[Gameplay Guideline]Resource System & Map control Elements

[DarcReaver]

Resource & economy System revised

 

This concept only covers economic features of civs. Military will be covered in a separate topic to keep this thing small. Some aspects of economy of course affect military as you’ll see later, but this is not the main argument at the moment. Military design and economic design will be tweaked to fit each other for every civ type. At first: I’d suggest to pair civilizations into  groups (i.e. Hellenic Civs, Nordic civs, Indian/African civs and so on). I’ve covered Gauls, Britons, Iberians, Spartans, Athenians and Seleucids so far as more-or-less specific layouts. This again is not a 100% finished layout with every detail covered. Instead it's a general guideline to differ civs from each other and allow to create unique game play patterns for each of them. More than they currently are. The other civs will come later as I need to create something unique for them aswell. I’ll expand this concept for them in the next update(s).

A .pdf is attached to be bottom of this post. (edit: I rewrote some parts because they contained some spelling errors. Should be more readable now)

I. General thoughts on resources

 

Every strategy game requires resources. The resources have to fit the game and players should have a choice whether collecting which resource is more important to them (strategic diversity). Each resource needs to fulfil a certain “role” that gathering it accomplishes it.

To prevent “overburdening” the game with resources there has to be a flow in the game to naturally lead players towards gathering new resources (i.e. a progression from resource A into resource A+B into resource B etc.). Resources that already are gathered by players may not become redundant (because it’s replaced by another resource).

If this is done well the economy management doesn’t become boring or unhealthy for the game and allows interesting, different types of playstyles where players decide how they are going to prioritize their gathering and army setups.

                Citizen/cavalry gatherers removed

 

Yes I know this is a drastic change from the current concept. Yes, it will require reworking parts of the game. However, this is also the opportunity to improve the overall gameplay quality.

                                Advantages of Citizen Soldiers/gatherers:

 

-          Usage of military units when not in combat

-          Especially cavalry can gather far away by hunting

-          Easy transition from economy to fighting

Disadvantages of Citizen soldiers/gatherers:

 

-          No distinction between economic and military units (an integral part of every RTS)

-          Since many gatherers can be active at the same time (economic + every military) gathering rates have to be poor to avoid “economy explosions” which means that the resource income increases exponentially with each additional soldier

-          Players loose resources when attacking, short math example:

o    Soldier collects 0.5 food per second, 30 soldiers work as gatherers which means 15 food/second income (or 900 food/minute).
Now if the 30 soldiers move to the enemy the player will lose 900 food every minute from his soldiers not gathering. Provided that the enemy has a similar army/economy that means that he’ll be ahead with 900 food for each minute he can gather (which would be equal to ~10 or more soldiers).

o    The attacking player needs to destroy more than 900 units worth of food every minute to get an advantage from his attack. If he can’t do that his attack actually weakens the Attacker instead of the Attacked -> unbalanced by design

o    Fixes: soldiers move at unrealistic ultra high speed (less time to get to the enemy) or lowering the gathering rates. The issue is the same still, attacking player initially has a large disadvantage

-          There is no progress from weakest -> strongest unit. Instead the players already start at a high level and then only progress in very small steps towards higher tech levels

-          Citizen soldiers discourage capturing as they are efficient at protecting the base early on, rendering capture rather useless

-          To get citizens back to work is a very fiddly task and annoying compared to regular economic units

Overall it’s better to adjust gathering to specialized units for each civ type instead of giving every civ the ability for soldier gathering. This makes civs more diverse (-> more gameplay depth). One (poor) game mechanic lost for a massive gain in playability is more than worth it.

Building layout (general)

 

1.       Civic Centers are buildable from the start. City influence radius reduced. Can train a weak “militia type” unit and slingers. Slingers can be used to help hunting and Militias are weak units that can be used to harass and defend. Both units hard counter each other (slinger > militia, but in close combat militia beats slinger because of much lower hitpoints)

2.       Storehouses, Sitobolon structures buildable in neutral territory

3.       Farms require neutral territory, affected by gathering duration (fertility) – fields initially generate resources very slowly, but the rate increases the longer it is harvested by gatherers. When the gathering stops the field fertility decreases. To-do: Generate map areas in which farms are more productive (a possible map control element)

4.       Military structures are postponed to City Phase, units are split up and not available all at once – either by per-building upgrades (only coding required, could be a workaround) or by splitting up the buildings into classes – Barracks, Stable, Archery range type classes (requires artworks), depending on civ type.

Gatherer Limits:                             

Food: 2/4 (for small/large food sources)
Wood: 3 (for all trees)
Stone, Iron, Silver: 3/5 (like food)

 

Food – basic resource. Used for training units, upgrades (military), melee infantry & slingers, City advancing

Wood basic resource. Used for military training (support/ranged units, ships). Used for economic upgrades, use for low tier buildings

Stone – resource that constructs high tier buildings and expansions (civic centers, barracks, temples, gymnasion etc.)

Iron - basic military resource, all basic melee military units require metal (swordsmen, pikes and cavalry).

Silver - advanced military resource - is important for military improvement techs and used for training superiors, elite units. Slow to gather.

Population - instead of being only connected to houses, population is influenced by city size (village - town - metropolis). Required to train units (obviously)

Population cap (thoughts)

Houses are hardcapped at ~10 houses per city. Depending on city level they can provide 10-20-30 population each. Alternatively: Military requires no population and is only depending on the food that is available from gatherers. Gatherers require population from houses and are hard capped per city.

In a logical sense, soldiers that are at war do not sleep in houses, so it's rather strange that they take up pop from the city houses. Instead, armies rely on being supplied with food, water, weapons etc. from their home cities. This concept could be further elaborated, as I think it would fit the city Advance system.

Alternatively, each city grants a fixed amount of population. Houses then are scrapped. I'd keep houses for the sake of being authentic though. houses belong into cities.

Upgrade System

Phase advancing: Food and Stone
Economic upgrades: Lumber and Iron
Military unit unlocks: Food/Lumber & Iron (ranged and melee units)
Military unit type upgrades: Food and Silver

Blacksmith “System“

Blacksmiths automatically reduce army Iron costs and increase the training speed for Sword wielding units. It can further research Metallurgy type techs that allow faster training, and allow further, cheaper unit production. Upgrades are not tied to City Phases anymore.
Concept: Blacksmith generates “experience ranks” over time which allows more advanced upgrades to be researched.

  Corrals

  Can garrison captured herdables to provide food over time. Idea taken from the "intended" version of 0AD which isn't finalized yet.

 

Gameplay reasoning

There should be a transition from one type of resource to others, similar to this: food -> wood -> metal -> stone/silver. Players are not overly confused with gathering many resources from the start. As the game progresses the economy complexity increases. Early civic center expansion allows to take additional gathering spots and economic advances. Gatherers training times can be increased since it's possible to train them in multiple buildings. Since gathering spots are limited there has to be economic expansion to fit all gatherers to the spots.

Phase advances that require stone - this way, players automatically need to gather a resource that will be more important in city phase, i.e. to build Phase II buildings.

Military unit upgrades (like “advanced training” or unlocking certain units) create a resource transition towards Silver.

 

II. Hellenic Factions (Sparta, Athen, Seleucids)

 

Economic concept: Hellenes are defensive civs, and thus have bonuses for foraging berries and decent farming. Gathering rates are comparably high, so they can exhaust their own resources more quickly. Slaves are free gatherers that can be trained, have a hardcap that can be increased with City Phases and Slavery Techs.

 

Athen speciality: silver mines last 20% longer
Sparta speciality: slaves have 10% faster gathering rates, hoplites 15% faster, start at veteran rank
Seleucid speciality: farming rate +50% (rate at which farming productivity increases)

Gatherer types:

Women (50 food, 1 pop)

                                    Gather rates: food

Hunt :                     1.25
herdables :             1.25
berries :                  1.50
grain :                    0.80

Gather rates: wood

Trees:                     0.6
rubble trees:           1.2

                                               Gather rates: stone

Quarries:               0.4
rubble stones:         0.8

                                               Gather rates: iron

Iron mines:             0.3
ambient iron:         0.6

                                               Gather Rates: silver

Silver mine:            0.2

 

Slaves (no cost, no pop. Have a hardcap)

                                    Gather rates: food

Hunt :                    1.4
herdables :             1.25
berries :                  1.00
grain :                    1.00

Gather rates: wood

Trees:                     0.8
rubble trees:           1.2

                                               Gather rates: stone

Quarries:               0.8
rubble stones:         1.2

                                               Gather rates: iron

Iron mines:             0.6
ambient iron:         1.2

                                               Gather Rates: silver

Silver mine:            0.4

 

A second type of gatherer that excels at mining. There are 2 options for them to be limited: either they automatically start to loose health if there are too many at one place, or they are simply hardcapped by default. It would be interesting to utilize capturing features to increase the maximum slave count. I.e. for 5 wounded/killed soldiers on the battlefield the number of slaves trainable increases by 1. So, by slaying enemy units the economic power rises for Hellenic civs. Due to the amount of gatherers per resource spot, having hundreds of slaves isn’t profitable as there is a need for more gathering spots to collect resources from.

 

Buildings:

Economic: wood only
Military: wood and stone
Civic: stone and food
Iron: none
Silver: none

 

III. “Alpine” Civilizations (Iberians, Gauls, Britons)

 

Economic concept: Opposed to Hellenes civs “nordic” civs rely more on hunting. They are mainly offensive civs to start with. Their buildings do not require much stone (if at all) but are less sturdy. Gathering rates are lower for farming and mining stone. The treadmill can be used to increase farming at a later civ stage to bring them on par with other civ’s lategame food economy.

 

Early huntables creates power spikes because they can advance quickly and field armies in a shorter period of time. Also, this allows more spreading and early expansion. While Hellenes need to consider how many cities they can supply and defend, the Nordic civs can play a rather mobile earlygame with rushes and lots of interaction with gaia.

Civ special advantages: villagers and Hunters receive weapon upgrades from the Blacksmith.

 

Iberian speciality: Start with additional metal, soldiers have 20% bonus speed, iron gathering +15%
Gauls speciality: +50% bonus damage against animals, units that are hunting have higher accuracy Cavalry +20% faster
Britons speciality:  Gathering from herdables +50%, herdables in stables provide more food

 

Villager (50 food, 1 pop)

                        Gather rates: food

Hunt :                     1.5
herdables :             1.5
berries :                  1.0
grain :                    0.60

Gather rates: wood

Trees:                     0.7
rubble trees:           1.2

                               Gather rates: stone

Quarries:               0.2
rubble stones:         0.6

                               Gather rates: iron

Iron mines:             0.4
ambient iron:         0.8

                               Gather Rates: silver

Silver mine:            0.2

Villagers are both male and female. They can utilize spears or bows for hunting. Melee defense with knifes/swords.

 

Hunter (80 food, 40 wood, 1 pop)

                        Gather rates: food

Hunt :                     2.5
herdables :             2.25
berries :                  1.50
grain :                    0.80

Gather rates: wood

Trees:                     0.6
rubble trees:           1.2

                               Gather rates: stone

Quarries:               0.4
rubble stones:         0.8

                               Gather rates: iron

Iron mines:             0.3
ambient iron:         0.6

                               Gather Rates: silver

Silver mine:            0.2

Hunters are mounted gatherers that can move swiftly around. They attack with spears and with upgrades/veterancy level they perform as a skilled mounted skirmisher unit.

They can harass from the start, but due to a low attack rate with miss chance they are not that good to hit moving gatherers. As they kill animals their rank increases and they become more effective at raiding enemy economic units.

 

Buildings:

Economic: wood only
Military: wood only
Civic: wood and food (!)
Iron: none
Silver: none

edit: removed-Special building : Corrals

IV. Map control elements

The game should be dynamic. Players should have options for economic expansion and there should be fluent progress on the whole map, with increasing intensity towards mid and lategame.

Many current RTS games revolve around a central “base” from which all major actions are taken. Units trained, teching accomplished, resources gathered etc. Outposts or second bases have less priority because the risk – reward ratio (hard to defend, little benefits in return) is high.

For 0 AD I’d like to propose a concept of “fluent expansion”. Since this game features unique aspects – city borders, city phases and a default capturing system for every military unit it would be beneficial to actually concentrate on these aspects.

 

To further emphasize the city progression and the construction of an empire, it’s important to have interaction with the map. Constructing outposts – new cities – that can supply the Capital city to grow in prosperity and power should be a vital part for the course of the game.

However, to avoid common issues from other RTS – economic expansion is punished hard by early rushes. Since eco management is pretty basic in many games, not punishing early economic  expansion would lead to massive unitspam and create war of attrition, so it’s not desirable. Sort of basic and not very unique. Every game does that.

0 AD features a detailed economy, and so the early focus should actually be economic expansion. Only very basic military available that allows players to focus on where to expand, which positions are worth to create new cities etc.

And then, as the game progresses, players can start gathering armies and start fighting. Many players enjoy “no rush” gametypes in which they can actually “build up” before the fighting starts – so rushing, even though it’s common in many RTS, is not the prime and sole option to solve games.

By delaying military there is the option for players to satisfy their desire to “build” and then allows a fluent progression into fighting the enemy.

How to achieve?

1.      Allow military to interact with the map instead with the enemy only. By providing neutral targets that can be captured (like neutral Villages, cities, mercenary posts, slave posts, markets etc.) that can provide military and economic bonuses on a long term by increasing the player’s influence.

2.      Allow military to attack positions apart from the main city. By providing multiple possible targets the strategical aspect becomes important – where to attack with how many units, fake attacks to disrupt the player, parallel harassment with multiple small armies which rewards multitasking, etc.

3.      Distribution of map resources and hardcapping gatherers to force expansions. If players are forced to explore the map and expand to gain more resources it’s important to know and anticipate where and when the enemy is likely to expand. Game experience and strategical “what if” thinking and decision making is fun and rewarding.

Ideas:

  Easiest: captureable herdables that can be used for food.

            Slave posts: automatically unlock the option to build slaves in cities for a silver cost.

Mercenary post: train map type specific military units that provide additional tactical options in army compositions, instant and at a higher cost.

Neutral cities: a small settlement or city with gatherable resources nearby, like a small gaul village, protected by some soldiers and has a couple of houses, maybe some farms. Can either be captured (expansion) or burned down to get immediate resource boost (food, iron, wood)

Temples: neutral buildings that generate silver, or allow to train special types of support units that otherwise would only be available to certain civs (similar to a merc camp for non-combat units)

Mines: generate iron indefinitely and work similar to farms

How the actual implementation and which bonuses are provided is a secondary task. As long as the neutral building creates the urge for players to explore and expand it’s all fine. I’m open for additional ideas for neutral buildings for sure.

 

0ad Resource1.1.pdf

Edited March 22, 2017 by DarcReaver

[Wesley]

Looks interesting. 

If I remember the original discussion at the start of the 0 AD project several forums ago, one reason for giving the citizen/ gatherers a combat capability was to give them a fighting chance. This was a problem in AoE that everyone was trying to fix in the mods. It's why the Citizen/cavalry gatherers.

The other idea was to differentiate the civilisations at the citizen level early on. The citizens all looked boringly the same in AoE. It worked but it leads to rushes and resource efficiency problems. The soldier citizen was never meant to be the main combatant force. 
The problem seems to be that both the players and the AI are using them as such. 

Slaves, Villagers, Hunter. Are all good ideas add them in but what is really needed, I suspect, is some upgraded barracks units that make gatherer fighter spam less profitable. Perhaps done by making visually different units but with the same combat stats as the Citizen/cavalry gatherers but at a fractionally lower cost. These fill the same combat roles but can't gather at all and because their a tiny bit cheaper they are the goto option once your barracks is up. You may still have slaves, villagers and hunters in addition to all the existing units. 

Gatherer carrying capacity needs to be bumped up. Normally this is done by adding technology tree upgrades at the blacksmith and other buildings. There are too few in the current tech tree and they bump speed not load. we may need more that +10% here and +20% there. A good mix of such upgrades could mean a gatherer in the late game does the work of ten early game gatherers. That should help with lag.

 Harvesting neutral territory is an option. DarcReaver's 'Storehouses, Sitobolon structures buildable in neutral territory' Would help but it kind of negates the idea of territory altogether. Has anyone considered movable resource drop points? A wagon, camel train, etc unit crafted at a building that can be sent out to a neutral area deployed and serves that drop point function for all resource types. It holds 20 times a gatherer and when full packs up and heads back to the nearest Building drop point on civ territory unloads and then returns to a place marker it left when it packed up. A tech upgrade makes instant resource transfer to the players pool without packing and moving so they become Movable but otherwise normal drop points. If attacked they sound an alarm, pack and try to escape. I've been looking at nomad options so this occurred to me.     
This would mean that to mine/ harvest where you can't build you deploy one of these wagons. The gatherers encountering it with a full load unload, loading the 'wagon'  and empty path back to the resource. This replaces the ant line of gatherers pathing back and forth long distances to resource drops, to a single wagon carrying ten times the load. Place two with one slightly closer to the resource and you get them alternating if they move fast enough and they should move faster than a gatherer. That should make the game run faster. 

 

Lastly to implement any of the suggestions from DarcReaver or me we would need larger maps or fewer fractions in the map menu per map size.

 

 

Edited March 22, 2017 by Wesley

[Wesley]

On 3/19/2017 at 1:14 AM, DarcReaver said:

III. “Nordic” Civilizations (Iberians, Gauls, Britons)

Economic concept: Opposed to Hellenes civs “nordic” civs rely more on hunting. They are mainly offensive civs to start with. Their buildings do not require much stone (if at all) but are less sturdy. Gathering rates are lower for farming and mining stone. The treadmill can be used to increase farming at a later civ stage to bring them on par with other civ’s lategame food economy.

I like this idea but Nordic is not the right term. Southern european or Alp may be more accurate.

If you know your genetics and linguistics Indo european split into several groups and the celts are a totally different line to the germanic norse line. Linguistically speaking they went in opposite directions.

Pre Roman Iberian is not even indo european. The basque languages, vasconĭce in latin, the oldest in Iberia is a language isolate. There is nothing like it elsewhere in the world and it may be pre ice age going back to the cro magnon. It once covered most of northern Iberia and southern france before the Romans, Franks and Visigoths pushed it into the Pyrenees strongholds.

Indo european is split into indo iranian and european with indian and many subcontinent languages linked to the former and the european splitting into three major lines Germanic, Italic Romance and Slavic. Greek, Celt and dozen others are minor branches at the same point. Olympus weeps. 
Nordic is north germanic off hundreds of miles from all three southern european hunting civilisations. 
However germanic and north germanic would have been a genuine hunting civ as you describe. Note: germanic tribes main source of nutrition according to pot residue  and cashes included fish, pottage (stewed wild herbs and grass heads), small game, and lots and lots of nuts. 
Celts, iberians had lots of dairy. Hunter herdsmen. 
  
This is a wonderful image. Minna Sundberg via Mikel Tolosana. 

 

[DarcReaver]

I'll replace them with Alpine civs then. It's just a term afterall to unify them in one category.

Edited March 22, 2017 by DarcReaver

[GunChleoc]

Transalpine is the term that the Romans would have used (minus the Anglicization, of course :P).

Regarding the resource wagon idea, that's pretty similar to the Mauryans' worker elephant.

Edited March 22, 2017 by GunChleoc

[av93]

Just as historic note, animal hunting as never been a big basis of the human diet except some few cultures (like Inuit). We always talk about hunter-gathering tribes, but they really were gathering-hunter tribes, the first performed by usually women.

Don't know if Iberian and Celt culture was a heavy hunter society, although I'm for a gameplay>historic realism, I wouldn't like to portray them as barbarians "more on less savage" civs.

Of course there was difference between them and the grecoroman culture (for example they had a more individualistic way of fight, in contrast of the Greek and Roman fashion, if my history notions are right)

Edited March 23, 2017 by av93

[Lion.Kanzen]

5 hours ago, av93 said:

Just as historic note, animal hunting as never been a big basis of the human diet except some few cultures (like Inuit). We always talk about hunter-gathering tribes, but they really were gathering-hunter tribes, the first performed by usually women.

Don't know if Iberian and Celt culture was a heavy hunter society, although I'm for a gameplay>historic realism, I would like to portray them as barbarians "more on less savage" civs.

Of course there was difference between them and the grecoroman culture (for example they had a more individualistic way of fight, in contrast of the Greek and Roman fashion, if my history notions are right)

When a army was in war... may be in critical situation? ( Winter in enemy territory)

[Radagast.]

The idea to make citizen soldiers very weak by default (knife) looks like it'd solve the puzzle, such that we do not have to remove this beloved functionality. Of course when deployed|called in in an organized manner then the armor + weapons are more powerful, it takes time though, as takes training, therefore even with the weapons they will have a hard time against the organized|well-trained army that it has to oppose.

This alone would require to decide on a strategy, i.e. keep the units in economic affairs and only allow them to capture some very weak targets (due to their weak fighting capabilities) or to call them in and train them properly. Actually warfare is all about planning. And that planning is what we want when we have our civil "city plan" laid out. (as DarcReaver said, first some time for economy, being wary of some neutral forces like bandits and friendly trader tribes or at least only having to fear certain early-rush capable player-controlled enemy factions - which makes intelligence more important early on, too, as you need to figure out which faction your enemies field.)

Edit: To not make citizen soldiers too useless, the rank-up system could improve the stats so significantly that  it'd be quite cool to have such a champion citizen soldier at gathering as it'd be a stout defense (but surviving long enough to gather enough XP to become a champion is seldom anyway => very unique and good for surprises for enemy raids, e.g. "Oh hell now we again were stopped by this single Champion soldier, take it out." ;-).

Edited March 23, 2017 by Radagast.

[GunChleoc]

On 22/03/2017 at 6:46 PM, av93 said:

Don't know if Iberian and Celt culture was a heavy hunter society, although I'm for a gameplay>historic realism, I would like to portray them as barbarians "more on less savage" civs.

This is the modern interpretation of the word "barbarian" - for the Ancient Greeks, it simply meant peoples who spoke a language other than Greek, so it all sounded like "barbarbar" to them.

I recently read an interesting book about Celtic astronomy: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/11/ancient-paths-graham-robb-review

From his research, it is likely that one of the reasons that Caesar conquered Gaul so quickly was that there was already a good road network in place for is legions to march on. And Caesar's writing can be assumed to be war propaganda and needs to be read with a grain of salt.

Edited March 23, 2017 by GunChleoc

[Lion.Kanzen]

10 hours ago, Radagast. said:

The idea to make citizen soldiers very weak by default (knife) looks like it'd solve the puzzle, such that we do not have to remove this beloved functionality. Of course when deployed|called in in an organized manner then the armor + weapons are more powerful, it takes time though, as takes training, therefore even with the weapons they will have a hard time against the organized|well-trained army that it has to oppose.

This alone would require to decide on a strategy, i.e. keep the units in economic affairs and only allow them to capture some very weak targets (due to their weak fighting capabilities) or to call them in and train them properly. Actually warfare is all about planning. And that planning is what we want when we have our civil "city plan" laid out. (as DarcReaver said, first some time for economy, being wary of some neutral forces like bandits and friendly trader tribes or at least only having to fear certain early-rush capable player-controlled enemy factions - which makes intelligence more important early on, too, as you need to figure out which faction your enemies field.)

Edit: To not make citizen soldiers too useless, the rank-up system could improve the stats so significantly that  it'd be quite cool to have such a champion citizen soldier at gathering as it'd be a stout defense (but surviving long enough to gather enough XP to become a champion is seldom anyway => very unique and good for surprises for enemy raids, e.g. "Oh hell now we again were stopped by this single Champion soldier, take it out." ;-).

 

we share the feeling.

[av93]

4 hours ago, GunChleoc said:

This is the modern interpretation of the word "barbarian" - for the Ancient Greeks, it simply meant peoples who spoke a language other than Greek, so it all sounded like "barbarbar" to them.

 

Sorry I misspelled the sentence. I wouldn't like to portrait them as "savage" people.

 

BTW, a compromise between having and don't having C-S, would be to have only "militia" or "youth warriors" only trainable on the CC, that can work, but that can't be upgraded and have a medium disadvantage against regular barracks soldiers, that step up with the upgrades and the progress of the match. 

Edited March 23, 2017 by av93

[DarcReaver]

Idk about "youth warriors" - might become a political issue with Child Soldiers (there are retards on the net who'd gladly start an argument about this, I'm sure of that).

I'd simply split military into a later phase and be done with it. Military isn't the main topic in here anyways. Most stuff that I'd propose is pretty similar to Wowgetoffyourcellphones proposals in his design thread.

 

[Guest]

You sure that citizen soldiers is a failed concept?

I guess there could be a way to make it work. Not removing one of the main points from the document drafted in 2003 would be a huge plus.

[DarcReaver]

6 minutes ago, (-_-) said:

You sure that citizen soldiers is a failed concept?

I guess there could be a way to make it work. Not removing one of the main points from the document drafted in 2003 would be a huge plus.

The question is what someone wants to accomplish with this.

AoE is like "we  have female/male villagers" and 0 ad was like "ok let's split women and men villagers so it's different".

There is no further reason for it. That's why I'm against the concept.

I think the game would be better off scrapping the whole Citizen/women system, automate Economy by at least 75% and focus on building up cities and THEN creating armies and fight about map control elements like neutral cities and resources like quarries, Farmhouses and Mines.

The whole detailed economy doesn't make much sense unless you focus the whole gameplay on it in a similar fashion of AoE and make the game a proper AoE clone. Which in itself is rather pointless because there is AoE DE, AoE 2 HD and AoE 2 DE coming out soon.

[Guest]

There was some historical authenticity in there too.

I always had something like this in mind. I even started building a mod and it actually reached somewhere too.

CC trains both women and men. Men being somewhat expensive and costing extra resources. They could take up arms. It costs resources. (At the time, it was a new resource + the usual training cost). Could arm into any of the civ's usual citizen soldiers. (They have to be in proximity of a barrack. But this was scrapped to just a simple time cost). They also cannot engage in any economic activity while being armed. If you wanted the citizen back, you would have to disarm him. Which also happens to cost something. These armed soldiers need to be combined with pure military units trained in the barracks for maximum efficiency. (call them officers, generals, whatever). You can commit such soldiers to a pure non-reversible military role with a time/res cost.

That was a concept I had in mind to fix the thing. But in the end, it just felt like a whole lot of micro and repetitive actions.

Edited June 8, 2019 by Guest

[DarcReaver]

4 minutes ago, (-_-) said:

There was some historical authenticity in there too.

I always had something like this in mind. I even started building a mod and it actually reached somewhere too.

CC trains both women and men. Men being somewhat expensive and costing extra resources. They could take up arms. It costs resources. (At the time, it was a new resource + the usual training cost). Could arm into any of the civ's usual citizen soldiers. (They have to be in proximity of a barrack. But this was scrapped to just a simple time cost). They also cannot engage in any economic activity while being armed. If you wanted the citizen back, you would have to disarm him. Which also happens to cost something. These armed soldiers need to be combined with pure military units trained in the barracks for maximum efficiency. (call them officers, generals, whatever). You can commit such soldiers to a pure non-reversible military role with a time/res cost.

That was a concept I had in mind to fix the thing. But in the end, it just felt like a whole of micro and repetitive actions.

This still doesn't remove the aspect that soldiers not gathering resources leads to the enemy gaining a resource lead while the attacker starts an attack. Considering that all units shouldn't move as fast as they currently do this is an issue nontheless, even with your (more fleshed out and more original concept).

Another issue I have with this is that it adds additional, unnecessary micro for players. In 0 AD it's a nightmare to re-order male soldiers back to work after defending an attack.

This is another reason why combat units usually do not gather resources. Also, this can lead to one player rushing the other, then attack and use his own soldiers to gather resources in the enemy base. This happens in AoE and is highly unrealistic - and it shouldn't work that way in a game that is intended to represent "authentic historic warfare".

It's a much better thing to put automatic workers into buildings, call them villagers, slaves, hunters or whatever and let them gather resources automatically in range of their economy building.

I.e. you build a Farmhouse, when finished 4 farm outlines appear next to it and a couple farmers automatically start generating food. Same with metal mines, wood camps and mines.

Enemy units can raid and capture those structures and claim them for themselves.

combat units do combat, and economy is done by economy building. The player who fights better and captures/destroys outposts wins.

[Sundiata]

8 hours ago, DarcReaver said:

In 0 AD it's a nightmare to re-order male soldiers back to work after defending an attack.

In the current setup it would be awesome to have a back to work button that automatically reassigns selected units to the last economic activity they were working on.

 

8 hours ago, DarcReaver said:

It's a much better thing to put automatic workers into buildings, call them villagers, slaves, hunters or whatever and let them gather resources automatically in range of their economy building.

I.e. you build a Farmhouse, when finished 4 farm outlines appear next to it and a couple farmers automatically start generating food. Same with metal mines, wood camps and mines.

I'd actually prefer this as well... Focussing on town building, raising an army and combat, instead of microing individual labourers..

 

8 hours ago, DarcReaver said:

This still doesn't remove the aspect that soldiers not gathering resources leads to the enemy gaining a resource lead while the attacker starts an attack.

That would theoretically mean defenders have an advantage, but during competitive play I feel like the more aggressive player actually has an advantage. This depends on the success of the attack of course, but sending an enemy's economy into disarray through an early rush seems to be very effective, especially if you keep up the pressure. 

[Feldfeld]

8 hours ago, DarcReaver said:

Another issue I have with this is that it adds additional, unnecessary micro for players. In 0 AD it's a nightmare to re-order male soldiers back to work after defending an attack.

 

2 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

In the current setup it would be awesome to have a back to work button that automatically reassigns selected units to the last economic activity they were working on.

But that already exists, press Y

[Sundiata]

5 minutes ago, Feldfeld said:

But that already exists, press Y

Really??? omg... I never knew... So many awesome little details... Where is this mentioned? Shouldn't there be a clearly visible button? 

[Lion.Kanzen]

4 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

Really??? omg... I never knew... So many awesome little details... Where is this mentioned? Shouldn't there be a clearly visible button? 

the icon isn't obvious. is a place holder.

[Feldfeld]

4 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

Really??? omg... I never knew... So many awesome little details... Where is this mentioned? Shouldn't there be a clearly visible button? 

It is mentionned in Learn to play > Manual, also if you select one or multiple units that have worked but have stopped, then the back to work button appears just near the repair one.

[Lion.Kanzen]

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/4019

 

[StopKillingMe]

11 hours ago, DarcReaver said:

This still doesn't remove the aspect that soldiers not gathering resources leads to the enemy gaining a resource lead while the attacker starts an attack. Considering that all units shouldn't move as fast as they currently do this is an issue nontheless, even with your (more fleshed out and more original concept).

Another issue I have with this is that it adds additional, unnecessary micro for players. In 0 AD it's a nightmare to re-order male soldiers back to work after defending an attack.

This is another reason why combat units usually do not gather resources. Also, this can lead to one player rushing the other, then attack and use his own soldiers to gather resources in the enemy base. This happens in AoE and is highly unrealistic - and it shouldn't work that way in a game that is intended to represent "authentic historic warfare".

It's a much better thing to put automatic workers into buildings, call them villagers, slaves, hunters or whatever and let them gather resources automatically in range of their economy building.

I.e. you build a Farmhouse, when finished 4 farm outlines appear next to it and a couple farmers automatically start generating food. Same with metal mines, wood camps and mines.

Enemy units can raid and capture those structures and claim them for themselves.

combat units do combat, and economy is done by economy building. The player who fights better and captures/destroys outposts wins.

I don't really understand what you are saying - if I take soldiers off of gathering resources, the person I am attacking has to do the same thing to defend.  It's pretty much a wash.  And as pointed out, it's not a nightmare to put them back to work, it's a hotkey.  And I guess you have never heard about an army plundering the land of its riches when it defeats them?  The resources that the attacking army can gather in enemy territory basically represents plundering and looting, and there certainly is 'authentic historical' precedence for that.  And then you go on to suggest that the micro to setup an economy be dumbed down?  You build a farmhouse and that's all you have to do?  Everything else is done automatically?  You are describing "The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II" whose game play became about running around destroying food producing buildings all game...exceedingly inane and boring.  The whole point of having to micro things separates the men from the boys, if you stay 100% focused on micro-ing an attack, then you shouldn't have the bandwidth to boom your economy at the exact same time you are micro-ring archers or whatever it is that has taken your attention away from building farms or whatever, that is the whole point of real time strategy, being smart about what gets your attention, when - and where.  Take that out of the game and you might as well just be a Total War MP clone.  The whole point of 0ad resource gathering Meta right now is that women gather food faster, and men gather wood and metal/stone faster, but even faster yet with one women gathering with them.  These details matter, yet for some reason you want to dumb all of that subtle strategy down to nothing.  I have to say, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.  I don't get what the point is of taking strategy out of the economic part of the game.  You're just removing things that make 0ad unique.

Edited June 9, 2019 by StopKillingMe

[DarcReaver]

10 minutes ago, StopKillingMe said:

I don't really understand what you are saying - if I take soldiers off of gathering resources, the person I am attacking has to do the same thing to defend.  It's pretty much a wash.  And as pointed out, it's not a nightmare to put them back to work, it's a hotkey.  And I guess you have never heard about an army plundering the land of its riches when it defeats them?  The resources that the attacking army can gather in enemy territory basically represents plundering and looting, and there certainly is 'authentic historical' precedence for that.  And then you go on to suggest that the micro to setup an economy be dumbed down?  You build a farmhouse and that's all you have to do?  Everything else is done automatically?  You are describing "The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II" whose game play became about running around destroying food producing buildings all game...exceedingly inane and boring.  The whole point of having to micro things separates the men from the boys, if you stay 100% focused on micro-ing an attack, then your you shouldn't have the bandwidth to boom your economy at the same time, that is the whole point of real time strategy, being smart about what gets your attention, when and where.  Take that out of the game and you might as well just be a Total War MP clone.

Because design doc. It pretty much describes a total war clone. Single worker micro with detailed economy (which leads to nowhere btw because it's just unoriginally taken from AoE without putting a thought in it) is repetitive micro.

• “Fastest click wins - In many RTS games, it isn't the player with the most intelligence or the best strategy that wins, it's the player who A] knows the proper order of actions and B] carries them out the fastest. People that practice a general procedure that is usually rewarding and know keyboard shortcuts should be slightly advantaged, and they will still be required; but, the if the opponent recognises their 'cookie cutter' gameplay, they should easily be able to outwit them by identifying and countering the unoriginal/over-used tactics with an effective counteractive strategy.

   

• Single path to victory - It seems to be a trend that games cater to a specific strategy that is frequently used to attain a victory. That could be rushing, turtling, booming, etc. We recognise these are valid ways to win a game, but we will attempt to not favour one over another. Players should be able to successfully use (and adapt/change) any strategy to achieve a victory.

   

• Sneaky Tricks - Many games overlook some aspects of gameplay that are unintentionally (by the game designers) used to a player's advantage. Through many hours of gameplay testing, we need to identify and eliminate these tricks.

   

• Repetition - If you find yourself doing the same action over and over without thought, then we need to either eliminate or automate such an action. Linear repetitious procedures are meaningless and boring. “

 

About resources: once more:

Defender has 10 soldiers gathering 10 res every 10 seconds.
Attacker has 10 soldiers gathering 10 res every 10 seconds.
Both bases are 1 minute of walking distance away from each other.

10 x 6 = 60 res per minute per player

If attacker now turns his men away from his down and starts attacking he no longer gets 60 res.
the defender still gets 60 res.

Total difference is 120 resources. Player 1 has 60 less while player 2 has 60 more. You can lessen the effect by either make soldiers move around the map at unrealistic speed (currently the case) and by making the individual collection rates low (lower effect of resource loss). But the issue is always present.That's why citizen soldiers without resource hard caps is a broken design.

Edited June 9, 2019 by DarcReaver

[StopKillingMe]

Yeah so what?  That is simply an inherent risk of attacking, you had better win, or you will be behind.  That's more about scouting and understanding what you are attacking then about the resources you lose from a minute of marching, and besides, if they are champion units, cavalry, or siege, your little formula doesn't even apply.  IMO, you are making a big deal over something that is trivial, no player uses all the resources he is gathering down to the 0 level all the time anyway...I see no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater.