Introducing the Official community mod for Alpha 26

[chrstgtr]

33 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Why would you rather throw the entire proposal out the window than allow the possibility of 1 or 2 (slightly more) OP units in an experimental mod?

We can call it "experimental" all we want, but for all intents and purposes--it is the current alpha. The vanilla version of a26 does not function, if for no other reason, because of the Han farming issue and as a result most regular players exclusively play the mod. The mod will also likely be a27.

And, again, a single OP unit can ruin gameplay. For example, in a22, a common rule was the no one was allowed to make cav or bolt shooters. In a24, no one made anything but archers and OP defensive structures made games extremely long and enjoyable. Those are two alphas where a single OP unit was sufficient to ruin gameplay. We should not brush off just a few potentially OP units. 

I have other issues besides the specific ones I named, but the ones I named provide a general preview.

33 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

No, it's definitely a system. It is commonly referred to as a tech tree.

That is also true if you add just one tech--it becomes part of the tech tree. Each of these can standalone. What requires all 23 to be implemented at once?

Edited December 9, 2022 by chrstgtr

[real_tabasco_sauce]

26 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

That is also true if you add just one tech--it becomes part of the tech tree. Each of these can standalone. What requires all 23 to be implemented at once?

each unit gets their own tree. All the upgrades play a role in unit (and civ) differentiation.

It doesn't make sense to overlook an upgrade for a unit type, that would be inconsistent. I think you are still assuming a lot. For instance, the javelin cavalry upgrade is not available in p1, where prepare time and accuracy would be the most problematic. Also, civs that already have strong jav cav for some other reason do not recieve this upgrade. See? Very easily modified as needed. 

The objective part is the content added, not balance because we can't predict the future meta (at least very easily).

Its like rejecting the entire hamburger just because you don't like pickles.

Edited December 9, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[real_tabasco_sauce]

33 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

And, again, a single OP unit can ruin gameplay. For example, in a22, a common rule was the no one was allowed to make cav or bolt shooters. In a24, no one made anything but archers and OP defensive structures made games extremely long and enjoyable. Those are two alphas where a single OP unit was sufficient to ruin gameplay. We should not brush off just a few potentially OP units. 

Yes, but these were OP due to their inherent stats, not due to upgrades. in a24, all units were slower so there was no way to escape the range of archers. Also, you should consider that other units (spear cav, slingers, skirms, pikemen, spearmen etc ) also get as powerful if not more powerful upgrades. This is what I mean when I say u should consider the whole system, not just one or 2 upgrades.

[chrstgtr]

55 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

each unit gets their own tree. All the upgrades play a role in unit (and civ) differentiation.

It doesn't make sense to overlook an upgrade for a unit type, that would be inconsistent. I think you are still assuming a lot. For instance, the javelin cavalry upgrade is not available in p1, where prepare time and accuracy would be the most problematic. Also, civs that already have strong jav cav for some other reason do not recieve this upgrade. See? Very easily modified as needed. 

The objective part is the content added, not balance because we can't predict the future meta (at least very easily).

Its like rejecting the entire hamburger just because you don't like pickles.

But my question was why do all need to be implemented at once? A pickle can make you reject the whole burger if you are allergic. I just don't see why all have to be implemented at once. 

43 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Yes, but these were OP due to their inherent stats, not due to upgrades

Units will eventually get to the upgrades, though. If a unit become OP after upgrades it is still OP. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

13 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

But my question was why do all need to be implemented at once? A pickle can make you reject the whole burger if you are allergic. I just don't see why all have to be implemented at once. 

Try the burger, if you don't like pickles just take them off, burger is still good no?

Idk, I just most players voting no are just afraid of change. The main thing is the mod has much higher turnaround than an alpha release, so we should try new things.

Edited December 9, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[chrstgtr]

Just now, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Try the burger, if you don't like pickles just take them off, burger is still good no?

I don't know. You tell me--is a patch of 22 upgrades still good? A patch of 21? 20? 19? . . . A patch with 1 upgrade?

[Stan`]

I would like to stress that so far only the rice field and regicide fixes have been committed. Nothing from the mod itself. 

A possibility is for the mod to be rebased for A27 and continue to exist as standalone.

We have not decided what to do yet because there is too little activity on the other side.

Only three people are active. One is working on a new Atlas, the other on Vulkan, and the last one is working on some minor art fixes.

 

[Dakara]

3 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Try the burger, if you don't like pickles just take them off, burger is still good no?

Idk, I just most players voting no are just afraid of change. The main thing is the mod has much higher turnaround than an alpha release, so we should try new things.

Of course i'm afraid to add 20 new upgrades.  

Besides, I don't see much point. Have a lot of little upgrades it useless. You might as well have the effects of these improvements automatically if you deem them necessary, without upgrade. 

The interest of the upgrade of forge it to have a forge. We have already few upgrade in barack and stables.

if you eat too much resource with "4" additional technology, less resource for P3, make champion, do a new CC and get your fist in fortress.

An interesting point could be the creation of final choice upgrades at free cost. But not many. The neophyte must be able to retain the technology tree.

Edited December 9, 2022 by Dakara

[chrstgtr]

41 minutes ago, Stan` said:

I would like to stress that so far only the rice field and regicide fixes have been committed. Nothing from the mod itself. 

A possibility is for the mod to be rebased for A27 and continue to exist as standalone.

We have not decided what to do yet because there is too little activity on the other side.

Only three people are active. One is working on a new Atlas, the other on Vulkan, and the last one is working on some minor art fixes.

 

The mod is great. It allows for quicker improvements that players want. I'm just saying that, at least for a26, the mod represents a large portion of all regular users and therefore has replaced vanilla as the 'true' a26. 

I would love to see it back for a27. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

8 hours ago, Dakara said:

Of course i'm afraid to add 20 new upgrades.  

Besides, I don't see much point. Have a lot of little upgrades it useless. You might as well have the effects of these improvements automatically if you deem them necessary, without upgrade. 

They are not available all to one civ. Each civ has a small selection of them depending on their unit roster. The upgrades are much more situational than the forge techs, because they are not just damage and armor. 

Also, they are researched in the barracks and stable because they apply to units trained there.

Edited December 9, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[real_tabasco_sauce]

8 hours ago, Dakara said:

if you eat too much resource with "4" additional technology, less resource for P3, make champion, do a new CC and get your fist in fortress.

this is just opportunity cost. This is actually a benefit.

[Loki1950]

Your allergy metaphor just does work if you are allergic to that pickle in the burger the whole burger has become toxic for you period removing it does remove the contamination it's still their and still toxic.

Enjoy the Choice  

[a 0ad player]

I just wanted to say thanks for all the works here. Great

[real_tabasco_sauce]

49 minutes ago, Loki1950 said:

Your allergy metaphor just does work if you are allergic to that pickle in the burger the whole burger has become toxic for you period removing it does remove the contamination it's still their and still toxic.

Haha you're right, I am all too familiar since I am allergic to many things. The point remains tho, that the whole system brings more benefit than individual components may bring harm.

Edited December 9, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[LetswaveaBook]

On 08/12/2022 at 5:34 PM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Just curious: what are some reasons to vote against number 3, unit specific upgrades? I would have expected more popularity due to the amount of content included.

I dont know all the reasons, but I suspect that most people read badly.

Nobody pointed out that the tooltip for the Infantry archer said that it increases damage by 10%, while the code multiplies it by 1.15. Also the sword2.json file is missing a %-sign in the tooltip.

There is also the curious case that mercenaries are excluded from the upgrades, without showing that in the tooltip.

Apart from that, I dont have any noteworthy opinions about the patch. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

5 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

I dont know all the reasons, but I suspect that most people read badly.

Nobody pointed out that the tooltip for the Infantry archer said that it increases damage by 10%, while the code multiplies it by 1.15. Also the sword2.json file is missing a %-sign in the tooltip.

There is also the curious case that mercenaries are excluded from the upgrades, without showing that in the tooltip.

Apart from that, I dont have any noteworthy opinions about the patch. 

Thanks for finding that mistake. I can fix that later today. As for the mercenary part, most civs coincidentally don't have upgrades for their mercenaries because mercenaries are most often unit types that the civ doesn't already have.

Since there are exceptions, and also for consistency, I will just say "Non-mercenary soldiers". How does that sound?

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Ok, @LetswaveaBook I fixed the issue you mentioned and updated the tooltips. Maybe after we test these in the next version, we could just allow them to affect all units. It might be too confusing to have them remain non-mercenary upgrades. It would be quite infrequent anyway that the upgrades also effect mercenaries, because there are few redundant mercenaries. One example would be the sacred band cavalry and spearcav mercenaries from the italian embassy for carthage.

Im going to go ahead and test all the merge requests together, looks like we have almost enough votes to decide.

Edited December 10, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Im going to go ahead and test all the merge requests together, looks like we have almost enough votes to decide.

so far so good, I haven't found anything broken.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

I would say with 26 votes we could probably call it. Anyone disagree?

Looks to me like 1,2,3,4,8, and 10 certainly have enough support, but i'm not sure about 7. Neither cavalry change was supported, we can redesign something for cavalry later as @chrstgtr said.

#7 (crush rebalance and hack attack for clubs) is one vote ahead for yes and its actually a fairly minimal change, the main thing is increasing macemen's general effectiveness for fighting. Less crush armor also means catapults will 1 hit more units, which I see as a positive.

Does anyone think 7 shouldn't be added even though there are more yes votes?

edit: nevermind, I guess the votes keep coming. When should we call it?

Edited December 11, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[Norse_Harold]

I voted yes on most of the proposals for community-mod version 0.26.4 except unit-specific upgrades. That would add a lot of new variables to the balancing responsibilities. And, it would add a lot of new functionality that people would have to learn. As a result, it's not suitable for a limited balance mod. There's already a high enough learning curve for the newer players. I even saw a skilled player, SaidRdz, complain that he felt like a newbie for several weeks until he could learn how to be effective with the new version of community-mod. This is not a statement about SaidRdz, it's a statement about community-mod.

Also, any votes that are approximately "50% yes, 50% no" should be interpreted as no votes.

Edited December 11, 2022 by Norse_Harold

[chrstgtr]

3 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I would say with 26 votes we could probably call it. Anyone disagree?

Looks to me like 1,2,3,4,8, and 10 certainly have enough support, but i'm not sure about 7. Neither cavalry change was supported, we can redesign something for cavalry later as @chrstgtr said.

#7 (crush rebalance and hack attack for clubs) is one vote ahead for yes and its actually a fairly minimal change, the main thing is increasing macemen's general effectiveness for fighting. Less crush armor also means catapults will 1 hit more units, which I see as a positive.

Does anyone think 7 shouldn't be added even though there are more yes votes?

edit: nevermind, I guess the votes keep coming. When should we call it?

What was the criteria we used last time? I thought it was a super majority or at least a majority of all votes cast.

Lots of people pick the third option as a "I like some but not all choice." At a minimum, I don't think something that skids by on a 40%, 35%, 35% votes should get in. 

[Dizaka]

3 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I would say with 26 votes we could probably call it. Anyone disagree?

Looks to me like 1,2,3,4,8, and 10 certainly have enough support, but i'm not sure about 7. Neither cavalry change was supported, we can redesign something for cavalry later as @chrstgtr said.

#7 (crush rebalance and hack attack for clubs) is one vote ahead for yes and its actually a fairly minimal change, the main thing is increasing macemen's general effectiveness for fighting. Less crush armor also means catapults will 1 hit more units, which I see as a positive.

Does anyone think 7 shouldn't be added even though there are more yes votes?

edit: nevermind, I guess the votes keep coming. When should we call it?

I'mma get bashed for this one:

For 4 I voted no.  It may be good ideas.  Great ideas too. I'd strongly, however, suggest making that "1 item changed/modified then vote for that 1 item."  Do not bundle items as riders for voting. 

It's hard to get a large overview of impact on the individual items/riders.  It would be better for a "no bundling/riders" rule on changes to be voted on.  Might sound stupid, but riders could be a problematic (a rider is an additional provision added to a bill or other measure under consideration). 

[chrstgtr]

3 minutes ago, Dizaka said:

For 4 I voted no.  It may be good ideas.  Great ideas too. I'd strongly, however, suggest making that "1 item changed/modified then vote for that 1 item."  Do not bundle items as riders for voting. 

 

Do you mean 3?

 

Edited December 11, 2022 by chrstgtr

[real_tabasco_sauce]

9 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

What was the criteria we used last time? I thought it was a super majority or at least a majority of all votes cast.

Yeah we did something like that. Unfortunately this means only 5 changes will be actually added, which is a tiny fraction of the work I put in here 

Hopefully I don't get any blame for the lack of content.

Edited December 11, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[real_tabasco_sauce]

17 minutes ago, Norse_Harold said:

And, it would add a lot of new functionality that people would have to learn. As a result, it's not suitable for a limited balance mod.

I would say learning new things is good. If there are more things to learn, that means there is more content to explore.

Also Said saying he feels like a newbie is a massive exaggeration, he still plays very well XD.

Also, this isn't a balance mod, its for new features too.

Again, I think I did a bad job of communicating what the upgrade system involves. Sorry to all the yes voters.