Introducing the Official community mod for 0 A.D. Empires Ascendant

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Just code it so I can have non randos in the better mod.

[ShadowOfHassen]

If it helps, I like the non-random arrows. Sure, they need tweaked, but I build a guard tower to kill people, and it's kind of hard to kill people if it skims the top 50% off of the invading Spartans and then moves on to shoot something else.

[ChronA]

20 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Surely you realize we are not giving non-random arrows a fair shake here since they are not yet balanced ideally.

The fact that non random arrows broke the balance in the first place just shows that the rush-defense balance was over tuned and under-differentiated to begin with. AoE2 tower rush wars prove that OP static defenses can still work in a fun and dynamic early game. You just have to leave room for the meta evolve new rush variants that don't get completely shut down by it. Maybe provide some sort of early heavy-armor infantry, or maybe even reduce building attack range so raiders can work around the edges.

Or you could meticulous rebalance the damage numbers along a new knife edge to preserve the current dynamic. It will be a lot of work, but you do seem determined to see it through. Note: that was why I was opposed previously to non-random arrows. It seemed like something that might burn you out for a feature no one else apparently wanted. But now @wowgetoffyourcellphone is asking for it for their mod, so I'm in.

[chrstgtr]

21 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

So the reason that non-random arrows is bad is personal preference?

One of the reasons, yes. 

I also think balance makes it pragmatically difficult (or impossible) to do, which I think you would agree with at this point you've tried too different versions that are presenting big balance issues. 

23 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

But it was silly, boring, and resulted in a lot of unfavorable gameplay.

All personal preference. None of these are objective conclusions. None of these are valid reasons to do a change. 

I disagree with all these positions and actually say that the opposite. Because it is largely about personal preferences. 

24 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Diving under buildings without consequence, buildings acting like a timer for the soldiers to leave, Healer auras invalidate arrows, lack of control over arrows.

• Diving under buildings without consequence
  • This isn't true. You do get damaged. You do die if you stay too long. 
  • To the extent you can rush without dying, I think that is a good thing. Basically no one has said that rush was a problem before. 
• buildings acting like a timer for the soldiers to leave
  • This is the same thing as "Diving under buildings without consequence"
• Healer auras invalidate arrows
  • This is obviously a problem with healer auras. That is what should've been fixed. 
  • Note, non-random arrows largely invalidates healing as a concept. This is bad.
• Lack of control over arrows
  • I kind of agree with you here. 
  • But I don't think manually control of arrows is actually used a lot/effectively. 
  • Manually control of arrows is possible with random buildingAI
  • This is less important that buildingAI behavior because it occurs less frequently. 

--------

To the extent there are objective criteria, that objective criteria favors random arrows because random arrows was already balanced. We don't even know if it is possible to balance non-random arrows and your efforts to do so are getting more complicated but with no more success. 

[Barcodes]

On 27/03/2024 at 4:23 PM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I agree, I think I overshot for towers and forts. Maybe even for CCs too. Forts really have no reason not to be formidable when fully garrisoned, so I would probably increase their firing period from 4 to 3s.

I think with a couple adjustments and some techs for fort and tower arrow damage (or maybe phase dependent damage) it might work out pretty well.

I didn't change the sentry tower build time, and I'm still evaluating the cost increase.

maybe you should consider adding upgrades to the fort, similar to how stone towers are 

[Outis]

6 hours ago, Barcodes said:

maybe you should consider adding upgrades to the fort, similar to how stone towers are 

Towers get range upgrade and no minimum range upgrade which fortresses don't. These add more utility.

Fortress specific HP or attack upgrades as mere stat boosts are also ideas.

 

[Outis]

19 minutes ago, Outis said:

Towers get range upgrade and no minimum range upgrade which fortresses don't. These add more utility.

Fortress specific HP or attack upgrades as mere stat boosts are also ideas.

 

There are no armor upgrades for towers or fortresses, or any buildings for that matter, i wonder if that would make things interesting.

[panda]

On 09/10/2022 at 10:04 AM, LetswaveaBook said:

@wraitii I created a repository on gitlab for big houses producing women in 25 seconds instead of 30 :

https://gitlab.com/LetswaveaBook/0adtest2/-/tree/main

Also I allowed Carthaginians to create women in 20 seconds in an apartment without the fertility festival requirement.

When I tried to make a merge request, Git asked me either to verify with a credit card or send an email. Is it necessary to do a merge request by one of these two options, or are there other options?

I think this is a great idea. Bigger houses should need less time for producing women. That would be fair for civ balance.

Moreover, reducing women training time from houses would give an alternative way to boom. I would go as far as:

- 25sec from small houses

- 18sec from big houses

- 12sec from apartment

Edited April 11, 2024 by panda

[Atrik]

@real_tabasco_sauce Most agree that A26 was reasonably balanced, units, buildings, even civs... If your changes introduces new game-play opportunities, I think you should consider making sure your suggested changes are consistent.

First let me remind you that I don't try to just be negative as I already said I liked the melee re-balance, and in 26.8, I like the cc arrow cap that open up for more rushing opportunities in 'mid game', (min 7-12). My own 100females squadrons are a bit more threaten then before which is fair.

However I do regret how 26.8 wasn't though out much and clearly was pushed to fix the unbalances introduced by non-random arrows. If for reasons non-random arrows will not be reverted despite the pushbacks, I would still like to suggest give back a role to towers. After thoughts, nerfing them was maybe good to avoid stalling turtle game. But now they are just always a bad investment.

Here is my line of reasoning: if the maximum power dps of a tower is nerfed by that much (reminder garrison contribute to -50% dps in 26.8), the associated cost of building the towers or upgrading them should have been scaled in consequences. Here some ideas:

• Sentry towers build cost reverted back to 100wood, or even lowered to 80wood.
• Share Carrier Pigeon tech for towers.
• Sentries, Crenellations techs cost at least cost -50% since they provide -50% dps from before.
• Han great tower and even Iberian tower need adjusted default arrow count as they are a big investments for half the max dps now.

Thanks for reading.

[ChronA]

Here's an idea for buffing sentry and guard towers that I tried in one of my own modding experiments and found incredibly fun: give them an aura that slightly increases the movement speed of friendly units. This is meant to represent the policing and infrastructure functions that a small local garrison under arms can perform. They keep the roads clear, break up fights, and give directions, enhancing the efficiency of the local economy.

The effect of this was to incentivize building out a network of sentry towers across your territory, and especially around work sites to speed up production. These naturally also became a defensive asset against raiders, especially if you strategically upgraded some to guard towers, but (at least in my experiments) the density of towers needed for efficient production was less than the density needed to fully protect against raids. But I still felt it shifted the approach to static defense away from the spoke and hub paradigm, where a CC or Fortress anchors the defenses and economy of a big chunk of territory.

If you want a further layer of intrigue, one could also give static defense a farming and metal mining debuff aura, representing the graft of the sentries. (This should also apply to CCs or Fortresses.) It could even slow research and unit production. Then you have an interesting push and pull where you should intentionally leave some gaps in the tower network.

Now, I would be remiss not to disclose that this was in the context of an experiment where I lowered the max pop to around 100 IIRC, along with other changes. I'm not sure the performance implications for a full sized game...

Edited May 17, 2024 by ChronA

[real_tabasco_sauce]

6 hours ago, Atrik said:

Here is my line of reasoning: if the maximum power dps of a tower is nerfed by that much (reminder garrison contribute to -50% dps in 26.8), the associated cost of building the towers or upgrading them should have been scaled in consequences. Here some ideas:

• Sentry towers build cost reverted back to 100wood, or even lowered to 80wood.

I agree, I think the 25 wood cost especially has made them much less worthwhile. However, lowering the cost back to 100 or 80 wood and keeping them weak (-50% garrison dmg), makes them a bit more spammy (too easy to cover a large area), which is kind of what happened in 26.6.

I would rather keep the cost as is, but add a single default arrow to make the 125 wood more worthwhile. I think it is good design to make scout towers something you get if needed when you can't fight off rushes. For example in aoe2, they talk about "forcing a tower" basically applying enough pressure to make the opponent invest in a tower for defense, therefore that money isn't invested in eco.

[chrstgtr]

On 17/05/2024 at 11:28 AM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I agree, I think the 25 wood cost especially has made them much less worthwhile. However, lowering the cost back to 100 or 80 wood and keeping them weak (-50% garrison dmg), makes them a bit more spammy (too easy to cover a large area), which is kind of what happened in 26.6.

I would rather keep the cost as is, but add a single default arrow to make the 125 wood more worthwhile. I think it is good design to make scout towers something you get if needed when you can't fight off rushes. For example in aoe2, they talk about "forcing a tower" basically applying enough pressure to make the opponent invest in a tower for defense, therefore that money isn't invested in eco.

Is any of this really necessary if we get rid of non-random arrows? I think there is a clear verdict on the non-random arrows at this point. 

Note, even after reverting back to random arrows, we might have to do a little rebalance to account for armor changes in the melee change. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

When I did the melee/ranged rebalance, I reduced all ranged unit damage. I could apply that same damage reduction to the a26 building arrow values. I think that would be the simplest way to go about it.

i won’t have time to make a new version for a while tho.

Edited May 21, 2024 by real_tabasco_sauce

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

When I did the melee/ranged rebalance, I reduced all ranged unit damage. I could apply that same damage reduction to the a26 building arrow values. I think that would be the simplest way to go about it.

 

Agree. Simplest and best. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I still can't understand why random arrows is desired by you folks. I'm absolutely flabbergasted. And even all mods will have to adhere to it. 

[chrstgtr]

54 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I still can't understand why random arrows is desired by you folks. I'm absolutely flabbergasted. And even all mods will have to adhere to it. 

There is a more full discussion in like three other threads. The short version is that non-random arrows creates lots of problems. Rushing is overly difficult. Sentry towers are too strong. Standing under a CC always creates unit loss even if there is no defending army outside, which means like 15 swords can defend against 2 rams and an army 3x as large. While it can be OP for both early and late game as described above, it also has lower dps than random arrows so the attacking army remains stronger in a way. Healers, including healing heroes, are ineffective and the ability to slowly level up units is much lower. And more.
 

In addition to these clear balance issues, this is ultimately just a preference issue. For me, I like random arrows because it creates a more dynamic game. If you stay under a building too long with random arrows you suddenly begin to quickly lose a lot of units, which can quickly flip the direction of a game. But with nonrandom arrows that sudden reversal doesn’t happen. This quick reversal effect can also happen if an army becomes lower health and then runs into a full health enemy army in an open field even if the full health army is smaller. 
 

All this is to say, we tried. But it was disliked by a lot of people. It wasn’t the first change to suffer that fate and it won’t be the last. 

[Feldfeld]

Nonrandom arrows simply don't play well with the engine currently imo, and random arrows did introduce a somewhat unique strategical mechanism like mentioned above.

That said I think nonrandom arrows would be good for ships.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

32 minutes ago, Feldfeld said:

Nonrandom arrows simply don't play well with the engine currently imo

What is different about our "engine" that makes non-random arrows not play well?

 

41 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

There is a more full discussion in like three other threads. The short version is that non-random arrows creates lots of problems. Rushing is overly difficult. Sentry towers are too strong. Standing under a CC always creates unit loss even if there is no defending army outside, which means like 15 swords can defend against 2 rams and an army 3x as large. While it can be OP for both early and late game as described above, it also has lower dps than random arrows so the attacking army remains stronger in a way. Healers, including healing heroes, are ineffective and the ability to slowly level up units is much lower. And more.

So it is OP and UP. Got it. 

 

42 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

But it was disliked by a lot of people.

They played it for what? A week? All right then. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

40 minutes ago, Feldfeld said:

That said I think nonrandom arrows would be good for ships.

Well @wowgetoffyourcellphone has already put together a pretty awesome rework for ships, which goes a lot further.

40 minutes ago, Feldfeld said:

Nonrandom arrows simply don't play well with the engine currently imo, and random arrows did introduce a somewhat unique strategical mechanism like mentioned above.

47 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

All this is to say, we tried. But it was disliked by a lot of people. It wasn’t the first change to suffer that fate and it won’t be the last.

I'll die on the hill that ultimately a non-random system is superior, but I can agree that the implementation of non-random arrows haven't hit the mark I was going for: Manual targeting isn't used much, some buildings are too effective, and others like the fortress are still fairly ineffective.

I'll put out an update sometime removing the non-random arrows, which may also help to serve as a negative control. I will bring them back at some point, with improvements for user control, cursors, audio cues, and more careful balance.

Edited May 22, 2024 by real_tabasco_sauce

[chrstgtr]

9 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

They played it for what? A week? All right then. 

It’s been a pretty long time now. It’s got less popular as time went on. At this point, I think people’s minds are made up. 

43 minutes ago, Feldfeld said:

That said I think nonrandom arrows would be good for ships.

I think I agree with this. But wow already has a rework for ships  I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive, though 

It was also integrated with siege towers but I think that make siege towers OP. I’m not sure if that just needs a stat adjustment or if there is an actual problem with the mechanism 

Edited May 22, 2024 by chrstgtr

[real_tabasco_sauce]

5 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

But wow already has a rework for ships  I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive, though

They are, the rework makes ships behave like proper units rather than water siege towers.

And they have classes: scout ship, arrow ship, fire ship, ram ship, siege ship.

[chrstgtr]

41 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Manual targeting isn't used much

Agree. It’s an interesting idea (and one that I think I want) but it really isn’t used. 
 

32 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

They are, the rework makes ships behave like proper units rather than water siege towers.

And they have classes: scout ship, arrow ship, fire ship, ram ship, siege ship.

But why is that mutually exclusive? If it is old buildingAI then the classes get muddled and you just need a mix of units. If it UnitAI then I think it could become just be a bunch of luring with sniping (targeting overrides). If it is nonrandom buildingAI then at least you get battle positioning. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

57 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

But why is that mutually exclusive? If it is old buildingAI then the classes get muddled and you just need a mix of units. If it UnitAI then I think it could become just be a bunch of luring with sniping (targeting overrides). If it is nonrandom buildingAI then at least you get battle positioning.

not sure what you mean with this. The ships are now like any other unit, (archer, pikeman, etc) in that they don't have buildingAI. So there is no buildingAI to be had.

im sure there will plenty of strategies and micro involved.

[MacWolf]

On 21/05/2024 at 1:37 PM, chrstgtr said:

Is any of this really necessary if we get rid of non-random arrows? I think there is a clear verdict on the non-random arrows at this point. 

Note, even after reverting back to random arrows, we might have to do a little rebalance to account for armor changes in the melee change. 

non random arrows are good, just need more balancing, the cc nerf + tower nerf was too much, for it to work properly i think just buff towers abit, no need to revert it to past, or atleast just do random arrows via cc and let the fortress+towers be non random, also new tech for fortress buffs, and towers whould be good

Edited May 22, 2024 by MacWolf

[MacWolf]

2 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Well @wowgetoffyourcellphone has already put together a pretty awesome rework for ships, which goes a lot further.

I'll die on the hill that ultimately a non-random system is superior, but I can agree that the implementation of non-random arrows haven't hit the mark I was going for: Manual targeting isn't used much, some buildings are too effective, and others like the fortress are still fairly ineffective.

I'll put out an update sometime removing the non-random arrows, which may also help to serve as a negative control. I will bring them back at some point, with improvements for user control, cursors, audio cues, and more careful balance.

noooooooooooooooooooo, siege towers will revert to being useless, we having more units being used lately, people are understanding how to kill siege towers, don't revert all random arrows, theres some good parts about it !!!