The Community Balance/Bugfix Patch has failed every evaluation category.
Also this starts off quite salty, because I think that there’s no honest explanation of why I’ve done this that doesn’t involve some level of disdain and disappointment.
Data-driven decision making is the only way to go
The amazing 2003/2004 RTS by Big Huge Games (2014 Extended Edition available on Steam — though that version is riddled with gameplay bugs!)
The Community Balance/Bugfix Patch has failed every evaluation category.
Also this starts off quite salty, because I think that there’s no honest explanation of why I’ve done this that doesn’t involve some level of disdain and disappointment.
This is a small bugfix patch, basically “Alpha 8c”. However, because these changes are not multiplayer-compatible with Alpha 8, they’re being released as Alpha 9.
This is just to ensure that this information is fully documented somewhere publicly – unless you’re a modder or just deeply curious about RoN quirks I’m not expecting you to bother reading this. It’s boring, poorly formated, has no images, and I basically haven’t posted it anywhere.
Knowing how fights are started and controlled is an invaluable but often poorly understood part of RoN’s combat.
Stemming from the above you end up with a broad category of units that can be considered the “backbone” of an army because they must exist for an army to be able to negotiate control of fights.
Continue reading “Fight Control and the Backbone of an Army”
This is a small-medium sized patch, focused mostly on non-balance changes.
You know how sometimes it takes a while for the gears in your head to turn before you finally have a big realisation? Yeah well, that happened to me yesterday.
For most of this year, I’ve been working on getting the next version, Alpha 7, of the Community Balance/Bugfix Patch out. One bug in particular relating to Barks and Triremes was especially difficult to pin down, but last night I was finally able to figure out the bug’s trigger and get a 100% reproduction rate.
Continue reading “The Most Absolutely Absurd RoN Bug I’ve Ever Found”
There are a few late changes to Alpha 7, as well as a slightly adjusted roadmap for future patches.
Rise of Nations is not a perfectly balanced game, and CBP doesn’t make it one either.
RoN is a reasonably balanced game though, and (by most people’s counts) CBP is a net-improvement of that balance.
There are a lot of areas which I’d like to probe further for CBP but am unable to due to lack of playtesting and quality discussion. This isn’t intended to be a comprehensive list of literally every possible change, but it can be used as a somewhat comprehensive starting point. Here’s what’s been left on the table.
To try to better communicate the reason behind changes, I’m trying out a slightly more fleshed-out set of patch notes to accompany the summary published on the mod’s Workshop page.
Each balance change will include a few lines providing context as to why the change was made, something that was often difficult to do within a single cell on a spreadsheet.
All the minor bugfixes etc which don’t affect gameplay are also listed in their entirety.