Introducing the Official community mod for Alpha 26

[BeTe]

52 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

See above. Some people think p1 is already too strong. Some people think p3 is already too strong. p2 is the age that needs to get stronger—which I tend to agree with

I think everybody agree that P2 need buff...

But, to explain:

I am thinking about being able to capture or kill something in early game (P1) with infantry - now only cavalry can eventually work. All other strategies are risky and will put you behind in eco if you fail which is high likely with an equal opponent.

Edited October 12, 2022 by BeTe
grammar fix

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, BeTe said:

I think everybody agree that P2 need buff...

But, to explain:

I am thinking about being able to capture or kill something in early game (P1) with infantry - now only cavalry can eventually work. All other strategies are risky and will put you behind in eco if you fail which is high likely with an equal opponent.

I have issues with cav/inf balance. But that’s beyond the scope here. 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

1 hour ago, BeTe said:

I am thinking about being able to capture or kill something in early game (P1) with infantry - now only cavalry can eventually work. All other strategies are risky and will put you behind in eco if you fail which is high likely with an equal opponent.

The main issue with sending infantry is that you use and lose your economic units. I have been thinking that adding a slave or serf type of economic unit would allow for citizen soldiers to be more efficiently used as military units. The idea is that it has better gather rate than CS infantry, which would relegate CS infantry's economic value as mainly supplementary while there is a break in fighting. I am not yet sure if this would be a better game after the unit is added (it absolutely depends on the units stats), and there is yet to be any mod that implements such a feature into otherwise vanilla 0ad.

It is worth noting that infantry can be used very successfully in p1 too, usually if there is a border fight.

 

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

and there is yet to be any mod that implements such a feature into otherwise vanilla 0ad.

I can do that.  Want slaves trained from the Storehouse & Farmstead, ala DE, or elsewhere? 

Edited October 13, 2022 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[real_tabasco_sauce]

2 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I can do that.  Want slaves trained from the Storehouse & Farmstead, ala DE, or elsewhere? 

I think from cc in p2 would be best to be honest. Perhaps Carthage could train from markets too.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

1 minute ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I think from cc in p2 would be best to be honest. Perhaps Carthage could train from markets too.

markets maybe at 1/2 rate.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone what are the gather rates and costs of the slaves in DE? what about hp and armor?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

8 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

Or just add an extra hero for Athens. 

Miltiades

"Heroes of Marathon"

- Hoplites +10% attack and +10% speed. Range: 50 meters

 

Aristides

"Strategos"

- All Infantry +10% health. Range: 50 meters

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 minute ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

@wowgetoffyourcellphone what are the gather rates and costs of the slaves in DE? what about hp and armor?

In DE:

Slaves have double gather speed of citizens, with citizen base gather rates reduced somewhat from public mod. Slaves are half health, low armor, and can be captured, and cannot build anything. They are gatherers only.

[chrstgtr]

4 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Miltiades

"Heroes of Marathon"

- Hoplites +10% attack and +10% speed. Range: 50 meters

 

Aristides

"Strategos"

- All Infantry +10% health. Range: 50 meters

 

Great. Both are much better than 2/3 of Athens current heroes

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

5 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

In DE:

Slaves have double gather speed of citizens, with citizen base gather rates reduced somewhat from public mod. Slaves are half health, low armor, and can be captured, and cannot build anything. They are gatherers only.

Spartan slave class units are Helots, who can be upgraded to light hoplites after researching "Brasidians."

  <Upgrade>
    <Mount>
      <Entity>units/spart/infantry_hoplite_helot</Entity>
      <Tooltip>Helots are given their freedom in exchange for military service.</Tooltip>
	  <RequiredTechnology>spartans/unlock_brasidians</RequiredTechnology>
      <Cost>
        <wood>40</wood>
        <glory>20</glory>
      </Cost>
      <Time>10</Time>
    </Mount>
  </Upgrade>

Helot "citizen soldiers" (Javelineers, Slingers) could even have the ability to be upgraded "down" to its slave class counterpart. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

10 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Great. Both are much better than 2/3 of Athens current heroes

Other ideas: 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Miltiades

"Heroes of Marathon"

- Hoplites +10% attack and +10% speed. Range: 50 meters

 

Aristides

"Strategos"

- All Infantry +10% health. Range: 50 meters

 

These are a lot more generic than my proposal for the two heroes.

I will soon add some things to my fork of the mod: Seleucid civ bonus, ptol nerf described by @chrstgtr and others.

Do you all remember the discussion on CC cost and territory expansion with each age?

Should I add something like that?

 

[chrstgtr]

12 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Do you all remember the discussion on CC cost and territory expansion with each age?

For me, yes

[alre]

I've said in the past that the biggest problem of 0AD was the lack of communication between players and developers. it seems to me that we have now evidence that shifting responsibility and decision making towards the players can speed up the development by a great degree.

this mod may still crash at next release, but I have a good feeling about it, because it's a community mod, and the community is open to everybody.

[hyperion]

On 11/10/2022 at 7:13 PM, chrstgtr said:

Town phase is p2.

Uh, my bad, then this isn't all that bad but hardly close to sufficient.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

6 hours ago, alre said:

I've said in the past that the biggest problem of 0AD was the lack of communication between players and developers. it seems to me that we have now evidence that shifting responsibility and decision making towards the players can speed up the development by a great degree.

this mod may still crash at next release, but I have a good feeling about it, because it's a community mod, and the community is open to everybody.

The game is open source. I don't think a lot of players understand the implications. Diffusion of responsibility is one of the pros and cons of the OS approach.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

10 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

These are a lot more generic than my proposal for the two heroes.

Right, but I wanted them to be useful in a wide variety of land combat situations and didn't want to be too specific, like: "+1 pierce resistance and +2.36 crush attack for advanced rank basket weavers between the 5 minute mark and minute 12 within his skirmish formation."  

[real_tabasco_sauce]

7 hours ago, alre said:

but I have a good feeling about it, because it's a community mod, and the community is open to everybody.

One of the best parts is that we can experiment with some things, which is something we never could on phabricator. It would always be an endless argument and usually the status quo was just maintained.

In this mod, we can try a simple ptol nerf to the houses for example, and if this makes a good difference during play on the next mod release, we can keep it, or change/remove if needed. 

Also people are actually willing to test features XD.

[Norse_Harold]

15 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I have been thinking that adding a slave or serf type of economic unit

Please don't call it "slave" or "serf". Better would be "skilled worker", "peasant", or "freeman". Peasants were not slaves, they got 1 to 30 acres of personal farmland and kept he harvest from it, and had more days off than the average American worker. "Freemen were, as the name suggests, the peasants with the most freedom. They had less obligation to the lord, but they were still subject to manorial jurisdiction and custom."

Certain groups would like to see slavery restored in various areas, and games can have a formative experience for people, especially children. Do we want the next generation to think that slavery was so ubiquitous in ancient times that there must have been some good in it? It is not even historically accurate to say that slavery was ubiquitous in every culture around 0 A.D.

Check out this mini-documentary, "Modern TV - How did English medieval peasants see themselves?" about slaves vs serfs vs peasants.

"In the area known as Danelore there are actually relatively few serfs recorded, which is interesting. They're mostly Freemen, they mostly pay rent. And, in some areas, particularly Northumberland for example in the very north of England, there is a curious thing about Fanes and Dranes. And, they actually paid tax based on the number of horned beasts they kept which is a complete hangover from the very earliest days of the medieval period." (7:39 m:s in the documentary)

Edited October 13, 2022 by Norse_Harold

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

5 minutes ago, Norse_Harold said:

Please don't call it "slave" or "serf". Better would be "skilled worker", "peasant", or "freeman". Peasants were not slaves, they got most of the harvest and had more days off than the average American worker. "Freemen were, as the name suggests, the peasants with the most freedom. They had less obligation to the lord, but they were still subject to manorial jurisdiction and custom."

Certain groups would like to see slavery restored in various areas, and games can have a formative experience for people, especially children. Do we want the next generation to think that slavery was so ubiquitous in ancient times that there must have been some good in it? It is not even historically accurate to say that slavery was ubiquitous in every culture around 0 A.D.

Check out this cool documentary, "Modern TV - How did English medieval peasants see themselves?" about slaves vs serfs vs peasants.

That's a good point. Calling the unit one of those options you discussed also gives us more freedom to design the unit to suit gameplay, which was my main motivation to investigate its potential. 

I think the stats and attributes we gave it are still valid, even with carth training them from markets, since its not unreasonable to think you could hire them from the market. The cost we were thinking about was 60 food 20 metal, that is still reasonable I think.

[Norse_Harold]

6 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I think the stats and attributes we gave it are still valid, even with carth training them from markets, since its not unreasonable to think you could hire them from the market. The cost we were thinking about was 60 food 20 metal, that is still reasonable I think.

Yeah, the stats are still valid, and can be chosen according to gameplay balancing. Hiring peasants from a market could be explained as follows. A market is simply where you meet peasants, as they're selling their wares there.

[alre]

1 hour ago, Norse_Harold said:

Please don't call it "slave" or "serf". Better would be "skilled worker", "peasant", or "freeman". Peasants were not slaves, they got most of the harvest and had more days off than the average American worker. "Freemen were, as the name suggests, the peasants with the most freedom. They had less obligation to the lord, but they were still subject to manorial jurisdiction and custom."

Certain groups would like to see slavery restored in various areas, and games can have a formative experience for people, especially children. Do we want the next generation to think that slavery was so ubiquitous in ancient times that there must have been some good in it? It is not even historically accurate to say that slavery was ubiquitous in every culture around 0 A.D.

Check out this mini-documentary, "Modern TV - How did English medieval peasants see themselves?" about slaves vs serfs vs peasants.

"In the (northern England) area known as Danelore there are actually relatively few serfs recorded, which is interesting. They're mostly Freemen, they mostly pay rent. And, in some areas, particularly Northumberland for example in the very north of England, there is a curious thing about Fanes and Dranes. And, they actually paid tax based on the number of horned beasts they kept which is a complete hangover from the very earliest days of the medieval period." (7:39 m:s in the documentary)

LOL guys this is not medioeval england, this is ancient world, where slavery was a totally acknowledged social status, slaves were called slaves and were legally owned by other people (regardless of how much free time they had, which varied very much I guess).

Edited October 13, 2022 by alre

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

16 minutes ago, alre said:

LOL guys this is not medioeval england, this is ancient world, where slavery was a totally acknowledged social status, slaves were called slaves and were legally owned by other people (regardless of how much free time they had, which varied very much I guess).

Agreed. Calling them "freemen" or "peasants" or some other euphemism would be silly. Even "serf" would be a euphemism for most of the civs besides Spartans. 

 

And this brings up one of the major annoyances of developing this game. You can have 9 people agree to something, but then one guy comes in with some left field opinion and stifles progress. A good example is the discussion about using the swastika symbol on Mauryan and Samnite shields. 

Edited October 13, 2022 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[real_tabasco_sauce]

On 12/10/2022 at 9:59 AM, vinme said:

denying enemy the loot is also an irrelevant stat, considering, you have this useless hero, and enemy has a good hero.

We don't have to give athens 2 new top tier heroes. Just two heroes that are worth training. I can adjust their strength very easily, its just I thought Pericles in particular was a unique and interesting bonus.

Edited October 13, 2022 by real_tabasco_sauce

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

2 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Agreed. Calling them "freemen" or "peasants" or some other euphemism would be silly. Even "serf" would be a euphemism for most of the civs besides Spartans. 

 

And this brings up one of the major annoyances of developing this game. You can have 9 people agree to something, but then one guy comes in with some left field opinion and stifles progress. A good example is the discussion about using the swastika symbol on Mauryan and Samnite shields. 

Well, there are options holy moly. I guess there will need to be a big debate about what to call the unit and how to model it. 

My interests lie purely in the gameplay quality that we could provide with the unit.

If different civs have different types of slaves or lower social status men or whatever it is/was, then we can call it that and model it that way, and the basic stats and cost and gameplay functionality can remain the same between the civs.