Wijitmaker Posted September 22, 2003 Report Share Posted September 22, 2003 Many of you have played the game Rise of Nations. I was wondering if you all had any thoughts on what you liked or disliked about RON's border systems?Did you feel that the border timers helped stop early rushing? Do you think its good to stop rushing? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aeros Posted September 23, 2003 Report Share Posted September 23, 2003 I think an RTS game should bring in something completely new, like a special building, let's call it a "holy place" just to add detail, where no fighting can take place for a set amount of time detirmined by the amount of enemy units outside that area or something like that. For example if there is a rush-force of 5 archers, they can't attack in that area for 5 minutes. If there is an army of 50 archers, they are more overwhelming and can't attack for 15 seconds or something.Or you can stretch the idea to make that a hero ability where you can mark a location with the same effect, or in TLA you can go more fantasy style and make the starting area have some special monument that does the same effect, or you could go Age of Mythology style and have that as a "godpower" type thing.Anyway I think something like that would prevent rushes better than anything else, especially in key areas early in the game, but they won't make much difference in the final stages of the game so people can't use them as places to hide or frustrate people. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CodeOptimist Posted September 23, 2003 Report Share Posted September 23, 2003 I'm not sure. When I first read about RON and the whole "borders" thing, I kind of when "yuck..". I haven't played RON but don't think I would like the "RTS/civ-building hybrid".I think 0 A.D. should steer completely away from the "god-powers" thing. I was pretty disappointed with AoM (not too crazy about the myth stuff).I personally don't think much should be done to stop rushing. Of course, everything should be balanced and all, but good players should be able to create armies quickly. If neglected defense... oh well Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wijitmaker Posted September 23, 2003 Author Report Share Posted September 23, 2003 Cheezy that is a neat idea... where did you come up with it? Or what got you thinking about that?Yeah CO I was wondering the same thing.. are there players who actually like the rushing in RTS games, and be mad if we elimated it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Klaas Posted September 23, 2003 Report Share Posted September 23, 2003 Maybe you could do this for certain buildings. For example defensive and economical buildings can only be built inside your borders and military buildings outside. That way rushing is still possible, but you clear out the building rush (with castles, towers, TC's). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkAngelBGE Posted September 23, 2003 Report Share Posted September 23, 2003 Well I think if rushing was totally prevent by the gameplay an RTS game would lose one big fun part.We could add some thing int he options like "difficult rushing ? Yes/No" which would make all towers have increased HP, Attack, Defense. So when you are doing a rush you can cripple your opponent's economy a bit, but you will have much losses and won't be able to wipe him out completely. That would make sure the rush gets back to its original purpose: Getting an advantage in time/economy over your enemy. You'd have to get some siege to crush his base (including those darn towers) completely. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Klaas Posted September 23, 2003 Report Share Posted September 23, 2003 You should watch out with the cost of the defensive buildings though. Remember what happened in AoK/TC, TC rushes became very common and were lame and easy to do. I remember the same thing in the AoM Multi Alpha, lots of tower rushes. A defensive building is after all defensive, not offensive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tonto_Icy_Tripod Posted September 23, 2003 Report Share Posted September 23, 2003 Whatever you do, don't remove rushing. An RTS is about making up strategies, and as such, removing one of the most popular strats around seems odd. I can't comment on the borders much though, seeing as I only got the demo for RoN and played it a grand total of 1 hour before getting bored of it The only thing I thought about it really, was that it made it harder to do a comeback, ala aok, where you'd build all over the map in and out of enemy territory. That's just my general impression of it though, I haven't played enough with the concept to really judge it T_I_T aka toast Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aeros Posted September 24, 2003 Report Share Posted September 24, 2003 Cheezy that is a neat idea... where did you come up with it? Or what got you thinking about that? Is my idea so good that it's hard to believe I came up with it? That's 100% CheeZy material there.If anything, 0AD should be original, no boundaries, or godpowers, or anything thats from another game, if you must have it, follow it loosely.Rushing is a very fun part in a RTS game, when you rush and you manage to pull it off successfuly you feal very proud and want to do it again, thats what makes som RTS games very popular. The key is to balance a rush, so that if someone starts rushing he can be stopped. Preventing rushing completely will turn the game into a newb-fest and eventually people will invent hacks or things that completely ruin multiplayer games.I'll use FPS games as an example. In FPS games the most important thing basicaly is the map, whoever makes the map adds hiding places and things like that. If you add hiding places or "camps" in all the wrong spots and if you make it so that when someone gets in a hiding spot you can't pry them away from it, then that is a very bad map and alot of people will get frustrated, even the people looking to camp because they might find that someone has already gotten to their spot and now they can't get them out of it. Eventually the game doesn't matter at all and basically whoever can get to the hiding place wins. Thats how Rushing should be looked at in RTS games, it has to be a very fine balance, and an RTS game should avoid having "click-fests" like in AOK where all that mattered is how fast you can get to the fuedal age and pump out some barracks.Another note on boundaries: If you're going to use them, make them vague and not like the boundaries in RoN. Another thing you can do to prevent rushes is to make it so that you can only build certain buildings if they're close to a special building. For example you can only build a barracks if it's ## of meters away from a fortress, or something like that. That's not a very good idea since I can see things that can go wrong with it but it's an alternative to the holy-places idea I gave. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Avenger Posted September 24, 2003 Report Share Posted September 24, 2003 Well, to demonstrate that the public announcement wasn't completely useless, hello, here's a new member. I'm Avenger, from aomh, fph, currently dormant arcane studios, mainly, so an AOM background. Let's see how long I last before I'm banned. *grins*So, to the point, I'll agree with CheeZy that it would be excellent to have something original. Now, I wonder if it is realistic, and useful gameplay-wise to create a "border", or rather a radius around your starting spot to prevent rushing. For starters, the only reason in history that Hannibal had to go around Spain, or Mithridates could not attack Rome right away, was because there were all the other cities, military fortresses, and the distance inbetween - that's what border means, further you are from it, more of your own troops and buildings you have to guard you. But in RTS, when you start off, you dont'have that, you start off in, so to speak, the Rome of the 12-13th century. Borders wouldn't make sense.But then, it really is okay if it's good gameplay-wise, right? So let's get into that. First off, I'll state my view that rushing is a fun, and ultimately, necessary, part of RTS. Perhaps not as much as AOM, or whatever game you find where fighting begins after six minutes. But certainly, even Civilisation has rushing; it's one of the most efficient and popular strategies and should not be neglected. However, rushing, so to speak, needs to be balanced. One might say that AOM went a bit over the top, since a successful rush could easily mean a siege at your hometown. A rush should be more of a raid-style thing, to keep you on your toes and to make you lose some resources, units, buildings or time, but not something that should keep all your citizens huddled up and unable to do anything.CheeZy's Ãdeas are very good, and ditching the border system creates a useful game mechanic to prevent "overpowered" rushing. I'd also like to suggest some things. Keep in mind that I haven't played RoN, but heard of some things vaguely, so this might be my memory pulling something out of there. - Distance. As your units travel further from your key buildings (obviously not any building), the weaker they get by some disadvantage, a stat decrease or anything. Since a quick rush on your enemy can only be described as, say, Xerxes marching to raid Rome, realistic and keeping a leash on the rushing. This factor would gradually nullify itself as your towns grow larger, and certainly there should be a large radius around key buildings where you don't have any adverse effects (or even benefits, like in EE?) so that this isn't too annoying.- Road System. Think of Civilisation; you move faster on roads. This doesnt have to be roads, but any sort of good terrain to mark the benefit; then having each building (or key building) have a radius around it for roads would mean that it would take longer to trek across the wilderness between you and your enemy to rush, and even harder to return, should your enemy strike your home base in that moment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marcus Petrius Posted September 24, 2003 Report Share Posted September 24, 2003 Adding to the holy places idea:Could you make it so that there are certain spots on the map where units can't attack eachother, even they are eachothers enemies?See this as a sort of sanctuary that can only contain so many units within a given radius.I'll give a quasi historical example:Somewhere south of the city of Troy there was a temple of Apollo. Both the Greeks and Trojans visited this temple and they were rather friendly to eachother when they were there. No something more historical:When in ancient times people were convicted or something else happened that meant they had to die, they often ran into a temple to find refuge. Cleopatra VII's sister even camped out in the temple of Artemis in Efesus for a long time.______________________________________I think the rushing restriction shouldn't be distance based, but time based. It makes the rushing far more accurate. A more mobile civilisation be more able to rush than a civ with a very slow army. You could make it so that the soldiers are forced to come back to the home town every two (?) years, or garrison in a fort(I don't even know if fortresses will be in the game) (again for a maximum number of years (an extra 2?)) and if they don't do either thing, their stats start going down gradually. This would make the maximum of a campaign with one army 4 years. By that time, you should've had enough time to make reinforcements, given the fact that you didn't send out all the soldiers you could make based on your pop cap at once. A really huge pop cap would be a great help here too. Make it so that people run out of resources in their stockpiles before they run out of population.Just my two cents. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aeros Posted September 25, 2003 Report Share Posted September 25, 2003 Could you make it so that there are certain spots on the map where units can't attack eachother, even they are eachothers enemies?Thats an idea, but it shouldn't be on every map since some people will want fast-paced action rather then jumping from "hiding spot to hiding spot" which these holy places might turn out to be.There should be some maps that have nuetral "gaia" holy places that can be captured, but if that's going to happen then these Holy places will have to be much more important than their purpose of simply preventing small harassment-troops attacking your early gold miners. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
svede Posted September 25, 2003 Report Share Posted September 25, 2003 Borders:I DO have RoN and can explain a little more about it. The effect on units is not based upon distance but simply whether you're in your land or the enemies.If the enemy has attrition research done (different levels of it), then your units lose HP (can be fast) when in enemy lands...to prevent this you bring a supply wagon with you (this unit also heals units for French civ)It is pretty cool and can be fun, but IMO could use a lot of tweaking...I also dont like seeing a color instead of greens etc on minimap and stuff...And yes it does slow rushing down a bit further in RoN...Roads:In RoN and the Empires demo, when you get to a certain age roads will appear automatically to connect your buildings and trade routes....very fun and cool altho no advantage in those games.....could this be useful??Safety Zones:I agree this should be something set up by the rms and not on every map. thxSvede Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marcus Petrius Posted September 25, 2003 Report Share Posted September 25, 2003 Thats an idea, but it shouldn't be on every map I thought of this as something that could occur in certain scenarios. Other than that, people would have to make it themselves in the map editor or check an option in the random map script.Just to give an example where it could be used:In a scenario where a map of whole Greece is used (That would be huge, if you would at least try to get the scale right), no fighting can take place in Delphi. Of course, Sparta isn't going to visit Delphi en route to Athens, as it is way of their route. In this case it would just be something extra for troops that accidently (or maybe, if the player decides to implement Delphi in his strategy anyway, not so accidently) end up in Delphi. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cougar Posted September 25, 2003 Report Share Posted September 25, 2003 One of the things I really liked about the borders in RoN was that it really felt like you were "expanding your empire" as your borders grew. It felt like you were fighting over the land as the borders move around and that was something that I don't think any other game has accomplished very well.I like the idea of having borders and a having a set "cease fire time" where during the first X minutes of the game any unit that leaves your borders loses health. X should be set at the beginning of a match so if the players want to allow rushing the could simply set it to 0. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkAngelBGE Posted September 25, 2003 Report Share Posted September 25, 2003 Yeah that HP decrease idea is what I like, too. Nice one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CodeOptimist Posted September 25, 2003 Report Share Posted September 25, 2003 About the "holy places" idea: In Empire Earth they had the "calamities" (volcano, earthquake, etc). But, if you built a Temple, the enemy Priest couldn't put a calamity in your town, except outside the "safe radius" of the temple. You could also upgrade the radius and build more temples to keep your town safe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wijitmaker Posted September 29, 2003 Author Report Share Posted September 29, 2003 Thanks for the ideas guys. One comment:Roads:In RoN and the Empires demo, when you get to a certain age roads will appear automatically to connect your buildings and trade routes....very fun and cool altho no advantage in those games.....could this be useful??Yeah we are looking into this and hopefully can do it. We will see Have any of you ever played 'Risk' the board game? If you guys were going to 'computerize' that game, how would you do it? Could you do it in a real-time fashion? Would it be enjoyable to play? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Avenger Posted September 30, 2003 Report Share Posted September 30, 2003 Could be, but RoN really does it already with the Conquer the World mode. It's different, but the essence remains with a lot of new spices. I don't see why you'd take computerised Risk over RoN's CtW. But if you were to computerise Risk, the important aspects would be to control your armies and wage real battles instead of.. dice battles.. , and retain its turn-based decision-making nature. Other than that... bleh, RoN does it well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quacker Posted September 30, 2003 Report Share Posted September 30, 2003 A defensive building is after all defensive, not offensive.Maybe something where buildings get more expensive the farther from the "town center" they are, and after a certain point, they're tripled (or more than) their normal cost? This way there would be a "main town center" that would provide those ranges, and lesser TC's would be built like the main one, but they wouldn't provide the range increase. Then in later ages, a research could be added to make it so the subsidiary TC's do increase the range. Feud for thought Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wijitmaker Posted October 1, 2003 Author Report Share Posted October 1, 2003 Well how about this, instead of your borders expanding automatically by some statistical calcualation.. what if you had 'territorries' with a TC on it. Then you advanced your 'borders' by taking over these territories on the map?Maybe this is what RON's "Conquer the World" is like? Not sure, I've only played the multiplayer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Avenger Posted October 1, 2003 Report Share Posted October 1, 2003 RoN's CtW is a complex version of Risk, so no, not really. You're talking more along the lines of Civilisation here. So you could say, capture this TC and you have the territory of Campania, Thrace, or Narbonese Gaul. Well, that would actually be more realistic than RoN, because the way provinces and borders were drawn up in the ancient world were alongside natural boudnaries like the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Rhine, the Channel. In RoN the borders swath through rivers and hills. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ulysses S Griffin Posted October 4, 2003 Report Share Posted October 4, 2003 I didnt really like the borders in RoN, it was constricting imo probably because citizens couldnt build outside you territory.C&C: RA2 has somthing like borders(you couldnt see them though), where you couldnt forward build next to an enemies main base unless you had one of those "command centre trucks"(forgot what they were called) deployed nearby. I would like somthing like that to be in the game. Maybe you could make the strategy of forward building still available but just a little harder to pull off."In RoN and the Empires demo, when you get to a certain age roads will appear automatically to connect your buildings and trade routes....very fun and cool altho no advantage in those games.....could this be useful??" - svedeActually there are a few advantages and disadvantages for roads, they can lead you to the enemies main bases. Roads could also be used as a bonus when it comes to military. maybe you could make it so walking on roads could also increase the speed of military units walking on them? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Avenger Posted October 4, 2003 Report Share Posted October 4, 2003 That was in Caesar III... it was good that roads were actually there for a purpose, instead of having your armies go near roads, away from roads, criss crossing road and swamp... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wijitmaker Posted October 4, 2003 Author Report Share Posted October 4, 2003 Actually there are a few advantages and disadvantages for roads, they can lead you to the enemies main bases. Roads could also be used as a bonus when it comes to military. ooooh the stratagy maybe you could make it so walking on roads could also increase the speed of military units walking on them? yeah we hope to do this Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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