Proposal

[Sundiata]

7 minutes ago, Grugnas said:

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.

This... I don't think it's good that you can train 50 soldiers in a minute flat, from a handful of barracks. Assuming it takes more than a minute to conquer your enemies' base, your enemy could have an entirely new, and sizeable army trained by the time you reach their CC. If the enemy is already in your base, it should be waaaay too late to start training a defensive army.

[Nescio]

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Move the starting resources away from the CC! We've been screaming this for months or years now.

Yes, I fully agree, it would be really nice if someone who understand map file and has free time could move the metal and stone mines individually to a random spot e.g. 120 to 180 m from your starting centre, instead of always having both next to each other at about 50 m. The location of fruit bushes might be looked at as well.

28 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

47 minutes ago, Grugnas said:

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.

This... I don't think it's good that you can train 50 soldiers in a minute flat, from a handful of barracks. Assuming it takes more than a minute to conquer your enemies' base, your enemy could have an entirely new, and sizeable army trained by the time you reach their CC. If the enemy is already in your base, it should be waaaay too late to start training a defensive army.

I'm contemplating doubling the training time of all units in my mod, 0abc; this would make the game more slow paced, encourage raiding and keeping your own units alive; however, batch training and barracks spamming would probably become even more common in late game.

[Grugnas]

11 minutes ago, Nescio said:

batch training and barracks spamming would probably become even more common in late game.

I am not sure that it is really relevant as long as there are soecific units class buildings ( standing at latest structures commits ). Instead of 10 barracks training 10 infantry then 10 cavalry, you will have 5 barrack training 2 batch infantry and 5 stables traning 2 batch cavalry which needs more time.

Still I am of the opinion ( i'd go in this direction in my mod in a23 ) that a Ranged or Stable structure would be kinda meaningless from the gameplay pov since 2 separate buildings ( ranged and barracks  or stables and barracks ) would already do the job. Training 1 or 2 units per building is kinda frustrating and perhaps confusional. Imagine mauryan building barracks in order to train spearmen only or ranged strcture for archers only.. I am of the opinion that Barracks and Stables would suit the most, plus splitting the blacksmith in 2 or even 3 separate buildings will also greatly increase the number technologies researchable:

Blacksmith = melee units techs

Ranged Blacksmith = ranged units techs

optional:  Armorsmith = defense techs

the idea would be to have Cavalry and infantry would share the same Weapon techs but diffferent Armor techs  ( weapons and armors are crafted with more fine techniques and technologies )  while class specific techs could be researched into production buildings ( stables and barracks ) as result of soldier skills training.

[Nescio]

27 minutes ago, Grugnas said:

Still I am of the opinion ( i'd go in this direction in my mod in a23 ) that a Ranged or Stable structure would be kinda meaningless from the gameplay pov since 2 separate buildings ( ranged and barracks  or stables and barracks ) would already do the job. Training 1 or 2 units per building is kinda frustrating and perhaps confusional. Imagine mauryan building barracks in order to train spearmen only or ranged strcture for archers only.. I am of the opinion that Barracks and Stables would suit the most,

Yeah, I don't really see the need for archery ranges either. In my 0abc mod I've distributed units as following:

• centres: females, one melee and one ranged infantry citizen, all heroes
• barracks: melee and ranged infantry (citizen and mercenary)
• cavalry stables: melee and ranged cavalry (citizen and mercenary)
• elephant stables: worker, melee, and ranged elephants (citizen, mercenary, and champion)
• hall (limited to one, plus one for each centre): champion units
• fortress: --- (purely defensive)
• siege workshop: siege weapons
• dock and crannog: fishing boats, merchant ships, barges, fireships
• shipyard and harbour: galleys

Of course, different people have different preferences, which is why it's great we can have different mods Your suggestion to have three different blacksmiths seems a bit of an overkill, though.

Edited December 20, 2017 by Nescio
ce

[elexis]

6 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Move the starting resources away from the CC! We've been screaming this for months or years now.

With this diff it would be very easy to do so for all maps. The further resources are moved away from the base, the more they can become exposed. If their location is still randomized, one player might have the resources behind the CC in a safespot, the other one on the front. So it might add to some possible imbalances. Same goes for not grouping stone and metal mines anymore.

Ranges and stables add something to the early gameplay, the opponent is rewarded with the information which units the enemy will train depending on the scouted buildings. The effect is more pronounced in AoE2 rather than 0 A.D., since the population growth is so quick that one can quickly afford all buildings (Perhaps we should simply lower the batch training benefit). Another good effect would be freeing up some space in the blacksmith if we would move the techs to the different barracks types. A negative effect of using ranges and stables would be more clicks and more space needed to build a city.

[Sundiata]

5 hours ago, Grugnas said:

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 [that's not really true though] 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).

To be honest, I think civilian houses are the only type of building I think should be "spammed/spammable". There needs to be a credible ratio between houses and barracks. 1 house, 1 barrack is just silly. It's like people having more corrals than houses. Surely, the introduction of stables and archery ranges will mitigate this issue somewhat, but I'm not convinced it will eliminate it. 3 barracks, or 3 "military recruitment structures" per CC (after the introduction of stables/ranges) is totally reasonable. If you have 2 CC's, you can build 6 "recruitment structures", if you have 3 CC's, you can build 9 recruitment structures, and so on. But now you'd have to expand before building more recruitment facilities, which is very credible, organic, and just good gameplay. It gives you an actual reason to expand. Then expansion isn't just about gaining more territory er denying the enemy resources anymore, but also a necessity to expand your recruiting abilities. It's logical you'd have to actually do something to be able spam anything. Towers and castles are limited too, so it's not a big deal. It only affects those people who take advantage of inorganic game-mechanics, by making things more organic.

Edited December 20, 2017 by Sundiata

[Nescio]

22 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

3 "military recruitment structures" per CC (after the introduction of stables/ranges) is totally reasonable. If you have 2 CC's, you can build 6 "recruitment structures", if you have 3 CC's, you can build 9 recruitment structures, and so on.

This would favour players who control lots of territory (and already have the advantages of resources and space), penalize players who're slow to expand, as well as make it harder for players who're under attack, have lost a centre or two, and are now trying to rebuild their army.

Let's assume a tiny two-player map; both players have two centres each, player A loses one to player B, the map is too small to build a new one, and suddenly B can produce soldiers three times as quickly. Do you really think A would still have a reasonable chance of winning?

Instead of limiting the numbers of barracks, maybe buildings could ramp up in cost, making each subsequent structure cost e.g. 20% more than the previous? So your fifth barracks would cost 207%, the tenth 516%; the total sum of the first five barracks is 644%, the first ten cost 2496% together; average cost of first five is 129%, average of first ten is 250%. A farming household can be run with much less corruption and waste than a large empire. It works great in RoN (which also had resource income limits).

Or simply assign a population cost to barracks.

Edited December 20, 2017 by Nescio
ce

[Sundiata]

29 minutes ago, elexis said:

(Perhaps we should simply lower the batch training benefit)

I actually really like the batch training benefit as it rewards those who save up and think big. I think all training times just need to be increased for a more realistic gameplay. People will actually care about the well-being of their soldiers rather than treating them like disposable consumption articles. It would also make it much more difficult to defend your base if you don't have a defensive army at your disposal. As mentioned this would probably increase barrack-spam, which is why tying the amount of barracks to the amount of CC's is totally logical.

 

9 minutes ago, Nescio said:

This would favour players who control lots of territory (and already have the advantages of resources and space), penalize players who're slow to expand, as well as players who're under attack, have lost a centre or two, and are now trying to rebuild their army.

That's the point. The better player wins. Why would the slow guy win? Or why would the guy suffering from crippling invasions win? If you play better, you win harder... Once you've reach critical mass, only an enemy alliance should be able to take you on. 

 

9 minutes ago, Nescio said:

Or assume a tiny two-player map; both players have two centres each, player A loses one to player B, and suddenly B can produce soldiers three times as quickly. Do you really think A would still have a reasonable chance of winning?

No, that's the point, why would the loosing player (A) have an advantages over the winning player? Which is the case now, because controlling huge territory really isn't a good strategy right now. If you loose you loose, not constantly hiding in little corners trying to creep back in to the game when the enemy already controls 90% of the map... 

 

9 minutes ago, Nescio said:

Instead of limiting the numbers of barracks, maybe buildings could ramp up in cost, making each subsequent structure cost e.g. 20% more than the previous? So your fifth barracks would cost 207%, the tenth 516%. It works great in RoN (which also had resource income limits).

That's counterintuitive and inorganic. Scale-advantages suggest it should become cheaper to build barracks if you've already built 10 of them (expertise/experience and such), economy 101. 

Edited December 20, 2017 by Sundiata

[Nescio]

Just now, Sundiata said:

That's the point. The better player wins. Why would the slow guy win? Or why would the guy suffering from crippling invasions win? If you play better, you win harder...

No, not the better player, the fastest player. The better player is the one who can survive an unfavourable situation and end up as the victor. If that's not possible in a game then I rapidly lose my interest. I favour games which are balanced and complex.

4 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

That's counterintuitive and inorganic. Scale-advantages suggest it should become cheaper to build barracks if you've already built 10 of them (expertise/experience and such), economy 101. 

Mass production, economy of scale, and learning curve are very modern concepts which form an essential part of our world nowadays, but were absent throughout most of human history. The larger the population and territory, the harder a state could be controlled. Small but efficient Macedon conquered the enormous Persian Empire.

[Grugnas]

54 minutes ago, elexis said:

(Perhaps we should simply lower the batch training benefit)

I agree with that since the value is too hard to handle and has high snowball effect, perhaps something more linear would suit good aswell.

45 minutes ago, Nescio said:

This would favour players who control lots of territory (and already have the advantages of resources and space), penalize players who're slow to expand, as well as make it harder for players who're under attack, have lost a centre or two, and are now trying to rebuild their army.

Totally agree with this, not taking into account civilizations with military colonies counting as civic center which would have bigger advantage.

Quote

I am not against infinite barracks spam because a rock solid eco is needed for this [that's not really true though]

thats really true, you'd need all wood technologies and there are better ways to invest wood into like armor techonologies ( at this point number differences would be less relevant ).

Also, as said,  a big territory is not easy to defend since a smart opponent could simply stick around and capture your barracks.

[Sundiata]

Interesting thread..

1 hour ago, Nescio said:

No, not the better player, the fastest player. The better player is the one who can survive an unfavourable situation and end up as the victor. If that's not possible in a game then I rapidly lose my interest. I favour games which are balanced and complex.

Ok, I can agree with that to an extent. But late game sweeping up actions get tedious when "defeated" enemies keep creeping back in to the game. Especially if they have huge stockpiles of banked resources. 

 

1 hour ago, Nescio said:

Mass production, economy of scale, and learning curve are very modern concepts which form an essential part of our world nowadays, but were absent throughout most of human history. The larger the population and territory, the harder a state could be controlled. Small but efficient Macedon conquered the enormous Persian Empire.

Hehehe, I feel like we could spend an entire thread discussing this  I'd argue that the imperial civilisations in the game, although pre-industrial, distinguished themselves from their weaker neighbours through near-industrial levels of production. Roman legions or the Macedonian Phalanx were prime-examples of ancient mass production. Economy of scale allowed them to equip most of their soldiers with quality weapons/equipment/armaments. The ever expanding urbanism allowed a much greater social stratification which also sustained the same educated classes necessary to develop and maintain technologies, like siege-machines. Didn't small but efficient Macedon acquire it's grain form vast, far flung greek colonies? I agree that larger territories are harder to control though. But that also drags out the game if there's no (significant) advantage to controlling such a large area, like being able to recruit more people at the same time.

 

1 hour ago, Grugnas said:

Quote

I am not against infinite barracks spam because a rock solid eco is needed for this [that's not really true though]

thats really true, you'd need all wood technologies and there are better ways to invest wood into like armor techonologies ( at this point number differences would be less relevant ).

Also, as said,  a big territory is not easy to defend since a smart opponent could simply stick around and capture your barracks.

Having a rock-solid eco or not doesn't stop people from doing this. Can we please agree that building 10 or 20 barracks is totally ridiculous, ugly, and undesirable and not how barracks are intended to be used. 1 barrack should train a battalion of 20 units. Not 20 barracks producing 1 unit each (and game mechanics should be geared towards this). How can you even argue with this? That's really beyond me. It's counterintuitive, in-organic, unnatural and ugly. It's a cheap trick, that's all.

Edited December 20, 2017 by Sundiata

[Grugnas]

19 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

Having a rock-solid eco or not doesn't stop people from doing this. Can we please agree that building 10 or 20 barracks is totally ridiculous, ugly, and undesirable and not how barracks are intended to be used. 1 barrack should train a battalion of 20 units. Not 20 barracks producing 1 unit each (and game mechanics should be geared towards this). How can you even argue with this? That's really beyond me. It's counterintuitive, in-organic, unnatural and ugly. It's a cheap trick, that's all.

It isn't ridiculous if you mean to train champion units that require more than double of citizen soldiers training time, and perhaps it is also intended as long as there are no alternative unit recruiting structures.  Still you can kill all ranged units you want with siege towers     With the implementation of new recruiting buildings, that won't be an issue anyway.

Batch training is a feature added later furthermore based on the previous training mechanism system that intends fast training soldiers.

Perhaps if you let your opponent to invest 3k of wood into barracks with no way too defend, you deserved to lose

Anyway I think you see the issue from a wrong pov aside the "ugly same building spam", and that's obviously the units balance.

E.g. you have no chance against britons as roman and no chance against romans as ptols ( i even lost some rating by stubbornly not using romans vs ptols on purpose   ).

Expanding has its risks, and i bet that hardly someone can build 10 barracks in the middle of the map gaining disadvantage. if not, as said... sneaky cavalry his base is the way to take down the barracks with ease..

[Sundiata]

Just now, Grugnas said:

Anyway I think you see the issue from a wrong pov aside the "ugly same building spam", and that's obviously the units balance.

Hmm, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree... The ratio is totally off... It's bothersome how unhistorical it is to have as many barracks as you have houses. And yes, it's ugly, and I can't stand ugly in such a pretty game. Should be like 10 houses for each barrack, at least (in reality it would be thousands of houses). But yes, stables and ranges will mitigate it somewhat. 

I mean, come on...

10 to 20 barracks... In the same place..... Really....?          

Never gonna like that, nope, lol...

[Lion.Kanzen]

Quote

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

Yes need be outside of territory initial range, this force to explore around.

Edited December 20, 2017 by Lion.Kanzen

[soloooy0]

6 hours ago, Nescio said:

No, no es el mejor jugador, el jugador más rápido. El mejor jugador es el que puede sobrevivir a una situación desfavorable y terminar siendo el vencedor. Si eso no es posible en un juego, pierdo rápidamente mi interés. Yo prefiero los juegos que son equilibrados y complejos.

La producción en masa, la economía de escala y la curva de aprendizaje son conceptos muy modernos que forman parte esencial de nuestro mundo hoy en día, pero estuvieron ausentes durante la mayor parte de la historia humana. Cuanto mayor es la población y el territorio, más difícil es controlar un estado. Macedonia pequeña pero eficiente conquistó el enorme imperio persa.

2017-12-03 1vs1 sparta vs rome.zip 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Reduce food gathering rates and increase unit train time. Slow down the start of the match. 

For the barracks problem, if anything you want the batch training bonus to be high, so you don't need to build so many barracks to spam train.

You can also make military buildings cost more for each one you build. I do this in DE with Cult Statues, tho I do it with auras, kinda hacky.

[Servo]

Easily mass producing units or building structures will always remain less strategic. It might be ok if the mechanics is like BFME. But we want this game to be more realistic!

Building CC too far or outside the border makes the game more ugly imo. Even if it’s been done by the ancient civs but if you apply it to the game it becomes messy. It will always results to fast click winners. 

I’ve posted same issue about structure building too close to enemy borders especially static towers/forts that fires projectiles towards enemy structures as really ruining the game. 

The game pace needs to slow down. Meaning impose some prohibitive measure of spamming units/structures. Stronghold was once my favorite game but because it’s so easy to produce units it becomes so boring.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

With increased training times you disincentivize the spam training method. Either increase the batch train bonus or add techs which improve it can incentivize batchtraining. 

[Sundiata]

In the latest game, I faced an opponent (Persians) with 23 corals, 17 stables and 16 houses..... And this has become normal... It's a broken mechanic, people.. 

When your army dies it should die, not resurrect itself to full strength in 30 sec flat. There's no strategy, only who can replace their losses as quickly as possible. But I won't bring it up again if people think 23 corals, 17 stables and 16 houses is a good ratio. 

I honestly feel like I'm fighting a conveyor belt. Ford would be proud.

Edited December 21, 2017 by Sundiata

[Guest]

Imho, most of these are the result of using aoe mechanics in a VERY different game.

Just the concept of citizen-soldiers lead to many of such mechanics being easy to abuse.

Edited December 21, 2017 by Guest

[Sundiata]

Yeah, that's probably a part of it. Why can't we just have villagers as the main eco unit? Citizen soldiers are still cool, especially for expanding and quick (military) construction in new territory. But they should be terrible at gathering.. I get the impression that a lot of people misunderstand what the term "citizen" means in a Hellenic context (which is ultimately where the citizen soldier concept was derived from, I believe). Citizens weren't the ordinary labour force. Far from it, they were an elite. The aristocracy, quite literally. And they were outnumbered significantly by the non-citizens/local population/farmers/slaves. It shouldn't be compared with todays concept of national citizenship. I just think the word citizen has been misinterpreted. 

[Stan`]

I believe Hellenistic factions were supposed to have slaves instead. (The unit exists at least)

It does make sense to me for civs like Gauls. We are not making buildings like those of Lutèce more like some of a small village were you'd better know how to fight if you'd want to have chances for survival. Women did also play a way bigger role before Roman conquest.

[Sundiata]

But, it doesn't really make sense for Gaul either. Gaul had an aristocracy of Kings and princes, and noblemen and such. They had warrior classes. Commoners weren't ordinarily armed. Commoners were a tightly controlled labour force. Their society was a lot more stratified than contemporary depictions give them credit for. The Belgae even had a senate. It's not even certain if Celtic was the language spoken by the peasant masses, or if it was an elite language only spoken by the Celtic overlords. It's been brought up a lot of times, that Gauls models indeed represent village structures, instead of using the architecture of the iconic celtic oppida. It still kind of looks like Asterix and Obelix, instead of Bibracte, Heuneburg or Entremont, and we can only imagine Alesia and Gergovia, and there are many, many more sites like those. 

Edited December 21, 2017 by Sundiata

[Stan`]

Celt is a vague term though. When I went to the British Museum they actually said the term was used for basically everything from gaul to Britain's while that made a lot of different peoples.

[Lion.Kanzen]