No peacetime, no militia rush!

[sado1]

(first 2 paragraphs are too long, you don't necessarily have to read them - feel free to skip to the main idea at the very end)

I've been thinking about the current state of the Remake. I'l start with a short explanation of the problem. See, we need peacetime. This makes people play ridiculous game speeds, because they don't want the game to take lots of time. This is a problem for us "pro players" (by pro players, I mean anyone that doesn't treat this game as a casual one, and wants to be a good player), because of a few things:
-it makes everyone build a worse city
-which means that it's less fun to build a city, because we can't control the game how we want to (try to micro builders with lags etc...)
-and also means that worse players will be even worse, which in turn means they will lose to experienced players even more -> we don't have any reasons to go to such a lobby then...
And the worst reason of them all: worse players kinda realized this. So, what did they do? In previous version the most peacetime you could see in a lobby was 75. Now, 75 is the least. We've even seen people using pt 120 with x3 speed. They're doing this because the game turns too fast for them, so ironically, they need to make it much longer, so they can make a more useful city...

But. I'm trying to understand all these poor souls. They are playing for fun, they are casual players. We're as much of a problem in their lives as they are in ours - we both ruin our games to each other. They are so bad that they make us otfen lose as a team, we are so good that we rape their cities, so they ragequit and might not even want to play for a quite few days. They basically want to have as much fun as possible, and the shorter the fun (which for them is building time) the better, because sitting in front of your PC for 1 hour+ is a bit much. That's why I've been thinking about finding a better way for making this game shorter.

Here's the idea, brutal and simple. Probably best introduced as a mutator. We need peacetime, because of militia rush. Let's block militia then. You will need to make leather or iron units to fight when playing with no peacetime.

[The Dark Lord]

I will spare you my explanation about why some things you said are a bit ironical and move on to your idea.
How does it solve anything? People won't rush for militia, but for iron soldiers. What's the difference? That you have more time to build towers? I don't see other differences, because without towers, 1 soldier in your town is still enough to end the game for you...

[Bence791]

Well said, sado.

The problem with your idea is that it wouldn't actually change anything. Only some addition for us ("pro players"), since randoms won't get fast iron/leather anyway But would be nice, even though we can just make an agreement not to train any militia (like we used to agree on slow start on GC a bit before, when it wasn't modified yet). Personally I don't like no pt games that much. I used to do, for example I used to play much TVoD2 back in the day, but I don't like it because it is just too short (in most of the cases). I don't really mind playing 1,5-2h games as long as it has much action, very good performances and so it is fun.

Anyway to add to the "randoms - pro players" stuff, they don't even accept our advices on anything. So why would we do anything in order to play with them? Sometimes I get myself a fake name and do it (because I love this game and nowadays I lack gameplay in the evenings), but what I see is just awful. Guys not having a barracks in 60 minutes, no weapon production in 70 minutes etc... I don't even know why they play more pt if they don't even try getting any soldiers.

[sado1]

My idea is not meant to give a chance for a win for the randoms (we'd need to implement intentional handicaps for that I guess), my idea is meant to destroy the dominance of x3 lobbies, which are made by people who don't want to waste an hour+ for the game.

[Krom]

That just replaces militia rush with axefighter rush

The proper solution would be to give players base enough natural defense abilities (peasants from Warcraft could fight back) or find out why rushes don't work that well in other games, how they are countered by gameplay mechanics?

[The Dark Site]

I think Krom is right that we need better natural defence in a base. Some solutions:
- All citizens should be able to fight (as discussed before)
- Arrow tower that has longer range than normal tower (as discussed before)
- Storehouse shoots arrows

[Jeronimo]

This is interesting. I recently saw a 6 FFA with 30 PT in Across the Desert (RomeK was the winner).
I liked the cities because were a mess, woodcutters anywhere, nice and fun.

@Krom: The replacer of Militia would be Pikemen (Iron soldiers are faster to reach... and stronger).
But I don't want to ban Militia... because they are correctly weak, and also mean slower city growth (2 militia = -1 house).

IMO matches would be probably "Pikemen rush" while getting Leather soldiers slowly /or militia support).
For avoiding this mainstream tactic, I'd recommend the following changes for TESTING:

*Serfs fight back (melee encounter only), with 1 sword attack (25% as Lance carriers).

*All renovable growths 20% faster: IMO this is important for a option of building and attacking... once initial trees are cut it takes a long time to have good timber supply while making weapons... game's economy is kinda slow in terms of NO PT... also adding the problem of rich locs vs poor locs (few trees imba).

Winefield/Corn/Tree: faster growth proportionally, better gameplay (iron timing keeps same... giving leather the option to catch up earlier/ and faster horse in game).
As wrote above, this is I think the point where KaM fails, it would make everyone just iron rush because timber is super valuable (14 mins full growth).

[dicsoupcan]

Well i would say no militia at all is a bit much, but maybe block it for a certain amount of time. i mean you can rush axefighters and /or iron soldiers, but that already takes way longer then a militia you can get around 14 minutes already. this means you can already have a few towers up as defenses if you want to instead of needing to spam towers at 14 minutes.

[Esthlos]

or find out why rushes don't work that well in other games, how they are countered by gameplay mechanics?

-Rushes are extremely powerful in Starcraft and Starcraft 2, even though builders can fight back and are quite powerful themselves (sometimes the "rusher" even sends them to attack with the soldiers).
A good defence versus rushes there is to rush a few units yourself and "camp" behind your buildings, hoping to hold the attacker long enough to outscale him/her.
-In Imperium: Great Battles of Rome, every city has walls with archers that can easily defeat small armies, and fortified wall doors.
-In Conquest: Frontier Wars, players can completely block any access to their bases with a cheap and quite durable building, which should buy them enough time to get some defences when they get attacked by a fast rusher.
-In Warzone 2100 it is possible to build many different types of towers, the cheapest and soonest available of which are able to easily dispatch small low-tech rushes.
They can also attack each other.
-In Battle Realms, towers are available early and their power depends on which unit you send in them; peasants can fight back, but still rushes can be quite strong.
-In Homeworld, you simply can't rush. You need to research better ships first, because Scouts (and even Bombers, if too few) stand no chance against the enemy Mothership.
-In Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic it is highly risky to rush: if you send in your own mage, you risk to lose him, and with no Mage Tower losing him means losing the game; if you don't send him in, the enemy mage will be able to use magic to defend while you can't use your magic to attack.
-In Empire Earth, if I remember correctly you could build towers early (which are very durable and powerful against early units) and you could hide your peasants (who could fight back anyway, if needed to) in your town centers and have them shoot arrows from there.
-In Heroes of Might and Magic 3, chances are that in the time you need to reach the enemy city it will have a larger defending army and towers.
-In Imperium Galactica 2 you can only explore near your empire, meaning you have no way to attack other empires until you expand your own.

These are the games I can think of now that actually deal with rushing.

[Bence791]

-In Heroes of Might and Magic 3, chances are that in the time you need to reach the enemy city it will have a larger defending army and towers.

In Heroes III, there are no towers as far as I know (to build "separatedly"). Only fortifications on your base (which are idd towers, but maximum 3, and you need at least a week to construct all that without going for soldiers), the fort (which has no towers, only walls), the citadel (giving 2 towers and +50% units growth) and the castle (+1 tower, the moat and +50% units growth). And that's another story. Although in Heroes IV you could backup your army without heroes since you could send your troops outside your base without them.

And the Heroes series are another story, that's like nothing related to KaM, except for the fact that it is also an RTS game (I played from III to V, for a pretty long time).

I don't know about the other games mentioned. And imo there are no problems with early rushes (right after peacetime), the defenders have to deal with some hard stuff as well.

[Krom]

@Bence: We are discussing about removing of peacetime altogether. All mentioned games are fine without PT (afaik) and we want to know - why?

@Esthlos: That is a very good collection of facts! How about analyzing them now?

[Da Revolution]

When looking at other RTS games you can draw a few conclusion:
1. Cheap towers which can be build early on to protect your important resource collecting/buildings. This one is kinda hard with the current KaM mechanism of building, it will too long to build it. Besides of that in those RTS you can often abandon a part of your town or let your villagers go to a saver place. If they get slaughtered there you can make new ones quite fast compared to KaM. So protecting stuff with towers will probably only be possible with just one or two really narrow entrances.
2. Villagers/serfs protecting themselves. This seems an obvious solution to early militia rushes, but this one also has the same problem as the first one. In KaM you can't get new serfs that quick, especially not before you start your gold production. So in worst case the attackers just moves to a road where barely serfs are and kills them easily one by one. If serfs would move to the point where others are being attacked your production might suffer even more and in some cases you lose even more serfs.
3. Central building shooting arrows. This one has the same limitations as the first one, it's almost impossible to cover the important stuff. For example gold can be quite far away, but gold is something you really need for surviving rushes.

Sado's idea:
- Excluding militia. It might give some extra time in which you can build towers, but taking away a unit isn't a good idea with the small amount of units there is. Also this will just shift the militia rush to pikemen rush.

When analyzing other RTS you'll see that the number of units that are being used for the rushes have some diversity. In KaM you can only rush with militia because the others need longer production chains. That's why I think implementing TPR units for some kind of low cost (For example 1 lance for a rebel and 1 bow for a rogue, even though this seems strange for the rogue). This way you create some options in the rushes, if you see someone making for example rebels you can make militia or a few rogues. I have no clear ideas yet on how it will turn out or how it can be implemented, but I do think that we can't get no pt games working with this low amount of units.

[The Dark Lord]

KaM is a very static game compared to, for example Starcraft II. If you're getting rushed in KaM, there is nothing you can do because everything takes a lot of time. In Starcraft II, you can:
1. Scout, so you can actually know when someone is rushing and act accordingly.
2. Build defensive structures without losing time.
3. Because building takes so much less time, sometimes you can even set up defenses while being attacked.
So, sadly, I don't see much options for KaM. Making serfs fight back would be best I guess, but it has problems as well:
- How to deal with ranged units?
- How to make sure the serfs can actually kill a unit? I mean, if the attacker attacks one serf, and then waits a while so that his unit's HP will regenerate, and then attacks another, the serfs will never kill it, it will only slow the attacker down.

[Krom]

@Revo: Excellent sum up

1. KaM does not allows cheap towers nowhere farther from base, cos each tower costs time and stone to build. A lot.

2. With no direct control over citizens .. that's probably not gonna work.

3. This has some potential if distant stuff (e.g. mines) are self-defending as well.

Diversifying rushes does not fixes the core issue with base being defenseless against just a few warriors.

[dicsoupcan]

actually diversifying rushes might work, in the early game you have a limited amount of gold you can put into your rush or else you will have nothing left to build your town, if someone tries a fast stable and rush with vagabonds, a few rebels can fend them off. if someone goes for a militia rush you can still make a few militia and some rogues and defend yourself. offcrouse it does not fix the core problem totally, but i think it is a good step towards diversifying and rush/anti rush strategies because now all you actually have is either also militiarush or towers.