansion with new CCs, techs and more advanced units. Perhaps this would lead to the need for a tower in village phase though.

[alpha123]

My experience with non farm food resources is that I use everything that isn't hunting wild animals before starting on farms. Hunting is a massive pain right now because animals are too enthusiastic in running away making it really hard to hunt. Also the random maps are too random with the distribution of animals to hunt, you often don't have any nearby. So basically there isn't enough non farm food on maps and hunting is too difficult.

I agree 100%. Maps need more animals, more fruit, and a lot more fish.

I don't have a problem with farms around CCs, people would probably just build their farmsteads close to the CC anyway. If you did want to restrict this then I prefer only being able to use farms within a certain distance of a farmstead, this is clearer for the player.

The nice thing about moving farms away from CCs is that it makes farms a little more costly to build and defend. Especially since they are far and away the best food source currently, this will help with balancing them out a bit.

For village phase I was wondering if a barracks should be available with only the CC units being trainable in village phase. This would encourage more fighting and time spent in village. Town phase would then allow expansion with new CCs, techs and more advanced units. Perhaps this would lead to the need for a tower in village phase though.

I know you haven't played in a while, but thanks to the 1000f 1000w town phase change, there's a fair amount of fighting in village phase. I'd still be OK with a barracks in village though, especially if town phase units are either stronger or there are a lot more tech options (or both), thus providing an incentive to get to town phase (and delay the other person from town phase).

[Zeta1127]

I basically do the exact same thing quantumstate does, use everything that isn't hunting before starting on farms. Unless its a random map like Cantabrian Highlands, there usually isn't enough fruit bushes, fig trees, and/or apple trees for foraging to be viable, herding is comparable to foraging in viability (corrals really need to work the way they are planned for herding to be viable), and hunting is generally too much of a hassle to be practical. The Mauryan Worker Elephant gives the Mauryans a slight boost in foraging, herding, and hunting, though it still usually isn't practical to herd and hunt even with the Worker Elephant.

Edited April 12, 2013 by Zeta1127

[Lion.Kanzen]

For balancing, farm, herd and hunt.

Ok to no Create a big micromanaging problem, the animals can be give bonus than vegetable food. All we know about "Fat calories" and all that matter, that why eat meat gives more than Vegetable. that sounds weird, but is real.

Re-spawn Fauna.

Now, how we can hunting more suitable, may be the fauna of animal to herd increased by re-spawn we have a population of animal in a map, they can re-spawn after may be 10 minutes(that can be changed), but that fauna not grown more than 40 units(population limit) in whole map. Now in order to prevent hunt all animals, The re-spawn, you must need in whole map a single unit, (see empire earth), to spawn new Units in a Herd, and that re spawn must be nearby a Hrd of that Fauna.

Hunt

Now In order to hunt easily without build a stockpile, is have a mobile building or units that follow the hunter. Now the hunter focus in single unit to be more effective, they can move in group and kill same animal. Like real life.

Foraging

For foraging the same, a mobile unit to stockpile, but this units can be follow the gatherers. And when is full, go to back to the city. Or work like Mauryan elephant, but more weakly. This can work with economic stances and special new units.

It's new for RTS, all can work in auto with stances, and command auto follow, may be the wagon can train special units like villager hunters. If we have a fisherman I don't know why don't have hunter that can convert into foragers.

Corral

Now to herding Domestic animals we can construct fence, like palisade, but more weaker, and autotraining the animals. The normals don go far because the fences and we can build a farmstead nearby. This only I idea, you can take a little bit or whole.

Other RTS

Remember economic stances in Rise of Nations. You can a villager a default stance. May be we can have various types of stances, military behavior, economic behavior and movement behavior.

• In RON the trader creates a building long far of your territory.
  
• For farming maybe create a mill as attached building to increases productivity, can be a good idea.
  
• Other concept to implement is package buildings. That you move some temporal point, outside your territory that are neutral.
  

Edited April 12, 2013 by Lion.Kanzen

[idanwin]

If respawning animals get implemented, it should be so that they only respawn in forests/near oasis and a certain distance from buildings.

[gab]

in "Empires : Dawn of the Modern World", animals could respawn, i remember isolated animals multiplying when you didn't bother with hunting : that was cool but completly unnrealistic

Edited April 13, 2013 by quantumstate
Fix formatting

[FeXoR]

I agree 100%. Maps need more animals, more fruit, and a lot more fish.

...

Try random map Belgian Uplands.

[alpha123]

Try random map Belgian Uplands.

True, that one does have enough fruit and almost enough fish. The problem is that map is awful for multiplayer. Terrible resource distribution (some people get stuck with very little wood while others get a ton; metal and stone are poorly placed), no real mines just little piles everywhere (and again, these are poorly distributed), too many little pools of water that make building unnecessarily difficult, bad spawning positions... I've played multiplayer games on Belgian Uplands. It just doesn't work. As I understand it's a pretty experimental map however, so that's excusable. If all those problems (particularly resource distribution) were fixed, Belgian Uplands would be a great map.