metagame MetaGameV2 Mod

[Eraser]

Hello community,

Since I was trying to improve meta-game by doing tickets related to the design docs, I decided to integrate all things I've been implementing (along with design changes I propose), and collect them into a mod so devs and players can try them and comment about the changes I'm offering to improve the game experience.

I tested a lot the actual meta-game by trying the three tactics, and I found it plain, since most civs feel the same; all of them go to champions (except ptole and maybe minor rushes) and all of them grow exactly in the same way. At least I wanted to make each civ win with something different, making the metagame more diverse and interesting.

Mayor aspects:

Design:

• Rush civs:
  • Strong against eco, weak against wall.
  • Stronger in age 1.
  • Early/free access to economic structures that can accelerate their growth. Early access to economic units.
  • Easy difficulty.
• Wall civs:
  • Strong against rush, weak against eco.
  • Stronger in age 2.
  • Early/free access to defensive structures. Early access to champion/siege units.
  • Medium difficulty.
• Eco civs:
  • Strong against eco, weak against rush.
  • Stronger in age 3.
  • Access to the most powerful structures. Access to the most powerful units.
  • Hard difficulty.

Champion costs:

• Rush civs: 150 food/wood/metal infantry (except persians), 200 food/wood/metal cavalry.
• Wall civs: 100 food/wood/metal infantry, 150 food/wood/metal cavalry.
• Late civs: 50 food/wood/metal infantry, 100 food/wood/metal cavalry.

The diff I'm attaching contains the basic aspects of the game, it will be updated on this very post. If you don't know how to get the patch working I'll upload the mod soon.

Thx you all for your time, please if you want to test this don't hesitate to contact me so we test

For developers:

MetaGameV2.patch

PlayerFilesGenerator.sh

For players:

MetaGameV2.zip

Edited November 12, 2016 by Eraser
Uploaded mod files

[Palaxin]

I like your thoughts/intentions in general. There is definitely room for improvements regarding variety of civ specific strategy. Ideally, civs are different enough that each civ fits at least one unique niche in gameplay.

However, your proposed "Rush"/"Wall"/"Eco" classification of civs doesn't seem historically accurate to me. IMO Carthaginians (triple walls), perhaps also Athenians (long walls connecting the city with Piraeus) are wall civs, and Celtic civs should be used for rushing (small/simple buildings, fast infantry). Ptolemies could be eco (fertile Nile River delta). Just some suggestions.

Furthermore, I suggest to add a second "dimension" to early/mid/late in order to provide even more variety or make that variety more visible. E.g. "economy"/"building"/"infantry"/"cavalry"/"siege" resulting in 3x5 = 15 fields (I don't think e.g. a wall civ necessarily needs to peak at phase 2). Or find another way to distinguish the 4 civs of each meta strategy.

Edited November 5, 2016 by Palaxin
propose change of civ classifications

[Eraser]

I also reused some concepts I found inside the the game that were not used for the actual gameplay. In the next updates I'll probably use more.

• Mauryan Palace: I've looked some history about the Mauryans, and they introduced many religious reforms relative to Buddhism to keep their country in an age of peace and prosperity. This building can recruit heroes and has an aura that "pacifies" the battlefield and removes all territory influence from civic centres, turning many buildings into gaia, making them "step aside" from the conflict.

• Temple of Mars: I've heard that when Rome was in war, the Temple of Mars opened, and in times of peace it stayed closed. Since it is the image of war itself, I decided to put it back into the game as the building which will end the game if Rome survives until age 3, that is. Originally, I wanted Rome Generals to spawn from the Senate, since they were elected there and sent to deal with the menace. Rome survived against many enemies with stronger, more experienced men thanks to the minds of their generals and rulers.

• Carthaginian Embassy: As long as I know, even the proper Carthaginian ranks of the army were mercenaries, the Sacred Bands were famous because they were the only ones who actually fought for honor instead of gold. So, I thought it'ld be more accurate not to recruit mercenaries as if they were normal citizens.
• Slaves: Many of the civilizations of the game had slaves, but for gameplay reasons only carthaginians have it (for now). They have a limited lifespan but in exchange they have build and mining bonuses. This is the way I thought carthaginians could grow in a unique way, since they need enormous amounts of metal for their units, making them fast enough to be a rush civ.

• Civic Stoa: As I looked in the description the designer left, those (unlike the Royal Stoa), were centers for commerce and reunion for common people, so I thought that a good approach would be to give them a high population bonus. They also were keys for the expansion of Hellenic culture, so I thought that they'ld get along very well with the Theatrons, to expand the culture among the land. Athenes was a relatively peaceful country compared to Sparta, so I thought they would make a good civ for winning with the wits instead of the fists, expanding their culture until they control the territory.

Edited November 5, 2016 by Eraser

[Eraser]

2 hours ago, Palaxin said:

I like your thoughts/intentions in general. There is definitely room for improvements regarding variety of civ specific strategy. Ideally, civs are different enough that each civ fits at least one unique niche in gameplay.

However, your proposed "Rush"/"Wall"/"Eco" classification of civs doesn't seem historically accurate to me. IMO Carthaginians (triple walls), perhaps also Athenians (long walls connecting the city with Piraeus) are wall civs, and Celtic civs should be used for rushing (small/simple buildings, fast infantry). Ptolemies could be eco (fertile Nile River delta). Just some suggestions.

Furthermore, I suggest to add a second "dimension" to early/mid/late in order to provide even more variety or make that variety more visible. E.g. "economy"/"building"/"infantry"/"cavalry"/"siege" resulting in 3x5 = 15 fields (I don't think e.g. a wall civ necessarily needs to peak at phase 2). Or find another way to distinguish the 4 civs of each meta strategy.

Well, the historical accuracy of the rush, wall and eco of each civ isn't accurate, I just classified them based on the actual status of civs and their current capabilities. Ptole sure was a rich country that'ld fit for eco, but current in-game usage is total rush. The concept may need to be reworked, but I was aiming more at changing existing design to make existing civs to fit in each role, since reworking them would take a lot of time, would break the design docs, and the patch would be too big that it'ld be even harder for the dev community to accept it for improving gameplay than it is right now.

About celtic civs, Rush/Wall/Eco slots are also a scale, and as you can see celtic civs are next to rush. This was done intentionally. The more close to rush a civ is, the civ must have also a small way to rush, and next to eco they must have a way to fight back in age 3.

• Persians are close to Wall: Their structures are harder to destroy/capture, and Persian Architecture gives them a way to fend off other rushes like wall civs do.
• Brits are close to Rush: They got dogs, which can rush lonely women/merchants.
• Ibers are close to Eco: Their age 3 technologies make skirmishers set strong buildings on fire, and run away almost unharmed.
• Macedonians are close to Wall: That's why they can spawn ballistas and towers in age 2. Once ballistas and towers are out, most rusher units will be slayed by superior siege firepower, as a defensive strategy.

Feel free to test it, contact me on IRC if you want to do a 1vs1 or a ffa between many of us, so we can test them and update the mod with more ideas/fixes. Also don't forget to vote after you do it, thx!

Thx

Edited November 6, 2016 by Eraser

[Eraser]

I've uploaded the link to the mod zip, so players can also test this:

Instructions:

-After you download, extract it.

-Copy it into the binaries/data/mods of your 0ad game folder.

-Run the game, go to Tools and Options/Mod selection.

-You should see this. Select and run the mod:

[Lion.Kanzen]

On 5/11/2016 at 2:12 PM, Eraser said:

 

For players:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9CIsMGzwrhmUzFNV3BQa3NoVEE

 

 

more than 1,2 Gb ?

[Eraser]

Well, it's actually a copy of the public mod with the changes applied. Current public mod is around that size. Note that I didn't include any art (it's out of the scope of this mod).

If you don't wanna download that, you can always perform svn patch with the .patch I attached for devs. For non-dev players I fear this is the only way I fount for them to install this without recurring to the command line

Until downloading mods from official servers are implemented, that is.

Edited November 7, 2016 by Eraser

[Lion.Kanzen]

I don't need full public... I'm using SVN version. and even a mod don't need full size.

How I can revert your patch in Svn if I dont  want use anymore ?.

I real mod can use only modified files it don't need full public.zip

[Eraser]

Apply the patch.

svn patch path/MetaGameV2.patch

Once you're done, go to the svn root folder and run:

svn patch --reverse-diff path/MetaGameV2.patch

That'll undo in SVN all changes related to the patch and will keep other changes you could be working on.

Edited November 7, 2016 by Eraser

[Eraser]

To those who use TortoiseSVN, you can undo changes by using this:

https://tortoisesvn.net/docs/release/TortoiseSVN_en/tsvn-dug-revert.html

You won't need to rebuild anything since this mod only goes on scripts and xml.

[elexis]

Indeed the mod should only contain the files that were changed or added, so the mod would be < 1MB.

Attached a quick economic test in a 1v1 in which it was demonstrated that the seleucid free sheep bonus gives them a similar ability to the current ptolemian rush.

commands.txt

[Palaxin]

On 11/6/2016 at 1:47 AM, Eraser said:

The concept may need to be reworked, but I was aiming more at changing existing design to make existing civs to fit in each role, since reworking them would take a lot of time, would break the design docs, and the patch would be too big that it'ld be even harder for the dev community to accept it for improving gameplay than it is right now.

Agree, since your mod aims to be (partially) included in vanilla 0 A.D. Small steps are always better then. However, I hope in the long run the devs committed to balancing, e.g. @scythetwirler will re-evaluate the current allocation of civs and preferred meta strategies (rush, turtling, boom).

[Eraser]

On 9/11/2016 at 7:26 PM, elexis said:

Attached a quick economic test in a 1v1 in which it was demonstrated that the seleucid free sheep bonus gives them a similar ability to the current ptolemian rush.

That's the idea. Since I figured out about the militia that seleucids used to protect their colonies, I thought that would be an awesome way of making seleucid gameplay unique, since militia is cheaper to recruit, but they lack the training and weaponry of professional units.

<Tooltip>Special: Non-professional soldier. -50% cost but also -50% attack.</Tooltip>

Militia infantry cost will also be reduced in the next version. ATM is only the militia cavalry.

Ptole is meant to be the embodiment of rush itself (as depicted on the design schema, they're on top). Sele is meant to have the "silver medal" of rush, being able to rush slower civs, but they shouldn't be able to match ptole's speed.

The test game I did with elexis was to make sure ptole is still the "golden medal" of rush. With this, tried to fight with 40 militia cavalry against 20-25 of his camels, and he won, since he has superior range and damage. Also, he made a little mistake during early game that slowed him down, so ptole could be even faster.

In fact, in early versions before releasing this I had the idea to also recruit cav militia on free stables, but removed it since that could have made them way faster than ptole. Now I wonder if I should get it back, since while in ptole you got women working on food, in sele you need to deplete all your food eco to rush.

On 9/11/2016 at 7:26 PM, elexis said:

Indeed the mod should only contain the files that were changed or added, so the mod would be < 1MB.

Will do

I will think on making a 2.0 version if I see there's interest on this idea. Next will include:

• Nerfing longsword and naked unit's pierce armor.
• Reboot of "weak/strong against" unit system.
• Implementation of briton's Woad Painting and Great Tower techs from #4084
• Put more unused concepts into the game.
• And more

Feel free to comment, review, propose, contribute or even complain about things you don't see balanced enought. Thx you all

Edited November 11, 2016 by Eraser

[Lion.Kanzen]

Look very promising but , I will play later, I can't right now.

[av93]

Some meta ideas for inspiration:
 

 

[Eraser]

Well this concepts of rush,turtle and boom are more or less the equivalent of the rush/wall/eco concepts I'm showing here. I agree totally in those mechanics.

About village fights, that's what rush is for. They've got the best economic mechanics, especially food, so they can spawn citizens faster.

About phase unit restrictions, I think that should depend on the civ, so diversity is guaranteed. For example, the militia concept I'm implementing in seleucids wouldn't be possible, since I couldn't recruit them from CC, that would slow down the rush a lot. And brit slingers and dogs are also supposed to rush, if I keep dogs in age 2 and put slingers into age 2 too, then brit won't be able to rush efficiently. 

When it comes to the weakness/strength design. I'm thinking on implementing a system based on logic facts. Pikeman can reach a horse from a long distance, so their bonus against cavalry should be enormous. And their match against swordsmen should be also good. But to operate the pike you need to use both hands, and that leaves you wide open to arrows. Mace should be able to use pezetairos to protect their siege from melee horsemen.

That's why I want to nerf some illogical facts when it comes to champions. They should be way superior to citizens of the same weapon type, but their because-I'm-batman style protections against units they should be weak against needs to be nerfed.

Edited November 10, 2016 by Eraser

[Eraser]

Uploaded the mod files, they're very thin now, not even a MB. Also posted an script for UNIX developers to deploy their mods into their respective mod folder.

Installation instructions for non-developer players are just the same as before.

On 6/11/2016 at 6:31 PM, Eraser said:

I've uploaded the link to the mod zip, so players can also test this:

Instructions:

-After you download, extract it.

-Copy it into the binaries/data/mods of your 0ad game folder.

-Run the game, go to Tools and Options/Mod selection.

-You should see this. Select and run the mod:

 

 

 

Edited November 12, 2016 by Eraser

[Phalanx]

I'm just a tad confused why two of the successors are rushers.  Historically, they had large cumbersome armies, and if one were to follow video game tropes, the barbarian civs, and Eastern civs would be rush, because they historically had cheap fast units.

Edited November 12, 2016 by Phalanx

[Eraser]

On 6/11/2016 at 0:47 AM, Eraser said:

Well, the historical accuracy of the rush, wall and eco of each civ isn't accurate, I just classified them based on the actual status of civs and their current capabilities. Ptole sure was a rich country that'ld fit for eco, but current in-game usage is total rush. The concept may need to be reworked, but I was aiming more at changing existing design to make existing civs to fit in each role, since reworking them would take a lot of time, would break the design docs, and the patch would be too big that it'ld be even harder for the dev community to accept it for improving gameplay than it is right now.

 

[Eraser]

Here's a glimpse of the next concepts I'll be including in the second version of the mod.

[Eraser]

New version is out. Check it out: