In D4148#177108, @wraitii wrote:

In D4148#177096, @chrstgtr wrote:

Personally, I like the randomness. [...] Based on the couple of gens you posted, I don't know if diverse strategies will necessarily be eliminated but it's something to consider when we start talking about being "fairer" and spacing things farther apart.

I agree, and I don't think this changes the randomness factor too much. In fact, it's why I added 'wildcard' mines that can be placed much nearer to other mines, to occasionally create some really good dropsites zones.

Also, it's hard to tell from this small number of gens, but it looks like there will now be at least 4 metal mines per every player. If so, that seems high to me.

Yeah, on looking back, I agree I overdid it :p.
The current mapgen is one large mine per player (starting mine) + A number between 4 & 16 depending on mapsize. A 'normal' map would get 8. The problem is that this scales poorly: in 1v1 on Small, you can expect 40K total metal. In 4v4 on Medium, you can expect 90K, so you go from 20K per player to a little over 11K.

These new settings will still give you 40K on a 1v1 Small, but instead of there being an additional 6 5K mines, there are 3 5K mines and about 6-7 mines of 2/3K metal. This lowers the chances of having not access to any metal beyond your starting base, though it might still not be a complete panacea.
On 4v4 Medium however, this bumps the metal to 140K, which is slightly less than you'd get on 1v1 but a lot more than on SVN. The mines are mostly 5K mines, so that you won't find metal everywhere either and there might be some good dropsite spots.

I've also made a quick change that Metal mines get generated before Stone mines. This should make the distribution slightly fairer, and should it be impossible to place some mines, the metal mines are likely to be placed and you might be missing stone, which seems less damaging on gameplay.

Personally, I like the randomness. It creates more diverse strategies (i.e., I see I have a lot of metal on this map, so I will go champs/mercs or I see there are three mines located in one spot, so I am going to invest in an early CC to get the good spot). The problem is that too often some players are blessed with massive amounts of extra resources while other other players have no extra mines. This creates the situation where map position becomes outcome determinative. Based on the couple of gens you posted, I don't know if diverse strategies will necessarily be eliminated but it's something to consider when we start talking about being "fairer" and spacing things farther apart.

In D4080#175533, @wraitii wrote:

How about:

• Add 100S/100M to the cost
• Make it possible to build siege rams there.

In D4080#175120, @ValihrAnt wrote:

Should also try to avoid a situation where the military colony is just a superior siege workshop. In general, I don't mind either solution.

In D4080#175082, @ValihrAnt wrote:

I'd rather just have the siege come back and not change anything else

I personally never liked that Rome had its siege taken away from the camps--it was a really unique civ differentiator and I never found Roman camps OP. Nowadays almost no one builds Roman camps, which indicates that the current setup is under-powered. As I said in the forum, since Roman camps can't produce siege in a24 they're only useful if they can shoot arrows at enemy units. That means that camps are only useful if they are placed in an area that will be the center of fighting. Except it is difficult to place buildings somewhere there is constant fighting since your builders will get killed in the fight and the defending player can more quickly spam to a location in their own territory. And, next alpha camps won't be nearly as good as that because D3668 reduces the damage of arrows from Roman camps by more than half.

In D3704#174887, @wraitii wrote:

In D3704#174883, @chrstgtr wrote:

Wait, why was there the increase in wood for the farm techs?

I made it consistent with other techs: it goes 100/200/300|200/400/600 for everything but food. I can change it back.

Wait, why was there the increase in wood for the farm techs? Also, I just realized we will also need to change the p1 techs values too--these only change the p2 and p3 values.

In D3704#174729, @wraitii wrote:

In D3704#174724, @chrstgtr wrote:

Should we switch the metal component to stone for the stone mining techs? And/or, switch the metal component for food for the farming techs? This would make more sense from a give up some now to get some later perspective.

How about:

• food/wood techs cost metal + wood (better equipment but it's "light" equipment)
• stone/metal techs cost stone + food (more slaves, deeper mine shafts (= stone))

This would make stone more worthwhile & reduce the load on metal.

Looping back around to this. Are we letting this ticket go unimplemented?

In D3686#174663, @Stan wrote:

It has to be a village phase because of nomad ?

Taking res away from the isthmus will take away a lot of the incentive to build in the center. The center will essentially become nothing but a bottleneck fight zone. This has its pros and cons and I don't have a strong opinion either way. I just want to flag it because it will change the map meta a bit.

In D4051#174209, @wraitii wrote:

This might make elephants a little underpowered, maybe? Wouldn't archers in particular become quite OP against elephants?

This should only really impact rushes. Making skirms (i.e., jav cav) quicker will encourage rushes, which are still a bit difficult with the rotation times being slower than a23 (although faster/easier than now). It will also make players less likely to lose units to enemy archers when passing from afar.

In D4051#174090, @borg- wrote:

I think it's unrealistic, but following the idea of the patch, isn't it more interesting to just lower the elephant's pierce shield?

I prefer to make ele vulnerable to pierce instead of melee. That way melee counters rams and range counters ele. This would require players to have diverse units in order to properly fend off varied attacks (i.e., having ele and rams be vulnerable to different types of attacks discourages single unit spam or else the archer spammer could see one ram kill an entire base because the archer spammer didn't build any melee). It would also help solve the meat shield problem with ele because it is very difficult to micro range units off of attacking ele (but perhaps this could be solved by making not automatically target ele when ele are the closest and instead treat ele like cata and bolts).

I think this is a good change.

In D3994#172611, @Freagarach wrote:

Someone proposed the trickle also for healers: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/40555-some-questions-and-proposals-in-my-first-post-here/. How do you (general you, also to balancers) feel about that?

In D3993#172044, @wraitii wrote:

In D3993#172043, @Freagarach wrote:

Walls/Pallisades cannot be captured unless by territory, right? So why don't we make them instant turn over?

That's correct, but only because all units have restricted classes on walls (because you cannot be invincible to capture until I merge that resistance change).
I think instant capture is a bit gamey in the other direction, just making them capture at a regular rate seems fine.

In D3994#172041, @Freagarach wrote:

For the barracks, the idea was there is a trade-off: use your CS for eco or let them slowly gain XP by garrisoning in the barracks. The same idea might or might not apply to the stables.

In D3993#172030, @wraitii wrote:

In D3993#172029, @chrstgtr wrote:

Regarding the 50s vs 100s difference, this will make capturing a CC with a small guerilla force far less useful because the remaining structures will be able to produce units for longer and allow the defending player to recapture their CC against the smaller force. I prefer to keep it at 50s.

mh, that's actually exactly my objective here. I find it quite annoying/gamey that a small guerrilla force / a few rams can basically force you into game over because in a few seconds you've lost everything. It just doesn't seem like good gameplay to me.
That being said, the game seems quite turtley right now from what I read, so perhaps it's good that we have this wildcard option.

I like making the house decay rate the same.

Insomuch as the experience trickle should apply to barracks, I think it should also apply to stables too (note: I don't think it should apply to barracks or stables because players generally only garrison units in order prevent capture and I don't see why the defending player should benefit here in what is otherwise a desperation move. But the XP trickle is way too slow to actually make a difference for the short period of time players garrison units in barracks/stables, so it won't make a big difference one way or the other).

In D3989#172019, @Stan wrote:

Won't that render fortresses useless ?

This makes sense to me, and I never cared for this change in the first place. Giving the fortress root means that CCs are of little importance in p3, especially because forts are relatively cheaper and stronger than CCs.

I guess I get your aesthetics concerns. My reply is simply that it is a game and not a simulation, and there are countless other ways that things depart from what is "natural." But I acknowledge this likely won't convince you

In D3971#171166, @Freagarach wrote:

For what it's worth, I dislike these rotation values, since they feel too fast.

Are these the same rotation times and speeds in the mod you created? If so, I like the balance.

This looks good from my end.

In D3898#170465, @wraitii wrote:

I noticed in A23 outposts actually had 80 vision by default, increasing to 120 with the pidgeon tech. It's D2933 that made it 100.

This gives them 100 base vision, and the pidgeon tech gives them 150. That's a _lot_ of range, but I agree that it should outrange units, and units have around 80 vision, so...

I didn't add a garrison-related tech because nothing works well with turrets. The only point of garrisoning is that you can attack.
I'm wondering if outposts shouldn't be made un-garrisonable and have an actor inside anyways now.

I'm wary that the new LOS values might be a bit too high. Perhaps unit should lose 10 vision, and outposts be 90-135 ?

In D3898#170259, @Freagarach wrote:

Garrisoning does cost you something, the entity that occupies the outpost cannot gather.

In D3898#170247, @borg- wrote:

I do not think it is necessary to use a technology to increase vision. Vision range aura should work much better and be more useful. The rest of the patch is required. The current situation was not well accepted by the players.

In D3758#165081, @ValihrAnt wrote:

Agree with this.

I have never been in favor of different speeds for common units, for me ranged/melee must have the same speed, varying only in some cases. Anyway, it is a more pleasant situation that D3735 about camel rush.

I don't think there's a need to have all common units types have the same speed. In my opinion the more range a unit has, the slower movement speed it should have. That avoids endless hit and run opportunities by archers or slingers.
I think it's one of the main reasons why so many complain about archers in this release, as they can safely pick the fight, get a few free shots in and if they realise that it won't be favourable just run away. And unless the enemy was massing cav they can't be caught up to.

I like this. Getting p2 champs again will be nice.

In D3919#169478, @ValihrAnt wrote:

I think the +10% health tech would be too cheap/too quickly researched.
This would make the tech very cheap compared to training more cav units. +10% health is a really good upgrade for the relatively cheap cost of about ~3 cav right now. This would give +10% health for the resource cost of less than 2 cav, which just feels super cheap. Research time would >also be similar to the training time for 2 cav.

This would also make tech very cheap compared to similar blacksmith armor techs available in p2. Blacksmith armor techs are both much more expensive (400w/400m) and have a longer research time (40s) than the proposed values despite providing a benefit that is similar to a +10% health >increase. Additionally, blacksmith armor techs only provide a benefit against either hack or pierce whereas the +10% health boost provides a benefit against both.

I think the reason why this isn't researched more in p2 right now is because so few people actually fight with cav in p2 (which is largely the result of rushes not being very viable this alpha).

The idea was to make it accessible for players going for a faster Phase up and allow them to use that to gain an actual military advantage. What values would you suggest?

I think the +10% health tech would be too cheap/too quickly researched.

Thanks, wraitii. This is needed.

Maybe I can help with the English part. How does this look?

In D3868#167383, @wraitii wrote:

If the berries disappear when depleted, I don't think there's any point, as people are unlikely to notice it and it requires a lot of effort to handle correctly, since you have to stop your units from completely depleting the resource manually.
That being said, this is mostly a "strong don't care" on my end, if other people like it, whatever.

In D3868#167378, @Nescio wrote:

In D3868#167306, @wraitii wrote:

I don't really agree with this for Fruit (at least for the early-game berries). These are meant to be consumable, and a slow regeneration just introduces micro.

With normal usage those will be exhausted and disappear. Apply the patch and try it yourself. It's just a nice extra for non-competitive players who want to explore the possibilities of the game.
Players who want an infinite supply of food can build farms and players who want to maximize their food income should go for the corral. This patch doesn't change that.

Regarding Fish, I don't really mind, but again to avoid micro we would need to make sure that the fish stay on map once fully collected, and ideally that units don't start collecting the 'regrown' fish right away.

As for fish, I quite liked the sigmoid growth proposed in the ticket, but I believe that hasn't been implemented.

As stated in the forum, the complaints about the worker ele feel off-base because it isn't actually OP. Very few players actually ever train a single worker ele, and this change will make even few players train this unique unit. I see no need to restrict player strategy where there is no actual problem.

In D3743#164567, @borg- wrote:

In D3743#164562, @Nescio wrote:

The issue is how to differentiate crossbowmen without making them more effective than archers, which would unbalance the game.

For citizen units it may make sense to remove the advance and elite rank, since it was easy to learn, and increase the attack or something else.

In D3779#164514, @wraitii wrote:

[the rest]

I think you're arguing against unifying all gather rates, not wood gather rates, which this diff is about.

In D3781#164507, @Nescio wrote:

50 vs 1? Keep in mind 50 archers are a lot more expensive than 1 piece of artillery and that the latter only costs 2 or 3 population.

In D3776#164469, @Freagarach wrote:

The problem @wraitii describes is that when you have gathered some stuff and order the unit to do something else, e.g. walk somewhere, should it keep its low vision (because it is carrying something) or not?

In D3776#164464, @wraitii wrote:

So I don't see an easy way to reduce LOS when gathering that would not be mostly useless, because 'shuttling' units would have normal LOS. Making 'shuttling' units have lower LOS seems weird and inconsistent and a workaround for something else, in my opinion.

In D3776#164427, @wraitii wrote:

In D3776#164395, @chrstgtr wrote:

I like to standardize the number, but I do not agree with the choice of 80. They are very important units economically, increasing your vision makes it very difficult harassing.

I agree that it makes harassing very difficult and that it doesn't make sense for women and men to have different vision ranges.

Q: this seems to assume women-only eco. Is that so common?

In D3776#164340, @borg- wrote:

I like to standardize the number, but I do not agree with the choice of 80. They are very important units economically, increasing your vision makes it very difficult harassing.

I prefer to keep all gather rates the same as they currently are.

In D3599#162553, @borg- wrote:

In D3599#162552, @Edwarf wrote:

Hello,

Can i give you my opinion ?

Elephant archer is a long range unit, slow, fat and clumsy.
They can't be massed, they take too much space, they block each other, it's hard for them to get to the enemy when some already started to shoot.
They can't be micro properly because they are slow an clumsy.
This unit is reachable late on the game which mean the scenario 1 unit vs 1 elephant archer will almost never appears.
It is not working as a single unit army compsition, other unit are mandatory in order to make this unit viable.
Melee unit shoud be used to tank damage.

Current elephant archer proposition :
Stats : 7 pierce damage 400Hp 1/1/10 (Hack/Pierce/Crush) resistance
Cost : 200 wood 50 food 2 population

The most important caracteristic for this units is its damage.
if you can manage to protect your ranged units with melee units, 2 simple archer are better and cheaper than an elephant archer.
In my opinion the 2 population cost is too much for this stats change.

I have 3 propositions for this unit :

1- Keep the current proposition but reduce the population cost to 1.

2- Keep the current proposition but add 1 arrow shooted per rank. It is an expensive investment that can be worthy if you can keep your elephant alive.

3- Make it a melee unit with some hack/pierce damage, with no ranks but can be garrisonned with archers (3 max) giving them range bonus like A24 outpost.

Of course, your opinion is always welcome.

For me Proposition 2 is what I always wanted for elephant archers, but I don't know if it is possible in the code to add an arrow.

In D3680#163287, @borg- wrote:

I would like the opinion of @chrstgtr and @ValihrAnt. 2500 food makes it difficult to research this tech?

A couple considerations to consider for discussion:

In D3703#161491, @borg- wrote:

These are the original values proposed by me, so I am fine with this revert if necessary.

In D3704#161682, @ValihrAnt wrote:

Would metal still be an issue if the norm were 2 metal mines (10k metal) instead of 1 metal mine (5k), like it's currently done in the balanced maps mod (guaranteed to start with 2 metal and stone mines)?

In D3704#161582, @Nescio wrote:

Try playing Polar Sea.

In D3704#161580, @Nescio wrote:

In D3704#161579, @chrstgtr wrote:

Good points, but metal cannot be easily worked around the way that wood shortages can be worked around. For example, you can make a lot of slingers/mercs for Sahel. You can use your metal to make traders to get wood. On the other hand, once metal is out, it is extremely difficult to get more of.

Not every faction has slingers or mercenaries, though. Moreover, having no wood is extremely annoying, since practically all structures cost wood and most units do as well.

Also, mainland (and similar maps) are by far the most commonly played.

Perhaps, but that doesn't mean gameplay should be balanced entirely based on that kind of map.

In D3704#161577, @Nescio wrote:

It depends on what maps you're playing. Resource shortages are a part of map design. On Mainland metal is the most serious, while on e.g. Northern Lights or Sahel wood is the limiting factor.
Besides, the grain gather technologies already cost 200, 300, 400 wood.

In D3704#161496, @borg- wrote:

To be honest I had no economic difficulties with wood or food with these technologies, the difficulty unit is really metal. The demand for metal in a24 is higher, so I am happy to reduce the cost of metal, but I don't know about the other resources.

In D3668#161340, @Nescio wrote:

Maybe the Crenellations technology (+40% arrows per soldier) ought to be removed? It kind of defeats the purpose of this patch and also makes fully garrisoned towers quite dangerous.

In D3392#161206, @borg- wrote:

I would prefer an additional set of forge technologies ("level III") succeeding the current ones ("level I+II"). Maybe only attack upgrades, not sure. They would be resource and time heavy but could be the edge in extended games.

We are thinking of adding a level 3 to all civilizations.

Bonus 1:
1 free Sanga Cattle at start, aka "Special Starting Unit"

Already start with a healer.

My idea:

1- elephant suplies should affect kushites too
2- starts with 500 metal, +200 compared to other civilizations
3- corrals are free.
4- Forge gives a trickle of Metal. Similar to the proposal by @wowgetoffyourcellphone, but does not add metal by add forge.

I don't like this proposal either. Wonders are super expensive to build. WTF is also super expensive to research. This would mean that it would be very, very difficult to ever get enough res to research WTF (even with the lower cost it would still be cost prohibitive).

In D3699#161153, @borg- wrote:

I would not remove the technology, I would make it exclusive for Carthage. maybe for rank 3?

I like this. But I think it still a bit too expensive. A 20% discount would mean you need to make 2 CCs to recoup the total amount of invested res (although these wouldn't be the same res). It's pretty rare that one player makes two extra CCs. Also, by keeping it in the CC players would have to sacrifice their pop boom in order to research

In D3688#160875, @Nescio wrote:

Or an entirely different idea: how about allowing Athenian elite spearmen to promote to champions?

In D3675#160504, @Nescio wrote:

• Why Athens?
• Why all resources?
• Why all technologies?

In D3565#160283, @wowgetoffyourcellphone wrote:

In D3565#160281, @chrstgtr wrote:

Why would anyone want to do this? I wouldn't want to spend resources just to see that the enemy has a soldier fighting my army. Just like I wouldn't want to spend resources to see that my enemy has women farming by their CC because I already assume this.

Real-time knowledge is better than old knowledge? Plus you see everything that unit sees, including the movements of nearby enemy units, not just what that unit is doing.

Why would anyone want to do this? I wouldn't want to spend resources just to see that the enemy has a soldier fighting my army. Just like I wouldn't want to spend resources to see that my enemy has women farming by their CC because I already assume this.

In D3668#160207, @Nescio wrote:

In D3668#160195, @chrstgtr wrote:

I agree with the thought that defensive structures need a nerf. And, I think defensive structures were very well balanced in a23 (although I like the addition of more default arrows in a24; correct me if I am wrong that there weren't other buffs to defensive buildings between a23 and a24).

Are you sure the default arrow count was changed? I looked up and compared the relevant structure templates in A24, A23, and A22 and didn't see a difference in arrow counts. Perhaps I'm missing something?
For defensive structures in general, perhaps the most important change is that the effective attack range is now calculated differently (from a circle around the obstruction instead of from the footprint centre). And the changes to make “dancing” harder (e.g. higher projectile speed, slower unit turning) indirectly made structures (and archers) better too.
For fortresses specifically, a lot has changed: they can no construct siege engines or train champions; have a territory root; are cheaper and c. 10% easier to destroy (lower resistances).

I am not sure the proposed changes are necessary as they may nerf defensive structures too much when combined with quicker production times. I would keep it the same for now and revisit if necessary.

There are dozens of open gameplay patches and there is no fixed order in which they would be reviewed or committed. Waiting for something else to change first is generally not a good idea. In principle, each differential ought to be considered on its own. Adjustments can be made, if and when necessary.

As for whether this patch is really necessary, right now soldiers garrisoning an army camp inflict about 3× the damage-per-second as the same units garrisoning a small tower. Moreover, a basic archer outside a structure inflicts 6.7 pierce damage per second, inside a civic centre 6 per second, inside a fortress 8 per second. It shouldn't matter much which structure you garrison, therefore it's important to unify damage-per-arrow values.

In D3668#160197, @Freagarach wrote:

(I think they mean the removed sentries technology.)

I agree with the thought that defensive structures need a nerf. And, I think defensive structures were very well balanced in a23 (although I like the addition of more default arrows in a24; correct me if I am wrong that there weren't other buffs to defensive buildings between a23 and a24).

Why not allow to attack fields? Killing fields doesn't make rams OP--no one does it on purpose.

This is a very bad proposal.