Perhaps P1 should be made a stage of purely economic development.

[AIEND]

4 分钟前，real_tabasco_sauce 说：

我从未听过有人抱怨单位多样性和他们在 0ad 中的资源收集状态。

First of all, this is not called diversity, because he did not add new functions, but just divided the old functions from one unit to multiple, making the player's operation more complicated.
Secondly, a lot of players who didn't like this design have given up on the game long ago, and you certainly won't see their complaints.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

One of the most challenging and fun aspects of 0ad is the boom/rush battles that happen in p1. These are very influential on game outcome and have many different strategies variables and levels of preparedness to keep track of. 

I would be very sad to see p1 be dedicated to booming alone.

@AIEND do you play in multiplayer? or vs AI? 

[ChronA]

I want to hate the idea of a demilitarized P1, but to be honest in this game it might work. 0 AD and the games that inspired it have an unusually well developed base-builder gameplay loop--and one that could be strengthened even further by using auras and build restrictions to deepen the challenge of optimal building placement. It might be enough to carry game for 5-10 minutes even without any combat or immediate threat of serious attack. (I might even argue AoE2 already operates within this paradigm, and it is the most popular entry in the entire ancient warfare genre.)

Players would still need to prepare for the start of hostilities in P2, which I suspect would impose its own version of the boom-rush-turtle strategy counter cycle.

If I were redesigning the game to support this kind of design, this is what I would do:

1. Reduce the CC territory radius and increase the territory radii of houses, towers, and military buildings. This enables players to actively position these structures to expand and shape their territory in P1 onward as part of an overall strategy, rather than just working with what they are given by their starting CC.
2. Greatly reduce the max number of units who can harvest from metal, stone, trees, and food sources at the same time. This would require players to cultivate multiple simultaneous resource extraction operations, rather than just piling all their economy onto one or two good sources.
3. Allow farmsteads and storehouses to be built in neutral territory, enabling map generation that requires players to actually venture out beyond the safety of the CC to find some resources, rather than automatically getting everything they need in their starting base.
4. Houses get a 30-to-50-radius aura that boosts resource harvesting speed, increases build rates, and slowly regenerates hp of friendly units in its area of effect. This adds an incentive to annex productive resource operations into your territory and build them up into little town like settlements, instead of only using houses for a wall around your CC. It also adds a little defensive bonus, since you are no longer relying so heavily on the CC for protection.
5. Sentry and Defense Towers get a 30-to-50-radius aura that increases movement speed of friendly units in its area of effect. Like the house aura, this is another incentive to annex and further build up useful territory, and a 2-for-1 defensive boost to compensate for reduced protection from the CC.
6. Fields cannot be built within 40 m of other Fields or P2+ buildings (and vice versa). One again the idea is to spread out production and force the players to think harder about base layout. This restriction forces the creation of separate farming and military/commercial districts. (The idea could be further developed by restricting the proximity of civil and military P2+ buildings from each other.)  

Edited April 23, 2022 by ChronA

[AIEND]

8 小时前，BreakfastBurrito_007 说：

0ad 最具挑战性和最有趣的方面之一是在 p1 中发生的繁荣/高峰战斗。 这些对游戏结果非常有影响，并且有许多不同的策略变量和准备程度需要跟踪。 

看到 p1 独自一人致力于蓬勃发展，我会感到非常难过。

@AIEND 你玩多人游戏吗？ 还是与人工智能？  

You know what it's like to fight in P1? ——Like two kindergarten children fighting boxing, their bodies have not grown, their strength is not strong enough, and their winning or losing is not interesting.
You still have a lot of technologies that you haven't researched, a lot of powerful units have not been unlocked, there is still a lot of balance left in the population cap, and the map is huge. You haven't explored and built new towns yet.
What's more problematic is that in P2, the scale of the army is larger, and the battle should be more intense, but now players ignore it and choose to upgrade directly to P3 before fighting, because P2 does not have siege weapons, it is difficult for the enemy to cause devastating blow.
This makes the flow of the game look like a dumbbell - heavy on both ends and light in the middle.
If P1 is militarized, then P2 should be more intense than P1, and the entire game should be a continuous increase in intensity from P1 to P3, instead of making P2 an embarrassing "peacetime".

[AIEND]

30 分钟前，ChronA 说：

我想讨厌非军事化 P1 的想法，但老实说，在这个游戏中它可能会奏效。 0 AD 和启发它的游戏有一个异常完善的基地建造者游戏循环——并且可以通过使用光环和建造限制来进一步加强最佳建造位置的挑战。 即使没有任何战斗或严重攻击的直接威胁，也可能足以进行 5-10 分钟的游戏。 （我什至可以说 AoE2 已经在这种范式中运作，它是整个古代战争类型中最受欢迎的条目。）

玩家仍然需要为 P2 中的敌对行动开始做准备，我怀疑这会强加他们自己版本的繁荣-冲刺-乌龟战略反周期。

如果我重新设计游戏以支持这种设计，我会这样做：

1. 缩小CC领土半径，增加房屋、塔楼、军事建筑的领土半径。 这使玩家能够积极定位这些结构，以作为整体战略的一部分，在 P1 以后扩展和塑造他们的领土，而不是仅仅使用他们的起始 CC 给他们的东西。
2. 大幅减少可以同时从金属、石头、树木和食物来源中收获的单位的最大数量。 这将要求玩家同时培养多个资源开采业务，而不是仅仅将他们的所有经济都堆放在一两个好的资源上。
3. 允许在中立地区建造农庄和仓库，从而使地图生成需要玩家真正冒险到 CC 的安全范围之外寻找一些资源，而不是在起始基地自动获得他们需要的一切。
4. 房屋拥有 30 到 50 半径的光环，可提高资源采集速度，提高建造速度，并在其影响范围内缓慢恢复友方单位的生命值。 这增加了将生产性资源业务并入您的领土并将其建设成像定居点一样的小镇的动力，而不是仅在您的 CC 周围使用房屋作为围墙。 它还增加了一点防御加成，因为您不再如此依赖 CC 来提供保护。
5. 哨兵塔和防御塔拥有 30 到 50 半径的光环，可提高其影响范围内友方单位的移动速度。 与房屋光环一样，这是吞并并进一步建立有用领土的另一个激励措施，以及 2 比 1 的防御提升以弥补对 CC 的保护减少。
6. 场地不能建在距离其他场地或 P2+ 建筑物 40 m 的范围内（反之亦然）。 再一个想法是分散生产并迫使玩家更加努力地考虑基地布局。 这种限制迫使创建单独的农业和军事/商业区。 （这个想法可以通过限制民用和军用 P2+ 建筑物彼此的接近来进一步发展。） 

I agree. At present, many players in 4VS4 multiplayer games will not build a second CC, and will not try to control a larger area of the map, which weakens the value of the territory mechanism.

[Nullus]

Won't this lead to the game just becoming a race to P2? In P1, without soldiers, players would be helpless to defend themselves against someone who rushes to P2, trains some soldiers, and attacks. This would lead to the game being very fast and boring, since matches would always go to the player who reaches P2 first. As it is, going to P2 quickly has a temporary disadvantage, since it reduces the number of soldiers that can be trained in P1. Currently, a player who stays in P1 can have an advantage attacking a player who went to P2 quickly, since the player that stayed in P1 longer had an opportunity to build up a stronger fighting force.

[AIEND]

27 分钟前，没人说

这不会导致游戏成为 P2 的竞赛吗？ 在 P1 中，没有士兵，玩家将无助于防御冲向 P2、训练一些士兵和攻击的人。 这会导致游戏变得非常快速和无聊，因为比赛总是会出现在最先到达 P2 的玩家身上。 事实上，快速进入 P2 有一个暂时的劣势，因为它减少了可以在 P1 中训练的士兵数量。 目前，留在P1的玩家可以有优势攻击快速进入P2的玩家，因为留在P1的玩家有机会建立更强大的战斗力。

Age of Empires and Age of Myth series also started fighting from the second stage, do you find these games boring?

I don't know what's wrong with these basic designs that are adopted by many RTSs.

Edited April 23, 2022 by AIEND

[Nullus]

1 hour ago, AIEND said:

Age of Empires and Age of Myth series also started fighting from the second stage, do you find these games boring?

I don't know what's wrong with these basic designs that are adopted by many RTSs.

I've never played those games, so I can't judge for them. However, in the case of 0AD, there is already a rush to phase up, and I think this proposal would make that even more the default. If people want that, it could be implemented. For myself, however, it doesn't sound like it would make the game more enjoyable. If 0AD has a different design than other RTSs, I don't necessarily think that it means that 0AD's design is inferior, I think it makes 0AD more interesting.

[AIEND]

15分钟前，没人说

我从来没有玩过这些游戏，所以我无法判断它们。 然而，在 0AD 的情况下，已经急于逐步升级，我认为这个提议会使它更加成为默认值。 如果人们愿意，它可以实施。 然而，就我自己而言，这听起来并不会让游戏变得更有趣。 如果0AD的设计与其他RTS不同，我并不一定认为这意味着0AD的设计低劣，我认为这让0AD更有趣。

If you haven't played those games, then you think the problems that have to be caused by letting combat start in P2 are just your imagination.
0AD's current problems are caused by imperfect design. I don't think that simply making 0AD more like other games will make it better, but "keep it unique" doesn't mean it's fun, because the problems with many of 0AD's unique mechanisms are They were not carefully sanded and were in a half-baked condition.

[Nullus]

13 minutes ago, AIEND said:

If you haven't played those games, then you think the problems that have to be caused by letting combat start in P2 are just your imagination.

I haven't played those games, but I have played this game quite a bit, and I know that rushing is already a popular strategy, and I know that rushing through the phases is already important. I anticipate that this will cause a rush to P2, with the slower player almost always losing, and I don't see any part of this plan that would mitigate this issue. Is there some solution to this that you see, or is there some reason that you believe this will not happen?

[AIEND]

刚才，努鲁斯说道：

我没有玩过那些游戏，但是我玩过这个游戏，我知道冲刺已经是一种流行的策略，我知道冲刺已经很重要。 我预计这将导致冲向 P2，速度较慢的玩家几乎总是输球，而且我认为该计划的任何部分都不会缓解这个问题。 您是否看到了一些解决方案，或者您是否有某些理由相信这不会发生？

I suggest you play these games first.
The first stage of a lot of games is not that complicated, and the second stage is not that scary.
If you haven't played it, you won't have an intuitive understanding of this.

[Nullus]

24 minutes ago, AIEND said:

I suggest you play these games first.
The first stage of a lot of games is not that complicated, and the second stage is not that scary.
If you haven't played it, you won't have an intuitive understanding of this.

I'm afraid I don't have the funds for that .

Until then, perhaps it would be best if a mod could be made so that 0AD players could gauge the effect of these changes.

[AIEND]

Just now, Nullus said:

恐怕我没有资金 .

在那之前，也许最好能制作一个模组，以便 0AD 玩家可以评估这些变化的效果。

I'll try to do this in my mod, you can try it then.

[Lion.Kanzen]

is your mod is in english?

[AIEND]

刚才，Lion.Kanzen 说：

你的mod是英文的吗？

Not English or what? There is no Chinese character library in the game.

[Lion.Kanzen]

7 minutes ago, AIEND said:

Not English or what? There is no Chinese character library in the game.

I can't read Chinese characters. That's why I was asking.

[AIEND]

3 分钟前，Lion.Kanzen 说：

我看不懂汉字。 这就是我问的原因。

In order to allow Chinese players to play, I made another Chinese mod.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

4 hours ago, ChronA said:

• Reduce the CC territory radius and increase the territory radii of houses, towers, and military buildings. This enables players to actively position these structures to expand and shape their territory in P1 onward as part of an overall strategy, rather than just working with what they are given by their starting CC.
• Greatly reduce the max number of units who can harvest from metal, stone, trees, and food sources at the same time. This would require players to cultivate multiple simultaneous resource extraction operations, rather than just piling all their economy onto one or two good sources.
• Allow farmsteads and storehouses to be built in neutral territory, enabling map generation that requires players to actually venture out beyond the safety of the CC to find some resources, rather than automatically getting everything they need in their starting base.
• Houses get a 30-to-50-radius aura that boosts resource harvesting speed, increases build rates, and slowly regenerates hp of friendly units in its area of effect. This adds an incentive to annex productive resource operations into your territory and build them up into little town like settlements, instead of only using houses for a wall around your CC. It also adds a little defensive bonus, since you are no longer relying so heavily on the CC for protection.
• Sentry and Defense Towers get a 30-to-50-radius aura that increases movement speed of friendly units in its area of effect. Like the house aura, this is another incentive to annex and further build up useful territory, and a 2-for-1 defensive boost to compensate for reduced protection from the CC.
• Fields cannot be built within 40 m of other Fields or P2+ buildings (and vice versa). One again the idea is to spread out production and force the players to think harder about base layout. This restriction forces the creation of separate farming and military/commercial districts. (The idea could be further developed by restricting the proximity of civil and military P2+ buildings from each other.)  

Some realistic feedback on these:

1. I agree with the CC change. Cost should also be reduced. @ValihrAnt has a mod to demonstrate these changes among other things.

2. For metal and stone, this could be done. But I don't think it will change anything. The costs of things one needs to buy is what should require multiple resources to be extracted. 

3. While I don't think this should be for all civs, perhaps some future civ (perhaps nomadic) could receive this as a unique civ bonus: houses, storehouses, farmsteads, perhaps some other buildings too receive a very small territory while not being a territory root. Is this even possible?

4. There will be very little support for this. One important reason is that we cannot have too many auras at the same time for performance reasons.

5. Why give this to towers? I could imagine this or something similar being a unique tech or some special building.

6. This would frankly be terrible. It can already be frustrating finding space to put buildings down. Forcing unnecessary building restrictions is not the move. Base layout is already something that requires thought.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

3 hours ago, AIEND said:

Age of Empires and Age of Myth series also started fighting from the second stage, do you find these games boring?

this is incorrect. There are very often rushes in dark age (p1).

Edited April 23, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

5 hours ago, ChronA said:

rather than automatically getting everything they need in their starting base.

You can progress economically with the res that starts in p1, but players already do venture away from their base for metal mines, extra berries, hunt and sometimes a preferred woodline. 

Restrictions 1,2, and 6 would do nothing but bring frustration to building the base. I could not image playing with these artificial and uncomfortable rules.

The other things such as auras sound nice but I would be worried about having too many auras as I think I heard this contributes to performance issues.

4 hours ago, AIEND said:

What's more problematic is that in P2, the scale of the army is larger, and the battle should be more intense, but now players ignore it and choose to upgrade directly to P3 before fighting, because P2 does not have siege weapons, it is difficult for the enemy to cause devastating blow.

There are frequently mercenary rushes, border skirmishes, cavalry harassment, and the occasional all out attack in p2. P2 does have way to take out buildings, but no siege. Keep in mind that destroying the cc is not the only way to deal damage.

 

1 hour ago, AIEND said:

I suggest you play these games first.
The first stage of a lot of games is not that complicated, and the second stage is not that scary.
If you haven't played it, you won't have an intuitive understanding of this.

This game is, in fact, not AoE3 and not Age of Mythology. I can't understand why you want to make 0ad into those games. 

[ChronA]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Some realistic feedback on these:

1. I agree with the CC change. Cost should also be reduced. @ValihrAnt has a mod to demonstrate these changes among other things.

2. For metal and stone, this could be done. But I don't think it will change anything. The costs of things one needs to buy is what should require multiple resources to be extracted. 

3. While I don't think this should be for all civs, perhaps some future civ (perhaps nomadic) could receive this as a unique civ bonus: houses, storehouses, farmsteads, perhaps some other buildings too receive a very small territory while not being a territory root. Is this even possible?

4. There will be very little support for this. One important reason is that we cannot have too many auras at the same time for performance reasons.

5. Why give this to towers? I could imagine this or something similar being a unique tech or some special building.

6. This would frankly be terrible. It can already be frustrating finding space to put buildings down. Forcing unnecessary building restrictions is not the move. Base layout is already something that requires thought.

2. A different way to achieve the same effect... Implementing this stuff would require a complete rework of the map pool anyway. So I think the easier solution is just to have the same amount of resources divided between more, smaller resource nodes, rather than try to adjust dozens of price and income rate stats; but reasonable minds may differ.

3. Last I experimented with these things (alpha 23), unrooted buildings can be placed in unclaimed territory, and even have their own territory field. They just don't count as controlled territory for the purpose of building other structures, and they bleed control over to gaia at a rate controlled by their territory decay stat---basically the same as what happens to all the buildings in a town when the CC is destroyed. For relatively inconsequential buildings like storehouses & farmsteads one might just want to disable their decay. Or they could be garrison-able in order to keep control always topped up.

4. I think the performance fears about auras are overblown in this specific case. The aura projectors under discussion do not move, which should allow for certain (hopefully already implemented) optimizations. Additionally since this whole discussion is about hypothetical design overhauls, let's recognize that 0 AD suffers from a severe misalignment between its engine's technical capabilities, its design intentions, and its realized simulation parameters. A lot of resources are being wasted right now simulating units that don't need to exist. Rather than simulating dozens of individual trees in a patch of forest, why not bundle them together as one entity? Why simulate the lives of hundreds of individual soldiers in combat that has no meaningful collision or individual unit maneuvering, instead of simulating at the squad or battalion level where all the gameplay is actually taking place? Do this and we could easy have 8 player games with dozens of active auras and still no CPU lag.

5. Why towers? i. Watch-towers are an easy way of representing the forceful hand of civil order and public works that enables efficient logistics. Basically they are stand-ins for roads and law-enforcement patrols. ii. Players would want to build towers anyway for protection. Giving them some secondary benefits makes it a little less ruinous when someone invest into turtling and the opponent booms.  

6. Universal chronic difficulty placing buildings sounds like a map design problem. And if non-chronic it's just a skill gap that can be filled by study and practice. We know this kind of gameplay can be fun because there are very popular genres of puzzle games that consists entirely of this sort of planning and optimization challenge. But anyway, don't misunderstand! I'm not suggesting that this is the way that 0 AD should be! It's not going to happen; and even if by some act of insane developer collusion it did, the established player base would not accept it. I'm just speculating that the possibility exists within the explorable design space and within the capabilities of the engine.  At best I can hope maybe someone with ambitions of making their own spin off game or mod sees such ideas and gets inspired!

2 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

You can progress economically with the res that starts in p1, but players already do venture away from their base for metal mines, extra berries, hunt and sometimes a preferred woodline. 

But these are still within (or just outside) the starting CC's territory radius. It's better than nothing I'll admit, but I stand firm that creative resource exploitation doesn't begin until players get the P2 territory multiplier and the option to build secondary CCs.

2 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

This game is, in fact, not AoE3 and not Age of Mythology. I can't understand why you want to make 0ad into those games. 

Not to be mean about it, but even as the lesser siblings of AoE2, those games have large, passionate, and active global fan bases. 0 AD is only relevant to FOSS enthusiasts. If you doubt that, see if you can find any articles by real games journalists suggesting "why not try 0 AD instead of AoE4".

Part of the reason for that popularity gap is this project's obsession with reinventing square wheels. It is good to try new things and push innovation, but when it becomes indisputable that those innovations are objectively worse than the proven design (like if they fracture the community or cause persistent balance problems), it's time to swallow one's pride and get on the bandwagon.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

31 minutes ago, ChronA said:

Not to be mean about it, but even as the lesser siblings of AoE2, those games have large, passionate, and active global fan bases. 0 AD is only relevant to FOSS enthusiasts. If you doubt that, see if you can find any articles by real games journalists suggesting "why not try 0 AD instead of AoE4".

Part of the reason for that popularity gap is this project's obsession with reinventing square wheels. It is good to try new things and push innovation, but when it becomes indisputable that those innovations are objectively worse than the proven design (like if they fracture the community or cause persistent balance problems), it's time to swallow one's pride and get on the bandwagon.

good point. I think we can and should take inspiration from game-mechanics of other games such as those, but we should not just port them over just because those games are more popular. For example, "arson" attack mechanic from aoe3 and 4.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

30 minutes ago, ChronA said:

I'm just speculating that the possibility exists within the explorable design space and within the capabilities of the engine.  At best I can hope maybe someone with ambitions of making their own spin off game or mod sees such ideas and gets inspired!

yes that makes sense. Thats why I said it was "realistic" feedback. I do think a future civ could have less civic buildings restricted to their territory as a civ bonus. That would be cool.

 

33 minutes ago, ChronA said:

If you doubt that, see if you can find any articles by real games journalists suggesting "why not try 0 AD instead of AoE4".

Actually, I would not be surprised if I saw something like that. AOE4 is pretty bad by the looks of things. They basically removed skill from the game, only keeping strategy. Between the two, I would consider 0AD the better game

36 minutes ago, ChronA said:

when it becomes indisputable that those innovations are objectively worse than the proven design

which features are this bad?

[ChronA]

On 23/04/2022 at 5:23 PM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Actually, I would not be surprised if I saw something like that. AOE4 is pretty bad by the looks of things. They basically removed skill from the game, only keeping strategy. Between the two, I would consider 0AD the better game

Same . I thought it looked promising provided it got some hefty post launch support, especially for modders to do their thing, but that has failed to materialize. I'm ready to call AoE4 a flop.

So yeah, I did do some Googling before making that claim so as not to look like an ass! I found only one article that listed 0 AD as an alternative to Age of Empires 4, but it also suggested games like Starcraft 2 and Total War Warhammer.... and 0 AD was further down the list! Obviously there is bias in that, since publishers are going to incentivize exposure for their products, but it would still be damaging to the journo's credibility if they were ignoring a popular open source alternative just for kickbacks.

(As a point of comparison, I'm sure I have seen articles citing the open source "Dark Mod" project as a better successor to the classic Thief series than the modern official reboot, Thief 4. That's not a perfect analog because medieval/steampunk immersive stealth sim is so obscenely niche that there are no direct commercial competitors to discuss. But still...)

On 23/04/2022 at 5:23 PM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

which features are this bad?

Right now two are weighing heavily on my mind:

First one is citizen soldiers. I love the concept as a representation of the non-professional status of ancient warfare, and the overlap of civilian and military roles in ancient society. However it's getting hard to ignore the frequency and prominence of the CS discussion's recurrence in so many balance complaints. It may be that trying to finesse stats so units are simultaneously balanced as fighter AND as resource gatherers is just too hard. 

Second one is 0 AD's lack of catapults for anti-infantry AOE. AFAIK this idea of anti-infantry artillery has no basis in ancient history. It is pure modern warfare if anything. However in competitive AoE2 it forms a key part of several prominent balance triangles. It disrupts the death-ball meta. I'm worried that without this utility, 0 AD might have no counter-play to the player who gets the bigger army, balls them up and ctrl-moves other than to respond in kind. That might be why I can't shake the idea that 0 AD's late match gameplay is bland.