[Document] The core problems of 0AD and mitigation solutions

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

@Yekaterina

0ad has a good community and is not pay to win. I would not consider it time wasted in my book.

[Yekaterina]

7 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

0ad has a good community and is not pay to win. I would not consider it time wasted in my book.

Me neither. The best thing about 0ad is that we can resolve all problems by making our own mods or just switching back to A23. I am making my own gameplay mod and I would be happy to share it with anyone who is interested. 

However, I have exams coming up soon, therefore I should revise and consolidate exam skills now, instead of spamming units in the lobby. 

The main issue with lobby games is that 30%-40% of games are good games and the others are bad games that are either imbalanced or played on a bad map. If one of your teammates make a mistake, that can also be detrimental to the outcome. Furthermore the time spent waiting for players and balancing games is too long, in my opinion. In order for you to enjoy features from your mod, everyone must have the same mod, which is not feasible. This is why I prefer singleplayer nowadays. 

@Stan` do you think that it's possible for all guest players to use the mods and features from the host player? For example, if I am hosting and I change archer attack to 10 pierce, is it possible for 0ad to synchronise this value across all players in-game, so that everyone's archers in my host have 10 pierce without OOS? After they quit my host, their value is restored to the original 6.5? This would reduce a lot of hassle as the host can change the balancing of units and civs in the game, without bothering the forum or the developers.

 

 

[Stan`]

3 hours ago, Sevda said:

 

@Stan` do you think that it's possible for all guest players to use the mods and features from the host player? For example, if I am hosting and I change archer attack to 10 pierce, is it possible for 0ad to synchronise this value across all players in-game, so that everyone's archers in my host have 10 pierce without OOS? After they quit my host, their value is restored to the original 6.5? This would reduce a lot of hassle as the host can change the balancing of units and civs in the game, without bothering the forum or the developers.

It's not sadly unless the map specifies it, which requires all players to have the modified map. All users compute the game

[LetswaveaBook]

20 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

yes, I hear youtubers talking about different civs "power spikes."

That is just the cherry on top of the pie.

Even if a civ in AoE2 has no relevant civ power spike to speak off, then the age up timings still totally change the flavor of the game.

[Mastoras]

Thank you @Sevda & @AIEND for this thoughtful doc.

 

Partially I agree that 0ad is leaning a bit towards militaristic-aggressive play-style.

@BreakfastBurrito_007 Male worker with higher gather rates for metal-stone and wood would be sick addition. I +1 this.

 

Also something not mentioned in the Doc is the defensive "build". The current implementation of walls has made them completely useless. I think the the following changes  will make it much more interesting:

Units on Walls:

- Make the resistance added to units on walls significantly higher, from +3 to +10 for example. (The extra points can be added as techs, maybe 2 techs)

- Add a few points of crash damage on the arrows coming from walls, like +1 or +, this will help defending against rams a bit, so 1 ram alone can not take down a wall mounted  with 30 soldiers.

- Increase firing range by 10%.

- As a tech firing arrows from walls have fire & deal fire damage.

Other Wall Additions:

- Make Stone walls available in phase P2, by P3 is already towards the end of the game to start building, too late too little.

The above can make walls much more lucrative addition and counter either with massive sacrifice of ranged units or by siege.

Update: Stone walls are already in P2, I didn't notice that, lol.

Edited May 20, 2022 by Mastoras

[AIEND]

2 分钟前，马斯托拉斯说：

感谢 @Sevda 和 @AIEND 提供这个周到的文档。

 

我部分同意 0ad 有点倾向于军国主义激进的游戏风格。

@BreakfastBurrito_007 金属石和木头采集率较高的男性工人会生病。 我+1这个。

 

文档中未提及的还有防御性“构建”。 当前的墙壁实施使它们完全无用。 我认为以下更改将使它更有趣：

墙上的单位：

- 显着提高墙上单位的抗性，例如从 +3 到 +10。 （加分可以添加为技术，可能是2个技术）

- 对来自墙壁的箭头添加几点碰撞伤害，例如+1或+，这将有助于防御公羊，因此仅1个公羊无法拆除安装有30名士兵的墙壁。

- 射程增加 10%。

- 作为技术人员，从墙上发射的箭具有火力并造成火伤。

其他墙壁添加：

- 在P2阶段使石墙可用，到P3已经接近游戏结束时开始建造，太晚太少了。

以上可以通过大量牺牲远程单位或围攻来使墙壁更有利可图的添加和反击。

This is a good idea, the city wall should not just passively withstand attacks, it should increase its firepower, I am in favor of the higher resistance of the city wall garrison.
Also, I think ranged units like archers should have flaming arrows for buildings and sieges.
For other non-archer units (including melee infantry and civilians), they should also have the ability to throw large stones from the city wall at a relatively close distance to attack the battering ram.

[Purgator_]

The core problem of 0AD as a modern game is lack of 64bit releases, which makes it unable to use more RAM (as nearly all modern PC got at least 4GB RAM).

[Stan`]

16 minutes ago, Purgator_ said:

The core problem of 0AD as a modern game is lack of 64bit releases, which makes it unable to use more RAM (as nearly all modern PC got at least 4GB RAM).

Only on Windows.

[LienRag]

On 18/05/2022 at 9:15 PM, Lion.Kanzen said:

rational thinking, but impractical when it comes to gameplay.

Why not ? Needs a bell like on the CivCenter for citizens to come in, that's all (a different bell, of course).

 

[LienRag]

On 18/05/2022 at 10:22 PM, Yekaterina said:

II. Frontiers

The cost of building a new town in 0AD is unusually high, requiring 500 wood & metal & stone, a total of 1500, far more than the Office of the Age of Empires, Age of Mythology and Rise of Nations, resulting in a rare player building a second Office in multiplayer games.
As a result, it is difficult for players to expand their towns to spread out their economic and military facilities and also to spread out their risks, and to build deep lines of defense to hinder enemy attacks, and they can only build the opening town and the only town as a "super city-state" and rely entirely on the army to protect it. Once the town is destroyed or lost, the player will never be able to return, as it will be difficult to rebuild the economy elsewhere, nor to rebuild the military and defense facilities quickly.
Therefore, to solve the problems caused by frontiers, a decentralized idea is needed to improve them.
1. lower the cost of the Office and the colony, limit it to 600 and 400 resources (400 wood + 200 stone and 250 wood + 150 stone are recommended), not train soldiers, as a building that simply trains civilians and recycles supplies, reduce HP, attack and frontier influence, and no longer consider it as a fortress-type defense facility.
2. Granary and depot buildings for gathering natural resources such as beasts, berries, wood and metals, and stones should be able to be built in neutral areas as well as docks. This will first effectively use the rich food sources on the map, without having to bother to start farming in the opening game, and will also facilitate a more decentralized placement of mineral resources on the map, avoiding the collection of one or two rich mines to become close to a de facto "infinite".
3. Arrow towers, forts and walls for security and defense should be built in neutral areas, with forts maintaining a certain frontier area of influence. This way, players can block the passages between mountains and forests with few stones through the walls, avoiding the embarrassment of "surrounding one's town with a large circle of walls", and also weakening the role of carts and cavalry and increasing the role of stone throwers. It is also possible to build a "fortress zone" with well-defended and military training facilities, which can be attacked and defended, to improve the role of the fortress, so that the situation does not fluctuate greatly with the army fighting downwind & upwind.
4. Military facilities and temples, which are theoretically occupied, will not get out of control due to the loss of offices and forts, avoiding speculative tactics caused by "office decapitation".

 

Well, the part about the cost of "town centers" may be right.

Maybe fragile town centers with the same food&wood cost but only 100 Stone cost could be an idea ? With less area generated, like Kleroukies.

 

The part about building granaries, ... in neutral territory is maybe not stupid, but contradicts the fundamentals options of 0ad. If the guy wants to play AoE in 0ad, let him build a AoE mod for 0ad...

That doesn't mean that no solution to allow gathering in neutral territory should ever be created (Maurya elephants are interesting for that an not really overpowered since they are slow and vulnerable), just that they should have real constraints and impose a committed strategy, so that they would not become the default way of doing things.

 

Building defenses in neutral territory is again a bad way of addressing the problem (especially since Athenians and Romans already can do that, so why remove their specificity ?).

But it's true that it's very frustrating to have the perfect defensive position on the map and not being able to use it because it's a few inches too far from your area of control...

Maybe things more varied than outposts could be added to the game ? Like a tower that cost a lot more but has its own root control area ? So it's possible to have a couple where they'll be really useful, but still not viable to spam them on the map.

 

Not sure about the 4th point. Office decapitation as he writes is an important strategy, but maybe it should be a little less "all or nothing" ?
No idea how to do it though. Maybe keep the ability to build inside the area even when the root is gone ?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, LienRag said:

The part about building granaries, ... in neutral territory is maybe not stupid, but contradicts the fundamentals options of 0ad. If the guy wants to play AoE in 0ad, let him build a AoE mod for 0ad...

 

If it's added to the game that dropsites are buildable in neutral territory, it then becomes a fundamental feature of the game.