32 replies to this topic

[FeXoR]

quantumstate, on 12 May 2012 - 02:44 PM, said:

In scenarios there can be existing structures placed on the map which are not Village structures.

5 isn't too many. You can reach that pretty fast with the standard starting resources. I haven't done much testing yet though. One balance issue is that come civs have houses worth more pop that others though.

Having two types of houses that AFAIK are: Cost 150 Wood/+10 pop cap and Cost 100 Woods/+5 pop cap is imbalanced on its own because the first grants +1 pop cap for 15 Woods the second needs 20 for the same amount.

Needing 5 buildings make them a bit more balanced because the hose type with the lower pop cap/wood ratio (bad/less efficient) is cheaper per house and so the needed structures can be reached faster (with less wood) with such civilizations.

feneur, on 12 May 2012 - 04:53 PM, said:

Hmm, if you have 5 Town Phase buildings it's weird the map designer didn't let you start at the Town Phase =) In either case you will be able to upgrade to the City Phase more or less as soon as you reach the Town Phase in that case, so giving a player a full set of Town Phase buildings and limit them to the Village Phase, or even the Town Phase, does seem a bit weird imho

Iberians start with walls and towers by default (which are city phase buildings) but they don't start in city phase (which I think is good. The walls seam already hard to balance for me).

For me most things are not considered "logical" in RTS games so having the goal of being "historically accurate" for me applies mainly to the text and the story told in a game. I could wright a list of 100 items right know that are unrealistic but it's not the question for me. It's a game and it should be fun and on the one hand complex enough to stay interesting for a long time on the other hand not too complex that you can't catch up with what you want to do in theory while the game runs in realtime. So both, realism and historical correctness, don't count for me when it comes to gameplay issues. Those should be clearly separated! Art, text, story and others would be good if historically accurate and realistic (as long noone feels offended by this, well, or at least not too many). But gameplay should be purely practical, easy and intuitively to use and balanced (and we're far away from being balanced but this will be a main goal in the beta phase AFAIK).

So for me the phases of a game should have a gameplay impact to have a reason to exist. RTS games are often divided is such phases like building up resource infrastructure, building up decent defenses against a possible counter attack, and than the (main) expand and attack phase. In the German RTS wikipedia side it's described about as I see it.

Edited by FeXoR, 12 May 2012 - 06:22 PM.

[Mythos_Ruler]

FeXoR, on 12 May 2012 - 05:45 PM, said:

Having two types of houses that AFAIK are: Cost 150 Wood/+10 pop cap and Cost 100 Woods/+5 pop cap is imbalanced on its own because the first grants +1 pop cap for 15 Woods the second needs 20 for the same amount.

There are other considerations besides a simple cost:population ratio, like construction speed, armour, health, building footprint, villager time (time spent building that seemingly overpowered 150W house could have been spent fighting or gathering resources), etc. But yeah, I think it all balances out.

Quote

Iberians start with walls and towers by default (which are city phase buildings) but they don't start in city age.

Walls are not considered.

[FeXoR]

Mythos_Ruler, on 12 May 2012 - 06:02 PM, said:

There are other considerations besides a simple cost:population ratio, like construction speed, armour, health, building footprint, villager time (time spent building that seemingly overpowered 150W house could have been spent fighting or gathering resources), etc. But yeah, I think it all balances out.

True, with the build time taken into consideration houses may be balanced ok.

But in general the game is not balanced at all (but I think you agree though perhaps not in the parts I have in mind but that's a thing for the beta phase IMO)

BTW: I updated my latest post while you wrote yours. A bad habit of mine x) 

Edited by FeXoR, 12 May 2012 - 06:24 PM.

[wraitii]

Yeah, the game is hardly balanced but afaik it was not a concern (or at least, a very minor concern) for the Alphas. Then again, 0 A.D. will have to come out of Alpha someday, and it looks like it could be soon enough (well, relatively).

BTW, Mythos, I see you decreased starting resources to 300 each, that's probably something you want to put in the "release info" on the homepage.

[General Octavian]

I think the phases are too short. You don't need to play long to advance to the next phase. I suggest from phases 1 - 2 you need a certain pop also. Then an increased pop for phases 2 - 3 and a certain amount of techs researched

[FeXoR]

General Octavian, on 13 May 2012 - 07:15 AM, said:

I think the phases are too short. You don't need to play long to advance to the next phase. I suggest from phases 1 - 2 you need a certain pop also. Then an increased pop for phases 2 - 3 and a certain amount of techs researched

The phases will have longer duration when starting resources are lowered. ATM you have enough resources for 10 female citizens (500 food), 5 citizen infantry soldiers (250 food and wood) and the 5 needed buildings (~750 wood). If you start with 250 of each resource only you just have enough for 5 citizen soldiers or 5 female citizens and about 2 buildings. That will slow things down. The final costs of the phases can be balanced if more ingame experience is there IMO.

Edited by FeXoR, 13 May 2012 - 10:49 AM.

[hhyloc]

IMHO adding techs to the phase requirement could be interesting, to simulate the advancements needed to expand a settlement, although these techs themselves shouldn't be too hard to get (perhaps the basic ones only)

[JuliusColtranePille]

i liked the change of the buildings concerning the optic very much!

will all or most of the buildings change their appearance when progressing through settlement-phases?

[hhyloc]

Not likely I think, it would require much work. That time can be used to improve many things.

[Mythos_Ruler]

Buildings changing between phases will not happen. Except maybe the Civ Centre, as a visual indicator. Some UI things might change between phases though, like Maybe a I, II, and III symbol indicating your phase and then some kind of audio/visual cue when the phase research is complete (I like Rise&Fall Civs at War for this).

I'd rather my art guys spend time improving the current buildings and...

Spoiler

Modeling new buildings for the brand new Mauryan India faction we want to create!

We'd also like to remake all of the unit body meshes for Blender compatibility.

[hhyloc]

Mythos_Ruler, on 15 May 2012 - 05:48 PM, said:

Spoiler

Modeling new buildings for the brand new Mauryan India faction we want to create!

We'd also like to remake all of the unit body meshes for Blender compatibility.

Sounds like a huge workload.

[Potter]

@mythos

WOW! Will the mauryan empire be included in part one itself?

[Veridagorin]

will you there be an option for random map and death match games to start out in a certain phase with all of the previous phases techs except for the ones that cancel out a different one.