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Topic: Zero capacity for military buildings

einstein13
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Posted at: 2018-05-17, 21:37

Occupied military buildings make borders stronger. As you mentioned, old Settlers II had simple rule: you have to have occupied military building to have a territory on your side. Here, in Widelands, we stick rather to Settlers III way of territory: once you gain, you can't loose. Except conquering by other military building. The only difference is that sometimes you have complete fog of war which prohibit you from building anything new. So answering kapputnik: sometimes you have to leave towers (medium building with high range of view) inside your country. Without this you will lose your potential.

As I understand, your suggestion is to provide a possibility of changing state of working military building into not working one? That will completely change the way of playing. Imagine that you are playing on a rather small but hard-terrain map (example: desert tournament). On the front line there is a race between two fraction: who will have more level10 soldiers (see discussions from previous tournaments). But nobody can attack the other side. There is no place to build a tower. So the only way of seeing the enemy is to place a scout and wait until he will reveal some territory with military building. But the players can build small buildings like sentries or small towers. And they do that. If the military building contains level10 soldiers, they are rather safe. If not - the building will be conquered. I can remember few games like that. So for example king_of_nowhere built up several sentries and wait until he will have at least one free level10 soldier. After that he made everything he could to place this soldier silently (without enemy's notice). Tactics that he got was: 1. build a building and cut roads, 2. wait some time, 3. build road and get the proper soldiers. From enemy's side it was like: 1. build a building without road, 2. place a road, 3. soldier inside = attack. The defence is about noticing if any new road is placed around the borders. With your change, the defence is much harder.

As I understand, you found a good point what can be done inside your country. But this feature can make games even faster and harder to new players. Real experts in widelands don't need this feature face-wink.png . As kapputnik told, your economy doesn't hurt of several useless soldiers.

Sorry for a long text, hope you can go through it.


einstein13
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kaputtnik
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Posted at: 2018-05-17, 23:30

einstein13 wrote:

The only difference is that sometimes you have complete fog of war which prohibit you from building anything new. So answering kapputnik: sometimes you have to leave towers (medium building with high range of view) inside your country. Without this you will lose your potential.

Yes, thats true. But without at least one soldier (so not a 'working' military site) it makes also no sense, because the building do not reveal the fog of war.


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ypopezios
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Posted at: 2018-05-19, 13:32

Seems that only king_of_nowhere grasped the concept.

I could expand on it further. But when a discussion goes this direction:

  • That's a small change, so it's not worthy.
  • That's a big change, so it's not worthy.

Such a discussion is fundamentally sterile and thus not worthy. In any case, that thread was not meant as a suggestion (was not put in Game Suggestions subforum). I got the answer to my question, so I stop here.


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GunChleoc
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Posted at: 2018-05-22, 08:10
  • That's a small change, so it's not worthy.

Only if it involves a lot of coding for a small change, because we have to be prudent about how we spend our developer time.

  • That's a big change, so it's not worthy.

I guess I'm a bit resistant to change at the moment, because my brain is in Build 20 bug fixing mode...

Also, requests for clarification how something would work and thinking it through doesn't equal "it's not worthy". The wallet model discussion was a case in point: I asked for clarification because I didn't understand the change, and you felt accused.

Please don't take it to heart when we don't agree on every suggestion. Diverging opinions are completely normal for projects like this.

ypopezios wrote:

GunChleoc wrote:

We'd also need to differentiate between 0 soldiers (currently not occupied) and 0 soldiers (was never occupied). Otherwise, the enemy could instantly attack any finished militarysite before the player has had a change to send some soldiers there.

They should rather be identical. An empty military building should become like a never occupied finished military site (flag down, non-attackable, no territory-control, vulnerable to enemy's expansion). In other words, like it got destroyed by the player and immediately rebuilt. No need for special third state to implement or teach to players.

This will make it harder for the attacking player to conquer. At the moment, if the defending player is using a burned ground strategy, they will have to destroy and lose the building. So, it does make a difference. We could make abandoned buildings lose their military influence, but still be attackable. Abandon them at your own risk.


Busy indexing nil values

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ypopezios
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Posted at: 2018-05-22, 14:58

GunChleoc wrote:

requests for clarification how something would work and thinking it through doesn't equal "it's not worthy". The wallet model discussion was a case in point: I asked for clarification because I didn't understand the change, and you felt accused.

Please don't take it to heart when we don't agree on every suggestion. Diverging opinions are completely normal for projects like this.

I'm not new in that kind of projects. If I wanted to be pedantic, I would note that now I'm again accused, this time that I take things to heart and that I treat clarification questions as accusations... As I said the other time, I've no problem with accusations, as long as they are fair. Asking for clarifications is done with questions, not with statements. Those statements reveal some lack of understanding (so maybe an indirect cry for clarifications), but they also reveal a general willingness to close a topic as soon as possible (thus saving time in doing that).

GunChleoc wrote:

we have to be prudent about how we spend our developer time.

I guess I'm a bit resistant to change at the moment

Nobody in this thread asked anyone to spend any time (or to spend it any time soon). My point is that, whether a change is worthy should be irrelevant to its size, and also irrelevant to its difficulties and its chances to ever take place. But people's resistance in this place is so big, that even the smell of a change triggers it... Someone could read that as an insult, but maybe it's useful to be aware of an outsider's perspective from time to time. Anyway, I understand that I should not expect for that mentality to change, and that I should adapt myself instead. I'll do it, but it may take me some time.


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GunChleoc
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Posted at: 2018-05-23, 08:08

I wrote "Please do not take it to heart" and you read what I would have meant if I had written "You are taking it to heart". I wrote this to try to encourage you and not to accuse you, but you understood the exact opposite of what I way trying to say. Looks like we don't have a snowball's chance in hell on communicating on this, because we are not speaking the same language at all.

I am out of ideas on how to solve our communication problem face-sad.png


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kaputtnik
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Posted at: 2018-05-23, 08:36

Please leave personal problems (like communication problems) out of the Forums and use PMs for that.

Thanks face-smile.png


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ypopezios
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Posted at: 2018-05-24, 01:20

GunChleoc wrote:

Looks like we don't have a snowball's chance in hell on communicating on this, because we are not speaking the same language at all.

That's a given. With all its shortcomings, C++ can be a better language than English...

GunChleoc wrote:

I am out of ideas on how to solve our communication problem face-sad.png

Still that kind of problems cannot be solved in coding terms either. Time can solve such problems though, as long as good will doesn't get lost.

Edited: 2018-05-24, 01:22

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