Changes in farms

[av93]

3 minutes ago, DarcReaver said:

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.

 

When I have time I will write on this. But phase I could be a rock-paper-scissor of spearman (Rush)>tower (Turtle)>javelin cav (Rush)

Next tier could add ranged infantry to kill spearman and javelin cav, and melee cav to kill ranged infantry and javelin cav if caught.

[Grugnas]

17 minutes ago, DarcReaver said:

- compared to unit training times buildings require too long to build up

 

you could use this statement as advantage by letting Cavalry still be trainable from Civic Center (because it is a basic hunting unit) but requiring a previously built structure for having access to it, like Corral.

It would delay cavalry training start and would require extra wood.

The amount of time required for building a structure is relative to the number of builders used, in my opinion this is a tactical and individual choice.

Edited March 17, 2017 by Grugnas

[DarcReaver]

9 minutes ago, Grugnas said:

you could use this statement as advantage by letting Cavalry still be trainable from Civic Center (because it is a basic hunting unit) but requiring a previously built structure for having access to it, like Corral.

It would delay cavalry training start and would require extra wood.

The amount of time required for building a structure is relative to the number of builders used, in my opinion this is a tactical and individual choice.

Yes, you could.

Alternatively you could just remove combat units from your starting building to make players actually require something remotely related to a "buildorder".

[Grugnas]

Removing units from the CC is a drastic move. Consider some alternative modes:

Regicide:  you can't defend your women from enemy heroes rush if no ceasefire time setted up.

Survival of the fittest: higher resources needed and probably even wave spawn rate should be modified by conseguence.

Unknown Nomad: you can't defend your units from gaia lions / tigers with no soldiers.

[av93]

12 minutes ago, Grugnas said:

Removing units from the CC is a drastic move. Consider some alternative modes:

Regicide:  you can't defend your women from enemy heroes rush if no ceasefire time setted up.

Survival of the fittest: higher resources needed and probably even wave spawn rate should be modified by conseguence.

Unknown Nomad: you can't defend your units from gaia lions / tigers with no soldiers.

Regicide: a no attacking unit could be changed instead of a hero
Survival: first wave can be delayed
Unknown nomad: You could add additional starting units.

(all are easy changes)

Instead of adapting the important core decision, adapt the secondary game modes.

 

Edited March 17, 2017 by av93

[DarcReaver]

12 minutes ago, Grugnas said:

Removing units from the CC is a drastic move. Consider some alternative modes:

Regicide:  you can't defend your women from enemy heroes rush if no ceasefire time setted up.

Survival of the fittest: higher resources needed and probably even wave spawn rate should be modified by conseguence.

Unknown Nomad: you can't defend your units from gaia lions / tigers with no soldiers.

Just modify the starting units for these modes then to feature a small army (except for nomad though).

[Imarok]

 Maybe just increase the train time of cav at the CC?

[DarcReaver]

Just now, Imarok said:

 Maybe just increase the train time of cav at the CC?

Only changes the symptom. The issue of gathering cavalry is still there. If you're going to nerf it (which should be done massively) you can just aswell remove it. Either broken or unuseable, there is no real middle ground.

[LordGood]

There is a middle ground, it just takes some fine tuning to realize. Gathering cavalry is not the issue here, its the snowball effect of cavalry gathering the resources necessary to make yet more cavalry in such a way that doesn't hamper economic growth.

Another easy fix would be making cavalry take up two pop slots and giving them a slight combat buff and price hike to compensate. Else make them cost a resource that skews village phase gathering.

There are several ways to go about fixing the problems presented that dont involve dismantling playstyles.

A good question to ask is how extreme can we make our changes before we alienate our current player base?

I don't bring this up over something as remedial as pushing raiding cavalry a phase forward, but you seem to have a distaste for citizen soldiers on a whole, which is one of the standout gameplay features of 0 AD.

[sphyrth]

The only middle ground I can see is that Cavs shouldn't be available on the Civic Center. Only then will the brokenness of the Citizen Soldiers will be the point of discussion.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

4 hours ago, LordGood said:

A good question to ask is how extreme can we make our changes before we alienate our current player base?

IMHO, since this is in alpha phase, this is not a strong consideration. You are developing a pc game that you hope will be played for years to come by thousands of people. Focus on what you want the end product to be, not on satisfying the couple hundred of people who play the incomplete alpha releases.

Edited March 18, 2017 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Lion.Kanzen]

Th fan base asked a bascly an AoE with fancy graphics, similar gameplay to 2, no citizen soldiers ever , no territory system.

something similar to this.

 

 

 

[niektb]

7 hours ago, LordGood said:

but you seem to have a distaste for citizen soldiers on a whole, which is one of the standout gameplay features of 0 AD.

As a recap: giving the the soldiers the ability to gather is not something that makes 0 A.D. special to play. Instead, the current implementation is broken and probably the concept too. So either the concept should be improved or completely removed (to lazy to look up Darc's detailed explanation post with some suggestions to fix it)  

[DarcReaver]

19 hours ago, LordGood said:

There is a middle ground, it just takes some fine tuning to realize. Gathering cavalry is not the issue here, its the snowball effect of cavalry gathering the resources necessary to make yet more cavalry in such a way that doesn't hamper economic growth.

Another easy fix would be making cavalry take up two pop slots and giving them a slight combat buff and price hike to compensate. Else make them cost a resource that skews village phase gathering.

There are several ways to go about fixing the problems presented that dont involve dismantling playstyles.

A good question to ask is how extreme can we make our changes before we alienate our current player base?

I don't bring this up over something as remedial as pushing raiding cavalry a phase forward, but you seem to have a distaste for citizen soldiers on a whole, which is one of the standout gameplay features of 0 AD.

Yes I do have a "distaste", and that for a good reason. I've already posted numerous times why it's bad and I don't want to write down the arguments again and again.

one sentence to the "Citizen soldiers is THE standout gameplay feature of 0 AD".

There are thousands of outstanding gameplay elements - Tactical combat, innovative economic management, special abilities, detailed tech trees that allow customization of troops with pro's and cons. Stuff like cavalry charges, trampling, combat bonuses in woods, stealth units, epic sieges etc etc.

And you come up with "soldiers can collect food! isn't that awesome?!" If that really is the case I really pity the game. I mean c'mon, really?

 

14 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

IMHO, since this is in alpha phase, this is not a strong consideration. You are developing a pc game that you hope will be played for years to come by thousands of people. Focus on what you want the end product to be, not on satisfying the couple hundred of people who play the incomplete alpha releases.

Exactly this.

11 hours ago, niektb said:

As a recap: giving the the soldiers the ability to gather is not something that makes 0 A.D. special to play. Instead, the current implementation is broken and probably the concept too. So either the concept should be improved or completely removed (to lazy to look up Darc's detailed explanation post with some suggestions to fix it)  

 

Since I've got a paragraph in mye resource design concept I've got a prepared text that summarizes it. So I can just keep copy'n'paste it everytime it's needed

@LordGood

In case you think Citizen gatherers has arguments that make it so unique and outstanding feel free to give them to me, apart from the ones I've stated below there seem to be none. However, I'm eager to hear about reasons to stick to it.

Quote

Citizen/cavalry gatherers removed!

Yes I know this is a drastic change from the current concept. Yes, it will require reworking parts of the game. However, this is also the opportunity to improve the overall gameplay quality.

                Advantages of Citizen Soldiers/gatherers:

-          Usage of military units when not in combat

-          Especially cavalry can gather far away by hunting

-          Easy transition from economy to fighting

Disadvantages of Citizen soldiers/gatherers:

-          No distinction between economic and military units (an integral part of every RTS)

-          Since many gatherers can be active at the same time (economic + every military) gathering rates have to be poor to avoid “economy explosions” which means that the resource income increases exponentially with each additional soldier

-          Players loose resources when attacking, short math example:

o    Soldier collects 0.5 food per second, 30 soldiers work as gatherers which means 15 food/second income (or 900 food/minute).
Now if the 30 soldiers move to the enemy the player will lose 900 food every minute from his soldiers not gathering. Provided that the enemy has a similar army/economy that means that he’ll be ahead with 900 food for each minute he can gather (which would be equal to ~10 or more soldiers).

o    The attacking player needs to destroy more than 900 units worth of food every minute to get an advantage from his attack. If he can’t do that his attack actually weakens the Attacker instead of the Attacked -> unbalanced by design

o    Fixes: soldiers move at unrealistic ultra high speed (less time to get to the enemy) or lowering the gathering rates. The issue is the same still, attacking player initially has a large disadvantage

-          There is no progress from weakest -> strongest unit. Instead the players already start at a high level and then only progress in very small steps towards higher tech levels

-          Citizen soldiers discourage capturing as they are efficient at protecting the base early on, rendering capture rather useless

-          To get citizens back to work is a very fiddly task and annoying compared to regular economic units

Overall it’s better to adjust gathering to specialized units for each civ type instead of giving every civ the ability for soldier gathering. This makes civs more diverse (-> more gameplay depth). One (poor) game mechanic lost for a massive gain in playability is more than worth it.

 

[wraitii]

I'm all for removing stupid features, and could name a few (corral, imo capturing, I'd do away with anything that's not some type of farms for food, tbh…) , but I feel like you're getting it wrong on citizen soldiers.

First: the point of citizen soldier is, first and foremost, the historical goodie. If we were to remove something, it should be the women, not the fact that military units can gather.
I'd like to add that departing from the classic RTS formula isn't necessarily a bad thing, AoM had military units that could make buildings and that was a refreshing change.

Your point about resource explosion is a little silly. Units can either gather OR attack, and that doesn't change from other RTS, so I don't see why it'd explode any more than another game. It's the fact that we start games with a farcical number of units and fast gather rates, as well as units being fast to recruit, that leads to apparent "explosiveness".

Now, your calculation makes it sound like attacking is not worth it. But the math could be inverted rather simply if we lower gather rates and raise unit costs (including training time). If your attack takes 10 guys away from your eco (let's say for 120 food/minute, which would be far less than we get now, admittedly) and you manage to kill 3 enemy units (let's say each cost 50 food), then you're coming out on top by attacking. Other things must be factored in (buildings efficiency, how easy it is to garrison in 0 A.D. - imo by far the poorest design choice), but it's nothing structurally broken like you make it seem.

Likewise, progress from weak to strong units has nothing to do with citizen soldiers and everything to do with how we (haven't) implemented technologies correctly. 

[sphyrth]

I'm getting too much emotional stress with the Citizen Soldiers discussion (Remove... Revamp... Remove... Revamp).

When it comes to two types of Farms: Corral?

Prevent cav rushing? Don't make them available in yhe CC is my suggestion.

But there's something I'm quitenot getting: Cav Rushing (fast attack) is the ONLY option... but then gathering ONLY is better than gather + attack. I mean, what?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Let me go to bat for the corrals, just this once, and see if I can come up with good pro argument.

 

Corrals as they are now are broken and not good, this is universally accepted I think. But... but... Corrals as they are now are not what they are intended for completion. Here's what they can be/should be use for: storing relics. Wait, the game does not have relics? The relics are herdable animals. No one says relics break AOK or AOM. Herdable animals are the relics of 0 A.D. So, you capture them and then garrison them into the corral to gain their benefit, just like a relic from AOK or AOM. These are not meant to unbalance the game, but to give the player a small edge, like relics did in those games. They provide a nice little benefit of scouting before the enemy does, just like relics, and add a nice little layer to the game. Just remove the animal training aspect from the corral and readjust the techs toward this new paradigm.

Edited March 18, 2017 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[niektb]

13 hours ago, wraitii said:

But the math could be inverted rather simply if we lower gather rates

With the ultimate endpoint being a gather rate of zero  

[DarcReaver]

13 hours ago, sphyrth said:

I'm getting too much emotional stress with the Citizen Soldiers discussion (Remove... Revamp... Remove... Revamp).

When it comes to two types of Farms: Corral?

Prevent cav rushing? Don't make them available in yhe CC is my suggestion.

But there's something I'm quitenot getting: Cav Rushing (fast attack) is the ONLY option... but then gathering ONLY is better than gather + attack. I mean, what?

Rather easy:

Cavalry = fast = less resource loss when attacking
Cavalry = high attack and outrun citizens/women = best chances to sucessfully kill infantry.
Gathering still possible everywhere if the rush fails

So, out of all other starting units, cavalry has the best odds for rushing.

On the other side, Citizen soldiers or even Pikes are completely useless for rushing because of their slow speed. It's more effective to use them as self-defending gatherers and then spam champions, which have superior stats and cannot gather at all to attack (which many players do).

[elexis]

12 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Corrals as they are now are broken and not good, this is universally accepted I think. But... but... Corrals as they are now are not what they are intended for completion.

Maybe they don't work as originally intended, but why are they broken? They do work and are a an alternative source of food income, more rewarding but more micro intense. Players are _not_ forced to use the more rewarding option because just doing fields works and there are many players who try different corral strats and many players who are very successful without fields.

Garrisoning animals in corrals seems quite boring to me, income without effort, not self-balancing, unless you add further logic to it than a simple resource trickle upon garrisoning.

[wraitii]

15 minutes ago, elexis said:

Garrisoning animals in corrals seems quite boring to me, income without effort, not self-balancing, unless you add further logic to it than a simple resource trickle upon garrisoning.

Disagreed. The meta-play here would be capturing the animals before the enemy does it, and then keeping control of the animals. This wouldn't be entirely unlike the relics or the sheep of AoE, as wow said. And it would be a completely different thing from farming. If we added mechanic such as shepherds having to guide the sheep instead of capturing them a-la AOE, and we allowed laming the shepherd and/or the sheep, we could even have an interesting, high skill-ceiling early gameplay just based on capturing the sheep. It shouldn't be a huge food income but give you a definite edge as the game drags on, making it worth it but not absolutely terrible if you don't do well. Obviously this is only worth it if we seriously slow down the early game.

Regarding corrals, I'm really not a fan of how they are implemented now because they just seem to be extraordinarily "game mechanic"-y.

Anyhow, I think hunting is not working properly and probably never will, and I think berries are a bad idea given our usual starts and we should either reduce the starting resources and the starting pop or remove berries from our RM.

[WhiteTreePaladin]

I don't think we need to remove berries, but we don't have to place them at the starting point on every map. We could increase their gather rate and they could serve as a food "treasure" with a non-zero gather rate. The fruit trees might be worth removing as I always get those mixed up with regular trees.

[Lion.Kanzen]

24 minutes ago, WhiteTreePaladin said:

I don't think we need to remove berries, but we don't have to place them at the starting point on every map. We could increase their gather rate and they could serve as a food "treasure" with a non-zero gather rate. The fruit trees might be worth removing as I always get those mixed up with regular trees.

Why need when fruit is depleted use the wood of the tree. The ancient recycled and have best sense of have better performance of each things of their enviroment. They even use bones for do things.

[Grugnas]

I think that berries are a great feature because they are a nice start for different strategies on how gather food ( corrals, fields, fishing boats).   The bushes could even be incremented from 5 to 6-8 as standard starting resources, since they aren't enough for starting corrals efficiently as alternative to grainfields. An economy based on grainfields and corrals mix without delaying phase up would even be more interesting.

[Lion.Kanzen]

The thing is the farms would work like in DE and... must be avaible after build a farmstead.