Testing Propositions

[Palaxin]

1 hour ago, DarcReaver said:

Heck I can even train women from every house that the civs have. Depending on the game time that's up to 20 women every couple of seconds. And all those can harvest resources aswell.
Ever seen a 5 TC Boom in Age of Empires ? Compared to this it's a Kinder Party.

I brought this point up, too, but no one seems to understand that. AoE 2 has 30s train time for villagers IIRC, we have 8s (?) for females. By the 10 min mark you did not have more than 23 villagers in AoE 2, in 0 A.D. 120 and more is possible easily (I remember a pure booming replay with 150). Training females in batches from a single CC in 0 A.D. is faster than producing villagers from 5 TCs in AoE 2.

This just doesn't feel like "training" but merely like industrial production of humans.

Ofc this is also a matter of personal taste, but such train times have obvious disadvantages. Such rapid growth limits your ability to effectively micro units in a stress-free manner. IMO This pace is just way to fast. And one of many reasons why I played 0 A.D. with game speed 0.5 or less. But no one cares so I don't know why I should continue to write posts with similar suggestions and proposals...

Edited March 1, 2017 by Palaxin

[Zeta1127]

If my units aren't gathering, then my army isn't doing its job.

The other day, I played a multiplayer match, a little Roman FFA on Tuscan Acropolis, and I used the approach I outlined. The matched ended with the host ending the game because it started dragging on, though I had clearly won, with very little expansion, I ended up losing my initial extra Civic Center before eventually recapturing it, and good use of Entrenched Army Camps. All of this talk of booming and Champion spam on these forums, and I thought for sure I wouldn't win with my approach, but I did.

[Grugnas]

I must agree in part, but for example if you kill a woman carrying 10 wood you will gain 1 of each resource and 10 wood that the woman carried plus your soldiers will gain experience per successful hit resulting with being promoted and having higher stats but lower gathering rate. The only downside is that the unit has to stay near or inside a temple in order to regen health, but this can be avoided with cavalry which has a really high food gathering rate while hunting and it can be used as advantage when massing cavalry and get as many animals in the map in order to have a discrete vision of the map. Consider that it may result hard focusing the already damaged unit when many other are around.

Building a stone wall may be a solution but it is aviable in phase 2 and it requires a resource gathered at a slower rate compared to wood when talking about soldier citizens, plus building a wooden wall may be faster but can be risky because you could lack on wood and be forced to train women in order to pump up the wood production and being vulnerable to possible scouts and cavalry raid. Not talking about traders in a "walled" game because it is an entire chapter apart.

I agree that using soldier citizens isn't worth for early attacks, thats why cavalry is nice for slowing enemy eco down, since they can be used for corrals when wood is abundant or for hit and run attacks just to annoy enemy and slow down his economy in order to prevent a possible wall.

Indeed a game can be won with more strategies: a player could focus on sieges / elephant training, champion spam or building civic centers around enemy lines in order to prevent gim to gather further resources and force him into resign.

None force you to booming as said above (constantly training 1 unit at time is more worth in terms of eco growing in my opinion but extremly hard) and the batch size change is an interesting feature since it allows you to optimize phasing, eco growing and units choice. F.e.  2 players could reach different goals because one trained per batches having time to comulate resources while the other constantly trained units and, since the sieges are the most impegnative to fight for units... guess who'll have advantage?

Indeed number supremacy is better than quality.

In some games some units have different population cost despite the effectiveness thay may have (f.e. in starcraft demolisher costs more than a marine but marines are easier to mass and they counter demolishers despite their price / stats), but this is a too wide discussion since 0 A.D. games haven't a standard population cap and finding a balance or any other concept that fit any population limit is really complex and since as you said "balance can be achieved", a citizen soldiers system can be reasonable.

[sphyrth]

Hopefully this will be my last post on this thread concerning this matter.

You know what why don't we have players who employ the booming strategies being put forth here? I mean, I concede that the Citizen Soldier system is inherently broken but for a lot of forum players, it's mere theory.

Why not have at it? Boomer vs. Attacker. I personally think that the defender will always have an advantage with strategies like:
"Oh here comes a raid. So what? I'll just keep them at bay with my spearmen."
"Oh my women just got killed. So what? Easily replace-able. I'll just let him have 'em."

No sarcasm there, by the way. I've seen replays posted in the forum and 90% of the time, the rusher fails. I often attribute that to the fact that the rushers often neglect their economy back in their base. But even if they manage everything right. The attacks have very little effect. It's as if nothing happened and the attacker just wasted have of the game time for it. The Citizen Soldiers had everything to do with it.

I still want to keep the Citizen Soldiers, but let me assure you that I no longer have any strong reason to.

If you want to contradict me, then provide the replays to prove the thesis: "Attack + Eco > Pure Boom"

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

What about if we skew the gathering rates significantly in favor of the women, and make the citizen-sodiers suck at gathering? You keep the ability for the soliders to gather, since sometimes it can be beneficial, but in reality they're better to be used as a defense or offensive force in most instances. Just spitballing here.

 

10 hours ago, Palaxin said:

I brought this point up, too, but no one seems to understand that. AoE 2 has 30s train time for villagers IIRC, we have 8s (?) for females. By the 10 min mark you did not have more than 23 villagers in AoE 2, in 0 A.D. 120 and more is possible easily (I remember a pure booming replay with 150). Training females in batches from a single CC in 0 A.D. is faster than producing villagers from 5 TCs in AoE 2.

This just doesn't feel like "training" but merely like industrial production of humans.

Ofc this is also a matter of personal taste, but such train times have obvious disadvantages. Such rapid growth limits your ability to effectively micro units in a stress-free manner. IMO This pace is just way to fast. And one of many reasons why I played 0 A.D. with game speed 0.5 or less. But no one cares so I don't know why I should continue to write posts with similar suggestions and proposals...

In DE I've increase the train times of units. It fees a lot better. I admit I like the Wives' Festival tech, but I think it can be balance better if the train time of house women is increased from 30s to 60s. I will try this in DE.

 

It's one of the reasons I push for battalions. You have fewer entities to control and each one feels more important and unique, especially if you add some customization possibilities like I propose. They take longer to train and you invest more resources and time into them by customizing them, etc. Not to mention now the battles look way more epic and you can implement thing like muster time and charging and etc. a lot easier for the player.

[Feldfeld]

6 hours ago, sphyrth said:

Hopefully this will be my last post on this thread concerning this matter.

You know what why don't we have players who employ the booming strategies being put forth here? I mean, I concede that the Citizen Soldier system is inherently broken but for a lot of forum players, it's mere theory.

Why not have at it? Boomer vs. Attacker. I personally think that the defender will always have an advantage with strategies like:
"Oh here comes a raid. So what? I'll just keep them at bay with my spearmen."
"Oh my women just got killed. So what? Easily replace-able. I'll just let him have 'em."

No sarcasm there, by the way. I've seen replays posted in the forum and 90% of the time, the rusher fails. I often attribute that to the fact that the rushers often neglect their economy back in their base. But even if they manage everything right. The attacks have very little effect. It's as if nothing happened and the attacker just wasted have of the game time for it. The Citizen Soldiers had everything to do with it.

I still want to keep the Citizen Soldiers, but let me assure you that I no longer have any strong reason to.

If you want to contradict me, then provide the replays to prove the thesis: "Attack + Eco > Pure Boom"

I offered to post them but it was called """"" off-topic """"".

Anyway, when i will have enough free-time, i'll gather the replays then post them.

[wraitii]

Quick meta-input:

It's largely true that we haven't changed gameplay significantly since forever. The main cause of this is that not a great deal of people on the team actually play the game, and the few that do seem largely content with the breakneck speed and the current mechanics. There is a metagame, and it's a relatively simple one since it's rather poorly balanced on the whole.

Furthermore, many devs feel that changing something now is useless since we're still in Alpha. Now this is something on which I could complain at length, but it's there.

Personally, I believe we're a little too hung up on Age of Empires - and my personal preference would be for a complete switch to a production/consumption system over the "one shot" AoE like system of gathering resources. Each unit would consume some resources, each unit would produce some, and houses would give you manpower instead of raising the pop cap (which would then be soft-capped). On the whole it'd make eco more interesting.

I also generally agree that the game goes way too fast in the early stages and that units are inherently too cheap, but that is definitely a matter of personal preference - and many would argue that AoE 2 goes way too slow. We've also had weird effects at play, such as the big unit speed and very large vision ranges, making our maps feel extremely small.

Relatedly, our counters are crap - that's because we have far too few units per civilisations, and made some braindead decisions such as the pierce/hack attack we chose.

But to go back to my first point: even perfect mods won't be played much, since the team doesn't play much, and that means that imperfect mods (such as my trade changes) have basically 0 chance of convincing anybody.

[Enrique]

20 minutes ago, wraitii said:

Furthermore, many devs feel that changing something now is useless since we're still in Alpha. 

Reading this saddens me deeply.

[Lion.Kanzen]

It's time to  re-design the game.

[borg-]

14 hours ago, sphyrth said:

Hopefully this will be my last post on this thread concerning this matter.

You know what why don't we have players who employ the booming strategies being put forth here? I mean, I concede that the Citizen Soldier system is inherently broken but for a lot of forum players, it's mere theory.

Why not have at it? Boomer vs. Attacker. I personally think that the defender will always have an advantage with strategies like:
"Oh here comes a raid. So what? I'll just keep them at bay with my spearmen."
"Oh my women just got killed. So what? Easily replace-able. I'll just let him have 'em."

No sarcasm there, by the way. I've seen replays posted in the forum and 90% of the time, the rusher fails. I often attribute that to the fact that the rushers often neglect their economy back in their base. But even if they manage everything right. The attacks have very little effect. It's as if nothing happened and the attacker just wasted have of the game time for it. The Citizen Soldiers had everything to do with it.

I still want to keep the Citizen Soldiers, but let me assure you that I no longer have any strong reason to.

If you want to contradict me, then provide the replays to prove the thesis: "Attack + Eco > Pure Boom"

Pure Boom can win Rush, or Rush + eco, Any strategy can win other strategy, depends on the ability of each player.

[DarcReaver]

1 hour ago, borg- said:

Pure Boom can win Rush, or Rush + eco, Any strategy can win other strategy, depends on the ability of each player.

And rain is wet. Apart from that the weather will be cloudy with a chance of meatballs. 

 

8 hours ago, wraitii said:

Quick meta-input:

It's largely true that we haven't changed gameplay significantly since forever. The main cause of this is that not a great deal of people on the team actually play the game, and the few that do seem largely content with the breakneck speed and the current mechanics. There is a metagame, and it's a relatively simple one since it's rather poorly balanced on the whole.

Furthermore, many devs feel that changing something now is useless since we're still in Alpha. Now this is something on which I could complain at length, but it's there.

Personally, I believe we're a little too hung up on Age of Empires - and my personal preference would be for a complete switch to a production/consumption system over the "one shot" AoE like system of gathering resources. Each unit would consume some resources, each unit would produce some, and houses would give you manpower instead of raising the pop cap (which would then be soft-capped). On the whole it'd make eco more interesting.

I also generally agree that the game goes way too fast in the early stages and that units are inherently too cheap, but that is definitely a matter of personal preference - and many would argue that AoE 2 goes way too slow. We've also had weird effects at play, such as the big unit speed and very large vision ranges, making our maps feel extremely small.

Relatedly, our counters are crap - that's because we have far too few units per civilisations, and made some braindead decisions such as the pierce/hack attack we chose.

But to go back to my first point: even perfect mods won't be played much, since the team doesn't play much, and that means that imperfect mods (such as my trade changes) have basically 0 chance of convincing anybody.

 Thing is : if you're going to copy something, better copy it darn good. There are plenty of examples of clones that actually were more sucessful than the original. But for that the core elements that create the gameplay have to be identified and copied in a way to actually make the game worthwhile.

Right now 0ad is somewhat inbetween everything. Too simple setup and few units/teching upgrade choices for an Age of Empires type game, too chaotic for a RUSE/mass production game, and not enough micro options to make it like a tactical warfare game. 

 

7 hours ago, Enrique said:

Reading this saddens me deeply.

Most stupid statement that I've read today (not yours I mean the statement "alpha too early for gameplay").  The alpha is where everything is setup and is THE most important phase of the game. The beta is only for bugfixing and stabilityfor the most part.

Edited March 2, 2017 by DarcReaver

[Feldfeld]

So I post the replays as promised.

Notice that 3 replays out of 6 are actually about sword cav rush. This should be surprising, because there are even more spent ressources committed only to make some sword cav. Indeed, you have to spend 500 food and 500 wood to get to phase 2 before 4 min, which is an huge investment at this time of the game. Furthermore, you have to add an additionnal 300 wood in order to get the barrack up before 5 min. Just to be able to train some sword cav. But the rush still works.

Here we go :

3v3 game (focus = Feldfeld-Hannibal).7z
I start with this game that shows the main purpose of cav rush : denying food income.
(I take the example of my rush vs hannibal barca, but there were another cav raids that i didn't choose to focus on)
 The attack was not defended well, and for minutes of game my opponent couldn't make food.

Feldfeld vs JeanClaude (Rome).7z
A game about spear cav rush. I think JC did well his rush and was better at approximately 3 min of game. I think that going to the animals in the center was a mistake, and that he should have kept raiding me the same way I did in the first game shown. He then would have got a better economy than me.

women hard boom (not advised) Feldfeld vs borg.7z
Another sword cav rush. I tried pure boom, but I shouldn't have made this much women and got punished (I didn't expect sword cav rush, it was the first time i saw it in the game if i recall well). But keep in mind that between 2 strategies of pure boom, 1 making more women early, and the second making more men in case of a rush, the first i described (more women early) will have better eco later.

Feldfeld vs defenderbenny naked fana rush.7z
Naked fanatics rush, first time i saw that as well. You need to sacrifice huge eco just in order to train these fanatics (early phasing + many workers on metal, almost no food production). But this strategy works still very well.

4v4 endless raids, + promoted cav very strong.7z
Rush with sword cav, then i kept the pressure all the game. At the end : huge eco damage, also my sword cav got promoted and became very strong, and had no issues fighting foot soldiers later. Notice that in team game, you can rush someone, the defender makes decisions to defend the rush, then you can simply switch and raid someone else, and later return on the first ennemy.

4v4 spear cav rush especially wang_wei.7z
This game is similar to the last game i described, this time i focus on wang_wei that rushed early with spear cav then kept the pressures and raided more and more.

You might want to download all the replays in 1 file instead of 6 :

pack.7z

note :
Also, it is a bit naive to think that you can replace your losses with the tech to make women from houses. This tech is very expensive at 6 min of game and i don't think it is affordable, and even more, you need to have food to make women, and food is the ressources raided. By 6 min, you don't need that much buildings to make units anyway, economy is not developped enough.

[soloooy0]

1 hour ago, Feldfeld said:

 

iber fire horses 

2017-02-25_0005 iberos.rar

2017-02-27_0005 fuego.rar

and athenes and rome vs sparta epic end 

2017-03-01_0006 final epico atenas vs sparta.rar

[sphyrth]

On 3/2/2017 at 7:08 AM, Lion.Kanzen said:

It's time to  re-design the game.

Not necessarily. (Please bear with the hasty generalizations about to be committed below)

Reading at the wraitii's comment, the game has attracted a player base who happen to like the mechanics (I know I do. I like the frantic pace), but at the cost of some devs who think that they created a disfigured monster.

Well, this IS a dilemma. Make the current playerbase happy at the cost of the devs hating their product, or make the the devs happy at the cost of the current playerbase (this will attract another playerbase, I know).

With people like fatherbushido (who is involved both the the development and playing) not having much complaints, I actually assumed that majority of the devs are content with the current development. It's actually a shocker to me that most of them don't use their free-time to test their own game as well as develop it.

I hope the team will make a successful decision of where this will go. But for now, I'll just dig myself on the "Keep the Mechanics" trench.

[Lion.Kanzen]

I was  testing...

 

I dont have problem with resources but can  better have more distance from CC.

The game have a huge  LoS. Im not sure if this are a factor that influence in units ai out of control even in formation the units tends to do that and the stances don't do the work.

In other topic we are talking about the military units in early. specially in CC.

 

are only tiny changes. but can be make the game more hard in early.

 

@sphyrth

Indeed I asked that in my FB 0 AD fan Page is Spanish, mostly of them suggest tiny details like use Bridges or more bigger maps, Infinite resources at option.

I dont see nobody unhappy with this, where i see the critical reviews was in Youtube. but this around months. the gameplay need polish. and we need wait for the other planned features

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

 

 

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

Quote

Techopedia explains Arcade Game

Arcade games often have short levels, which rapidly increase in difficulty with simple and intuitive controls. Game players are essentially renting the game for as long as the game avatar is alive. For this business model to be profitable, the difficulty of the game must be high enough to make the players reach a game-over state and engaging or addictive enough to keep the players playing. Nowadays, the arcade is clearly dead in most parts of the world as what was once amazing technology is available on your cell phone. 

PC- or console games are sometimes referred to as arcade games if they share the same qualities as real arcade games such as the following:

• Intuitive and simple controls with simple physics
• Short levels which become increasingly difficult as the game progresses
• A focus on gameplay rather than on content or story

So if another guy don't have any clue what I mean.

[Ulfilas]

In response to Angel above, there are a few things that can move the game away from just resource spamming.

1) the computer can store a rich number for each unit in terms of combat effectiveness, not just basic / skilled / elite. If it can store an 8 bit number, the higher the 8 bit number, the better fighter the unit is. The level (basic/skilled/elite) should only be a summary to help the human get a rough idea of the skill of the warrior. Then an army can have a true diversity of many skilled warriors.

2) In order for units to switch to combat (weaponized) mode from worker mode, must be within a certain radius of a house or city center. If gathering wood miles from a city center it should not be possible to switch to weaponized mode.

3) when not in weaponized mode the combat ability of a citizen soldier should be slightly greater than a Spartan woman and strictly melee based

4) town halls provide an unrealistically high level of protection. Rather than allowing units to go into a town hall, when in the aura of a town hall allow friendlier units to simply have a higher armor rating as if that town hall were helping to protect them. Do not have town halls automatically fire arrows. In this way an attacking army at least has the basic ability to defeat an early enemy and the town hall does not become a pointless target at the village stage

5) Another related idea -- when citizen soldiers are initially weaponized, at a house / civ center, they get a full 'food counter'. That food counter slowly drops. If it drops to 0, the soldier reverts to an un-weaponized soldier (as described above). The food counter can be refilled by simply being in the aura of a friendly/allied house/civ center/ trade caravan/ trireme...  In that fashion it becomes expensive to conduct an extensive invasion, as reflects reality

6) Finally, an 'unweaponized' citizen soldier should move slightly fastert than their weaponized counterpart, to simulate the effect of 'they dropped their arms and ran'

 

 

Edited April 12, 2017 by Ulfilas
correction