Balancing and QoL changes to 0AD

[Micfild]

Hello everyone! I've been reading a few forum threads recently, discussing a myriad of issues and balancing suggestions for 0AD, that is, OP cav swordsman, OP mercs, Metal abundance, Elephants being very good at taking down walls, to name a few.

To that point, i would like to make 4 small suggestions in an attempt to deal with those problems. I'm aware that some of these suggestion might have flaws, but even if they just help inspire people to come with other solutions, i'm happy.

I'll divide this post in 2 parts. The first one will only contain my suggestions, while the second one will contain my reasoning. Have fun!

===================================//=================================

PART 1: SUGGESTIONS

 

Population Cost:

Taking women as a baseline 1 pop cost:

 

Women and Healers: -> 1 pop

Citizen-Soldiers and Mercenary infantry: 1.5 pop

Champion infantry: 2 pop

 

Citizen-Soldier Cavalry -> 2 pop

Mercenary Cavalry -> 2 pop

Champion Cavalry -> 3 pop

 

Boltshooters -> 2pop

Catapults and Rams -> 3pop

 

Siege Elephants -> 5 pop

 

Metal Distribuition:

Maintain number of Metal mines, but reduce the Resource Amount from 5000 --> 2500-3000.

 

Crush Damage:

- Decrease crush armor on organic units:

From 15 --> around 5 and add crush armor increase to both Armor and Shield Upgrades (like 0.5 increase instead of 1, so the neither will be crush preferential)

Exemple: Hack Armor 1: -> +1 Hack armor +0.5 Crush Armor

Pierce Armor 1: -> +1 Pierce armor + 0.5 Crush Armor

 

- Increase Crush armor of some buildings (those that have high Hack armor):

From 3 -->15 (79% damage reduction)

 

- Give Siege units (Rams and Catapults) a bonus vs Buildings to offset the new armor values.

 

Palisade Walls:

Increase Hack Resistance: 5-->15 (79% damage reduction)

Increase Wood Cost: 14 --> 30 (to compensate for the higher resistance)

 

PART 2: REASONING

 

Population Cost:

The main idea is: the stronger a unit is, the higher it's maintenance cost (armor gets rusty, swords get blunt, spears can break, etc). The better the equipment, the higher the maintence.

This way, soldiers and mercenary units have a higher maintenance cost than the women unit (who are just gatherers) and that is reflected in a higher pop cost. Same for horses, champions, siege units and Elephants.

From a balance standpoint this should also remove a bit of power from cavalry rushes without removing it as an option, (since the player will have to build more houses in order afford the same amount of units he did previously).

 

Metal Distribution:

This is meant to force players to expand more in search of metal, since it's a very important reasource for late game units. It will also reduce a bit of the abundance of metal without reducing the number of metal mines, giving more expansion options. Might even encourage people to start trade routes earlier.

 

Crush Damage:

I haven't seen anyone complaining about Crush damage specificaly, but i think there is room for improvement.

Currently crush is treated as "anti-building" Type of attack. This way buildings have low crush armor, while humans have high crush armor. The problem with this approach is that it limits what you can do with crush.

In my opinion, there is no real reason why humans would be so resistant to crush damage in the first place. Clubs, slings, maces, can crush bones, burst organs, crack skulls and so on, even with armor (if you hit'em enough times). As for buildings, again, there is no real reason why a building would be weak to maces, slings or clubs. So it having low crush damage makes little sense to me. Buildings are indeed weak to siege weapons (catapuls and rams) and therefore those units should have a damage bonus vs buldings, instead of buildings having low crush armor. This ways we can make units use crush damage more liberaly without fear of breaking the game.

This also helps against Elephants being able to take down stone walls and forts with ease. Elephants are strong, but they are not siege weapons. They can stomp units (crush), skeewer them with their tusks (pierce) or whack them with their trunk(crush), but they have limited usufulness against stone walls.

 

Palisade Walls:

Palisade walls are defensive structures, made out of sturdy wood and are hard to take down, specially with swords (chances are they will blunt before the wall is taken down). So for the sake of realism, i'm suggesting a significant increase in the Hack resistance of wooden walls.

In order do make it difficult to spam them in the early game, an increase in their price can help with that. If there is a need to make them more fragile, my sugestion is to lower the hit point of the wall instead, or slightly decrease the Hack resistance, but not by much.

 

==============================///====================================

Well, those are my suggestions. What do you think?

[Dizaka]

It would be interesting to see this at play in a mod.  Though maybe 1.5 humans being 1 humans needs renaming of the term 'population.'   Specifically, what I find problematic is that the population dynamic would dramatically impact the current 1 human : 1 population dynamic for models.

With currently how elephants/rams are I can understand the 5/3 population distribution (e.g., rams cannot kill units or farms).

 

[Micfild]

49 minutes ago, Dizaka said:

Though maybe 1.5 humans being 1 humans needs renaming of the term 'population.' 

Fair enough. Although, just to clarify, it's not that you're building 1.5 humans, but that you're building 1 human that has a "maintenance" cost of 1.5 (it consumes more resources). But as you said, the term "population" isn't the best to describe this value.

[Yekaterina]

5 pop elephant seems like a good idea to me, because it effectively deters elephant spam.

Let champion cavalry take up 2 pop instead, 3 is a bit too much. Citizen soldiers should take up 1 pop.

I agree with lowering unit crush armour as that unlocks a new variable we can play with. Just give siege weapons 25x hard counter against buildings. Buildings with high armour also means no more chopping down CC with Merc cav.

I don't think palisade walls should be improved. They should be nerfed.

3 hours ago, Micfild said:

Fair enough. Although, just to clarify, it's not that you're building 1.5 humans, but that you're building 1 human that has a "maintenance" cost of 1.5 (it consumes more resources). But as you said, the term "population" isn't the best to describe this value.

Agreed, maybe increase cost or train time.

[Micfild]

5 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

Let champion cavalry take up 2 pop instead, 3 is a bit too much

I put champion cav at 3 pop for 2 reasons. One is that I put regular cav at 2 pop, and since champions are much more stronger than regular cav (both in damage and armor) it made sense that it's pop cost (i.e. maintenance cost) would also be higher. The second one is to reduce the availability of champion cavalry overall., seeing that they are just as fast as regular cavalry (meaning they can take and leave fights very easily), but have a lot more HP, Armor and Capture attack (increasing their survival and threat power).

If 3 is too much though, what about 2.5?

5 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

I don't think palisade walls should be improved. They should be nerfed.

Why? Are they that good? I thought they just melted to sword units (specially sword cav).

Edited September 29, 2021 by Micfild

[LetswaveaBook]

13 hours ago, Micfild said:

Crush Damage:

I haven't seen anyone complaining about Crush damage specificaly, but i think there is room for improvement.

Currently crush is treated as "anti-building" Type of attack. This way buildings have low crush armor, while humans have high crush armor. The problem with this approach is that it limits what you can do with crush.

In my opinion, there is no real reason why humans would be so resistant to crush damage in the first place. Clubs, slings, maces, can crush bones, burst organs, crack skulls and so on, even with armor (if you hit'em enough times). As for buildings, again, there is no real reason why a building would be weak to maces, slings or clubs. So it having low crush damage makes little sense to me. Buildings are indeed weak to siege weapons (catapuls and rams) and therefore those units should have a damage bonus vs buldings, instead of buildings having low crush armor. This ways we can make units use crush damage more liberaly without fear of breaking the game.

This also helps against Elephants being able to take down stone walls and forts with ease. Elephants are strong, but they are not siege weapons. They can stomp units (crush), skeewer them with their tusks (pierce) or whack them with their trunk(crush), but they have limited usufulness against stone walls.

 

Palisade Walls:

Palisade walls are defensive structures, made out of sturdy wood and are hard to take down, specially with swords (chances are they will blunt before the wall is taken down). So for the sake of realism, i'm suggesting a significant increase in the Hack resistance of wooden walls.

In order do make it difficult to spam them in the early game, an increase in their price can help with that. If there is a need to make them more fragile, my sugestion is to lower the hit point of the wall instead, or slightly decrease the Hack resistance, but not by much.

 

I think this makes sense.

[Yekaterina]

2 hours ago, Micfild said:

I put champion cav at 3 pop for 2 reasons. One is that I put regular cav at 2 pop, and since champions are much more stronger than regular cav (both in damage and armor) it made sense that it's pop cost (i.e. maintenance cost) would also be higher. The second one is to reduce the availability of champion cavalry overall., seeing that they are just as fast as regular cavalry (meaning they can take and leave fights very easily), but have a lot more HP, Armor and Capture attack (increasing their survival and threat power).

If 3 is too much though, what about 2.5?

Why? Are they that good? I thought they just melted to sword units (specially sword cav).

Ok 3 pop is fine as well.

Palisades are cheap so you can spam them. Sword cavs are OP as well, but you can take them down with spears and javelins.

 

[Gurken Khan]

13 hours ago, Micfild said:

Metal Distribuition:

Maintain number of Metal mines, but reduce the Resource Amount from 5000 --> 2500-3000.

Since metal isn't abundant on all maps I'm very skeptical about any reduction.

[Dizaka]

5 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

Since metal isn't abundant on all maps I'm very skeptical about any reduction.

That needs to change.  I still dislike nomad as it sort of feels like a different game, even though the maps are the same ( @wowgetoffyourcellphone maybe can somehow verify if nomad metal is different than regular metal)  With nomad it feels like there is ALWAYS the old low amounts of metal on the map.

Edited September 29, 2021 by Dizaka

[Micfild]

32 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

Palisades are cheap so you can spam them.

I do agreed, which is why i also suggested a price increase from 14 --> 30 wood. Stone walls cost 48 stone and are quite sturdy in comparison. Granted, stone is harder to come by than wood, so maybe 30 wood is still too cheap. 

[LetswaveaBook]

16 hours ago, Micfild said:

Crush Damage:

I haven't seen anyone complaining about Crush damage specificaly, but i think there is room for improvement.

Currently crush is treated as "anti-building" Type of attack.

I have voiced my issues with crush damage here and there on the forum and I agree with the room for improvement.

What I would like crush damage to be, is damage that is not as deadly as pierce and hack against weakly armored units. However I would like to see that heavily armored units don't see their crush damage improved as much as their other armors, so crush would be something to overcome armored units. That is also somewhat historically correct. So an citizen ranged unit could have 6 crush armor and a champion infantry could have 10, which is a difference of 4, while for hack/pierce the difference would be 7.

Edited September 29, 2021 by LetswaveaBook

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

Crush, Hack, and Pierce attack types do not have to conform to reality.  Simply speaking there are plenty of abstractions as is.  Swordsmen for instance dealing hack damage in the case of the legionnaire makes little sense as the gladius functioned primarily as a stabbing weapon.  Likewise spearheads could oftentimes be used for cutting, as represented by medieval treatises on the matter.  The terms hack, pierce, and crush are merely lovingly face-lifted from Age of Mythology.  Yes, the terms generalise and are unoriginal, but they kind of work (outside of the fact that spearmen and pikemen suddenly become worse at demolishing buildings and destroying rams).

[hyperion]

6 minutes ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

Crush, Hack, and Pierce attack types do not have to conform to reality.  Simply speaking there are plenty of abstractions as is.  Swordsmen for instance dealing hack damage in the case of the legionnaire makes little sense as the gladius functioned primarily as a stabbing weapon.  Likewise spearheads could oftentimes be used for cutting, as represented by medieval treatises on the matter.  The terms hack, pierce, and crush are merely lovingly face-lifted from Age of Mythology.  Yes, the terms generalise and are unoriginal, but they kind of work (outside of the fact that spearmen and pikemen suddenly become worse at demolishing buildings and destroying rams).

Indeed, instead a sword could do sword damage, an axe axe damage, and arrow arrow damage ...

That they kind of work is kind of wrong tho, besides the shortcomings you mentioned we wouldn't need hard counter modifiers either.

[Micfild]

2 hours ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

Crush, Hack, and Pierce attack types do not have to conform to reality.

Fair, but just because they don't have to, doesn't mean they can't get closer to reality, specially if it imposes less restrictions on unit diversity.

2 hours ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

Swordsmen for instance dealing hack damage in the case of the legionnaire makes little sense as the gladius functioned primarily as a stabbing weapon.

If that is the case, then nothing wrong with making the legionnaire have a mixed damage type (hack and pierce) like the spearman has. I not only adds historical accuracy but also adds diversity. 

2 hours ago, hyperion said:

Indeed, instead a sword could do sword damage, an axe axe damage, and arrow arrow damage ...

Hmm, it might make the game a bit more complex and add a new challenge to coding but why not have then a 2 pronged approach. Units would have a damage type (hack, pierce, crush or mixed) based on the weapon capabilities, and it could also have a damage source (spear, arrow, sword, etc). This way, attack modifiers would be linked to the source (weapon), not the damage type. 

I personally prefer the 3 damage type solution currently in use. I think it's more easy to understand and work with.

[Freagarach]

6 hours ago, Micfild said:

Hmm, it might make the game a bit more complex and add a new challenge to coding but why not have then a 2 pronged approach. Units would have a damage type (hack, pierce, crush or mixed) based on the weapon capabilities, and it could also have a damage source (spear, arrow, sword, etc). This way, attack modifiers would be linked to the source (weapon), not the damage type.

In my mod units have a "Strength" property that determined the damage it does. So each weapon had its standardised properties, which were multiplied by the strength. Champions would be a bit stronger, but moreover stay at the same strength for longer (Stamina).

[hyperion]

18 hours ago, Micfild said:

I personally prefer the 3 damage type solution currently in use. I think it's more easy to understand and work with.

It's not a matter of taste, the 3 damage types are insufficient by themselves. Somewhere around A18-A20 0ad dropped hard counters once, the experiment failed. Those counters are equivalent to having another, let's call it anonymous damage type. There is also poison and fire damage currently.

Sword damage and such are only semi serious suggestions to spur thinking for alternatives. Btw. "mixed" is already in use.

 

12 hours ago, Freagarach said:

In my mod units have a "Strength" property that determined the damage it does

Link pretty please?

 

[Freagarach]

13 hours ago, hyperion said:

Link pretty please?

I haven't got one; it's merely local. I haven't updated it since I started contributing to the main game. So it is A23b but with a lot of irregularities (and debug stuff). I've tried to get some nice features (like trample damage, directional resistance, elevation damage bonus, attack ground) into the main game, but to no avail yet. (Some _did_ get included, e.g. battalion-like selection and resource de-/regeneration.)

[Micfild]

Hello! 

I've been having some trouble while trying to mod the resource cost of palisades. To make modding easier, i went to the base .xml file for palisades and setup a base wood cost and building time. Then, on the many pieces that inherit that .xml i changed their cost to a multiple of the base value using (op="mul">). 

But when i run the game, it give me an error (interestinglog.html), so i was wondering if it is not possible to use that operation in regard to resource costs or if i'm doing something wrong? (i'll attach both some sample .xmls if you want to check).

Thanks.

palisades_long.xml template_structure_defensive_palisade.xml

[Freagarach]

The log yells "Validation error: structures/palisades_medium", so could you include that as well, please?

[Ceres]

@Freagarach
In case you have some code/ patch to share, please do.

A nice Sunday to all of you!

[Freagarach]

On 03/10/2021 at 10:22 AM, Ceres said:

@Freagarach
In case you have some code/ patch to share, please do.

See Phabricator. ;P

[Ceres]

Erm, maybe I'm just too dumb or lazy but do you have a patch number or something to look for? Else, I have no clue where that might be - Phab is quite large. Would it make sense to search for patches from you? Does your mod have a name? Like so? (I looked for "trample damage" and added you as author in the search query) https://code.wildfiregames.com/search/query/q4.aAyiFLdjO/#R

[Micfild]

On 03/10/2021 at 1:46 AM, Freagarach said:

Validation error: structures/palisades_medium

It's the same for all of them. Before posting, i tried to revert the changes i made to palisade_long and it went after palisade_medium (it seems to be going in order).

But if it helps, here is palisade_medium.

palisades_medium.xml

[Freagarach]

16 hours ago, Ceres said:

Erm, maybe I'm just too dumb or lazy but do you have a patch number or something to look for? Else, I have no clue where that might be - Phab is quite large. Would it make sense to search for patches from you? Does your mod have a name? Like so? (I looked for "trample damage" and added you as author in the search query) https://code.wildfiregames.com/search/query/q4.aAyiFLdjO/#R

https://code.wildfiregames.com/people/revisions/185/

47 minutes ago, Micfild said:

It's the same for all of them. Before posting, i tried to revert the changes i made to palisade_long and it went after palisade_medium (it seems to be going in order).

But if it helps, here is palisade_medium.

I'm not seeing it, sorry. Its probably just simple, so I'm summoning @bb_ and @Angen here.

[bb_]

I guess I found the culprit: the cost/Resources/wood entry must be a nonnegative integer, following the cost schema. Since you multiply with 1.2, this will be interpreted as a decimal (even though 1.2*30=36). So I suppose you can fix it by explicitly setting the value in the children instead of using the operator (maybe using the add operator still works). Another option is to try to fix the operators in this case.