Borg Expansion Pack Mod Release V 1.0.5

[Lion.Kanzen]

please keep on topic as wraitii said.

[feneur]

@StopKillingMe If you want to discuss the merits or bad things about @borg-'s mod, please do so on specific and concrete grounds, and not just some generic "it's not the way it used to be" or "it doesn't say things this way in the design document". Nothing holds any value on its own, if you can't explain why there is less reason to mention it at all than if you can explain why your point should be taken seriously. And also more specifically in this thread, the Design Document etc doesn't really matter, what matters is the aspects of the mod borg has created and their merit in and of themselves. If you want to discuss whether or not parts of the mod or the entire mod should be included in the main game, please create a new topic to do so.

[Lion.Kanzen]

I will recommended your mod with my followers. your changes are very interesting.

• Can you check @DarcReaver gameplay design and try to incorpore some go the mod? I made a good quality document with solid arguments. Since I understand his points, I'm very open to their duggesting as well yours or Wowget.... are best guy to argue with this matter.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Sorry if my obs did that mess, but is mvk file better than heavy mp4.

 

[borg-]

44 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

I will recommended your mod with my followers. your changes are very interesting.

• Can you check @DarcReaver gameplay design and try to incorpore some go the mod? I made a good quality document with solid arguments. Since I understand his points, I'm very open to their duggesting as well yours or Wowget.... are best guy to argue with this matter.

Thanks for the recommendation.

I will certainly look at the document made by @DarcReaver. Where can I find your document @Lion.Kanzen??

[Lion.Kanzen]

I'm not sure if this is the complete one...

 

[DarcReaver]

52 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

I'm not sure if this is the complete one...

 

This one was just about the resources. My other ones should be available here:

 

Also had some other posts somewhere

 

[Guest]

The armor thing is rather trivial to implement. Not sure if that makes much sense without formations though.

[Lion.Kanzen]

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mount_Gindarus

Quote

When the Parthians got to the town, which sat on a small hill, they encountered Roman legions confidently formed in battle order on the slopes. The Parthians rushed to attack - whether this order came from Pacorus or was a spontaneous charge is unknown. In any case, Ventidius ordered his troops, who had the advantage of high ground, to attack the horse-archers advancing up the slope. The horse-archers were forced into close-quartered combat against the legionaries and suffered heavily for it, for they were unsuited for such combat. The Parthian cavalry's will eventually broke and panic spread, many of the horse archers being driven down the slope where they crashed into their fellows in their desperation to escape. The horse-archers eventually fled or fell. Parthian heavy cavalry, which was stationed at the bottom of the hill, was enveloped and surrounded by the legionaries. Instead of immediately attacking with the legionaries, Ventidius made use of his slingers to rain down projectiles on the Parthian heavy cavalry, which included Pacorus himself. 

Who vs Who?  can a army of slingers defeat an army of Cataphracts?

Edited June 10, 2019 by Lion.Kanzen

[StopKillingMe]

On 1/27/2019 at 8:02 AM, elexis said:

  On 1/17/2019 at 11:09 AM, borg- said:

I have as main objective that this patch / mod is implemented to the a24, if this is the desire of the majority.

 

[borg-]

Thank you for keeping this in evidence.

[StopKillingMe]

My feedback on your mod is pretty simple:

Giving all civs common startup techs from the CC, and removing the ability to train citizen soldiers from the CC.

IMO, this is a considerable mistake.  The male units that train from the CC are not the same for every civ, some can train skirmishers, some archers, some swordsman, some slingers, etc.  You've removed a feature that makes 0ad unique.  It now takes an incredible amount of time, and wood - to get up a barracks, an archery range, and a stable - in order to make the units that in vanilla you can make from the CC if you want.  Even worse, if your starting horseman dies, you can't create another one until you get up a stable.

IMO, the startup of phase of 0ad does not need to be changed.  Taking away the ability of the players to make citizen soldiers and Cav that can hunt from the CC is not something that in my opinion needs to be done.

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

1 hour ago, borg- said:

Thank you for keeping this in evidence.

borg  you are doing the correct thing, if this idea isn't good, probably nobodies care or spread hate. your idea left no one indifferent.

[borg-]

54 minutes ago, StopKillingMe said:

My feedback on your mod is pretty simple:

Giving all civs common startup techs from the CC, and removing the ability to train citizen soldiers from the CC.

IMO, this is a considerable mistake.  The male units that train from the CC are not the same for every civ, some can train skirmishers, some archers, some swordsman, some slingers, etc.  You've removed a feature that makes 0ad unique.  It now takes an incredible amount of time, and wood - to get up a barracks, an archery range, and a stable - in order to make the units that in vanilla you can make from the CC if you want.  Even worse, if your starting horseman dies, you can't create another one until you get up a stable.

IMO, the startup of phase of 0ad does not need to be changed.  Taking away the ability of the players to make citizen soldiers and Cav that can hunt from the CC is not something that in my opinion needs to be done.

 

Thank you for keeping mod in evidence.

Edited June 12, 2019 by borg-

[Lion.Kanzen]

6 minutes ago, borg- said:

Actually I do not care because he's doing it based on an old version of a mod that is under construction and ever changing. Besides the only one who knows about all the changes is me. That's why I used the word "ridiculous." But this is even good, it will save me a lot of time when I'm finished mod and need to do the documentation.

I gonna use my new building(s) in your mod, if you want an icon for your mod, tell me. even i can try make sounds.

[borg-]

1 minute ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

I gonna use my new building(s) in your mod, if you want an icon for your mod, tell me. even i can try make sounds.

In real I need 3 new icons and color changes in some mercenaries templates (blue to green).

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

49 minutes ago, borg- said:

In real I need 3 new icons and color changes in some mercenaries templates (blue to green).

Are you on git yet? It would help make it easier for contributors to keep up.

(I'm at work, so I forget if the mod is on git yet or not)

[borg-]

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Are you on git yet? It would help make it easier for contributors to keep up.

(I'm at work, so I forget if the mod is on git yet or not)

I'll arrange.

[borg-]

@Lion.Kanzen @wowgetoffyourcellphone

Meanwhile, if you want to help me with these two icons, I appreciate it.

Are rome vigile and vestae. Actors and templates.

rome_infantry_vigiles.xml rome_support_healer_vestae_b.xml infantry_spearman_v.xml healer_v.xml

[Lion.Kanzen]

On 6/13/2019 at 6:22 PM, borg- said:

@Lion.Kanzen @wowgetoffyourcellphone

Meanwhile, if you want to help me with these two icons, I appreciate it.

Are rome vigile and vestae. Actors and templates.

rome_infantry_vigiles.xml 1.3 kB · 1 download rome_support_healer_vestae_b.xml 756 B · 1 download infantry_spearman_v.xml 1.56 kB · 0 downloads healer_v.xml 685 B · 0 downloads

give me some time. my ageda is full. and i need download the files.

probably I need finish the water supply or see if i can do this before. Theoretically is faster, but Wow still have better specs for the screenshots.

[Lion.Kanzen]

give me some time borg-

[Lion.Kanzen]

keep In mind this vision.

 

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/0AD_The_Vision

 

Especially this, most importantly, without this, you lose the immersion.

Quote

Snares ¶

It is very easy for a game to fall prey to many of the common mistakes that prove disastrous to the games in the RTS genre. We need to keep our guard up and avoid these pitfalls:

• Fastest click wins - In many RTS games, it isn't the player with the most intelligence or the best strategy that wins, it's the player who A] knows the proper order of actions and B] carries them out the fastest. People that practice a general procedure that is usually rewarding and know keyboard shortcuts should be slightly advantaged, and they will still be required; but, the if the opponent recognises their 'cookie cutter' gameplay, they should easily be able to outwit them by identifying and countering the unoriginal/over-used tactics with an effective counteractive strategy.
• Single path to victory - It seems to be a trend that games cater to a specific strategy that is frequently used to attain a victory. That could be rushing, turtling, booming, etc. We recognise these are valid ways to win a game, but we will attempt to not favour one over another. Players should be able to successfully use (and adapt/change) any strategy to achieve a victory.
• Sneaky Tricks - Many games overlook some aspects of gameplay that are unintentionally (by the game designers) used to a player's advantage. Through many hours of gameplay testing, we need to identify and eliminate these tricks.

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

On 6/13/2019 at 6:22 PM, borg- said:

@Lion.Kanzen @wowgetoffyourcellphone

Meanwhile, if you want to help me with these two icons, I appreciate it.

Are rome vigile and vestae. Actors and templates.

rome_infantry_vigiles.xml 1.3 kB · 2 downloads rome_support_healer_vestae_b.xml 756 B · 2 downloads infantry_spearman_v.xml 1.56 kB · 1 download healer_v.xml 685 B · 1 download

Next time a single. Zip file is more easy. I'm working in water supply.

[faction02]

On ‎6‎/‎7‎/‎2019 at 8:10 PM, (-_-) said:

Economic growth is directly related to technological effectiveness. RoN had an "artificial" limit there. It kinda makes sense and is somewhat similar to reality. Although, I would have preferred if it economic growth was an S-curve. It gets harder to grow the bigger it gets with new techs raising the ceiling. Not an arbitrary limit that you can reach within 5 minutes.

I read fieldfield talking today about having decreasing gathering rates for each additionnal units put in a single feld, was that related ?

(it might be someone else but I read somewhere else that historical accuracy is important only as long as it doesn't have a negative impact on the wordplay).

Introducing negative externalities/decreasing returns could help to reduce the exponential growth effect. For example, we could also have a lower gathering rate for each additional units using the same storehouse. Then how many dropsites you build wouldn't be just a question of distance to ressources but depends on the number of workers using it (dropsite should then also be balanced between civ). 

    => More thinking = more fun

 

The following isn't related directly to the mod, but it might be considered while implementing changes.

I am wondering about how market barter rate are currently determined. They usually seems quite ok in 1vs1 but in tg, they often get crazy/unfair and can easily lead to game imbalances. In some recent games, I have managed to get to barter efficiency close to 300% thanks to Brennus or some additional mines. In the summary attached, I came to choose a strategy in which I would keep the ptolemies enemy player alive as long as possible just to artificially raise metal prices.

The strategy is quite simple:

 1 - Send army for direct confrontation with the mineral dependant player, it doesn't really matter if it is a good fight or not as long as the enemy loose a lot of units with a high cost in mineral;

 2 - keep sending units until the enemy can't sustain the fight because he runs out of minerals (because he can't gather it fast enough or he is running out of it, in both cases, he would turn to the market anyway)

 3 - once he doesn't react too much anymore, just turn to attack some other enemy, wishing his allies will send him food/wood in the meantime that he will trade for minerals in order to rise his pop again. As soon as it has some new mineral costly units, come back to put more pressure on him and on market prices.

With prices on minerals increasing a lot, you can basically keep just a few women on food (to use for protection against sneaky rams too), delete the rest and leave some men on minerals to gather what you will barter later. The larger your army is, the easier it is to put pressure on mineral prices, and the less units you need then on eco since you get better barter rates, the less units you loose also while fighting because you have a larger army, the less ressources you need to make new units...

Civilizations like ptolemies or athens should be very strong in team game, but sadly, they often just end up looking like junkies. Even kushites could potentially become close to fun with enough metal...

 

Changes in the way map are generated could help, this was already said elsewhere. Another fix (simple but maybe only partial too) would be to changes market barter rates determination. Barter rates of different teams should be independent, it doesn't make too much sense that how much ressources a player is bartering affects the barter rate of his enemy. I don't think they are supposed to barter together.

I also think that market prices volatility is partly responsible for the sustainability of a relatively small number of mineral dependent civs in the same team game. Markets should offer a way for those civ to hedge themself against map-gen risks. Any insurance should have a cost, but if there is a large need for barter and barter efficiency falls too low, then this cost becomes too expensive in the current version of the game (another S curve needed there??) .

Currently, traders seem like an unreliable suppliers to compensate for prices volatility (slow to put in place, hard to protect constantly...). Maybe a few other simple adjustments could be made to improve the game from this perspective, I just gave some ideas above...

 

I was also wondering about a last thing. Would it be complicated/feasible to introduce different land type on the same map ? I do like that currently wood is slowing down units and is preventing sieges from passing. Having some kind of muddy land type which simply slow down all units could introduce a fun strategical dimension to the game. Scooting would give a higher reward, range units would have a bigger advantage in fighting over this type of land etc... 

 

eae !!!

 

...

[borg-]

First I want to say that it was a great pleasure to work on this mod. I have a lot of affection and respect for this game, where many people work hard to give us some fun.
0a.d has already provided me with hours of fun and I felt compelled to give back a little of it.

Were long 7 months of much work, really most people do not know how much this is laborious. You need to always have new ideas, do and redo many things, look at historical context, test, test and test, and of course, have people available to help you in this process. Tnx @Angen @Lion.Kanzen @Stan` @ValihrAnt @Feldfeld @Stockfish @wowgetoffyourcellphone.

Well, this will be the last version (1.0.5) of the mod for the current version a23b. Just a version to fix something if necessary. Nothing new will be added.

From now on the whole work will be focused on the a24 version, where together with @elexis we will review the mod so that if so accepted by the developers, it can be implemented to the a24.

The main goal of the mod was to bring players and the community a better experience of gameplay/balance within what the game can offer in the current state of development. It is perceived by everyone that gameplay has been "stalled" for some time, so that was my focus.

As I mentioned before, even though many resources are lacking due to the current state of development, it is possible to do much more with what we have now.

I want to make it clear here that the changes made in the mod have always respected the main pillars and design documents (just changed what was really needed for the balancing to work).

Major changes/Features

- Added counter system;

- General balancing of all units and buildings;

- Gameplay slightly different for each civilization;

- Reformulation of current techs/auras/bonuses/teambonus;

- New bonuses/auras.

- New buildings/units/technologies for the respective civilizations;

- New upgrades to units/buildings;

- New icons;

- Mercenary champions units now has icons with yellow color.

- Civil centre can train only women (some exceptions);

- All mercenaries cost only metal;

- Units promoted has no gather penalty;

- Deactivated the animation of promotion (units do not take damage while celebrating);

- Hero after death can not be trained again;

- Dead animals lost food;

- Domestic animals can fatten;

- Increased number of icons available on the panel;

- Women can build all buildings;

- Promotion (advanced/elite rank) gives +10% health, +1 armour, +20% attack +1 capture attack, +20% loot, vision range for all soldiers. Healers gain +5 heal range and +2 heal/HP.

Counter System 

The system I chose to work on is simple and easy to set up for casual players or pro players.

Spearmen/Pikemen bonus against Cavalry/Elephant;

Archer/Slinger bonus against Melee Infantry;

Skirmisher bonus against Archer/Slinger;

Swordsmen all-round;

The same applies to Cavalry.

Cavalry Spearmen bonus against Cavalry/Elephant;

Cavalry Archer bonus against Melee Infantry;

Cavalry Skirmisher bonus against Archer/Slinger;

Cavalry Swordsmen all-round.

To many changes such example: to each quarter built by a Macedonian player, gain a free pikemen. Macedonian is the only civilization that can train pikemen in village phase. Sparta is a civilization focused on melee units and the only can train champions on village phase.

These and many more changes can only be seen with details in the technological tree.

 

Please, give your feedback, this is important.

 

The latest version is not yet downloadable by mod.io, it is waiting authorization.