Let's Fight - Gameplay Balance Mod

[letsplay0ad]

Let's Fight

• 0 A.D. is an open-source RTS game (https://play0ad.com/)

• Let's Fight is a 0 A.D. gameplay balance mod for Alpha 24 (Xšayāršā)

Motivation

Currently the meta of Alpha 24 is skewed towards turtling via walls, towers, and forts.

This problem is exacerbated by the advantage that archers, units that already have high range, have over other ranged units.

This mod aims to provide gameplay that is more rewarding for aggressive players and roughly equalize the strength of civilizations to allow for a greater variety of strategies.

In particular, there is an emphasis on encouraging players to utilize different strategies depending on the civilization and situation of the game.

Several balance changes in this mod were based on discussions in the "Gameplay Discussion" and "Balancing Discussions" sub-forums.

Installation

• Drag and drop the pyromod file over the 0ad start icon or open the pyromod file with pyrogenesis.exe
• The mod will be downloaded and you will be taken to the "Mod Selection" page (if not, then click "Settings" -> "Mod Selection")
• Click on the "letsfight" mod in the "Available Mods" and click "Enable" in the bottom left
• Click "Save Configuration" in the bottom right
• Click "Start Mods" in the bottom right

 

• If you have an older version, go to your local mods folder (https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/GameDataPaths) and delete all other versions of the mod before downloading a different version
• If you're still having trouble, see https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Modding_Guide#Howtoinstallmods

Updates

Thanks to the 0ad community for their feedback.

Some people have had questions about the changes or wondered about the justifications.

The reasoning behind each change is placed in brackets behind each bullet point.

v0.2.3

• Gave auras to Chandragupta Maurya and Agis III
• Buffs to auras of Pericles, Arakamani, and Alexander III
• Increase damage of melee infantry and cavalry [Thanks @borg]
• Decrease armor of pikeman [Thanks @borg]
• Increase crush damage of catapults [Thanks @maroder]
• Fixed fortress, civic centre, and military colony minimum distance [Thanks @Nescio]
• Limit of 1 fortress and 10 towers for each civic centre [Thanks @Nescio]
• Group armor of buildings based on economic, civic and military, and defensive classes [Thanks @Nescio]
• New stable technology for Britons to increase vision range of war dogs
• Buff to team bonus of Britons

Spoiler

v0.2.2

• Reduced health of all buildings [Thanks @Edwarf]
• Fixed mercenary upgrade to rank 3 technology for Carthaginians [Thanks @Edwarf]
• Removed the limit for Carthaginian and Kushite embassies [Thanks @0AD Dev Team]
• Moved Iberian monument to town phase [Thanks @0AD Dev Team]
• Have Iberian monument count towards city phase requirement
• Lowered the limit on fortresses and towers

v0.2.1

• Automatically set mercenaries to rank 2 and halve training time [Thanks @Nescio]
• Mercenary upgrade to rank 3 technology for Carthaginians [Thanks @borg-]
• Fixed health bonus to military units with each phase up [Thanks @Valihrant]

v0.2

• Increase cavalry move speed [Thanks @Valihrant]
• Increase turn rates for infantry and cavalry [Thanks @Valihrant]
• Added a minimum distance between forts and civic centres [Thanks @faction02]

 

All Changes

Spoiler

Heroes

• Gave auras to Chandragupta Maurya and Agis III (encourage use of Chandragupta and Agis who have significantly less utility than all other elephant and infantry heroes, respectively, due to having no aura)
• Buffs to auras of Pericles, Arakamani, and Alexander III (slight buff to these hero auras to encourage their use as well as strategies based on these aura bonuses)

Units

• Cavalry and Infantry javelineers accuracy increased (spread reduced since they became much less effective in fights compared to all other ranged units)
• Infantry javelineer walk speed increased (to allow skirmishers to chase slingers and archers and prevent formation laming)
• Infantry slinger walk speed increased (to chase archers, but still be slower than javelineers and prevent formation laming)
• Cavalry and Infantry archers attack rate reduced and damage increased (to have players make a choice between the pros and cons of different ranged options rather than an obvious winner with high range, damage, and attack rate as higher attack rates provide a demonstrable advantage in practice even with equal theoretical damage-per-second)
• Melee cavalry health increased (to make melee cavalry more effective in fighting and rushing as they currently are underutilized and tend to lose to massed range)
• Reduced training time of cavalry, infantry, and women (to allow players to make the choice of either rushing or a larger boom)
• Increase cavalry move speed (to enable raiding as it is currently disadvantageous to attempt in all stages of the game compared to booming)
• Increase turn rates for infantry and cavalry (allow better engagements for aggressors while still keeping in the intent of preventing dancing)
• Automatically set mercenaries to rank 2 and halve training time (since mercenaries have prohibitive cost compared to the value they provide as they do not have enhanced stats without this upgrade or the ability to gather resources)
• Fixed health bonus to military units with each phase up (tradeoff of having more pop or phasing up for a hp bonus during a fight or push to allow for more variety of timing strategies)
• Increase damage of melee infantry and cavalry (to make melee more effective in battles and encourage their use in army compositions)
• Decrease armor of pikeman (couple with increased damage to allow them to be more than sponges for damage in terms of role)

Siege

• Allow rams to hit fields and units (to allow for fast clearing of space and to prevent laming by body blocking)
• Reduce wood cost of catapults (to compensate for the inability to effectively fight units as area-of-effect damage was removed)
• Increase crush damage of catapults (to compensate for the inability to effectively fight units as area-of-effect damage was removed and have them be more effective against buildings)

Buildings

• Increase the resource cost and build time of palisades, stone walls, and Roman siege walls (to prevent abuse of walling which also throttles the game due to the increased pathfinding workload)
• Reduced arrow damage of civic center, sentry tower, defense tower, and fort (to prevent defensive structure abuse and have players make the choice between a larger army with higher damage but lower durability or defensive structures with lower damage and higher durability rather than getting the best of both worlds at minimal cost and decision-making)
• Reduced health of sentry tower, defense tower, and fort (to prevent defensive structure abuse and allow unit pushes to be more effective in the late game rather than having territory creep and turtling be the obvious choice of strategy in all situations)
• Theater buffed to have more territory weight and influence (since it did not provide a significant advantage for its cost)
• Roman army camp can produce siege engines and cost 100 more wood and 300 more metal (to allow for greater variety of strategies at a greater cost)
• Increase outpost vision when not garrisoned, but give greater vision when garrisoned (to make outposts useful while still rewarding garrisoned units)
• Allow Macedonians to produce arsenals at the town phase (to allow greater strategic variety and compensate for the loss of the uniqueness of the siege workshop from A23)
• Added a minimum distance between fortresses, civic centres, and military colonies (to have players make the choice of increasing territory via a civic centre or securing territory via a fort instead of allowing both at low risk)
• Removed the limit for Carthaginian and Kushite embassies (since the limit on the number of embassies greatly restricted the variety of strategies players could employ with Carthaginian and Kushite mercenaries)
• Moved Iberian monument to town phase (to provide more opportunities to use this building as part a combat asset earlier in the game)
• Reduced health of all buildings (since even civic buildings such as houses and economic buildings such as storehouses took upwards of seven hits by rams to destroy)
• Limit of 1 fortress and 10 towers for each civic centre (to encourage more strategic placing of forts as opposed to spamming and to prevent mass fort and tower abuse as well as introduce a need to obtain more territory to enable the construction of more castles and towers)
• Group armor of buildings based on economic, civic and military, and defensive classes (to have durability reflect costs for the same building classes)

Technology

• Reduced city phase requirement from 4 to 3 (to encourage boom/earlier aggression and de-incentivize tower abuse while also encouraging usage of other special town phase buildings unique to certain civilizations)
• Defensive towers do not count in city phase requirement (to discourage turtling and de-incentivize tower abuse while also encouraging usage of other special town phase buildings unique to certain civilizations)
• Sentry towers do not count in town phase requirement (to discourage turtling and de-incentivize tower abuse)
• Reduced metal cost of all farmstead and storehouse technologies by half and increased wood cost to compensate (since metal is scarce on popular maps and is required for many strategies)
• Reduced metal cost of all forge upgrades by half and increased wood cost to compensate (since metal is scarce on popular maps and is required for many strategies)
• Remove food cost for non-champion mercenaries (since mercenaries' high metal cost coupled with their inability to gather resources necessitates an advantage to compensate; also, since the intent was to have them be more realistic by costing gold or metal, then food should not be one of their costs)
• Add cartography to market while keeping the option in civic centres (to still allow players the choice of taking cartography in the village phase, but also have the choice to take it in the town phase without sacrificing unit production)
• Bring back carrier pigeons and stone foundations for outposts (to give the choice between achieving greater utility at the cost of a garrisoned unit or at the cost of time and resources through technologies)
• Arsenals produced by the Macedonians count towards city phase requirement (to allow greater strategic variety and compensate for the loss of the uniqueness of the siege workshop from A23)
• Mercenary upgrade to rank 3 technology for Carthaginians (to give a differentiating trait to Carthage and an incentive to try a mercenary army strategy as Carthage has the greatest mercenary diversity)
• Have Iberian monument count towards city phase requirement (to provide more opportunities to use this building as part a combat asset earlier in the game)
• New stable technology for Britons to increase vision range of war dogs (to enable them to become scouting units in the late game, rewarding a small resource investment and attention to micromanagement with increased information)

Miscellaneous

• Buff to team bonus of Britons (a slight buff to their team bonus to compensate for the fact that a significant number of healers generally appear in longer games where players have stronger economies but Briton playstyle tends towards early rushes and fast pushes)

 

Thoughts, Comments, Suggestions? Discuss!

I've tested this mod against the AI, but the best results are from real players.

Try some games with other players and then let me know what changes you liked and disliked.

Feel free to make other suggestions that you would like to see in this mod after testing it out.

letsfight_v0.2.2.pyromod letsfight_v0.2.1.pyromod letsfight_v0.2.pyromod letsfight_v0.1.pyromod letsfight_v0.2.3.pyromod

Edited April 3, 2021 by letsplay0ad
instructions

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

Hello @letsplay0ad,

These changes seem very well thought out and should make the gameplay a little more dynamic and less stabilized. Ideally, as players test the mod we could decide what parts are really good (candidate changes for a25) or what values could be tweaked. It would be awesome to see a25 take this direction. 

Nice work!

 

 

[ValihrAnt]

In regards to turtling being the meta, I'd say it comes down to rotation times and reduced cavalry move speed. The rotation times severely slowed down wood gather rates while farming is mostly unaffected. This means that players are more incentivized to train more early soldiers and less women as they aren't as efficient in wood gathering and fewer are needed for farming. With slower cavalry move speed that plays into woodlines being near impossible to raid and farms being very hard to raid, due to there being less farmers and thus them being able to hide in the CC and other buildings.

Additionally, rotation times hurt the attacker more than the defender. Engagements always happen in points of interest. For the early game that would be near woodlines. As a defending player I fight as far to the back as I can and with all my units grouped. The attacker though has to have his back units slowly traverse through the forest or around my buildings, while I can have all my soldiers fighting.

Oh, and I just remembered that another thing playing into towers and other defensive buildings seeming much stronger, is that units no longer gain a hp bonus from phasing up. If I recall correctly it was +20% per phase so that means units currently have about one third less hp in the City phase. 

[faction02]

I think the hp bonus was a good tool to depreciate the value of towers/civic centers. A phase 1 tower would loose effectiveness in killing enemy units in the late game if it was not upgraded or replaced by a fort. This mechanics made a lot of sense to me. 

It probably also contributed to reduce the advantage of archers. If units have more hp, they might cover more distance before being killed by units with a range advantage. Changing unit speed might be a way to address the issue, but I also remember people worrying about the economic impact that a change like this might have. Thanks a lot for the mod, this can finally be carefully tested.  

Turtling is also encouraged by the fact that archers are a good counter to catapults/bolts. These sieges can now be easily sniped from archers standing next to defensive buildings. Skirmishers civilization are now at a huge disadvantage in their usage of catapults/bolts. The capture/low vulnerability to arrow choice of a 23 made much more sense than the current one to me. Roman catapults could effectively destroy buildings or at least force the defender to send melee outside the range of defensive buildings.

I would also introduce a minimum distance between forts and civic centers since when the two buildings are next to each other they because very difficult to take down.

[Nescio]

11 hours ago, letsplay0ad said:

• Reduced city phase requirement from 4 to 3 (to encourage boom/earlier aggression)
• Defensive towers do not count in city phase requirement (to discourage turtling)
• Sentry towers do not count in town phase requirement (to discourage turtling)

Actually, that has already been implemented: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/changeset/25135

Furthermore, wall towers can no longer shoot arrows in A25.

I've also written a somewhat similar mod for A24 about two weeks ago; more feedback is appreciated: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/37312-balancing-defensive-structures-test-mod/

3 hours ago, ValihrAnt said:

In regards to turtling being the meta, I'd say it comes down to rotation times

Yes, I fully agree, this had quite a large impact. I don't know what would be appropiate rotation values, a lot more experimenting and testing by competitive players is needed for that; feel free to write a patch.

[Lopess]

11 hours ago, letsplay0ad said:

Siege

• Allow rams to hit fields and units (to prevent laming by body blocking)

I am not a multiplayer player, so I reserve myself not to comment much on this area, but I always feel that things keep going and coming back, I remember people complaining about how much the ram was OP and how unreal a working siege device was. kind of like a modern battle tank. This was changed to alpha 24, which is different now so that it doesn't become an inconvenience again?

[alre]

Many contents of this mod overlap Nescio's one, and I think this is a very good sign: it's fine patching. I also like the proposals about macedonian arsenal.

What I don't like is your take on ranged units. Admittedly, it's a delicate matter, because every new alpha, it comes out that ranged units are unbalanced. The problem, in my opinion, is that some day it was decided that all ranged units are one of these three kinds (archers, slingers, skirmishers) and that they must have different ranges to differentiate them, however, the slingers having shorter range that archers is not supported by historical evidence, and skirmishers being faster and able to effectively chase archers definitely doesn't go in the sense of historical plausibility. It is totally in the sense of rock-paper-scissors mechanic to have skirmishers weak against archers, and we should not allow skirmishers to be effectively used in the same way as archers or slingers, instead we should try to find a different tactical fold where skirmishers are better versed.

My proposal is simply to make skirmishers cheaper. They could even be the cheapest soldier unit for all civilizations, the male counterpart of woman villagers: no armor and only equipped with self crafted shield and weapons. Another idea is the one of having soldiers hidden in the bushes, and skirmishers could have some advantage in that kind of usage. Another change still could be to give skirmishers a limited number of javelins, after which they would fight hand to hand. Ideally, I imagine them best used in support of heavier infantry, that should not cost the same as them, but more. Skirmisher spam should hardly be a good idea, that would be anti-historical.

Also, all ranged citizien soldiers should have equal speed. Maybe champion archers or such could be made slower, as they are more heavily armoured.

[hyperion]

29 minutes ago, Lopess said:

I am not a multiplayer player, so I reserve myself not to comment much on this area, but I always feel that things keep going and coming back, I remember people complaining about how much the ram was OP and how unreal a working siege device was. kind of like a modern battle tank. This was changed to alpha 24, which is different now so that it doesn't become an inconvenience again?

In A24 sieges are still far to strong from a realism point of view, but to frail from gameplay perspective. Obviously you can't have both.

As for the mod, I like that it has a more or less coherent direction and not "there are some nobs we haven't touched in a while, so we surly need to do some tweaking".

[letsplay0ad]

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

Now, to address comments and questions with my line of thought and reasoning:

 

@BreakfastBurrito_007 Thanks! That would be awesome.

 

@ValihrAnt the rotation times indeed slow down economy, but since they were implemented to prevent dancing (something that had many complaints), I'm not sure how to best compensate for this. I think it's a great idea to try lowering rotation times though and testing it out.

Higher cavalry move speed was not something that I considered though so I'll definitely try it out. Thanks!

I also liked the hp bonus per phase up, but it admittedly came with the issue of buffing cavalry too much. Since cavalry had a higher base hp, the bonus affected them more than infantry, which resulted in some abusive cavalry strategies. I'm not too sure how to deal with this. Perhaps further reducing tower damage?

Btw, awesome YouTube videos! I watched you to learn how to get better.

 

@faction02 the minimum distance between forts and ccs is a great idea. Something for me to try out.

Thanks for the suggestion!

 

@Nescio indeed there are a lot of fun and interesting patches already committed into A25. Thanks for that! There are a lot that I like and may put into this mod. My intent with this was to have gameplay changes in an easy-to-use and download mod in A24 so that players could play test change more easily since generally most players I know don't know how to deal with version control to test the latest build of 0ad. The primary goal of this mod is actually for my personal use since I feel that there are too few viable strategies in high-rated multiplayer team games.

Thanks for your hard work!

 

@Lopess and @alre there is a conflict between realism and gameplay. On one hand these values are sometimes unrealistic (why would an archer who only carries arrows be slower than a javelineer who carries a bunch of heavier spears? the answer is, they probably wouldn't) but on the other hand you may need to tweak values to allow for balanced gameplay (for example, it is possible for archers to kite skirmishers using formations since they have the same move speed, resulting in the skirmisher army taking significant losses before even getting in range to attack. I've seen high rated players do this and basically win battles with minimal losses despite the archer army having 1 or 2 less military technologies researched).

@Lopess Regarding rams hitting fields and organics, the field issue was just so that they could be removed quickly since they block structures (eg: a cc) from being placed. A common strategy is to place a cc on top of an enemy's destroyed cc to take territory. Sometimes fields get in the way though (since generally players put fields around ccs) so rams were just a quick way to make space for that. The reason for being able to hit units/organics is because I noticed even in lower-rated games there is the tactic of body-blocking (body-blocking is the technique of using the collision size of your own units to prevent the movement of enemy units) rams using units, which results in the ram getting stuck and not being able to do anything.

What did people find OP about rams? It might be possible to have them do less damage against organic units like how spears do more damage to cavalry, but I'm hesitant to do that since there's not much of a hard counter system in 0ad other than the spear vs cav matchup.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

@alre Regarding unit speed unification, it makes sense in real life but results in the abusable mechanic I mentioned before.

Reduced unit costs is an interesting idea, but it has a significant secondary effect on economy. The boom of skirmisher civilizations would be significantly higher than that of others, leading to a rippling/snowball effect in terms of economic and military technologies as well as siege capabilities. A common strategy in A23 was to have an Iberian ally and take a skirmisher civilization for this reason, as it resulted in a much faster boom, leading to earlier research of technologies due to free resources, earlier phasing up, earlier construction of siege engines, etc.

The swapping of melee to ranged and back was implemented in the Terra Magna mod I believe. It was really cool. I'm not sure how the balance would work though. Do you want them to become spearmen? Not sure how to do limited number of projectiles though. 

Thanks for the feedback!

 

@hyperion Thanks! That's the dilemma - realism vs gameplay. Since this is a gameplay balance mod I will err towards gameplay.

Edited March 27, 2021 by letsplay0ad

[alre]

You are right, skirmishers are kind of garbage in this alpha, but of course you are gonna lose them all if you send them to fight archers! Archers are like the scissors of skirmishers paper, while it's melee units that skirmishers are best against. This is intuitive enough, I believe. Skirmishers should be buffed a bit, but they should not be balanced with archers. Better still, skirmishers could be cheaper, as I proposed, and this would have major economic consequences of course, that would help differentiating the civs. Making skirmishers faster would have economical consequences as well, but less evident and more sneaky, that's why they got slowed.

About archers kyting other units, hitting and retreating, I think that's an advantage that long range units will always have. It's an actual, documented tactic of course, and I think it's something RTS games should have. The problem is that the meta is now too oriented towards attrition warfare, that favorites archers.

[ValihrAnt]

Quote

@ValihrAnt the rotation times indeed slow down economy, but since they were implemented to prevent dancing (something that had many complaints), I'm not sure how to best compensate for this. I think it's a great idea to try lowering rotation times though and testing it out.

Higher cavalry move speed was not something that I considered though so I'll definitely try it out. Thanks!

I also liked the hp bonus per phase up, but it admittedly came with the issue of buffing cavalry too much. Since cavalry had a higher base hp, the bonus affected them more than infantry, which resulted in some abusive cavalry strategies. I'm not too sure how to deal with this. Perhaps further reducing tower damage?

Dancing was mostly done by abusing patrolling or with high hp units. Obviously you could still dance with any unit but that wasn't too frequently seen. Patrol dancing is now impossible due to set wait times, so what could be tried is having citizen soldiers with none to very little rotation times, then champions, heroes, siege, elephants with current rotation times. Basically rely on the much more frequent use of melee units to hide the issue.

 

In regards to the phase up bonus helping cavalry, it could be just a set amount of hp, say +10hp for all citizen units. Alternatively, infantry and cavalry can just have different bonus values, say 10% for cavalry vs 20% for infantry.

[Nescio]

19 hours ago, letsplay0ad said:

Feel free to make other suggestions that you would like to see in this mod.

A few proposals that could definitely use more testing:

• mercenaries: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3699
• camels: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3735
• javelineers: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3755

1 hour ago, letsplay0ad said:

My intent with this was to have gameplay changes in an easy-to-use and download mod in A24 so that players could play test change more easily since generally most players I know don't know how to deal with version control to test the latest build of 0ad.

Yeah, only few people have sufficient perseverance to set up the svn version. Mods can certainly help reach a wider audience.

[letsplay0ad]

@alre I like the idea of skirmishers being a cheap economic unit you later discard for battles, but civs with primarily skirmishers (eg: Rome and Sparta), how will they fight? My intent was to have the ranged roughly equalized so that a mixed army would be the best choice in a pitched battle, but still have differences so that rushes could occur with faster units. Something like ranged > melee > cavalry > ranged etc. For armies it would be all cav > all ranged > all melee >> all cav etc. And then a mixed army (melee + ranged + cav) > all of one type of unit.

What would your counter circle be?

 

@ValihrAnt I like the idea of fixed hp bonus. The tradeoff of having more pop or phasing up for a hp bonus during a fight or push is a choice that I think will allow for more interesting strategies.

I'll look into it.

 

@Nescio I really like the idea of a mercenary upgrade technology, but I also agree mercs as they are now are not great. What if I got the best of both worlds? Maybe have them start at rank 2, but keep the tech that will let them become rank 3 at the cost of taking more time to make due to "training".

What do you think?

[borg-]

The idea is to keep the tech just for cartage to diversify the civ, rank 3 ofc.

[letsplay0ad]

@borg- I understand. I can see how it might snowball with Ptolemies and Kushites. And I guess Seleucids wouldn't benefit as much anyway. Cool.

Sounds pretty interesting and fun to try.

[Edwarf]

Hello,

Here is my personal feedback about your change.

 

V0.2.1:

Automatically set mercenaries to rank 2 and halve training time [Thanks @Nescio]
-> Why not

Mercenary upgrade to rank 3 technology for Carthaginians [Thanks @borg-] 
-> Why not but doesn't work on your mod.

Fixed health bonus to military units with each phase up [Thanks @Valihrant]
-> I don't like it a percentage is mutch better. Instead of doing 2* +10hp, do 2* +10%hp (which means less HP for ranged infantry, same for melee infantry and more HP for melee cavalry)

 

V0.2.0:

Increase cavalry move speed [Thanks @Valihrant]
-> Why not

Increase turn rates for infantry and cavalry [Thanks @Valihrant]
-> Why not, but the dancing is back.

Added a minimum distance between forts and civic centres [Thanks @faction02]
-> Why not but i'm not a big fan.

All Changes
Units:

Cavalry and Infantry javelineers accuracy increased (spread set to a23 value since they became much less effective in fights compared to other ranged units)
-> Why not

Infantry javelineer walk speed increased (to allow skirmishers to chase slingers and archers and prevent formation laming)
-> Why not

Infantry slinger walk speed increased (to chase archers, but still be slower than javelineers and prevent formation laming)
-> Why not

Cavalry and Infantry archers attack rate reduced and damage increased (to unify with other ranged units as higher attack rates provide a demonstrable advantage in practice)
-> I prefer to have unit not unified, but ok why not

Melee cavalry health increased (to make melee cavalry more effective in fighting and rushing as they currently are underutilized and tend to lose to massed range)
-> I don't like it at all melee cavalry is already very strong in A24, this will make cavalry unstoppable just like persia in A23. Rank up HP is enough, more over in your mod Phase 3 rank 3 cavalry have more HP than champion cavalry.

Reduced training time of cavalry, infantry, and women (to allow players to make the choice of either rushing or a larger boom)
-> Why not

Increase cavalry move speed (to enable raiding as it is currently disadvantageous to attempt in all stages of the game compared to booming)
-> I don't like it cavalry is strong enough for raiding in A24, this will make them too strong. More over currently on your mod cavalry have the same speed as champions cavalry.

Increase turn rates for infantry and cavalry (allow better engagements for aggressors while still keeping in the intent of preventing dancing)
-> Why not, but the dancing is back.

Automatically set mercenaries to rank 2 and halve training time (since mercenaries have prohibitive cost compared to the value they provide as they do not have enhanced stats without this upgrade or the ability to gather resources)
-> Why not, make sense

Fixed health bonus to military units with each phase up (tradeoff of having more pop or phasing up for a hp bonus during a fight or push to allow for more variety of timing strategies)
-> I don't like it a percentage is mutch better. Instead of doing 2* +10hp, do 2* +10%hp (which means less HP for ranged infantry, same for melee infantry and more HP for melee cavalry)

Siege:

Allow rams to hit fields and units (to allow for fast clearing of space and to prevent laming by body blocking)
-> I don't like it, it feel useless to me, it make your rams behave stupidly.

Reduce wood cost of catapults (to compensate for the inability to effectively fight units as area-of-effect damage was removed)
-> I like it

Buildings:

Increase the resource cost and build time of palisades, stone walls, and Roman siege walls (to prevent abuse of walling)
-> I don't like it a wall of farmstead is similar to a palisade ? It would be better to make longer palisade keeping its stats (like picture). Stone walls and Roman siege walls are fine. At least they are a little bit used now.

Reduced arrow damage of civic center, sentry tower, defense tower, and fort (to prevent defensive structure abuse)
-> I don't like it, why would you use garrison mechanics if your units becomes useless inside ? Defensive build are not that strong in A24 if you know how to deal with them.

Reduced health of sentry tower, defense tower, and fort (to prevent defensive structure abuse)
-> I don't like it, 4 houses have more HP than a fort ? Sentry tower are already extremly weak and can be destroy by archers. 

Theater buffed to have more territory weight and influence (since it did not provide a significant advantage for its cost)
-> Why not

Roman army camp can produce siege engines and cost 100 more wood and 300 more metal (to allow for greater variety of strategies at a greater cost)
-> I realy don't like being able to build siege in Castra, you can loose a game because of 1 sneaky man, that's not an interresting strategy.

Increase outpost vision when not garrisoned, but give greater vision when garrisoned (to make outposts useful while still rewarding garrisoned units)
-> I like it

Allow Macedonians to produce arsenals at the town phase (to allow greater strategic variety and compensate for the loss of the uniqueness of the siege workshop from A23)
-> Why not but useless Phase 2 exept to go phase 3

Added a minimum distance between forts and civic centres (to force the choice of increasing territory via a civic centre or securing territory via a fort instead of allowing both at low risk)
-> Why not but i'm not a big fan.

Technology:

Reduced city phase requirement from 4 to 3 (to encourage boom/earlier aggression and de-incentivize tower abuse)
-> Why not

Defensive towers do not count in city phase requirement (to discourage turtling and de-incentivize tower abuse)
-> Why not

Sentry towers do not count in town phase requirement (to discourage turtling and de-incentivize tower abuse)
-> Why not even if it's not really usefull.

Reduced metal cost of all farmstead and storehouse technologies by half and increased wood cost to compensate (since metal is scarce on popular maps and is required for many strategies)
-> I like it 

Reduced metal cost of all forge upgrades by half and increased wood cost to compensate (since metal is scarce on popular maps and is required for many strategies)
-> I like it 

Remove food cost for non-champion mercenaries (since mercenaries' high metal cost coupled with their inability to gather resources necessitates an advantage to compensate; also, since the intent was to have them be more realistic by costing gold or metal, then food should not be one of their costs)
-> Why not

Add cartography to market while keeping the option in civic centres (to still allow players the choice of taking cartography in the village phase, but also have the choice to take it in the town phase without sacrificing unit production)
-> Why not

Bring back carrier pigeons and stone foundations for outposts (to give the choice between achieving greater utility at the cost of a garrisoned unit or at the cost of time and resources through technologies)
-> I like it

Arsenals produced by the Macedonians count towards city phase requirement (to allow greater strategic variety and compensate for the loss of the uniqueness of the siege workshop from A23)
-> ok

Mercenary upgrade to rank 3 technology for Carthaginians (to give a differentiating trait to Carthage and an incentive to try a mercenary army strategy as Carthage has the greatest mercenary diversity)
-> Why not but doesn't work on your mod.

[Dakara]

Added a minimum distance between forts and civic centres , no plz !! 

What the problem with fort area the CC? u can't twice buiding in same time, and imagine if you play little map? no spot for build fort

[faction02]

1 hour ago, Dakara said:

Added a minimum distance between forts and civic centres , no plz !! 

What the problem with fort area the CC? u can't twice buiding in same time, and imagine if you play little map? no spot for build fort

I only meant a small one, very small one..... such that people don't put their fortress just right next to the cc.

Edited March 29, 2021 by faction02

[letsplay0ad]

@Edwarf you tested the mod! Nice! Thanks for finding that bug with the Carthage mercenary upgrade. I fixed it with v0.2.2.

I also agree that four houses should not have more health than a fort. That's ridiculous. So, I have lowered the health of all structures according to be in line with their costs. Generally a higher cost means more construction material was used and the stats should reflect that. The health stat of structures was also way too high as even civic buildings such as houses and economic buildings such as storehouses took upwards of seven hits by rams to destroy. With a fully garrisoned tower or fort or civic centre nearby, you could lose your entire army after only knocking down a single wall or a couple houses.

@Dakara don't worry my friend. The minimum distance between a fortress and a civic centre is less than the minimum distance between civic centres. I played a pizza game (tiny map, 8 players) and was able to place a fort (it was uncomfortable and hard to do, but that's the theme for all buildings with pizza games). 

@faction02 yes, I had the same intent. Fortresses still cover each other the way that towers do in that if your enemy stands between them, they will be shot at by 2 fortresses or 1 fortress and 1 civic centre. There is just some distance between them to have players make the choice of increasing territory via a civic centre or securing territory via a fort instead of allowing both at low risk.

[Nescio]

Look what I managed to build with your mod:

I can't say I like the hard limit of only 3 fortresses and 10 towers: that might be sufficient for the tiny map size, however, some people play on giant. Nor am I fond of the wall changes, trebling the stone cost and build time of walls (long and medium have the same time) while halving their health. Also, it seems you ignored the differences in resistance levels when lowering structure health.

[Lion.Kanzen]

24 minutes ago, Nescio said:

Look what I managed to build with your mod:

I can't say I like the hard limit of only 3 fortresses and 10 towers: that might be sufficient for the tiny map size, however, some people play on giant. Nor am I fond of the wall changes, trebling the stone cost and build time of walls (long and medium have the same time) while halving their health. Also, it seems you ignored the differences in resistance levels when lowering structure health.

Welcome to A11 again..or was 10?

[maroder]

13 hours ago, faction02 said:

only meant a small one, very small one..... such that people don't put their fortress just right next to the cc.

While I understand the reason, I personally disagree with it very much. I hate being told what to do or not to do Especially in a less competitive setting, I want to be able to place my buildings wherever I want, to be able to build an unconquerable city. So I would remove all minimum distances and building limitations.

IMO Turtling should not be prohibited by the game mechanics, it should be punished by the fact that you run out of resources in the long run and that you have a slower economy.

Edited March 30, 2021 by maroder

[alre]

On 27/03/2021 at 9:32 PM, letsplay0ad said:

 I like the idea of skirmishers being a cheap economic unit you later discard for battles, but civs with primarily skirmishers (eg: Rome and Sparta), how will they fight? My intent was to have the ranged roughly equalized so that a mixed army would be the best choice in a pitched battle, but still have differences so that rushes could occur with faster units. Something like ranged > melee > cavalry > ranged etc. For armies it would be all cav > all ranged > all melee >> all cav etc. And then a mixed army (melee + ranged + cav) > all of one type of unit.

What would your counter circle be?

I like your reasoning, that's a solid AoE rock-paper-scissors. I was suggesting some other mechanics that you can find, for instance, in Total War games. Having played that, I can assure you that you can have a game that's both realistic and a lot of fun (although with some spectacularization, in that case). Realisticity is not really opposed to gameplay. In general, the ranged>melee>cavalry>ranged cycle can stay valid, but skirmishers would be an intermediate step between melee units and archers/slingers. They would be quite weak against archers and specially strong against melee units, and also more resistant than archers against cavalry. If we want to go even more realistic, there are further considerations that we can do, that involve the usage of shields and their size.

Skirmishers were underpowered in a23 when they were faster (although they were appreciated for economy) and I don't think we can put them on the same level of other ranged units anyway. I think the best solution is to give them a different caracterization altogether, like booming or forest ambushing, so that they won't be like an handicap anymore.

Furthermore, (I'm speaking to devs now) be careful not to nerf archers too much, or slingers will be op all over again.

Edited March 30, 2021 by alre

[Radiotraining]

13 hours ago, letsplay0ad said:

I also agree that four houses should not have more health than a fort. That's ridiculous. So, I have lowered the health of all structures according to be in line with their costs. Generally a higher cost means more construction material was used and the stats should reflect that. The health stat of structures was also way too high as even civic buildings such as houses and economic buildings such as storehouses took upwards of seven hits by rams to destroy. With a fully garrisoned tower or fort or civic centre nearby, you could lose your entire army after only knocking down a single wall or a couple houses.

Hi! Nice improvements overall!

Loved the change on hp of structure, it looks more consistent now.

 

If I may add, as a random player I don't mind too much a hard limit on fortresses (it always bugged me to see them sprawling everywhere in some maps, it takes away a bit of realism sometimes) but I agree that is may be not the prettiest solution.

If I can share an idea for a soft limit on turtling: I thought that a way to simulate a resource penalty during a siege could be a food trickle for garrisoned units. It could make sense realistically, as if your troops are sustaining a siege they should slowly depleting your resources and it could add an interestic mechanic for sieges, as you can take down a city through starvation and you kinda force who's turtling to move forward with their troops to challenge the stalemate (or sustain a heavy cost for a prolonged defence, that's also a choice )

I never tested such idea so I'm not really sure how it can play out in the game and if it makes sense or is consistent with the general gameplay, but yeah, they are only my 2 cents

 

Edited March 30, 2021 by Radiotraining

[borg-]

I prefer the system ranged > melee > cav > ranged. For this to work, the skirmisher cavalry must have a bonus against ranged infantry, like https://ageofempiresonline.fandom.com/wiki/Sarissophoroi

Edited March 30, 2021 by borg-