Balancing Citizen Soldiers (CS) (long shot)

[maroder]

20 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

@maroder I found a little bug in your mod: you are missing the icons for the CC upgrades. By default you get 3 purple blocks. I fixed it by copying 3 copies of the default civic centre icon into the correct folder, and everything works smoothly now. If you want different icons to represent different upgrade routes just send me the images and I will implement it for you.  

Well done!

maroder fixed.zip 502 kB · 0 downloads

thanks! my bad. didn't click on the art folder while making the zip. Fixed now (in first post).

Btw@Stan`CZ for Czech Republic or is this the shorthand for Citizen Soldiers?

Edited May 15, 2021 by maroder

[Stan`]

Whoops

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

People have said that to make rush a more viable tactic that has equal chance of overall success as booming, we need to remove citizen soldiers from the game and make them all professional. 
 

I think a better solution is rather than removing citizen soldiers, we can add mercenaries, champions to a diversity of usage strategies. Mercenaries in a24 are super bad overall and certainly not worth the cost. If they were stronger than citizens and available in p1 (and cost is balanced) for a good variety of civs, there would certainly be a professional soldier rush option.

Keep in mind that rushing in a23 was only slightly underpowered. I have been brutally many times in a row by successful rushes. 
 

personally I think changes should  make rushing a balanced strategy that requires boomers to prepare defenses or die.

adding mercenaries to barracks for a majority  of civs in p1. Making sentry towers cost 150 wood, longer build time (reduces the reaction towers and saturation of towers), this will mean a turtler will need to prepare in advance, therefore separating turtleing from booming. Reducing arrow range and damage of cc back to a23 levels, making rotation times faster.

I think all of these changes would be great. If you disagree pls tell me why.

I would argue that rushers being able to gather res decreases the predictability of rush behavior, and allows a failed rush (enemy is prepared) to catch up in eco.

I hope when some of you guys read this you realize the huge selection of options for making rushes viable.

Edited May 15, 2021 by BreakfastBurrito_007

[hyperion]

1 minute ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

People have said that to make rush a more viable tactic that has equal chance of overall success as booming, we need to remove citizen soldiers from the game and make them all professional. 

Those people have forgotten that there were releases where rushing was far to strong. Then everyone cried nerf rushing. After plenty assorted changes without touching the CS concept we are now at a point were people complain about the reverse.

Also unit pushing which I think is part of A25 will have a major impact on the balance of this, so any discussion based on A24 I consider pointless. Basically if balance is completely outside reason after feature freeze do a hot fix adjusting the parameters that were used in the past to nerf rushing, else just leave it as is for now.

[ValihrAnt]

Buffing/nerfing or moving units around to different phases isn't the only way to incentivize aggression. Another way would be to make players actually think about map control. Currently, a new CC is something that you see very rarely. Reducing their territory influence will force players to think about expanding and give more importance to map control. Of course, reducing the cost of CCs would be needed in effect.

With all the ideas for offensive options there need to be more defensive options. Giving Military Colonies to every civ would be a positive too. They work as a defensive and offensive option. Secure a vulnerable or important part of your base, or establish a forward foothold if you're the attacker.

In general, I dislike forcing players to just pick between set options. 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

55 minutes ago, ValihrAnt said:

In general, I dislike forcing players to just pick between set options.

I agree, I think no matter what course is taken to balance strategies, this is one to be avoided. 

From what I have observed, adding new ccs in a 4v4 is more common than in a23. But in a24, map control is more about archers than anything else, since they are not only the best for defending individual places on the map but also defending huge swaths of territory, I think the main reason for this is because archers can move to defend any structure in your territory faster than any other unit besides cavalry. I think the popular proposed changes set for a25 could help reduce this problem. Rushing was maybe only a little underpowered as balanced in a23.  Obviously, making cc's cheaper sounds really bad as added to the current alpha, as this would cause the map to become fully entrenched and make the game endless even faster than in current a24. changing cc's like this could be a great change, if other changes happen with it.

[Dizaka]

17 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I agree, I think no matter what course is taken to balance strategies, this is one to be avoided. 

From what I have observed, adding new ccs in a 4v4 is more common than in a23. But in a24, map control is more about archers than anything else, since they are not only the best for defending individual places on the map but also defending huge swaths of territory, I think the main reason for this is because archers can move to defend any structure in your territory faster than any other unit besides cavalry. I think the popular proposed changes set for a25 could help reduce this problem. Rushing was maybe only a little underpowered as balanced in a23.  Obviously, making cc's cheaper sounds really bad as added to the current alpha, as this would cause the map to become fully entrenched and make the game endless even faster than in current a24. changing cc's like this could be a great change, if other changes happen with it.

Currently, defensive map control is EXTREMELY easy with forts having the "root" that civic centers do.  It's annoying. 

In a23 if someone forgot to defend their base and sent all units to the enemy their base was toast if someone attacked it.  Currently, all you need to do is place a fort near where your army is.  This forces the defender to always have an advantage as their building "root" can be located in multiple places with multiple forts.  This forces the attacker from being unable to take over bases defended by women, even more so when walls and undefended forts are present.

In a23 only Ptol/Sele had this ability (secondary cc's of smaller cost).  A24 really promotes turtling and winning by forcing the other side to "run out of resources" or an enemy newbie making a really small/big mistake (that amplifies) which can be picked up on by an ally who went all cav (e.g., enemy border did no walls, pocket from other side sees this and overwhelms with cav).

 

Edited May 15, 2021 by Dizaka

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

26 minutes ago, Dizaka said:

Currently, defensive map control is EXTREMELY easy with forts having the "root" that civic centers do.  It's annoying. 

In a23 if someone forgot to defend their base and sent all units to the enemy their base was toast if someone attacked it.  Currently, all you need to do is place a fort near where your army is.  This forces the defender to always have an advantage as their building "root" can be located in multiple places with multiple forts.  This forces the attacker from being unable to take over bases defended by women, even more so when walls and undefended forts are present.

In a23 only Ptol/Sele had this ability (secondary cc's of smaller cost).  A24 really promotes turtling and winning by forcing the other side to "run out of resources" or an enemy newbie making a really small/big mistake (that amplifies) which can be picked up on by an ally who went all cav (e.g., enemy border did no walls, pocket from other side sees this and overwhelms with cav).

 

I am just tired of marching my 80 archer/ 50 spear army along parallel defenses in a 4v4 for 20 minutes at a time, only for people to go afk because the turtling is so boring. Everyone has a bunch of archers and are constantly trying to get an enemy to fight under a fort and tower, but no one will because their archers get eaten by towers. You can't attack weak spots because archers will get to the fight before any other unit besides cav, and then even weak spots take too long to break, causing you to be 2v1ed. One problem is stone availability, another problem is that everyone has too much time on their hands. In a23 everything was a race against time, in a24 there is little excitement, little risk, little reward, and little offensive mobility. This late game turtliness and gameplay stabilization is probably the worst problem of a24 and needs to be addressed more, because it covers up all of the good features a24 did bring.

You talked about defensive map control, this is the opposite of what Rauls used to do with his ptol colony-->fort--> catapults.

The way I interpreted @ValihrAnt's talk of map control, I think he was trying to foster offensive map control.

Edited May 15, 2021 by BreakfastBurrito_007

[Yekaterina]

Seems like we have three agreements here:

1. Make second CCs cheaper to encourage expansion. 

2. Remove the territory root property of fortresses.

3. Reduce territory influence of all CCs. 
 

All of these are quite do-able. I like Valihrant's idea of giving military colonies to all civs. Should we limit the number of traditional civic centres to only 1 per player? That would prevent the old problem from returning. 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

@Yekaterina I think it is best not to talk about cc changes in isolation, many other features of a24 are causing problems. These changes to ccs will not do much alone, they need to be analyzed carefully with other features so that they combine to make outsized improvement in gameplay.

I can confirm that I agree with those changes to ccs provided that the gameplay becomes less stabilized, turtleing becomes less OP/ gets restricted to a smaller area of control, and defenses are weakened a bit. Add some civ diversification, and the positive effect of cc changes is multiplied by the presence of other good changes.

Edited May 15, 2021 by BreakfastBurrito_007

[Yekaterina]

Currently I have heard ideas about:

• Changing CC cost and influence
• P2 Champions 
• Nerf Archers and palisade

[Dizaka]

2 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

Everyone has a bunch of archers and are constantly trying to get an enemy to fight under a fort and tower, but no one will because their archers get eaten by towers.

Summary 0ad gameplay if no fights happens in the 10-15 min mark.  Instead, fights happen in the 16+ min mark.

 

  

2 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

Currently I have heard ideas about:

• Nerf Archers and palisade

I think nerfing archers should be cautionary.  I really don't want them to end up like in a23.  I think, at present, it may be best to use archers as a baseline and bring other units in line with them.

Edited May 15, 2021 by Dizaka

[LetswaveaBook]

10 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

Currently I have heard ideas about:

• Changing CC cost and influence
• P2 Champions 
• Nerf Archers and palisade

I would like to say something else:

-Nerf all ranged units.

[Lion.Kanzen]

by the way... the elephants are kind OP, you can hardly kill them from a distance.

[PyrrhicVictoryGuy]

loose idea here. Make it so women can only build houses, farms, farmsteads and storehouses, secondly remove the ability to collect resource from citizen soldier but still allow them to build all buildings. Lastly i have seen talk of introducing another gatherer type on the forums , specifically about slaves, that with my proposal could be introduced as specialized stone and metal gatherers  since the citizens  wouldn't be able to collect  them. Naturally these slaves wouldn't be able anything and they would probably have stats compared to women. I  think all three of these aspects would bring new dynamic gameplay as more soldiers would no longer equal more eco power.

[Yekaterina]

17 minutes ago, PyrrhicVictoryGuy said:

  think all three of these aspects would bring new dynamic gameplay as more soldiers would no longer equal more eco power.

Nice. Paraphrase:

Women are cheap and good at gathering any resource. They build slightly slower.

Citizen soldiers are more expensive, decent at fighting, gathers resources very slowly, but can build quickly.

Champions are an elite fighting force who don't care about eco.

 

 

 

[PyrrhicVictoryGuy]

38 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

Nice. Paraphrase:

Women are cheap and good at gathering any resource. They build slightly slower.

Citizen soldiers are more expensive, decent at fighting, gathers resources very slowly, but can build quickly.

Champions are an elite fighting force who don't care about eco.

 

 

 

Well soldiers do gather wood slightly better than women and gather metal and stone way faster, they only resource were they faill is food. So in my modest opinion, yes you can build an army and build your economy at the same time because more soldiers means more of those three resources.

[Yekaterina]

1 hour ago, PyrrhicVictoryGuy said:

Well soldiers do gather wood slightly better than women and gather metal and stone way faster, they only resource were they faill is food. So in my modest opinion, yes you can build an army and build your economy at the same time because more soldiers means more of those three resources.

Oh no sorry I meant to change it to this way

Status Quo:

Citizen soldiers good at mining and wood, poor at food

Women good at food and ok at wood, poor at mining

Proposed change:

Citizen soldiers poor with all resource collecting

Citizen soldiers good at building

Women good at all resource collecting. 

[PyrrhicVictoryGuy]

Yup that's a nice compromise and negates the need to add another gatherer class.

[Lion.Kanzen]

5 hours ago, PyrrhicVictoryGuy said:

loose idea here. Make it so women can only build houses, farms, farmsteads and storehouses, secondly remove the ability to collect resource from citizen soldier but still allow them to build all buildings

Delenda Est...

[PyrrhicVictoryGuy]

13 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Delenda Est...

Wait really? I new the mod was a sort of overhall for the game but as it isn't ported to A24 i didn't even bother getting  the A23 compatible version.

[Lion.Kanzen]

3 minutes ago, PyrrhicVictoryGuy said:

Wait really? I new the mod was a sort of overhall for the game but as it isn't ported to A24 i didn't even bother getting  the A23 compatible version.

Yes, since A23 Delenda Est is that way.

I have not tested the version compatible with svn alpha 25.

[PyrrhicVictoryGuy]

Well well , get wowgetofyourcellphone to make patches asap .

[maroder]

Oh wow, this thread moved very quickly from balancing the CS concept to removing the CS concept.

[Lion.Kanzen]

7 minutes ago, maroder said:

Oh wow, this thread moved very quickly from balancing the CS concept to removing the CS concept.

yes, it seems to me that it is not the intention of the development team.