Why units are produced so fast?

[BeTe]

8 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

Smaller blobs for the sake of smaller blobs. And to be more like other games. Nothing against new members with fresh ideas, but I don't know if this game will turn into what you want.

I am actually against blindly copying other games. I referred to AOE as game where there are smaller blobs and still is very playable and has big player base. So just as proof it's possible. 

Also there is a lot of lag issue, not only for me but I saw it in Youtube. I also mentioned microing large blob on small screen is very hard or impossible. 

These are things that should improve game, not only blindly copy others, right? 

@wowgetoffyourcellphone I am lazy to install and play yet another game. And I am not sure if it has enough player base.  Btw, redirecting new players to mods is not good for 0AD I guess. I think we should increase it's player base, not reduce it.  

[Gurken Khan]

1 hour ago, BeTe said:

@wowgetoffyourcellphone I am lazy to install and play yet another game. And I am not sure if it has enough player base.  Btw, redirecting new players to mods is not good for 0AD I guess. I think we should increase it's player base, not reduce it.  

It only takes a couple of clicks to install mods. And it is a mod, not another game. Maybe the playstyle would be more to your liking, dunno.

[Dakara]

Is it easily doable to increase the gap between units relative to their hitbox on the ground? (the circle?) What bad consequences can this have? I remember that in the old alphas the units were more spaced out when moving.

[Stan`]

5 minutes ago, Dakara said:

Is it easily doable to increase the gap between units relative to their hitbox on the ground? (the circle?) What bad consequences can this have? I remember that in the old alphas the units were more spaced out when moving.

The bigger the gap the more they get stuck.

[Darkcity]

17 minutes ago, Stan` said:

The bigger the gap the more they get stuck.

same reason units used to get stuck in a24 and people used to get furious about it (inclduing slow turn around). If I understand correctly, large gap also create path finding issues especially in formations.

[Dakara]

19 minutes ago, Darkcity said:

same reason units used to get stuck in a24 and people used to get furious about it (inclduing slow turn around). If I understand correctly, large gap also create path finding issues especially in formations.

Few beginners use this feature but you can dodge places likely to block armies. By creating a path with waypoints with shift. Except for the boats which I find very irritating I consider that it is the fault of the player if he blocks his units in a forest or other. All proportion kept.

This can make it important for lands to stay blocked. For example archers can be happy to stay hidden in a forest. Melee cavalry will have a little more trouble penetrating the forest in large numbers to kill archers because they have a bigger hitbox.

We are used to it but I don't know if a new player will find it attractive that the units on the move without formation are so close to each other. It is sometimes difficult to know if there are 50 units or 100.

Edited July 25, 2022 by Dakara

[BeTe]

3 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

It only takes a couple of clicks to install mods. And it is a mod, not another game. Maybe the playstyle would be more to your liking, dunno.

Yeah but it's like different game in terms of how many players is available to play against, ie. people that play "normal" 0AD don't play this mod. So in theory I would wait much longer for 1v1 game on this mod...

[alre]

2 hours ago, Dakara said:

Is it easily doable to increase the gap between units relative to their hitbox on the ground? (the circle?) What bad consequences can this have? I remember that in the old alphas the units were more spaced out when moving.

It's very easy actually, it's just a couple of parameters. You just have to check how units behave while lumberjacking or mining, so it's not the case that they get suck.

the main parameter is Pushing/Radius in simulation\data\Pathfinder.xml.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I wonder how a game like Battle for Middle Earth 2, with its battalion system and large gaps between soldiers, manages pathfinding. The major thing I see is that there are fewer pathing obstacles in a typical BfME2 map for one thing. I think 0 a.d. maps are extremely obstacle heavy, honestly, and contribute to pathfinding problems. These are just hunches; I have no empirical evidence. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

7 hours ago, BeTe said:

@wowgetoffyourcellphone I am lazy to install and play yet another game. And I am not sure if it has enough player base.  Btw, redirecting new players to mods is not good for 0AD I guess. I think we should increase it's player base, not reduce it.  

I was just thinking you could try it out in single player and see if the kinds of changes present in the mod positively affect the gameplay in the way you wish.  

[alre]

A brief guide to how to set the parameters in Pathfinder.xml

the most important parameters you can find in Pathfinder.xml configuration file, are those called Clearance. Each passability class (humans are default class, elephants and such are in the "large" class) has its clearance value, which is the size of the square each units occupies in the map, and that affects the pathfinder. When you put units working at a mine, they will try to stay at clearance distance from each other, same when you order them to go to some point and you wait until they crowd it.

Scaling up clearance value would have the most consequences, affecting how units space out when working, and how likely are they to get stuck.

Clearance is defined pretty low in the xml file, before that it comes the Pushing section, which has many other parameters. Radius is the most important, and it's a value that multiplies the clearance size (actually, its diagonal) to make up the radius at which that units impresses maximum pushing to nearby units. You can extend area at which units push each other with StaticExtension and MovingExtension, which depend on wether the unit is moving or not.

If you use values too large for pushing radius and/or StaticExtension, you will get units that try to get as packed as clearance allows, but then get pushed away and settle for a sparcer arrangement. this is ugly, and can also lead to units continuously pushing each other out of position while they are trying to work:

MovingExtension, on the other hand, can be larger, because it doesn't create those bad effects.

StaticSpread and MovingSpread influence how progressive will be the pushing strenght in the range of StaticExtension and MovingExtension (inside clearance*radius, pushing strenght is maxed out). These parameters are not so relevant as the others, 0.6 is a good value (it prevents steps in the pushing strenght function). Values bigger than 0.6 extend the area a which pressure is maxed out.

PressureStrength regulates the amount of slowdown to be impressed on units that are suffering heavy pushing (because they are too dense). Current value is very small and some little slowdown can be observed only by making two dense balls of units cross each other. In the following video, the value is raised to 20 (PressureDecay = 0):

You can see in the video that high pushing pressure (slowdown/friction) prevents dense blob by making denser units fall behind, and it's more realistic, but may feel too slow - consider this is is A26 which also feels slower becouse of acceleration. High values for PressureStrength can also give back strategical meaning to chockepoints.

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I wonder how a game like Battle for Middle Earth 2, with its battalion system and large gaps between soldiers, manages pathfinding. The major thing I see is that there are fewer pathing obstacles in a typical BfME2 map for one thing. I think 0 a.d. maps are extremely obstacle heavy, honestly, and contribute to pathfinding problems. These are just hunches; I have no empirical evidence. 

it's true, but it's inevitable. for wood chopping, units move in very messy obstruction maps. Also many obstacles are those built by the players.

Edited July 25, 2022 by alre

[real_tabasco_sauce]

If AOE2 was played at 2x speed, I would expect the gameplay to be similar, just harder to manage

0ad's fast pace is a benefit IMO, as oftentimes players do not have hours to spend on a single game. 

The root of the issue raised by @BeTe is that the game's meta is a little too dependent on economic boom time (mentioned by @borg- too: eco boom in p1, get 3 town buildings in p2, then right to p3 and fight).

In Age of Empires 2, there are many opportunity costs associated with decisions, with the most obvious being villagers versus military production (also aging up versus producing villagers). In 0ad, batch training and citizen soldiers greatly reduce the opportunity costs for certain decisions, such as advancing to the next age, or delaying/rushing upgrades.

I would say balancers are working on a solution already: to provide interesting gameplay options in the middle and early game, especially centered around differentiating civs.

Going forward, if we think about opportunity costs in the context of gameplay changes, we may begin to see fighting from start to finish even in more casual games.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 hours ago, alre said:

There should be some code that creates a quasi-formation in this kind of instance, so that they don't all try to converge on the same target point. The quasi-formation makes it to the target and then everyone stops in place. 

 

Very interesting experiments.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

5 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

0ad's fast pace is a benefit IMO, as oftentimes players do not have hours to spend on a single game. 

 

No one is talking about hours.  The typical "slower paced" AOE2 match still lasts less than an hour. Sure, you can have epic 2-hour games in AOE2, but who complains about that? lol, they're epic.

[chrstgtr]

42 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

No one is talking about hours.  The typical "slower paced" AOE2 match still lasts less than an hour. Sure, you can have epic 2-hour games in AOE2, but who complains about that? lol, they're epic.

They kind of are, though. The original post talks about how 0AD produces units at a rate that is 3x to 4x times faster. If a 0AD game is made 3x-4x longer that could very easily result in games lasting hours.

Additionally, there's a difference between game time and real time. 0AD has significant lag issues that often cause normal games that are 30m or less in game time to last more than an hour in real time. Those problems are not nearly as significant in AOE.

Taken as a whole, a 3x-4x slower game that has lag issues could quickly result in games that last 3-4 hours (or more). I don't think anyone wants that. 

If someone really wants slower gameplay they can always change the game speed to .75x or something. 

Of course, this 3x-4x faster rate is a flawed perception because 0ad and other RTS have different metas, pop caps, and other factors. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

6 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

They kind of are, though. The original post talks about how 0AD produces units at a rate that is 3x to 4x times faster. If a 0AD game is made 3x-4x longer that could very easily result in games lasting hours.

 

That's not how things scale, bruh. You know that.

 

Also, I don't think OP is saying spearmen and women should take 40 seconds to train, so you be misrepresentin' yo.

 

6 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Additionally, there's a difference between game time and real time. 0AD has significant lag issues that often cause normal games that are 30m or less in game time to last more than an hour in real time. Those problems are not nearly as significant in AOE.

 

That's not by design, of course. That insinuates that as the game's code gets more efficient, matches will last even shorter than they currently do, exacerbating OP's problem!  

Edited July 25, 2022 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[chrstgtr]

17 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

That's not how things scale, bruh. You know that.

 

Also, I don't think OP is saying spearmen and women should take 40 seconds to train, so you be misrepresentin' yo.

 

That's not by design, of course. That insinuates that as the game's code gets more efficient, matches will last even shorter than they currently do, exacerbating OP's problem!  

I don’t know what he meant. But all together, I do think there could be negative stacking impacts. Agree to disagree here. 
 

But yeah, we get code efficiencies but then add more features. So lag doesn’t actually improve. I’m sure you would love if we just took AOE2 graphics to get rid of the lag. 

[Stan`]

48 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

But yeah, we get code efficiencies but then add more features. So lag doesn’t actually improve. I’m sure you would love if we just took AOE2 graphics to get rid of the lag. 

If only it were that simple... We could just switch to fast mode by setting unit model quality to low.

[chrstgtr]

12 minutes ago, Stan` said:

If only it were that simple... We could just switch to fast mode by setting unit model quality to low.

I know—there’s a ton of other (old, new, and future) contributors. I just picked the most visually obvious one to be facetious. We’re on a bit of a treadmill here, but that’s ok so long as the lag doesn’t become unplayable 

Edited July 25, 2022 by chrstgtr

[real_tabasco_sauce]

5 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

No one is talking about hours.  The typical "slower paced" AOE2 match still lasts less than an hour. Sure, you can have epic 2-hour games in AOE2, but who complains about that? lol, they're epic.

right, and yes I was exxagerating with that statement.

my point is that the game time is kind of irrelevant. A fun game can be 3 mins long or 40.

What matters is that the entire game time is fun (fighting, raiding, scouting). AOE2 does this largely in part by opportunity costs.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

4 hours ago, Stan` said:

If only it were that simple... We could just switch to fast mode by setting unit model quality to low.

And again, graphics lag is often only a small part of the problem.

[BeTe]

11 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

They kind of are, though. The original post talks about how 0AD produces units at a rate that is 3x to 4x times faster. If a 0AD game is made 3x-4x longer that could very easily result in games lasting hours.

No man. We should have less but stronger units. Which will keep game duration same but more interesting, better microing and maybe a bit less lag. And for me personally more appealing. 

I just don't like big blobs.

Edited July 26, 2022 by BeTe

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

6 hours ago, BeTe said:

No man. We should have less but stronger units. Which will keep game duration same but more interesting, better microing and maybe a bit less lag. And for me personally more appealing. 

I just don't like big blobs.

I could see keeping the max pop cap at 300, but just making it more difficult to reach and a little less easy to replenish lost troops, so that functionally you have about 150-200 troops at any given time, with brief punctuations of larger armies.

[Frederick_1]

3 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I could see keeping the max pop cap at 300, but just making it more difficult to reach and a little less easy to replenish lost troops.

"less easy to replace lost troops" will make it even more difficult to revitalize after an lost battle. I would guess that this will make a game to tip over even faster, because a one time defeated player has even harder to compensate his losses. An early victory can decide a game even more.

[Freagarach]

On 25/07/2022 at 8:20 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

epic 2-hour games in AOE2

27