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

[sarcoma]

I have played some defensive players that get around the no walls rule by building layers of houses in front of a perimeter of garrisoned fortresses and towers with horses ready to attack rams.  Very distasteful.

One strategy against turrets, but not turret spam, is to have archers destroy a turret but not the connecting parts.  You need lots of archers and healers behind.

[causative]

Using houses and other buildings to create barriers is an accepted strategy.  They aren't nearly as powerful as walls because they can be quickly captured and destroyed by champions.  They also have no gate so they block allied units as well as enemy units.

[Zeta1127]

Well, the aura doesn't really seem to help much.

[Trionkali]

I don't believe walls are overpowered at all. I am one of the first players to use the turret spam bug, (which I no longer use), but overall, one (normal) set of walls around a weak players civ only gives them about 20 seconds to prepare even if you attack with about 20 champions. 40 for Carthaginians. So no, I do not think walls are overpowered, only turret spam. As BadMonkey showed, 1000 champ deaths, only because of turrets not walls. And could that not be solved by limiting the amount of arrows which could be fired in a certain radius?

[Dade]

To sum up, from what I've read on this topic, I think the easiest and simple way to currently fix this without exploring new mechanics are actually:

1. Improve catapults range, so they are not being attacked from walls/fortifications at same height and we can place at least 2 lines of troops in front to defend them without being attacked. Alternative: Reduce wall turret range (and look into reduce Fortress range too). They are suppose to be defensive, after all, not offensive. This benefit all attacker  units equally.
2. Buff rams when they have garrisoned units aka: extra damage, a little defensive bonus and a great capture points bonus. I think this last is one of the more important, is very annoying to have a ram full of champs being captured with full HP. IMO a fully champ garrisoned ram should not be able to be captured until 25% HP, else you are sending a free gift to your enemy with a nice shiny ribbon
3. Rise repair timings related to walls: already planned in #3707 & #3811
4. Rise the minimum space between wall turrets, thus this could be a problem in certain cases and we would have to modify the trajectory of our wall line to something different due to this restriction and map shape.

As for new ideas/mechanics, we have the following:

1. Walled City tech: set an amount X of stone to 'activate' walls and turrets foundations around your CC
2. Starving: players need to not only be able to actually buy units, but also to sustain them. Siege player could try brake his opponent economy to cause lack of supplies to enemy civilization

Sorry if I've missed something.

Edited April 3, 2016 by Dade

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

50 minutes ago, Dade said:

• Improve catapults range, so they are not being attacked from walls/fortifications at same height and we can place at least 2 lines of troops in front to defend them without being attacked

Alternative: Reduce wall turret range (and look into reduce Fortress range too). They are suppose to be defensive, after all, not offensive. This benefit all attacker  units equally.

Edited April 3, 2016 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Lion.Kanzen]

I agree with @wowgetoffyourcellphone That better idea. This way get enough opportunity to break the defense if the attacker have enoght troops to take down the defenses. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I have experiment a lot with Delenda Est (local copy), by making it so only 1 arrow come from towers, fortress, etc. and only other arrows come from propped garrison units. For instance, you cannot pack a bunch of soldier into Fortress and get 20 arrows and soldiers stay safely inside Fortress. No, those unit who are archer show up outside on battlements and then they shoot at attacker. Arrow shooters are vulnerable to counterattack and as more defender archers die, fewr arrows for defense. Fortress become strong defense point, but does not have offensiveness without vulnerable archer on top.

I have made so only archer or other infantry ranged garrison show up  on battlement:

 

This can be done easily for Wall turrets too. Only a few of the turret need redesigned for propped unit

Edited April 3, 2016 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Dade]

Edited to include the alternative

Thus I'm not sure if it's a good idea because wouldn't those structures have less range than ranged units themselves?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

6 hours ago, Dade said:

Edited to include the alternative

Thus I'm not sure if it's a good idea because wouldn't those structures have less range than ranged units themselves?

I think lots of ranges (like vision for example) are way too long in vanilla game as it is.

 

In my mod Archer Infantry have 40 attack range. In vanilla the Archer Infantry have 72 attack range. This is too much. Similar ratio respect to vision range.

Edited April 3, 2016 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Dade]

Personally, if your idea includes high defensive buffs to garrisoned units I won't say it's a bad idea (maybe in a castle of 20 units, 5-10 are inside "safe" and the rest is outside).

About ranges, maybe is a matter of tastes but probably we would need to see how to scale all real distances into the game (maybe we would even have to discuss some micromanagements options for archers commans). From what I've read, actual archers hunting 'effective range' is someway between 35yd (~32 meters) and 50yd (~45m), maybe this can be used as orientation. From my own experience, I've built bows with my father with recycling materials, this ranges are probably correct in a warfare situation. Also check Composite Bow and Auxilia - Archers.

I'd also like to point, as my personal opinion again, I don't think the matter is to let any civ to be able to easily break any defense. Don't forget battering rams are a very simple concept, only sophisticated by very few civilizations (Persians on 0AD for example).

[causative]

Hunting range is not the same as combat range, because to hunt you need to hit the target, but in combat you only need the arrow to land somewhere in the enemy formation.  This article estimates the range of ancient bows: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1087210?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents.  You have to pay for the article but you can read the first page for free, which includes several useful claims.

It quotes an earlier article apparently by the same author saying "that bowmen were quite accurate up to 55-60 meters; that their effective range extended to at least 160-175 meters, but not so far as 350-450 meters; and that 500 meters was an exceptional flight shot."  The article then qualifies this statement based on additional data, saying "To judge from ancient documents and modern performance, two hundred feet (59.2 meters) is unthinkably short for arrows, sling-bullets, or mechanical artillery; all outreached this limit at least threefold."

 

That article was about ancient bows.  Here are a couple of sources for more modern bows, which similarly conclude an effective range of hundreds of meters:

http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/8022/how-far-could-an-english-war-bow-shoot

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_bow#Range

Hundreds of meters seems a common figure for bows in warfare.

 

Despite the range, in ancient and medieval times bow combat was limited by the amount of ammunition available - particularly for the defenders in a siege, who didn't have access to trees to make new arrows.  It was also limited by the fact that once your own forces intermingled with the enemy, archers had to stop shooting because of friendly fire.  In Agincourt, for example, British archers switched to melee weapons once the French men-at-arms were among them, partly because the archers were already out of arrows.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I understand about reality of bow range, but this is video game where "large battles" only have about 100 men per side and you can build a city in mere minytes.  And also like you kind of say already, archer in 0 A.D. have unlimited ammo. So, I think for range we should think about balance first. 

[Dade]

Well, I think we all agree on one this: either ranged units get nerfed range so catapults are useful and possible to protect or catapults get a higher range with the same result.

@causative I understand ancient archers could reach those distances, but I won't be sure they could really be effective from outside 50-100 meters. Of course you can shoot an arrow to almost 200-300 meters and hit somebody into formation but as @wowgetoffyourcellphone it's all about scaling into the game. I mean, we can't consider real ranges if we don't also consider the scaling of the game from real world sizes.

[Loki1950]

Effective range for bows is also tied to the targets armor the reason most war bows have a heavier draw weights is armor penetration not range after all hunting animals do not have armor or shoot back

Enjoy the Choice

[causative]

@Loki1950 that's a good point.  To be really realistic, armor penetration should be separated from damage.  A very fast arrow can penetrate better armor, but once it hits flesh it doesn't poke a much bigger hole than a slower arrow would.  Armor penetration would decrease with range, whereas damage would decrease more slowly with range.

An "ultimate" armor penetration model would work something like this.  For each body part (head, abdomen, arm, leg) there would be a percentage of that body part covered by armor/shield, together with a number indicating the strength of the armor covering that body part.  An arrow would have an armor penetration value that gets rolled randomly when fired, and decreases with range.  If the arrow hits the armored enemy, first it randomly selects a body part to hit, based on the area of that body part.  Based on the "burn percentiles" chart, this would be roughly:  36% chance to hit the abdomen, 38% legs, 18% arms, 8% head.  Then it rolls again to see if it hits the armor covering that body part, or misses the armor (the difference between a shot to the helmet and a shot to the face).  If it misses the armor the arrow hits.  If it hits the armor, but the arrow's penetration value is less than the armor strength for that body part, the arrow does no damage.  Otherwise the arrow hits.

The amount of damage when the arrow hits would depend on the body part hit, and shouldn't depend very much on the type of arrow or bow.  An arrow is an arrow, when it comes to poking a hole in meat.  Head wound - very high damage, likely instant death.  Abdomen wound - high damage.  Leg or arm wound - lowest damage (but still possibly fatal).  To be truly accurate wounds should add disability to the unit such as decreased walking or fighting speed.

To be even more accurate, wounds should have a delayed possibility to kill by infection.  Infection was a truly major cause of death in medieval warfare but the would not kill immediately - only after a delay of some days.  The way it could work is, when a unit gets wounded it gets a certain amount of infection points on a timer.  The timer should be some amount such as 60 or 120 seconds so that the unit can finish the battle before infection sets in.  When the infection timer runs out, the infection points are deducted from the unit's HP total.  Abdomen wounds would have very high fatality rates from infection.  Being shot in the gut is pretty much a death sentence eventually without modern medical care.  Arm, leg, or head wounds would have lower fatality from infection, but still substantial.

[causative]

Also - kind of related to damage and damage mitigation - priests shouldn't be healers.  Considering the backwards state of battlefield medicine at the time, there was very little a priest or doctor could really do to help a wounded soldier.  Priests should instead have a morale-boosting effect like a hero aura.  Temple technologies should decrease training costs of troops, because of religious propaganda ("Athena is on our side, so join the army today!").

[Dade]

On 6/4/2016 at 8:09 PM, causative said:

Also - kind of related to damage and damage mitigation - priests shouldn't be healers.  Considering the backwards state of battlefield medicine at the time, there was very little a priest or doctor could really do to help a wounded soldier.  Priests should instead have a morale-boosting effect like a hero aura.  Temple technologies should decrease training costs of troops, because of religious propaganda ("Athena is on our side, so join the army today!").

Hmmmm Sintagma with a priest in the middle <3