wowgetoffyourcellphone's gameplay design

[Lion.Kanzen]

Quote

The sight of trade caravans in huge quantities are just too unreal. If the amount of goods to trade can be much much more then the players don’t need to use too many trade carts

Source?

[Stan`]

@Servo Anything we can do to help you use SVN ?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

17 hours ago, stanislas69 said:

Sounds like a bold change so close to a release but maybe @temple has some ideas

I don't think Scout Cavalry are that bold of a change. But if you're talking about the other cavalry stuff, like capping them until Phase 2, then yeah, that's pretty bold for a player base who goes crazy over a 10% change in cost from one alpha to the next. lol Better to consider it for A24, along with the new stabs and arches.

 

14 hours ago, Servo said:

Food only requirement to train cavalry will just make the game worst imo. Food is just too easy to produce in the game.

 

My Scout Cavalry cost 100 Food, but are very weak. They are literally only good for scouting and hunting. All other cav types cost Food+Wood or Food+Metal. You might be able to use scavs [scout cavalry, just coined the term right now in this post; thank me later] in some desperate circumstances to take out enemy siege weaponry if they aren't properly guarded by the enemy, but I doubt you'd just have a squadron or two of scavs just waiting around for this possibility.   No, 99% of the time you'd use them for their intended purpose.

 

Regarding the scavs, since @Alexandermb's new camels are committed, I'm thinking of making the Ptol and Persian scouts into Scout Camelry, "scams" if you will, for a little civ variation.

 

11 hours ago, Servo said:

Most players can afford to lose units carrying resources in the battle and tbh it’s not a nice sight. Units must be able to fight only without carrying any resources. If they don’t drop it off there should be time to make them combat ready and lose the resources they are carrying. 

A bit too much micro I think. You're brainstorming ideas at least.

 

11 hours ago, Servo said:

On barter side it should be really a real barter. If you don’t have goods to barter then your trade cart should auto stop. The sight of trade caravans in huge quantities are just too unreal. If the amount of goods to trade can be much much more then the players don’t need to use too many trade carts. The population can have more cap to much needed units like soldiers.

I'm not a big big fan of the barter feature. It's this big "meta economy" feature plopped right in the middle of a strategy game that takes place in a game world. That's not 0 A.D.'s fault, as it has become a kind of RTS staple over the years. I'd rather take out bartering and replace it with a Market trickle feature, where you use the 'Upgrade' feature with the market to make it trickle one resource or another. Or, you could have a feature where you sell large batches of one commodity or another at the market and gain the coin. It would be a feature that has to recharge so you can't just flood the market and gain coin whenever you want. It would be similar to the Bartering feature, but each sale or trade is more significant and has a bigger impact. Just brainstorming here.

I also think Tribute could work in a less meta way too, as you allude to. Right now, trading in 0 A.D. has a tribute-like feature where your ally gains resources every time your trader stops at her market. You could integrate tribute into the game by allowing the player to "switch" his traders from gathering trade resources to tributing trade resources instead. So, in a team match each player chooses whether trade benefits them, or benefits their ally. If you do stuff like this, I think econ elsewhere would need streamlined a bit, like perhaps Slaves appear automatically when you build a Storehouse or Farm Field and work automatically to gather those resources. The strategy here being where and when you place those assets rather than microing gatherers around.

[Stan`]

I like scavs I'll steal the term.

Yeah sounds reasonable for A24 with the new stables.

 

[Nescio]

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Regarding the scavs, since @Alexandermb's new camels are committed, I'm thinking of making the Ptol and Persian scouts into Scout Camelry, "scams" if you will, for a little civ variation.

Variation for the sake of variation seems to me a bad idea. Horse-back riding was the forte of the Iranian peoples (Persians, Scythians, Bactrians, etc.). If anybody should use cavalry, certainly they.

34 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:

Yeah sounds reasonable for A24 with the new stables.

What I would recommend (and actually have implemented in my 0abc mod some months ago) is:

• remove cavalry from centres and barracks
• enable stables for all factions in the village phase
• give cavalry a population cost of 2

Limiting cavalry in the village phase would be a contradiction of history. Horses were kept on the countryside, near manors and villages, certainly not in the cities. Semi-nomadic peoples living in nothing larger than villages were cavalry heavy; city-states often lacked cavalry; cavalry to infantry ratio in the armies of large kingdoms seldom exceeded 1:10.

Gameplay-wise, people should not be unnecessarily restricted, they should have a choice. Do I build a barracks to train infantry? Do I build a stables to train cavalry for some early raiding, hunting, and exploring? Or do I neglect my military and rush to the next phase, hoping I won't be attacked early on?

 

Edited February 27, 2018 by Nescio
ce

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

7 minutes ago, Nescio said:

Variation for the sake of variation seems to be a bad idea. Horse-back riding was the forte of the Iranian peoples (Persians, Indians, Bactrians, etc.). If anybody should use cavalry, certainly they.

The Persians have like 5 other horse cavalry units in my mod. 1 camel unit isn't going to kill their historicity.

 

7 minutes ago, Nescio said:

Gameplay-wise, people should not be unnecessarily restricted, they should have a choice.

Game design is about restricting, else you have a sandbox game. Might as well remove territories and phase requirements.

 

Quote

• give cavalry a population cost of 2

Hell, give infantry a pop cost of 2 and cavalry a pop cost of 3, as in Delenda Est.

 

But that hasn't any bearing on my gameplay proposal, since in my proposal gives pop cost on a per battalion basis. I think we're drifting here, which is partially my fault.

Edited February 27, 2018 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Nescio]

2 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

The Persians have like 5 other horse cavalry units in my mod. 1 camel unit isn't going to kill their historicity.

Having a camel per se, no, it won't, but having a camel as its primary mounted unit is ahistorical.

3 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Might as well remove territories and phase requirements.

Actually I think removing phases would be an improvement Unfortunately the AI is designed around phases at the moment.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

9 minutes ago, Nescio said:

Actually I think removing phases would be an improvement Unfortunately the AI is designed around phases at the moment.

I think phases can be reworked. See the first post in this thread for my ideas.

 

Quote

Having a camel per se, no, it won't, but having a camel as its primary mounted unit is ahistorical.

The Persians in the game represent the entire Achaemenid Empire, not just the Persian home culture. In fact, I toyed with renaming the Persians to Achaemenids, since the Egyptians are called Ptolemies, but I settled for Egyptians (Ptolemies) and Persians (Achaemenids) since I figured it would work better for mod civs and any additional official civs added in the future. I wish the core game and other mods would adopt this naming scheme, along with Indians (Mauryans) and Romans (Republicans). For instance Aristeia could have Egyptians (New Kingdom), while Delenda Est includes the Romans (Principates). 

Edited February 27, 2018 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Nescio]

13 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I The Persians in the game represent the entire Achaemenid Empire, not just the Persian home culture.

Yes, I'm acutely aware of this. Ethnic Persians were just a tiny minority within this multi-national entity. (For those of you who know very little of the Achaemenid Empire, you can actually compare it to the European Union).

By the way, I also considered renaming “Persians” to “Achaemenids”, because the Persian empire was continued by Seleucid, Arsacid (Parthian), Sassanian dynasties. I decided against because I believe it's better to keep names close to 0 A.D.'s main distribution's.

PS Although “Principate” is an appropiate and nowadays standard name for the Roman Empire of 27 B.C. to 284 A.D., the term “Principates” is not a proper word (neither in English nor in Latin).

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 minutes ago, Nescio said:

PS Although “Principate” is an appropiate and nowadays standard name for the Roman Empire of 27 B.C. to 284 A.D., the term “Principates” is not a proper word (neither in English nor in Latin).

Mauryans is incorrect too, but  Thanks for the lesson, professor.

Edited February 27, 2018 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Nescio]

23 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Mauryans is incorrect too, but  Thanks for the lesson, professor.

The difference is that “Mauryan” is an English adjective belonging to the dynasty founded by Chandragupta Maurya. “Principate” is neither an adjective nor a dynasty. As you probably know, “principate”, starting with Augustus, is derived from princeps (first one), and “dominate”, starting with Diocletian, from dominus et deus (master and god)

Better this way? (Of course, Sparta ought to be Lacedaemon, but let's not alienate too many 0 A.D. players.)

Edited February 27, 2018 by Nescio
ce

[Nescio]

3 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Mauryans is incorrect too, but  Thanks for the lesson, professor.

https://code.wildfiregames.com/D1342 should fix that. I also inserted a section at https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/EnglishStyleGuide#Dynasticfactions

[Lion.Kanzen]

7 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Mauryans is incorrect too, but  Thanks for the lesson, professor.

You must realize  this from the beginning, he loves give "facts", isn't bad thing but don't take some things personally.  is good have ever different opinion.

[Lion.Kanzen]

8 hours ago, Nescio said:

Yes, I'm acutely aware of this. Ethnic Persians were just a tiny minority within this multi-national entity. (For those of you who know very little of the Achaemenid Empire, you can actually compare it to the European Union).

By the way, I also considered renaming “Persians” to “Achaemenids”, because the Persian empire was continued by Seleucid, Arsacid (Parthian), Sassanian dynasties. I decided against because I believe it's better to keep names close to 0 A.D.'s main distribution's.

PS Although “Principate” is an appropiate and nowadays standard name for the Roman Empire of 27 B.C. to 284 A.D., the term “Principates” is not a proper word (neither in English nor in Latin).

Remember , we aren't doing a game, some realism is subjective. as @DarcReaver said isn't a museum. 

[Stan`]

[Servo]

@stanislas69 I already had tortoise installed since last year, and just realized that almost everything is in there but can’t find the specific file to download and play the svn. I tried looking up from the repo browser/url. Which one should I look up to play the svn version? Idk if visual studio (seems like for modding) is needed but I downloaded it too. 

I’m trying to click everything and see if I can find files to install the svn version, quite a lot though. darn I’m so close to making it!! Sorry to hijack your thread wow. 

I found a pyrogenesis.exe but got an error. Will try again tomorrow and hope to be able to follow your help/instructors. 

Edited March 1, 2018 by Servo

[Stan`]

@Servo First thing you need to run is SVN update (Right click on the 0AD folder)

You shouldn't get errors running the game. If you do so. Post it in a separate thread.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

On 2/27/2018 at 6:40 AM, Nescio said:

I wouldn't mind doing something like this, but we'd need named for the others:

Britannia
Gaul
Iberia

 

[Nescio]

4 hours ago, Servo said:

I’m trying to click everything and see if I can find files to install the svn version, quite a lot though. darn I’m so close to making it!! Sorry to hijack your thread wow.

Did you look at https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/BuildInstructions ?

21 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I wouldn't mind doing something like this, but we'd need named for the others:

Britannia
Gaul
Iberia

Those names would imply they were unified states, which was certainly not true for these tribal peoples.

0 A.D.'s factions are quite different (tribal, city-states, dynastic kingdoms, empires); there probably is not a single naming scheme which would be correct for all of them. But it doesn't hurt debating alternatives

[Servo]

thanks @stanislas69 will do that (after work) and if ever it is updated do I have to go back to tortoises, run the pyrogenesis.exe and the game will run if no problems? Or it will show up in the mods section of 0ad? 

Yeah Nescio. I read but I’m novice on understanding these kind of things but going through those instructions, process and files it’s kind of not too complicated.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

[Alexandermb]

In advance of groves, will you consider making the faction combats with auras using the enviroment ? For example i made some time ago a basic movement speed aura for every tree affecting the units and even more the cavalry, but if im not wrong the celtic factions werent good making ambushes in woods ? And arabic or ptolemaic faction resistant to desert. My point is add auras to some gaia objects and buildings to affect the speed or resistance of units in specific zones so the gameplay become more complex than just spam of the stronger, rome faction already have a civ bonus for combat in their territory, celtic could be in woods, africa and asia factions in the desert sands not just all the desertic maps like a huge desert whitout mountains and maybe even add techs for reduce the penalization of the enviroment

[av93]

Forest bonus is a good idea because more or less every map have them, but deserts are more map-specific, so this civs won't be chosen in other kinds of maps, or would be banned. Sounds fun for a campaign bonus.

Edited March 31, 2018 by av93

[Alexandermb]

About batallions, is somehow possible to spawn an entity when units are in formation or define the first unit of the formation to play another animation of formation type in the UnitAi or Formation json file ? lets call it banner_wearer for example if phalanx formation is reached then the first unit of the formation will play 1 animation holding the banner of the unit class.

I mean, this can be reached by making something similar of what i did for the roman testudo it could just be adding other idle_testudo animation or idle_walk animation, but in some point it will switch position with another unit and then it will be switching props but thats not the idea, what i think is better is just have one unit until the formation dies holding the banner.

Edited April 2, 2018 by Alexandermb

[Stan`]

I guess you can create an animation variant for all units that can use this formation and add a prop to it. Then assign the formation anim to that position.