Good Players usually say "No Walls" in the Multiplayer Lobby

[Palaiogos]

I agree that siege engines should be buffed, but maybe there can be a new strategy. I am proposing a "starve" strategy because let's say you are playing on Greek Acropolis and they wall their Acropolis in. You can simply starve them of resources because the only things that they can get is food. Tank the market for wood and iron, and they can't produce anything but women. Sounds like a good strategy? Then after drive your force with everything you have got and break through the walls. With the buffed siege equipment it should fall quickly. Especially if the enemy doesn't have allies.

[Mr.Monkey]

Honestly like I said before I think that the actual values for walls are actually pretty balanced. It takes about 20 champs to quickly destroy a wall without loosing any troops, you can easily destroy a wall with 1 siege ram, and it doesn't really stop an army from destroying a base. As for range and damage output, it is actually pretty low if there are only 1-2 wall turrets. This seems reasonable to me

As I pointed out its the fact that you can spam walls is the main problem making your enemy destroy various walls to just get in to you base, or even worse, various wall turrets, is way too over powered.

This is because it makes your enemy take longer to get to your base, therefore more damage is made to their troops, and so the less troops they have to finish you off. If I am able to completely set up a "Wall turret spam" base, I can literally be unbeatable, no matter how many champs you send. I am not joking, doing various tests, with just one layer of turrets surrounding your civ (in my screenshot I had 2 layers with some of it destroyed after 1200 champs were sent to my base), an army of 100 fully upgraded Briton longsword men can only take out one wall turret before they are completely wiped out. It is basically like having 20 defence towers extremely close together, and extremely cheap.

 I can make a video of this when I get the time.

Therefore in my opinion, the easiest way of fixing this problem is adding a minimum distance of units that wall turrets can be placed, similar to how defence towers and fortresses must be at a certain distance between each other. That is the easiest, and best way to fix the only problem with walls.

Making siege stronger, or walls weaker is not a good option as it will affect everything else, and honestly I don't want to see another alpha where siege rams are completely over powered.

[Lion.Kanzen]

I don't see the big problem here...

the turret are historical accurate. So is needed the game keep with them.

if is op only need balance, not big deal, in the ticket about balance this the devs uses this post as feedback.

[causative]

7 hours ago, Palaiogos said:

I agree that siege engines should be buffed, but maybe there can be a new strategy. I am proposing a "starve" strategy because let's say you are playing on Greek Acropolis and they wall their Acropolis in. You can simply starve them of resources because the only things that they can get is food. Tank the market for wood and iron, and they can't produce anything but women. Sounds like a good strategy? Then after drive your force with everything you have got and break through the walls. With the buffed siege equipment it should fall quickly. Especially if the enemy doesn't have allies.

This doesn't work if the walled opponent can set up trade routes with himself behind his walls.  Even trading on a short trade route for 5 or 10 profit per trip is enough to keep his economy going, if you have to spend 5 or 10 times as much resources to attack his position as he has to spend to defend it.

Sure, it would be nice if a "starve" strategy worked, because it would be more historically accurate.  Perhaps it could work with some modifications to how trade works.  Although, trading with yourself is necessary on many low resource maps, so it wouldn't be a good solution to simply remove that option.

7 hours ago, Mr.Monkey said:

Honestly like I said before I think that the actual values for walls are actually pretty balanced. It takes about 20 champs to quickly destroy a wall without loosing any troops, you can easily destroy a wall with 1 siege ram, and it doesn't really stop an army from destroying a base. As for range and damage output, it is actually pretty low if there are only 1-2 wall turrets. This seems reasonable to me

As I pointed out its the fact that you can spam walls is the main problem making your enemy destroy various walls to just get in to you base, or even worse, various wall turrets, is way too over powered.

This is because it makes your enemy take longer to get to your base, therefore more damage is made to their troops, and so the less troops they have to finish you off. If I am able to completely set up a "Wall turret spam" base, I can literally be unbeatable, no matter how many champs you send. I am not joking, doing various tests, with just one layer of turrets surrounding your civ (in my screenshot I had 2 layers with some of it destroyed after 1200 champs were sent to my base), an army of 100 fully upgraded Briton longsword men can only take out one wall turret before they are completely wiped out. It is basically like having 20 defence towers extremely close together, and extremely cheap.

 I can make a video of this when I get the time.

Therefore in my opinion, the easiest way of fixing this problem is adding a minimum distance of units that wall turrets can be placed, similar to how defence towers and fortresses must be at a certain distance between each other. That is the easiest, and best way to fix the only problem with walls.

Making siege stronger, or walls weaker is not a good option as it will affect everything else, and honestly I don't want to see another alpha where siege rams are completely over powered.

"20 champs to destroy a wall without losing any troops" - not if there's a garrisoned fortress behind the wall, or some workers repairing it on the other side.

"you can easily destroy a wall with 1 siege ram" - see my screenshot earlier in this thread in which that was impossible.  Siege rams can be easily killed by melee or catapults, and in fact a wall can be repaired faster than 2 siege rams can damage it.

"Making siege stronger, or walls weaker is not a good option as it will affect everything else" - making walls weaker would only affect walls.  Making siege stronger wouldn't affect everything else, if you only give siege an attack bonus against walls specifically, rather than increased attack against everything.

Minimum distance between wall turrets would be great and would solve much, although not everything.  Requiring a minimum distance might complicate wall placement since it would require wall segments to only be the long kind.  I have a suggestion to solve this:  make wall turrets be very cheap (e.g. 5 stone) when initially built, and not shoot.  They could be called "corners" instead of "turrets."  But you can upgrade a wall corner into a turret that shoots, for 100 stone, similar to making a gate - but only if there are no other turrets within a minimum distance.

[Mr.Monkey]

25 minutes ago, causative said:

"20 champs to destroy a wall without losing any troops" - not if there's a garrisoned fortress behind the wall, or some workers repairing it on the other side.

"you can easily destroy a wall with 1 siege ram" - see my screenshot earlier in this thread in which that was impossible.  Siege rams can be easily killed by melee or catapults, and in fact a wall can be repaired faster than 2 siege rams can damage it.

"Making siege stronger, or walls weaker is not a good option as it will affect everything else" - making walls weaker would only affect walls.  Making siege stronger wouldn't affect everything else, if you only give siege an attack bonus against walls specifically, rather than increased attack against everything.

Minimum distance between wall turrets would be great and would solve much, although not everything.  Requiring a minimum distance might complicate wall placement since it would require wall segments to only be the long kind.  I have a suggestion to solve this:  make wall turrets be very cheap (e.g. 5 stone) when initially built, and not shoot.  They could be called "corners" instead of "turrets."  But you can upgrade a wall corner into a turret that shoots, for 100 stone, similar to making a gate - but only if there are no other turrets within a minimum distance.

If I were in your position in that game, I would have done the following:

1. Send  a batch of 5 garrisoned rams to destroy 2 walls, preferably a small wall or a gate, if there are workers behind to rebuild send 5 of them to one.
2. Send 80 champions (with 10 healers) to do extra damage and protect the rams
3. Kill the workers (you should only really lose 10 or so champs), if they have champs in the area, send back your rams, keep up production and kill them with the army (most of his army must be garrisoned so it should be a quick win)
4. Send the rams to the fortress with 40 champs 
5. Send 30 champs with the healers to meanwhile destroy the remaining garrisoned walls
6. By this time you should of been able to reproduce around 20-30 champs, and another 10 healers, send them over for back-up
7. Once the fortress is done, the rest is easy, the military colony can be captured, the rest of the walls are finished off.

Giving siege an attack bonus for walls specifically is a decent idea, however like I have pointed out, it isn't really necessary, proper strategy can finish off heavily walled bases.

The corners idea is also good however it might defeat the historical idea of it.

If you hate dealing with walls play with Iberians, Britons or Mauryans, their crush damage units OBLITERATE walls.

 

Edited March 30, 2016 by Mr.Monkey

[causative]

36 minutes ago, Mr.Monkey said:

If I were in your position in that game, I would have done the following:

1. Send  a batch of 5 garrisoned rams to destroy 2 walls, preferably a small wall or a gate, if there are workers behind to rebuild send 5 of them to one.
2. Send 80 champions (with 10 healers) to do extra damage and protect the rams
3. Kill the workers (you should only really lose 10 or so champs), if they have champs in the area, send back your rams, keep up production and kill them with the army (most of his army must be garrisoned so it should be a quick win)
4. Send the rams to the fortress with 40 champs 
5. Send 30 champs with the healers to meanwhile destroy the remaining garrisoned walls
6. By this time you should of been able to reproduce around 20-30 champs, and another 10 healers, send them over for back-up
7. Once the fortress is done, the rest is easy, the military colony can be captured, the rest of the walls are finished off.

Giving siege an attack bonus for walls specifically is a decent idea, however like I have pointed out, it isn't really necessary, proper strategy can finish off heavily walled bases.

The corners idea is also good however it might defeat the historical idea of it.

If you hate dealing with walls play with Iberians, Britons or Mauryans, their crush damage units OBLITERATE walls.

 

I sent 540 champions to their death, and many rams as well.  The position was impenetrable.  Rams, as I mentioned, can only approach one at a time due to the trees, and were easily killed one at a time by the catapults regardless of how many champions were with them.  The champions themselves were slaughtered without killing any walls.  I would send in large numbers of champions - at least 50 each time, more than 80 a few times.  They would be slaughtered by arrows while damaging one wall... halfway.  At one point I tried an endless flood of champions (brythonic longswords), with the initial flood backed up by constant production from 20 barracks at once, with pathetic results.

There was a moment towards the end of the game when my opponent messed up and left a gate open, allowing me to flood in with 50 champs and capture and kill most of his catapults.  He was able to mop it up before I could take the fortress or military colony, however, and quickly rebuilt.

[Mr.Monkey]

1 minute ago, causative said:

I sent 540 champions to their death, and many rams as well.  The position was impenetrable.  Rams, as I mentioned, can only approach one at a time due to the trees, and were easily killed one at a time by the catapults regardless of how many champions were with them.  The champions themselves were slaughtered without killing any walls.  I would send in large numbers of champions - at least 50 each time, more than 80 a few times.  They would be slaughtered by arrows while damaging one wall... halfway.  At one point I tried an endless flood of champions (brythonic longswords), with the initial flood backed up by constant production from 20 barracks at once, with pathetic results.

There was a moment towards the end of the game when my opponent messed up and left a gate open, allowing me to flood in with 50 champs and capture and kill most of his catapults.  He was able to mop it up before I could take the fortress or military colony, however, and quickly rebuilt.

That makes no sense to me, I have destroyed multiple bases that are similar, if not even harder, there is either something that you missed or something small, in that specific situation made it hard. But it must be a 1 time thing only, because I've had to destroy bases with 4+ fortresses, a civ, 10+ towers and a @#$%ton of walls, multiple times.

[causative]

Probably your opponents failed to fully garrison, or they didn't have walls preventing you from getting at their defensive structures.

[Mr.Monkey]

2 minutes ago, causative said:

Probably your opponents failed to fully garrison, or they didn't have walls preventing you from getting at their defensive structures.

Nope i am 100% sure they were garrisoned and yes they had walls, I did it by basically doing the points that i mentioned (not exactly, different every time, but more or less)

[causative]

Show me a screenshot of one of these games just before you attacked.

[Mr.Monkey]

Just now, causative said:

Show me a screenshot of one of these games just before you attacked.

I will do when I find one again

[Finchj]

I think I should chime in here since causative is referring to a game we played a few weeks ago. The game is, indeed, an excellent example of why walls are often not allowed in multiplayer games. If one were to watch the actual replay of that match, there were some serious missteps that led to a situation where I was able to wall myself into 1/4 of the map. I didn't have a serious wall system until the 40 minute mark. At 35 minutes causative's ally, mapkoc, had utterly annihilated my ally (named enemy, who was also Ptolemies) with a mixed force of champion swords and maces available to the Mauryan civ. For some inexplicable reason, he then retired that army to a fortress for at least 10 minutes before making a move on the second entrance to my base, which by that time I had fortified in a hurry; for I thought that he would have immediately advanced on my unprotected flank. Other missteps by my opponents include a failure to scout, doing so would have revealed a few opportunities to destroy me.

Still, the presence of the extremely dense tree stands at either entrance to the base (which also existed for the other players in their little entrances) made the map extremely defensible. With only two entrances that, by the nature of the map, reduced movement, the meat grinder opportunities were exceptional. I intentionally tried to avoid wall tower spamming like Mr. Monkey showed in his screen shot. I even deliberately built many palisade walls in order to avoid any accusation that I was abusing the wall tower placement. 

I should also make it clear that the replay would show I made quite a few attempts to attack by various means throughout the game and didn't just sit inside my base from minute 1 building an ultimate fortress. The trees, which I tried to cut on many occasions, also wound up killing many of my own units too- everything from large units like elephants and catapults to cavalry and infantry. 

Ptolemies are actually not that well suited to defense, IMO, because- although you can build the military colonies close to your main CC or fortress- they lack a champion infantry unit to garrison with. Only having the champion cav means you gain the anticapture bonus, but lose the arrow bonus that every other civ has with their champ selection. Ptolemies also lack the critical "punch" for offense, so unless you do a camel rush (which I was unaware of at the time and have since realized is possibly the only way to play Ptolemies online), you will have your work cut out if you want to win.

If I were able to post the replay (I don't know how), I think it would make it clear that in certain map situations, walls are indeed over powered. Just this week I played a game where "unknown land" generated a map that was mostly impassable cliffs with each player starting in a small valley with only one entrance, which opened to a large circular middle with trees, one metal mine, and lots of stone. We had said "no walls/wonders" in the game lobby before launch and I reiterated the point once the game started, revealing the map situation, precisely because I remember the game I played against causative and didn't want a repeat. To make a long story short, one player became frustrated and put up a stone wall blocking the entrance to his starting position which not only broke the rules set at the beginning, but also changed the game dynamic completely. In these kinds of situations, where a few pieces of wall, in conjunction with natural map features, can totally shut down every strategy beyond direct attack, walls are currently simply too much. And that is a legitimate reason to ban them IMO.

In any open map situation, which the majority of maps are, I feel walls are only borderline overpowered. Their absence leads to mass champion swords zerging around the map capturing or quickly destroying enemy CC's, which gets quite old to play against. While champions are another topic, they do need to be thought about when discussing walls. While garrisoned walls are extremely powerful and need to be toned down, I think that in all but the most exceptional situations (which usually relate to how the map was generated), the "wall ban" has more to do with the dominant strategy of choosing Britons and training Boudica + champion swords and flinging them at the enemy CC as fast as possible. I've seen too many people quit games they had the upper hand in simply because their first couple of zerg attacks fail against a defended position. It is much easier, then, to ban walls entirely (including palisades, which share few of the stone wall problems), facilitating the dominant play style. That play style, of course, works because currently citizen soldiers are so quickly and easily replaced with champions.

For changes to stone walls, I would suggest:

-Increase wall segment build time slightly. If stone walls took longer to build, one might see more palisades.

-Reducing the damage and range of wall towers. They shouldn't have nearly 100 range, greater than regular towers. I think it should be the same or shorter than a free standing tower.

-Add an attack bonus to rams for every garrisoned unit. One would also need to normalize the garrison count for rams as some are 5 and others are 10, but otherwise the stats are equal IIRC.

-Add a crush armor bonus to rams for every garrisoned unit. How much, I don't know, but testing could be done to see that a fully garrisoned ram can at least hit a gate a few times before, say, 5-10 hits by stone throwing catapults.

-Oddly, give civs the ability to research a tech allowing palisade walls to be built in neutral territory (which automatically self destruct after a certain period of time) to allow entrenched siege positions around catapults. Maybe once formations are working again, that won't be necessary, but currently it is very difficult to block enemy champion units from gaining access to either capture or destroy your catapults. I currently find sieging any enemy fort with catapults to be slow but doable.

-If possible, add a repair debuff aura to siege. The problem with increasing their repair time, IMO, is that it is already often a better proposition to simply delete a wall segment (especially gates) and rebuild it. If the presence of a siege engine would slow down repairing, I think that would be much better because during a lull in the fighting there is a chance to repair. I've also had situations where two or three garrisoned siege rams failed to destroy wall segments due to repairs, which is simply ridiculous.

-Think about giving certain buildings (faction specific) an ability, on a timer, to "inspire" troops for a short duration. Once walls are breached, if garrisoned wall towers are brought into balance, it would be easy for an attacking army with siege equipment to lay waste to the remaining structures. Having some kind of "anti bell" in the CC for a final defensive stand could be useful and fun.

-Lastly, map options that will not generate the kinds of situations in which walls are overpowered. If I wanted to play a scenario where enemy units are flung against a single position, I would. Don't get me wrong, I like maps where you can use the terrain to benefit your defense, but maps with only a single (or two) narrow choke point made by impassable mountains are not fun.

Anyway, those are my ideas for now.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 31, 2016 by Finchj
grammar

[Palaiogos]

I like the idea of making palisade walls build able in neutral territory. That is pretty realistic to the time (Alesia). But I would suggest that maps should be bigger and catapults should have 200-300 range like in actual life. The range of arrows can keep at 100 because that is historically accurate. Also how come this problem never happened in Age of Empires, or Rise of Nations? 

Edited March 31, 2016 by Palaiogos

[causative]

I have a strange suggestion that could simultaneously make walls balanced, preserve more historical accuracy, and prevent pathological uses.  The concept is that walls were historically used mostly for walled cities or forts, and therefore they should only be made at some distance encircling a CC or fortress.  All walls would be like the Iberian starting walls.

 

The concept is that you do not build walls individually; instead they are purchased at the CC or fortress for a suitable amount such as 1000 stone.  The purchase could be called "fortification" or "walled city."  Once purchased, a circle of wall foundations is automatically placed at a distance around the CC or fortress that purchased them, provided the space is clear.  You can then assign workers to build the foundations into walls.  The result is exactly like the Iberian starting walls.

These walls can be repaired by workers, but if they are destroyed the only way to rebuild them would be to spend another 1000 stone to buy "walled city" again, which places new foundations.  Deleting the foundations should not return resources to you.

 

Anyway, just a funny idea.  The Iberian starting walls provide a very powerful defense, but not imbalanced, and they are more realistic to the historical use of walls.

[Palaiogos]

Causative: ever played BFME2? Maybe the walls can be like that. 

[bb_]

Another (planned) way to make walls less powerfull is disallowing arrows to go trough wall, which they currently do. This will have the effect that towers/fortress/cc behind the wall cannot shoot at any champs/siege close to the wall. So attacking walls will then become easier.

[Dade]

25 minutes ago, bb said:

Another (planned) way to make walls less powerfull is disallowing arrows to go trough wall, which they currently do. This will have the effect that towers/fortress/cc behind the wall cannot shoot at any champs/siege close to the wall. So attacking walls will then become easier.

If I'm not wrong @Lion.Kanzen told me it's a planned feature.

[Lion.Kanzen]

6 hours ago, Dade said:

If I'm not wrong @Lion.Kanzen told me it's a planned feature.

Is very little to be a planned feature for now. But the ticket to balance this, is already open. And is based in this feedback topic.

[causative]

10 hours ago, Palaiogos said:

Causative: ever played BFME2? Maybe the walls can be like that. 

Never played it, what are the walls like?

[Zeta1127]

The walls in BFME2 weren't very effective, if only because the maps were so small and the economy required too much land for resource production to be productive.

[Palaiogos]

Basically you have a radius where you can build walls. Outside the radius you can't build walls. Walls also didn't shoot. 

How come we can't make the walls like the Stronghold series? The walls can't shoot, but archers and crossbow men get huge buffs (historically) on the walls. That solves all the problems except we probably would need 10,000 soldier battles like Stronghold.

[fatherbushido]

23 minutes ago, Palaiogos said:

 The walls can't shoot, but archers and crossbow men get huge buffs (historically) on the walls.

You say that it must be like that ? If so, it's yet how 0ad works.

Edited April 1, 2016 by fatherbushido

[Zeta1127]

There is no point in putting units on walls in 0 A.D., because they can't move and don't really receive any bonus, and, therefore, die way too easily.

[fatherbushido]

@Zeta1127 : There is a wall aura (currently: +3 armour of each type is the bonus)

[Palaiogos]

53 minutes ago, fatherbushido said:

You say that it must be like that ? If so, it's yet how 0ad works.

I mean that there aren't any turrets that shoot, but the archers and cross bowmen on the ramparts and walls shoot. You can move them around too.