Why units are produced so fast?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

The original idea for units was that they should be (somewhat) difficult to replace, so there's an incentive to not waste their lives. Another reason why ranking was invented.

[borg-]

I'm not particularly a fan of the fast style, I think in general, not just units, they must be harder to get. Basically everything is now easy to get, you hardly need a new cc to expand for example. Some small changes might be interesting, like initial gold and stone mines smaller (800 - 1000), cc border should be considerably smaller, gather rate longer, remove the ability to recruit soldiers in cc, etc..

[Gurken Khan]

14 minutes ago, borg- said:

you hardly need a new cc to expand for example

Depends on where you want to expand to/what you want to achieve?

I don't want to judge your wanting to play hard to get, but all the examples you brought up just sound horrible to me.

[borg-]

In 1v1 games you dont need to build a new cc to get some extra resource, this hardly happens in team games too. The border in phase 3 is enough to reach all resources 95% of the time.

We should give more value to buildings and units, not just build/train as fast as possible without a purpose in mind. The game works now only in the first few minutes, after that is spam maximum units, move to p2, build market/temple/blacksmith, move p3, research blacksmith techs, train hero and fight a final fight, whoever wins this fight, win the game.

Edited July 24, 2022 by borg-

[Dizaka]

12 hours ago, Player of 0AD said:

I like it to reach 100 population in under 7 minutes. Changing the game would mean less fun.

I'm curious:  If the game would use less units and be equally as challenging / fun (basically, the same, just less units) would that be ok to use less units vs more?  There's a point, I think, where it would be more fun to do 6v6 and 10v10 games that are low pop rather than a 1v1 with 300 or 4v4 with 200.

Edited July 24, 2022 by Dizaka

[LetswaveaBook]

7 hours ago, borg- said:

I'm not particularly a fan of the fast style

I agree as the fast style of the game eliminates the middle phase of the game.

However there are also other factors that contribute to this.

[chrstgtr]

8 hours ago, borg- said:

cc border should be considerably smaller

I think this is needed. @ValihrAnt had a mod at one point that did this--it seemed to work well.

Right now, there is basically no resource scarcity--players can build all the units they need with the resources within their own borders at every phase of the game. Players also don't have to skirmish over resources because they can gather the desired res in another part of their base. It's great that there are enough resources on the map to make all the units available (i.e., players can now make champs and mercs because metal is actually available), but there should be some resource scarcity. An easy way to introduce scarcity is to just force players to expand to access the wealth of resources on any given map. The current abundance of resources also means that players don't build second CCs because doing so mostly just expands where you can build instead of what you can gather. This takes out an offensive second CC strategy. It also takes away a strategic trade-off decision between building a second CC for long-term access to resources, which makes you weaker in the short term but stronger in the long term, and going for a quick p3 push, which makes you stronger in the short term but weaker in the long term. 

Making borders smaller will help with all this. It could also address some of @LetswaveaBook's complaints about how p2 is largely uneventful because p2 could become the phase where you build offensive CCs and skirmish over scarce border resources. 

I have no problems with the training speed and think its current stats are desirable. 

Edited July 24, 2022 by chrstgtr

[LetswaveaBook]

10 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Right now, there is basically no resource scarcity--players can build all the units they need with the resources within their own borders at every phase of the game.

I tend to like the resource availability in small mainland map on the Aegean-Anatolian biome.

However other biomes have more wood and they get forests get even bigger when there map size increases. The amount of forest doesn't scale well with the map size.

 

Limiting the size of forest also limits your development speed in some sense. However I would prefer not to divert to much from the original topic.

[BeTe]

8 hours ago, borg- said:

The game works now only in the first few minutes, after that is spam maximum units, move to p2, build market/temple/blacksmith, move p3, research blacksmith techs, train hero and fight a final fight, whoever wins this fight, win the game.

Do we like this? On first look it sounds terrible for me personally, but it's maybe better for "casual" players, for people who want to play easier games. Me personally would like to see more smaller fights during game, resource raids, etc. 

Mentioned idea about limiting resources on initial CC sounds interesting towards above goal. But we should be careful - not all players want aggressive game. We don't want to make game uncomfortable for beginners / intermediate players. 

[Stan`]

1 minute ago, BeTe said:

Do we like this? On first look it sounds terrible for me personally, but it's maybe better for "casual" players, for people who want to play easier games. Me personally would like to see more smaller fights during game, resource raids, etc. 

That's usually how competitive multiplayer works.

[LetswaveaBook]

25 minutes ago, BeTe said:

But we should be careful - not all players want aggressive game. We don't want to make game uncomfortable for beginners / intermediate players. 

The assumption that a more aggressive game is uncomfortable to beginners is not valid.

For example: Age of Empires 2 is an aggressive game, but it does not mean the game is no fun for newer players. Also aggressive games point beginners quickly to the moment when they fall behind. Whereas a defensive boomy game only tells people after 10 minutes that they did something wrong.

[rossenburg]

11 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

The assumption that a more aggressive game is uncomfortable to beginners is not valid.

For example: Age of Empires 2 is an aggressive game, but it does not mean the game is no fun for newer players. Also aggressive games point beginners quickly to the moment when they fall behind. Whereas a defensive boomy game only tells people after 10 minutes that they did something wrong.

I agree

[BeTe]

Good point LWB.

Btw, maaan, I just played 1v1 game. My opponent was just defensive... I spent 25 minutes in marcoing and then when I got to 250-300 pop I attacked and game started to lag so much that it wasn't playable. So frustrating. Pointless match.

[alre]

45 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

The assumption that a more aggressive game is uncomfortable to beginners is not valid.

For example: Age of Empires 2 is an aggressive game, but it does not mean the game is no fun for newer players. Also aggressive games point beginners quickly to the moment when they fall behind. Whereas a defensive boomy game only tells people after 10 minutes that they did something wrong.

Nevertheless, I hope the game is never made too stressful for less aggressive player, many beginners are like this, before they start to realise the fun of aggressive play. Just a gentle reminder that turtling is a legitimate strategy.

[Akira Kurosawa]

BTW! "National borders" and distance limitation beteween towers/CC/fortresses are also ugly. At AoE2 AI-player expand only on his area, and build only lumbermills and mines at distant lands. At 0 A.D. AI trying to grab all map (not bad) and you can't put Store to steal resources right under it's nose because of dumb "national borders" (very bad!). The most annoying thing is that AI's national borders may "convert" your towers, which were on your national border. Could devs at least add something like "Ox Cart" just like it was at Age of Mythology? I don't see any reason why I can't steal unprotected resources on enemy's lands. And you shoud do something with siege weapons. Just 5 rams can win the map because destroying CC authomatically starts decay and AI run to towers and fortress to stop it instead attack rams. National borders - most evil game-ruin thing what may happen at RTS.

Edited July 24, 2022 by DeWynter

[Stan`]

7 minutes ago, DeWynter said:

"Ox Cart" just like it was at Age of Mythology

Play Mauryas.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone Didn't you make a classic AOE2 like mod?

8 minutes ago, DeWynter said:

National borders - most evil game-ruin thing what may happen at RTS.

Disagree  

[Akira Kurosawa]

1 minute ago, Stan` said:

Disagree  

Because it's prevent castle-rush?

Spoiler

 

[Akira Kurosawa]

1 hour ago, alre said:

Nevertheless, I hope the game is never made too stressful for less aggressive player, many beginners are like this, before they start to realise the fun of aggressive play. Just a gentle reminder that turtling is a legitimate strategy.

It's all because you can't steal enemy's resources because of painted border there.

[Stan`]

10 minutes ago, DeWynter said:

Because it's prevent castle-rush?

No because this is a strategy game, not an AOE clone

 

[alre]

16 minutes ago, Stan` said:

No because this is a strategy game, not an AOE clone

well...

[Akira Kurosawa]

24 minutes ago, Stan` said:

No because this is a strategy game, not an AOE clone

Well... It's better than AoE at some parts. AI which can expand even by islands was surprised me. But it steal can't build neither palisade nor stone walls, while old AoE2 AI can.

Edited July 24, 2022 by DeWynter

[Frederick_1]

4 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

I think this is needed. @ValihrAnt had a mod at one point that did this--it seemed to work well.

Right now, there is basically no resource scarcity--players can build all the units they need with the resources within their own borders at every phase of the game. Players also don't have to skirmish over resources because they can gather the desired res in another part of their base. It's great that there are enough resources on the map to make all the units available (i.e., players can now make champs and mercs because metal is actually available), but there should be some resource scarcity.

There is the map Editor. It would be an simple task to design a map with less resources. Design some szenarios with less resources an you can try out the effects. There is the migration map for example. If you do not succeed to gather enough resources and manage to travel to the "continent" you will soon have sevre resource scarcity.

[Stan`]

7 minutes ago, alre said:

well...

I mean, citizen soldiers, territories, formations, status effects, being free an open source, crossplatform. It's the same genre, but you can't say it's an exact clone. Also, lag & DDOS.

[Frederick_1]

49 minutes ago, DeWynter said:

The most annoying thing is that AI's national borders may "convert" your towers, which were on your national border.

You need to garnison your Tower to prevent them from beeing captured by a moving border. It would be nice to get a warning if a Building is affected. And in the begining of the game to prevent an watchtower from decay often 3 men garnison is not enough you also need the sentries upgrade to rescue them.

 

49 minutes ago, DeWynter said:

Just 5 rams can win the map because destroying CC authomatically starts decay and AI run to towers and fortress to stop it instead attack rams. National borders - most evil game-ruin thing what may happen at RTS.

 

When there are enough buildings close enough together they protect each other from decay.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

52 minutes ago, Stan` said:

@wowgetoffyourcellphone Didn't you make a classic AOE2 like mod?

I did but never figured out how to get rid of the border lines on the minimap.