ESOCommunity

Googol wrote:

umeu wrote:

princeofkabul wrote:As for Garja-Diarouga debate. Garja usually exaggerate things what I've seen and no he's not right about everything he says but diarouga has a tendency to just to pick up his statements and not think about the context. and for Jerom and his crusade on Garja seems to be personal and nothing to do with the game. There are many things Garja have said to me and others which makes sense. Jerom I haven't seen you nor Diarouga playing much or at all recently, instead of arguing it over the forums you could post records to prove your point, same for Garja.

does anyone even play eeeeepeeeee?

iamshurk told me he would love to play with you.

tell him to get in line.

@iamturk you got all the shurk power ready for this?

I think there are some interesting options for buffing Russians:

– All batches now trainable while any population room remains (even it will exceed the limit, like Chinese banner-armies).
– Blockhouse population room increased from 5 to 10.
– Musketeer batch cost reduced from 281.25f, 93.75c to 270f, 90c (from 75% to 72% of standard Musketeer cost).
– Settler batch cost reduced from 270f to 255f.
– Westernization unique-church improvement cost reduced from 900w to 600w.

The goal is not to buff russia @Diarouga bc they are already good enough, I just want to give them some more options because they are a bit boring now. The thing is that you need wood, but like when you ship 700w you rahter have too much wood. I could see some build with TP/market during trasnition, then 200g+1bh wagon age up and 700w/700g/5cos big timming for example. I am pretty sure this would be better to do this with this age up, bc having a TP earlier makes this time of timming a lot faster and that's the key for them to work.
btw rusket rly don't need to be cheaper @zoom ofc they are bad vs huss bc of no overkill or vs any area damages bc they are cheap small unit, but otherwise they are a good unit that needs no buff.

zoom wrote:I think there are some interesting options for buffing Russians:

– All batches now trainable while any population room remains (even it will exceed the limit, like Chinese banner-armies).
– Blockhouse population room increased from 5 to 10.
– Musketeer batch cost reduced from 281.25f, 93.75c to 270f, 90c (from 75% to 72% of standard Musketeer cost).
– Settler batch cost reduced from 270f to 255f.
– Westernization unique-church improvement cost reduced from 900w to 600w.

saw how op were russians when cost vill was 255f
russians are just fine like this maybe the trainable point is good, and/or musket reduce but all this will make russians too much strong

I am neither saying that Russians should be buffed, nor that all of the options should be implemented together. I'm merely stating options in case of a future buff.

Pls dont 255f vills, plus dont buff bh when its already their best unit. Musk +5hp or the overpop thing is fine by me

So we are going to buff each and every civ? What does that mean

princeofcarthage wrote:So we are going to buff each and every civ? What does that mean

What are you referring to? It can't be the OP, ye?

princeofcarthage wrote:So we are going to buff each and every civ? What does that mean

That they shouldve nerfed france/brit more instead.

Man zoomeroo is like the head of all Esoc parches. I don't know where we would be without him

EP 5.0.0.0 Beta4 [2018-05-19]

First off, what's the UHC? UHC is a community project by kangcliff and danielpereira, aiming to "unhardcode" parts of the AoE3 engine, make more things configurable than what has ever been possible before, add new features to the engine, fix bugs, that sort of stuff: https://github.com/danielpereira/AoE3UnHardcoded
In the past, we've collaborated with UHC when they made the extended teams patch, which is included in current EP. However, UHC opens up many more possibilities than just that, and it is time we take advantage of them. Now, let's take a look at what those possibilities are.


UHC Plugin system
Through the UHC Plugin system, we gain access to an environment where the entire set of AoE3 engine functions is available to utilize for either creating new functionalities, or exporting existing functionalities into a scope where they were not available before.

What does exporting functionalities mean exactly? Well, the way it works there are different sets of functions for various scopes of the game such as UI design scope, AI design scope, map generation scope and so on. With UHC we can easily export functions from one scope to another where such functionality was previously missing and impossible to replicate. First area we plan to utilize this for is improving the way Observer UI maps work as well as the Observer UI itself.

Custom cheat codes
One feature of the plugin system is the option to easily implement new cheat codes into the game. At first, this might not sound very useful; aren't we trying to block cheats, after all? Well, here we're talking about "regular" cheats which can only be used in singleplayer or when they are specifically allowed in the multiplayer room, just like the other built-in ones; "x marks the spot" and so on.
What does this bring to the table:
- just giving more fun things to the players
- we can create cheats that help speed up development and testing of maps or game changes
- we can utilize this in certain competitions and have "design your own cheat code" be amongst the prizes, or perhaps have small competitions entirely centered around designing the most fun new cheat code

UIx map project
Saving the best for last, something I'm personally most excited about; I call it the "UIx map project". The idea here is to overhaul how we handle Observer UI maps in a big way. On the ESOC Patch, all maps are to be progressively converted into "UIx" maps which support both observer mode and regular play. These will be included in the "official" dropdown list of preinstalled maps on EP and functionally replace both the previous version of a map on this list (ex. ESOC Arkansas) as well as the custom UI map version which is currently downloaded separately as a custom map (ex. UI 2.2c ESOC Arkansas). On a UIx map, observer mode will be activated by selecting "Sandbox" difficulty when hosting a game room (Sandbox will also be renamed on EP to make this clearer). Other than this, the observer mode works the same way as before by selecting FFA for 1v1 matches and so on.

As the UIx maps use features implemented through UHC plugin system, manually copying them as-is onto official RE patch will not be possible (map will crash on load). For usage of ESOC maps on non-ESOC patches, we will continue to generate hardcoded versions of the maps with observer mode permanently disabled (ex. ESOC Arkansas) and permanently enabled (ex. UI 2.2 ESOC Arkansas).

Why are we doing this at all, what are the benefits?
- The custom map system is extremely clunky to use during ESOC competitions, causing massive delays and headaches to both participants and admins due to all players needing to obtain the same version of the map. The p2p system of sharing custom maps on ESO is often slow or outright bugs out and requires players to jump through hoops to get the correct map version.
- All changes to map scripts essentially need to be implemented twice with the old system, which often causes inconsistency when UI map version is ahead of non-UI version or the opposite. This is both causing confusion to the players and requires more work from the devs/mapmakers.
- Using the custom map system at all opens up ESOC competitions to additional security vulnerabilities.
- Once finished, this change will allow players to utilize mapsets for play on randomized maps in Observer UI mode.
- It will be easier to implement special non-RE-compatible features on maps and add fallbacks for them (ex. custom trees on ESOC Iowa).

That's it for the intro, now for where we are in terms of actual progress:

UHC Plugin progress
- kangcliff of UHC team patched EP to add support of the UHC Plugin system, along with providing a special UHC version that is compatible with EP's modified executables
- ESOC's own UHC Plugin is prepared with the changes needed for UIx maps, changes for Aizamk to implement new UI features, as well as the following newly implemented cheat codes:
[spoiler=name spoilers only]cowhax
this is a complication
kill 'em all
fear the elifents
it's raining men
dev
devx
devr[/spoiler]
[spoiler=name and effect spoilers]cowhax (turn enemy villagers into cows)
this is a complication (gain 100 shipments)
kill 'em all (spawn 50 heavy cannons)
fear the elifents (spawn 10 of each mansabdar elephant)
it's raining men (spawn 20 cdbs and a rain effect)
dev (it's raining men + this is a complication + 10k of each resource + fog & blackmap off + x100 research rate)
devx (dev + x100 handicap + x100 train rate)
devr (reset research/train rates to normal, reset handicap to none, reactivate fog & blackmap)[/spoiler]

UIx progress
The process of converting maps to UIx entails essentially merging the old UI version with the non-UI version and wrapping UI-specific code in conditional statements. I've also been checking each map for runtime errors using the RMS debugger and fixing those - this should cause smoother map loading and prevent some random bugs in how the maps spawn. The merging will notably enable KotH functionality in observer mode on maps where that change was not yet ported to UI version before.

List of converted maps:
UIx ESOC Arkansas
UIx ESOC Kamchatka
UIx ESOC Hudson Bay
UIx ESOC Gran Chaco
UIx ESOC Tibet
UIx ESOC Manchuria


changelog since EP 5.0.0.0 Beta2

ESOC Patch
- Added UHC Plugin support (see explanation above).
- Changed default diplomacy stance to Enemy in diplomacy mode.
- The "Sandbox" difficulty setting has been renamed to "Observer Mode / Sandbox".

ESOC Patch map changes
- Fixed gaia unit selection bug on ESOC Bonnie Springs.
- Fixed ESOC Gran Chaco minimap thumbnail image.
- Converted the following maps to UIx (see explanation above): ESOC Arkansas, ESOC Kamchatka, ESOC Hudson Bay, ESOC Gran Chaco, ESOC Tibet, ESOC Manchuria

ESOC Treaty Patch map changes
- Added minimap thumbnail images for all special Treaty Patch maps.

Anti-cheat
- Protect UHC plugin files from external modifications and disallow external plugins.

@EAGLEMUT I solved the ep issue btw. Changing resolution and hitting alt+enter did the trick

Incredible.

Amazing job guys, I can't wait to try the new update!!

EP 5.0.0.0 Beta5 [2018-05-27]
changelog since EP 5.0.0.0 Beta4

ESOC Treaty Patch map changes
- added latest UI Blitz maps

ESOC Patch map changes
- all remaining ESOC maps on EP converted to UIx and cured of all debugger errors
- the ESOC Maps mapset is now safe to play in Observer Mode
- added fallbacks for maps with special features incompatible with non-ESOC environment (ESOC Iowa trees, ESOC Malaysia trees, ESOC Wadmalaw trees & treasureset & water)
- ESOC Bonnie Springs is now functional on RE if both players have EP installed
- ESOC Bonnie Springs is now functional in any common non-ESOC environment if both players have the ESOC Map Pack installed for their game version
- all ESOC maps extensively rebalanced for KotH game mode, details described in an extra section

ESOC Map Pack installer
- implemented new map pack installer from scratch
- automatically generated with EP release, therefore contains latest map versions
- includes automatically generated UI and non-UI versions of all UIx maps for use in non-ESOC environment
- includes all special maps of ESOC Treaty Patch
- customizable installation destinations for maximum compatibility with other game patches (defaults to RE TAD)
- beta map pack installer available here: https://eso-community.net/assets/patch/files/ESOC%20Map%20Pack%20Installer.exe

ESOC Patch installer
- now automatically installs generated UI and non-UI versions of all UIx maps for use on RE TAD

ESOC Patch Launcher
- all custom maps on RE which were generated from UIx are now validated upon launch and replaced with latest version in case they are found to be corrupted/outdated
- as custom UI maps generated from UIx are always prepended with "UI 2.2 ", all outdated special versions of those UI maps such as 2.2c/2.2a are automatically erased from custom maps
- implemented new launcher icon

ESOC Network Hook
- fixed an issue causing excessive CPU usage

ESOC Patch
- polished Diplomacy UI (both window and button)
- KotH timer set to 10 minutes, regardless of player count (was problematic with spectators)

KotH rebalance on EP ESOC maps



UIx ESOC Adirondacks:
- much more consistently balanced KotH spawn
- added two more possible spawn locations (in 1v1 only)

UIx ESOC Alaska
- much more consistently balanced KotH spawn

UIx ESOC Arizona
- rebalanced KotH spawn along with center mesa size
- King's Hill now spawns between two mesas in 1v1
- trade route now always spawns in circle variation during KotH

UIx ESOC Arkansas
- much more consistently balanced KotH spawn
- added a second possible spawn location

UIx ESOC Baja California
- rebalanced KotH spawn
- trade route now always spawns in horizonal variation during KotH, slightly adjusted to avoid fort

UIx ESOC Bengal
- spawn more ground around King's Hill for easier placement

UIx ESOC Bonnie Springs
- much more consistently balanced KotH spawn

UIx ESOC Cascade Range
- much more consistently balanced KotH spawn

UIx ESOC Colorado
- much more consistently balanced KotH spawn
- adjusted trade route to not obstruct King's Hill in KotH mode

UIx ESOC Fertile Crescent
- much more consistently balanced KotH spawn

UIx ESOC Florida
- much more consistently balanced KotH spawn
- added two more possible spawn locations; swamp or water

UIx ESOC Gran Chaco
- much more consistently balanced KotH spawn
- added two more possible KotH spawn locations (in 1v1 only)

UIx ESOC Great Basin
- KotH center spawn removed
- added possible KotH spawn locations on either side (1v1 or team only)
- added fixed eastern KotH spawn in FFA (3+ teams)

UIx ESOC Herald Island
- much more consistently balanced KotH spawn
- added one more possible KotH spawn location

UIx ESOC High Plains
- much more consistently balanced KotH spawn
- added two more possible spawn locations
- always set trade route to FFA variation in KotH mode

UIx ESOC Hudson Bay
- much more consistently balanced KotH spawn
- added possible southern spawn location, only possible in trade route variation which doesn't obstruct it
- added possible bay spawn location
- center spawn location now only possible in FFA games (3+ teams)

UIx ESOC Indonesia
- much more consistently balanced KotH spawn

UIx ESOC Iowa
- much more consistently balanced KotH spawn
- adjusted trade route line and center socket in KotH mode to allow space for King's Hill

UIx ESOC Jebel Musa
- much more consistently balanced KotH spawn

UIx ESOC Kamchatka
- much more consistently balanced KotH spawn
- added one more possible spawn location (in 1v1 only)

UIx ESOC Klondike
- reworked KotH spawn, now always on western platform

UIx ESOC Malaysia
- much more consistently balanced KotH spawn (may clip with trade route though)

UIx ESOC Manchac
- much more consistently balanced KotH spawn

UIx ESOC Manchuria
- much more consistently balanced KotH spawn
- added two more possible spawn locations

UIx ESOC Mendocino
- much more consistently balanced KotH spawn
- adjusted central mine location in KotH mode

UIx ESOC Pampas Sierras
- much more consistently balanced KotH spawn

UIx ESOC Parallel Rivers
- KotH spawn now always far north

UIx ESOC Tassili
- much more consistently balanced KotH spawn

UIx ESOC Thar Desert
- much more consistently balanced KotH spawn
- central natives not guaranteed to spawn in KotH mode

UIx ESOC Tibet
- much more consistently balanced KotH spawn

UIx ESOC Wadmalaw
- reworked KotH spawn location onto water

Cool. Where are updates to "Team Maps" and the following added map-sets?

1. "ESOC NTP Maps" – All ESOC-maps without a Trade Route (i.e all ESOC-maps not in "ESOC TP Maps").
2. "ESOC TP Maps" – All ESOC-maps with a Trade Route (i.e all ESOC-maps not in "ESOC 0TP Maps").

3. "ESOC Land Maps" – All ESOC-maps featuring no whales (i.e all ESOC-maps not in "ESOC Water Maps").
4. "ESOC Water Maps" – All ESOC-maps featuring whales. (i.e all ESOC-maps not in "ESOC Land Maps").

It seems more relevant than King of the Hill updates.

Great changes, can't wait for full release.

Goodspeed wrote:

gamevideo113 wrote:Sioux is being changed too much imo.

It's true. This is due to the big changes we made and the lack of testing. Each iteration we are mostly guessing where they will end up on the balance scale. So far we haven't gotten them quite right yet. But we'll get there.

Thanks again @EAGLEMUT for implementing the changes

lack of testing? i don't really see why you would make pretty sizeable changes to a civ without testing them first.

i say this only cause people seem pretty annoyed at the state of ep sioux being so different from re, despite one of the goals of ep being to minimize changes while achieving balance. it doesn't seem like changes have been kept to a minimum, and balance with the civ still hasn't been found (though this is easier said than done).

I don't really get why they need the teepee eco auras when the only things they are missing (when compared to other civs) are 1 starting vil and steel traps. the 5 vil card mitigates this somewhat, and i feel just giving them steel traps and removing teepee eco auras would be fine. they don't really have a boom mechanic in age 2, but that is how the civ was designed (maybe cause br are meant to raid and reduce the eco discrepancy in age 2). the intended boom mechanic for them was baby dance (+adoption?), so making changes in line with that would retain some of the civ identity.

Hidddy_ wrote:

Goodspeed wrote:

gamevideo113 wrote:Sioux is being changed too much imo.

It's true. This is due to the big changes we made and the lack of testing. Each iteration we are mostly guessing where they will end up on the balance scale. So far we haven't gotten them quite right yet. But we'll get there.

Thanks again @EAGLEMUT for implementing the changes

lack of testing? i don't really see why you would make pretty sizeable changes to a civ without testing them first.

Because we don't have the manpower to do so. Testing the impact of changes is a lot of work, and if you half-ass testing it actually backfires on you because confirmation bias is a big issue; you will get people saying one thing is too strong and then subconsciously playing in ways that prove this to be true. I've seen it happen first hand when testing ASFP, and fell victim to it myself.

i say this only cause people seem pretty annoyed at the state of ep sioux being so different from re, despite one of the goals of ep being to minimize changes while achieving balance. it doesn't seem like changes have been kept to a minimum, and balance with the civ still hasn't been found (though this is easier said than done).

They haven't been, for this civ and Otto, because we felt that these civs wouldn't find their place in the meta without bigger changes.

I don't really get why they need the teepee eco auras, the only thing they are missing (when compared to other civs) is 1 starting vil and steel traps.

This is the kind of standardizing attitude we're trying to avoid. If a civ is weak we want to buff things that are unique about them, not add things that are already prevalent. So it's true that they don't need the teepee eco auras, that was just a good way to buff the civ's eco without standardizing it in our view.

@Goodspeed Ok that all seems understandable, especially the bit about otto and sioux needing to find their place. Feels like they are pretty one dimensional on re which is a good thing to avoid. One point that I disagree on is the standardization. Though I agree it is bad to standardize (promotes laziness when balancing and decreases diversity), i feel it can sometimes be used in cases like these to avoid complicating the changes. Sioux is a food heavy civ and is hurt by their lack of steel traps. Iirc they have the only skirms in the game that cost more food than coin, their axe riders cost mostly food. The only units you would be producing that are not food heavy are rr but even then they cost a good amount of food and are trained sparingly (mostly ship 5 in fortress). Improving their overall eco seems unnecessary as they only really need a food gathering boost which is why I suggested steel traps.

They have 3 cards that boost hunting and berry gathering. Can see them as 4v cards if you have 20 vills on food. Eco teepees are a facilitation that they didn't really need.

Garja wrote:They have 3 cards that boost hunting and berry gathering. Can see them as 4v cards if you have 20 vills on food. Eco teepees are a facilitation that they didn't really need.

Perhaps combining 2 of the 3 cards into one would be worth it for them, like a buffed up exclusive spice trade

zoom wrote:Cool. Where are updates to "Team Maps" and the following added map-sets?

1. "ESOC NTP Maps" – All ESOC-maps without a Trade Route (i.e all ESOC-maps not in "ESOC TP Maps").
2. "ESOC TP Maps" – All ESOC-maps with a Trade Route (i.e all ESOC-maps not in "ESOC 0TP Maps").

3. "ESOC Land Maps" – All ESOC-maps featuring no whales (i.e all ESOC-maps not in "ESOC Water Maps").
4. "ESOC Water Maps" – All ESOC-maps featuring whales. (i.e all ESOC-maps not in "ESOC Land Maps").

Last I remember there were some disagreements about the mapsets and I haven't followed all the discussions, so I did not work on implementing that yet.

It seems more relevant than King of the Hill updates.

You might be in for a surprise

As far as I'm aware, those disagreements relate to "Competitive Maps" – a mapset featuring particularly homogenous maps of a certain type.