D896 disabled training cavalry at civil centres discussion

[Lion.Kanzen]

Give less slot to infantry and more to cavalry.

 

-------

imagine if we don't want the historical background.

very funny for mods concepts as cheat units. The Balloom was suggested for some.

 

[Stan`]

5 hours ago, Sundiata said:

Also, soldiers destroying buildings by fire should be a thing. I'd love to see a bunch of swordsmen hurling torches at houses, which start smoking and eventually catch fire, then collapse in a cloud of dust and smoke  

Well to your disappointment it was decided it wouldn't be done because unrealistic. It's perfectly doable right now though. Just adding empty props to everybuilding and using the damage variations would work

4 hours ago, Sundiata said:

All the more reason for the rest of the factions to have it as well. I never understood why only they get stables. Sure they loved horses, but even the Persians were infantry heavy, training cavalry separately, like everyone else did.

The only type of factions that don't need a dedicated stable are factions like the nomadic Xiognu, or Scythians. Of the factions already in-game though, Iberians are the only ones of which it can be argued that they don't need stables to train cavalry, because they're the only really cav-heavy civ, but that's another discussion I think.

I think it was to better reflect how good their cavalry was.

4 hours ago, LordGood said:

jeez

well, that's a fair amount of work

should totally add all of the original AoE buildings too. archery ranges siege workshops

champion academys

wee

Don't need to copy everything though  0 A.D. has it's own set of buildings and it's good like that
How are spartans going ?
 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, Hannibal_Barca said:

Played a few games with others using this mod and indeed we were back to proper infantry + a few cavalry battles, not massed cavalry (although some tried)

Right, if we want a game that feels authentic, then battles should primarily be infantry-based, with cavalry on the wings, raiding, and occasionally making crucial attacks that turn the tide. Most "balanced" armies of the time were roughly 85/15, infantry/cavalry. Greek city-states would be something like 95/5, while Persians, who relied heavily on cavalry, might be 75/25. The nomadic civs are definitely the ones that break the mould, with reversed ratios.

So, while we shouldn't enforce such ratios, I think we can encourage this kind of gameplay via stats, unit roles, and combat features. Should a Spartan player theoretically be able to win with a massive cavalry rush? Sure! It should be possible, but it should be very hard to pull off, methinks. The opposite may be true for planned nomad civs. Some strats harder than others for each civ. I'd like to see a gameplay like this. Civs good at some strats based on history, but other strats certainly possible to pull off by a skilled player in some situations. Orthodox vs. unorthodox.

 

Of course, it's all harder done than said. Hence, all these mods and balance thread.  Just trying to present a theoretical framework for this stuff. 

Edited September 16, 2017 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Sundiata]

10 hours ago, stanislas69 said:

it was decided it wouldn't be done because unrealistic

Hmmm, I came across a topic like that a long while ago. I can't say I agree with the reasoning... 

How many times in history did a swordsmen hack a stone or solid wooden building in to the ground? The answer is never... Swords and spears can't destroy a sturdy structure.

How many times have sturdy buildings been destroyed by fire? All the time! Still happens all the time in conflicts around the world today...

Fire is the only reliable way to destroy buildings without siege-equipment. Hitting a solid structure with a sharpened stick is a bit silly. Even "stone" buildings like castles are predominantly destroyed by fire, because of the vast amounts of wood that are used in the construction of stone structures (stairways, roofs, supporting beams, scaffolds, stores of wood and other flammable materials like fabrics, barrels, wooden chests, furnitures, oil... Even stone itself tends to crack under extreme heat.  

Edited September 17, 2017 by Sundiata

[Stan`]

I guess the initial goal was to make capture the only thing units could do. You can set a building on fire true. But most of the time you wanted to capture a city not ruins.

[Hannibal_Barca]

But if you can't capture it then might as well raze it to the ground

[Sundiata]

5 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:

I guess the initial goal was to make capture the only thing units could do. You can set a building on fire true. But most of the time you wanted to capture a city not ruins.

I also don't agree with that line of thinking  lol....

I believe scorched earth policy were the predominant way of driving out an enemy, especially if that enemy was of a different culture. 

Capturing is nice, but should never have been made the default! It should be used tactically, to try and take over sensitively placed fortifications.

Can we all agree that units trying to capture random enemy housing in the heat of battle is one of the most annoying things in the game. At least if they try to destroy it, there is some damage, even if they fail. If they fail at capturing, nothing happens to the enemy at all... A complete waste of effort...

[Hannibal_Barca]

4 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

I also don't agree with that line of thinking  lol....

I believe scorched earth policy were the predominant way of driving out an enemy, especially if that enemy was of a different culture. 

Capturing is nice, but should never have been made the default! It should be used tactically, to try and take over sensitively placed fortifications.

Can we all agree that units trying to capture random enemy housing in the heat of battle is one of the most annoying things in the game. At least if they try to destroy it, there is some damage, even if they fail. If they fail at capturing, nothing happens to the enemy at all... A complete waste of effort...

If there are enemy units around then they don't attack buildings, unless the units are out of their vision range

Edited September 17, 2017 by Hannibal_Barca

[Grugnas]

22 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:

I guess the initial goal was to make capture the only thing units could do. You can set a building on fire true. But most of the time you wanted to capture a city not ruins.

this may be true with buildings but units trying to capture by default a siege instead of attack it is somehow confusing.

12 hours ago, Nescio said:

Well, I don't disagree with you. Personally I think removing cavalry from civil centres is a good idea (as is increasing their population requirement to two slots). However, I don't really care whether or not this is changed in the main distribution, because it's very easy to modify the game to suit my own tastes (and significantly less time consuming than participating in these balance discussions. Oops!)

modify the game is very easy. The difficult part is to convince others to play with you online with your mod.

[Sundiata]

The Romans put Gaul on fire, dismantled Carthage block by block, burned the fields between the Tigris and Euphrates...

Major powers often completely wiped out their enemies' ability to sustain themselves, usually by fire and other means of destruction. Territories could only be "peacefully" captured after enemy forces had vacated the place/surrendered, and even then, soldiers would often pillage, loot and destroy just for the fun of it...

 

3 minutes ago, Hannibal_Barca said:

unless the units are out of their vision range

 Which happens very quickly. I find I have to concentrate on not letting soldiers wonder too far from the battlefield because they're chasing women... It's annoying to me, not fun, when soldiers wonder, and get themselves killed, especially in an enemy's fortified area. Why do people think it's ok for a soldier to chase a unit all the way across the map, even in to another enemy's territory, especially when you're still fighting (concentrating on) the original battle. Am I the only one that thinks soldiers should NEVER enter enemy territory unless explicitly told to do so? Perhaps even return to the original position you told them to go to?

 

4 minutes ago, Grugnas said:

this may be true with buildings but units trying to capture by default a siege instead of attack it is somehow confusing.

OMG, the most annoying thing of all... Siege destroying your city walls, and soldiers just standing there trying to "capture" it, and failing miserably, while your walls/fortresses go down. This isn't even a matter of opinion. It's a broken feature that leads to frustration.

 

6 minutes ago, Grugnas said:

modify the game is very easy.

Modifying the game isn't easy at all, for the vast majority of players that never mod anything at all... The vanilla should be as flawless as possible. Capture is systematically brought up as confusing for new players, and annoying even for experienced players. All that needs to happen is change capture with attack as the default. Why is there such resistance against this logical proposal, that has been proposed so many times before I can't even count?? 

[Nescio]

Since this thread has gone off-topic, I might as well use the opportunity to complain about two other things:

• War elephants were *not* living siege weapons. (Have you have ever seen an elephant charging head on at a large stone wall? Exactly!) Elephantry had many functions: prestige, intimidation, high and relatively safe look-out posts for generals, platforms for archers to shoot arrows from (walking towers), and protecting vulnerable infantry against cavalry charges and horse archers (horses won't charge directly at elephants and arrows had little to none effect against war elephants); direct elephant charges at infantry formations were risky and rare. (Elephants were extremely expensive and hard to replace, so generals were reluctant to waste them in the melee.)
• The thing which bothers me most are those free bonuses heaped upon the phase advances (e.g. +10% health for citizen soldiers per age). If anything, they should be the other way around. Hunters, herders, farmers, peasents, and other villagers were valued as troops; they were used to enduring hardships, working in the heat and sun, shortages of food and water, and last but not least, they were eager to defend the countryside, upon which their livelihoods depend. Artisans, craftsmen, merchants, and other city-dwellers, on the other hand, were not interested in fighting for what was beyond the city walls; moreover, all sources agree they were unfit and poor fighters. Furthermore, cities are a notoriously unhealthy place to live, with a significant lower life expectancy, and up until c. 1900 AD, cities required a constant influx of people because mortality always exceeded birth rates.

0 A.D. flatly contradicts reality here, so this was one of the first things I changed in my mod (0abc).

[Hannibal_Barca]

While historical background is something we care about, gameplay is favoured over history and in 0 A.D. things have been simplified.

Sometimes you just don't want that 100% realistic, historic feel. You want something fun. It's why units can down buildings and many other little features..

 

34 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

Which happens very quickly. I find I have to concentrate on not letting soldiers wonder too far from the battlefield because they're chasing women... It's annoying to me, not fun, when soldiers wonder, and get themselves killed, especially in an enemy's fortified area.

I guess that happened often in history too, loot and rape - so must be a good feature purposely implemented

[Sundiata]

11 minutes ago, Nescio said:

Have you have ever seen an elephant charging head on at a large stone wall?

Well, they weren't living siege weapons indeed, but they can most definitely take down simple walls, structures, gates, etc. Still happens today, when wild elephants across India and Africa attack villages, or when they are purposefully used for demolition.

Spoiler

 

@Hannibal_Barca lol, you're right, I stand corrected  

[Nescio]

Simple structures, yes. But serious fortications?

By the way, war elephants were used completely different from worker elephants.

 

EDIT: And something else, am I the only one who thinks there is currently something wrong with health and capture points? (Especially the sentry tower.)

• storehouse: 800/300
• outpost: 800/500
• sentry tower: 250/800
• stone tower: 1000/500
• fortress: 4200/4000

Edited September 17, 2017 by Nescio
health/capture; and gate

[Sundiata]

@Nescio, you're right about not being able to take down serious walls like that, that's why I said simple. But gates are another story...

[Stan`]

I actually think that gates should have two life bars.

[Hannibal_Barca]

Nor can rams down walls like that

So if we take all that out whats to stop walls from being op?

[Nescio]

No? Why not? Philip's siege of Amphipolis in 357 BC is just one of many examples in which battering rams were used to breach massive city walls. (City walls of over 10 m are no exception; in Lugo, a provincial town in Galicia (Spain) the Roman city walls are still standing.) The idea is that if you weaken the stone at the bottom enough, the walls will collapse, and you can send in your troops to enter the city. The same principle applies to sending in sappers to undermine walls via tunnels (for which there are also many examples). These options were time-consuming and allowed the besieged to take counter measures (e.g. constructing secondary walls within the city walls, which was done on numerous occassions).

Instead generals typically prefered quicker options, such as treachery, bribery, surprise attacks, and direct assault by sending in ladders to scale the walls. (Yes! We need ladders in 0 A.D.)

And if no other options were available (e.g. pre-Hellenistic Greece, pre-Assyrian Near East, etc) the besieger could do little more than surround the city and hope to force it to surrender through starvation.

Anyway, that was not my point. Historically:

• War elephants were used in pitched battles, not in siege warfare
• Battering rams were used in siege warfare, not in pitched battles

Currently in 0 A.D.:

• War elephants can destroy most if not all buildings 1:1
• Battering rams can crush many if not most human soldiers 1:1

Personally I have no problems with compromising realism to some degree, but I feel occassionally obliged to point out when the game flatly contradicts reality.

Yes, complete realism is impossible and unwanted. If you leave out everything unrealistic, you'll be left with nothing left. And having fun is certainly more important. I'm the first to admit all this.

However, as wowgetoffyourcellphone wrote earlier, using history to bring in authencity to the game is important as well, otherwise we could just make it a fantasy game. (Introduce flying purple hippos!)

Edited September 17, 2017 by Nescio
ce

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

The Romans had a saying, "The ram has touched the wall." Meaning, that the inhabitants of a city or town have until the ram touching the wall to surrender, else once an assault has begun you are completely at the mercy of the besiegers.

 

There are some things that I've always found weird that have been mentioned here:

 

1. Battering Rams killing infantry dudes in one blow. lololol. Why do battering rams attack soldiers at all? They should be 100% for destroying buildings, not mowing through formations of troops.

2. I think War Elephant attack should be rebalanced to be something like 60 hack, 40 crush. They still can be used against buildings, but are really much better against units.

 

Give both a bonus vs. gates.

Edited September 18, 2017 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[sphyrth]

Promoting DE? I have to:
Cavalry in Phase 1 - You get to have only 1, they should only be SCOUTS (and meat gatherers) in the early game.
Cavalry in Phase 2 - Remove the limit. NOW you get to choose if you want to rush with them.

That's the only idea I have. But it doesn't change the primary concern: Jav Cavs are OP. Delaying the rush doesn't really affect the Balance Issues.

Elephants = Non-siege Units. Well, implement DE's Flaming Pigs and we have something. Otherwise, they have to stay as a gameplay feature.

This is the game's current "Counter" System:
Rams destroy each other with 1-2 Hits
Elephants > Buildings & Rams
Rams > Buildings & People
People > Elephants

Take that into consideration.

[Nescio]

wowgetoffyourcellphone seems to agree with me on several points in this discussion. Maybe I should try out Delenda Est However, large, bold, full caps are used too often in the captions of the github README.md file to my taste. Why not change it to the usual MD headers?

# Title
## Section
### Subsection
#### Subsubsection

Also useful for itemization:

* item
* item
 * subitem
* item

 

 

 

Anyway, back to war elephants and battering rams, a very easy and effective solution is:

• Give war elephants e.g. a 0.1 bonus attack (i.e. a 90% damage penalty) vs structures; this makes them still more effective against structures than any other human soldiers, but significantly less than siege weapons
• Reduce battering ram base damage to a quarter and apply a 4.0 bonus attack (i.e. a 300% damage improvement) vs structures; this does not change their effectivity vs structures, but makes them less capable of crushing human soldiers

 

 

 

Oh, yes, gates. Currently in 0 A.D.:

• Gates (or actually converted long walls) are wider than they're high and are effectively the thinnest and weakest spot in the total walls. Such Lord of the Rings Mordor style gates are fantastic but ahistorical.

Historically:

• Gatehouses were the largest, deepest, highest, most massive, and often the strongest parts of the city walls. The most famous are probably the Ishtar gate of Babylon, now in Berlin, and the Porta Nigra in Trier (Germany). However, in general this applies to city walls everywhere from the early Bronze Age to the Modern Era when walls became obsolete. (Examples of Medieval gates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_San_Niccolò,_Florence and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holstentor ) The gate doors were typically higher than they were wide and actually relatively narrow; they were choke points and prone to traffic jams, a frequent complain of all ages. Gates were a symbol of the power of the city and were often (but not always) decorated. (In Mesopotamia gatehouses also served as the district courts of their adjacent neighbourhoods and the place to conduct trials, consult the laws, read the ruler's edicts, sign contracts, and challenge business deals.) 0 A.D.'s Carthaginian fortress probably resembles more how a gate in Antiquity would have looked like than 0 A.D.'s Carthaginian gate. When generals had to breach the city walls they looked for a weak spot (harbours, sewers, unfinished wall sections) and this seldom was the city gate.
• City walls were amongst the most expensive (and durable) structures and could easily take years to construct (for comparison, palisades and fortified army camps could be erected in an afternoon, a decent fortress in a matter of weeks). 0 A.D.'s walls are too cheap and too fast to construct.

Edited September 18, 2017 by Nescio
ce

[av93]

Rams killing units is because the pathfinding have problems with them, and a small group of units can prevent them to move, right? Elephants as a good siege units, are a Aoe tradition. Elephants can level a building, but no a massive walls or fortress, maybe a malus against them? That would need rams for elephants civs that doesn't have them. But I don't care in this area.

If finally the cav skirmishers are only balanced by stats, my opinion would be not touch to much the accuracy. I don't like to lost a fight by random generated numbers (rng)

[Lion.Kanzen]

Yes, was weird decision that still being awkward .

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

4 hours ago, av93 said:

Rams killing units is because the pathfinding have problems with them, and a small group of units can prevent them to move, right?

So, when pathfinding is fixed that will be removed, right?

Edited September 18, 2017 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Lion.Kanzen]

@elexis right?