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Topic: Frisian Balancing

GunChleoc
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Posted at: 2018-04-20, 11:08

This is a thread to discuss how to improve the balancing for the Frisian tribe.

Original thread: https://wl.widelands.org/forum/topic/2888/?page=40


Busy indexing nil values

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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2018-04-20, 18:27

Ok the bug is registered I already uploaded the excel for the trainingcosts. With 4 simple changes I got probably already reasonable values. Feel free to discuss.


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WorldSavior
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Posted at: 2018-04-24, 14:27

king_of_nowhere wrote:

WorldSavior wrote:

king_of_nowhere wrote:

But I believe in order to work effectively frisian farms should be somewhat more efficient than those of other tribes, if given the extra space required. I think "needs 6 fields to work at 100% but makes one barley in 70 seconds " (it's 4 fields and 80 seconds for other tribes, 100 for barbarians) would be a good target

Imo this idea aims in a good direction. But a farm which uses more than 5 fields could be a little bit annoying for the players which use your rhombus street system, because they'd have to cut some roads if they place many farms next to each other

Yes, it would be annoying for me and for anyone using my street system, but that would be kinds the whole point of it: you could not fit as many farms in the same space. If I can keep making farms as I use to, then it's not really a penalty. I have to leave more space, which compensates for greater speed. Only if I can use the bad scraps of terrain to my advantage, have a farm plant fields where I could not build other stuff anyway, then I can get an advantage. For example, in my nile run I made all the farms in the strip of land between the mountains, because that way most fields were planted on mountain terrain where they would not interfere with anything - especially since atlantean mines have huge radius and so are not disturbed by a few fields. that would be very effective with frisians too

If you think so...

In general, I am ill at ease with the tribe because there are so many buildings requiring space, and that messes up my roads.

Yes, there are too many buildings

stuff about balance

I also get the impression that frisians so far are at a severe disadvantage. I don't have any idea on how to make a fully promoted soldier before 90 minutes of game, at best, while I can manage 60 minutes with atlanteans and worldsavior shaved it down to 35.

It's true, frisians are the slowest tribe at training the first top-soldier - by far. Especially since barbarians can train master smiths&brewers faster than before, and frisians have not been changed here.

efficient charcoal kiln are good, but mines are still more effective, so it does not matter. high building cost means expansion is slow. Maybe once your recycling sets in frisians are good, but in 90% of practical situation you'll be killed first.

Even with recycling frisians are disadvantaged

And the cost of extracting coal or iron is around the same, so if advanced soldiers cost plenty of coal it offsets the benefits of recycling.

Don't worry, recycling actually saves some coal

hessenfarmer wrote:

@ WorldSavior: thanks for the calculations about training costs this is definitly an isssue and totally eats up any advantage of recycling. thanks for your contribution

You're welcome

hessenfarmer wrote:

WorldSavior wrote:

Imo this idea aims in a good direction. But a farm which uses more than 5 fields could be a little bit annoying for the players which use your rhombus street system, because they'd have to cut some roads if they place many farms next to each other

Ok probably that would be a pain somebody playing the frisians could accept.

Well... Such a match is very extreme...

well basically it is not a match

it's a single player match face-wink.png

I meant a single player game as in einsteins tournament. However we can postpone this most probably as from our recent calculations and research in the lua files it became very apparently we should first fix some things before playtesting.

Yes

Well... They need iron ore for every trainings step. And a top soldier requires 11.5 iron ores, while an atlantean one requires 11, imperial 13, barbarian 16. So it looks for me as it wouldn't be a frisian advantage, but a barbarian (and imperial) disadvantage to need more iron ore for top soldiers.

ok I checked your values and I count 9,5 ores after subtracting the return from recycling

You're right. I'm sorry for the small miscalculation...

but that doesn't matter as it is very time consuming in my calculations they consume 25 ores for a full trained soldier and get back 15,5.

So one can see: That's one of the reasons of the fact that they are slow at training their first perfect soldier

So I agree it is a great disadvantage due to the necesary coal and working time. we need to work this out in a direction that recycling is developing an advantage in late game. As for other issues my current plan is to create a bug and link some excel files to it in which we could analyze the values in the scripts compare them between the tribes and doing some mind experiments to tweak the values there. Would this be acceptable?

I think that it is acceptable

disadvantages: - needs a lot of grain which is produced very slowly. This is mainly due to barley is necessary to produce fur which is necessary for every soldier training recruitment. - needs a lot of building materials which are very expensive.

They probably need a lot building materials because they need so many buildings. I've got somehow not the impression that their building materials are very expensive. But bricks are not cheap, that's true. Though I bet that marble columns are much more expensive...

bricks are really expensive cause they need coal (like the grout for the barbarians) and they are used massively.

Yes, they need a lot of them... But I think that grout is not so expensive. And I wouldn't say that the costs of brick have to be reduced, they are not extremely high.

However I already started an excel containing only all buildings necessary for training a soldier. Although I just took one of each building for each tribe they need more buildings and a lot of upgrades as well, so they need about 33% more than the other tribes for their economy.

Okay... But for me that looks just like the fact that they are a complex tribe.

especially I splitted the refined material into their components where it comes even more apparent. Will upload this for discussion as well as soon it is finished.

Sounds interesting

Military buildings use same amount of wares but after the split into basic materials it is more than the other tribes as well. And time for refining the material isn't calculated already. so this is a nother big issue we need to work on.

I'm not sure if splitting wares up into basic materials can give exact results. For example, a barbarian axe can be splitted up into 2 meat as basic materials, which sounds cheap, but the axe needs many buildings which transform the basic materials into other wares... So the axe is much more worth than 2 meat, while for example frisian beer (or was it mead?) is approximately as much worth as 1 barley+1water.

I've already pointed out a lot of disadvantages of the Frisians... Here in this thread.

Again a summary would be helpful but if not I will take the pain to dig through this thread over the 40 pages or so. It just will take some time.

You could look at this post as a starting point.

We'll see if I've got time for a summary. I mean, nobody seems to be willing to fix the mining-bugs, so maybe I have to do it.

I am restarting the Nile map, actually paying attention to the game this time.

For the balancing comments, Charcoal kilns do require clay so while more efficient they do rob some building materials, which can be in short supply. The recycling of wares from training is a great advantage,

clay supply for charcoal kilns isn't a problem in my opinion as you need some working clay pits for the aqua farms. So currently I use the charcoal production to keep them working.

Nah, next to the required iron ore (see above) frisian top soldiers need 8.5 gold ores, while others need only 4 or 3.

yes as pointed out above values look very high they need to be compared and then adjusted. so the advantage currently is only virtual it is a disadvantage currently.

bad news is that i got another task from our chieftain to finish first so I can't start this soon. If anybody would start the work this would be welcome. For example creating a complete excel about the needed wares for training for every tribe. creating an excel listing the times needed for the creation of the wares needed for training or even better all of the tribes wares.

So my current list of issues is the following: - working times of production buildings especially the farms - basic mining ressources neede for training a soldier - build costs (and times) adjusted for the economy and for the military seperatly

What do you think?

That is a good start. By the way, I think that the building costs are not that bad...

Tinker wrote:

hessenfarmer wrote:

clay supply for charcoal kilns isn't a problem in my opinion as you need some working clay pits for the aqua farms. So currently I use the charcoal production to keep them working.

Personally I rarely build aqua farms , way to expensive to run if there is an alternative.

You're right. Probably aqua farms need a boost - what if they would approximately be as efficient as fishers?

GunChleoc wrote:

Maybe it's time to open up new threads, to make things easier to find? Like separate threads for Frisian balancing, Frisian graphics, Frisian scenarios?

ETA: I have set them up.

Good idea

king_of_nowhere wrote:

WorldSavior wrote:

king_of_nowhere wrote:

But I believe in order to work effectively frisian farms should be somewhat more efficient than those of other tribes, if given the extra space required. I think "needs 6 fields to work at 100% but makes one barley in 70 seconds " (it's 4 fields and 80 seconds for other tribes, 100 for barbarians) would be a good target

Imo this idea aims in a good direction. But a farm which uses more than 5 fields could be a little bit annoying for the players which use your rhombus street system, because they'd have to cut some roads if they place many farms next to each other

Yes, it would be annoying for me and for anyone using my street system, but that would be kinds the whole point of it: you could not fit as many farms in the same space. If I can keep making farms as I use to, then it's not really a penalty. I have to leave more space, which compensates for greater speed. Only if I can use the bad scraps of terrain to my advantage, have a farm plant fields where I could not build other stuff anyway, then I can get an advantage. For example, in my nile run I made all the farms in the strip of land between the mountains, because that way most fields were planted on mountain terrain where they would not interfere with anything - especially since atlantean mines have huge radius and so are not disturbed by a few fields. that would be very effective with frisians too

If you think so...

In general, I am ill at ease with the tribe because there are so many buildings requiring space, and that messes up my roads.

Yes, there are too many buildings

stuff about balance

I also get the impression that frisians so far are at a severe disadvantage. I don't have any idea on how to make a fully promoted soldier before 90 minutes of game, at best, while I can manage 60 minutes with atlanteans and worldsavior shaved it down to 35.

It's true, frisians are the slowest tribe at training the first top-soldier - by far. Especially since barbarians can train master smiths&brewers faster than before, and frisians have not been changed here.

efficient charcoal kiln are good, but mines are still more effective, so it does not matter. high building cost means expansion is slow. Maybe once your recycling sets in frisians are good, but in 90% of practical situation you'll be killed first.

Even with recycling frisians are disadvantaged

And the cost of extracting coal or iron is around the same, so if advanced soldiers cost plenty of coal it offsets the benefits of recycling.

Don't worry, recycling actually saves some coal

hessenfarmer wrote:

@ WorldSavior: thanks for the calculations about training costs this is definitly an isssue and totally eats up any advantage of recycling. thanks for your contribution

You're welcome

hessenfarmer wrote:

WorldSavior wrote:

Imo this idea aims in a good direction. But a farm which uses more than 5 fields could be a little bit annoying for the players which use your rhombus street system, because they'd have to cut some roads if they place many farms next to each other

Ok probably that would be a pain somebody playing the frisians could accept.

Well... Such a match is very extreme...

well basically it is not a match

it's a single player match face-wink.png

I meant a single player game as in einsteins tournament. However we can postpone this most probably as from our recent calculations and research in the lua files it became very apparently we should first fix some things before playtesting.

Yes

Well... They need iron ore for every trainings step. And a top soldier requires 11.5 iron ores, while an atlantean one requires 11, imperial 13, barbarian 16. So it looks for me as it wouldn't be a frisian advantage, but a barbarian (and imperial) disadvantage to need more iron ore for top soldiers.

ok I checked your values and I count 9,5 ores after subtracting the return from recycling

You're right. I'm sorry for the small miscalculation...

but that doesn't matter as it is very time consuming in my calculations they consume 25 ores for a full trained soldier and get back 15,5.

So one can see: That's one of the reasons of the fact that they are slow at training their first perfect soldier

So I agree it is a great disadvantage due to the necesary coal and working time. we need to work this out in a direction that recycling is developing an advantage in late game. As for other issues my current plan is to create a bug and link some excel files to it in which we could analyze the values in the scripts compare them between the tribes and doing some mind experiments to tweak the values there. Would this be acceptable?

I think that it is acceptable

disadvantages: - needs a lot of grain which is produced very slowly. This is mainly due to barley is necessary to produce fur which is necessary for every soldier training recruitment. - needs a lot of building materials which are very expensive.

They probably need a lot building materials because they need so many buildings. I've got somehow not the impression that their building materials are very expensive. But bricks are not cheap, that's true. Though I bet that marble columns are much more expensive...

bricks are really expensive cause they need coal (like the grout for the barbarians) and they are used massively.

Yes, they need a lot of them... But I think that grout is not so expensive. And I wouldn't say that the costs of brick have to be reduced, they are not extremely high.

However I already started an excel containing only all buildings necessary for training a soldier. Although I just took one of each building for each tribe they need more buildings and a lot of upgrades as well, so they need about 33% more than the other tribes for their economy.

Okay... But for me that looks just like the fact that they are a complex tribe.

especially I splitted the refined material into their components where it comes even more apparent. Will upload this for discussion as well as soon it is finished.

Sounds interesting

Military buildings use same amount of wares but after the split into basic materials it is more than the other tribes as well. And time for refining the material isn't calculated already. so this is a nother big issue we need to work on.

I'm not sure if splitting wares up into basic materials can give exact results. For example, a barbarian axe can be splitted up into 2 meat as basic materials, which sounds cheap, but the axe needs many buildings which transform the basic materials into other wares... So the axe is much more worth than 2 meat, while for example frisian mead is approximately as much worth as 1 barley+1water.

I've already pointed out a lot of disadvantages of the Frisians... Here in this thread.

Again a summary would be helpful but if not I will take the pain to dig through this thread over the 40 pages or so. It just will take some time.

You could look at this post as a starting point.

We'll see if I've got time for a summary. I mean, nobody seems to be willing to fix the mining-bugs, so maybe I have to do it.

I am restarting the Nile map, actually paying attention to the game this time.

For the balancing comments, Charcoal kilns do require clay so while more efficient they do rob some building materials, which can be in short supply. The recycling of wares from training is a great advantage,

clay supply for charcoal kilns isn't a problem in my opinion as you need some working clay pits for the aqua farms. So currently I use the charcoal production to keep them working.

Nah, next to the required iron ore (see above) frisian top soldiers need 8.5 gold ores, while others need only 4 or 3.

yes as pointed out above values look very high they need to be compared and then adjusted. so the advantage currently is only virtual it is a disadvantage currently.

bad news is that i got another task from our chieftain to finish first so I can't start this soon. If anybody would start the work this would be welcome. For example creating a complete excel about the needed wares for training for every tribe. creating an excel listing the times needed for the creation of the wares needed for training or even better all of the tribes wares.

So my current list of issues is the following: - working times of production buildings especially the farms - basic mining ressources neede for training a soldier - build costs (and times) adjusted for the economy and for the military seperatly

What do you think?

That is a good start. By the way, I think that the building costs are not that bad...

Tinker wrote:

hessenfarmer wrote:

clay supply for charcoal kilns isn't a problem in my opinion as you need some working clay pits for the aqua farms. So currently I use the charcoal production to keep them working.

Personally I rarely build aqua farms , way to expensive to run if there is an alternative.

You're right. Probably aqua farms need a boost - what if they would approximately be as efficient as fishers?

GunChleoc wrote:

Maybe it's time to open up new threads, to make things easier to find? Like separate threads for Frisian balancing, Frisian graphics, Frisian scenarios?

ETA: I have set them up.

Good idea

hessenfarmer wrote:

Ok the bug is registered I already uploaded the excel for the trainingcosts. With 4 simple changes I got probably already reasonable values. Feel free to discuss.

Haven't looked at the new trainingscosts yet, will probably do that soon


Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2018-04-24, 15:58

I have uploaded a second excel sheet to the bug where I have listed the build costs for all building. However to balance build costs (and therfore build times) we need to have the buildings that form a working economy to train soldiers to the highest level for each tribe. In this case I ws hoping for WorldSavior and/or king-of-nowhere to help me with their experience for the "old" tribes.
Basically I have two columns One where the costs for 1 building of each type is listed and another one where the cost of an economy will be included however they are currently the same due to No building/eco is set to 1 everywhere. So if anybody could have a look on the values I would be more than happy. Feel free to download the excel and upload another version after modification.
thanks in advance
hessenfarmer


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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2018-04-24, 16:34

Have had a look at the Thread starting from your link. Thanks for it. So I have spotted a new issue which is mine efficiency maybe there might be some benfits from the discussion about fixing the mines problems with probability. Will add it to the list and create another excel sheet.


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GunChleoc
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Posted at: 2018-04-25, 09:55

WorldSavior wrote:

We'll see if I've got time for a summary. I mean, nobody seems to be willing to fix the mining-bugs, so maybe I have to do it.

It's less a matter of will and more a matter of capacity... personally, I am completely snowed under with new stuff to learn and deadlines to meet at the moment, so I can't learn how to do balancing as well. Your help is very much appreciated face-smile.png


Busy indexing nil values

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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2018-04-25, 10:50

hessenfarmer wrote:

I have uploaded a second excel sheet to the bug where I have listed the build costs for all building. However to balance build costs (and therfore build times) we need to have the buildings that form a working economy to train soldiers to the highest level for each tribe. In this case I ws hoping for WorldSavior and/or king-of-nowhere to help me with their experience for the "old" tribes.
Basically I have two columns One where the costs for 1 building of each type is listed and another one where the cost of an economy will be included however they are currently the same due to No building/eco is set to 1 everywhere. So if anybody could have a look on the values I would be more than happy. Feel free to download the excel and upload another version after modification.
thanks in advance
hessenfarmer

where do i find said sheet?


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Venatrix
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Posted at: 2018-04-25, 11:12

king_of_nowhere wrote:

where do i find said sheet?

In the bug, that he linked in the second post. Here’s the direct link.


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WorldSavior
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Posted at: 2018-04-26, 13:34

hessenfarmer wrote:

I have uploaded a second excel sheet to the bug where I have listed the build costs for all building.

Wow, thanks for sharing

However to balance build costs (and therfore build times) we need to have the buildings that form a working economy to train soldiers to the highest level for each tribe. In this case I ws hoping for WorldSavior and/or king-of-nowhere to help me with their experience for the "old" tribes.

Which kind of help do you wish exactly?

Basically I have two columns One where the costs for 1 building of each type is listed and another one where the cost of an economy will be included however they are currently the same due to No building/eco is set to 1 everywhere. So if anybody could have a look on the values I would be more than happy. Feel free to download the excel and upload another version after modification.
thanks in advance
hessenfarmer

What's the point of this concept where you have 1 building of each type? I think that it doesn't fit to the real gameplay...

hessenfarmer wrote:

Have had a look at the Thread starting from your link. Thanks for it. So I have spotted a new issue which is mine efficiency maybe there might be some benfits from the discussion about fixing the mines problems with probability.

You're welcome. It's possible that the frisian mines are bugged, too, I didn't check them during the last weeks. And I still think that the deep frisian mines are just too inefficient, so frisians are bad in the lategame

Will add it to the list and create another excel sheet.

Okay

GunChleoc wrote:

WorldSavior wrote:

We'll see if I've got time for a summary. I mean, nobody seems to be willing to fix the mining-bugs, so maybe I have to do it.

It's less a matter of will and more a matter of capacity... personally, I am completely snowed under with new stuff to learn and deadlines to meet at the moment, so I can't learn how to do balancing as well. Your help is very much appreciated face-smile.png

Okay


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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2018-04-26, 18:22

WorldSavior wrote:

Wow, thanks for sharing

you're welcome.

Which kind of help do you wish exactly?

I need to know what buildings of which type are needed to supply a constant 100% output of soldiers. So first we need to determine how many of each of the trainingbuildings are needed to operate all ar 100 % (the lowest value of this would be good). After that we need to know how many of each other buildings we need to supply this training. To be as Precise as possible it would be good to have the output rate of heros in this configuration as a further equalizing factor. These number had to be fit into the row where initially all numbers are set to 1. This initial value was chosen to check whether my formulas in the sheet work. But the final goal was to have real numbers there. From my perspective we could use real numbers insteasd of integers to reflect the proportion if needed. Doing so we will have finally the value of all building material needed for a working economy.
Of course I know we could figure all these things from the lua files to be very exact. But this is a pretty pain to do so I was hoping our very advanced players should have a feeling or a thumbrule for this values which could lead to a first bunch of numbers which could probably be implemented for Build 20. So just share your secret Knowledge with me. face-wink.png

What's the point of this concept where you have 1 building of each type? I think that it doesn't fit to the real gameplay...

this was just an intermediate step to get a feeling for the problem and to spot some real obvious unbalances. the final goal was always to have the costs for the economy as a basis for balancing.

Will add it to the list and create another excel sheet.

Okay

Excel is under construction will be finished probably tonight. Already spotted some weird things in the mines definition for the other tribes. Will share as soon as it is finished. You could use this for your task as well. Hope I get some numbers for my build cost excel in exchange: face-smile.png


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