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

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

As for the techs I think its nice to have potent techs that make an effect on a particular ship type, that way you actually choose which techs to get according to the naval strategy you are going for instead of just clicking almost everything like eco or land military techs

Right now, the best strategy is to NO techs. The techs for boats right now are more numerous than for inf/cav despite boats being made about 1000x less often than inf/cav. That just doesn't make sense. 

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I'd like to be able to make scout ship in p1. I think given how long p1 usually lasts, having an opportunity to "rush" on water would be nice. I think the details of which ships are too op/ up in navy fights aren't clear yet, but definitely ships need to be be killing fishing ships faster.

Totally disagree. I think the best thing that naval does (or used to do) is force a quick p2 to get war ships to kill fishing. If you put a fighting ship in p1 then fishing will be mitigated and people will just stay in p1 forever and make fields instead of bothering with fish. 

The balance is just bad. All ships are underpowered and none are worth making to fight. That is very clear. Luckily balance stats can be fixed. But the next round basically requires brand new stats because the current situation isn't informative. Navy is still totally conceptual to me. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

32 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

3. I do indeed would like to see Arrow Ships fire volleys of arrows instead of one at a time. I think there may be a patch somewhere for that. And then be awesome for the arrow ship tech to add arrows to this volley instead of reducing attack time.

I achieved this in my non-random buildingAI experiements. Tbh I think a faster fire rate would be fine too as an interim measure. This would be of interest anyway for onagers.

32 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

4. Balance etc. This was a first draft of the ship stats. Put into the community mod for yall to suggest good stat values. I guess a few rounds of idle complaints are necessary before the real work is done. For instance, I would suggest (among other things!!2) tightening up the accuracy of warships so they are stronger against land units and fishing boats.

I could do a round of updates at some point to address the points made here.

Edited June 27, 2024 by real_tabasco_sauce

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

We should definitely play some water maps so we are forced to make ships to help inform the ship on ship balance. It probably won't be fun, but it would be good navy is balanced upon a27 release.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

5 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

Luckily balance stats can be fixed. But the next round basically requires brand new stats because the current situation isn't informative. Navy is still totally conceptual to me. 

Ya supposed to suggest some numbers, broham. Yer a balancer? (Maybe I'm mistaken).

I got you a decent ship concept. Now suggest some stats. The whole point of this exercise.

[ChronA]

On 27/06/2024 at 9:22 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Ya supposed to suggest some numbers, broham.

Somewhere I heard this advice and it has served me well: if a unit is initially OP, reduce one of its combat stats by half. If the unit is UP, double one of its combat stats. Keep doing this until the relationship flips, thereby bounding the balanced range for the statistic. Then start splitting differences until you converge on a balanced value.

The real big brain moment is realizing that this is is not just a good algorithm for converging on acceptable parameter ranges. It's actually easier to create stable Nash equilibria using strong dominance relationships, such as you get by sticking to powers of two stat-adjustments. The resulting strong counters will be much more stable against perturbations than a delicately fine-tuned dominance web.

I know 0 AD aspires to be a "soft counter" based experience, but I really think you guys will paradoxically make a lot more headway if you learn to be less cautious with your stat adjustments. When every piece of your balance web is fine tuned, adjusting any part is almost inevitably going to break other parts, creating obscure new problems as fast as you solve them. You end up needing to add compensatory adjustments across every node of the web, which in turn all cause their own adjustments that must be correctly compensated... it's an endless quagmire:

On 25/06/2024 at 10:48 PM, chrstgtr said:

We see a bunch of small problems with balance where things are just a little bit off. I can't put my finger on the exact problem or a solution but I think there is pretty wide agreement that balance isn't quite right. 

 

TL:DR - Try doubling the DPS of all boats. See how much that helps the UP-ness of naval units vs land ones. Then you will probably need to buff the HP of ram ships, since melee units benefit less from DPS changes than ranged ones. But after that you might be in the ball-park of the situation you want.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

 

https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/-/tree/main/community-mod/simulation/templates

May I suggest for ships:

 

template_unit_ship_warship

        <Pierce>12 20</Pierce>

      <PrepareTime>1500 1000</PrepareTime>
      <RepeatTime>3000 2000</RepeatTime>

 

template_unit_ship_warship_arrow

 -       <Pierce>15</Pierce>

    <Population>3 2</Population>

Line 36 tab -> spaces

 

template_unit_ship_warship_ram

        <Hack>200.0 150.0</Hack>

      <RepeatTime>8000 6000</RepeatTime>

    <Population>3 2</Population>

Line 51 tab -> spaces

 

template_unit_ship_warship_scout

    <Population>2 1</Population>

Line 27 tab -> spaces

 

template_unit_ship_warship_siege

        <Crush>125 150</Crush>

      <MaxRange>80 85</MaxRange>

        <Spread>6 3</Spread>

    <Population>4 3</Population>

Line 63 tab -> spaces

[real_tabasco_sauce]

ok, today version 10 is out! Be sure to check out the new sparta content and the updated values for naval units.

[RangerK]

On 16/07/2024 at 5:49 PM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

ok, today version 10 is out! Be sure to check out the new sparta content and the updated values for naval units.

What is the best place to see release notes?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

The popup in the main menu does a good job

[Philip the Swaggerless]

On 16/07/2024 at 4:49 PM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

ok, today version 10 is out! Be sure to check out the new sparta content and the updated values for naval units.

This is interesting.  I have one question about Sparta and the Neodamodes spearman they get in p3 for 30 food and 20 metal.  I assume their main benefit is the cheaper cost?

So it should be easier for the Spartan player to keep a high population. That is in addition to hoplite tradition tech making their regular spearmen train 25% faster.

Do we want Sparta to be a civ that can spam units easily? In earlier alphas Sparta had a -10% pop cap.  Was there a basis for that debuff? Or was that just hype around the famous "300" battle that didn't necessarily reflect Sparta over its strong period?

[real_tabasco_sauce]

6 hours ago, Philip the Swaggerless said:

This is interesting.  I have one question about Sparta and the Neodamodes spearman they get in p3 for 30 food and 20 metal.  I assume their main benefit is the cheaper cost?

So it should be easier for the Spartan player to keep a high population. That is in addition to hoplite tradition tech making their regular spearmen train 25% faster.

Do we want Sparta to be a civ that can spam units easily? In earlier alphas Sparta had a -10% pop cap.  Was there a basis for that debuff? Or was that just hype around the famous "300" battle that didn't necessarily reflect Sparta over its strong period?

The intent was for the neodamodes reforms to be kind of a last resort when sparta is low on military. IIRC the 180 pop debuff was there to justify superior infantry and champions, but it really wasn't worth it. When it was removed i think a lot of ppl were in favor of removing it.

The neodamodes are not intended to make sparta a spammy civ, so I think they should be made a little weaker than the regular hoplite infantry, and also maybe make them unaffected by leonidas.

Also, I think the p1 champs have turned out much less powerful than I anticipated, so I think i'll remove the train time penalty and move the movement speed tech to p1.

Edited July 25, 2024 by real_tabasco_sauce

[BeTe]

13 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

The intent was for the neodamodes reforms to be kind of a last resort when sparta is low on military. IIRC the 180 pop debuff was there to justify superior infantry and champions, but it really wasn't worth it. When it was removed i think a lot of ppl were in favor of removing it.

The neodamodes are not intended to make sparta a spammy civ, so I think they should be made a little weaker than the regular hoplite infantry, and also maybe make them unaffected by leonidas.

Also, I think the p1 champs have turned out much less powerful than I anticipated, so I think i'll remove the train time penalty and move the movement speed tech to p1.

Fyi, I tried 2 games vs CPU to rush those Spartan champions - but I don't think it can be done on time. Maybe I didn't optimize Bo, idk. But with normal BO your Barracks are ready around 3:00 (or so) and you will have stronger eco + outproduce champions build, right? 

Btw, in general, I am curious why champions are so expensive in 0AD? I mean they are stronger but can't gather resources which is direct harming eco - according to this, shouldn't they be at least equally expensive? I am just curious why it's designed that way?

[chrstgtr]

7 minutes ago, BeTe said:

Btw, in general, I am curious why champions are so expensive in 0AD? I mean they are stronger but can't gather resources which is direct harming eco - according to this, shouldn't they be at least equally expensive? I am just curious why it's designed that way?

Once you’re fighting with champions you’re generally engaged in constant fight. The fact that they can’t gather is irrelevant as you generally would never use them for that. 
 

They’re more expensive for the reason you identify—they’re stronger. 
 

One can argue on whether their costs, in terms of resources and train time, are property set

[BeTe]

24 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Once you’re fighting with champions you’re generally engaged in constant fight. The fact that they can’t gather is irrelevant as you generally would never use them for that. 
 

They’re more expensive for the reason you identify—they’re stronger. 
 

One can argue on whether their costs, in terms of resources and train time, are property set

Yeah that makes sense. Tho, I think I actually used CS units to gather resources (metal/wood) near battlefield/center of map between fights. If you need to quickly rebuild units from 10 Barracks after big loses and you're low on food, you want women to gather food and CS for wood/metal. Unless you are floating something, which is usually suboptimal, at least in other RTSes. Tho, I guess in most cases you start floating some resource before fight is started, so maybe this is not always case... 

What I talk about, I like ability to choose more economy/macro or more military buildings during game. According to that, if you chose military approach, you must 1) scout 2) if he goes eco, be more aggressive and make damage so you don't fall behind. Otherwise, if you go eco, you need to 1) scout opponent and see what he builds 2) properly react (if he is going military) you need defenses, walls, play defensively, etc.

Maybe I am wrong and fixated to how other games works. But 0AD is weird to me (doesn't mean wrong/bad, idk yet)...

Edited July 26, 2024 by BeTe

[chrstgtr]

59 minutes ago, BeTe said:

Yeah that makes sense. Tho, I think I actually used CS units to gather resources (metal/wood) near battlefield/center of map between fights. If you need to quickly rebuild units from 10 Barracks after big loses and you're low on food, you want women to gather food and CS for wood/metal. Unless you are floating something, which is usually suboptimal, at least in other RTSes. Tho, I guess in most cases you start floating some resource before fight is started, so maybe this is not always case... 

What I talk about, I like ability to choose more economy/macro or more military buildings during game. According to that, if you chose military approach, you must 1) scout 2) if he goes eco, be more aggressive and make damage so you don't fall behind. Otherwise, if you go eco, you need to 1) scout opponent and see what he builds 2) properly react (if he is going military) you need defenses, walls, play defensively, etc.

Maybe I am wrong and fixated to how other games works. But 0AD is weird to me (doesn't mean wrong/bad, idk yet)...

No disrespect but you have some things to learn about 0AD. I think you're the one who created another thread on whether 0AD should have less units on the screen. In that thread, the OP started with a bunch of premises (like it's hard to identify the types of units present), which just aren't true once you get more experience playing. 

All this is to say, yes, OAD is different from some other RTS. That doesn't necessarily make it worse, though. And, I suspect a lot of the opinions you are saying now will change as you gain more experience/get better at the game and realize some of the things you are doing now don't make a ton of sense. 

Anyways, cheers and welcome to the community. 

Edited July 26, 2024 by chrstgtr

[BeTe]

14 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

No disrespect but you have some things to learn about 0AD. I think you're the one who created another thread on whether 0AD should have less units on the screen. In that thread, the OP started with a bunch of premises (like it's hard to identify the types of units present), which just aren't true once you get more experience playing. 

All this is to say, yes, OAD is different from some other RTS. That doesn't necessarily make it worse, though. And, I suspect a lot of the opinions you are saying now will change as you gain more experience/get better at the game and realize some of the things you are doing now don't make a ton of sense. 

Anyways, cheers and welcome to the community. 

1) i forgot what I actually wrote, but "hard to identify" is visual not mechanical issue for me (at least now). It just looks ugly (and it's subjective ofc). 

2) Yeah basically you are right, i just need to learn that's why i wrote "idk yet". Usually if I write something, it's not for purpose of teaching others but rather for learning purpose. (Dialectical approach?) Definitely I should make it clear, but essentially my goal is to encourage people to prove me wrong or explain some parts i am missing. I give my perspective and hope for different one. Anyways, you just reminded me to start this thread: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/120864-advanced-players-1v1-replays/ , so I'd really appreciate someone to teach me a bit.  

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

3 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

One can argue on whether their costs, in terms of resources and train time, are property set

My general feeling is that Champs could be a little weaker and a lot cheaper. I have no hard data to show, though. Just my general feeling. I like Age of Mythology's "champ" cost ratio to standard units better than 0 A.D.'s. So, that colors my view, for sure. 

[chrstgtr]

4 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

My general feeling is that Champs could be a little weaker and a lot cheaper. I have no hard data to show, though. Just my general feeling. I like Age of Mythology's "champ" cost ratio to standard units better than 0 A.D.'s. So, that colors my view, for sure. 

I’m mostly fine with them. Except for how they take forever to make. I can have all the resources and 10 unit producing buildings and I will still choose not to produce them during a battle because their production is so long that my army will become too small by the time they’re ready to fight. Having to unlock them is also a pain that I find unnecessary.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

3 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

I’m mostly fine with them. Except for how they take forever to make. I can have all the resources and 10 unit producing buildings and I will still choose not to produce them during a battle because their production is so long that my army will become too small by the time they’re ready to fight. Having to unlock them is also a pain that I find unnecessary.

I agree with this. They take way too darn long to train compared to citizen soldiers and unlocking is a pain. It would be different if citizen soldiers took longer too. The ratio is what's important, and 2x training time is too much. What if....

 

Unlock tech available in P2 for barracks, get them unlocked for free at the Fortress in P3. So, they're available by default in P3 from expensive Fortresses, but have the option to unlock them early in P2. Also, lower train time:

 

Infantry Champs 20s -> 15 seconds.

Cavalry Champs 25s -> 20 seconds.

Elephant Champs 36s -> 25 seconds.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

I think the unlock techs from barracks/stable are be ok since those are buildings you want anyway. It could also be a case by case situation. Definitely champions coming from unique buildings (Han academy)(gym) should get a train speed buff according to the building cost. Han academy is 300 stone 300 metal.

[chrstgtr]

51 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Unlock tech available in P2 for barracks

It won't change anything--it'll be cost prohibitive. What's the point of having it? It adds a ton of time and costs a ton to do. 

51 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Fortress in P3

Don't care. No one is going to spam forts to use as a barrack. 

51 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Infantry Champs 20s -> 15 seconds.

Cavalry Champs 25s -> 20 seconds.

Elephant Champs 36s -> 25 seconds.

Fine. I would probably be more radical but conservative is a better approach. If that makes champs too strong then champs' stats should be nerfed. 

 

My view is: if you can afford it, it should be available. Everything else, including long train time and locking them behind a tech, just encourages CS spam. 

Edited July 26, 2024 by chrstgtr

[real_tabasco_sauce]

I'd like to keep up diversifying champion units. I think it could be cool to let the kushite axe champs be a bit cheaper, weaker, but fast moving.

We did the chariot mixin, longsword mixin (not comm mod, but could be), we have the persian immortals weapon switching now.

Any other ideas?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

8 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I'd like to keep up diversifying champion units. I think it could be cool to let the kushite axe champs be a bit cheaper, weaker, but fast moving.

We did the chariot mixin, longsword mixin (not comm mod, but could be), we have the persian immortals weapon switching now.

Any other ideas?

I'd suggesting looking into what DE has done with Hoplites and Phalangites. 

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I'd like to keep up diversifying champion units. I think it could be cool to let the kushite axe champs be a bit cheaper, weaker, but fast moving.

We did the chariot mixin, longsword mixin (not comm mod, but could be), we have the persian immortals weapon switching now.

Any other ideas?

It might be fun to do something non-military. A couple ideas below.

1-a unit that can collect resources. This would allow you to potentially mass them early, so it’s not a huge drain to have a bunch of idle units. This would be especially helpful in p2, i think. 
 

2-a unit that can build. Either a really quick builder. Or a unit that can build really cheap/free buildings. It plays with the idea of territory expansion, which has untapped potential, I think. Also, deals with the problem of champs being a huge drag on eco like (1) above, which, again, would be real helpful if available in p2. 
 

3-something like the Han minister but stronger. 
 

One other note, I don’t think all champs becoming gimmick units is desirable. It’s ok that more than one civ has champ swords, or whatever, that function the same as another civ. With that said, having one fun unique unit can give a civ a real unique feel if it’s done right.