Map layout unbalanced?!

[BeTe]

I just played against Gonzalo1995 on Northern Island... Wtf is this map? I didn't have place to build structure and go P3 b/c my part of map is surrounded with cliffs. Attached is video of how it looks. 

[Gurken Khan]

• yes
• wtf
• don't play it again

[BeTe]

Again! Wtf is going on with these maps?! This time I chose map, tho... Do I miss something?

He had much more resources that he can reach on P2... Attached is video.

[Gurken Khan]

I believe there's a mod with balanced maps, might wanna check it out.

[BeTe]

I guess it's known issue and will be solved in next release?  

[guerringuerrin]

U can download feldmap mod from this thread and play Mainland Balanced map

[BeTe]

39 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:

U can download feldmap mod from this thread and play Mainland Balanced map

Thanks to you and Gurken. I was looking for Mainland Balanced before, but I thought it's map, not mod and couldn't find guide. I will try this definitely.

Does it fix stone and metal mines? I see only Food and Wood are mentioned.

But still, problem is that I can't play with people who doesn't have that mod... Should we report this to someone to include in next releases?

[vladislavbelov]

1 hour ago, BeTe said:

I guess it's known issue and will be solved in next release?  

It might be, but no promises. Because we have limited time and few active people to fix everything.

[BeTe]

7 minutes ago, vladislavbelov said:

It might be, but no promises. Because we have limited time and few active people to fix everything.

But that guy who developed mod, couldn't he do it directly in basic 0AD?

However, it is annoying, but I guess it's not the highest priority. It's just important to have it in "backlog". 

[vladislavbelov]

6 minutes ago, BeTe said:

But that guy who developed mod, couldn't he do it directly in basic 0AD?

If something needs a change in 0 A.D. it has to be reviewed. That means time, though it's less than creating a patch. But a bigger patch more time to review (and dependence isn't linear).

10 minutes ago, BeTe said:

It's just important to have it in "backlog".

For that we have Trac: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/report.

[guerringuerrin]

@BeTe
I would like to recommend you these two mods also. I give u the links.
At least to me, these two mods are must-have for get the best game experience.

Autociv: it adds many useful hotkeys like buildings ones. It saves you a lot of time. It has hosting tools. Auto civ change for players, kick and bans. U can /team 1v1 /team 4v4 and it sets u up the config.

https://github.com/nanihadesuka/autociv

 

BoonGUI: it shows u stats info in a more detailed way than vanila. How many women, inf and cav u have. Res per minute. also u can see allies stats when u got cartography and have a better overview of the hole team. This is specially useful for res sharing. Also, when spectating, u can see detailed info of tech research, units production, and so on.

https://github.com/LangLangBart/boonGUI

Edited September 19, 2022 by guerringuerrin

[Feldfeld]

46 minutes ago, BeTe said:

Thanks to you and Gurken. I was looking for Mainland Balanced before, but I thought it's map, not mod and couldn't find guide. I will try this definitely.

Does it fix stone and metal mines? I see only Food and Wood are mentioned.

But still, problem is that I can't play with people who doesn't have that mod... Should we report this to someone to include in next releases?

In the mod I only fixed food (which is the most critical resource for competitive play in A25)

36 minutes ago, BeTe said:

But that guy who developed mod, couldn't he do it directly in basic 0AD?

However, it is annoying, but I guess it's not the highest priority. It's just important to have it in "backlog". 

I have the intention to improve the map by fixing all 4 resources, generalize it so all fitting existing maps can be balanced in the same way, and bring it to vanilla 0AD. I also gathered the support of the 0AD devs interested on the matter. I started a patch in order to merge it to vanilla 0AD. Unfortunately up to now I haven't got the motivation to actually finish it. Now please note that since the upcoming A26 was in feature freeze for quite a long time, there was no chance of the patch getting in that version. I imagine that the next release after that, A27, will be out at least quite a few months later, so hopefully I will regain my motivation by then.

[thankforpieOfficial]

3 hours ago, BeTe said:

Again! Wtf is going on with these maps?! This time I chose map, tho... Do I miss something?

He had much more resources that he can reach on P2... Attached is video.

natural maps are unbalanced. play Mainland if you want balanced map

[BeTe]

1 hour ago, Feldfeld said:

In the mod I only fixed food (which is the most critical resource for competitive play in A25)

I have the intention to improve the map by fixing all 4 resources, generalize it so all fitting existing maps can be balanced in the same way, and bring it to vanilla 0AD. I also gathered the support of the 0AD devs interested on the matter. I started a patch in order to merge it to vanilla 0AD. Unfortunately up to now I haven't got the motivation to actually finish it. Now please note that since the upcoming A26 was in feature freeze for quite a long time, there was no chance of the patch getting in that version. I imagine that the next release after that, A27, will be out at least quite a few months later, so hopefully I will regain my motivation by then.

Thanks for the efforts made up until now!

Btw, I had more issues with terrain/space for expansion and later metal/stone when opponent had like 15-20k metal&stone reachable within build range in P2. I had like 1k-2k.

[BeTe]

1 hour ago, guerringuerrin said:

@BeTe
I would like to recommend you these two mods also. I give u the links.
At least to me, these two mods are must-have for get the best game experience.

Autociv: it adds many useful hotkeys like buildings ones. It saves you a lot of time. It has hosting tools. Auto civ change for players, kick and bans. U can /team 1v1 /team 4v4 and it sets u up the config.

https://github.com/nanihadesuka/autociv

 

BoonGUI: it shows u stats info in a more detailed way than vanila. How many women, inf and cav u have. Res per minute. also u can see allies stats when u got cartography and have a better overview of the hole team. This is specially useful for res sharing. Also, when spectating, u can see detailed info of tech research, units production, and so on.

https://github.com/LangLangBart/boonGUI

Thx, I noticed these in some stream... 

I have resistance to install it - as I feel it also makes game kind of unbalanced...

[BeTe]

A little feedback and appeal for community.

I had like 3 of 5 ruined games in prev. 3-4 days. Resources were unbalanced either in my or my opponents' favor. Winner was one who had luck to have more resources around original CC. 

I am not sure but I feel people talk too much about UI updates, minor unit balance, adding new civilizations, etc. while some other important problems such as "unbalanced resources" and "can't connect" are kept unfixed.

Attached is game. I think I had better early and mid game, but then I just couldn't collect enough wood to reproduce units, while my opponent had plenty of that. Or I miss something? 

Anyways, I hope people will focus on solving these issues asap. I think it's high priority. 

(Sorry, I am still new and I don't want to be more smart than older players, but I just feel frustrated and lose will to play 0AD. Off course, in general game is just awesome and I will continue to play. I'd just like to see it improving and getting more players in lobby.)

Cheers!  

bete_unbalanced_match.zip

Edited November 16, 2022 by BeTe

[Stan`]

Why don't you play the balanced maps like feld feld's ?

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

There is a subset of random maps and biome selections that are widely considered to be good for multiplayer. I can't remember them all off the top of my head, but so far mainland, guadalquivir river, lake, arctic summer, continent (on large). There is another map that has circular walls and players start in pockets around the outside, this one should also be played in large. There are also different Unknown map generations which you can adjust to some extent.

For a good set of MP maps:

• no places for units (in particular rams) to become stuck, in general focus on making pathfinding easy (not the same as making the map obstruction-free)
• enough wood, few "straggler trees/bushes" that prevent building placement
• variety of resource amounts, distributions, locations 
• purposeful terrain generation- cliffs, mountains, and hills
• avoidance of focus on water combat (water combat is not in a good state: sadness), small water sources in places with fish to exploit could be fun.

@badosu had a great mod with a variety of MP maps, some of which were modifications from standard 0ad maps. 

I should say that adding even 1 or 2 maps that challenge mainland in terms of depth of strategies, resource fairness, and general playability would be fantastic.

 

 

[BeTe]

14 hours ago, Stan` said:

Why don't you play the balanced maps like feld feld's ?

I do, but that's not long-term solution IMHO.

And it's still not properly balanced, even food which should be balanced in Mainland Balanced, right? Check my tournament match with `rm -rf`: 

 I had much more hunt in CC range and it was near cherries so I could build 1 Farmstead and reach 3 food resources easily. I think I didn't use it properly - some better player would quickly stomp opponent. 

I guess if players are near to equal in skills, these balance will decide game actually, especially on high level.

Edited November 17, 2022 by BeTe

[Feldfeld]

17 minutes ago, BeTe said:

I do, but that's not long-term solution IMHO.

And it's still not properly balanced, even food which should be balanced in Mainland Balanced, right? Check my tournament match with `rm -rf`: 

 I had much more hunt in CC range and it was near cherries so I could build 1 Farmstead and reach 3 food resources easily. I think I didn't use it properly - some better player would quickly stomp opponent. 

I guess if players are near to equal in skills, these balance will decide game actually, especially on high level.

Your additional hunt was compensated by his additional berry patch. And the position of your hunt relative to your starting berry near CC is irrelevant because it is worth it to build a farmstead at a hunt location anyway. If you don't the hunt food collection will be way slower. It's a tradeoff but it's never bad to build a farmstead anyway. All features of my berry patch / hunt generation are something I wanted. Resource diversity while being balanced at the end.

The only thing I didn't balance about food are the straggler berry tree. Imbalances with this could happen although rare and it is rarely relevant.

 

[Stan`]

For random maps it's up to @smiley and @maroder

[BeTe]

10 minutes ago, Feldfeld said:

Your additional hunt was compensated by his additional berry patch. And the position of your hunt relative to your starting berry near CC is irrelevant because it is worth it to build a farmstead at a hunt location anyway. If you don't the hunt food collection will be way slower. It's a tradeoff but it's never bad to build a farmstead anyway. All features of my berry patch / hunt generation are something I wanted. Resource diversity while being balanced at the end.

The only thing I didn't balance about food are the straggler berry tree. Imbalances with this could happen although rare and it is rarely relevant.

 

Thx for explanation.

Idk, I just think that Farmstead = 2 soliders + build (or res.collecting time), which can be huge early game. I am not sure it's good for competitive games. IDK.

On the other side I understand wish to have randomness and I like that, too. I just hope there is better algorithm. 

[BeTe]

P.S.

he had 2 trees (800 food). I had 16 animals (1600 food). But he had very near tree and 6 sheep. @Feldfeld

 

[Feldfeld]

5 minutes ago, BeTe said:

P.S.

he had 2 trees (800 food). I had 16 animals (1600 food). But he had very near tree and 6 sheep. @Feldfeld

 

I'll check again when I can but from what I remember he had a full berry patch on the bottom right of his base, which on this biome is equivalent to about 2 hunt patches (anyway my algorithm does the calculation so the total amount of food is equal without considering straggler berry trees)

From my experience at playing at high level this alpha, none of my losses could be explained by food imbalance. Wood generation is way more important and even after removing Nubia biome I know it will need a more sophisticated change.
I found that I always have a way to take advantage of my food distribution, and if I didn't unnecessarily mess my macro I always had an equal or better economy than my opponent.

As far as I know, apart from straggler berry trees, I never saw evidence of imbalanced food generation.

[BeTe]

18 minutes ago, Feldfeld said:

I'll check again when I can but from what I remember he had a full berry patch on the bottom right of his base, which on this biome is equivalent to about 2 hunt patches (anyway my algorithm does the calculation so the total amount of food is equal without considering straggler berry trees)

From my experience at playing at high level this alpha, none of my losses could be explained by food imbalance. Wood generation is way more important and even after removing Nubia biome I know it will need a more sophisticated change.
I found that I always have a way to take advantage of my food distribution, and if I didn't unnecessarily mess my macro I always had an equal or better economy than my opponent.

As far as I know, apart from straggler berry trees, I never saw evidence of imbalanced food generation.

I agree that wood/metal is priority no 1. After that, incorporating food balance from Mainland Balanced to all other maps.