Should we go towards less units on screen (but keep similar gameplay)?

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

I think there are two main reasons why we usually see only fights with maximum size armies (aside from rushing and raiding). One of them is the citizen soldier implementation and the lack of a male economic unit. See "booming=turtling" below. Adding a male economic unit would mean that the barracks would no longer be the principal economic building and there would be more variations between booming and turtling. Additionally, forge techs in 0ad are very general and apply to many units at once. Adding unit specific upgrades could allow smaller, more specialized armies to exploit the timing value of unit specific upgrades. 

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

29 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

Adding unit specific upgrades could allow smaller, more specialized armies to exploit the timing value of unit specific upgrades. 

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Never been a big fan of the EA forge tech tree and never could put my finger on it. This articulates one of the reasons I don't like it. Specialization allows you to opt for specialized (and smaller) armies.

[ChronA]

20 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I think the tendency of these large battles to happen is really a big selling point for 0ad.

I fall in favor of the less-units side of this debate, but I will concede that this is probably true. But, what would be even more useful, is knowing why larger unit counts appeal to prospective players in spite of the performance tradeoffs.

• Is it because larger fights take longer to resolve, which means players have more time to re-deploy their forces and rectify the trajectory of bad engagements without needing a million apm?
• Is it the gambler's thrill of committing all the fruits of 20-30 minutes of investment in city building and logistics into a single potentially game ending clash?
• Is it the visual spectacle of hundreds of units smashing against each other? (This last seems unlikely to me, since units continue to pack so densely that individuals smear together into an undifferentiated blob.)

If we had an answer to that question, maybe there would be a way to improve performance without degrading the special appeal of 0ad's ambitious scale in the minds of its playerbase.

[Boudica]

I didn't have much time for a proper response, so I fed my quick thoughts into ChatGPT and ask it to make that into a full answer.

You might need to clarify whether you're asking about general player preferences in RTS games or specifically about their behavior in the current alpha of 0 A.D.

If it's the latter, I have some insights:

1. APM and Gameplay Style: Fast economic growth (booming) requires high APM (actions per minute). Many players, especially those who aren't pros, find it easier to focus on either growing their economy or fighting, but not both simultaneously. As a result, they often switch from economic growth to combat at a certain point. Engaging all units in battle means there's less economic management needed.

2. Full Population Strategy: Reaching full population with all upgrades provides players with confidence. They know their opponent won't have more units or better technology if they themselves have maxed out their capabilities.

3. Early Attacks: If an opponent attacks early, they spend significant time moving their units across the map, which can be inefficient. Subsequent reinforcements also take longer to arrive, potentially weakening the attack.

The question might not be about wanting smaller fights. Instead, your concerns could be addressed by improving the UI to make unit management easier.

[alre]

2 hours ago, ChronA said:

I fall in favor of the less-units side of this debate, but I will concede that this is probably true. But, what would be even more useful, is knowing why larger unit counts appeal to prospective players in spite of the performance tradeoffs.

• Is it because larger fights take longer to resolve, which means players have more time to re-deploy their forces and rectify the trajectory of bad engagements without needing a million apm?
• Is it the gambler's thrill of committing all the fruits of 20-30 minutes of investment in city building and logistics into a single potentially game ending clash?
• Is it the visual spectacle of hundreds of units smashing against each other? (This last seems unlikely to me, since units continue to pack so densely that individuals smear together into an undifferentiated blob.)

If we had an answer to that question, maybe there would be a way to improve performance without degrading the special appeal of 0ad's ambitious scale in the minds of its playerbase.

good question. I always thought it was the third one, but now I want to hear it from someone who actually likes the high popcap games. anyone?

17 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Never been a big fan of the EA forge tech tree and never could put my finger on it. This articulates one of the reasons I don't like it. Specialization allows you to opt for specialized (and smaller) armies.

35 minutes ago, Boudica said:

I didn't have much time for a proper response, so I fed my quick thoughts into ChatGPT and ask it to make that into a full answer.

You might need to clarify whether you're asking about general player preferences in RTS games or specifically about their behavior in the current alpha of 0 A.D.

If it's the latter, I have some insights:

1. APM and Gameplay Style: Fast economic growth (booming) requires high APM (actions per minute). Many players, especially those who aren't pros, find it easier to focus on either growing their economy or fighting, but not both simultaneously. As a result, they often switch from economic growth to combat at a certain point. Engaging all units in battle means there's less economic management needed.

2. Full Population Strategy: Reaching full population with all upgrades provides players with confidence. They know their opponent won't have more units or better technology if they themselves have maxed out their capabilities.

3. Early Attacks: If an opponent attacks early, they spend significant time moving their units across the map, which can be inefficient. Subsequent reinforcements also take longer to arrive, potentially weakening the attack.

The question might not be about wanting smaller fights. Instead, your concerns could be addressed by improving the UI to make unit management easier.

in the end, you still have a game that is like rock-paper-scissors, where rock and paper overlap for a good part (booming=turtling), so the third option (rushing) cannot compete. you gotta decouple the best booming strategy from the best defensive strategy, otherwise you'll still have everyone going for that one strategy only.

[Atrik]

7 hours ago, alre said:

where rock and paper overlap for a good part (booming=turtling), so the third option (rushing) cannot compete.

Maybe this is mostly just about how players like to play : 60/200 females. I guess the theory is that you put 60 females on food and then only mens on wood but always felt like soldiers on wood was already a waste of resources.
Females feel balanced to me, maybe rounding wood gather rate to match soldiers one could be enough (+8% wood gather rate). What I regret about "booming=turtling" is more about civs that force you to build a fort to unlock your hero for example. @wowgetoffyourcellphone suggested that heros buildings had their own class somewhere, would make sens then to have one for all civs.

Edited July 24 by Atrik

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

On 24/07/2024 at 3:30 PM, Atrik said:

What I regret about "booming=turtling" is more about civs that force you to build a fort to unlock your hero for example

forts don't really help you turtle on their own since you still need the whole army. If you read through the discussion on that thread the issue boils down to the protective power of infantry CS from p1 through the rest of the game. CS infantry are also marginally faster in wood production and significantly faster for mining, and can also be trained from multiple barracks. One way to put it is that there is no "naked" boom in 0ad, in fact booms with as many as 80-90 women aren't much faster than a safer boom with 45-55 women. Of course a male economic unit could help with this, meaning a "naked" boom would be composed of women and male eco unit, freeing up infantry citizen soldiers to primarily serve as fighters early on. 

As for civs that need a fort to make the heros, I think it makes sense for some civs like ptol and ibers which have fast booms and strong heros. Others like seleucids have niche uses for their heros and its nice that they can come out of the cc. I think we should use a range of hero origins (cc, special building, temple, fort) as needed by civ design. Carth or Kush could definitely benefit from getting heros from something faster than the fort.

[Atrik]

33 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

in fact booms with as many as 80-90 women aren't much faster than a safer boom with 45-55 women

The fastest population grow where literally made by Stockfish with 170 females. And more females very likely make you faster even without fertility festival. Maybe you just base your analysis on ad-hoc games or just look at population count as metric for booming. Even to gather minerals females would be better if you just consider unit cost and efficiency.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

2 hours ago, Atrik said:

The fastest population grow where literally made by Stockfish with 170 females. And more females very likely make you faster even without fertility festival. Maybe you just base your analysis on ad-hoc games or just look at population count as metric for booming. Even to gather minerals females would be better if you just consider unit cost and efficiency.

I based it off of the current meta. You have to delete women after a while. Also stockfish isn't exemplary for 0ad gameplay since he plays with different tools compared to the vast majority. If going 85+ women was significantly better then many more players would try it other than those with special advantages. 

To be honest I think a male economic unit available in p2 would also be very interesting for choosing when to go p2. 

[Atrik]

30 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

If going 85+ women was significantly better then many more players would try it other than those with special advantages. 

85 females booms aren't uncommon afaik. Even if it was, wouldn't prove anything. Better meta could very well be discovered and unoptimal metas in a community with very few players wouldn't be surprising.

 

33 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

Also stockfish isn't exemplary for 0ad gameplay since he plays with different tools compared to the vast majority.

Well that's one con on insisting to be silly right? You won't try to understand what Stockfish does exactly like all 1v1 you spectate with him against borg and the only commentary you can make are about mod usage, because that's accessible to your current game understanding.
Stockfish was queuing females with vanilla autoqueue 1 per 1 btw.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

On 24/07/2024 at 8:14 AM, alre said:

good question. I always thought it was the third one, but now I want to hear it from someone who actually likes the high popcap games. anyone?

well I typically don't play past a 200 pop cap, but I have seen comments on youtube videos (like release trailers or 0ad reviews from youtubers) that seem pretty thrilled about the big battles and the graphics.

So I would bet these are factors that drive interest in the game.

Edited July 26 by real_tabasco_sauce

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

1 hour ago, Atrik said:

85 females booms aren't uncommon afaik

well I guess I should say its uncommon (around 1/10 games you see one player do this) because its not a significantly better boom. Even over the time I've observed your gameplay you've gone from making up to 120 at the peak of your reliance on progui, and then down to 65-70 recently as you've gained actual game knowledge and skill. 

[chrstgtr]

3 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

well I guess I should say its uncommon (around 1/10 games you see one player do this) because its not a significantly better boom. Even over the time I've observed your gameplay you've gone from making up to 120 at the peak of your reliance on progui, and then down to 65-70 recently as you've gained actual game knowledge and skill. 

I've experimented with it. making more than 60 women in a 200 pop game is actually a worse boom for most games with the common CS strategy because you have to make units twice just to get a proper sized army (i.e., you make women that you later delete to replace with men). YMMV, though, depending on KD. Other strats may call for other numbers. 

There are three reasons why people wait until p3 to fight. 

First, people wait until they're strongest or forced to fight. This is natural ("if I wait just 30 seconds more I will have 10 more men," "if I wait 40 seconds more I will have 15% attack," etc.). This means that fighting typically begins as soon as the first player has all the upgrades that they intend to use in a fight. This won't change no matter what the upgrade structure looks like--people will just wait until they get that unit-upgrade or whatever.

Second, there's a dearth of worthwhile strategies between min 6 and min 15. There needs to be more stuff like p2 merc rush. 

Third, even if you do find a successful strat between min 6 and min 15, then you can get slapped in TGs where an un-rushed booming player is able to roll you over. This makes strats like merc rushes risky and rarely worthwhile (i.e., you can have a successful min 10 push but lose if your pocket isn't as strong as the player you are rushing aka the "elephante syndrome"). 

The third factor really shows how 0AD is two different games--one for TGs and one for 1v1s. There is way more action throughout a game in 1v1s than in TGs. But a lot of what is being discussed here is about TGs. 

[BeTe]

Related to talks about big vs small army fights... I just watched this and want to share here for "brainstorming" purpose. The guy (is he credible actually?!) compares AOE 2 and 3 and mentions fights and unit mechanics and why he thinks AOE2 is better or more popular:   

https://youtu.be/A_q_pMVLqY4?si=xgXWDEC_PKNVNq25&t=344

[chrstgtr]

On 14/10/2022 at 7:18 AM, BeTe said:

1. For me as new player it's very hard (and frustrating?) to estimate how big opponent's force is and to send appropriate amount and type of units to defend (or attack). I think overcommitment is not good in RTS.... I guess I will improve skills in this but why not to motivate people to continue play by making game appealing.  

2. Hard to distinguish units to find proper counter. Or if I have huuuuge blob in a battle and I want to kill separated opponent's Sieges, it's hard to find 3-4 swordsmans to kill them (I don't want to separate all of the swords).

3. Harded microing, relying more on luck.

4. Performance/lag.

@BeTe you mentioned it is helpful if people respond. So here I go. 

1. You're right, it is because you are new. I used to have same problem. 

2. Same. It is because you are new. I also used to have this problem. 

3. Same. You get better with time, which I know from personal experience. 

4. Agree. There are other fixes, though. Some of those are already in the pipeline. 

So, basically, I would challenge almost all of your premises on why it is a problem. 

Edited July 26 by chrstgtr

[alre]

10 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

@BeTe you mentioned it is helpful if people respond. So here I go. 

1. You're right, it is because you are new. I used to have same problem. 

2. Same. It is because you are new. I also used to have this problem. 

3. Same. You get better with time, which I know from personal experience. 

4. Agree. There are other fixes, though. Some of those are already in the pipeline. 

So, basically, I would challenge almost all of your premises on why it is a problem. 

well if something is problematic for new players, it's problematic nonetheless, especially if other games have solved that problem.

[chrstgtr]

8 minutes ago, alre said:

well if something is problematic for new players, it's problematic nonetheless, especially if other games have solved that problem.

Sigh. Must you always disagree with everything? 

I do not know how to drive an F1 car. If I tried, I would probably go very slow or crash and die. But I am a very good driver in a street-ready automatic transmission car. I'm not asking F1 to change their car designs because Toyota else invented a less problematic Camry for me. 

Sometimes things are foreign. Sometimes foreign things are difficult to adapt to. That's ok. 

Edited July 26 by chrstgtr

[BeTe]

@chrstgtr I appreciate your reply. It's 100% valid perspective and is one of valid opinions. It doesn't mean it's correct or wrong and that alre's one is correct or wrong. It's just different opinion and that's normal in human societies. 

To give my perspective.

This thread is started long ago and meanwhile I played like 2000 games of SC 1 which is very hard mechanically (old) + very competitive on Ladder. SC 1 as we know don't give a @#$% about fact that newbies find it hard to queue 1 by 1 unit from 5-10 different facilities and that you need to select them 1-by-1, unlike 0AD, SC2 or other RTS. You can't select more then 12 units as well. And many other things.

And now, that's where philosophy comes into play. I do think SC 1 is awesome game and I personally wouldn't change it although I am new. I like it more then SC 2 in almost every aspect. 

In that sense regarding 0AD, I don't necessary think we need to adapt to newbies, but as Alre said, game is not made only for PROs.... Some people (not me) like to play it semi-casually and it must be taken into consideration. That's also what new RTSes goes  towards and I personally think it's bad thing. 

But 0AD community needs to choose top level strat of what we want to have and stick to that (for some time at least).

So 1, 2 and 3. arguments are correct but come out of not necessary correct premise, unless we want high competitive game. Which is not good or bad on it's own ofc. Nor it's only way to make game more competitive. "Make bigger crowd to make it harder".... not sure that's correct. IDK tho. 

4. It's nice to hear. I did notice better performance in a26 which is nice. Idk what other solutions are in pipeline, but I guesstimate fewer units would be much easier approach and it works without too much involvement of developers (which is problem for open-source projects afaik). Especially if we all like to see fewer units on screen for whatever reasons. 

Also,

recently I have less problems with first 3 points, especially since someone showed me Alt+right click to split units. But I still don't like of that mass of units, mostly for  visual reasons but also for reason stated in point 1. (not always tho). I also don't like graphics and fact it's hard to distinguish my own units from opponents. That's my problem with all modern games, aoe 3,4, SC 2, WC3, etc. In that sense AOE 2 DE is perfect, it's more simple, less effects and it's obvious what unit belongs to who. New games are just overwhelmed... All that combined is hard for my eyes, I feel blind and tired after 1 single game. You can now argue it could be my lap-top or my body, which is also true to some extend, but it's same as discussion about topic from start of this message.

Again, don't take this personally. I don't say i am right and don't want to force changes. I just want to give my perspective and to hear what others think. I mean title of this theread is with question not exclamation mark.... I like democratic approach.  But yeah, I am new i need to adapt to game, not game to myself.  

Again thanks for feedback, sincerely appreciate that.

[Atrik]

9 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

well I guess I should say its uncommon (around 1/10 games you see one player do this) because its not a significantly better boom. Even over the time I've observed your gameplay you've gone from making up to 120 at the peak of your reliance on progui, and then down to 65-70 recently as you've gained actual game knowledge and skill. 

You really just can make up stuff to try prove your points.

Since now talk about my gamplay specifically with females I'll explain the principle with witch I play:

You don't need to aim for a specific army strength, as to win your opponent, you need a stronger army relative to him, not absolute (seems obvious right?, well it's not for most that will always fight maxed out). Therefor if you can send your forces early with upgrades but you are keeping a high female count to keep up eco, you can win over a opponent aiming for a later 'ready' timing.
Instead of taking off the pressure your opponent when you need wood (by recalling CS to gather it). It's better to just make more females, even in late game. CS gathering wood are just a loss of efficiency since they are just costlier units that gather at about the same rate.
When booming, if you have some hunt, making cavs instead of inf makes food even 'cheaper' then wood (gathering food is very efficient with cavs), and cavs can be used harrass your opponent. Since food is now so cheap, making females is even more worth it. This is how you can storm your opponent with cav harrassment and chain up with some rams early enough. You might have 100-120 females min 13-14 but you got  rams AND harassed your opponent all game AND you have a bunch of cavs that are a bit stronger then inf.

Sometimes if your ally isn't going to help you until himself is maxed out, you have no choice then you make the exact same strategy. Likewise, you are likely you meet opponent with the "classical" army size, so if you don't know when to retreat, just copying the "classical" army strength is also a good choice. Theses are the reasons why players locked in the local optimum of 60/200 in my opinion, as myself have experienced the need to going for this for the reasons above.
Females ARE more cost efficient then CS in theory, so ofc that the reasons they aren't used more comes from other reasons then 'it's the better play to make only 60'.

Edited July 26 by Atrik

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

@Atrik your explanation makes sense, thanks for sharing it. I still think that if the resulting smaller army size was worth it, we would see players do this much more frequently.

[alre]

6 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

Sigh. Must you always disagree with everything? 

I'm sure I don't. but I always thought 0ad has too much units overlap. It was me that suggested the changes to unit pushing from a25 to a26.

[guerringuerrin]

7 hours ago, BeTe said:

This thread is started long ago and meanwhile I played like 2000 games of SC 1 which is very hard mechanically (old) + very competitive on Ladder. SC 1 as we know don't give a @#$% about fact that newbies find it hard to queue 1 by 1 unit from 5-10 different facilities and that you need to select them 1-by-1, unlike 0AD, SC2 or other RTS. You can't select more then 12 units as well. And many other things.

What a wonderful game! That was my favourite RTS as a kid I played on a local server called Ombuserver with a cracked copy I still remember the CD-Key number. It was a famous one, starts with 3630....
The difficulty and learning curve of the games have eased over the years as the gaming industry has changed. This is not something exclusive to RTS games, regardless of the fact that they have always been very complex games compared to other genres.
On a visual level, it must be said that the era of pre-rendered graphics has had milestones of beauty and personal style never achieved by the 100% 3D era. Good old days? Maybe....

I think one of the characteristics of 0ad is the scale of its battles, and I think this is something good to highlight and preserve. An army of 100/180 units fighting against another is something epic and remarkable about the game. I think that perhaps the "simplification" could cover other aspects such as the amount of technologies possible to research, the need to unlock units in order to produce them. Aspects that can end up resulting in the player avoiding even trying to produce a specific unit due to the resources and time that he has to dedicate to be able to enable units.

Something I've been thinking about and am very curious about is how the dynamics of the game would change if the number of possible units to select were limited. The StarCraft community has always complained about this number being so small when, like 0ad in standard configuration, the maximum production limit is 200 units. However, could this limitation when selecting units substantially modify the dynamics of a huge army moving across the map? What do you think?
It must be said that SC 1 had a moment of stagnation in the game's meta when in the end everything came down to massing a single unit and thus winning the game. I don't know if this has changed over time and, although at the top of the competitive field it was very common to see very innovative strategies with tech units that, thanks to their special abilities, could tip the balance to one side or the other, the truth is that at the average level the game's meta ended up being massing a unit before your enemy and overtaking them by taking advantage of the snowball effect after winning the first battle.

Some of this snowball effect is also present in 0ad and that's why it's so important not to kill your army because a first defeat on the battlefield will in most cases end with the defeat of that player or the defeat of that edge, speaking of TGs. I think in AOE II this snowball effect is a bit more difficult because of its "hard counter" model, where one can choose to switch to another unit to counter the enemy's unit.

7 hours ago, Atrik said:

You don't need to aim for a specific army strength, as to win your opponent, you need a stronger army relative to him, not absolute (seems obvious right?, well it's not for most that will always fight maxed out). Therefor if you can send your forces early with upgrades but you are keeping a high female count to keep up eco, you can win over a opponent aiming for a later 'ready' timing.

In this sense, I think that what we should aim for is to "disarm" or improve the 0ad meta so that not everything is reduced to an economic race in which each player tries to get to a full army, full tech + rams faster to win the battle. I think that at an average level of play it is simpler to stick to an effective strategy than to risk trying innovative things, since, most likely, these will give worse results than the classic boom race. The "fear of failure", in such a small community, with so few hosts and game options, can also play a role in this sort of homogenization of gameplay.
I think that dynamizing phases 1 and 2 to create new game meta in early and mid game is a good starting point.

[BeTe]

@guerringuerrin Idk if that was rhetoric question, but I do think number of units significantly decide dynamics. This is case for Zerg in SC 1... iirc, they would be OP if you could select all of them at once... Idk if how many people complain about that.

Btw, about meta: SC 1 meta is still evolving. For example Flash went to army and was away 1-2 years idk. Meanwhile TvP changed and switched to +1 5 Factory instead of fast 3rd. Reason is b/c pro gamers figured out how to use Shuttle+Reaver more efficently and punish greedy Terrans. Flash tried to play old meta, but if I noticed propely he is switching to new one. I like SC1 and I'd like to see more games like that, but problem is that I am not sure that modern players respect that qualities enough so it's not most popular game (at least when we compare viewers on Twitch and other stats). So not everything must be applied to 0AD, but I think it's good to take some elements from that game, especially from AOE 2 which is super popular as I can see on Twitch, even more then AOE III and IV together. 

I just throw ideas. Maybe I should stop now, at least until I master 0AD?  

[BeTe]

Just found this message in ORA Discord. It seems some people really like big fights (we discussed it here):

[alre]

1 hour ago, BeTe said:

ORA Discord

?