Introducing the Official community mod for Alpha 26

[Lion.Kanzen]

There should be other experiments .

Cav skirmishers vs spearmen

Cav skirmishers vs swordmen

[leopard]

1 hour ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

you are playtesting them. Thanks for your efforts. The pikemen here are rank 3, melee units have added damage, armor, and hp with each rank, compared to ranged units which only get accuracy and hp. The strength of melee rankups is acknowledged to be a problem by most players, so there will be some reduction to the rankup bonuses. Try the same scenario with rank 1 units from both types and you'll find it much easier to kill the pikemen.

ok will try that. but we can see the outcome of the new balancing changes in games we play, we should not shut eyes to that. also we should consider the opinion of players who has been playing this game for years, if they don't like the direction of balancing changes then we should not go that direction.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

yes @leopard I am taking feedback from several longtime players. Unfortunately it is difficult to agree on the path forward on a couple items, in particular the building arrows.

[leopard]

@BreakfastBurrito_007

[leopard]

 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

14 minutes ago, leopard said:

@BreakfastBurrito_007

In theory you could micro well enough to completely avoid damage from the pikeman. It's really interesting to see the long reach of pikemen play a role here, where before it didnt matter since they did negligible damage anyway. It's nice now to see pikemen and spearmen having different strengths versus cavalry.

[leopard]

2 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

In theory you could micro well enough to completely avoid damage from the pikeman.

look how much time it takes to micro away from the pikeman and my cav died anyway, in 0AD time play a big factor. I feel pikemen is buffed too much. and even after hitting too many javelins pikeman is barely touched. watch the second video.

pikeman is reasonably strong but still getting hit by javelins and eventually dies I had to micro hard though and wasted lot of time killing one pikeman.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

32 minutes ago, leopard said:

look how much time it takes to micro away from the pikeman and my cav died anyway, in 0AD time play a big factor. I feel pikemen is buffed too much. and even after hitting too many javelins pikeman is barely touched. watch the second video.

pikeman is reasonably strong but still getting hit by javelins and eventually dies I had to micro hard though and wasted lot of time killing one pikeman.

The situation changes when you have 100+ unit battles, some players have complained that everything dies too fast.

[ChronA]

6 hours ago, leopard said:

look how much time it takes to micro away from the pikeman and my cav died anyway, in 0AD time play a big factor. I feel pikemen is buffed too much. and even after hitting too many javelins pikeman is barely touched. watch the second video.

pikeman is reasonably strong but still getting hit by javelins and eventually dies I had to micro hard though and wasted lot of time killing one pikeman.

Balance-wise there might be an argument that the one-sided victory for the modded pikeman is bad, but speaking from a perspective of historical authenticity and the impression given by the in-game art, I think the modded outcome is an improvement. The rank 3 pikeman is depicted as a heavy-infantryman kitted in full body armor. He should be virtually impervious to all light projectiles of the period, which would include the rider's javelins. Otherwise why wear all that heavy and expensive gear?

And the opponent he is facing, even at the elite rank is still just a light cavalryman. His role is supposed to be to scout, to raid, and to lure the pikeman out of position so that allied heavy infantry of heavy cavalry could mop him up. In this time period he wouldn't be expected to inflict massed casualties against heavy infantry. Even in a rout, his job was really just to pick off a few unlucky individuals to keep the enemy in a state of fear and prevent their re-cohering. If they were lucky they might trigger a crowd disaster or chase the enemy into a river, where they would drown, but that was the exception.

There was a period in history where ranged light cavalry could inflict mass casualties against heavy infantry like you're expecting. It was in the era of pike and shot, when cavalry started carrying pistols and carbines. This was one of the development that ended the era of armored melee infantry.

[Nobbi]

On 06/02/2024 at 6:47 PM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

change options for building arrows (there is a lot of them, so some subset of these would be good):

• Decrease CC "max arrows" currently this number is 23, which is 1 less than for fortresses.
• Decrease CC range from 60 meters to 55 or 50 meters.
• Decrease sentry tower base range by 10 meters to 50m.
• Increase sentry tower cost by 25 stone. (change upgrade cost to defense tower too)
• All buildings with arrows: Decrease pierce damage or fire rate, increase default arrows.
  • The idea here is to make garrisoning less impactful for building effectiveness, keeping the un-garrisoned performance the same. Currently a tower with 5 garrisoned units does 6x the damage of the empty tower.
• back to random arrows except when focused.

Please, don't change the range of towers or CCs or u mess up the balance with CAV archers/camels again. Another idea is to make pierce damage of CCs or towers dependent from the phase. So they will not be too strong in P1 but also not too weak in P3.

[Lion.Kanzen]

If you are going to balance units or factions, make technologies that break that balance without being OP.

 

And have a counter strategy.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

@Nobbi thanks for the suggestion on changing damage on phase ups. This is also something I have been considering for addressing the issues with building arrows at the moment. I think most would say the arrows are too strong when fully garrisoned and it leads to too much turtling at the moment. You can really see this in p1 when enough units garrisoned can be overly punishing of any attempts to rush.

I get that part, but are you saying cavalry archers/ camel archers are too strong now?

[alre]

keep bulding arrows random is my two cents. you fixed something that wasn't broken.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, alre said:

keep bulding arrows random is my two cents. you fixed something that wasn't broken.

It wasn't a fix per se, but a desired feature. People wonder why the heck the arrows don't shoot at the unit they tell them to shoot at.

I think a more than acceptable middle ground would be 100% random by default, but focus-fire when re-targeted by the player.

[chrstgtr]

31 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

It wasn't a fix per se, but a desired feature. People wonder why the heck the arrows don't shoot at the unit they tell them to shoot at.

That is a separate issue. I don't think anyone has an issue with being able to override buidlingAI. But there is a lot of debate around whether buildingAI should shoot randomly or at the closest unit. It isn't clear what the preference of the community is, and if the "closet unit" system can even be balanced in a desirable way. 

But buildingAI was certainly changed to address a units "don't die" problem. I personally don't think that was ever really a problem. But now we might as well see if this other system is better/workable. 

In short, everyone should vote in the poll in the other thread once they develop a firm opinion. There is no clear right answer--people have different preferences for legitimate reasons. The community at large should decide. 

EDIT: Sorry, I didn't all the way down to the bottom of your comment where you said random buildingAI with player override was a good compromise. It could be. I think player override should exist. The buildingAI should be community determined. 

Edited February 14 by chrstgtr

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Yep, player override would be best. I think consensus will build (is building) around that.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

perhaps. We will have to see.

I would have a couple of concerns with letting the default arrows be random. I think a lot of people might not realize these consequences:

First, if non-random arrows are stronger as deemed by many players, then it could be seen as beneficial to be constantly targeting single units with buildings, which would be a pretty sub-optimal scenario. In addition, we might have to balance buildings both in their capacity to target random units (how they are currently balanced) and in their capacity to target single units (what makes them strong in 26.6).

My last point is more on appearance: I don't like the idea of completely changing the way the arrows function upon a click. It just would look and feel clunky and possibly counterintuitive. (Opinion if you can't tell :D)

I am certain that the issues a lot of people have with defaulting to the closest unit are really just balance concerns and can be addressed by modifying building arrow count (default and max arrows) and damage. However, if everyone agrees that what @wowgetoffyourcellphone suggests is the best way forward, I would begrudgingly concede.

Edited February 15 by real_tabasco_sauce

[real_tabasco_sauce]

3 hours ago, alre said:

keep bulding arrows random is my two cents. you fixed something that wasn't broken.

I never advertised it as a fix. non-random arrows were not broken, just a little lame compared to how they work in other RTS games.

[chrstgtr]

2 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

perhaps. We will have to see.

I think the wait and see approach is the way to go--opinions are still forming.

With the melee patch, it is clear the community wants something different than community.mod.v4. It's not clear the community wants something like community.mod.v6, though. 

With the buildingAI patch, it isn't clear if the community wants any change from community.mod.v4. 

[Lion.Kanzen]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I never advertised it as a fix. non-random arrows were not broken, just a little lame compared to how they work in other RTS games.

Exactly is lame compared with standard RTS. You are right.

 

I don't know why people complain every time we change something that's wrong in the game design.

People sometimes have to think that the game is not finished and that the mechanics are not that we are changing for the sake of doing so.

 

We are changing because we are following the criteria that other games have.

[Nobbi]

15 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I get that part, but are you saying cavalry archers/ camel archers are too strong now?

No, I am not saying they are too strong now. I am saying, when you lower range of towers or other buildings below 60 range, CAV archers might become OP.

[MarcusAureliu#s]

On 13/02/2024 at 7:13 PM, leopard said:

look how much time it takes to micro away from the pikeman and my cav died anyway, in 0AD time play a big factor. I feel pikemen is buffed too much. and even after hitting too many javelins pikeman is barely touched. watch the second video.

pikeman is reasonably strong but still getting hit by javelins and eventually dies I had to micro hard though and wasted lot of time killing one pikeman.

I think that is just how the game is supposed to be like ? If the pike/spear unit doesnt kill the jav cav players just spam cav jav and u are gg and have no option how to react ? Every intresting rts that shall not be just about spamming a signle unit, that has strategic depth and allows putting some thought into army composition to have any impact should have at least  soft counter system ! If the pikes bother u just make  units such as spear inf, sword inf, inf jav, archer cav that should all do decent vs pikes ! So i think there really isnt any problem.

 

[MarcusAureliu#s]

On 15/02/2024 at 11:46 AM, Nobbi said:

No, I am not saying they are too strong now. I am saying, when you lower range of towers or other buildings below 60 range, CAV archers might become OP.

They can always be countered by melee or jav cav, as long as the unit itself is not too op. But i agree nevertheless, towers already dont do very much damage and need quite some time to make any impact. It would be strange if archer cav could just ignore them bc out of range.

[Acanthis]

So far the game is more fun from my perspective. It is refreshing after a few years.

About buildings: yes, they are quite strong now. Is it possible to retain the "fire at closest unit" but increase the spread of the arrows a little bit? Something like an area effect fire rather than focus fire? I get the frustration if turtling becomes too strong, yet we've been playing the game for years in a situation where the first time you build anything more than a couple towers and a fort you get accused of turtling and being afk.

Fortifications should be formidable. Not impossible to overcome, but strong enough to make the enemy actually consider other routes of attack.

Personally am happy to see that cav aren't the end all be all. Was getting a little bit old seeing how many players would focus almost entirely on jav cav. I want to see more of each civ's roster at play, leaning towards mostly infantry.

And if ranked up infantry are considered too strong and Iphicrates finally moves from his "in formation only bonus" to a reduced bonus, but an aura like virtually every other hero in the game, good.

[guerringuerrin]

Hey, what do you think of something like this to show community-mod changes in-game? Not the best place to have them since it's the credits section but at least they are reachable in-game. I think  it would be better to add them in a subsection inside Options like other mods has. I still figuring out how to do that without adding too much code.
I probably missed some important changes or wrote down them wrong. Feel free to improve this. Although this is only a proposal

 

Edited February 17 by guerringuerrin