Introducing the Official community mod for Alpha 26

[hamdich]

Members of Balancing team are a fight between each other about what w and what not to change . No wonder every new 0ad version and evey comunity mod is instantly dissliked by  both newbs and pros

[real_tabasco_sauce]

@hamdich I think they are instantly disliked just because of human discomfort with change. For instance, some players told me the game was broken because I made cavalry archers OP in 26.6 (I made them much weaker).

[real_tabasco_sauce]

** first bug**

Both the melee and ranged immortals may be trained from the barracks, the price for the ranged one is mistakenly the full champion price. The correct price is the price of the melee version.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Second: no icons appear for iphicrates aura, the aura still works.

[chrstgtr]

10 hours ago, hamdich said:

Members of Balancing team are a fight between each other about what w and what not to change . No wonder every new 0ad version and evey comunity mod is instantly dissliked by  both newbs and pros

There should be rigorous debate. If you look back in trac at some of the least popular changes, those were the changes that typically had the least discussion or where dissenting opinions where just outright ignored. 

Disagree on each version of the community mod being disliked. To be honest, all the versions before 26.6 were pretty widely liked at initial release and those changes are still widely approved of. 

There are mechanisms to reverse changes. Indeed, we appear to be in the midst of changes with buildingAI and melee rebalance. 

[0 calories]

15 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

@hamdich I think they are instantly disliked just because of human discomfort with change. For instance, some players told me the game was broken because I made cavalry archers OP in 26.6 (I made them much weaker).

make in-game change list and we gonna get fine.. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

settings->community-mod

[Atrik]

@real_tabasco_sauce Good thing you tried to make rams more maneuverable and durable.

For the defense building debuff of -50% it seems to me a ridiculous overshot. Defenses were a good way to prepare for asymmetrical battles and the only thing that was needed was to better options to break through them.
Increasing the cost and build time of sentry towers also feels sad, as often, building some early was already a sized investment. I would wish for a total revert of those changes. I rarely play defensive, but, it seems to me to decrease the 'viable' strategies and this is bad.

[Nobbi]

On 25/03/2024 at 6:09 PM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

yes, and its now in the game!

Go to settings-> community-mod, and you will see the patch notes in order of release.

The 26.7 changes are shown, but I had to make a 26.8 version because of an issue

Hi, that is a nice thing to see the changes. I still don't find when the archer firing rate got decreased to 1.25 (from 1) and I also missed the discussion about it here in chat. I think. Where did it come from?
Besides that the change log has some mistake in it. Like Hans don't have elephants so it doesn't matter for them if splash damage was introduced or for pike there is written twice the Hack damage is decrease but I think one of it is armour.

[Player of 0AD]

Why has the targeting behavior of buildings not been changed back to the original state? 24 people voted that its a bad change, only 15 voted that it's a good change. https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/110338-polls-about-community-mod-version-266/#comment-563146

 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

7 hours ago, Atrik said:

@real_tabasco_sauce Good thing you tried to make rams more maneuverable and durable.

For the defense building debuff of -50% it seems to me a ridiculous overshot. Defenses were a good way to prepare for asymmetrical battles and the only thing that was needed was to better options to break through them.
Increasing the cost and build time of sentry towers also feels sad, as often, building some early was already a sized investment. I would wish for a total revert of those changes. I rarely play defensive, but, it seems to me to decrease the 'viable' strategies and this is bad.

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.

Edited March 27 by real_tabasco_sauce

[real_tabasco_sauce]

3 hours ago, Player of 0AD said:

Why has the targeting behavior of buildings not been changed back to the original state? 24 people voted that its a bad change, only 15 voted that it's a good change. https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/110338-polls-about-community-mod-version-266/#comment-563146

 

That poll offered no way forward. Its a bit more complicated than a yes or no situation. 

Another poll showed players have mixed feelings about it, but it showed 3 clear issues.

The most agreed upon solution was to let building arrows be random unless targeted by the player. I tried this, but it was kind of a disaster to implement, so I went with the next most popular progressive solution which was to adjust building arrow counts.

Also, I have still not heard 1 reason from anyone why the building arrow behavior is bad that could not be explained by arrow counts. So why is the behavior itself problematic @Player of 0AD?

The fact of the matter is that building arrows were balanced under a random behavior and changing the behavior has clearly thrown off this balance. If we can restore balance, then we will be left with a new mechanic.

Edited March 27 by real_tabasco_sauce

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Another poll showed players have mixed feelings about it, but it showed 3 clear issues.

This poll is equally clear that non-random arrows is disliked:

• 66% of votes cast called for random buildingAI for CC/fort ("Reverse the non-random arrows entirely," "Make buildings shoot at random unless targeted," or "Make the civic center and fortress shoot at random unless targeted")
  • Note this 66% vote share is as great or greater than questions 3 and 4, which you point to as a clear issue).
• 61% of votes cast called for random buildingAI to be reversed for all buildings ("Reverse the non-random arrows entirely" or "Make buildings shoot at random unless targeted")
• The largest vote getter called for random buildingAI ("Make buildings shoot at random unless targeted")
• But a less popular buildingAI behavior was implemented ("Balance the CC, Tower, and Fortress arrows"). In every way, this was a disfavored option by the voters. 

To the extent there are "mixed feelings" it is whether a player should be able to override random buildingAI and manually target units.  

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I went with the next most popular progressive solution which was to adjust building arrow counts.

This doesn't consider the likely outcome of a rank order vote.

This is like if you asked people what their favorite ice cream flavor was and gave them the options of dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and vanilla and the votes came out as below:

• Dark chocolate (3)
• Milk chocolate (2)
• Vanilla (2)

In this scenario, it is clear the people want to chocolate but spread their votes out between two similar options. Same too here. Rebalancing non-random arrows is only popular to the extent that you ignore 2/3 of all votes. Put simply, non-random arrows is/was unpopular.

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Also, I have still not heard 1 reason from anyone why the building arrow behavior is bad that could not be explained by arrow counts. So why is the behavior itself problematic @Player of 0AD?

The fact of the matter is that building arrows were balanced under a random behavior and changing the behavior has clearly thrown off this balance. If we can restore balance, then we will be left with a new mechanic.

No one has put forth a reason why a new mechanic is needed. By your own admission, the old mechanic worked fine. Change should not inherently be favored. 

It is also untrue that no one has explained why non-random arrows is bad or why random arrows is good. It is just a question of personal preference, which has clearly been expressed several times at this point by the larger community. 

Edited March 27 by chrstgtr

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

By your own admission, the old mechanic worked fine.

I said random arrows were balanced, and I agree with that. But it was silly, boring, and resulted in a lot of unfavorable gameplay. Surely you realize we are not giving non-random arrows a fair shake here since they are not yet balanced ideally.

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

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

It is also untrue that no one has explained why non-random arrows is bad or why random arrows is good. It is just a question of personal preference, which has clearly been expressed several times at this point by the larger community.

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

[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 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 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.