Please reduce speed of battering ram

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

3 minutes ago, Hannibal_Barca said:

Change this and you'd need to change half a game to get things right

 

Perish the thought! 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

8 minutes ago, elexis said:

For defending against rams, we may also consider giving more civs easier access to sword units (or new upgrades or whatever)

Or removing that weird pierce attack given to spearmen and make them hackers instead. All civs have spearmen as far as I remember.

[Stan`]

Does that make sense ? (Total newbie in the balancing world) I guess if we consider piercing is for arrows, maybe there should be another type of attack for spearmen ? Hack only seems right if they are halberdiers, which probably wasn't really a thing at the time.

[Hannibal_Barca]

13 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

In the like 100 matches I've seen casted on Youtube, I can't remember a single player actually building a curtain of walls, but I'm not sure if that's a whole other discussion or if siege weapons should be discussed in concert with walls. 

I agree that 100 matches is sadly insufficient to form any conclusion on gameplay strategy

Also, players don't tend to record such games as they are laggy, stressful and perhaps not the most beneficial to anyone trying to learn something

 

12 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Is that even a problem anymore? 

Umm.. no - its forbidden in most games

Otherwise yes it looks awful and if backed by an able defensive force can take a decently long amount of time to get rid of (most hosts just end the game)

And while I may not recall the identity of that player, I am sure he is still around

 

11 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Perish the thought! 

 

10 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Or removing that weird pierce attack given to spearmen and make them hackers instead.

Currently spearmen are so effective vs. cavalry due to the horsemen having low pierce armour and the multiplier boosting it all

And what would be the main difference between spear and sword then?

10 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:

another type of attack

Sounds messy but I guess would solve many problems as possibilities multiply and soft-counters become easy to do

[Sundiata]

I understand that balancing is a delicate issue, but rams should obviously be noticeably slower than the slowest infantry unit. The heavy ram is pushed forward by people, it's not outfitted with a combustion engine or anything. By definition it is slower. Just think about it for a minute... How can people pushing a heavy device outrun infantry? That one unit of speed difference isn't noticeable by the way, it results in a disorrientated mass of infantry chasing the ram from behind, rather than flanking it or immobilising it by running in front of it. You often can't effectively order your infantry to "intercept" them. Secondly, it's really cool that swords are specialized at taking out rams, no problem, but it is highly unrealistic and unintuitive that spears perform so poorly against them. Again, think about it for a minute... You'd expect spears (with all that extra reach) to be quite effective at killing the dudes operating the ram. I haven't played alpha 23 MP, to be honest, but I played more than a few MP-games in alpha 22 and people were definitely complaining about rams. Mostly during the game, and I've also seen people bring it up after games in the lobby as well... Also, how are rams even capable of killing horses? You can even effectively use rams against ranged infantry if the opponent isn't paying close enough attention. That's just weird... 

In short, rams are too fast, and spears should be somewhat effective at taking them out as well. It has been brought up many times before. Rams should also have a bonus against gates. If not those things, at least make it slower at dealing damage... A siege should feel like a siege, not a steamroll... First you kill/clear the enemy army, then you send in the siege-equipment. But how in the world can you send siege-equipment through an enemy army?? Anybody that does that deserves to loose their equipment. Currently they are rewarded, however, especially if they advance with rams.  

Sure, it's a good practice to take advice from the best pro-players, BUT, I always get the very strong feeling that many people here are forgetting the masses of single players (more than 90% of the player-base), and everyone that isn't a pro-player (99.9%). Obsessive compulsive micromanagement of units, a strong focus on APM and a good command of shortcuts, as well as making the most effective use of obscure/under-advertized mechanics isn't what most players enjoy or expect from a Real Time Strategy game. You expect that from MOBA-games like League of Legends. When playing a historical RTS like 0AD, a certain level of intuition is to be expected.. You'd expect melee units to be good against rams.

I also think you can easily alienate new players by always dismissing these kind of concerns/suggestions when they come up repeatedly like this. It almost feels like calling them ignorant for not understanding things that can not be understood without asking specific players, which is unintuitive and offsetting. The vast majority of people aren't crunching numbers when they compose their army. Explaining fiddly numbers about hack, pierce and crush damage really isn't a satisfying explanation as to why you lost a game. 

If you want to ignore, disagree or dismiss the above, that's totally fine (no hard feelings), but at least agree that there need to be clear and unambiguous in-game tooltips explaining each of the most obscure/influential mechanics. Lower the threshold for players to understanding what they are doing wrong. When recruiting rams, it should clearly say what they are good against, and what they are vulnerable to. When recruiting swordsmen, it should clearly say that they are specialized at taking out siege-equipment. 

[elexis]

1v1s are over before it comes to the time of walls. 4v4s (with bots or not), it takes a lot more time until everyone is defeated if the players are similarly capable.

It's important to note that walls can accumulate successively while the unit population is limited and the area where progressively is obstructed in lategame.

From #3811 and https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/20621-good-players-usually-say-no-walls-in-the-multiplayer-lobby/&do=findComment&comment=314820

[elexis]

Also I agree that movement speed of rams should be slightly slower than that of melee infantry units, just don't mess with the effectiveness of the thing once it attacks.

[Hannibal_Barca]

45 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

How can people pushing a heavy device outrun infantry? 

Perhaps in crutches or lazy

 

46 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

A siege should feel like a siege, not a steamroll... First you kill/clear the enemy army, then you send in the siege-equipment.

A siege doesnt involve really clearing the enemy army, which is holed up and defensive unless otherwise.

48 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

I always get the very strong feeling that many people here are forgetting the masses of single players (more than 90% of the player-base)

Never forgetting, just not taking into account

Invisible majority is just that.

 

49 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

isn't a pro-player (99.9%)

This is a weird term, anyone who got basic skill can have welcome insights

 

 

And while siege might be realistically weaker, one must face the facts: Alpha 23 has seen rams seriously nerfed due to the appearance of the Teleportation feature, in which units materialize around the offending entity and terminate it before it scratches the plaster.

 

Rams are weak, needing tons of care and effort to be kept 'alive'. Slingers, swords, spears and even other rams are all factors which drastically reduce the chance of success.

Rams are theoratically best kept at the back with a steamroll army defeating all opposition and weathering missile fire while rams work feverishly to remove those obstacles (need to defend very carefully)

 

Thus, even while we might be gratifying the lusts of the greater masses, we'd have christmas card greetings listing why rams are so abysmally weak.

 

Sorry for the unfunny humour, it's a bonus

[elexis]

1 hour ago, Sundiata said:

I always get the very strong feeling that many people here are forgetting the masses of single players (more than 90% of the player-base), and everyone that isn't a pro-player (99.9%)

It almost feels like calling them ignorant for not understanding things that can not be understood without asking specific players, which is unintuitive and offsetting

It's a misrepresentation. We should be guided by good arguments for things being true or false, not our feelings.

It's not that there is a choice between optimizing the game for the top 1% or the 99%, it's that the best players have the most experience, seen the most things to get a clear view of the game mechanics and balance to understand the needs of every player, experienced and inexperienced. It's in everyones interest that games don't end up with one unit or structure being spammed and the rest being useless. If there is a thing where experienced players don't complain about but inexperienced ones do, it seems to be a matter of missing information, such as was intended to be provided by tutorials.

1 hour ago, Sundiata said:

Lower the threshold for players to understanding what they are doing wrong

That.

1 hour ago, Sundiata said:

When recruiting swordsmen, it should clearly say that they are specialized at taking out siege-equipment.

In that case I might call players that what you mentioned above if they request us to change the game without having read the current attack and armor stats of the units they use.

If one had a problem with destroying rams, one looks at the armor statistics of rams and notices they have 99% pierce armor or such but only very few hack and pierce armor. Next, one looks at ones own units and checks which units have more hack and crush attack. One should learn by mistakes, not request the game to change if one does a mistake.

The counters to units is not a fixed list and can change with every tempalte chane. Swordsmen are one example, elephants are also good, even spear cavalry or outnumbering catapults.

While one can add a number of tooltips to these units for rams, one runs into the same problem with the next best unit that one doesn't know how to counter.

The missing piece of information might or might not be how our attack model actually works (pierce / hack / crush damage and armor model).

It can be easy to lose a match against an AI or a human who wins by outnumbering one and then instead blames the unit that was outnumbering one. It really depends on the individual match why a player has lost.

I have seen a lot of players have a terrible economy, don't train 5 units at a time but 1 by 1, don't research economic upgrades or phases, build storehouses far away from the resources and thus might not be able to reach age 3 as quick as the human or AI opponent to counter the siege warfare effectively. So just because one is bombarded with lots of different balancing requests doesn't mean they are all right (in particular if some of the requests are mutually exclusive).

I didn't say that the game balance shouldn't be changed, I was merely answering to andy5995 why I don't want to review a patch that changes the balancing while we don't have unambiguous evidence of an 'OP' unit. While movement speed might  not change balancing that much,  attack and armor stats are very volatile. I don't feel capable to judge a balancing patch without investing much time with other players to have something that works for 100% of the players. I don't need someone to change a number, I need someone credible that knows that this number is the best one and actually exhausted the evidence for that (at least if you're working on a unit that is central to the gameplay, such as siege engines).

2 hours ago, Sundiata said:

The vast majority of people aren't crunching numbers when they compose their army.

Explaining fiddly numbers about hack, pierce and crush damage really isn't a satisfying explanation as to why you lost a game

Why one lost can best be found by watching the replay.

If the opponent outnumbers one and one didn't have the hard-counters to that unit, the opponent clearly should win. While not everyone knows about the snowballing effect of Lanchesters Law, I assume everyone knows that one can't beat someone with 50 units if one has only 30 units of the same type. If the numbers were equal but the unit types differed, it should also be clear that the units have properties that make them stronger or weaker. Where would they be seen other than the tooltip?

I'm losing many games, but it's because I'm not good enough at it, not because the game is imbalanced. Consequence? I continue to play with the better players because I want to be challenged. If I want to increase my chance to win, I have to spend more time on practise and theory or I can play with more players closer to my level or the AI.

Anyway, the discussion is getting more broad with every sentence rather than converging towards an implementation.

2 hours ago, Sundiata said:

Also, how are rams even capable of killing horses?

In case I didn't mention it already in this post, ok for me to restrict rams attacking other units (maybe except siege engines).

[andy5995]

>If it's player error, it should be addressed by informing the player better. For defending against rams, we may also consider giving more civs easier access to sword units (or new upgrades or whatever)

>If there is a thing where experienced players don't complain about but inexperienced ones do, it seems to be a matter of missing information, such as was intended to be provided by tutorials.

Then wouldn't it be helpful if a trac admin created a wiki page that could be edited later by experienced users? A wiki page with the title and subject "Defense against battering rams", or something to that effect? Something that new users could be referred to?

And regarding the tutorial, shall I create a ticket for that?

Since any type of balancing would take a lot of time and testing, I wanted to make those two suggestions as something that might be effective in the meantime.

[Servo]

MP wise most decent players rely on siege weapons as the main winning strategy while most pros are trying to outsmart opponent using organic units then just use siege if the opponent won’t submit to defeat. It this is the trend then it’s viable to reduce rams speed or reduce the capabilities of every non organic sieges. 

SP is the worst case with AIs are too quick and very fond of siege weapons. Playing Mil AD and the hardest AI makes between 5-8 rams per massive attack destroying the beauty of your defenses. I play against 2 hardest and it’s quite annoying, the Rams. How much more if it’s against 3!

With very few good maps for an infinite time game. Added by the AIs making too much offensive towers and forts wherever they can (IMO one of the RTS games annoying mechanics) is the most annoying Petra bot behavior. I think it’s better that these sieges are very powerful and slow but should cost really high! Realistically they are there for breaking the impasse. Rams exclusively for structures with very high damage and catapults for long range with varying degree of capabilities per Civ. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

7 hours ago, stanislas69 said:

Does that make sense ? (Total newbie in the balancing world) I guess if we consider piercing is for arrows, maybe there should be another type of attack for spearmen ? Hack only seems right if they are halberdiers, which probably wasn't really a thing at the time.

Hack = melee. In game context. It never made sense to give them a pierce attack. It only muddied the waters.

[Hannibal_Barca]

Although if we dispense with that then it should be renamed, hacking for spears is not appropriate

 

This subject has drifted off-topic

Rams could be slower but they should get a bonus something instead

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

6 hours ago, Hannibal_Barca said:

Although if we dispense with that then it should be renamed, hacking for spears is not appropriate

It's an abstraction bro.

[macemen]

13 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Hack = melee. In game context. It never made sense to give them a pierce attack. It only muddied the waters. 

I brought up this very issue in:

 

[Silier]

Add Missle attack for bows and javelins. This way pierce amror can go down and making rams imune to missles. And make repeat time longer. They will still be able to crush units staying infront of them but not so fast and there would be more melee troops available to take it down fast. Maybe give swords and spears attack bonus against them to make it faster. 

[Ulfilas]

Here is an idea to help balance the Siege Engines:

If any non-living siege engine gets down to 50% of its hitpoints or less, its speed halves, or, even better, its speed becomes multiplied times the fraction of its current hitpoints divided by its maximum hitpoints. Siege engines in perfect shape go at regular speed; any injury and they get out of step

Edited August 17, 2018 by Ulfilas

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Ulfilas said:

Here is an idea to help balance the Siege Engines:

If any non-living siege engine gets down to 50% of its hitpoints or less, its speed halves, or, even better, its speed becomes multiplied times the fraction of its current hitpoints divided by its maximum hitpoints. Siege engines in perfect shape go at regular speed; any injury and they get out of step

IMO, that makes it too complex. And why should a piece of wood (oversimplified, but you get the point) moves slowly when a human soldier can sprint at 1 HP. If its done it should go all the way.

[Ulfilas]

41 minutes ago, (-_-) said:

IMO, that makes it too complex. And why should a piece of wood (oversimplified, but you get the point) moves slowly when a human soldier can sprint at 1 HP. If its done it should go all the way.

So, perhaps you have seen the show 'The Vikings', where Floki through great effort created the siege towers that the Vikings used to attack Paris. Now these great wooden contraptions, naturally, the Parisians threw all manner of things at, and of course they were hideously damaged. Now, when moving the pristine and freshly built siege towers, they were moved efficiently; but when the mechanisms are damaged, axles broken, wheels chipped, etc etc, they do not move and work as efficiently, hence the slower speed. Obviously, then, it makes sense to have a damaged siege engine move slower.

Now, suppose we consider the living being.  Sure, a highly injured person moves slower. However, a person with a simple wound would probably not move slower, especially not in the short term. Get cut on the arm, you are still under an adrenal rush and running full speed. With a slight wound, one might even move faster (e.g. a Berserker). The concept of slowing someone down as  a linear function of their hitpoints does not then make sense. However, slowing someone down, perhaps as a function of their hitpoints if they go under some small fraction of their hitpoints, could make sense, and in fact would go along with the idea of the tactic of wounding someone to slow down a larger force. I think for playability, if a living unit goes under 1/4 of its hitpoints, its speed should be 2/3 of normal. A non-living siege unit should have its speed be (current hp / max hp)*max speed

Edited August 18, 2018 by Ulfilas

[andy5995]

On 8/13/2018 at 11:07 PM, (-_-) said:

Or perhaps we can make building destruction more realistic. All units (melee and range) could throw torches or something at buildings from a range. AoE3 mechanic for those wondering.

edit: I might actually do some experiments in a mod.

Let me know if you finish your mod, and I 'll download it and host it sometime.

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

Just my two cents on the pierce discussion.  While spears do obviously have the same attack function as arrows, melee combat has enough nuances that I don't think that it qualifies for them to have the same type of attack.  For that matter, the predominant way for a legionnaire to attack was by stabbing, but they don't get pierce attack.  The basis for how easily units can defend against projectiles should mainly rest on the shield they use followed by their armour.  If I were to calculate the ranged and melee armour of units, I would have a shield and armour value for them based on the type of shield and armour used.  For melee attacks, the shield value would be halved and with melee attacks, the shield value would be the total amount for ranged attacks.  Any attacks that get past the shield then make their way to the armour, which again detracts from the attack.  If concepts like flanking are introduced on a unit to unit level, it could become even more nuanced.

Also, I think that the wall use in that way demonstrates that there should be a change in how they function.  I would recommend making the turret aspect an upgrade to wall connectors.  Prior to that point, ranged units would have to man them like walls for any effect.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

21 hours ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

 Also, I think that the wall use in that way demonstrates that there should be a change in how they function.  I would recommend making the turret aspect an upgrade to wall connectors.  Prior to that point, ranged units would have to man them like walls for any effect.

Indeed. Flat-topped non-shooting wall connectors would be the default, and then you can upgrade the connectors to arrow towers, ballista towers, etc., with the upgrade function at a cost. It just needs the wall code to be extended to allow multiple entities to be connectors. Right now you can only designate one entity as a connector in the wallset templates.

Another problem is the insane range they have in the base game (72 meters in core game, 40 meters in Delenda Est). Also in Delenda Est there is a "Civic Spaces" range around Civic Centers where you can't build farms or walls. This would prevent some of the "inventive" wall turtling that is currently possible in the core game.

Edited August 21, 2018 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[elexis]

We had not reduced it further than archer range (72m) because we didn't want people to surround it with 80 archers and get 0 damage while taking out the thing 1HP at a time. Next you're gonna say walls could get 100% pierce armor then, maybe, yes. To be honest I don't see the problem with the current balancing (other than spamming wall turrets without walls as seen on the Dizaka screenshot, which can be addressed by having non-arrow turrets depending on the density, but even that can be torn down with siege engines easily if the enemy doesnt have an sustained economy).

22 hours ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

ranged units would have to man them like walls for any effect.

That's already the case that they have to be manned before they shoot arrows.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

20 hours ago, elexis said:

We had not reduced it further than archer range (72m) because we didn't want people to surround it with 80 archers and get 0 damage while taking out the thing 1HP at a time.

Well, archer range is ridiculous too. lol But I get your point. 

[Lion.Kanzen]

@Thorfinn the Shallow Minded what  you think about the real bows vs real defenses vs siege catapuls(range)

I really like huge range by Archers but if is realistic.

 

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