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[gameplay] balance economy techs
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Authored by borg- on Jul 28 2020, 3:25 AM.

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Summary

The purpose of this patch is to have technologies better distributed in ascending order.
The difference from the second phase to the third is huge, and this greatly benefits the economy of players who arrive before the third phase, making comeback almost impossible.
Player in phase 3 should get better upgrades of course, but the player in phase 2 should still be able to win a game, and this is practically impossible if player get level 3 economy techs.
The gains with the 3 techs is practically the same as the old numbers, but much better distributed.
It also makes p1 and p2 tech more attractive to players.

Gather techs Standart values:

  • Village phase - 200 wood, 100 metal, 40 research time, +25% gather rate (+20% to food tech);
  • Town phase - 400 wood , 200 metal, 50 research time, +25% gather rate (+20% to food tech);
  • City phase - 600 wood, 300 metal, 60 research time, +25% gather rate (+20% to food tech).

Food is less because farms generate infinite food, so it’s fair.

Carry capacity techs standart values:

  • Village phase 200 food, 200 wood, 40 research time, +5 capacity;
  • Village phase 400 food, 400 wood, 50 research time, +5 capacity;
  • Village phase 600 food, 600 wood, 60 research time, +5 capacity.

keep food + wood, because the metal will often not be available. The cost of metal has increased for other techs, so it seems fair to keep only food and wood.

Fishing techs:

  • Fishing Net, cost 100 food --> 200 food, research time 30 --> 40.
  • Salting Fish, research time 40 --> 50.

Corral tech:

  • Stockbreeding, cost 50 food --> 100 food.

Market techs are not included, I will make a patch for all market technologies.

Test Plan

Check mistakes and ways to improve.

Diff Detail

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Event Timeline

borg- created this revision.Jul 28 2020, 3:25 AM

Market technologies? Also fruit baskets and domestic animal technologies?
How about stone gather technology costs from food + metal to wood + metal, like the others? And capacity technologies from food + wood to wood + metal?
Why not +25% each? Modifications compound, so each subsequent technology means a higher absolute gain. Just curious.
Shouldn't farming technologies have a lower gain, e.g. 15% each? Their food supply is infinite and they can be placed right next to food dropsites.

How about standardizing costs to e.g.:

village technologies : 200 wood + 100 metal, 40 s
town technologies    : 400 wood + 200 metal, 50 s
city technologies    : 600 wood + 300 metal, 60 s

[...]

Arguably you should balance on "cost-per-worker" or something. On a baseline of 15 / 40 / 80 workers perhaps (no idea if those are realistic), costs ought to be more exponential:

village technologies : 200 wood + 100 metal, 40 s
town technologies    : 500 wood + 250 metal, 50 s
city technologies    : 1000 wood + 500 metal, 60 s

(2, 4, 6 is linear, 2, 4, 8 would be exponential, 2, 5, 10 is not (first +150% then +100%).)

(2, 4, 6 is linear, 2, 4, 8 would be exponential, 2, 5, 10 is not (first +150% then +100%).)

Well, 2, 5, 12/13 maybe.

My point is more that I think we should balance the cost per worker at any given point.

borg- added a comment.Jul 28 2020, 5:45 PM

Market technologies? Also fruit baskets and domestic animal technologies?
How about stone gather technology costs from food + metal to wood + metal, like the others? And capacity technologies from food + wood to wood + metal?
Why not +25% each? Modifications compound, so each subsequent technology means a higher absolute gain. Just curious.
Shouldn't farming technologies have a lower gain, e.g. 15% each? Their food supply is infinite and they can be placed right next to food dropsites.

I'll take a look at the technologies on the market and some others.
It can be done 25 + 25 + 25, the final gain is the same as the proproe patch and the same current value.
Stone technologies cost food because of the description ( Im not sure ), but I can agree with that, and it's something that I changed in my mod.
I agree with tou about farm techs, i will make changes.

borg- added a comment.Jul 28 2020, 5:51 PM

village technologies : 200 wood + 100 metal, 40 s
town technologies : 500 wood + 250 metal, 50 s
city technologies : 1000 wood + 500 metal, 60 s

The purpose of the patch is to decrease the advantage that a player in the city phase has against p1 / p2.
With these values no solve the problem.

borg- updated this revision to Diff 12955.Jul 29 2020, 2:13 AM
borg- edited the summary of this revision. (Show Details)

Up.

Gather techs Standart values:

  • Village phase - 200 wood, 100 metal, 40 research time, +25% gather rate (+20% to food tech);
  • Town phase - 400 wood , 200 metal, 50 research time, +25% gather rate (+20% to food tech);
  • City phase - 600 wood, 300 metal, 60 research time, +25% gather rate (+20% to food tech).

Food is less because farms generate infinite food, so it’s fair.

Carry capacity techs standart values:

  • Village phase 200 food, 200 wood, 40 research time, +5 capacity;
  • Village phase 400 food, 400 wood, 50 research time, +5 capacity;
  • Village phase 600 food, 600 wood, 60 research time, +5 capacity.

keep food + wood, because the metal will often not be available. The cost of metal has increased for other techs, so it seems fair to keep only food and wood.

Fishing techs:

  • Fishing Net, cost 100 food --> 200 food, 40 research time.
  • Salting Fish, research time 40 --> 50.

Corral tech:

  • Stockbreeding, cost 50 food --> 100 food.

Market techs are not included, I will make a patch for all market technologies.

borg- edited the summary of this revision. (Show Details)Jul 29 2020, 2:14 AM

Generally I like this patch, it's a clear improvement over the current situation. A few things to think about, though:

+25% gather rate (+20% to food tech)

For most resources the old (1.15 × 1.15 × 1.5 = 1.98, i.e. a 98% increase) and new (1.25^3 = 1.95, i.e. a 95% increase) are about the same, however, for food the numbers mean an increase, from +65% (i.e. 1.15 × 1.15 × 1.25 = 1.65) to +73% (i.e. 1.2^3 = 1.73). 15% each would mean a decrease, though, to +52% (i.e. 1.15^3 = 1.52). Nonetheless, I think lowering food gain would be better than raising it, though.

keep food + wood, because the metal will often not be available. The cost of metal has increased for other techs, so it seems fair to keep only food and wood.

Don't players practically always start with a stone quarry and metal mine adjacent to their starting centre, each worth 5000? I think making metal more important in early game won't harm. That said, if you believe food + wood is intrinsically better than wood + metal, I don't have serious objections.

Fishing Net, cost 100 food --> 200 food, 40 research time.
Salting Fish, research time 40 --> 50.
Stockbreeding, cost 50 food --> 100 food.

I never liked these technologies (I'd prefer to see them disabled, but that's a different discussion), however, why do they cost only food?

Market techs are not included, I will make a patch for all market technologies.

Fair enough.
gather_wicker_baskets.json did not need tweaking?

borg- added a comment.Jul 29 2020, 2:35 PM

For most resources the old (1.15 × 1.15 × 1.5 = 1.98, i.e. a 98% increase) and new (1.25^3 = 1.95, i.e. a 95% increase) are about the same, however, for food the numbers mean an increase, from +65% (i.e. 1.15 × 1.15 × 1.25 = 1.65) to +73% (i.e. 1.2^3 = 1.73). 15% each would mean a decrease, though, to +52% (i.e. 1.15^3 = 1.52). Nonetheless, I think lowering food gain would be better than raising it, though.

If change to +15%, what you think about increase farm base gather rate like +5%?

Don't players practically always start with a stone quarry and metal mine adjacent to their starting centre, each worth 5000? I think making metal more important in early game won't harm. That said, if you believe food + wood is intrinsically better than wood + metal, I don't have serious objections.

I really think it's better to keep food and wood.

gather_wicker_baskets.json did not need tweaking?

No.

If change to +15%, what you think about increase farm base gather rate like +5%?

You can keep 20% if you believe that's better. It would mean an effective increase, but 15% each would mean a reduction. I'm not requesting changes, I wrote my previous post to encourage you to critically think about the proposed changes another time.
As for base gather grain rates, infantry has 0.25, slave 0.35, female citizen 0.50, i.e. a 1 : √2 : 2. I'm not saying those values are great, but I think tweaking them would be outside the scope of this patch.

By the way, did you consider diminishing increases, e.g. +30%, +25%, +20% (village, town, city)? While the relative increase per technology would go down, the absolute gain would still go up slightly, but less pronounced than under the current proposal. It would also be a bit closer in spirit to @wraitii's point.
(Again, not a request, just something to think about.)

borg- added a comment.Jul 30 2020, 3:33 AM

By the way, did you consider diminishing increases, e.g. +30%, +25%, +20% (village, town, city)? While the relative increase per technology would go down, the absolute gain would still go up slightly, but less pronounced than under the current proposal. It would also be a bit closer in spirit to @wraitii's point.
(Again, not a request, just something to think about.)

Yes i thought. Mathematically it looks good, but for player perspective it seems strange to have decreasing techs.

I never liked these technologies (I'd prefer to see them disabled, but that's a different discussion), however, why do they cost only food?

Fishing techs cost wood, just stockbreeding cost only food.

borg- added a comment.Jul 30 2020, 3:41 AM

+25% seems really good mainly because with the proposed values, the techs cost more wood and metal, so a higher early gain seems better to me. Also makes the techs more attractive at the early of the game, for example, I prefer to make more soldiers than research a +15% tech, at least as long as I don't have a good amount of units.

In D2916#126445, @borg- wrote:

+25% seems really good mainly because with the proposed values, the techs cost more wood and metal, so a higher early gain seems better to me. Also makes the techs more attractive at the early of the game, for example, I prefer to make more soldiers than research a +15% tech, at least as long as I don't have a good amount of units.

As a baseline, you should prefer it until you have 1/X units, so with 15% you should prefer units until you have 7 units or so (one needs to factor in cost as well). I think this makes the first tech interesting to research at around 10 gatherers,

borg- added a comment.Jul 30 2020, 2:40 PM

+25% means that city phase technologies are no longer as necessary to win as before, so you can choose to use these resources in another way, like champions if you prefer.

borg- added a comment.Aug 6 2020, 3:31 PM

@wraitii this values are good to you?
@badosu opnion?

Nescio added a comment.Aug 6 2020, 4:22 PM

The values look fine to me, but arc patch D2916 does not apply cleanly, so this probably needs a proper rebase?

borg- added a comment.EditedAug 6 2020, 4:36 PM

arc patch D2916`

I didn't understand what you meant, sorry.
What needs to be changed?

borg- added a comment.Aug 7 2020, 8:41 PM

@Nescio i need make this patch on new revision?

badosu added a comment.Aug 7 2020, 9:28 PM

@badosu opnion?

One positive of this patch is that removing the outrageous bonuses from P3 might make recovery possible for players rushed/rushing at team games.

I am not sure what are the consequences in deciding whether to P3 or attack economy and punish booming player, however given that most of time currently you'd want to P3 this could be a positive and force players to scout what opponent is doing to verify a safer transition.

badosu accepted this revision.Aug 8 2020, 4:21 PM

I also very much appreciate the 15%->25% changes, makes the early game decision whether to boom or rush much more relevant.

This revision is now accepted and ready to land.Aug 8 2020, 4:21 PM
borg- edited reviewers, added: Balancing; removed: Restricted Owners Package, wraitii, badosu.Aug 29 2020, 1:41 AM
borg- edited subscribers, added: Balancing; removed: badosu, wraitii, Feldfeld, Nescio.
This revision now requires review to proceed.Aug 29 2020, 1:41 AM
wraitii accepted this revision.Sep 2 2020, 9:16 AM

Seems a solid improvement over the status quo regardless. Thanks for the patch!

This revision is now accepted and ready to land.Sep 2 2020, 9:16 AM
This revision was automatically updated to reflect the committed changes.
Owners added a subscriber: Restricted Owners Package.Sep 2 2020, 9:20 AM