[SUP] Do you want to separate straight walls and pillars cost?

[Dsy]

Walls are strangly designed in the game. I mean there are 2 type of walls. Straight wall and pillars. You can build a whole wall from 105 wood but if you delete your pillars correctly it costs only 50wood and there wont be any holes in your wall. This delete strategie require knowledge, fast clicking skills and time to do.
I think this delete strategie is bleeding in more points:
1. Most of the players dont want to spend much more time to deploy a wall (compare to the normal walling), until that delete its own parts.
2. You unduly save half of your wood cost.
3. Making wall more expensive force players to using this strategy often which means pillars can totally disappear from the game. Will become an annoying thing: you have to delete pillars every time when build walls.
There is a solution to fix this issue by separate the straight wall and pillar costs. I think (1:10) ratio would be fine to go with first. It means if you have to pay 20wood for a straight wall then the pillar costs only 2wood.
After this change you can still delete pillars but it wont be a necessary thing to do. For example: If you build 10 straight walls from 200 wood there are 11 pillars next to them so it basicly means you can save only 22 wood by deleting pillars. But destroy pillars risky cause if you dont deplay your walls well there will be holes in it. So its basicly more time to deploy walls fine if you want use this trick. All this means its still allowed to do, but there wont be any advantage to do it (calculate with time lose).
Why this solution is good?
1. It makes walling easy to use for everyone (you arent forced to delete some of your wall parts).
2. You cant unduly save your wall cost. This thing even help make wall cost mobile which is a necessary for game balance.

Thanks for iCourt who checked out its a doable change!

[yemshi]

just nerf everything i dont want to deal with. good job

[pecelot]

People would just start building single pillars if the cost of a whole wall was increased, since 5/6 pillars take as much space as one long wall segment.

[Dsy]

Yes its 5 pillars. But thats not a problem. You build a long wall from 20 wood, or build it from 10 one by one. You send more time to do it than benefit get from it...

[Dsy]

Or ratio can even be changed for 1:5.

[britishmusketeer]

you would need to make sure to set los of pillars to 0 if you do this.

[Dsy]

On 1:5 ratio maybe not. Depends on what prices want we to play with.
4:20 for exapmle is close already to 5.

I think 4:20 is nice for wall price. Plus change back its health to 3k.
But this thread about the seperate idea not for the numbers yet!

[iCourt]

Walls actually have 7 different ID numbers associated with them.

<Unit id ='611' name ='WallConnector'>
<Unit id ='482' name ='CWallGate'>
<Unit id ='374' name ='WallStraight1'>
<Unit id ='405' name ='WallStraight2'>
<Unit id ='406' name ='WallStraight3'>
<Unit id ='407' name ='WallStraight4'>
<Unit id ='375' name ='WallStraight5'>

Villagers can only build 3 of these however. You can set the stats and costs to be different for each of them if desired.

<Train row ='0' page ='255' column ='1'>WallStraight2</Train>
<Train row ='0' page ='255' column ='1'>WallStraight5</Train>
<Train row ='0' page ='6' column ='8'>WallConnector</Train>

[Garja]

This is the kind of change that would only pollute the patch notes honestly.
Like yes, you can do that but it's simply not worth the time and the notes space.

[iCourt]

I'm neither for or against this change. I'm simply stating its able to be done.

[Garja]

Ye I know, my consideration is mostly refered to the opening post.

[[Armag] diarouga]

Your argument if I understand correctly is that deleting pilars should just be 10s for 10w lol?
My advice is that you should train and improve your apm to be able to do it.

[Atomiswave]

@Garja

notification

Pollute patch notes space, lol! It's like one longer sentence, and i am sure iCourt will formulate it clearly so everyone understands what suggested change does.

[iCourt]

This is how I'm interpreting the proposed change:

Question: Is the penalty for not deleting pillars to high, compared to keeping them?

Can this be accomplished in a way where players can keep this developed mechanic of deleting pillars, while at the same time reducing its impact on players that choose not to delete them?

Does it improve the look of the game from a design point of view?

Answer: Well the first two questions are not my territory and I feel comfortable only answering that last question. From a designer stand point pillarless walls are stupid looking and were never really intended. That alone can't justify its removal however.

[Gichtenlord]

Maybe you should also remove hotkeys, because it favors players with apm

[britishmusketeer]

Maybe you should also remove hotkeys, because it favors players with apm

i get that you are being sarcastic, but removing hotkeys would actually favour players with high apm lol

[Gichtenlord]

Maybe you should also remove hotkeys, because it favors players with apm

i get that you are being sarcastic, but removing hotkeys would actually favour players with high apm lol

Yeah, I thought the same after I posted my comment, lol

[iCourt]

@Garja

notification

Pollute patch notes space, lol! It's like one longer sentence, and i am sure iCourt will formulate it clearly so everyone understands what suggested change does.

Patch notes would look something like this.

- WallConnector cost lowered to 2 wood. (Down from 5)

Garja's point being that it adds another change to a patch that wants as few balance changes as necessary.

Now one could argue that because this is pretty obviously unintended you could define it as a "bug" as units should be able to walk through those gaps in the wall. One way that this could be rendered obsolete is changing the obstruction lines on walls thus making pillars necessary to build. I'm afraid with that method however I damage something that has been developing for years in treaty and most recently in supremacy, which I'd hate to take away from the community

[Atomiswave]

@Garja

notification

Pollute patch notes space, lol! It's like one longer sentence, and i am sure iCourt will formulate it clearly so everyone understands what suggested change does.

Patch notes would look something like this.

- WallConnector cost lowered to 2 wood. (Down from 5)

Garja's point being that it adds another change to a patch that wants as few balance changes as necessary.

Now one could argue that because this is pretty obviously unintended you could define it as a "bug" as units should be able to walk through those gaps in the wall. One way that this could be rendered obsolete is changing the obstruction lines on walls thus making pillars necessary to build. I'm afraid with that method however I damage something that has been developing for years in treaty and most recently in supremacy, which I'd hate to take away from the community

You see, it's not even long sentence.

It's not a big change by any stretch of the imagination. Only pro players will find this "modification" problematic, because it supposedly removes knowledge and skill factor in wall building process. Nevertheless I personally find your solution satisfactory.

[iCourt]

I'm more torn on changes like this. I cringe when I see it cause the walls look dumb, but players developed this and spent years perfecting just the right length, coming up with a hotkey solution (which is a rather recent development), and weighing the benefits of this method to change game meta. I admire and respect that a lot.

What's more amazing is it's a meta that passed down from treaty. Usually it's supremacy skills working its way up through the treaty ranks.

[Atomiswave]

I'm more torn on changes like this. I cringe when I see it cause the walls look dumb, but players developed this and spent years perfecting just the right length, coming up with a hotkey solution (which is a rather recent development), and weighing the benefits of this method to change game meta. I admire and respect that a lot.

What's more amazing is it's a meta that passed down from treaty. Usually it's supremacy skills working its way up through the treaty ranks.

Wall placement should be most important thing in the whole story, while building process should be streamlined. Losing precious time while deleting wall segments in order to get wood "discount bonus" is pure nonsense, and it's probably not intended by game design.

[Dsy]

But the main problem they cant thinking in the future. Its okey to delete pillars now if the wall cost is 5 wood. But if the price increasing in the future everybody will delete these pillars cause they will became too expensive. And yes the main point you dont really want to lose any apm in a middle of a fight or if your enemy trying to raid. You want focus for a fight, raid, eco decisions not how to build your wall up. And i want see the same if i watch a stream. I dont want to see how people focus to build a wall. Thats boring.
Walling shouldnt be time and micro investment, it should be price based.

[Mr_Bramboy]

Who cares? I'm still going to be deleting my pillars.

[Atomiswave]

Who cares? I'm still going to be deleting my pillars.

Do it by all means, but you will receive no additional benefit.

Look at it this way.... it's one less thing to worry about. In AOE III you are shepherd, general, animal breeder, miner, lumberjack, fisherman, admiral.... etc and on top of that you still have to worry about "cracks in the wall".

[Garja]

Who cares? I'm still going to be deleting my pillars.

Actually it's rather the opposite I'm not deleting pillars to gain 20w when I have other things to do.
Like I never considered the pillar thing being any relevant except when emulating the wall style with jap, which btw is bad anyway.