Suggestion Ideas from Sighvatr

[Sighvatr]

Technology

Technology should be risky. Currently 0 A.D. alike to Age of Empires, do not emphasize on the technology factor of the game, rather it feels like something that contributes to a racing game feel. I suggest creating a bigger impact on the game play by increasing the price of resources to buy technology. The current 0 A.D. game allows the player to create a certain mental pattern of what technology to buy next to race to the later game phase. Technology in the game feels like an unconscious role that does not impact the player's decisions.

If the game increases the price of technology to an expensive amount, the player has to think about what technology would impact them in the entire game. Technology should be a risk factor that players have to consider ahead of in game. For example, would buying a wood gathering technology be more efficient than a metal gathering technology depending if my opponent is going to field either professional spear or cavalry units later in the game? Should I spend my resources purchasing the majority of the equipment for my troops or should I focus on bettering one kind of unit?

Technology should be expensive so that players buy depending on the situation. It slows down the players to consider the game to a situational strategic thinking play style rather than a race against time to buy everything essential to play against your opponent. If technology is expensive, the one pattern technology mentality would be ineffective and allow the players whom consider how their opponent plays to be able to purchase technology needed to counter.

Buildings

Technology existence should rely on the buildings they were purchased from. If I destroy my opponent's armoury, he should not be able to purchase units with benefits of the technology purchased from the armoury. I dislike how useless buildings become after purchasing all of the technology that come from them. It doesn't make sense if military units get effective equipment if they do not have an armoury to get that equipment from.

It would be another interesting game play feature if you can handicap your opponent by destroying the buildings essential to providing technology. If I could downgrade my opponents newly created spearmen by destroying the fortress that gives the civilian soldier bonus, I could then use my heavily upgraded cavalry to kill off my opponent.

By the threat of losing technology if the specific technology building is destroyed, players would have to develop a more defensive play style to prevent such a situation.

Formations

Formations aren't incredibly developed in 0 A.D. currently, but they should be something to consider as a tactical approach to prevent and create counters. Currently 0 A.D. focuses on counters for units individually rather than for a whole formation, and formations seem to only affect the units with small stat changes. Formations and how they are used should be what is a deciding factor to hard counters. For example, if I field an army of archers against my opponent's hastati, my opponent would then enable the testudo which would then benefit his hastati to become immune to slingers and archers. Then if I use my cavalry to use a flying wedge formation, they would charge into the hastati testudo and break them out of formation to become exposed to projectile fire.

With hard countering formations, a unit total minimum should be required to create that formation; therefore, the player may have to consider creating a large amount of units to get the benefits of the formation. Formations would make battles and sieges require more control from a player rather than a mass of fodder units enveloping themselves into a chaos that tends to favor ranged units (why ranged and mobile units are more favored than infantry units in Age of Empires 1&2).

Formations and hard benefits to using them would hopefully help the players who prefer using large massed armies over the players that win by controlling widespread groups of few units each and use guerilla warfare to win the game.

[HeroesGrave]

In addition to making technology more expensive, it should also be more powerful.

High-risk, high-reward upgrades are great for increasing the depth of strategy.

Instead of thinking "I have some extra resources, which technology should I get next", the player should be thinking "Should I buy more units or save up resources to upgrade what I already have"

The technologies being tied to buildings also sounds very interesting, but could result in players researching everything in the middle of a well-defended base. Maybe a limit of 1 or 2 techs per building, but allowing the player to change that tech without having to spend the full amount of resources again? (perhaps half the resources?) This could also contribute to the extra cost of research by requiring the player to make some more buildings.

Edited February 13, 2015 by HeroesGrave

[Sighvatr]

Oh yeah, high risk and high reward sounds like a nice idea. For technology being tied to buildings- I was thinking that if the player loss the building, the player would be temporarily be denied of the technology purchased. If the structure tied to the technology purchased was rebuilt, the player would regain that technology. I was also considering an idea where the more duplicates of a structure built, the less expensive the price of a technology tied to those specific buildings are to purchase.

Edited February 13, 2015 by Sighvatr

[Lion.Kanzen]

Sounds some complicate but have sense. I not sure what think the team, gives some realistic feeling. I ilke the idea of lost buildings and technologies this incentives to player not limit to destroy only defenses and CC focuses in other buildings.

Edited February 14, 2015 by Lion.Kanzen

[tau]

I agree with you that technologies choices should provoke strategical thinking. However cost increase and reward increase seems not to be a solution. This is what was done in a17 (cost increase; + techs for each resources available in each phase with comparable coefficients --> reward increase). This sounded good in theory but in practice this is exactly what contributes to the race feel. See what happens: after a player manages to research a couple of resource techs he will use theirs benefits to research another ones. Eventually there is just more stuff built/trained/gathered for the same time span.

So, to slower the pace (if there is such a goal), i'd suggest, on the contrary, lowering coeffs/decreasing the number of upgrades, maybe combined with some cost decrease. To make it risky... not sure yet what could be done.

Edited February 14, 2015 by tau

[FeXoR]

IMO the cost of technologies has to be balanced against the cost of units and buildings.

If technologies are to expensive and/or take to long games will lean towards "reach the unit cap ASAP and overrun the enemy".

(Instead of upgrading to City Phase you could alternatively build 40 skirmishers for example)

The cost of upgrading everything should cost about as much as building 2x unit cap cheap combat units (as a rough guideline so about 2*250*100 ~= 50000 resources)

The main thing driving research is the satisfaction of basic needs so Food should be the resource needed most in the research tree.

(That's why the neolithic revolution had such a big impact on social and technological development)

Edited February 14, 2015 by FeXoR

[niektb]

I think the technology tree should excel in diversity rather than cost. I must say I'm still a fan of the technology web (the idea at least, the implementation could be discussed about): http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=18635&p=300053

The building idea could be done by giving such buildings a (non-stackable) global aura that gives you a benefit.

Other than that I think that 0 A.D. plays too much like a deathmatch game (even though you start with low resources). I think it would be good to bring the pace down.

Edited February 14, 2015 by niektb

[Sighvatr]

@Tau: I'm not sure if I understood your alternative method correctly. Can you rephrase it for me?

@FeXor: When I play the current 0 A.D. version competitively, reaching the unit cap and producing units consistently is already a goal of mine. Though I would agree that some essential progressive techs would need to remain in price, but there are some techs in the blacksmith, fortress, temple, and other economic buildings whose techs are cheap to purchase and they do not particularly threat the economy if purchased. The current techs mentioned are not very risky in my opinion to purchase; therefore, I get the idea that buying technologies aren't a big impact, rather its just a due time till I max out all the techs I can purchase. The purpose of increasing the price of technology is not just a risk factor, but it may include the need for players to expand and gather more resources to then establish boundaries with their enemies to fight for the control of resources. A player doesn't particularly need to buy all the technologies available during his current phase. All a player needs to do is provide enough resources to construct the essential buildings and purchase the next phase for their city growth. I mean to propose that technologies need to feel like a choice of tools to use against an opponent rather than an alternative output of resources to fund into.

@nietkb: Technology web could work if displayed correctly for people to understand what they will need to purchase next. I'm for slightly exaggerating the cost of most technology and providing more technology diversity.

[tau]

@Tau: I'm not sure if I understood your alternative method correctly. Can you rephrase it for me?

Sure, here's some clarification:

1) i didn't suggest a method to make tech choices more risky

2) i warned against cost increase + reward increase as it doesn't add risk but makes the game 'faster' and more deathmatch-style

3) to slower the pace, i suggested the following:

for example, currently we have 3 techs for stone mining: Servants +15%, Serfs +15%, Slaves +50%.

We could have 1 or 2 techs instead of 3, or lower coeffs for them to, say, 10%, 10% and 35% (just an example).

In the latter case, costs should be lowered accordingly, so that it doesn't become totally useless to research.

However before considering this it is better to observe for a while how a18 will be played. People are expected to train more champions now so maybe this will balance things a bit. Though the deathmatch feeling appears earlier than in City phase.

[HeroesGrave]

Some of the concerns here seem to be around the idea that making techs more powerful could upset the economy and quickly allow a player to get too far ahead.

Maybe eco techs could be left as is and military ones become more high-risk/high-reward?

[FeXoR]

.The "deathmatch feeling" comes from several things IMO:

- Civil Soldiers can gather (even gather some resources best, especially wood). So building an economic basis and training an army is the same at the early age.

Possible solution: Make woman better and citizen soldiers worse at gathering wood. That would also make woman better (ATM I only use them for farming/foraging)

- There is no real possibility for defense early on other than soldiers.

Possible solution: Add defensive structures to the starting age (AFAIK palisades can be build now right away). This also should include weaker, low range high view range towers (I never used the scout tower so not sure if it works for defensive purpose early on).

- Games are often decided before City Age is reached by all players. This is not bad in general but means that e.g. champion units are much less used in average.

Possible solution: Make Champion units stronger (already as is AFAIK) and make sure siege weapons in the last age can out-range defenses or take quite some punch

I agree that late techs can be expensive (especially military/trade/intelligence techs). Also they could have quite some impact but shouldn't entirely break the balance between civs (I'd still like a late expensive tech that uncovers the entire map).

I also like a more complex tech tree (or "techweb"). It shouldn't be to complex though to allow new players not find themselves completely lost (Afaik thats also planned anyways).

IMO we are going in the right direction over all. Lets see what extensive play testing will bring.

Edited February 14, 2015 by FeXoR

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Maybe try something tlike this:

In something like this you have many paths you can take, but player can restart or branch off new paths whenever they want to. I don't think there need to be fewer tech but they just need to be made to be more interesting and whcih ones to choose should require more thoughts on the players part. With something like this you start on a path. If it is not working for you thwn you can try a new path but time and resoucrs is wasted, so there is inherent risk of targeted (narrow path) approach. You can try broad approach, but it takes longer to get the higher quality techs. Another idea to go along with this is to have techs that depends upon different biomes or maps. This alters the webs a little bit adding a little bit of variety.

I like the idea that some buildings can act like a tech. This is done in my mod with aura. For instance, Temple of Vesta for Roma gives a boost to nearby building (right now the aura and tech effects are limiting, so I await the day when features are worked on again).

I have adjusted my mod to include the new wooden defense towers in Phase 1, but I go one step further than this by adding a Stone Towers tech in Phase II to upgrade them back to full stength Defense Towers. Swaps the actors from wooden tower to stone tower (but the building preview and fogging ghost remains wooden tower, a bug).

If you add a IV Phase and move all of the big tech to that, and move civic center expansions to Phase III, you then have a Phase II that includes an element of city building and defenses. Build a long city wall or use that stone to fast Phase III and use the stone for civic centers expansions? Add a real usage for Wonders and make 1 Wonder prerequisite for Phase IV. Go Phase IV and now you have uber techs for siege and elephants, fire arrows, and all that stuff,

Edited February 15, 2015 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[tau]

.The "deathmatch feeling" comes from several things IMO:

- Civil Soldiers can gather (even gather some resources best, especially wood). So building an economic basis and training an army is the same at the early age.

Possible solution: Make woman better and citizen soldiers worse at gathering wood. That would also make woman better (ATM I only use them for farming/foraging)

- There is no real possibility for defense early on other than soldiers.

Possible solution: Add defensive structures to the starting age (AFAIK palisades can be build now right away). This also should include weaker, low range high view range towers (I never used the scout tower so not sure if it works for defensive purpose early on).

- Games are often decided before City Age is reached by all players. This is not bad in general but means that e.g. champion units are much less used in average.

Possible solution: Make Champion units stronger (already as is AFAIK) and make sure siege weapons in the last age can out-range defenses or take quite some punch

I agree with you that the deathmatch feeling has to do with the fact that citizen soldiers can gather (and generally, with other points you have stated). Benifits in one resource type can be 'converted' to benefits in another one quite easily by training gatherers that cost first type of resource. But because of this i'm also afraid that the proposed solution will have undesired consequences: we'll get better wood gatherers that cost only food and train faster, so again, more resources and more possibilities for the same time.

With the last version the situation with resources has developed from 'in 0AD, you normally don't severely lack any kind of resource' to 'you have lots of everything, a dead army is np just train another'. I am convinced that this is caused by techs changes which give higher gathering speeds eventually. So it would be good to try to lower techs' effects first (increasing cost of units/buildings will have the same effect just with some multiplier, and the default pop cap, which people hurry to reach, obviously has to stay the same).

Edited February 15, 2015 by tau

[iNcog]

i wouldn't mind economic upgrades not boosting gather rates on citizen soldiers