Proposal

[Ionek]

Hello!

Firstly, I am not a native English speaker so I can make mistakes. Secondly, can you add to block enemy workers from build anything in range of my units or something like that? In most rts I can see  similar function. It's very anoying when my friends on my back build a wall/towers close to me in his castle/city or in mountain terrain and killing all my units . Also unit movment it's quite bugged in large numbers, especially in formations.

[Lion.Kanzen]

52 minutes ago, Ionek said:

Hello!

Firstly, I am not a native English speaker so I can make mistakes. Secondly, can you add to block enemy workers from build anything in range of my units or something like that? In most rts I can see  similar function. It's very anoying when my friends on my back build a wall/towers close to me in his castle/city or in mountain terrain and killing all my units . Also unit movment it's quite bugged in large numbers, especially in formations.

Nope, you can add mods to the game, or build outposts to have more control over your territory.

[Loki1950]

3 hours ago, Ionek said:

Also unit movment it's quite bugged in large numbers, especially in formations.

Formations have not been fully implemented and the pathfinder(the code that figures out where and how to move units) still needs some work it is being worked on though.

Enjoy the Choice

[Sundiata]

9 hours ago, Ionek said:

can you add to block enemy workers from build anything in range of my units

I've been wanting to bring this up for a while, but there are so many little details that could be changed, that I want discus them in a single post/list. Anyway, for now:

It's really awkward that you're able to start construction on a building within range of enemy units/buildings. It's kind of an immersion breaker, and borderline cheating, in my book. Tower-creeping is so, ugh.. Basically taking advantage of a less than ideal game mechanic, I think. Both, building a tower/fortress on your enemies' border within range of your enemies' buildings/units as well as starting construction on new structures when you're base is already overrun is just, ugh... Like sending 30 guys to rebuild a destroyed CC when the enemy army is still in your base??? Ugh... Sorry for all the ughs

There are many of these "micro-cheats" that take advantage of less than ideal game-mechanics and pathfinder issues, like using 1 soldier to lure an entire army in to a kill box. Or pressing the halt button every couple of seconds while in combat, so that all the soldiers are reassigned to the most nearby target (this should happen automatically). It looks horrendous to see an entire army cut to pieces because they obsessively chased a single unit, passing an entire army that's systematically cutting them down. 

There's a lot of this weird advantage taking. For example: Supposedly pro-players don't use walls. Nonsense! All these so called pro-players are building "house"walls" instead. What in the actual "explicative". Why would a row of houses stop an army? You just go through the backdoor, and exit through the front. Or crawl through the windows. O just kick through the wattle and daub or mudbrick house walls. But it's a little ridiculous that civilian housing provides an effective wall. Just use the actual walls... You know...  Plus house walls look really ugly... 

Ugly like building farms around the CC (an illogical AoE convention), for easy garrisonability of women and skimping out on wood by not building a farmstead (which really should be a pre-requisite for building farms, or even gathering food in general. Why is the CC used as a storage yard, when a storehouse is one of the earliest structures you need to build anyway??)...  

I derive no pleasure from defeating an enemy like this, and "pro-players" destroy "noobs", because the noobs don't know about these "faulty" mechanics. How is that fun? A lot of the "pro-players" depend on the ignorance of their opponents to win... This is supposed to be a strategy game, not a take-advantage-of-mechanics-that-new-players-can't-possibly-know-about game, because this stuff is not clearly written down anywhere. That's cheating, i.m.o...

At least, their should be a strategy and tactical guide that explains the mechanics that should be looked out for, like: diminishing farm returns, embedding women with your workers, and the effect of experience on gather rates, garrisoning ships with siege and units so they actually become effective, never using formation when fighting, the effectiveness of kiting, the amazing efficiency with which women can take out battering rams... Those kind of things... Ideally, you should have easy access to this info in game, like a question mark button with each unit/building that brings up a pop-up message explaining all the specifics about that unit/building.

Edited December 16, 2017 by Sundiata

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

20 hours ago, Sundiata said:

I've been wanting to bring this up for a while, but there are so many little details that could be changed, that I want discus them in a single post/list. Anyway, for now:

It's really awkward that you're able to start construction on a building within range of enemy units/buildings. It's kind of an immersion breaker, and borderline cheating, in my book. Tower-creeping is so, ugh.. Basically taking advantage of a less than ideal game mechanic, I think. Both, building a tower/fortress on your enemies' border within range of your enemies' buildings/units as well as starting construction on new structures when you're base is already overrun is just, ugh... Like sending 30 guys to rebuild a destroyed CC when the enemy army is still in your base??? Ugh... Sorry for all the ughs

There are many of these "micro-cheats" that take advantage of less than ideal game-mechanics and pathfinder issues, like using 1 soldier to lure an entire army in to a kill box. Or pressing the halt button every couple of seconds while in combat, so that all the soldiers are reassigned to the most nearby target (this should happen automatically). It looks horrendous to see an entire army cut to pieces because they obsessively chased a single unit, passing an entire army that's systematically cutting them down.

One could say part of the game is about managing your army's movements efficiently, but you're right in that it is currently very difficult to do this. Right now, at default stance every one of your units are berserkers who chase after and attack anything they come across within vision range. IMHO, there needs to be an "offense range" that is separate from vision range. First, remove "Violent" stance, as there is little difference between it and Aggressive. Now, make the offense range for Aggressive, Defensive, and Stand Ground be a percentage of vision range. Aggressive is attack anything within 90% of vision range and chase until target flees outside that range. Defensive should be default, at 60% of vision range and chase target to 75% of vision range. Stand Ground is something like 5% of vision range and no chase. These values are for melee units, as for ranged units you'd want somewhat different behavior. But you get the idea. This makes the units more controllable, instead of them constantly berserking anything and everything. And if the game used battalions, you could reduce the number of range calls by basing these offense and vision ranges on the battalion as a whole instead of on a soldier-by-soldier basis.

There's a lot of this weird advantage taking. For example: Supposedly pro-players don't use walls. Nonsense! All these so called pro-players are building "house"walls" instead. What in the actual "explicative". Why would a row of houses stop an army? You just go through the backdoor, and exit through the front. Or crawl through the windows. O just kick through the wattle and daub or mudbrick house walls. But it's a little ridiculous that civilian housing provides an effective wall. Just use the actual walls... You know...  Plus house walls look really ugly... 

I agree. They're basically just taking advantage of weird game mechanics. The game should encourage the building of actual towns, instead of this here that you mention: 

Ugly like building farms around the CC (an illogical AoE convention), for easy garrisonability of women and skimping out on wood by not building a farmstead (which really should be a pre-requisite for building farms, or even gathering food in general. Why is the CC used as a storage yard, when a storehouse is one of the earliest structures you need to build anyway??)...  

Yep. The game should strongly encourage the building of farms out away from the city's center. Maybe not forbid building them there, but farms should be really inefficient when built right in the middle of town. About removing the dropsite ability from the CC, I tried this out and it was hard to get the AOE out of my head. My brain always just assumed the CC would be a dropsite and became annoyed when units wouldn't drop resources there. It was difficult to untrain this expectation from my brain. What I would do instead is just move starting resources out away from the starting CC to strongly encourage building Storehouses and Farmstead instead of relying on the CC so much as a dropsite. The current game setup with a boatload of resources bunched up against the starting CC reminds me so much of Starcraft. 0 A.D. shouldn't be Starcraft in this regard. The CC is the founding of a city, not a stone quarry. It's also why in DE I have moved the major resource gatherer unit's training to Storehouses and Farmsteads: Slaves. Male Citizens are trained from the CC, while Female Citizens are trained from houses*. 

*I'd like to combine the Male and Female units into one unit, but it's currently not possible to do it in the way I'd like, so for now they reside as separate units.

 

I derive no pleasure from defeating an enemy like this, and "pro-players" destroy "noobs", because the noobs don't know about these "faulty" mechanics. How is that fun? A lot of the "pro-players" depend on the ignorance of their opponents to win... This is supposed to be a strategy game, not a take-advantage-of-mechanics-that-new-players-can't-possibly-know-about game, because this stuff is not clearly written down anywhere. That's cheating, i.m.o...

At least, their should be a strategy and tactical guide that explains the mechanics that should be looked out for, like: diminishing farm returns, embedding women with your workers, and the effect of experience on gather rates, garrisoning ships with siege and units so they actually become effective, never using formation when fighting, the effectiveness of kiting, the amazing efficiency with which women can take out battering rams... Those kind of things... Ideally, you should have easy access to this info in game, like a question mark button with each unit/building that brings up a pop-up message explaining all the specifics about that unit/building.

I agree that some of these things can remain and should be explained better in the game. While others should just be eliminated or modified.

 

[Sundiata]

8 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

One could say part of the game is about managing your army's movements efficiently, but you're right in that it is currently very difficult to do this. Right now, at default stance every one of your units are berserkers who chase after and attack anything they come across within vision range. IMHO, there needs to be an "offense range" that is separate from vision range. First, remove "Violent" stance, as there is little difference between it and Aggressive. Now, make the offense range for Aggressive, Defensive, and Stand Ground be a percentage of vision range. Aggressive is attack anything within 90% of vision range and chase until target flees outside that range. Defensive should be default, at 60% of vision range and chase target to 75% of vision range. Stand Ground is something like 5% of vision range and no chase. These values are for melee units, as for ranged units you'd want somewhat different behavior. But you get the idea. This makes the units more controllable, instead of them constantly berserking anything and everything. And if the game used battalions, you could reduce the number of range calls by basing these offense and vision ranges on the battalion as a whole instead of on a soldier-by-soldier basis.

Yes, yes, yes... This would make units behave much more logically/naturally. Right now they are all indeed berserkers, lol! This Berserker attitude often messes up my stealthy tactics, and "non-agression policy" in my early game. 

• "But just put your units in defensive/passive/ stand ground": no thanks, those stances are 1 way ticket to getting slaughtered. I like my soldiers to defend each other no matter what, not be picked of one by one or be kited to death... But that doesn't mean they should chase uncatchable enemies across the map when I leave them alone for half a minute..
• "If you don't like fighting in early game, use ceasefire": no thanks, it's very gratifying to see your enemies slaughter each-other while you try to maintain peace. Peace should be earned  

 

8 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

The game should encourage the building of actual towns, instead of this here that you mention: 

Yes please... A total disregard for town aesthetics is currently the way to go if you want to win a MP match. Building a town with a logical/natural layout is totally penalised right now.. In fact, experienced online players ridicule noobs for their "sim-cities".. When a logical town layout invites ridicule, that should be a red light.

 

8 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Yep. The game should strongly encourage the building of farms out away from the city's center. Maybe not forbid building them there, but farms should be really inefficient when built right in the middle of town. About removing the dropsite ability from the CC, I tried this out and it was hard to get the AOE out of my head. My brain always just assumed the CC would be a dropsite and became annoyed when units wouldn't drop resources there. It was difficult to untrain this expectation from my brain. What I would do instead is just move starting resources out away from the starting CC to strongly encourage building Storehouses and Farmstead instead of relying on the CC so much as a dropsite. The current game setup with a boatload of resources bunched up against the starting CC reminds me so much of Starcraft. 0 A.D. shouldn't be Starcraft in this regard. The CC is the founding of a city, not a stone quarry. It's also why in DE I have moved the major resource gatherer unit's training to Storehouses and Farmsteads: Slaves. Male Citizens are trained from the CC, while Female Citizens are trained from houses*. 

yes please, I'm trying to make a map according to these considerations. I like a lot of those mechanics from DE. They're much more logical/immersive. I was thinking that the CC could be programmed to only be able to store a nominal amount of each resource, like max 200 of every resource. Then the CC can still be used in very early game, or emergencies or when setting up a new territory, but the moment you want to train 5 units at a time, or build barracks, you're going to have set up storehouse and farm to store more resources. When CC is full, you'd get a message like: "CC stores are full, build a storehouse to store more resources or a farmstead to store more food"

 

8 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

*I'd like to combine the Male and Female units into one unit, but it's currently not possible to do it in the way I'd like, so for now they reside as separate units.

Would be so nice. We really need this, I think. Having 100% of dedicated eco units being women makes me cringe. "But, but, what about citizen soldiers?" people watch too many movies, I think... 300 was a really terrible movie people... Absolutely terrible... Really bad... Even propagandistic... Read about Helots, and realise every single civ in the game had a similar civilian plebeian population. Warrior cultures where all the men are fighters don't exist outside of hunter gatherer communities... It's a Western romanticism that doesn't have any place in a historical game, imo... Even Celts had a huge non-combatent civilian population... 

 

8 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I agree that some of these things can remain and should be explained better in the game. While others should just be eliminated or modified.

Uhu..

Edited December 17, 2017 by Sundiata

[Grigoris]

On 16.12.2017 at 5:11 AM, Loki1950 said:

Formations have not been fully implemented and the pathfinder(the code that figures out where and how to move units) still needs some work it is being worked on though.

Enjoy the Choice

I agree with Sundata, that city building ends up often in too mechanic-practical ways. Multiplayer games escalate pretty fast, there's no time left to build a city with walls (even wooden one). I think some reasons are because of the unit system: every citizen soldiers can be used as full soldier, you don't need really walls for protection from enemy soldiers. Walls won't help much a more "peaceful" developing city anyway. Nowadays in fights you got the winning majority or you loose (even against AI). City building can have really low priority, expensive walls can be destroyed by masses of unorganized citizen soldiers in no time, without siege machine.. Houses are much cheaper, fast built, useful and don't cost too much. Don't understand me wrong, i like the concept of citizen soldiers, but it feels a bit overwhelming in some situations. (probably we could do a group of players for more roleplay focused city-building )

My wish/opinion on formations : every formation should need a minimum size of units, time to form, later the peoples are in a locked group with bonus/malus depending on unit and formation (speed, charge, defence, turtle, range, cap, .. , citizen can't gather in group but fight, .. ). This could bring in a counter-system "light" and open ways to divide citizen soldiers more into phases when they work like women without normal weapons, or fight as organized groups. Citizen only gain ability to fight effective in formations. Champions would just benefit by formations themself. Walls would gain influence, they give time to prepare citizen for an organized defence of a city. Non-combatant population could be made an important factor to increase the number of locked groups, to increase the possible amount of militarized citizen, unless you build champions. If you want big armies, you need a big city, enough ressources to afford professional soldiers or special resarch?

 

36 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

 

yes please, I'm trying to make a map according to these considerations. I like a lot of those mechanics from DE. They're much more logical/immersive. I was thinking that the CC could be programmed to only be able to store a nominal amount of each resource, like max 200 of every resource. Then the CC can still be used in very early game, or emergencies or when setting up a new territory, but the moment you want to train 5 units at a time, you're going to have set up storehouse and farm to store more resources. When CC is full, you'd get a message like: "CC stores are full, build a storehouse to store more resources or a farmstead to store more food"

 

Good idea. Now we can build dropsites and do research (faster gathering, ..), because CC alone isn't helpful over time (ressources deplete in area). Why not a similar system for to store ressources? If i want to store more food, i need some sort of ancient granary, or other storehouses for different material? (Question: can worker be made to stop gathering ressources if store full?) I would like this

This thread pretty escalated to a collection of different ideas

 

[Sundiata]

2 hours ago, Grigoris said:

This thread pretty escalated to a collection of different ideas

Yes, threads on this forum tend to do that  It frustrates some people, but I think it's important to get regular feedback from people who aren't super intensively playing, or developing this game every day, to get a fresh idea of what the current first impressions are, as well as "documenting" recurring requests and pointing out obvious stumbling points.

The current role of citizen soldiers vs dedicated eco workers, for example has come up so many times I can't even count. So has capture vs destroy. These concepts really don't need to be mutually exclusive. They can be beautiful complements to each other. 

The other thing is that we really need more proficient coders to work on this project, and when looking at the original design documents, they're pretty good. A lot of stuff is actually planned, but need work. That's another reason why I think this constant feedback is important. So that the devs can see what the community desires the most, for future releases. 

Anyway, having resources "stored" at specific sites, like a "storage-yard", and having a maximum resource-cap on these storage-yards seems super interesting, and could add crazy dynamics to the game.. Destroying or capturing enemy resources by taking their storageyards... Yes please  Currently, you could have 1 woman, left, but still have access to thousands of units of every resource, and technically restart your civilisation from these "banked" resources. But where are these resources banked?? Is that single woman carrying around thousands of logs, and hundreds of tonnes of stone, and "metal", plus a few thousand baskets of food (that's surely rotten by now  )?? This is one of the things that actually unnecessarily lengthens the game. If your resources go down with your town, you'll be easily defeated. But if you magically transport those "floating" resources across the map and restart your civilisation from scratch, except you have a ton of resources now, the game could theoretically last forever.

We could even have transport-carts, like traders, to shuttle resources from dropsite to storage-yard, or storage yard to storage yard. You could even let it be done semi-automatically. All you have to do is recruit transport-carts and they automatically transport resources from the dropsites to the nearest storage-yard. Now the game starts looking like it has an actual economy/supply chain.

If any of the devs are reading this, please forgive me, I know I'm crazy, but 0AD potentially has so much to offer. I see it more like a platform than a standalone game. It can really go any direction it wants to. There's millions of people out there who would die to play a game similar to banished, with actual battle mechanics and good historicity, and 0AD totally has the potential to deliver this kind of hybrid. Pure RTS with a veneer of city building and economy management. The trick is to keep it intuitive/not too complicated. It's basically what everybody (yes, the whole world) is waiting for. More than world peace, this is what people want...  Has anybody ever played The Settlers III? An old-school classic RTS game, with a full economic supply chain, and real time battle mechanics, and it's not too complicated for kids to figure out either. Was a super fun game. Every single resource (and there's a lot) are visibly produced and transported around the map by the workers. The level of logic, detail and immersion in the economy is just sumptuous. 0AD can offer a lot of the immersive elements of a game like that without braking the core gameplay (although more resources will probably mess with the current play-style), the Settlers III was played in much the same (macro) way 0AD is now. Build a base, set up an economy, train an army and conquer your enemy. It just has a much more mature economy/resource management aspect. eco units are automatically controlled by the AI, you just say what and where to build and your workers start building. You have direct control over military units though, like 0AD. Don't be put off by the 90's graphics, this game was delicious.

Please pay close attention to the explanation. How the economy in this game works is simply amazing! And this for a game from 1998

 

[Grugnas]

On 12/17/2017 at 1:15 PM, Grigoris said:

I agree with Sundata, that city building ends up often in too mechanic-practical ways. Multiplayer games escalate pretty fast, there's no time left to build a city with walls (even wooden one). I think some reasons are because of the unit system: every citizen soldiers can be used as full soldier, you don't need really walls for protection from enemy soldiers. Walls won't help much a more "peaceful" developing city anyway. Nowadays in fights you got the winning majority or you loose (even against AI). City building can have really low priority, expensive walls can be destroyed by masses of unorganized citizen soldiers in no time, without siege machine.. Houses are much cheaper, fast built, useful and don't cost too much. Don't understand me wrong, i like the concept of citizen soldiers, but it feels a bit overwhelming in some situations. (probably we could do a group of players for more roleplay focused city-building )

Good idea. Now we can build dropsites and do research (faster gathering, ..), because CC alone isn't helpful over time (ressources deplete in area). Why not a similar system for to store ressources? If i want to store more food, i need some sort of ancient granary, or other storehouses for different material? (Question: can worker be made to stop gathering ressources if store full?) I would like this

This thread pretty escalated to a collection of different ideas

 

structures could destroy trees when the foundation is placed and started to be built since most of times environment prevent an effective defence ( there is always a sneaky hole where to pass through the walls).

Perhaps a limit for resources isn't really needed since a smart player will always optimize his resources and never stockpile stuff and a city builder will build for his city good looking regardless the amount of resources he has.

But sure, a delivering system would be fun. A system where resources are delivered to near storehouse / farmstead then transported by a wheeled unit ( like a trader )  to the market or civic center and effectively gain resources. Eventually, capturing an economic building will also grant to the capturer the amount of resources stored in it ready for the new deliver destination.

What the game needs is to enlarge its community in order to have modders that can effectively write down fresh ideas even if those aren't implemented in the main distribution.

Edited December 19, 2017 by Grugnas

[Stan`]

I'm not sure destroying tree is a good idea. That looks like a good multiplayer exploit where you spam enemy territory trees with buildings to destroy resources. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

19 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:

I'm not sure destroying tree is a good idea. That looks like a good multiplayer exploit where you spam enemy territory trees with buildings to destroy resources. 

Surely that's your own territory you are spoiling since you can't build buildings in enemy territory. 

[Lion.Kanzen]

41 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:

I'm not sure destroying tree is a good idea. That looks like a good multiplayer exploit where you spam enemy territory trees with buildings to destroy resources. 

only one tree.

[Stan`]

34 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Surely that's your own territory you are spoiling since you can't build buildings in enemy territory. 

You could do territory pushing right ?

[Sundiata]

In some games the trees reappear if the buildings get destroyed, although that might be an immersion breaker.

[SirPope]

I think I've got the answer to why people put farms near the CC's and don't use farmsteads. Farmsteads can't be built on neutral territory. Building them away from the base is only possible with expansion. Sure they could place them along the border of the territory. That not only looks stupid. It is stupid from a defense standpoint. The farmsteads don't provide any real benefit to the farms other than a quick drop off point. Give them a less boosted aura similar to the rotary mill (or an hp  boost)? If it was possible to add a restriction to the amount of distance one could build outside of their territory that'd be nice. A can't be built more than X meters into neutral territory kind of thing (for farmsteads and storehouses). It'd make the game a lot more enjoyable.

As for house walls. Just reduce the hp of them. They will be forced to build actual walls if they want to stay safe (and keep training troops/workers). The house is one of the most essential thing you could lose. Force them to believe it CAN be lost to a few soldiers. Make it more realistic.

[Nescio]

Constructing walls is difficult, and the AI isn't able to cope with this either.

Quote

I think I've got the answer to why people put farms near the CC's and don't use farmsteads.

Not just people (human players can do what they like), the problem is that the AI has this behaviour as well. As for why, it's because it's the most sensible thing to do under the current mechanics.

Quote

Ugly like building farms around the CC (an illogical AoE convention)

Which is something I don't like either. I tried out a building restriction in my mod, 0abc, e.g. farms at least 75 m from centres; however, structure distance is calculated from object centre to object centre, and shuttle distance is edge to edge, thus perhaps 40 m. More importantly, the AI continues to build farms as close to centres as possible (which looks even weirder), so I'll probably revert this construction restriction (I don't want to penalize the AI). Apparently the ugly "farms around centres" behaviour is hard coded in Petra.

Another idea I have is using auras instead, e.g.:

• 50 m from centres: structures +20% capture points, workers -20% gather rates
• 100 m from centres: structures +10% capture points, workers -10% gather rates
• farmsteads and storehouses might get a slight gather bonus aura (cf. rotary mill)

The AI seems to be aware of diminishing returns, so maybe it can also take auras into account, and decide to build farms around farmsteads instead of centres.

Quote

On 17/12/2017 at 7:15 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

[...] What I would do instead is just move starting resources out away from the starting CC to strongly encourage building Storehouses and Farmstead instead of relying on the CC so much as a dropsite. [...]

[...] I was thinking that the CC could be programmed to only be able to store a nominal amount of each resource, like max 200 of every resource. [...]

It seems you're talking about two different things. On the one hand, there is 5000 metal and 5000 stone within walking distance of your starting centre on about every map. Moving mines further away to or beyond the edge of your initial territory would be a great improvement.

On the other hand, the suggestion to have maximum resource capacities, which worked great in Caesar III and Stronghold. This is an interesting idea to explore (e.g. no buildings mean you can not gather any resources; centres increase every resource capacity by 500 each; small houses increase food capacity by 100 and wood by 50, big houses double that; granaries food by 1000; storehouses wood, stone, metal by 300 each; etc.), although it would mean significantly more micro-management, which is not necessarily an improvement.

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

6 minutes ago, SirPope said:

I think I've got the answer to why people put farms near the CC's and don't use farmsteads. Farmsteads can't be built on neutral territory. Building them away from the base is only possible with expansion. Sure they could place them along the border of the territory. That not only looks stupid. It is stupid from a defense standpoint. The farmsteads don't provide any real benefit to the farms other than a quick drop off point. Give them a less boosted aura similar to the rotary mill (or an hp  boost)? If it was possible to add a restriction to the amount of distance one could build outside of their territory that'd be nice. A can't be built more than X meters into neutral territory kind of thing (for farmsteads and storehouses). It'd make the game a lot more enjoyable.

As for house walls. Just reduce the hp of them. They will be forced to build actual walls if they want to stay safe (and keep training troops/workers). The house is one of the most essential thing you could lose. Force them to believe it CAN be lost to a few soldiers. Make it more realistic.

That is proof of concept of Delenda Est mod.

[Sundiata]

2 minutes ago, SirPope said:

As for house walls. Just reduce the hp of them. They will be forced to build actual walls if they want to stay safe (and keep training troops/workers). The house is one of the most essential thing you could lose. Force them to believe it CAN be lost to a few soldiers. Make it more realistic.

I actually think this is a decent, simple solution. Houses are indeed important, but also very weak, so it does make it more realistic, like you say.

Have you checked out Delenda Est mechanics? farms can be built in neutral territory, and there's a gather rate penalty or something if you do build them inside your territory.

 

1 minute ago, Nescio said:

farmsteads and storehouses might get a slight gather bonus aura (cf. rotary mill)

The solution? Seems very logical that farmstead improves the performance of fields, no? I like this, why didn't I think of that, lol  

[Lion.Kanzen]

14 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

I actually think this is a decent, simple solution. Houses are indeed important, but also very weak, so it does make it more realistic, like you say.

Have you checked out Delenda Est mechanics? farms can be built in neutral territory, and there's a gather rate penalty or something if you do build them inside your territory.

 

The solution? Seems very logical that farmstead improves the performance of fields, no? I like this, why didn't I think of that, lol  

Basically bonus to farmstead and penalty to civic center.

[SirPope]

41 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

there's a gather rate penalty or something if you do build them inside your territory.

I didn't know that's what it meant in delenda est. I thought it was more of an 'on green grass' kind of thing. I think the tool tip just said 'fertile'. I feel stupid.

[Sundiata]

I'll allow myself to bring up another pet peeve. When playing MP, a lot of pro players build a very large amount of barracks. I've played games where my opponent built 15 barracks right on my border, and kept training 1 soldier from each, simultaneously, creating this constant flow of units. Like yesterday, I played a game where an opponent built about 10 barracks (all in the same place) to attempt the same strategy. This is obviously undesirable, and breaks common sense play-styles, like actually maintaining an army instead of treating them as disposable meat bags with pointy sticks. I'm not saying I can't handle those play styles and have destroyed players doing this, but it's arguably even more ugly and annoying than house-walls and "CC-plantations". It's another one of those micro-cheats... Abusing less than ideal mechanics. I'm somebody who hates any kind of limit, but even to me it seems obvious that the amount of barracks you can build should be tied to how many CC's you own. 1 CC allowing the building of 2 barracks, seems 100% reasonable. People building more barracks than they have houses is completely unreasonable.

The same applies to the corals. I've regularly seen players build more than 20 corals in a single territory, pumping out legions of pigs and sheep, at lightening speed. Why??? I mean, just don't, you know...

If towers have build limits, why not corals and barracks as well. You can't depend on peoples decency to play nicely. They always look for ways to abuse less than ideal game-mechanics, to the detriment of the game. 0AD currently actually favours these kind of "dirty" play styles. Sometimes the devs even cater to these kind of "dirty" demands (like adjusting unit training batch size in the menu, which can increase efficiency, while 99% of the players have no idea this is even possible, or even desirable if you actually want to win. Although Imarok said he's working on a patch that allows anyone to do it in game, anyone doing it right now is effectively cheating in my book (adjusting batch size only applies to the person who adjusted it, before the game starts, definition of cheating, anyone?).

Anyway, to bring it back to what this thread was actually about, what do you guys think about the first post?

On 12/16/2017 at 1:21 AM, Ionek said:

can you add to block enemy workers from build anything in range of my units or something like that?

Logical, no, that you can't start construction on a building with an enemy army standing right there. Something like an aura that disallows units from starting construction near enemy units or buildings. 

Edited December 20, 2017 by Sundiata

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

3 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

Logical, no, that you can't start construction on a building with an enemy army standing right there. Something like an aura that disallows units from starting construction near enemy units or buildings. 

Hmm, almost everything you've said I can agree with except this one. Forward-building is a viable real-world tactic. See how the Romans would invest a town: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Investment_(military)

 

I agree with these principle problems brought up in this thread:

1. Building masses of farms around the CC.A dumb AOE holdover. Farmlands, people. 

2. Dozens of Barracks, etc. Just another dumb AOE holdover.

3. Dozens of corrals = lulz. Just tie their number to the number of Farmsteads. This essentially doubles their price and construction micro. And, IMHO corrals should work a lot differently than they do now. I've already talked about this. It's nearly useless trying to convince anybody of anything.

4. Using CCs as the primary dropsite. Move the starting resources away from the CC! We've been screaming this for months or years now.

 

I'm not too jazzed about:

1. Resource storage. This was also in the game Command & Conquer and some of its sequels. It could be interesting or an unnecessary detail. Perhaps abstract it a bit to where you drop resources off at a storehouse and farmstead per usual, and then when it "fills up" to max amount you get the resources automatically dumped into the player's treasury. If the storehouse or farmstead gets destroyed by the enemy, they get whatever has been stored up in the dropsite as loot.

 

I don't agree with:

1. Preventing players from constructing buildings just because there are enemy units within vision range. If "action range" was implemented, then I could mayyyyyybe using action range as the construction constriction. But vision range is way too much. The public mod has insanely large vision ranges and would be a frustration for players.

 

Edited December 20, 2017 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Sundiata]

Just now, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Forward-building is a viable real-world tactic.

ok, I'll concede that point  I remember seeing the remains of the Roman fortifications around Masada. It's indeed a viable tactic, just a little annoying, but legit. 

[Grugnas]

15 hours ago, stanislas69 said:

I'm not sure destroying tree is a good idea. That looks like a good multiplayer exploit where you spam enemy territory trees with buildings to destroy resources. 

Generally Wood is easy to gather and only romans/athenians can build walls out of own territory.

Anyway in AoE  was possible to build over an already chopped tree only ( isn't possible to move in the forest anyway )

1 single tree could spoil the whole defense (it could let a hole between houses or walls) even if the player doesn't want to wall over his external forest which is the primary wood gain, thus counterproductive.

Perhaps a build time malus could be applied whenever the player is trying to build on trees if you think that spamming on enemy territory forests would be bad.  Building slower would make the task harder to accomplish and easier to detect by opponent.

( perhaps there could be a way to order workers to give priority to resources on placed foundation then gather them and build instead of delete them?? )

 

Quote

Ugly like building farms around the CC (an illogical AoE convention)

From uban pov that's wrong but there are only disadvantages into building farms far from cc. Anyway having a farmstead aura would be nice since a rectangular shaped aura would come in handy also in other applications ( like spiked wall damage over time to nearby units similar to the trample damage of Cunobeline in DE mod  ). the bell's alarm is defined into Civic Center structure while having it as ability of women would let the player to select the interested women only and order them to garrison nearby structures ( it could be useful for soldiers garrisoning towers too ) anyway there is something going on by @temple.

Quote

l allow myself to bring up another pet peeve. When playing MP, a lot of pro players build a very large amount of barracks. I've played games where my opponent built 15 barracks right on my border, and kept training 1 soldier from each, simultaneously, creating this constant flow of units. Like yesterday, I played a game where an opponent built about 10 barracks (all in the same place) to attempt the same strategy. 

I am not against infinite barracks spam because a rock solid eco is needed for this and there are many counter tactics ( also something will probably change with the introduction of new buildings since barracks untis production queue will be splitted among different buildings ). You can still sneak with a bunch of horses and capture + destroy barracks as counter tactic ( it would require 100 men to garrison into 10 barracks in order to protect them all).

Perhaps many players didn't realize it but the game is kinda frenetic since 10 sec for a soldier to train is quite low and usually using batches to train soldiers from fewer barracks helps to use the stockpiled resources and it is basically a battalion-like training system but building many barracks is always more efficient and it let you make a lot of pressure with a meat wall of soldiers since they can be replaced very fast, and this in parts kill the military strategy.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

About building over trees, this is viable if you take DE's route and have straggler trees and tree groves. Groves would not be buildable/destructible, while stragglers would be. This would make building walls easier for player and AI methinks. Groves also have the advantage of possibly doing cool ambush/garrisoning things, like allowing barbarian/guerilla civs the ability to garrison soldiers "inside" groves for ambuscade.

Edited December 20, 2017 by wowgetoffyourcellphone