Monkey Wrench Balance Mod Alpha 22

[Grugnas]

This simple mod wants to modify the current alpha 22 version balance in a "conservative" way with no use of any counter system as long as units in the current version already have different attributes and this concept tries to stay away from a massive use of hard and soft counters.

The patch isn't finished since technologies aren't included yet but they will surely included in the next release of this patch as long as can I do some tests first.

Why did i publish this mod?

I think that the intent to introduce soft and hard counters by setting the attributes of all units with a given value then add counter bonuses is time spending and the result would be partially the same as simply tweaking the already existing values with the difference that the latter requires less effort, it is more polished and doesn't remove the "realism" factor like light armored units being faster than heavier equipped soldiers. A counter system requires the player to remember the bonuses and the weakness of each unit against each unit.

As long as it is a mod, here will be implemented new features and units / structures rearrangement.

Newest Version: Monkey Wrench 22.1.4.3!

Download

You can download the mod here:

Changelog:

• 22.1.2:  monkey_wrench_22.2.zip
• 22.1.3.1:    monkey_wrench_22.1.3.1.zip
• 22.1.4.1:  monkey_wrench_22.1.4.1.zip
• 22.1.4.2: monkey_wrench_22.1.4.2.zip
• 22.1.4.3: monkey_wrench_22.1.4.3.zip

Installation

         Drag and drop the content of the .zip archivie in one of the folders listed below depending on your operative system.

• Vista or newer: C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\My Games\0ad\mods\
•  XP / 2000:  C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\My Documents\My Games\0ad\mods\
• OS X:  ~/Library/Application\ Support/0ad/mods/
• Linux:  ~/.local/share/0ad/mods/

                              from          https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/GameDataPaths

Launch 0AD and click on  Tools & Options -> Mod Selection  then select the mod Monkey Wrench from the list of the Available Mods and click Enable, Save Configuration and Start Mods.

At this point the mod is ready to be played.

What Does it Changes?

Units

• Now citizen soldiers loot increases with rank.

Woman

• training time increased to 10

Elephant Worker

•   Now can build basic civic structures and research economy technologies.

Cavalry

Citizen Solzier

•     Increased training time to 16.
•     Capture Rate decreased from 2 to 1.
•     Ranged Cavalry base HP decreased from 120 to 100.
•     Melee Cavalry base HP decreased from 160 to 150.
•    Decreased Vision Range to 50.
• NEW!  Barracks removes the limit of 1 Cavalry only.
• NEW!  gain more Vision Range per phase.

Spear

• Cost increased by 5 wood.
• Now has 1.25x bonus damage against Cavalry class.
• Attack rate decreased from 3.5 seconds to 3.0.
• Movement speed decreased from 22 to 20.

Sword

• Cost increased by 5 wood.
• Movement speed increased from 20 to 21.

Javelin

• Attack Max Range reduced from 28 to 24.

Archer

• Attack Max Range reduced from 72 to 60.

 
Champion

• Capture Rate decreased from 5 to 4.
• Ranged Cavalry base HP decreased from 270 to 180.
• Reduced training time to 32.

Spear

• Now has 1.25x bonus damage against Cavalry class.
• Attack rate decreased from 3.5 seconds to 3.0.
• Movement speed decreased from 25 to 23.

Sword

• Pierce Armor reduced from 7 to 6.
• Movement speed increased from 23 to 24.

Javelin

• Iberian unit Crush damage increased from 13 to 18.
• Iberian unit Pierce damage increased from 5 to 18.

Archer

• Pierce damage decreased to 12

 Infantry

Citizen Solzier

•    Decreased Vision Range to 40.
• NEW!  gain more Vision Range per phase.

Javelin

• Attack Max Range reduced from 24 to 20.
•  Pierce damage decreased to 15.

Slinger

• Attack Max Range reduced from 42 to 40.
•  Pierce damage decreased to 9.

Archer

• Attack Max Range reduced from 72 to 60.
•  Pierce damage decreased to 5.

Champion

• Reduced training time to 24.

Sword

• Mauryan Yoddha Crush damage increased from 10.5 to 11.
• Mauryan Yoddha Hack and Pierce armor increasedfrom 6 to 7.

Javelin

•  Pierce damage decreased to 24.

Archer

• Attack Max Range reduced to 6.

Siege

Bolt Shooter

• Included fixing patch for a bug that allowed bolt shooters to deal more damage than intended.
• Decreased pierce damage from 150 to 130.
• Decreased crush damage from 25 to 10.
• Decreased splash pierce damage from 75 to 65.
• Decreased splash crush damage from 10 to 5.
• Increased training time from 20 seconds to 25.

 
Siege Tower

• Decreased training time from 60 seconds to 40.
• Decreased Crush damage from 2.5 to 2.
• Now has attack minimum range of 8.0 .

Support

Healer

• Reduced cost from 250 food to 200 food.
• Reduced xp required from 200 to 150 from Basic to Advanced.

Structure

Civic Center

• Increased Vision Range from 90 to 100.

Barracks

• Now they cost some stone for any civ.

Embassy

• Limit increased from 2 to 3.
• Now all embassies have same cost and build time.

Military Colony

• Removed the max arrow limit.

Sentry Tower

• Decreased Vision Range to 75.
• Attack Max Range decreased to 72.

Defense Tower

• Decreased Vision Range to 80.
• Attack Max Range decreased to 78.

Outpost

• Decreased Vision Range to 70.

Fortress

• reduced batch time multiplier from 0.8 to 0.7.

Wall Towers

• Now can't be garrisoned.

Technology

Blacksmith

• armour and attack technologies have been revisited.

Iron Hero Armour

• removed the effect +50 metal cost for heroes.
• NEW! Now this technologies reduces hero training time by 20%.

Houses:

REMOVED! Home Garden

NEW! Pair Tech:

Home Garden:

•  Increases houses garrison limit from 3 to 4 and big houses limit from 6 to 8
• Increases by 20% the population limit given by houses

Home Harem:

•  -50% training time for women trained from houses.
• Increases by 20% the population limit given by houses

Elephant Stable

• Now the elephant stable is buildable in village phase.

Farmstead

• Grainfields gather technologies increase from 15% -> 15 -> 50% to 25 % -> 25% -> 25%

Storehouse

• Wood/stone/metal gather technologies increase from 15% -> 15 -> 50% to 25 % -> 25% -> 25%

Library

 NEW! Improved Siege Tower

• Defense tower technology "Crenellations" affects also siege tower.
• Defense tower technology "Arrow Shooters" affects also siege tower.
• Defense tower technology "Murder Holes" affects also siege tower.
• Defense tower technology "Sturdy Foundations" affects also siege tower.

Fortress / Siege Workshop

Armor plating

• Now increases also Crush and Pierce armor by 2 levels. 

Hero

Athene

Themistocle

• NEW! Now Naval Commander aura globally affects units trainable in docks.

Gauls

Brennus

• Metal loot increased from 15 to 20.

Rome

Fabius Maximus

• Now the aura has a 60 mts range.

Scipio

• Aura range increaed from 10 to 60.

Seleucid

Anthiucus the Great

• Now the aura has a 60 mts range.

Ptolemies

Cleopatra

• Consort aura range increased from 30 to 45.

Civ Bonus

Athene

• NEW! The bonus is limited to infantry citizen soldiers only.

Carthage

• NEW! Now Carthage can research a technology to upgrade mercenaries to Elite rank.

Team Bonus

Rome

• The bonus is limited to infantry citizen soldiers only.

Enjoy the few changes.

Edited November 2, 2017 by Grugnas

[Hannibal_Barca]

All the best, pal

Edited September 28, 2017 by Hannibal_Barca

[Grugnas]

13 hours ago, Hannibal_Barca said:

Update: This mod has been tested numerous times and sad to say many crashes have happened during those tests. I think it should be pronounced unsafe to use as it froze the screen for long moments before finally dying. While I admire the attempt @Grugnas is making, I think he might need some guidance with his mod. Sometimes the game crashes early on but sometimes also in mid-game and this is a lot of lost time.

All the best, pal

Hi and thanks for the interest. I am afraid that the bad experience you had due freezes and crahses are unrelated to the applied mod as long as it only modify few templates.

[Hannibal_Barca]

‎

Edited September 28, 2017 by Hannibal_Barca

[Grugnas]

9 minutes ago, Hannibal_Barca said:

@Servo, @Feldfeld, D_D_T and @mapkoc also experienced crashes while testing

could it be because the host was always the same player?

[Hannibal_Barca]

‎

Edited September 28, 2017 by Hannibal_Barca

[elexis]

That mod contains only templates and the committed splash damage bugfix. There is no reason why this should crash. Therefore every crash should be reported like a crash without the mod.

If there is no bugreport that states how a crash can be reproduced, then there is nothing that we can do.

I saw one line about SDL_TextEditing. This is certainly unrelated to the simulation and the mod, but should be a bug in source/gui/ and triggered when someone edits the text in an input field. (Since it occured in a22, I'm glad that my recent commit to the file didn't cause the crash :P)

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/ReportingErrors

[Hannibal_Barca]

 ‎

Edited September 28, 2017 by Hannibal_Barca

[Grugnas]

EDIT:  Spear cavalry seems to be still advantaged in the few minutes as long as it is able to gain enough food from chickens to get enough units for a quick raid.

as long as more tests are needed, the cavalry can still be trained from cc with no need of a required technology.

Edited September 3, 2017 by Grugnas

[Hannibal_Barca]

‎

Edited September 28, 2017 by Hannibal_Barca

[Servo]

The game works in single player. But still rushes could hardly be prevented imo. Idk what's the purpose but skirm cavalry is still hard to check. 

It's smooth. No failures. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

56 minutes ago, Servo said:

The game works in single player. But still rushes could hardly be prevented imo. Idk what's the purpose but skirm cavalry is still hard to check. 

 

I'd give skirmishers a bonus vs. ranged cavalry

[Grugnas]

44 minutes ago, Servo said:

The game works in single player. But still rushes could hardly be prevented imo. Idk what's the purpose but skirm cavalry is still hard to check. 

It's smooth. No failures. 

The purpose is to make rushes less deadly but not too slow to perform.

Which kind of deadly rush?

Starting Considerations:   1v1, Low resources ( 300 )  and small size map (often larger maps with more players kinda respect the the distance proportion between neighbors of different teams)  Mainland.

Most of random generated map share same amount of starting resources aka  5 berries bushes, something like 10 chickens, 40 starting trees in range (or the equivalent in wood), 1 stone mine and 1 metal mine.

Usually starting off with cavalry only is quite easy on low resources games as long as hunting chickens provides a temporary food boost that puts in secondary scene buildings like the storehouse and the farmstead, often built to grow the starting economy by reducing resources deliver time and because of the technologies available to research, because it allows to train 5 -6 extra cavalry units ( time and amount of units also depends by the skill of a player) and send them to raid an opponent.

(In no starting chickens maps like Pompeii [ or was it Volcano ?? ] successful cavalry raids are really hard to accomplish).

This tactic is very effective because it let enough food to the attacker to continue training workers and grow economy (mostly women because all the wood is spent into cavalry) while the defender will have hard times because men gather food much slower than women and it requires too much micromanagement in order to prevent the attacking cavalry to kill the most of the women trained. Successful raids badly slow down the opponent who can't counter attack because of his lack of workers, while the attacker is free to gain resources with the most cheap but weak workers he can train, women.

This happens even before a player has the time to build a house and benefit from the "The Loom" technology.

It isn't hard to imagine that soldiers can't be trained with no wood  and that having the wood gather spot covered with infantry spearmen and sentry towers would be the best possible defense in terms of costs/performance against spear cavalry (whom attacks require melee distance) or  infantry skirmishers and sentry towers against skirmish cavalry,  but both requires quite some wood and even garrisoned soldiers in the case of sentry towers, and that having women to gather wood is much more convenient than men gathering berries (an obvious advantage for who invests all his wood into cavalry!).

On the other hand, while protecting the wood lane is quite doable,  the "gridless"  structures placement system makes hard to defend grainfields from cavalry rushes on the very begin of the game because, unless you are really fast and precise to build a house wall with no holes (thing that is indoable in the first 3 min of game), even building palisades would be counter-productive if they can't protect the whole area around the civic center and even work as obstacle from storehouses to place near the mines. If palisades would be able of such a task, they would be too expensive anyway and in that case their use would still keep open holes into your food production.

Despite my first approach was to keep as most of vanilla stuff as possible and to use tweaks only, perhaps having a researchable food costly tech from corral as prerequisite to train cavalry from the civic center and slow their initial rush could be a working idea.

Indeed rushing with infantry is most of times unworthy because of the economy lose (e.g. mauryans are nice infantry rushers because of their amazing worker elephants! ).

Starting rushes are only 1 of the issues that (in my opinion) "over healthy" cavalry creates on the overall game balance but perhaps one of the most problematic.

[Grugnas]

On 9/3/2017 at 11:06 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I'd give skirmishers a bonus vs. ranged cavalry

Having barrack as prerequisite to train cavalry give more room to player who likes to play defensively with no need of cavalry.

Also the vision range and attack max range of most units has been reduced drastically to feel the game more adventurous while scouting for the first time.

Vanilla vision range 80 at any phase:

Monkey Wrench vision range 40 at phase 1 ( every phase give +10 vision range). infantry phase 1:

Edited September 6, 2017 by Grugnas

[elexis]

I'd also favor a general vision range reduction and increase with age 1 and 2 (plus a technology in age 1 to increase the vision range). Hannibal was not decided yet.

@mimo had similar plans right? So perhaps we can get Grugnas to create said patch(es) for Alpha 23 and start agreeing on vision ranges based on screenshots and reviewable patches (that don't have any other balance changes)?

[elexis]

(There were some screenshots visualizing different aura radiuses in D395.)

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

The vision range thing has been in DE for months and months so yeah I approve. The major benefit imho is that it makes units easier to control. Fewer things come into view so units chase after fewer things that stray into view.

Edited September 6, 2017 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Lion.Kanzen]

This one best fixes that the game can have, so you put more effort to exploring.

and one thing I ever say... more technologies, takes eesition to improved the faction is almost important as how you use military tactics.

so this affects the meta. Is incredible, but the good things are ever in the details.  

[Servo]

Vision changes is good in multiplayer games. 

My observations when testing the mod though just against AI:

1. Reducing the HP of skirmisher cavs by 20 greatly affects its OP rush (diminished). Reducing the spear cav HP by 10 and increasing its attack rate by .5 and 1.25 bonus against all cavs makes it more deadly. 

With Hannibals mod, though it takes awhile to muster mass cavalries but retaining most of specs both cavalry "raids" are still very devastating. 

As they gained experience the more they are harder to counter. Raiding is one of the best strategy in RTS and even if they don't kill it's the most annoying and frustrating thing to happen to a player if he is caught napping. 

What will be your opinion if we have a 110HP skirmisher cav and 140 melee cav but 2.5 attack rate?

Although I haven't tried Hannibal mod in multiplayer it seems less deadly and could be countered with some foot soldiers since by the time you muster mass raiders your opponent can have defensive units and structures in place. 

Btw I tested skirmisher cav vs spear cav 1on 1 and the skirm cav won with having the first strike. If they acted at the same time it's going to be almost even. 

Edited September 7, 2017 by Servo

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

6 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

The vision range thing has been in DE for months and months so yeah I approve. The major benefit imho is that it makes units easier to control. Fewer things come into view so units chase after fewer things that stray into view.

I'll take this opp to plug another idea of mine for the core game, which is also applicable to unit management and mods and how units handle, etc.: 

 

In addition to vision range, units need "aggression range." Aggression range is dictated by the unit stance. Aggressive, Defensive, or Stand Ground, and is a percentage of vision range, so they are related.

Aggressive Stance: Attacks any enemy within 90% of vision range. Stops chasing when enemy outside this range. Some berserker units, like Thracian Black Cloaks for instance, can be capped to this stance. 

Defensive Stance. Attacks any enemy within 50% of vision range. Stops chasing when enemy outside this range.

Stand Ground: Only attacks enemies who attack him. Never chases any enemy. Useful for scouts.

Defensive is DEFAULT stance. The benefits to unit management would be great, IMHO. Coupled with battalions and battalion formations, charging, etc., and now you can imagine a coherent combat mechanic that works very well.

 

I know it's off topic. Sorry.

Edited September 7, 2017 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[mimo]

14 hours ago, elexis said:

I'd also favor a general vision range reduction and increase with age 1 and 2 (plus a technology in age 1 to increase the vision range). Hannibal was not decided yet.

@mimo had similar plans right? So perhaps we can get Grugnas to create said patch(es) for Alpha 23 and start agreeing on vision ranges based on screenshots and reviewable patches (that don't have any other balance changes)?

Yes, i think we all agree on reducing vision ranges. I had also an attempt already at https://code.wildfiregames.com/D76

But from these trials, i think that:

- we should change ranges of range attack accordingly (except maybe for catapult, no units would have range exceeding vision at that time)

- we may have to decrease a bit walkspeed, otherwise reducing their ranges will make ranged units more vulnerable

And i now believe it would be much better to first start with a "cleanup patch" which would not change any values, but replace them all using relative templates: choose a basic Vision and RangedAttack Range (possibly different for Units and Structure, i don't know) and make all changes in the templates relative to it. Then we (or mods) can easily play with different settings and understand the changes, while currently everything is dispersed in tenth of templates files.

[Nescio]

33 minutes ago, mimo said:

Yes, i think we all agree on reducing vision ranges. I had also an attempt already at https://code.wildfiregames.com/D76

But from these trials, i think that:

- we should change ranges of range attack accordingly (except maybe for catapult, no units would have range exceeding vision at that time)

- we may have to decrease a bit walkspeed, otherwise reducing their ranges will make ranged units more vulnerable

And i now believe it would be much better to first start with a "cleanup patch" which would not change any values, but replace them all using relative templates: choose a basic Vision and RangedAttack Range (possibly different for Units and Structure, i don't know) and make all changes in the templates relative to it. Then we (or mods) can easily play with different settings and understand the changes, while currently everything is dispersed in tenth of templates files.

Yes, I fully agree that changing vision range without considering attack range and unit walk speed is a bad idea.

As for the templates, I noticed they are currently rather arbitrary. Therefore I've applied a more systematic approach in my mod (0abc) and reorganized the template tree; feel free to have a look at it and include parts or all of it in any other mods, patches, distributions, etc.

[Grugnas]

4 hours ago, Servo said:

Vision changes is good in multiplayer games. 

My observations when testing the mod though just against AI:

1. Reducing the HP of skirmisher cavs by 20 greatly affects its OP rush (diminished). Reducing the spear cav HP by 10 and increasing its attack rate by .5 and 1.25 bonus against all cavs makes it more deadly.

What will be your opinion if we have a 110HP skirmisher cav and 140 melee cav but 2.5 attack rate?

All cavalry now have 50 more hp than infantry, thus in late game civs with no archer cavalry will have more chances to stand to their great range and hp. While skirmish cavalry are an "upgraded" version of skirmishers with more hp, damage, range and mobility,  Spear cavalry should be strong against ALL other cavalry only but less effective against infantry, matter of fact sword cavalry is much stronger against infantry units as intended. Decresing their attack rate will make them stronger vs infantry too.. I should try different combinations of attack values to fit with 2.5 to achieve the same result they could have already. Also notice that in Vanilla version  cavalry spear weirdly have less attack range than sword cavalry,  matter of fact in this mod Spear cavalry has more attack range and their its seem more natural thus realistic.

Actually I'll consider to add 10 hp to skirmish cavalry, but what struggle me is that the strength of javelin cavalry will be too high in late game ( they gain more hp per phase up ) despite their attack max range reduction.     ( 10 hp isn't a big change though )

Quote

Btw I tested skirmisher cav vs spear cav 1on 1 and the skirm cav won with having the first strike. If they acted at the same time it's going to be almost even.

I recall testing cavalry and actually spear cav seemed to win against skirmish cavalry, but if those 2 type of cavalry can be somehow "equal" it will still be an improvement. I am still of the opinion to have spear cav as counter of other cavalry. I will make some tests though.

That's what I noticed.  By having barracks as prerequisite to train cavalry, we can have diversification of civs already from the first minutes because of their barracks costs! The idea is to allow some civs to rush slightly faster than others because of their barracks cost:   e.g.   Celtic barracks cost 300 wood and build faster than any other civ, this means that they will be able to build barracks asap ( even at start of the game! ) and train cavalry to raid, on the other hands they will have to use all their wood and the rush will be delayed a bit more,  while other civs have the barracks cost splitted between wood and stone but they build bit slower than celtics giving the chance to ANY civ to defend against a possible cavalry rush.

E.i. Persian cavalry stable is the prerequisite for persians to train cavalry and its stone cost makes rushes easier to perform, while  Roman cavalry is too easy to train because roman barracks cost 100 wood and 200 stone making the spear cav rush much easier than skirmishers. In @wowgetoffyourcellphone Delenda Esta mod all barracks cost stone and that's something i really liked, and i kinda share the opinion that all barracks should have at least a part of their stone cost.

56 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

n addition to vision range, units need "aggression range." Aggression range is dictated by the unit stance. Aggressive, Defensive, or Stand Ground, and is a percentage of vision range, so they are related.

Aggressive Stance: Attacks any enemy within 90% of vision range. Stops chasing when enemy outside this range. Some berserker units, like Thracian Black Cloaks for instance, can be capped to this stance. 

This may make sense.  Seems like units in Aggressive Stance won't attack units further than their vision range, matter of fact more than often war dogs stay idles on the battleground and I guess it is because of their short vision range.

54 minutes ago, mimo said:

- we should change ranges of range attack accordingly (except maybe for catapult, no units would have range exceeding vision at that time)

- we may have to decrease a bit walkspeed, otherwise reducing their ranges will make ranged units more vulnerable

What i have done in this mod is to decrease all infantry units vision range from 80 to 40, cavalry units vision range to 50  and archers max range from 72 to 60. In this way they will be able to shoot at max distance only in phase 3 ( because citizen soldiers gain +10 vision range at every phase) making the usage of outposts more tactic in order to help archers into having higher range at early phase.

Still I am not sure if i should change spread according to the new max range and let units aim be less accurate though.

[Grugnas]

Updated to  22.1.3.0

• Added new athenian civ bonus.
• barracks cost some stone for any civ.
• Blacksmith technologies have been revisited.
• Now citizen soldiers loot increases with rank.
• Wall turrets can't be garrisoned anymore.
• Athenian hero aura revisited.

Edited September 20, 2017 by Grugnas

[Grugnas]

quick bugfix: 22.1.3.1

now wall turrets aren't garrisonable as intended.