Changes in farms

[mimo]

I've tried to implement two changes in farms, which are available as a mod.

1) the first one is rather cosmetics, it gives to the farm the same ownership as the terrain on which it is. This doesn't change the gameplay as units can already gather from any fields. But this has 3 advantages:
- there was no reason for enemy farms in our territory to not switch ownership after we have expanded territory
- idle soldiers will no more try to destroy these farms which we could use
- that will ease the job of the AI, which currently only tries to gather its own fields

2) the second change tries to make early rushes more efficient in destroying the enemy economics. Currently, an easy defense is to garrison its gatherers in the cc with a few arrows, and wait for it to kill the attackers. As units does not make significant damages to fields, the economy is usually not really affected. The proposed changes is that fields loose health when not worked on, and only regain health (very slowly) when having workers (i.e. they are no more directly repairable). Thus during a rush, if we succeed to kill all gatherers (or make them flee), the field will be severely damaged and eventually destroyed if the attack is long enough.
As the goal is really to help rushes in early game, I've also added a tech (irrigation, thus fields need less maintenance) only available in town phase which decreases the health decay when not worked on (there is a temporary icon for it, but if anybody could provide a good irrigation icon, that would be great).

Any feedback welcome.

newFarms.zip

[RoekeloosNL]

And #3 sould be add a no building radius of fields around CC With a updated UI for how to use farmfield so people place them near the farms" more realistic and better looking" farmfield sould not be placed around a CC but around a farm and give more food for gathers that bring food to the farms then when the bring it to the CC with the idea farms process better so they get more out of it.

Field lose health? lolz they sould decay when not worked on and when units start working on them after some time they need to be re seeded with will take some time more then a new field. I like your idea but the gameplay overall need to be taken with a more realistic aprotch i think 0.A.D is going more to the arcade and simple style the the realistic and fun like it was prenounced

Edited January 8, 2016 by RoekeloosNL

[av93]

If the objetive is making rush a more viable option, maybe CC arrows quantity could be reduced overall, and then increase by each phase.

[Lion.Kanzen]

If the objetive is making rush a more viable option, maybe CC arrows quantity could be reduced overall, and then increase by each phase.

totally agree, or reduce the range of arrows.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Hi mimo. I like your #2 proposal. It's very cool idea and make sense to me. It kind of like a field going fallow to disuse. I like #1 too.

I don't know why field so strong in vanilla version. Burning enemy field was common tactic for marauding armies. Field should be very vulnerable. To that end, I think you should look at Delenda Est farmland implementation. It is hacky, but as game mechanic it work. It push farming far away from the center of town.

Edited January 10, 2016 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[wraitii]

I think we should also come back to about 3 workers per farm or even fewer.

[mimo]

av93 I don't think reducing the cc arrows is the right fix for this issue (even if it may be useful for other purposes). For this specific problem, the main problem is that farms needs too much time to be destroyed in early game when we have only soldiers (as pointed by wowgetoffourcellphone). So the alternative would be to reduce the armour of farms, but i've the impression that decaying unused fields could bring something new to the game.

[av93]

av93 I don't think reducing the cc arrows is the right fix for this issue (even if it may be useful for other purposes). For this specific problem, the main problem is that farms needs too much time to be destroyed in early game when we have only soldiers (as pointed by wowgetoffourcellphone). So the alternative would be to reduce the armour of farms, but i've the impression that decaying unused fields could bring something new to the game.

Sorry for the off-topic then. Good concept btw.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Yeah forcing to have to use the livestock or corral this can be better idea than reducing worker.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Ok, I was testing, work fine, no bugs, but can implemented decay if the field is not active, I mean the field with through the time with not have worker will lost health / HP?

[mimo]

Hi lion, thanks for the tests. But can you rephrase you last sentence ? I'm not sure how to understand it

[Lion.Kanzen]

Hi lion, thanks for the tests. But can you rephrase you last sentence ? I'm not sure how to understand it

in The ticket about new farming system , You guys discuss about when a farming haven't workers or gatherers, many of you have the agreement about, if a farm haven't workers, the farm start to lose HP ( health)

Lo escribiré en español, si las granjas no tienen recolectores empezarán a perder salud, eso habían mencionado, como parte del nuevo sistema de granjas.

I found the quote

http://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/3406

another possibility would be to change radically the way fields are used. We could make them non-attackable, but any fields without gatherers would health-decay while fields with gatherers would slowly regain health (that would represent the fact that fields not worked on become uncultivated land). So when raiding, killing or making flee the gatherers would make the field decay. And to make these raids more useful, the gathering rate would be scaled by the health ratio of the field, so that after a raid the field will take some time to be fully efficient again.

Edited January 15, 2016 by Lion.Kanzen

[mimo]

ah ok we have still to discuss it within the team, but hopefully that will be included.

[Grugnas]

On 7/1/2016 at 8:21 PM, mimo said:

I've tried to implement two changes in farms, which are available as a mod.

1) the first one is rather cosmetics, it gives to the farm the same ownership as the terrain on which it is. This doesn't change the gameplay as units can already gather from any fields. But this has 3 advantages:
- there was no reason for enemy farms in our territory to not switch ownership after we have expanded territory
- idle soldiers will no more try to destroy these farms which we could use
- that will ease the job of the AI, which currently only tries to gather its own fields

2) the second change tries to make early rushes more efficient in destroying the enemy economics. Currently, an easy defense is to garrison its gatherers in the cc with a few arrows, and wait for it to kill the attackers. As units does not make significant damages to fields, the economy is usually not really affected. The proposed changes is that fields loose health when not worked on, and only regain health (very slowly) when having workers (i.e. they are no more directly repairable). Thus during a rush, if we succeed to kill all gatherers (or make them flee), the field will be severely damaged and eventually destroyed if the attack is long enough.
As the goal is really to help rushes in early game, I've also added a tech (irrigation, thus fields need less maintenance) only available in town phase which decreases the health decay when not worked on (there is a temporary icon for it, but if anybody could provide a good irrigation icon, that would be great).

Any feedback welcome.

newFarms.zip

Actually cavalry rush is already a popular, if not a must in 1v1 games for earning an economy superiority. The idea is interesting but the grainfield is the only non-random generated food income aviable and reducing the intial food amout would result in a game where the players are more dipendent from huntable gaia (considering that even corral usage require enough amount of food).

You might want also consider that in order to have a decent amount of food income, women required will be more and they will be harder to protect by garrisoning houses (reason why i proposed a house tech that increases garrisonable units in the houses).

Actually spear cavalry (roman and macedonian) rush is the most efficient tactic, and looks like with this grainfield income change it will be even more effective.

[elexis]

The difference between alpha 20 and 21 was the fact that attackers aren't hurt anymore when the CC / tower arrows miss, which is a good change, but the balancing effect should be reviewed. Raids are very effective right now

[elexis]

[DarcReaver]

4 hours ago, Grugnas said:

Actually cavalry rush is already a popular, if not a must in 1v1 games for earning an economy superiority. The idea is interesting but the grainfield is the only non-random generated food income aviable and reducing the intial food amout would result in a game where the players are more dipendent from huntable gaia (considering that even corral usage require enough amount of food).

You might want also consider that in order to have a decent amount of food income, women required will be more and they will be harder to protect by garrisoning houses (reason why i proposed a house tech that increases garrisonable units in the houses).

Actually spear cavalry (roman and macedonian) rush is the most efficient tactic, and looks like with this grainfield income change it will be even more effective.

Which leads to the point that raiding cavalry shouldn't be available right at the start.

[Grugnas]

46 minutes ago, DarcReaver said:

Which leads to the point that raiding cavalry shouldn't be available right at the start.

Researching "Wicker Basket" technology and having animals nearby to hunt are enough for a cavalry rush already.

Didn't say it is a bad idea, but if i can obtain food faster hunting  animals than working fields, i'd feel more incentivated to hunt and train cavalry instead of women.

Edited March 17, 2017 by Grugnas

[DarcReaver]

11 minutes ago, Grugnas said:

Researching "Wicker Basket" technology and having animals nearby to hunt are enough for a cavalry rush already.

Didn't say it is a bad idea, but if i can obtain food faster hunting  animals than working fields, i'd feel more incentivated to hunt and train cavalry instead of women.

That's what I meant. Most efficient gathering and strongest early rush option at the same time sounds pretty broken, doesn't it?

[av93]

Or cavalry shouldn't be able to gather food.

Even if you want keep citizien-soldiers, it feels weird cavalry working with herdables: it should be able to only hunt wild animals. But this doesn't fix the problem in some maps.

[Grugnas]

indeed it could be broken, but not necessarly. Map size and resources distribution also play an important role on which strategy can prevail.

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

True.  Personally I feel a bit annoyed with the hunting and herding capabilities of cavalry.  It would be more interesting to see them play scouting/harassment roles in the early game, but their potential has to be limited.  If line-of-sight and movement would be reduced, they could probably play a more balanced role in-game.  

[DarcReaver]

1 minute ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

True.  Personally I feel a bit annoyed with the hunting and herding capabilities of cavalry.  It would be more interesting to see them play scouting/harassment roles in the early game, but their potential has to be limited.  If line-of-sight and movement would be reduced, they could probably play a more balanced role in-game.  

As I've stated numerous times already, citizen soldiers are a broken and unbalanced concept. It's not related to their line of sight of general movementspeed (which IS too high, just like all other unit speeds). They shouldn't be available from the CC and they shouldn't be able to gather food. It's pretty simple.

5 minutes ago, Grugnas said:

indeed it could be broken, but not necessarly. Map size and resources distribution also play an important role on which strategy can prevail.

Of course map size plays an important role. But take it like that: there are intended map sizes for players. 2 player maps = small or tiny, 4 player maps small and medium, 6+ players large and gigantic maps.

If someone decides to play on maps that are not intended for the appropriate numbers of players they have to take the risk that the game might be unbalanced in one way or another. It's not a problem of the game itself rather than one of the players.

Just like playing 8 player maps on C&C with 2 players or AoE II black forest Gigantic with 2 players. Eco booming = win there. Can be fun - certainly. Balanced? not really.

[Grugnas]

The point is that if we talk about 1v1 games and in particular about small maps, you can notice that smaller the map size is, the lower amount of wood is avaiable. Building wooden walls or building towers won't prevent cavalry from rushing.

Walls are too expensive and building rate is too low for walling the civic center and protect the food production, at least. This doesn't help against Spear Cavalry rush.

Sentry Towers in phase 1 don't deal enough damage for protecting gatherers from Skirmisher Cavalry rush. The sentry tower deals the same damage of an archer and it is pretty easy to destroy or just damage and capture. Garrisoning it isn't worth it because women wouldn't have any soldier protecting them.

Probably yes, cavalry could train with an higher time size or just requiring a previously built structure like Corrals.

[DarcReaver]

6 minutes ago, Grugnas said:

The point is that if we talk about 1v1 games and in particular about small maps, you can notice that smaller the map size is, the lower amount of wood is avaiable. Building wooden walls or building towers won't prevent cavalry from rushing.

Walls are too expensive and building rate is too low for walling the civic center and protect the food production, at least. This doesn't help against Spear Cavalry rush.

Sentry Towers in phase 1 don't deal enough damage for protecting gatherers from Skirmisher Cavalry rush. The sentry tower deals the same damage of an archer and it is pretty easy to destroy or just damage and capture. Garrisoning it isn't worth it because women wouldn't have any soldier protecting them.

Probably yes, cavalry could train with an higher time size or just requiring a previously built structure like Corrals.

You're stating perfecly why cavalry/combat units in general shouldn't be buildable from the freaking Civic Center from the start:

- Cavalry can gather huntables everywhere on the map at high speed early on -> no economic drawback of cavalry rush even if you can't harm the enemy economy for some reason
- other faction has no time to prepare against cavalry rushing there is no such thing as a "buildorder" that allows foreseeing cavalry rush (compare to a militia/drush in AoE or Late Hero/mass hunts or a ghoul rush in warcraft to put up an example).
- compared to unit training times buildings require too long to build up

Corrals as requirement would certainly help a bit, but still there is stuff like the gathering on them which breaks the aspect of "rushing" really.

 

Edited March 17, 2017 by DarcReaver