Gameplay on Walls

[sphyrth]

I'm not sure if it's more organized to divide the gameplay discussions based on structures, but I'll go in here anyway.

So, it's a given fact that walls are nearly useless in the early game, but unnecessarily drag the late game. This "feature" will be further magnified with Carthage's really buffed walls and @wow's strong core city concept.

We'll be having this thread for more future wall discussions but here are my suggestions:

1. Incrementally increase Wall and Turret build time based on a player's total wall length and/or turret numbers.
2. Walls and Turrets almost immediately turn Neutral, forcing players to garrison them. (Yes, they will also be prone to capture by opponents, and that's the point).
3. #2 will probably mess up gate-building if not garrisoned.

Edit: #2 is also unrealistic especially that we still don't have a feature to set which side of the wall is facing out... and I failed to take account the Iberian starting walls, which will be made useless with my suggestion. But I'm still laying it on the table: walls immediately turn neutral.

Edited May 24, 2017 by sphyrth

[borg-]

1- In 0 a.d the units can pass through the trees, so the walls actually lose a little of their value, at least at the beginning of the game.

2- Wood Walls should be more a bit cheaper. As trees do not serve as walls, then you always need a large amount of walls to have a significant defense. This would easily cost you 500 wood, which is inpensavem at the beginning of the game. Towers cost 5 and walls 4, i think 3-2 more apropriate, I would certainly start using.

3- Stone walls are actually much stronger, in two situations, damage and defense. I would greatly decrease your hit points and a bit of your damage.

Edited May 24, 2017 by borg-

[causative]

Walls in 0ad are used in non-historical ways.  There weren't that many geographical chokepoints that you could block off with walls.  Historical walls were mostly walled cities because real-life land is much more open.  In addition, new players like to build walled cities, because it's fun and looks cool, until they learn it's not cost efficient.  Most examples of abuses of walls, are of heavily fortified walled chokepoints.  I think that 0ad needs limitations that encourage walls to be used specifically for walled cities, and not for blocking off chokepoints.

Here are some simple limitations to achieve that:

1. Most importantly, say that walls can't be placed unless there is 30m of clear space between them and any invalid terrain.  This means that you can't wall off chokepoints, you have to instead put walls all the way around whatever you want to protect.  "Invalid terrain" means only terrain; you can put walls right up against other buildings, that's OK.
2. Walls must be at least 50m from CCs/forts to prevent the cheap trick of making walls closely hugging your CCs and forts to prevent capture.
3. In exchange, the cost and build time of walls can be greatly decreased, because now you have to wall all the way around your city to get protection.
4. Perhaps other limitations that prevent walls from being too densely packed would be needed, or perhaps not.

Edited May 24, 2017 by causative

[Grugnas]

A nice thing to have would be to prevent trees to act as obstruction by simply destroying trees whenever they are on the walls fundation path. This would prevent open backdoors in the walls layer. The only side effect is that fundations are visible entities and it could be exploitable. If fundations would change from "preview" to real simulated entity, this method would work just fine. Actually outposts are can be used as traps in order to know where the opponent is moving to by simply put many fundations throught hte whole map. The cost is refunded anyway.
 

[elexis]

IMO with alpha 21 walls became well balanced (at least the best balance Ive seen in a number of alphas).

They can be built quickly and provide a good defense as long as one can defend vs siege engines.

While it is true that they don't keep an attacker out if the area isn't completely walled, they are still useful to stabilize areas in the frontline, for example building a wall around a newly built civic center or mines in that area (so that enemies will be deterred from wall turret arrows and towers don't hit the mining units).

Dragging on the lategame is their job, but an enemy that is an actually better position can tear down those walls very quickly with siege engines (1 ram is still faster than 50 swordchampions).

[Feldfeld]

If you want elexis, I am ok to play in multiplayer maps that don't have few chokepoints easily wallable, for example mainland, with stone wall allowed, and actually use the wall, to see if their ban is only a tradition that is not relevant in a21. It can be a good test.

it would too be interesting to know if we should ban putting multiple layers of wall.

Consider, too, that it can be interesting for a player to wall a building, that is of course unrealistic. With walls allowed, you can for example circle with walls a 2nd CC if you don't want to spend the stone and the time to circle the area, which you would do later. They would still be very vulnerable against slingers in a21, and likely ranged siege (catapults) in a22. But it would "add" them HP against rams for example, and prevent capture, for not much of stone added. This example and multiple layers of walls can be considered abusing, so you should discuss allowing it or not.

[Grugnas]

4 hours ago, elexis said:

IMO with alpha 21 walls became well balanced (at least the best balance Ive seen in a number of alphas).

They can be built quickly and provide a good defense as long as one can defend vs siege engines.

While it is true that they don't keep an attacker out if the area isn't completely walled, they are still useful to stabilize areas in the frontline, for example building a wall around a newly built civic center or mines in that area (so that enemies will be deterred from wall turret arrows and towers don't hit the mining units).

Dragging on the lategame is their job, but an enemy that is an actually better position can tear down those walls very quickly with siege engines (1 ram is still faster than 50 swordchampions).

Indeed walls are well balanced. Wall Towers are the real issue because they can be built without any distance restriction. A full Wall Towers layer could be easly built and be garrisoned by swordsman champions ready to kill any elephants or ungarrison them and destroy any ram with few hits. On the other hand garrisoning Defense Towers and Wall Towers with ranged citizen soldiers reduces the max DPS a player could deal. Personally i see garrisoning towers like a "soldiers life-saving" feature instead of a "building damage improving" feature. Since garrison units don't get exp from tower successfull hits, I am not sure if garrisoning is worth in order to save the life to 250 food 250 wood in the case of citizen soldiers.

[sphyrth]

23 hours ago, Grugnas said:

Wall Towers are the real issue because they can be built without any distance restriction.

Not to mention they can't be captured.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

As always. See DE. Lol

[Servo]

How nice it is if walls and turret within a specific CC radius can be assimilated when that CC is captured. If empty wall(or unfilled  fully)/turrets can be occupied by any it would be very interesting and could be deterrent to abuse.

For single player mode the AI should occupy walls and turrets(if they build) or enemy can't occupy it if any of two adjacent turrets is garrisoned. 

I noticed too that foot units can garrison turrets(or even towers maybe) from any angle. The foot units should be able to come in by way of the turret door only.

 

 

[WhiteTreePaladin]

I think it should be possible to capture walls when they are no longer in a player's territory.