what about snowballing

[chrstgtr]

14 minutes ago, Atrik said:

Yes, definitively, more so, stronger and faster units should have also greater weaknesses.

I think players say that because they expect turtling to be : "build a fort then you are safe".

Turtling this alpha is a tone of fun and it's balanced. The attacker CAN make progress, and you have to think of your defenses as layers, instead of just relying on just having invested a very low amount of resources that would make you immune forever to attacks.
Defending should be dynamic (and this alpha, it kinda was). There would be 0 fun if any players could just set up a base with a fort with swords garrisoned and a couple towers, and be rewarded with immunity without him having to do more.

I would point out that defenses are really cheap and currently are already very easy to make worth their cost:
A single tower can have 25+ kills over the course a game very easily. A fort with 80+ kills is common.
A tower cost 200 resource or 2 CS, a fort 900 resource or 9 CS.
Obviously not weak at all.

Defensive buildings aren't meant to just get kills.

Defensive buildings are primarily meant to protect you from losing your base to an invading army. Defensive buildings perform very poorly in this aspect. Siege is rarely built because defensive buildings are so poor at their primary purpose. 

The game hasn't always been this way. Something is clearly wrong. 

[Atrik]

14 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Defensive buildings are primarily meant to protect you from losing your base to an invading army.

You also said last time that when fort gave territory root, game was lame because it was forcing a player to spend even more time ramming all of the enemy's base.

I'm pretty sure that this desire to have "stronger" defensive buildings is a bias, and that once I will be the case, it be lame and stall games.

Defensive strategies should be viable (as is currently), not de-facto guaranteed to all players who built a fort to get their hero in the first place.

I already know there is nothing I can do to convince players of theses facts. We'll have to go through a cycle of making defenses op again for some to realize them.

Edited 3 hours ago by Atrik

[chrstgtr]

3 minutes ago, Atrik said:

You also said last time that when fort gave territory root, game was lame because it was forcing a player to spend even more time ramming all of the enemy's base.

I'm pretty sure that this desire to have "stronger" defensive buildings is a bias, and that once I will be the case, it be lame and stall games.

Defensive strategies should be viable (as is currently), not de-facto guaranteed to all players who built a fort to get their hero in the first place.

There's clearly something between the game being a miserable turtle system and feeble defensive buildings that do little to secure a base and render many siege units superfluous. In fact, that system has previously existed. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

3 hours ago, Atrik said:

Snowballing happens when there is no diminishing return on something you can accumulate, like champions.

This seems like a narrow definition.

With the points I brought up, I was talking about things that make snowballing inherent to 0ad gameplay.

Anyways, with the next release, I would like to experiment with some changes along these lines. I hope you all will be willing to test stuff out.

[Perzival12]

I definintly agree with the idea of unit-specific upgrades (which would also contribute to civ-specific tech trees). Then you can also counter the tactics of your enemy (possibly nullifying their snowballing). For example, say the snowballer has tons of cav, research better spears, train spearmen, snowballer loses most cav. Then, as the now weakened player (who spent most of his resources on cav), figures out his opponent's tactics, he can counter (tons of archers an swordsman).

Defensive buildings are a little too strong in some ways and too weak in others. They have too little life and resistance, and way too much damage (especially when garrisoned). This should be slightly reversed, so that towers can shoot less arrows, but take longer to destroy or capture. Fortresses are also very OP, though maybe that is a good thing.

I think that the biggest thing involving CS is their lore and reason for existing. The idea is that they are everyday people who take up arms, not professional soldiers. But, professional soldiers are all champions which, A: doesn't make sense (champions, not professionals), and B: makes all actual soldiers too expensive and OP.

For loot, I think the entire lootsystem should be done away with, and replaced with a treasure dropping system. I have two reasons for this. The first is that, in reality, in the middle of a battle how are soldiers carrying suits of armor and other looted items from the dead bodies, while still fighting unimpaired, and two, when I lose most of my army, it would be nice to have a way to get it back, by sending people to collect the treasure that both armies have dropped.

[chrstgtr]

52 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

This seems like a narrow definition.

It’s also fixed to this specific alpha. Snowballing has been around for a long time. This thread is evidence of that. There are underlying factors that contribute to that, which have nothing to do with cav/champs being too strong. 

It would be wise to listen to some of the old heads that have been around for a longer time that have learned the (often painful) lessons of previous alphas 

Edited 1 hour ago by chrstgtr

[Deicide4u]

I will bring up another point in this discussion, and that is the absolutely insane way that damage reduction works in this game.

Just take a look at this post.

An unit with 6 armor will have 47% damage reduction. So nearly 50% of all damage will be absorbed with just 6 armor! I think we all agree that this is most military units after a couple of upgrades. Most champions go above this value into 10 armor (65% DR) or more.

It's no wonder that most players try to maximize high burst damage, using hard-hitting ranged units like javelin throwers and slingers. It's ultimately a product of the game's math. Another thing to consider is that many units have both hack and piercing armor at similar levels, so it doesn't matter which type of damage they take, they will have the same DR.

Warcraft 3 has a similar system, but it also has proper counter system, so it is less noticeable there.

[Perzival12]

11 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

An unit with 6 armor will have 47% damage reduction. So nearly 50% of all damage will be absorbed with just 6 armor! I think we all agree that this is most military units after a couple of upgrades. Most champions go above this value into 10 armor (65% DR) or more.

The armor system should definitely be reworked to a 1-1 basis (I.e your 6 armor=6% resistance, while 65 armor=65% resistance). That would make it easier for both players (why does 6 armor mean 47% resistance?) and modders (how do I know if this is balanced I or not?).