Gameplay issue: Booming = Turtling

[Yekaterina]

21 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

We should do a really big mods, which we all agree with.

 

"Balance Mod community"

Very good idea. Let's get started: which points have we decided to change and how?

I think I can easily merge a few of my mods to make a big community one. 

[LetswaveaBook]

We were discussing on a similar matter on another thread called ´Balancing Citizen Soliders (long shot)´

21 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

As I see things, we allready have the tools for creating booming/rushing/turtling gameplay

Booming: the unit that does this are women.

Turtling: This can be done by building towers and citizen soldiers.

Rushing: This could be done by cavalry or p2 champions.

I made this comment a then thought a little deeper. Currently the focus is to much on making citizen infantry. They cost proportionally most wood. The other options cost proportionally more food.  So if we want to encourage the other options, I would suggest reduce wood gathering by a little (-10% or so) and increase food gathering(faster farming/cheaper farms/ cavalry carry capacity). Any thoughts on this?

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

@wowgetoffyourcellphone why is it bad having different gather rates bad for female citizens and the male economic unit?

I don't think that just increasing women gather rates and decreasing citizen soldier gather rates will help solve this issue, because women (two-gendered mod doesn't make male villager functionally different than a woman) still fulfill the same limited economic role, leaving citizen soldiers to be required for economy.

The goal of such changes would be that a pure, unprotected "boom" would be only women and the male economic unit, with no barracks in sight. 

Edited April 9, 2023 by BreakfastBurrito_007

[real_tabasco_sauce]

to be super generic and straightforward you could do this:

• woman unit (unchanged) - gather rates better for food
• laborer (male model, costs more than woman due to opportunity cost compared to CS) - gather rates decent for food, but best for wood, stone, metal.
• CS - gather rates halved.

then, all you would have to do is pick the right cost for the "laborer" (a generic term which would nicely encompass terms that might be more controversial).

Then on top of that, you could use this for a civ bonus (start with 2 laborers instead of 2 ranged units).

I'd say this would require the fewest changes to the game (besides just buffing women gather rates.) The only issue that remains is the controversy of encoding gender roles, which is generally historical, but some might take offense.

This way you also don't have 4 visuals for eco units (as in 2 gender mod + DE)

Edited April 9, 2023 by real_tabasco_sauce

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

8 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

@wowgetoffyourcellphone why is it bad having different gather rates bad for female citizens and the male economic unit?

I don't think it's bad per se. Would just rather see it divided by social class than by gender, is all. And don't forget, that no matter how much you reduce their gather rate, citizen-soldiers will still be economic units, so now you have multiple different economic units, each with different effects on actual gather rate. I'd honestly rather remove gathering altogethr from soldiers.

 

19 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

The goal of such changes would be that a pure, unprotected "boom" would be only women and the male economic unit, with no barracks in sight. 

Yeah, just remove gathering from soldiers altogether.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

Just now, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Yeah, just remove gathering from soldiers altogether.

I would prefer it as a secondary role, where booming is a lot slower if you do it with cs. 

 

2 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

And don't forget, that no matter how much you reduce their gather rate, citizen-soldiers will still be economic units

No, because when you make anything you need to make the best use of it. If citizen soliders are better at attacking and defending than they are at eco, then players will use them for fighting.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

4 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Would just rather see it divided by social class than by gender, is all.

Well, if u have a population of women and men (50:50) it would make sense that among the men, the "laborers" are of lower status than those trained to fight as soldiers. U don't have to call the unit a slave, which could be too specific for some civs anyway.

[LetswaveaBook]

On 09/04/2023 at 12:59 AM, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

The core of the issue of the booming meta is that training soldiers is simultaneously the best economic and military process. In order to resolve the issue citizen-soldier infantry need to lose a good portion of their economic value. There is a whole other discussion on this, but the leading suggestion is to introduce a male economic unit that can be trained from the cc.

The issue is that citizen soldiers are both valuable as fighter and economic units, which has its problems. Nobody denies that.

However, the desire for a male economic unit is based on a debatable premise: Is the role of the rank 1 citizen infantry that of a capable fighter? Personally, I would prefer if the military role of rank 1 citizen soldier was more a supportive role, where the reliable core of the army would be (melee) mercenaries, champions and rank 2&3 CS.

[chrstgtr]

On 09/04/2023 at 12:43 PM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I'd say this would require the fewest changes to the game (besides just buffing women gather rates.) The only issue that remains is the controversy of encoding gender roles, which is generally historical, but some might take offense.

 

I think what you say is fine and is an obvious next step (at least for some civs), but another option remains: modify current values of CS units and women. Women could be made cheaper or produce more quickly. Women gather rates could increase and/or men rates could decrease. Etc. 

Personally, I would prefer this approach for all (or at least most) civs and then giving a few select civs, like Sparta, laborers/slaves as a civ differentiator. 

[a 0ad player]

I think stronger separation of roles might help:
- CS slower attack speed for more epic fights and more micro time for melee units.
- economic technologies (level 2 and 3 except basket) reduce to a23 boost rates
- CS reduce range of sight by 20% except for cav
- in phase 2 more professional soldiers with specialization especially on high speed for short raids on isolated groups of economic units, area distributed economy
- further specialization, reinforcement of professional soldiers

[Fabius]

I don't like the idea of removing gathering as an option from citizen soldiers, its one of those mechanics that feels unique to 0 AD and keeps it apart from Age of Empires. Not to mention is a lot more engaging.

There is already an eco differential based on movement speed of ranged units, archers are slowest and skirmishers fastest.

The speed of the ladies is consistent, and the distinctions are such that they farm better, chop wood at roughly the same rate as the men, and are half as good at mining as the latter. Its entirely intuitive as to who will do what in any given match

Seems reasonable enough as it stands, why is it necessary to break and recreate the system?

 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

Personally, I would prefer this approach for all (or at least most) civs and then giving a few select civs, like Sparta, laborers/slaves as a civ differentiator. 

Hmm yeah that also sounds good.

I guess what I said earlier was more to introduce the "laborer" to all civs, and then one could differentiate on the cost, availability and properties of them for different civs.

for example, sparta could train neodamodes spearmen instead of laborers for the same price after researching the unique reform upgrade. (maybe carthage could get some cheaper laborers for a metal cost from markets)

perhaps I could cook up a couple ideas in the community mod sometime. @wowgetoffyourcellphone would I be able to use your male villagers from the two gendered citizens mod?

[Lion.Kanzen]

I had the idea of upgrading the male villager to a semi soldier (militia kind).

Just as an upgrade.

a generic soldier with a spear,It could be 3 upgrades, another could be a bowman and another a soldier with a dagger and round shield.

[Lion.Kanzen]

On 09/04/2023 at 11:43 AM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

but some might take offense

So let them be offended. crystal generation.

The offended always come from the same countries. Most do not represent the population of the world.

Edited April 10, 2023 by Lion.Kanzen

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

3 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

Is the role of the rank 1 citizen infantry that of a capable fighter? Personally, I would prefer if the military role of rank 1 citizen soldier was more a supportive role, where the reliable core of the army would be (melee) mercenaries, champions and rank 2&3 CS.

This is considerably more complicated than adding a male eco unit or adjusting existing gather rates between women and cs. Rank 2 and 3 citizen soldiers obviously need to start as rank 1 with some exceptions. Champions can't be a meta since there are too few of them to create a balanced system. Mercenaries are not available to all civs.

The reason I prefer creating a male eco unit as opposed to buffing women gather rates as suggested by @chrstgtr and @wowgetoffyourcellphone is that women can be made using ff from houses, they are super weak, and CS would still be needed for metal and stone. Having a male eco creates the opportunity to make the cc a more economically valuable building responsible for booming, avoiding the women- only eco, differentiating cost, gather rates, and creation time. Also, the gameplay choice of making women as opposed to the male economic unit would be interesting to me. 

Edited April 10, 2023 by BreakfastBurrito_007

[Lion.Kanzen]

1 hour ago, Fabius said:

I don't like the idea of removing gathering as an option from citizen soldiers, its one of those mechanics that feels unique to 0 AD and keeps it apart from Age of Empires. Not to mention is a lot more engaging

it would be better to remove them from the first phase. and that they appear in the second.

[Fabius]

48 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

it would be better to remove them from the first phase. and that they appear in the second.

That basically makes first age redundant and simply forces you to go Second Age asap. Which ironically is already a stopgap by in large for Third Age. We only have 3 ages and only one truly matters as of now.

I presumed the point was to spread things fairly evenly across the ages to avoid this sort of thing.

And again this is something that differentiates 0 AD from Age of empires, first age is not some mediocre barebones entity that is just a stop gap for second age. we have a bunch of options to play around with and do early game mischief or do an outright early war and end the game in second age by annihilation.

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

3 minutes ago, Fabius said:

That basically makes first age redundant and simply forces you to go Second Age asap. Which ironically is already a stopgap by in large for Third Age. We only have 3 ages and only one truly matters as of now.

I presumed the point was to spread things fairly evenly across the ages to avoid this sort of thing.

And again this is something that differentiates 0 AD from Age of empires, first age is not some mediocre barebones entity that is just a stop gap for second age. we have a bunch of options to play around with and do early game mischief or do an outright early war and end the game in second age by annihilation.

 

I thought we wanted to make the first one less frenetic, no problem for me.

 

The point is to justify the villager male unit.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

@wowgetoffyourcellphone would I be able to use your male villagers from the two gendered citizens mod?

of course

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

The reason I prefer creating a male eco unit as opposed to buffing women gather rates as suggested by @chrstgtr and @wowgetoffyourcellphone

Not really what I'm suggesting though.  

4 hours ago, Fabius said:

I don't like the idea of removing gathering as an option from citizen soldiers, its one of those mechanics that feels unique to 0 AD and keeps it apart from Age of Empires

It may be unique, but it's problematic as Hayall. 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

5 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Not really what I'm suggesting though.

wait what? please explain more, I must have misunderstood.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

6 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

wait what? please explain more, I must have misunderstood.

ehh, I'm really just want the DE system, but I have to couch it in AE aesthetics. lol

[Lion.Kanzen]

2 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

 

It may be unique, but it's problematic as Hayall. 

economic snowball effect.

[Fabius]

Adding a male villager would water down the value of citizen soldiers and potentially make turtling stronger due to smaller armies.

However those armies will likely be champions as they are still overall better value, especially cavalry and elephants, so now the value of jobless citizen soldiers must be evaluated against the superior champions. 

 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

57 minutes ago, Fabius said:

jobless citizen soldiers must be evaluated against the superior champions. 

In this case, I wouldn't say they are "jobless." For one, remember it is still an important "job" to go harass the enemy and cause damage.

This is done currently, but it's widely considered that their economic value generally surpasses their immediate fighting value. The idea here is to bring down the economic value of CS however much is appropriate while adding an additional eco unit.