Changes in farms

[wraitii]

Berries are a staple of AOE (to the point that AOE 3 joked on it), where they occupy the niche between collecting treasures/sheep and being able to farm because you have enough wood. This is a little irrelevant in 0 A.D. because our starting resources and units would allow us to have enough wood from the get-go to make farms (and we don't even have hunting). So I'd rather we just go into farms directly.

Furthermore, berries made lore sense in AOE ½ because you start in the prehistoric/dark age, basically as hunter-gatherers. That's not really the case in 0 A.D.

But mostly I find them annoying because they're bloody hard to see  

[av93]

Well, in a new founded colony away from home, berries have sense in aoe3

[Lion.Kanzen]

The berries thing depends from biome than if the villager are starting a colony or not.

 

nomad map needs a redesign in this case. The farm depends of fertility of the ground. Think in polar map, is exaggerating the plantation, or north territory, the nomad tribes( Germanic) migrating for territory that's other culture stole to them.

vandals for example in the start.

Spoiler

Check 2:52 this people start to starving.

 

 

 

 

[mimo]

It seems that this discussion has derived so much from its original topics that it is becoming useless and should be recentered. I'll just add my own feelings on some of the points raised:
- several kind of food is good imo if they are different enough (which is currently the case) and allow more diversity in the gameplay. I would say that it is to the map maker to make its map interesting by a good placement of berries and animals for hunt. The only potential problem i see is with fields and corrals which both provide infinite sources, but as specified above, corral's implementation is far from complete and we should find a way to make it more interesting. In addition, one possibility is to remove the slaughter attack to cav, so that they can't kill domestic animals while still being able to hunt, that would be more realistic and also would make corrals only a supplemental source of food for some maps where fields are difficult to place or when we will have a variable rate depending on the terrain (that rocky or snowy maps have their food better based on corrals rather than fields for example would be nice to force diverse gameplay). That both fields and corrals are not feature complete is to my mind an important fact to keep in mind.
- concerning citizen soldiers, i'm completely for keeping them and do not agree at all with the comments that it is a broken concept. I think it is rather a very nice one which adds some originality to 0ad compared to other games. In addition, the player has to make some choice between investing in cs which are weak but can gather or in champions. They are also more realistic.

Now let's go back to the original topic (now in https://code.wildfiregames.com/D227) which is to make the rate of fields variable (relatively slow when the field is built, and then increasing with time up to its nominal rate) so that at the beginning other sources are more interesting, but after some time, fields would become the dominant one. The second mecchanism in D227 is that when unattended, fields productivity starts decreasing, which makes them more vulnerable to raids. I'd be happy to have feedbacks, but preferrably from people having tried the patch. General discussions on gameplay should rather stay in one of the numerous other threads we already have in this forum.

[wraitii]

Hm, as I understood it, D227 is a go. You've had 3 explicit OKs in the ticket, I'm adding mine here. Getting 5 people to agree on anything is already a miracle so imo you should go right ahead with that feature.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

D227 sound like an unnecessary complexity. You guys care about this kind of stuff too much, like the hundred or so posts spent on trying to make berries variable and regenerate. What player should need to care about is placement of the farm instead of whatever you're trying to achieve with D227. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

13 hours ago, elexis said:

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.

 

Respectfully, they are so broken that online players ban them in their matches. I mean, their current form is a decent stopgap to make the corral interesting until its final form is developed, but it's just a stopgap. 

[WhiteTreePaladin]

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

D227 sound like an unnecessary complexity. You guys care about this kind of stuff too much, like the hundred or so posts spent on trying to make berries variable and regenerate. What player should need to care about is placement of the farm instead of whatever you're trying to achieve with D227. 

I do think location of farms would be much simpler to keep track of and more fun for players. Rates are not visual. I have enough issue keeping track of the difference in gathering rates between citizen soldiers and civilians. Then there are the techs that increase the gather rates. Honestly, a variable rate doesn't sound like much fun. It's not terrible, but it's fairly mediocre. I don't really see what it offers for the complexity that it adds. I'd much rather choose a respectable spot to place a farm using some visual aid to help choose the location (e.g. an efficiency percentage displayed when hovering to place the farm, etc.) This adds a visual element rather than forcing the player to keep track of all the abstract information in their head.

[elexis]

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Respectfully, they are so broken that online players ban them in their matches. I mean, their current form is a decent stopgap to make the corral interesting until its final form is developed, but it's just a stopgap. 

Never seen someone banning corrals, why would they?

[niektb]

@wraitii: not sure whether D227 it's a go, I have seen several 'no' posts in the other topic (and I'm adding a 'no' here too)

[wraitii]

Could you state why here? This is the topic for it after all  

[niektb]

Oh sure!

I think the proposed mechanisms add too much complexity (and unnecessary too) for a game like 0 A.D. It might be funny for a realism / city building mod

[mimo]

@wowgetoffyourcellphone : how can it be complex to have the fields decay when unattended and regenerate when attended? that's on the contrary something which looks natural to me, and certainly not less natural no more complex than having health regen when passing nearby a temple, or when idle if we have a medecine tech. Futhermore, while i understand that everybody can change its mind, it's funny how you can say the exact opposite of what you said previously in this same thread

that does not support taking your opinion too seriously, at least up to the next change of mind

@WhiteTreePaladin : why would you ever need to keep track of these rates? do you also try to follow the changes of rate each time a man comes near a female? hopefully not! a game should stay a game, not a mind torture. For me, the only useful information is the base rate (knowing that a female is x% more efficient than a given male soldier), this does not change because of tech, mill, auras ..., nor because of D227, except the female aura which you should then also find much too complicated!

@niektb : as said before, no complexity here. And don't worry, nobody has asked you to give a yes or a no, my only demand was to test the patch for people to give a useful feedback

Just to clarify what is D227: fields are built much faster (15s instead of previous 50s), but starts with a lower rate which increases with time. Typically after 2 mn, it reaches the nominal rate which won't change anymore as long as you have people working on it. As fields are long term resources, nobody cares about the rate of these 2 first mn. Then when abondonned, the rate that the field can provide decreases, and this "field rate" is visualized by the health bar (the field is destroyed when the health reaches 0). What it brings is that, when a field is half destroyed because of an attack, it looks more natural for me that the farming rate is decreased accordingly during the time the field is restored. And if when attacked, you garrison all your gatherers in the nearest cc, your fields will start to decay, which also looks more natural, but more importantly that makes raids against fields more efficient even if the defender has used the town bell.

[Hannibal_Barca]

16 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Respectfully, they are so broken that online players ban them in their matches. I mean, their current form is a decent stopgap to make the corral interesting until its final form is developed, but it's just a stopgap. 

Never experienced such a rule. Who is doing this?

[drsingh]

1 hour ago, mimo said:

Just to clarify what is D227: fields are built much faster (15s instead of previous 50s), but starts with a lower rate which increases with time. Typically after 2 mn, it reaches the nominal rate which won't change anymore as long as you have people working on it. As fields are long term resources, nobody cares about the rate of these 2 first mn. Then when abondonned, the rate that the field can provide decreases, and this "field rate" is visualized by the health bar (the field is destroyed when the health reaches 0). What it brings is that, when a field is half destroyed because of an attack, it looks more natural for me that the farming rate is decreased accordingly during the time the field is restored. And if when attacked, you garrison all your gatherers in the nearest cc, your fields will start to decay, which also looks more natural, but more importantly that makes raids against fields more efficient even if the defender has used the town bell.

This is not the same as the female aura. With female aura its easier to assess since there are only 2 values. But here you want there to be a gradual change in the gathering rate of the farms. which the player has no way to assess. After a raid if the farms degenerate. How will the player know if he needs to put more people on farms to continue producing batches from 2 buildings(example) or not.. The player macro becomes random. This is where we should stop while pursuing realism.

 

having said that, I liked the first change making farms capturable. It doesnt make sense seeing army attack a field. Also its loot bonus should be removed. I have implemented this part in Improvement mod.

 

On 3/19/2017 at 6:06 PM, elexis said:

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.

Corrals are broken because they are extremely effective. Players soon get multiple thousands of food in their bank. So food ceases to become a resource. And everything which costs food is free. With bartering at market, it outperforms even Traders.

There shouldnt be 2 infinite sources of single resource. Because it just means one of them is redundant feature. Being an alternate source which is micro intense is not a good arguement. There are less people playing right now so it may seem just doing fields works against a guy doing corrals. But it would not in more intense competitive seen. The more skilled players with higher apm will always only use corrals, and not build a single farm. And the lower skilled casual players will always build only farms and not bother with corrals. There wont be an option here. Good players will be forced to use corrals to not auto-lose. And Corral is just a time consuming mundane mechanic, the kind which takes the fun away. Even those guys who can macro it, dont enjoy it.

Garrisoning animals is to give it a strategic option. Assuming that first herdables are made to have faster gather rates than hunts. After finding a random sheep/goat. A player has an option to either garrison it in corral for a slow trickle. Or eat it up quickly for a fast but limited spike. Both these options would seem favourable in different situations. Also the additional build limit to sheep from corral will make it a finite resource so theres no conflict with farms.

[drsingh]

Regarding other forks in discussion in this thread...

Berries seem fine imo. But I agree the fruit trees are alway confusing. Maybe a change in graphic could make them easy to spot.

 

About cavalry being trainable from CC. I'm of the opinion that no military unit should be trainable from CC. Since CC is the main source of eco units. A player wanting to go for early aggression should have to a build a separate structure for military. Anyways merging eco and mlititary buildings make gameplay too convenient. the player never has to decide between investing in one of the above. Every decision which we remove from player, it makes game more casual and lose strategic depth. The same goes for having a single building for both infantry and cavalry.

 

Citizen soldiers- again :). The current implementation is ofcourse not good for competitive gaming. But as you can see in my mod. A change in implementation is going to solve the problem. All you need to do is make sure soldiers like cav dont outperform a specialised food gatherer(woman) in food gathering. Soldiers who are meant to battle should be more profitable fighting than gathering. Being realistic-  in those days no king would keep his soldiers gathering if there was a war to be fought. And would gather only when fighting was not required. But due to mechanics in the game currently. It is more efficient to just keep gathering and let the enemy come to you. Except some naked, commando or jav cav rushes. The citizen soldiers should never be best at gathering any resource. There should be a 2nd eco unit which can replace them for stone and metal gathering.

Just increasing the train time, or make corral being a requirement is not going to cut it to balance cav. 

 

Lastly, even if it is still alpha, the player base is still important. Since it has accumulated slowly over time. And has started getting the game more attention recently. Which will be good for the future of the game. The game is quite playable already. Currently a gameplay mod with smaller changes will cause a sudden burst in players, if it makes for a better in-game experience. And with the increased popularity a second kickstarter campaign or something similar can be done. Will get a better response if players like what they see. And the remaining development will be completed much faster.

Trying to completely rework the basic mechanics of the game- if alienates the players and many of them drop off. It will delay the development cycle and it will be apparent very late that the changes done made it better or not.

Edited March 20, 2017 by drsingh

[niektb]

3 hours ago, mimo said:

@niektb : as said before, no complexity here. And don't worry, nobody has asked you to give a yes or a no, my only demand was to test the patch for people to give a useful feedback

You say it's not complex but your explanation tells different. It adds to the complexity of the farming concept without improving it (except for 'looking more natural') And of course people care about those two minutes that they need to invest before they get their nominal rate (these citizens can't gather anything else during that period).

Wriatti mentioned that the patch is a go, hence my post that questioned wether it is a wanted feature...

[wraitii]

This doesn't really add much complexity, all you need to know is that farms are only good if you keep them busy, so you need to try and keep them busy and keeping them not-busy is more rewarding.

[sphyrth]

The concept is indeed simple. "Keep your farms attended or else."
Well, simple until a Raiding Party comes in. "Haha! Watch your farms rot while you stay in your buildings cowering in fear."

I kinda like the system.

[WhiteTreePaladin]

2 hours ago, wraitii said:

This doesn't really add much complexity, all you need to know is that farms are only good if you keep them busy, so you need to try and keep them busy and keeping them not-busy is more rewarding.

 

6 hours ago, mimo said:

why would you ever need to keep track of these rates? do you also try to follow the changes of rate each time a man comes near a female? hopefully not! a game should stay a game, not a mind torture. For me, the only useful information is the base rate (knowing that a female is x% more efficient than a given male soldier), this does not change because of tech, mill, auras ..., nor because of D227, except the female aura which you should then also find much too complicated!

Farm expiration has never been fun for me and is actually is one of my biggest gripes with AoK. AoK:TC was a little better with its farm queues, but even that resulted in repeated top-offs. AoE3 avoided the issue by using infinite farms like we currently have. I feel that if a field was paid for with wood and build time, then having it sit unused is an extremely obvious and adequate penalty. I don't see the need to introduce a variable rate which has the singular purpose to punish the player for leaving a farm unattended.

Resource gathering in AoE3 does not have units shuffling back and forth like AoK. Our game didn't either at first. I remember us asking Philip to add it in. In hindsight, I don't think resource shuffling is a great idea; it complicates gameplay and hurts performance. However, it is so charming that I would still miss it if it were removed. For me, farm expiration adds a significant annoyance without any of the charm.

I actually don't really like the female aura either because I have to space out the female citizens so that all the other gathering units are covered by the aura. This requires repeated micro-management during placement of gatherers for both new resource locations and for repositioning units that have roamed (wood cutters, etc.) It's rather a pain, so I mostly don't fool with it, but the best players will be required to bother with mundane details like that.

Corrals properly paired with cavalry can collect ridiculous amounts of food quickly. I did it once - it requires a lot of planning; I imagine a more experienced player could really get the timing of the training and the positioning of the cavalry right. It was so much effort that it was not fun for me at all. I think the issue would be much more apparent if we used the computer player to optimize that strategy.

Just some personal opinions. Other people have different experiences.

[wraitii]

Quote

I actually don't really like the female aura either because I have to space out the female citizens so that all the other gathering units are covered by the aura. This requires repeated micro-management during placement of gatherers for both new resource locations and for repositioning units that have roamed (wood cutters, etc.) It's rather a pain, so I mostly don't fool with it, but the best players will be required to bother with mundane details like that.

Have to say I agree… It also feels extremely game mechanic-y and not like something natural and rewarding.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

6 minutes ago, wraitii said:

Have to say I agree… It also feels extremely game mechanic-y and not like something natural and rewarding.

Well, all of the aura in the game feel gamey. At the end of the day you have to accept some of these tropes and suspend disbelief. But perhaps the female aura is one step too far for you? For me, it's not so tedious as @WhiteTreePaladin says, because I use enough females that I'm relatively assured that if I send a few of them with the men to mine the stone that they'll have enough "coverage" for efficiant use of their aura. But I have no huge love for the feature though. At one point I removed it from DE -- but put it back again -- it felt charming to keep it, to use Brian [aka WhiteTreePaladin]'s word.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

5 hours ago, WhiteTreePaladin said:

Resource gathering in AoE3 does not have units shuffling back and forth like AoK. Our game didn't either at first. I remember us asking Philip to add it in. In hindsight, I don't think resource shuffling is a great idea; it complicates gameplay and hurts performance. However, it is so charming that I would still miss it if it were removed.

Nonono, better not remove shuttling. If anything I would like some [minor!!!] complexity added with shuttling: I would like a shuttling speed added to the templates, so that dudes carrying slabs of stone back to the civic center can walk slower. That way, maybe wheelbarrow and handcart techs can affect shuttling speed as well.

[LordGood]

3 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Nonono, better not remove shuttling. If anything I would like some [minor!!!] complexity added with shuttling: I would like a shuttling speed added to the templates, so that dudes carrying slabs of stone back to the civic center can walk slower. That way, maybe wheelbarrow and handcart techs can affect shuttling speed as well.

this could balance out the speed discrepancy between infantry units, so skirmishers aren't so far ahead in gather rates from pikemen.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

5 hours ago, LordGood said:

this could balance out the speed discrepancy between infantry units, so skirmishers aren't so far ahead in gather rates from pikemen.

Yep, my point exactly. Every infantry unit should start at same shuttling speed. Right now, it's way betteer economically to train slingers or javelin dudes to gather because they shuttle much faster. imho, this should not have to be a consideration, and they should shuttle at the same speed.

Edited March 21, 2017 by wowgetoffyourcellphone