Testing Propositions

[scythetwirler]

If you know of a strategy that does not have its own topic and should be tested, please reply to this thread.

[Servo]

I think the most important thing to do testing is the unit/s counter whether one can kill/defend or the specs of a unit is really credible for what it was designed. 

For example a range unit should be able to kill any other unit if the target doesn't move and how long. A targeting unit must also be tested without moving against a moving target like melee as well as another range unit with lesser range.  

Melee units should be tested against another melee doing head on battle. 

I know that simulation can do the job to verify but it doesn't mean it is accurate enough to conclude. That's why we need to test. 

Economic wise there's not much accurate conclusions you can have if the economic benefit of a civ really shows much difference when you test it. A player speed would never be the same every time you test though you can make a couple of test and get the average.

One thing that needs to be tested on clear and level terrain is the unit speed. I was surprised my cavalry skirmisher was able to run to safety against a Roman cavalry. One hit by the Romans did not happen having more than 60% HP, 3-4 units difference in speed compared to my skirmisher cavalry who is severely wounded.

Caravan may play a very important role in the game but it looks like there's no accuracy or real benefit a player should have. I like caravan/or merchants but sometimes it doesn't make sense to have a lot and amazingly able to do barter even if there's no resource activity between two destinations. 

For example you have two merchants running back and forth between two CC without and resource gatherers and still produce resources for the player! It's ok with me because I play with AI alone and I want it to produce resources to make armies once resources are depleted. I don't even care how much they carry and provide the players, percentage of what the origin has?! The best caravan/merchant RTS for me so far is Civ5/6. There are citizens in the City and it trades with city states.  

 

Edited February 10, 2017 by Servo
I inserted a paragraph about unit test in wrong spot

[DarcReaver]

No point in balance testing.

The "game" mainly consists of booming like a madman and then spamming units.

the units themselves are not visibly different from each other, which makes microing units even worse. It's almost impossible to assign units against their intended counters (another reason to actually use my proposed system of unit battalions instead of single units/formations. It's like microing each soldier individually in Rome Total War )
Furthermore, there is no red line in the factions, thus it's chaotic.
On top of that there still is no resource dependency of units. All units cost food, lumber and some cost another additional resource. There is still no idea behind the resources used ingame.

I propose you actually create a gameplay to get something that is worth called "balance".

There cannot be a balancing process in this stage of the game.

I'll go ahead and post a faction concept usable for multiple factions and different types to factions to actually get something that could be used.

Right now it's just a mess. Sorry to say that, but it's true.

Edited February 28, 2017 by DarcReaver

[Imarok]

Maybe you should start making specific constructive suggestions on how to improve the situation

[niektb]

@Imarok: for that I suggest to read a bit in his post history

[DarcReaver]

 

54 minutes ago, Imarok said:

Maybe you should start making specific constructive suggestions on how to improve the situation

Specific constructive suggestions?

Well how about this:

edit: step 0: get rid of that citizen soldier concept, then start from scratch and use the art assets you already have available

Step 1: create a resource concept
Step 2: create faction concept(s) - create original factions that actually represent the characteristics of the civilizations ingame
Step 3: create a teching concept - where and how many buildings should be available at which state of the game
step 3a: economic systems
step 3b: military systems
step 3c: defensive tech systems
Step 4: create a counter system - units that are trainable at which state of the game, how many units, unit characteristics etc.
Step 5: create a gameplay pattern that the game follows to actually have some sort of game progress
Step 5a: gameplay patterns of economy
Step 5b: gameplay patterns of structures
Step 5c: gameplay patterns of military
.
.
.
Step 10.000: balance playtesting of the final game (for which this forum is for)

Those 5 things would at least create a state in which you can go more into detail. At this point I'd have to create a design guide for the game, consisting of everything, and would be probably a couple dozen pages long. This should have been done by the team years ago already and programming should have followed it (and by "design guide" I mean a detailed document that is actually worth a darn and not made by a bunch of noobs who don't know anything about actual gameplay), and I can't be bothered to write a design guide for you because you won't listen anyways.

I know that there already is some of that present in the game, it's just that the implementation is nowhere near in a state that allows to actually create a gameplay.

Also, follow Niektb's suggestion and as a first step read through my posts.

 

Edited February 28, 2017 by DarcReaver

[Lion.Kanzen]

@DarcReaver you need read more, "hablemos sin saber".

http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Design_Document

you know about our wiki?

[DarcReaver]

16 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

@DarcReaver you need read more, "hablemos sin saber".

http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Design_Document

you know about our wiki?

Already waited for an answer from you.

 

How about this?

It's very detailed in terms of history, art and armaments etc and I know that much work has been put in that, but in terms of an actual game it's simply 90% unuseable. Because that's what currently is ingame, and everyone can see that's it's not good.

That's what I meant with a design document that actually determines how the game should be played.
Right now it's a bad version of Age of Empires. Nobody needs a bad version of Age of Empires.

Edited March 1, 2017 by DarcReaver

[sphyrth]

The Citizen Soldiers is what makes 0 A.D. 0 A.D. I'll never want that removed.

The main reason you think that they're only used for booming is understandable ("Why should I waste time attacking when I can do is gather->populate->build houses->rinse and repeat? By the time the enemy is attacking, I'd mustered enough units."

Well, you might want to build up until City Phase to get the real non-working soldiers up and running. So you'll have to end your cycle that way.

Also, you know the advantage of attacking? The loot system: Your units gain experience, and  you certain resources by killing enemy units as well as disrupting their economy. So it's not necessarily a "waste of time booming".

[DarcReaver]

11 minutes ago, sphyrth said:

The Citizen Soldiers is what makes 0 A.D. 0 A.D. I'll never want that removed.

The main reason you think that they're only used for booming is understandable ("Why should I waste time attacking when I can do is gather->populate->build houses->rinse and repeat? By the time the enemy is attacking, I'd mustered enough units."

Well, you might want to build up until City Phase to get the real non-working soldiers up and running. So you'll have to end your cycle that way.

Also, you know the advantage of attacking? The loot system: Your units gain experience, and  you certain resources by killing enemy units as well as disrupting their economy. So it's not necessarily a "waste of time booming".

Dude. citizen soldiers are the most broken concept ever made. It may be unique, but it's not good.

edit: actually, when I first noticed this game I also thought "woah cool, soldiers can gather resources. That's something refreshing". But after 3 games I already noticed that the system is flawed in its very essence.

There is a reason why in 95% of all strategy games there is a difference between combat units and non combat units (aka resource gatherers). It doesn't make any sense to have main combat units gathering resources, because this always creates a disadvantage for attacking players. During the time my own army marches to the enemy, taking that both sides have equal resources (Which should be the case in this kind of mirroring civ games) the player attacking will loose, depending on the game time and population up to thousands of resources. And those resources are not only less for the attacking player but also more for the defending player and he can use this to defend his city + the attacking player's ecomonmy is weaker because his units are not in the base gathering resources. It's a slippery slope.

Furthermore there are techs and design features that favor booming even more. Why should I try to rush an enemy if I can build a dozen women at once for gathering resources when I teched the "train women in houses tech" and replace my losses within seconds? There are much better ways to actually accomplish a working offense-defense balance.

On top of that it doesn't even make sense the way it is implemented at all. Why should soldiers go to forests and fields and gather resources with their pikes/swords/axes and instantly be able to repel attacks as if they'd beam their weapons into their hand?

Guess what: a much better system would be simply to keep the diverted women <-> citizen system and instead give certain buildings, like Town hall or barracks the option to "call to arms" which then arms citizens with characteristic weapons that were used by said civ for a period of time. During that time they can fight but no longer gather resources.

And the best thing is that it actually resembles how Citizen Soldiers worked in that time (At least almost, because for certain civs the weapons were bought by the soldiers, like most greeks or romans).

This is just an example of how flawed the whole "game" is at the moment (I'd rather call this "playable graphic model showcase" for that matter instead).

Edited March 1, 2017 by DarcReaver

[sphyrth]

16 hours ago, DarcReaver said:

Dude. citizen soldiers are the most broken concept ever made. There is a reason why in 95% of all strategy games there is a difference between combat units and non combat units (aka resource gatherers).

And that's the main reason 0 A.D. is unique from all of them.

Quote

Why should I try to rush an enemy if I can build a dozen women at once for gathering resources when I teched the "train women in houses tech" and replace my losses within seconds?

Because I'll be gaining 1 Food, 1 Wood, 1 Stone, and 1 Metal. For each woman I kill... things that I don't usually get especially in the Village Phase. Not to mention exp points for my soldiers.

Quote

On top of that it doesn't even make sense the way it is implemented at all. Why should soldiers go to forests and fields and gather resources with their pikes/swords/axes and instantly be able to repel attacks as if they'd beam their weapons into their hand?

For gameplay reasons. But how about Marius' Mules?

Quote

Guess what: a much better system would be simply to keep the diverted women <-> citizen system and instead give certain buildings, like Town hall or barracks the option to "call to arms" which then arms citizens with characteristic weapons that were used by said civ for a period of time. During that time they can fight but no longer gather resources.

Like I said, there are Champion units in the City Phase for that. Not all units are Citizen Soldiers.

Quote

This is just an example of how flawed the whole game is at the moment (I'd rather call this graphic showcase for that matter instead).

I don't actually have a problem learning to play with it. I'm actually considering the fact that AoE 2 wasn't my childhood and I have to learn the game from scratch. You have a standard way of playing RTS and you want that imported here as well. This I believe is more of a battle of preference than actual standard of what makes RTS good or not.

[DarcReaver]

Okay, let's split hairs then.

15 minutes ago, sphyrth said:

And that's the main reason 0 A.D. is unique from all of them.

Because I'll be gaining 1 Food, 1 Wood, 1 Stone, and 1 Metal. For each woman I kill... things that I don't usually get especially in the Village Phase. Not to mention exp points for my soldiers.

For gameplay reasons. But how about Marius' Mules?

Like I said, there are Champion units in the City Phase for that. Not all units are Citizen Soldiers.

I don't actually have a problem learning to play with it. I'm actually considering the fact that AoE 2 wasn't my childhood and I have to learn the game from scratch. You have a standard way of playing RTS and you want that imported here as well. This I believe is more of a battle of preference than actual standard of what makes RTS good or not.

Edit: as for your first sentence that I just noticed:

 

unique does NOT always mean good.

 

Wow, women give resources if killed. You need ot kill 50 !!!! women to gain back only the resources for a single soldier. Sure, this value can be adjusted by increasing the amount of resources per woman killed. The exp. point system is nice of course, but still. This game is in its current state about masses. How many units should a single veteran soldier equal out?

If there is enough economy for pumping out 10 soldiers at once your veteran would need to equal out what? 5 soldiers? 10 soldiers? 100 soldiers? better arm it with a MG 42 then ... xD
Joking aside.

towards your last sentence:

Are you a game developer? Did you create a working game that was played by thousands of players?

I did, google "Company of Heroes : Eastern Front". In total there were around 500.000 players who play and played it in the past. When we released the first version we managed to crash the official game servers because so many people went online and started playing it. I also made modifications for Warcraft III which also are played by thousands of people.
Furthermore, I played various RTS games in the past 20 years, starting from Age of Empires, over stronghold, Warcraft III, Rome Total war series, plenty of The Settlers, Cultures, Battle For Middle Earth Series and a couple more to mention, and I've been in the modding departments of a lot of these games. 

So I sort of know what makes an RTS good and what not. Don't try to lecture me.

Edited March 1, 2017 by DarcReaver

[Lion.Kanzen]

33 minutes ago, DarcReaver said:

Already waited for an answer from you.

 

How about this?

It's very detailed in terms of history, art and armaments etc and I know that much work has been put in that, but in terms of an actual game it's simply 90% unuseable. Because that's what currently is ingame, and everyone can see that's it's not good.

 

You can made propositions, you know?

Quote

That's what I meant with a design document that actually determines how the game should be played.
Right now it's a bad version of Age of Empires. Nobody needs a bad version of Age of Empires.

Why, you need explain a lot this and how can be changed. Not only say "is bad because I don't like"

or "you must fix that, try to imagine how, but you need fix that"

Edited March 1, 2017 by Lion.Kanzen

[sphyrth]

16 hours ago, DarcReaver said:

Okay, let's split hairs then.

Wow, women give resources if killed. You need ot kill 50 !!!! women to gain back only the resources for a single soldier.

Well, how about the economy I just disrupted? Gaining resources was the addition to that as I mentioned. So, it's kind of a pay-off.

Quote

If there is enough economy for pumping out 10 soldiers at once your veteran would need to equal out what? 5 soldiers? 10 soldiers? better arm it with a MG 42 then ... xD

They're actually imbalanced (Alpha 20), and the developers gave the slower train time. By my estimates, 5 Citizen Soldiers or more to take down 1 Champion Unit. 20 for the Heroes I think.

Quote

Are you a game developer? Did you create a working game that was played by thousands of players?

...I played various RTS games in the past 20 years...and I've been in the modding departments of a lot of these games. 

So I sort of know what makes an RTS good and what not. Don't try to lecture me.

No. Not a game developer, only played a handful of RTS (Red Alert 2, Battle Realms, and this one), and I don't have any experiences in the same way you have. Now that's out of the way, please don't think I'm trying to lecture you. Think of it as me who loves this particular game trying to state his case.

My question, though, is: Are you looking at 0 A.D. from a Marketing standpoint? I'm considering that because majority of the comments against the game's gameplay decisions (especially the Citizen Soldiers) is that "A lot of players won't like this, so it's losing its potential for promotion."

[DarcReaver]

Just now, Lion.Kanzen said:

You can made propositions, you know?

Just a couple

[Lion.Kanzen]

Citizen soldiers isn't broken, only you don't know how using it. Simple.

[DarcReaver]

1 minute ago, sphyrth said:

Well, how about the economy I just disrupted? Gaining resources was the addition to that as I mentioned. So, it's kind of a pay-off.

They're actually imbalanced (Alpha 20), and the developers gave the slower train time. By my estimates, 5 Citizen Soldiers or more to take down 1 Champion Unit. 20 for the Heroes I think.

No. Not a game developer, only played a handful of RTS (Red Alert 2, Battle Realms, and this one), and I don't have any experiences in the same way you have. Now that's out of the way, please don't think I'm trying to lecture you. Think of it as me who loves this particular game trying to state his case.

My question, though, is: Are you looking at 0 A.D. from a Marketing standpoint? I'm considering that because majority of the comments against the game's gameplay decisions (especially the Citizen Soldiers) is that "A lot of players won't like this, so it's losing its potential for promotion."

sort of... I don't care for marketing appeal or making money. It's simply for the concept behind the game.

 to make it short:

Any game needs rules. Those rules are setup by the developers, as they decide which type of game they want to make.
For these rules to apply you create an enviroment.
Those two aspects work together.

0 ad first does the enviroment and has no rule concept. Ence the game feels empty, unpolished, unfinished and has no long time motivation to play.
So, to get people to stick with it there is more and more art stuff (models, maps etc) implemented to fill up the hole.

Just that this hole can't be stiffed with content.
 

Just now, Lion.Kanzen said:

Citizen soldiers isn't broken, only you don't know how using it. Simple.

 

that's what our former lead gameplay developer said aswell "IS 2 are not imbalanced against King Tigers beating them in frontal combat. You're just using them wrong".
That was before I bashed him so hard with IS 2 tank spam that he finally noticed himself there is something wrong.

So, no, you're wrong. You just don't know it yet. We've had stuff like this on our games in the past years, and experience is a hard teacher. the difference is that I know what I'm taling about and you don't.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Yes but, you must know these couple of things is fine, nobody says we aren't listening.

 

to something get fixed first you may identify the problem, propose solutions, right ?

 

one solutions are ready to be enlisted (must community and team approval), the task need be taken, if nobody wants take the task you must be wait for years. So have patience . If don't have patience you must contribute your delft or donate for that.

 

is easy criticism in a project like this if you compared this with Blizzard, with Microsoft... etc.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Quote

Any game needs rules. Those rules are setup by the developers, as they decide which type of game they want to make.
For these rules to apply you create an enviroment.
Those two aspects work together.

0 ad first does the enviroment and has no rule concept. Ence the game feels empty, unpolished, unfinished and has no long time motivation to play.
So, to get people to stick with it there is more and more art stuff (models, maps etc) implemented to fill up the hole.

Just that this hole can't be stiffed with content.
 

It's an alpha... and you still here with no proposition of this.

[sphyrth]

I'm kind of done with this as well. I kind of miss arguing about some "trivial" things with someone. But I have to take a breather.

Whether Citizen Soldiers should exist in the game or not will be in the hands of the developers. For now, I'll be fighting for it. Unless the team suddenly changes it, which leaves me crying in pain until I get over it and move on.

That's just me. It's one of the few things I'm willing to be close-minded on... sort of.

Edited March 1, 2017 by sphyrth

[Lion.Kanzen]

Quote

0 ad first does the enviroment and has no rule concept. Ence the game feels empty, unpolished, unfinished and has no long time motivation to play.

If you don't have motivation to play, don't play it, simple. For example haven't motivation of play Sc2. May be AoE 2 but...feels I need another game, for me there is the potential to my enjoy. In this moment nobody is making an RTS with romans.

[Lion.Kanzen]

 

@sphyrth

 

This guys is the kind is capricious, the citizen soldiers can work, I don't see where is broken for an experienced player.

he statement this because like nostalgia and stay in a safe place his confort zone.

 

- I think the same about Citizen soldiers but, later I understand how can deal with them and how using them.

Edited March 1, 2017 by Lion.Kanzen

[DarcReaver]

2 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

It's an alpha... and you still here with no proposition of this.

Oka, I'll just give you a starter, this is Something I wrote together in ~2 hours. It's nowhere near finished, but since you want specific infos that you can then ignore I'll just post it here:

Improvement Concept:

- scrap the Citizen Soldier system
- units are trained in batches. that means: you click on the "train button" and once finished a certain amount of units is spawned instead of single units (I'd still suggest to have battalions because with the tiny units on the map it would simply make everything way more easy to overview, but anyways. I'll go with this for now as an improvement)
- unit cost is increased accordingly, building times aswell  

Resources:

- food (herdables, huntables, fish, replenishing food for later stages of the game)
- wood (forests, bushes etc.)
- metal (from mines on the map)
- stone (from mines on the map)

Usage:

- food is key element to economy teching, training economic units and ofc. training military units
- lumber mostly used for creating buildings and training units that shoot missiles (or have spears for that matter)
- metal used for any military unit and to tech up certain military and economic upgrades
- stone used for creating buildings aswell as walls towers etc.

This system is consistent for all civilizations. The more specialized a unit is the higher is its respective cost.

New gather system

System 1 civilized/hellenic tribes/romans/Karthago

* 2 trainable types of Gatherers : Women and Citizens
    - proposal:
    women cost 150 food, number of women per training: 5
    - gather food (only)
    Citizens cost 200 food, number of Citizens per training: 2
    - harvest metal, food, wood, stone

    Citizen can be "called to arms", transforming them in a garrison/defense type unit (like a Hoplite for example) for a set amount of time (like 30 seconds - 1 minute). After that they automatically become Citizens again

-> defensive type civilizations that rely on using their citizens to defend their cities
-> can create Outpost buildings that allow to increase the build radius. Without outposts they can't build in neutral territory    
-> outposts can be garrisoned with infantry to defend themselves, citizens can be called to arms on those buildings aswell
-> utilizing the "combating Citizen" gameplay concept without all the unnecessary micro involved

Buildings constructed in t1 phase:
(only citizens can build them)

-> quarry (store stones)
-> mines (store metal)
-> some sort of Agora building that stores food
-> outpost
-> towers
-> wooden walls
-> lumbermills (store lumber)
-> farms
-> houses

 

System 2 "barbaric tribes/nomad" tribes

* 1 trainable unit type : Villagers

    - Villager cost 200f, number of units per training: 5    
    - can gather everything, but slower compared to Women/Citizens
    - have no defense mechanics by default but can be equipped with armour techs like military units (cloth, better weapons/axes and so on),
    - can be turned into warriors for a resource cost permanently, but they are weaker than citizen militia
        

Barbarians have weaker buildings compared to hellenic tribes, but they are cheaper.

-> resources can be collected with Ox carts or cheap stash buildings that only require a couple of resources to be built. Can be built anywhere on the map no matter if friendly or neutral territory.
-> allows early expansion and swarming the map with units, setting up camps for ambushes and harassment

Buildings constructed in t1 phase:-> storehouse/mobile ox carts (stores every resource)
-> barracks type building (like tribal house or whatever)
-> palisades/wooden walls
-> hunting lodges (increase pop cap)
-> building that creates herdables as a food source for later stages of the game, similar to farms, but fit a nomadic style of a civilization
    

Spoiler

 

    
--- this is not a finished concept and was just a quick thought on the capture mechanisms. don't take it as 100% done, I would try to enlarge the concept into more detailed. After hearing that women give back resources when dying this system already partly is in place ---

Slave/Capture system:

- not all soldiers/women die on the Battlefield
- wounded enemies can be captured and are put into a sort of "slave building". Either automatically or the ownership is changed and they can be garrisoned manually
- slaves are captured automatically when military units stopped fighting (to reduce necessary micro)

Slave building:

Slave buildings work like a market place and permanently create resources.
the building can be built and then upgraded to become a mine (produces metal), quarry (produces stone), farm (produces food). Each building limits to like 10 slaves or 20.

Civs that did not rely on slavery in history instead get a resource bonus for captured units added to their resources.
That means that defensive slaver civs can slowly build up a better economy by utilizing the slave buildings.

 

combat unit system:

- units take up different amounts of population, the better/larger the unit is the more pop cap it uses

- mace/sword units 1-2 pop
- spearmen 1 pop
- hoplites 3 pop
- siege weapons 4 pop
- melee cavalry 2-4 pop (from light -> heavy)
- archers take 2 pop
- skirmishers take 1 pop
- mounted skirms take 2 pop
- ships take 5-10 pop, but are much more powerful and expensive compared to now

Just like Citizens/Women/Villager military units are trained in batches.

Depending on the type of unit (spam/low tech unit/high tech unit/cavalry/siege equipment) the number of units spawned varies.

example Sparta:

- hoplites spawn 10 men each
- elite spartans are only 5

germanic tribe Axemen/Swordmen spawn with 15 soldiers each and so on.

The costs are applied based on their hitpoint/damage ratio.

there is a difference between a trained army and tribal warfare. Experienced, well equipped soldiers are better at fighting and are more powerful in direct combat. They have to be weakened by nomads with hit and run tactics, ambushes
and other stuff.

Each unit gets a hard counter that is significantly cheaper in one area.

 

5 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Yes but, you must know these couple of things is fine, nobody says we aren't listening.

 

to something get fixed first you may identify the problem, propose solutions, right ?

 

one solutions are ready to be enlisted (must community and team approval), the task need be taken, if nobody wants take the task you must be wait for years. So have patience . If don't have patience you must contribute your delft or donate for that.

 

is easy criticism in a project like this if you compared this with Blizzard, with Microsoft... etc.

Yes, it's easier to order people to do something if you pay them. However, if you have no aim to work with it's even harder.

We on eastern front did the following:

"dude cool Panzer Model. However, would you like a finished, working, fun game and see your Panzer from hundreds of players? or would you like to keep posting screenshots and videos of it because the game around the tank doesn't work or is played at all?"

The result was most of the time that people did what had to be done.

Just now, Lion.Kanzen said:

If you don't have motivation to play, don't play it, simple. For example haven't motivation of play Sc2. May be AoE 2 but...feels I need another game, for me there is the potential to my enjoy. In this moment nobody is making an RTS with romans.

Yes, and 0 ad has potential to become a @#&#036;%ing Blockbuster. There are no great ancient times RTS games on the market.
I also dislike Starcraft II but at least it makes sense when you actually play it. I don't like SciFi scenarios so I don't like the races in there. But even then it was logical and fun to play because it's a working game.

5 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

 

@sphyrth

 

This guys is the kind is capricious, the citizen soldiers can work, I don't see where is broken for an experienced player.

he statement this because like nostalgia and stay in a safe place his confort zone.

 

- I think the same about Citizen soldiers but, later I understand how can deal with them and how using them.

Astonishing ignorance. Wow.

[Lion.Kanzen]

my first RTS game. (1999)

[Lion.Kanzen]

@DarcReaver that is better why you dont start a topic like that my first time I do in that way.