Mega Glest is a kind of "Cookie Clicker" actually

[biel]

Do you know what game is it? http://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/
Well, i've seen games of best MG players on youtube and i've discovered that to get that insane amount of units they have you only have to do a thing: CLICK. Yes, i know, this is a little overstatement but in the game the winner is who have more units.
When you have 8 barracks/roundtents/... and 30 or + workers harvesing and mining, all yo have to do is keep clicking the unit icons to keep all the buildings producing and to manage (move, make attack, ...) units it can be an odissey. How do you make attack 100 units if the max selection size is less than this? It can take 3, 4 or 5 selections to give all attacking units the order to attack.
And also, the typical cow / worker that thinks he can destroy the enemy and the only thing it does is making your offensive units moving instead of attacking or simply removing the ability to attack for the selection.

So, the game that is intended to be an RTS(Real-Time Strategy game) ends being an RTC(Real-Time Clicking game).
In this game wins who clicks faster and laggs less.

PD: Please don't take this as something bad as i only want to be constructive and share my opinion with all of you.

[tomreyn]

To be frank, while I have not the slightest doubts that you want to be constructive (which is a good intention), I don't see much of a constructive element in your post (other than starting a discussion, which does have a bit of a value). You point out what you dislike and conceive to be problematic, but I don't see you suggesting how you would change things and how these changes would improve upon these conceived problems.

Back on topic. I don't agree that MegaGlest is only about clicking. It does involve a lot of micromanagement, though. And I like it this way, since it's a challenge to not get lost in detail. You need to do the micromanagement, but you also keep an eye on expansion and upgrades (both of which gives new players a hard time). A fun real-time game is not one which is convenient to play, but one which keeps you busy and allows for variation. Yes, there are repetitive tasks, but then there are plenty of different factions where those tasks differ, so it doesn't need to get boring.

In my opinion, MegaGlest is pretty much about strategy, too. You may or may not be able to see this in those videos you watched. Whether you lure the opponents into an ambush, orchestrate unexpected air attacks from the back of their bases, overrun them with melee units, keep attacking their settlements so they run out of resources etc. - there are plenty of possibilities regarding strategy.

[biel]

Yes, i know that what i said and how isn't the best way to start a conversation with constructive intentions, but i had just written it as it was flowing in my mind. Also i think that, sometimes, writting a high-impact text is better than simply explaining the "matter".

Back to the topic, as i have seen, you are also agree with me as i know that there is micromanagement but it have to be magnified a lot.
For example, decreasing the units that can be produced (by increasing its cost or decreasing resource production) and remove or nerf the "exponential" factor. Starting games in pause for 5 seconds could be an improvement.
For the reduction of the clicking factor, it's easy as adding a key like Shift for making a button be clicked as many times as possible.
Example: You have 1000 Gold and 1000 wood and you shift-click a "Produce archer" button. Each archer costs 100 gold and 50 wood. After you click you get 10 archers in queue and your resources end at 0 gold and 500 wood. This should also work for the cancelling buttons, cancelling all in a click.

Doing this should be easy, you can create a while loop in the code that executes a "Command("Command name") returns 1 or 0 depending on sucess or fail" until it returns 0.

Also adding new attack types (i don't mean damage types like slashing or piercing). For example allowing attacks without a target (area damage). Then you can create an unit like an "Ignited meteor" or "Nuclear waste barrel" that deals damage to all enemies in a range passively. Each unit should also be able to attack or upgrade or perform any command while damaging al¡ny enemy in proximity.

[NoQ]

Example: You have 1000 Gold and 1000 wood and you shift-click a "Produce archer" button. Each archer costs 100 gold and 50 wood. After you click you get 10 archers in queue and your resources end at 0 gold and 500 wood. This should also work for the cancelling buttons, cancelling all in a click.

Well, no good player would ever set more than two items in a queue, rather will try to maintain exactly one most of the time.
Its sorta obvious: by presumption of balance, it makes no sense to pay the same amount of money for something twice as long to produce, so he'd better spend money where it would pay off faster, and if he can't, then he did something wrong earlier.

P.S. Also, i disagree with the general statement. Megaglest offers enough strategical variety even with tool as simple as damage modifiers. That is, often many units of certain type can often be defeated by relatively little units of the type correctly chosen by the other side. Simple fast-clicking does not overweight strategy and adaptation here.

[biel]

Example: You have 1000 Gold and 1000 wood and you shift-click a "Produce archer" button. Each archer costs 100 gold and 50 wood. After you click you get 10 archers in queue and your resources end at 0 gold and 500 wood. This should also work for the cancelling buttons, cancelling all in a click.

Well, no good player would ever set more than two items in a queue, rather will try to maintain exactly one most of the time.
Its sorta obvious: by presumption of balance, it makes no sense to pay the same amount of money for something twice as long to produce, so he'd better spend money where it would pay off faster, and if he can't, then he did something wrong earlier.

Ok, i undestand. Then the shift-click could lock the button and ordering a new producing command each time it finish the last order. If more than a button is locked in a building, it produces it 1 by 1. Ex: Archer, swordman and horseman selected: Produces an archer, then an swordman and then a horseman. Then starts off for the archer. If there are no enough resources, the button keeps locked but don't send commands until it can produce one.
If handling the locking mre than 1 button is too difficult, only allowing to lock one button at same time.

Is this idea better?

[NoQ]

Is this idea better?

If there are no enough resources, the button keeps locked but don't send commands until it can produce one.

Actually, no. The first idea is better, and i know at least one game that implements the second idea.

In either case the whole point is to eliminate the clicking delay, but with the second idea your production queue becomes completely counter-intuitive when more than one factory is involved in waiting for resources.

So, if there is also an UI enchancement to show the complete global production queue of all factories, researches and construction units, with an ability to swap queued things, then the second idea is better.

[titi]

Many RTS games need MANY clicks per second and that's an important part of MG too ( look at professional Warcraft3 or Strarcraft games!). Yes we want some micromanagement.
We don't want semi automated production where players just manage  production. We want it "real time" and human managed and played,
MG is not meant to be a management game . It's about sending/controlling units and fight with them .

[MoLAoS]

Many RTS games need MANY clicks per second and that's an important part of MG too ( look at professional Warcraft3 or Strarcraft games!). Yes we want some micromanagement.
We don't want semi automated production where players just manage  production. We want it "real time" and human managed and played,
MG is not meant to be a management game . It's about sending/controlling units and fight with them .

I'm not sure I follow, having players click over each building in a set order to produce one unit per building and to always have each building making its one unit is a behavior you WANTED to have? Eww. This whole idea that that qualifies as macro or skill is one of the banes of strategy gaming. And mainline strategy gamers wonder why LOL is so popular.

Being able to hotkey through a ton of buildings keeping one unit building per building at all times is not something to aspire to. It's something to be horrified by. There is literally ZERO strategy in doing that.

[biel]

Many RTS games need MANY clicks per second and that's an important part of MG too ( look at professional Warcraft3 or Strarcraft games!). Yes we want some micromanagement.
We don't want semi automated production where players just manage  production. We want it "real time" and human managed and played,
MG is not meant to be a management game . It's about sending/controlling units and fight with them .

I'm not sure I follow, having players click over each building in a set order to produce one unit per building and to always have each building making its one unit is a behavior you WANTED to have? Eww. This whole idea that that qualifies as macro or skill is one of the banes of strategy gaming. And mainline strategy gamers wonder why LOL is so popular.

Being able to hotkey through a ton of buildings keeping one unit building per building at all times is not something to aspire to. It's something to be horrified by. There is literally ZERO strategy in doing that.

I think the same as you!

Actually i could modify the MG code locally to implement this and get a big advantage over other players. This is a thing that is important to avoid, especially on open-source games

[MoLAoS]

Actually I am pretty sure you cannot do this. That would invalidate the checksum and probably cause out of sync errors or something.

[biel]

Actually I am pretty sure you cannot do this. That would invalidate the checksum and probably cause out of sync errors or something.

You can do this as you aren't really cheating. The information sent and recieved is the same. You only are automating the game (on the client). You get the instant power of the CPU + Your strategy.

That kind of problems will happen if you (for example) modify the megapack XML and you want to start with 9999999999 of each resource, or modify the attack strenght of a unit making it instakill.

[NoQ]

A pre-paid production queue of at most two things is actually useful to eliminate the clicking APS pause (in case it's unwanted, and even in starcraft, so much concentrated on micro, it is unwanted).

But it's too far from our discussion. When we are talking about lack of strategy, we cannot compensate it by decreasing value of micromanagement: this way we will only produce the game that lacks both strategy and micromanagement.

[biel]

A pre-paid production queue of at most two things is actually useful to eliminate the clicking APS pause (in case it's unwanted, and even in starcraft, so much concentrated on micro, it is unwanted).

But it's too far from our discussion. When we are talking about lack of strategy, we cannot compensate it by decreasing value of micromanagement: this way we will only produce the game that lacks both strategy and micromanagement.

Simply clicking to mantain production isn't strategic at all. This can't have a discussion.

[biel]

Hi people, i only wanted to give an idea to improve the game and start a discussion about an important thing of the game. Everyone is saying me that i'm wrong (except 1) and i know that i'm far from being an expert on video games. So, if there isn't more to say, the thread can be closed. The MG developers should have last word, but keeping an ear to the community too.

Platonic question: What we want? Clickers.. or maybe players.. (Often, games are played by players)

[MoLAoS]

A pre-paid production queue of at most two things is actually useful to eliminate the clicking APS pause (in case it's unwanted, and even in starcraft, so much concentrated on micro, it is unwanted).

But it's too far from our discussion. When we are talking about lack of strategy, we cannot compensate it by decreasing value of micromanagement: this way we will only produce the game that lacks both strategy and micromanagement.

Games that lack excessive micromanagement and strategy are still better than games that have excessive micromanagement and lack strategy. Microing tons of barracks is not the same as microing units in combat who have situational abilities that you can apply tactically. Games are supposed to be about decisions. There is no decision in keeping one unit building in all building structures and doing it the same way every game.

Personally I don't care for excessive combat micromanagement like what happens in Starcraft either, but at least you can make an argument that its tactical, if not strategic.

[John.d.h]

I'm not sure I follow, having players click over each building in a set order to produce one unit per building and to always have each building making its one unit is a behavior you WANTED to have? Eww. This whole idea that that qualifies as macro or skill is one of the banes of strategy gaming. And mainline strategy gamers wonder why LOL is so popular.

Being able to hotkey through a ton of buildings keeping one unit building per building at all times is not something to aspire to. It's something to be horrified by. There is literally ZERO strategy in doing that.

Games that lack excessive micromanagement and strategy are still better than games that have excessive micromanagement and lack strategy. Microing tons of barracks is not the same as microing units in combat who have situational abilities that you can apply tactically. Games are supposed to be about decisions. There is no decision in keeping one unit building in all building structures and doing it the same way every game.

Hear, hear!  I don't particularly want any game I play to feel like a chore.  The point of a strategy game is (by definition) strategy.  Having to check in on each of your barracks every 30 seconds to click on the "train the guy" button is not strategy; it's like harvesting your crops in FarmVille.

[titi]

Maybe ypu did not really play MG yet. It would be a completly different game with such an automated production system. People would just create an insane amount of units. The next step is they would cry for features like zooming out, beeing able to manage bigger groups and so on. Thats maybe fun yes, but thats another game and gameplay.

What I want is:
You have to decide each time what kind of unit you want to produce.  You have to decide how to spend your resources to produce units in each situation to get an effective army.

examples:
While you fight you suddenly realize that you need some stickman as cannon food, because you have your archers in front.
Or you realize that you need some firearchers because the enemy suddenly shows up with some snakes.
And if there is time you maybe want thunderbirds and no money wasted for firearchers and stickfighters.
And yes in general I want all this to be done and descided manually.

If you really want this, you maybe want to start your own mod and as a first step enable "multiselection"  on the production buildings in the xml. By this you can select all production buildings of one type at once and you can give them all orders to produce fighters in one step.

[MoLAoS]

Um, Titi, having a queue or an automatic produce this unit over and over function would not allow you to make a crap ton of units. You are still resource limited.

Professional starcraft players say that you always wants to keep your resources extremely low. And you also want to make sure you never have resources stuck in queue. Hence why they always track between every building constantly keeping a single unit and only a single unit in production at a time.

That has no effect on your resource count which is what determines your unit numbers. Its simply pointless micromanagement.

The only difference is that they would have MORE time to micro units in combat where, again its stupid, but at least there is some tactical value.

None of the things you talked about are in any way affected by being able to tick a check box to have a building produce a unit automatically. Even with this system if you want to change production you still have to go back and click through all the buildings to change to a new unit.

[biel]

Maybe ypu did not really play MG yet. It would be a completly different game with such an automated production system. People would just create an insane amount of units. The next step is they would cry for features like zooming out, beeing able to manage bigger groups and so on. Thats maybe fun yes, but thats another game and gameplay.

What I want is:
You have to decide each time what kind of unit you want to produce.  You have to decide how to spend your resources to produce units in each situation to get an effective army.

examples:
While you fight you suddenly realize that you need some stickman as cannon food, because you have your archers in front.
Or you realize that you need some firearchers because the enemy suddenly shows up with some snakes.
And if there is time you maybe want thunderbirds and no money wasted for firearchers and stickfighters.
And yes in general I want all this to be done and descided manually.

If you really want this, you maybe want to start your own mod and as a first step enable "multiselection"  on the production buildings in the xml. By this you can select all production buildings of one type at once and you can give them all orders to produce fighters in one step.

You can also add it as an option in the options menu disabled by default. Then, new players will learn the basics of the game without that option wen one day someone tells it on a online game.

The migromanagement will still be on (for example) how to place offensive/deffensive buildings and in the battle make your units delete enemy ranged powerful units such as catapults or airships. Also, attack larger units with splash attacks and size 1 ones with archers.

[titi]

Maybe I don't get the point, but imagine the following:

You are playing indian and you have :
totem,shamen,horsefarm,roundtent,tent,bigtent

Now how do you queue production here ? Imagine you have not enough ressources to produce anything.
Now you you select the totem and you order a shamen.
In the horsefarm you order 3 horses .
In the bigtent 3 firearchers.
In the tent a stickfighter.

Now you are getting ressources, which one would be the first unit which is produced? Cheapest first, because you can effort it earlier?
Or one big list showing all orders in one single queue no matter which building/unit produces them?

[biel]

Maybe I don't get the point, but imagine the following:

You are playing indian and you have :
totem,shamen,horsefarm,roundtent,tent,bigtent

Now how do you queue production here ? Imagine you have not enough ressources to produce anything.
Now you you select the totem and you order a shamen.
In the horsefarm you order 3 horses .
In the bigtent 3 firearchers.
In the tent a stickfighter.

Now you are getting ressources, which one would be the first unit which is produced? Cheapest first, because you can effort it earlier?
Or one big list showing all orders in one single queue no matter which builing/unit produces them?

In my mind i had "Cheapest first" but not as it sounds. I only want to be able to lock down a button and it gets "clicked" when there are enough resources. If you are very low on resources, simply don't lock down any button. This should on all buttons that can add items to a queue, such as a morph command. If a summoner has the drake rider button locked, when stop in a free place starts the promotion. If stop where the command returns invalid order it does nothing and is aple to perform other commands like move or attack.

Also, adding a hotkey to clear or disable all "button locks" would be nice too.

In the last post, as i have seen, you didn't get the point. You don't have to go to a building and order 3 units (you can do that but it goes to the normal queue of the building and the resources are consumed / reserved when ordering) you simply lock the buttons in the buildings and always there is enough resources for an unit, it starts producing. Now, you can think: "Well, in that way you will only produce the cheapest type of units you've locked..." but it's suposed that you can get much more resources than the costs of the unit while it is producing. If not, you should use the "Clear locks" hotkey.

In that way you can have 2 barracks with a locked unit on each ( archer and swordman) and having a third one where you sometimes order a horse or an armored swordman.

And i'm agree with you that adding a global balance and global queue will change too much the game and this is unwanted. What i'm triying to do isn't to fully automate the unit production. Only try to remove unecessary clicks and actions such as get a queue of 1-2 on each building.

Do you get the point now?

[titi_son]

so you want a button which auto-produce units if there are enough resources?

but then if you have to fight you dont have to produce units and then the attacked one does not have any chance to win because the other one has always enough units.

Next thing is auto-repair,auto-let-new-produced-units-attack,auto-build-new-building-if-enough-resources,auto-heal,auto-attack-the-strongest-unit-first... in the end you only give the auto-commands once and then wait until you win or loose.

[biel]

so you want a button which auto-produce units if there are enough resources?

but then if you have to fight you dont have to produce units and then the attacked one does not have any chance to win because the other one has always enough units.

Next thing is auto-repair,auto-let-new-produced-units-attack,auto-build-new-building-if-enough-resources,auto-heal,auto-attack-the-strongest-unit-first... in the end you only give the auto-commands once and then wait until you win or loose.

LOL??? Do you know what means "auto"? Auto != free. Also, the units don't move itself, you have to order them...

Why did you post that??

[John.d.h]

Now you are getting ressources, which one would be the first unit which is produced? Cheapest first, because you can effort it earlier?
Or one big list showing all orders in one single queue no matter which building/unit produces them?

This is not an impossible problem, as many games have already solved it in various ways.

Next thing is auto-repair,auto-let-new-produced-units-attack,auto-build-new-building-if-enough-resources,auto-heal,auto-attack-the-strongest-unit-first... in the end you only give the auto-commands once and then wait until you win or loose.

This is a slippery slope fallacy and a false dichotomy.  You don't have to choose between "games that practically play themselves" and "games in which you have to manage every tiny detail manually".  There's a large and fertile middle ground.  There are already some features in MG that reduce micromanaging, and the game would basically be unplayable without them.  If you really want to have absolute micro, then only select one unit at a time and see how fun that is.   When your workers fill up on gold, they automatically return it to the castle.  When your units are attacked, they automatically fight back.  Your towers automatically shoot at enemies within range.  Is this all bad?  No, it's all good because it lets you spend your time conquering your enemy instead of tying your soldiers' shoes because they won't figure it out for themselves.

[biel]

Well, i see that the dicussion is near of an end. The  is winning clearly but it have to be approved by MG developers. If it finally does, i can create a detailed feature request on the corresponding forum section.