expansion&gameplay

[LetswaveaBook]

Currently the game in many cases encourages players to stay within their own territory for the first territory, apart from a little cavalry opening. I would like to try a mod to change that resulting in more dynamic play where controlling the neutral territory is more important. I am aiming these changes to benefit the early game in 1v1s or 2v2s (where there is relatively much neutral territory). So that leads to these changes.

-stables now have a batch multiplier of 0.7 as training mass cavalry felt to slow early on. (Later in the game, players can easily afford multiple stable resulting in smaller batches and then this change becomes less impactful)

-I created a map (Mainland with corrals) where players start with a corral and corrals have the option to train cattle for free, but that option requires 6x the training time. Since this change means extra cattle, it encourages cavalry play.

- in the map map (Mainland with corrals), there are neutral corrals to be found. Corrals do not have territory decay. Controlling these corrals thus gives the option to train cattle for free.

 

- For balance, the corral upgrade moved to p2. A cow can be trained for free in 360 seconds and has 300 food. So an unupgraded corral will produce 50 food (in the form of livestock) per minute and an upgraded one will produce 66.67. If you have 3 corrals the upgrade pays back in about 150 seconds

Other reasons p2 is now more important:

Cavalry get +25% health on with the health upgrade. As a compensation, they don't benefit from the first armor upgrade.

-second attack and defense upgrade available in p2. The 2nd armor upgrade is split of from the first one, such that cavalry users don't need to research the 1st one, as it no longer benefits cavalry. Personally I consider it bad that in A25 there is a huge difference in unit strength between p3 and p2.

-p2 allows the player to build farmsteads in neutral territory for more efficient hunting/ berry gathering

-mercenaries and skiritai are now good at collecting berries or hunt (being rank 2 slows them by 30%).

-If you want to collect far hunt with your units, then you are in luck as gather capacity upgrades cost now -100 wood.

-archery tradition now has its cost halved but it is a p2 tech.

->This means you can collect all the food on the map, which makes scouting more important to know where the food is and which food is being taken by your enemy.

There is in A25 a big difference between the effiiciency of mercenary cavalry and regular cavlary. This is changed

-Mercenary cavalry now cost 60 food and 60 metal, but can hunt (being rank 2 slows them by 30%).

-Promoting to rank 3 requires +50% more XP

-Mercenaries need 20% more XP to promote than rank 2 CS need (so in total 1.8 times as much as rank 1 units)

 

If you want to expand to control extra territory, you will also have an easier time

- newly build CCs cost -100 of each resource and -100 build time. They can often also train units that a normal CC can't. However they have less HP, capture points, default arrows and less territory. If you want to have a "normal" CC then you can upgrade the newly build CC to a regular one, similar to how you can upgrade sentry towers.

-Gauls and Britons get as tribal faction the option to build CCs for -100 stone. That means for 1100 resources, you get a building that can train like a barracks, supports 20 population, is a dropsite and can shoot arrows like a tower.

 

If splitting your units makes you more vulnarable you can choose for extra options at the towers

-sentry towers can be upgraded in p1 to stone towers for 100 wood and stone.

-stone towers shoot 2 arrows by defealt.

-the sentries tech has reduced price.

-Other tower technologies are now affordable as well.

 

Notable faction specific changes

Gauls:  Naked fanatics now cost less metal and train faster. They get also a slinger in the CC upon reaching p2. CCs are cheaper (and benefit from the gallic building bonus)

Kushites: Can now build pyramids in p1 for 150 stone (might be to cheap)

Persians: Can train now both spear and jav cav in the CC in p1. In newly build CCs they can train hoplite mercenaries.

Spartans: Skiritai are now rank 2 but move 30% faster and are good at hunting/collecting berries.

 

Also for better balance: Spear cav +1 armor and melee infantry +0.5 attack.

 

The reason for posting this on the forum is to find people that might want to try these changes.

 

 

foodmod.zip

Edited January 23, 2022 by LetswaveaBook
Athens was bugged with its phasing structure and mercenary hoplites were bugged

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

I like some of the balance changes, and I am worried about others. I am not sure if you wanted free livestock available at all corrals or just the gaia ones, but free livestock seems like a nice way to allow for both fields and corral food income through the whole timespan of a match. @Player of 0AD is, from my observation, the best player at managing corral economy as it exists in A25, so I would be interested to hear his thoughts about that part of the mod.

I think this mod is complex enough that we ought to just get together and test its gameplay before more discussion. 

Edited January 23, 2022 by BreakfastBurrito_007

[LetswaveaBook]

2 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I am not sure if you wanted free livestock available at all corrals or just the gaia ones, but free livestock seems like a nice way to allow for both fields and corral food income through the whole timespan of a match.

The option to train them for free would be offset by the long training times. In the mod, you can train a goat in 2 minutes for free or a cow in 6 minutes. Spending resources to build a corral and getting a cow 6 minutes after completion of the corral does not seem OP.

I also did some analysis on cattle without cost but long training time.

https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/67691-regular-trainslow-train-corral-feature/?do=getNewComment

 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

8 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

The option to train them for free would be offset by the long training times. In the mod, you can train a goat in 2 minutes for free or a cow in 6 minutes. Spending resources to build a corral and getting a cow 6 minutes after completion of the corral does not seem OP.

I also did some analysis on cattle without cost but long training time.

https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/67691-regular-trainslow-train-corral-feature/?do=getNewComment

 

yea I tried it out and it certainly did not seem OP or abusable.

[faction02]

Just throwing some ideas here to try to help your reflection:

 - For the purpose of stimulating cavalry usage, do you need to the changes suggested? The savana biome seemed like very effective to reach that goal (especially in previous alphas, the Sudanian savanna biome of the current alpha is a bit less pronounced). Spreading trees to make rush easier and huge amount of hunt made cavalry rush very important in that biome. The advantage that I see for an "aggressive biome" relative to change in standard features of the game is that it can fit more varieties of players taste. One player who do not like aggressive game could therefore select his biome to avoid Savana but still play any of the existing map where the biome can be selected.

 

 - For the purpose of stimulating territory control, what about a version of mainland with less starting mines? and possibly small spots well spread over the map? This suggestion would not fit what I qualify as a "good change" since to reach one goal, it affects too many parts of the games, creating possibly some other issues elsewhere. I am just suggesting it, because I would find the experiment of this type of feature quite interesting.   I am also still puzzled about how to make trade useful in 0ad.

 

 - For the purpose of making P2 more interesting, I personally dislike the idea that champions are currently meant to be spammed. For many games, it makes sense that you can access the strongest units in late game only and it does sound fun to mass the strongest possible units in the game with all upgrades, but in 0ad, champions are not balanced between civilizations and therefore it doesn't sounds suited to give champions that kind of role. They would make more sense as precious babies which need to be followed carefully to accomplish some particular missions differentiated between civilizations. I would therefore see them produced in small quantities only rather than massed in p3 (some champions should be good against buildings but bad against units=> firecavs...  , some could be used for P3 harass like cavalry champions, other for P2 harass like naked fanatics, and maybe some should be there for P2 fights...)

In that spirit, black coats in p2 were interesting, and generally, infantry champions (maybe only the melee one?) could make sense in P2 in small numbers. Not saying that this is what should be since it might need many other changes (like possibly less starting mines for example ), but again, I am just throwing an idea at someone who is asking for more actions in P2 and is spending time thinking about it.

 

 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

@faction02

This discussion is good, as I think we need territory expansion to make more of a difference in the game. Currently its prohibitively expensive and makes too huge difference. I think its good to keep that discussion separate from other balancing topics, as it would apply to all civs fairly equally (maybe not seles). Vali's territory mod is also pretty good.

Currently @LetswaveaBook has another mod that is gaining more traction with the player base:

I think you would probably find these changes more appealing in the near term.

[LetswaveaBook]

1 hour ago, faction02 said:

do you need to the changes suggested?

That is indeed a fair question

However I feel that on those biomes gameplay also feels suboptimal as spamming cavalry there seems more important than phase advancements. For me the problem was that phase advancement to p2 does hurt to much if done early. That is something a biome can't change.

However there could be experiments with starting with a free smith to encourage p2. That would only require to create an extra map and does not affect any other maps.

1 hour ago, faction02 said:

For the purpose of stimulating territory control, what about a version of mainland with less starting mines? and possibly small spots well spread over the map? This suggestion would not fit what I qualify as a "good change" since to reach one goal, it affects too many parts of the games

Such a version wouldn't affect most players. It would only affect those who play on the special version of mainland.

 

1 hour ago, faction02 said:

I am also still puzzled about how to make trade useful in 0ad.

Maybe do the same as I did with cattle: Make them free but give them longer train time. Also this should require a limit on how many traders you can get.

 

49 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I think we need territory expansion to make more of a difference in the game. Currently its prohibitively expensive and makes too huge difference. I think its good to keep that discussion separate from other balancing topics, as it would apply to all civs fairly equally (maybe not seles)

For this mod, I tried to be less conservative allowing a lot of different things. for proposed features mod - Page 2 - Gameplay Discussion - Wildfire Games Community Forums, I tried to be conservative and not add any changes that affect gameplay in a major way.