Introducing the Official community mod for Alpha 26

[real_tabasco_sauce]

14 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

Brit chariots are not OP. They are counter-able by any melee champ cav, CS spears, sniping, and by other means.

Try them with Boudicca tho.

[chrstgtr]

2 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Try them with Boudicca tho.

Sure. I’ve expressed skepticism about Boudica many times before in these forums.  They’re very very strong with Boudica.  That may be a different problem.
 

But I’m personally undecided on whether Boudica is a problem. She only helps heroes, which means the impact is limited unless a player masses a lot of chariots, in which case it’s probably already gg. Compare that to the cav hero for rome, which boosts champ and CS cav, or Vercin, which boosts all soldiers

[Fabius]

On 02/12/2022 at 5:56 PM, alre said:

there has been in the past some discussion about reframing champ spear cav as cataphracts (which is mostly how they are called in game). cataphracts would be slower than usual cav and have a lot more pierce armor, and would be very good ranged inf counters, interpreting well the classical AoE cav role.

Cataphracts are line breakers not light infantry hunters, historically they tired extremely quickly so not at all ideal for light infantry hunting. They should be good against melee infantry, so high hack armour, and definitely slower.

[Fabius]

On 02/12/2022 at 7:34 PM, binobo said:

To make it more affordable, I think it it should be 400 wood (100 wood reduction) with 100 stone and 100 metal

Why is there a metal cost anyway? fortresses cost wood and stone, so why does this have a metal component? Why not  just make it 200 stone and 400 wood?

[chrstgtr]

7 hours ago, Fabius said:

Why is there a metal cost anyway? fortresses cost wood and stone, so why does this have a metal component? Why not  just make it 200 stone and 400 wood?

This was one of the mistakes from a23-->a24. Someone thought it was massively OP and made the camp useless in a24. It's been partially fixed, but I would have no problem going back to a23 where the camp was actually used (and wasn't OP imo). Now, it is very rare to ever see one built

[poised]

I think it could be useful if the links on the topics for the vote linked to some sort of summary of the discussion, or at least of the argument for agreeing with each respective proposal. It looked like they merely showed the technical application of the alteration. Perhaps I missed something.

[Stan`]

5 hours ago, poised said:

I think it could be useful if the links on the topics for the vote linked to some sort of summary of the discussion, or at least of the argument for agreeing with each respective proposal. It looked like they merely showed the technical application of the alteration. Perhaps I missed something.

Well for that you'd need to have the discussion happen on gitlab which never happens because most people prefer the forums. 

Also most decisions were taken by majority rather than unanimous decisions. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

unanimous decisions

Which are almost impossible to achieve and game design is never done this way.

[Kampot]

Would it be possible to include in next community-mod release ability for host of the game to disable gaia attack after player resignation - either friendly units or all units?

 

thanks

Edited December 4, 2022 by Kampot

[Fabius]

13 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

This was one of the mistakes from a23-->a24. Someone thought it was massively OP and made the camp useless in a24. It's been partially fixed, but I would have no problem going back to a23 where the camp was actually used (and wasn't OP imo). Now, it is very rare to ever see one built

I see. I remember they complained we were using them as impromptu siege workshops and so bypassing the need for a fortress and proceeded to ruin it, which struck me as rather much like punishing the player for being creative with things. I used that as often as I could, not just for siege, when I realised it had veteran spearmen I always made some camps somewhere on my back line so I could make use of those veterans.

All in all I would love the old camp with the complete original training roster of hastati, triari and Equites(veteran equites maybe?) with all the siege as well. It wont make the siege workshop a redundancy either as that still can be placed back home.

[chrstgtr]

2 hours ago, Fabius said:

I see. I remember they complained we were using them as impromptu siege workshops and so bypassing the need for a fortress and proceeded to ruin it, which struck me as rather much like punishing the player for being creative with things. I used that as often as I could, not just for siege, when I realised it had veteran spearmen I always made some camps somewhere on my back line so I could make use of those veterans.

All in all I would love the old camp with the complete original training roster of hastati, triari and Equites(veteran equites maybe?) with all the siege as well. It wont make the siege workshop a redundancy either as that still can be placed back home.

It also lacks techs and other functionality. 

I agree for all your reasons and more. But that’s how we got here

[Fabius]

9 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

It also lacks techs and other functionality. 

I agree for all your reasons and more. But that’s how we got here

It could be used as a staging point to finally add in centurions as a trainable unit from it, that would be very nice. Though centurions are I think their own little debate at this point.

Some unique techs would be awesome, maybe some kind of vision upgrade, Romans did like their outposts and signal towers.

I guess having the full siege roster might be a bit much on top of a training roster of similar length to all have in one place. So I am definitely fine with other functionalities. Like those mentioned above. 

[Fabius]

One thing I would love to see is a return of the Roman mule and see it used to once again move scorpions around instead of them being pulled in little carts like everyone else.

[binobo]

11 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

It also lacks techs and other functionality. 

I agree for all your reasons and more. But that’s how we got here

There could be upgrades to the camp to make the troops veteran. Personally, I like that the troops trained are higher level.  For the sake of creativity, the camp could slowly heal troops inside at the cost of an upgrade. To circumvent the "abuse" of mobile arsenals, the production of rams could be slower in the camps. Also, nobody uses the siege wall. currently, garrisoning of walls is one tactic I see no one use.

Are there any thoughts to this?

Also, on a side note, didn't the romans have slingers too? I think it would upset some balancing if they were a stock troop but if there was an upgrade in the barracks to allow the production of slingers, the romans would have more versatility. One of the worst things about playing Romans is playing in low wood environments. They don't have mercenaries or slingers so it makes Romans extremely disadvantaged in these biomes. 

[binobo]

I like the idea of centurions. It could be similar to an area affect troop like the minister or trumpeteer. Or it could be similar to the Iphicrates in Athens and have a slight movement boost (5-10%)for soldiers in a formation with a centurion. 

I think it's cool to have formations but there's no point to do the testudo other than keeping troops together. It would make sense if testudo troops had +1 pierce resistance while moving. 

On the debate of Cavalry, I think all cavalry, especially sword cavalry should have a health decrease and/or a reduction in armor. I'm guilty of it but the Roman sword cav (and other sword cav like the carth mercs) are too tank like. 

[Philip the Swaggerless]

51 minutes ago, binobo said:

Also, nobody uses the siege wall. currently, garrisoning of walls is one tactic I see no one use.

I would love to use the wall but you lose control of it quickly to gaia if in neutral territory or to the enemy if in enemy territory and you can't prevent it.

[chrstgtr]

2 hours ago, binobo said:

camp could slowly heal troops inside at the cost of an upgrade.

It used to do this too. The camp used to be really useful and open up a lot of new strats, but it was entirely gutted. 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

3 hours ago, binobo said:

garrisoning of walls is one tactic I see no one use.

The main reason no one uses it is that its hard to get the troops in the right places, and also you can only garrison 8 troops up there, which means its not worth the clicks to get them up there unless you are iberians in p1. 

I have previously recommended adjusting the number of positions to 20 so that it can be useful, even if there is some unit overlap (god forbid).

[Fabius]

8 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

The main reason no one uses it is that its hard to get the troops in the right places, and also you can only garrison 8 troops up there, which means its not worth the clicks to get them up there unless you are iberians in p1. 

I have previously recommended adjusting the number of positions to 20 so that it can be useful, even if there is some unit overlap (god forbid).

the main problem is the only unit that actually effectively works on walls are archers since they have the longest range.

Skirmishers are useless and slingers are mildly better.

[Fabius]

12 hours ago, binobo said:

Also, on a side note, didn't the romans have slingers too? I think it would upset some balancing if they were a stock troop but if there was an upgrade in the barracks to allow the production of slingers, the romans would have more versatility. One of the worst things about playing Romans is playing in low wood environments. They don't have mercenaries or slingers so it makes Romans extremely disadvantaged in these biomes.

Why not put some focus on allied troops? Apparently Rome was using regular legions drawn from Rome as a province and then Allied legions drawn from other areas nearby. You could use this to bring on other troops to fill in gaps assuming they weren't all just carbon copies of each other. 

[Fabius]

12 hours ago, Philip the Swaggerless said:

I would love to use the wall but you lose control of it quickly to gaia if in neutral territory or to the enemy if in enemy territory and you can't prevent it.

nobody uses walls at all, not even stone walls. And hilariously enough this is the first alpha since A23 where I have used walls and had them play important rolls in multiple battles. I think players are so not used to seeing walls that when they do see them they sort of freak out. And now we have functional catapults to deal with rams again.

Still, siege walls are nice as an alternative solution, if you have no stone you can still wall stuff using wood. It is a pity though they lost one point of crush armour, used to be 4 but then became the generic 3. Is great for wood maps like Ardennes, the broken terrain can really be played for advantage.
 

maybe could make siege walls phase 2 as well?

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Ok everyone, I found a good civ bonus for Seleucids:

farms -25% cost, -75% build time, and no diminishing returns for farmers.

How does this sound?

This way the bonus works in the short term, but also a little bit in the long term.

here is the merge request:

https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/-/merge_requests/24/diffs

[Fabius]

48 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Ok everyone, I found a good civ bonus for Seleucids:

farms -25% cost, -75% build time, and no diminishing returns for farmers.

How does this sound?

This way the bonus works in the short term, but also a little bit in the long term.

here is the merge request:

https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/-/merge_requests/24/diffs

An interesting idea, why Seleucids? 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

4 minutes ago, Fabius said:

An interesting idea, why Seleucids? 

I called it "fertile crescent"

It should help with seles need for food, in particular for eles and cavalry, two Seleucid strengths.

[alre]

2 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Ok everyone, I found a good civ bonus for Seleucids:

farms -25% cost, -75% build time, and no diminishing returns for farmers.

How does this sound?

This way the bonus works in the short term, but also a little bit in the long term.

here is the merge request:

https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/-/merge_requests/24/diffs

I think the non-diminishing returns are a very big buff actually, even if late. must be well evaluated. maybe it's better to just keep the building bonus.