 |
| |
|
|
HeymlicH
|
|
I disagree with most of the above posts.
1. Ages are not too short. An entire game takes a few hours. This is enough. I don't want to spend several days on one single "quick battle".
2. Yes, defensive is strong in the beginning. I like it. In most cases you have to build a little bit before you start fighting. This build up is something about 10 minutes in-game-time, that's not too much. In AoE it was always the problem that you need an army early because someone else raids you otherwise. Defense was too weak there.
3. If you really want to raid early play turks. They are great at this. Go to classic quickly, get military 2 tech (lower military tech costs and lower food costs are helpful here), build a small army (10 slingers/archers + 4 cavalry units are sufficient), build a siege workshop and take the 2 free catapults and start raiding. Don't waste time building up the economy - you don't need a granary or university for this and the player next to you has already built all this stuff. Take his structures. The only thing you might want to build yourself early is the colossus - it is very useful.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Out4Blood
|
|
quote:
1. Ages are not too short. An entire game takes a few hours. This is enough. I don't want to spend several days on one single "quick battle". |
RFOL! An entire game usually takes LESS than an hour. I'm almost always in INFO AGE in 30 minutes. Gunpowder age comes really fast. What game are you playing?!
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Out4Blood
|
|
Great googly moogly!
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Hermann the Lombard
|
|
Hoboken, NJ, USA
Jun 1999
time: 00:30
|
|
O4B: With each game I play, I find that I burn out and lose interest, sometimes surprisingly quickly. I finished a CtW campaign on Tougher last night, and I think I'm teetering on the edge of burnout. This seems awfully fast, but I think the reason is just what you said. The "been there, done that" factor is already very strong. Thanks to you (and to others), Tougher (against the AI) is now too easy. I was almost stunned by how easy it was to conquer the AI civs, especially if we started separated by water (thus leaving my boom undisturbed as I grabbed total sea control).
There have been a few games where I burned out and came back later, like Civ2, and found whole new levels of strategy and challenge, like the OCC (One City Challenge) and even the Size One OCC (I never pulled that one off). It doesn't seem that RoN will have that sort of replay value.
Can This Game Be Saved? Is there anything they could do in the next patch/expansion to remedy this? THAT could be a strategy discussion in its own right.
Based on this thread, one option would be to change the default cost and speed of research. Another might be to change the ramping algorithm (I agree with the idea of "economies of scale" up to a point...meaning that for a while the cost would go down, but at some point it would start up again). Yet another: make UUs more U to give an incentive for different army compositions. How would you change it, if you could?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Madine
|
|
One thing I would like to see is change the way unit upgrades work. Instead of being able to skip upgrades, I would like to see every upgrade needed. So instead of upgrading slingers to arqubusiers, you would need to up grade them to javelineers, then to elite javelineers first.
The main problem I have noticed is that unless you have your opponent crippled before enlightment, the game is essentially a tech race.
Because of this, there is little incentive to fight in ages 5 and 6, unless you have a significant advantage.
Why? The obvious reason is nukes. Their destructive power is unmatched. My experience is that someone wins the race to nuke by a large margin wins. There is a powerful incentive to be the person who wins that race or to not be the person that loses it badly.
Another reason is oil. Building wells takes precious metal that could be used to build units. Also most industrial units require oil, which makes it hard (impossible) to build up a military without getting left in the dust in the tech race.
Bombers, tanks, and helicopters also drive the tech race.
The design of the game was for it to start out defensive, and get more offensive as the game went on. I think this is a good decision, and it works out well for most ages.
However I think that there is a problem with ages 5 and 6. Major fighting is supposed to start in 4, so you would think that 5 and 6 would be the "meat" of the action. Instead they seem like a hoop you have to jump through to get the the destructive power of the last 2 ages.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Grond
|
|
Sure it can be saved but BHG would have to remove ramping or provide an option for disabling it and more importantly decrease the counters bonuses. As long as everybody is making very similar armies its going to be the same old same old.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Out4Blood
|
|
quote:
The design of the game was for it to start out defensive, and get more offensive as the game went on. I think this is a good decision, and it works out well for most ages. |
No, I think this is the fundamental flaw. Too strong of a defense eliminates the rush and thus forces a boom approach. The most efficient economy wins, which is the way it is now - for the most part.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
solo
|
|
Lowell, MA USA
Jan 2001
time: 05:30
|
|
I think a more fundamental problem is that most current games (including RoN) emphasize appearances over detail and strategic depth. So many of the designer's and platform's resources are devoted to things like 3-D and special effects, that there is hardly anything left to build a more detailed or challenging game.
Perhaps the solution is to turn to a simpler, but deeper game. I have discovered Go, and like it a lot so far because it makes me think.
Getting back to RoN, I've played a few games on very slow and expensive, and my experience is that the rush and a military approach is quite viable when using this option. Since there is such a long wait in between ages AND in between commerce level changes, more reources can be devoted to building a military, even one that is heavy on a particular unit or units. Miilitary research is relatively cheap and each level of it decreases unit costs by 5% (this overcomes ramping costs to some degree) and allows more units to be built earlier.
A small change that might help the standard game might be to halve the costs of unique units, so that their differences mean something more than just unique artwork.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Rusty Nail
|
|
Copenhagen
Jan 1970
time: 05:30
|
|
I have begun experimenting with very low population ceilings (say 75), increased unit costs and disabling Collossus (becomes too powerful) to increase the strategic aspect. It is too early too say yet, but you really have to think about which precious units to build and when, and when to kill off citizens and scholars to create room for miitary. I may have to increase attack strengths to balance offense versus defense (forts and towers become more important obviously). In any case, the usual one big diversified army can be eliminated this way.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
HalfLotus
|
 |
ATL, shorty.
Sep 2001
time: 00:30
|
|
quote:
Notice I said strategic stagnation. I'm not that there is NO strategy, just no new strategy DEVELOPMENT. And you said it yourself: "strategies are already well documented." And for a published book: Sybex strategy guide (written months before the game even goes gold; I know, I've written some) to be the tome for strategy means there is no hope! |
RoN has a very small community right now, especially online community, including forum-goers and those who play online. How many people play multiplayer at an expert level? A few dozen at _most_. I wouldnt expect a game with a tiny online population and an even smaller forum population to explode with original ideas right away. As the community grows and time passes there will be a great deal of strategic evolution. Considering how small RoN's comunity is, and that the game has only been out for a few months, Im impressed with the number of articles written at MFO and Infidels.
I agree with what you're saying about defensive play, and short ages...it detracts somewhat, though Very Expensive/Slow can cure that. I'd like for "age-jumping" and defensive play to be somewhat blunted in future patches.
As far as booming being the dominant strategy, I can say that I've won a great deal of online games by attacking in classical/medieval age, against good competition. In theory defensive booming is the best way, but in multiplayer anything goes really.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Out4Blood
|
|
That was the point of the post in the first place. Game design limits strategic innovation. Because of the lack of strategic innovation, people have quickly gotten bored of the game. Thus they left.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Madine
|
|
quote:
The most efficient economy wins, which is the way it is now - for the most part. |
The way I would define efficient is gather rate per citizen. It's good to have an efficient econ, but I don't think it's a game breaker.
I would agree that having the best-managed economy usually wins, but that is true in many other rts also. In addtion, a big part of rushing successfully is managing your economy to produce your rush force.
Typically in RTS you have three main ways to spend your resources: Improving your economy, building a military, and technology (of some sort or another).
In RON technology is king. It controls how big your population can be as well as how efficient and large your economy can be. The economies in RON exist largely to feed the library. Now that I think about it, the constant need to feed the library might be a big part of the problem.
Regarding the online community, one thing that Microslave posted a while ago on MFO is that BHG doesn't have the name recognition and fan base that an established company like ES or Blizzard has. However the big killer of online gaming is probably the poor matchmaking interface and the connectivity/stability problems.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Madine
|
|
I wouldn't say it's dead, but it's looking rather sickly.
I think the big questions for RON are:
Will patch 3 resolve the multiplayer problems?
Will there be an expansion, and will that expansion attract people to multiplayer?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Out4Blood
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by HalfLotus
I think RON's best days are ahead of us. |
No way.
quote:
[SIZE=1] Originally posted by Madine
Regarding the online community, one thing that Microslave posted a while ago on MFO is that BHG doesn't have the name recognition and fan base that an established company like ES or Blizzard has |
RON was published by MICROSOFT. You don't get much bigger than that. Gamespy just doesn't work that well (problem #1) and the game itself is tiresome because of the lack of strategic diversity (problem #2).
Some people call RON a very "deep" game, as in strategic depth. They're just confusing DEPTH with COMPLEXITY. RON is a very complex game. There are a LOT of things you have to manage. But if you want to win against good players, you pretty much have to manage them in the same way everytime. So it's complex, but strategically very limiting. The game structure itself limts what is strategically viable. Chess, on the other hand, is a very SIMPLE game, but one that has very deep strategy. On top of that, the increasing complexity reduces the time available for strategy. The range of viable strategies is further reduced by the high level of micromanagement required for certain actions. What could be a good strategy under ideal conditions might be impossible to execute tactically at normal speed in competitive play conditions, and thus is discarded as a viable alternative.
This is why most recorded games look the same. There are a lot of differences in micro technique, but there are few differences in chosen strategy.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Terser
|
 |
Imperialist Running Dog
Nov 2001
time: 23:30
|
|
I just bouht RoN a few days ago, having previously played the demo for the first time last week(even though I've had the PCGamer demo CD for months now).
Even having only played a half-dozen games or so I can bear witness to the late game stagnation that haunts this title. Eventually, it just seems like all I do is cycle through barracks, factorys, and airbases, setting production queues and dropping the destination flag in enemy territory. Then, I sit back and watch my armies advance into the maelstrom...
It's truly awesome to look at, and it feels and especially sounds similar to what I imagine a chaotic modern battle must be like. But is there any "strategy" there? I'm afraid that even more than in most RTS games(which are pretty light on strategy to begin with) the answer is a definitive "no".
The problem, I think, is that the modern battles just move too fast and furious for a human player to really lay any kind of long term strategic plan. The fact that strategic resources never run out and that any resource-collecting building that is destroyed can quickly be rebuilt means that there are hardly any lulls in the fighting(such as I remember from my Age of Empires 2 days. This just makes the fighting in the modern eras a slugging match and a war of attrition. More often than not, I give up out of sheer exhaustion or boredom.
Still a great game. Love the variety of special units, and the fact that even generic units look different for the various nations. That's something other games(especially the Civ series) would do well to look at and emulate.
As it stands now, it's not a classic. Patching and an X-pack might change that assessment.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Buckets
|
|
I read this thread this morning and i've been thinking about it all day. Very insightful, indeed.
It reminds me of this article .
The gist of it is that rock-paper-scissors is a very boring and vacuous game because it is TOO balanced. If all three options are equally viable, there is actually no strategy. So then at least one option must be somehow superior, to start the domino effect of counters.
I think RoN does suffer from overbalancing on both the unit level and the economic level. On the unit level, most nations' special units are really not that special, and no one unit stands out the strongest (except for the hoplite in that one very short age). So, i think for that reason, moreso than ramping, is why armies all look the same. But also for economic resons.
The economy in RoN is overbalanced in two ways: one is the commerce cap. It applies to all resources and is kinda easy to cap out on once you get the hang of it. Which means that you can't focus on one resource and hoard it, you collect everything relatively equally. The other problem is that costs of units and technologies are pretty evenly divided among all the resources meaning that no one resource is more important than the others. For these reasons also, if you do try to focus on building one type of unit, you'll end up with a surplus to spend on other units hence the varied army.
Don't get me wrong here, i think this is a great game. and i think there IS strategy here. But, i also see alot of truth in the original post. There's far too many reasons to blame for the lack of community and far too many fingers to point with, but i think there is something here that could be balanced.
Two things, imho, that could bring some strategy where it lacks:
1. Make the economy more fragile
2. Unbalance the units
Unbalancing the units could be either making the UU's more powerful or choosing one unit (such as HI) and beefing it up some. Or HI, then HC, then tanks by era.
By making the economy more fragile i mean to make raiding a more viable option. Give a bonus to all nations' CA vs attrition. Get rid of 'indestructible' economy like taxation, or the +10 food from cities. Tie taxation to the number of caravans or the number of citizens. Make economic buildings more fragile. Allow scholars to be killed inside universities. Something like that.
Just my 2W.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Out4Blood
|
|
You make some great points on the economy. I like your ideas. I think you're right. It's very hard to really hurt someone's economy. Even if you capture a city and force all the villagers away, they are still likely to be at cap for more everything aprart from knowledge, of course.
However, I think you're off on the units. The units are WAY unbalanced. Archers can't touch slingers. Slingers get mowed by cav, cav get owned by hoplites. Hoplites get totally fuxored by archers. Even if you come with huge numbers, I can fight you off very cheaply. This is why I think there should be a huge (and I mean very large) cost for the first unit with declining costs from there. This forces real choices in army composition. It also makes rushing a lot more viable, because you can no longer be assured of having sufficient resources stockpiled to make troops. So now you have some immediate strategic choices: make early mil and rush, stockpile resources for potential defense, or pump all into econ.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Solver
|
|
Apolyton Duke Of Something
|
 |
Latvia, Riga
Sep 2000
time: 07:30
|
|
Out4Blood,
I'd mention another game that you played, which is AoK. Why does AoK, being now 4 years of age, have an online community even bigger than that of RoN? Before Age of Mythology release, it was even bigger.
I could, as a civ player say, that AoK also had little strategic diversity. The two dominating strategies were Feudal rushes with no-gold units and resource towering, or going fast castle and killing the opponent then. The really original strategies, such as KLEW or SMUSH (does that ring a bell  ) could only be executed by experts.
In the last year or more, everyone plays Huns, and everyone rushes the same way... does that kill the game? It doesn't. While RoN is, after all the incredibly positive reviews, nearly dead just 4 months after its release.
Although I can't disagree with some of the above points. Units are in such a way that attacks are actually the same.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Balrok
|
|
I see good points beeing posted here. Yes, I do agree that the Rock/paper/scissors bonuses are too big. and the unique units too. I miss some units that ain't got bonuses and disadvantages, but are overall good and expensive. I feel that when you cavalry should be overall better against footsoldiers. I do not agree in the lack of strategy in the game. what about sending bombers and take out universities and fighters right behind to take out the scholars? or ambush a large, and show a few, then when he to early sends an army to defend his first thought would be "damn, maybe I should have waited, now I have to build a new army". Things like that. It millions of options to avoid the straight forward game. ahh.. stupid thread, but anyway...
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Madine
|
|
What does Microsoft have to do with the online community? Yes they are a well-known publisher. RON's problem is not due to number of copies sold; it sold very well iirc.
Perhaps it would be more correct to say that certain franchises had an established fan base, ie Age series and Warcraft/Starcraft.
I agree that RON is a very complex game. Specifically it's economy is very complex. My general opinion is that 3-4 resource types is about right for a rts, and RON has 6. I thought the RON economy was well designed, and it was refreshing to see something different, but ultimately I think it is too complicated for an RTS game, and takes focus away from the military aspect.
Solver has a good point; there isn't much strategic depth in most rts. I would say there seems to be 3 general strategies to winning rts games: strong early attack (rush), map control, or overwhelming. Of course they are not mutually exclusive.
As far as army composition goes, I think that game mechanics will either encourage a 1-2 unit army, or encourage a diverse army. Which one you would rather see is a matter of personal preference, but you will tend to get one or the other.
I think there are unbalanced units now. Heavy calvary for example tends to do well against everything except it's counter, and it's relatively fast.
I think the comment about the commerce cap forcing economic diversity was right on the money though. I think that is a driving force behind diverse armies. Often what units I build depends largely on what resources I have. Maybe the commerce cap needs to be revised to be global instead of per-unit.
I am not a fan of the fragile economy. I like fights between 2 armies, not fights of 3-4 cavalry units attacking villies.
|
|
| |
All times are GMT. The time now is 05:30.
Apolyton Time is 00:30. |
top of page
|
|
|
Forum Rules:
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
|
HTML code is ON
vB code is ON
Smilies are ON
[IMG] code is ON
|
|
|
|
|
|
27-08-2003 16:42
. Civ is supposed to provide as much depth as possible, while RoN is supposed to provide a middle-point between Civ depth and RTS speed.
|