what about snowballing

[ChronA]

10 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

my feeling that melee/ranged balance is quite good at the moment

I agree that it appears to be in a much better place within it's established paradigm. Players are finally acknowledging the necessity of having melee as a meat shield for their ranged DPS.

I think it can be pushed further though. Real diversity would be having some compositions (other than Spartans) where the heavy melee can be sustained damage dealers, where horse cavalry can be sustained damage dealers.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

9 minutes ago, ChronA said:

Players are finally acknowledging the necessity of having melee as a meat shield for their ranged DPS.

I think it can be pushed further though. Real diversity would be having some compositions (other than Spartans) where the heavy melee can be sustained damage dealers, where horse cavalry can be sustained damage dealers.

I agree certainly that melee units being mainly a meat shield is not a good result for the use of melee infantry. Actually, in the "magnetic pikemen" discussion @Jofursloft and I were discussing the benefits of ranged units being able to effectively target other ranged units in the back of a battle. What this would do is allow for the targeting of other ranged units, rather than the melee always dying first, and because of this melee units could become more than meat-shields.

 

[Gurken Khan]

47 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

A "capture the wonder" or "king of the hill" gamemode could be quite fun.

2 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

But there is the 'capture the wonder' winning condition.

[borg-]

@Gurken Khanwhat we have now is not what i expect. We have victory by wonder, but we don't have a sacred place on the map that if controlled for a few minutes wins the game, it's not even close to the same thing.
We don't have treasures on the map, we only have a few resources played across the map, no need to fight for them, just use your horse and collect everything before your opponent. It needs to be more complex and fun. I also want to say that these features shouldn't just be available on some specific maps.

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, borg- said:

I also want to say that these features shouldn't just be available on some specific maps.

Or forced on every map. For example, some people like regicide. Some people don't. It is an option in every game, but that doesn't mean it has to exist in every game. It seems like this should be able to be added via an optional victory condition to every map. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I'd like to see more combination victories being played, but right now the game just isn't satisfying to play that way. 

[alre]

7 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

Usually it is better to leave behind enough units on the various resources needed so that you are able to train replacements to your army. 

I think it is more risky (to your team) to not attack. If you have 100 extra units in your base gathering res instead of fighting, you will accumulate lots of extra resources which you are unable to use since you are already at the pop cap (assuming you have all the upgrades you want). For this reason the units have more value if they are used to fight. Also, if you attack first, you can usually decide where to fight, since it is now your enemies' goal to limit the damage you do to them.

Also, attacking does not necessarily mean moving directly to someones base, it can also mean flanking their army, gaining a position close to their base that they don't like, building offensive buildings, or causing an economically unfavorable reaction from your enemy.

This actually changed a lot from A24, but I agree that now attacking seems very often convenient over defending, even if the defender has some few towers. Guessing reasons, that could be because raiding the economy is so convenient. You can do it also when you are defending, with some cav, but it's harder because you have to split your attention among far battles. To be honest, I don't like this attacker advantage and it may be, in fact, the most important pro-snowballing factor of this game.

In any case, loot hardly has any real strategical consequence by itself, because it's only 10% of killed units value (if you want an army to replenish itself with loot alone, it should have a kill ratio of 10!), it's just a gift for whatever player has made more kills, attacker or defender that is.

Anyway, if we are still going to keep loot, I'd like if you could visualize it somehow. @Micfild idea is not bad, maybe it could be a message that pops up when a battle is over (starting from any attack alarm, until some time passes without fighting inside that same area). That same message could also give more details like the number of killed and lost.

6 hours ago, ChronA said:

I agree that it appears to be in a much better place within it's established paradigm. Players are finally acknowledging the necessity of having melee as a meat shield for their ranged DPS.

I think it can be pushed further though. Real diversity would be having some compositions (other than Spartans) where the heavy melee can be sustained damage dealers, where horse cavalry can be sustained damage dealers.

It seems to me like you are describing A24 still. In A25 melee cavalry gets used a lot, and melee infantry also is sometimes used without any ranged support at all.

6 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

A "capture the wonder" or "king of the hill" gamemode could be quite fun. I feel like these are features that would be great to have as optional add-ons for games of 0ad rather than core features. 

Someone should make a map like that. That's how much it takes. I had something like that planned, but it's very low in my priorities now, I still have to make sense of the map I'm already working on.

Edited August 27, 2021 by alre

[alre]

I have an idea: let attacks still be this dangerous for your eco (to be fair, that's only logic) but balance this by making guerrilla tactics a lot easier in your territory.

concrete proposal: allow teleporting units from any building to any other inside the same continuous territory patch. from bug to feature! whenever you send men into buildings, you can send them back on your enemy from anywhere!

ok this would be too much, but maybe it could work if entering/exiting from buildings was slower, and if conquering buildings wasn't a thing (and I wouldn't really mind if it wasn't). Anyway, I'm just tossing ideas. 

Edited August 27, 2021 by alre

[soloooy0]

the relic mode could be modified? so that the team that has the most relics if all have been taken wins? or wins by time?
as it is set now if you put all the relics, it is like a normal game but with the technologies of the relics .....

[Gurken Khan]

9 minutes ago, soloooy0 said:

the relic mode could be modified? so that the team that has the most relics if all have been taken wins? or wins by time?

Yeah, holding x/y relics for z time might be a good mode.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

13 minutes ago, soloooy0 said:

the relic mode could be modified? so that the team that has the most relics if all have been taken wins? or wins by time?
as it is set now if you put all the relics, it is like a normal game but with the technologies of the relics .....

Yep, some thought could be put into the separate game modes or victory conditions. For instance, Civic Center victory condition could have an optional timer. 

Capture the Wonder is a game mode (a Wonder of the World is placed near the center of the map) that turns on the Wonder Victory by default (can't be toggled off) with the optional timer. And perhaps it disables player-built Wonders.  

 

Some thought could be put into a Death Match mode as well. Make it more than just getting a bunch of resources at the beginning.

Edited August 27, 2021 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Jofursloft]

7 hours ago, alre said:

Someone should make a map like that

@nani already created a "king of the hill" map back into 2018: 

 

Edited August 28, 2021 by Jofursloft

[LetswaveaBook]

20 hours ago, ChronA said:

0 AD's Anti-Snowball Features:

• Abundant resources that permit a player to survive falling behind on expansions
• Very strong static defenses
• Very durable buildings that can garrison and protect large numbers of units of arbitrary type
• Limited anti-building counters
• Soft-counter based balancing
• Lack of major unit and faction differences

I think most of these in 1v1s are more like pro snowballing features.

-Wood is plentiful on the map, but having only 1 CC for the entire game might stress you.

-The static defenses are difficult to overcome, but on the other hand, they do not really endanger most opponents. A unit garrisoned in static defense has only 5 damage per second, which is mediocre at best. On top of that, they don't focus their arrows on a single target, which means that instead of taking out a few units, the army has a chance to escape without casualties.

-garrisoning units does not stop an attack. It keeps some units save, but most often there are kills to be found.

-Again, I think buildings are difficult to take out, but neither do these buildings harm the opponent to much.

-Soft-counter is really pro-snowballing IMHO. It means you still need a decent force before it can be effective. It is not like good use of a few units results in taking out a larger force, as in games such as age of empires 2(mangonels, siege onagers) and Red Alert 3(war dogs).

20 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I can't say for the other players but it is my feeling that melee/ranged balance is quite good at the moment. 

I think it could be better.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

On 27/08/2021 at 11:54 AM, ChronA said:

Loot

I'm going to remove much of the loot in Delenda Est. Loot is a reward, true, but it's one that promotes snowballing, and I think a lot of players don't even know it exists (except for XP purposes). It's just a silent snowball. I think massacring the enemy is its own reward. I'll keep Glory and Coin loot, but raw resources as loot is going to be out for DE A25b. This also has a side benefit of making the "loot" bonuses of a select few heroes feel more special. 

 

On 27/08/2021 at 11:54 AM, ChronA said:

• Capturable buildings

Mostly removed from Delenda Est, although capturing CCs remains. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I think it's funny how the original game design had some interesting self-balancing and anti-snowballing features. While soldiers get automatic upgrades (promotions) and extra armor, they were supposed to get slightly slower. As you upgraded units, they were supposed to get more expensive. And technologies were supposed to have self-balancing effects, so let's say you upgraded unit health, they were supposed to take slightly longer to train. The stronger your buildings became, the more expensive they were supposed to cost or the longer they were supposed to take to build. Technology pairs meant that you gained 2x as many possible techs, but you couldn't have all of them no matter how many resources you had. And the pairs complemented each other in a self-balancing way. 

All of this was stripped out of the game, largely because their implementation was ad hoc and new people came into the team and thought things should work a different way or didn't understand why they were designed the way they were.

[Gurken Khan]

40 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I think a lot of players don't even know it exists

Maybe I'm just a pedant, but how could anyone not ever look at any unit info and not notice that there's a loot category?

As I said before, I don't think loot plays much of a role and so I don't care too much either way.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Just now, Gurken Khan said:

Maybe I'm just a pedant, but how could anyone not ever look at any unit info and not notice that there's a loot category?

As I said before, I don't think loot plays much of a role and so I don't care too much either way.

What I mean is, it's such a passive benefit that is not very obvious. In other games you see some kind of UI notification when you gain loot, either with a number flash, a text notification, an animation, something. Loot in 0 A.D. is very sub-surface. In BFME2 you had to physically move your soldiers to go grab loot as it was dropped from a loot-bearing structure that was destroyed. In 0 A.D., you have to go digging into a layer or two of the UI to find it and even then you don't really notice it's happening. There's just this snowball effect that rolls under the surface.

[Gurken Khan]

4 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

What I mean is, it's such a passive benefit that is not very obvious.

I don't think you were not clear, it's just not clear for me why anyone playing a strategy game would pay as little attention to the available info to not notice the unit info and stats and not get that there's loot.

Maybe we should add some emanating numbers and a dingeling sound when an enemy is killed or a building captured/destroyed? :ugly:

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Why do I even try? 

[seeh]

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

What I mean is, it's such a passive benefit that is not very obvious. In other games you see some kind of UI notification when you gain loot, either with a number flash, a text notification, an animation, something. Loot in 0 A.D. is very sub-surface. In BFME2 you had to physically move your soldiers to go grab loot as it was dropped from a loot-bearing structure that was destroyed. In 0 A.D., you have to go digging into a layer or two of the UI to find it and even then you don't really notice it's happening. There's just this snowball effect that rolls under the surface.

I like this idea of additional messages on booty or other incidents. At least I can't always keep an eye on my statistics and don't always know them by heart. And I still don't know a lot of the little things about the game. There are obviously advocates and some who feel rather bothered by such notifications. Of course, that changes with everyone over time. At some point you know everything or you could remember it right from the start. an additional message of success strengthens the ego and is emotionally just pleasant;) I could somehow imagine this as an option that can be switched on and off. How important, I can't decide, I will certainly not be able to participate in the implementation again.

[Gurken Khan]

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Why do I even try? 

I don't know. Maybe you're just such a nice guy. Or you try to improve communicating your point?

[chrstgtr]

Loot has a big purpose early game when rushing is very detrimental to your eco. It helps offset that. 
 

it would be nice if there was a civ that was naturally weak in p3, but derived extra loot bonuses so they could be a constant rushing civ

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, Gurken Khan said:

I don't know. Maybe you're just such a nice guy. Or you try to improve communicating your point?

I really don't know who pissed in your Wheaties. Maybe you were just born this way.

 

24 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Loot has a big purpose early game when rushing is very detrimental to your eco. It helps offset that. 

I can see this point. Though, isn't there supposed to be a detriment to your eco with rushing? The game is very fast paced already (folks have said rushing is now super viable with A25), and with a successful raid not only have you harmed your enemy's econ, but you've gained a bunch of free resource with which to keep the snowball rolling.

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I can see this point. Though, isn't there supposed to be a detriment to your eco with rushing? The game is very fast paced already (folks have said rushing is now super viable with A25), and with a successful raid not only have you harmed your enemy's econ, but you've gained a bunch of free resource with which to keep the snowball rolling.

The problem isn’t 1v1s. The problem exists in team games where a player can have an incredibly successful rush and then get steamrolled by an enemy that boomed (ally of the player that got rushed). As a result, most rushes are only partially done because at some point (which occurs quite early) you put yourself more at risk of doing damage to yourself (vis a vis the booming enemy) than you can ever do to the rushed player. This is particularly true if your pocket ally is worse than your enemy’s pocket ally. Because of all this, most rushes in team games last only one or two waves.
 

Multiple wave rushes are also much more common in 1v1s, which is partially the result of farther walk distances that give rushed players a chance to recover. 
 

ETA: so basically, loot helps make a “good” rush (ie, something like 10 kills and 5 deaths) be a viable strategy. “Lesser” rushes like 7 kills and 5 deaths can often cause you to lose a game even though you actually “won” that initial fight 

Edited August 29, 2021 by chrstgtr

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

@wowgetoffyourcellphone@chrstgtr

I also notice that in TGs I see good players who have a lot of fun rushing sometimes get carried away and do what I call "over-rush". What happens is the value of further rushes decreases and the overall effect is that you slow yourself down. Sometimes I see one super successful rush where the victim is then placed very far behind in boom, and the attacker can either use the population lead to have a faster boom and finish the victim later or the attacker can keep rushing. If a weaker player has a successful rush against a better player, they might want to keep rushing even if it slows themself down, because the weaker player was less critical to their own team. Sometimes a game can be lost by a good player slowing themselves down by continuing to rush a player who is already behind from the first rush.