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Topic: Troop movement questions

BoeseKaiser
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Joined: 2019-02-21, 11:03
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Pry about Widelands
Posted at: 2019-02-21, 11:22

Hi everyone,

First of all, great game. I've been playing quite a lot the last days, and I'm really enjoying it !

I've got a couple of questions regarding troops, I didn't find an answer after a quick search. I'm mostly playing barbarians right now, (build 19) but I guess it's pretty much the same for every faction.

  • I want my troops focused at the front. So I reduce the capacity of my military buildings everywhere else, set the prefered soldiers on weak, and do the opposite near the front. My question is : let's say I have enough soldiers, and I have two lines of defense, with the second a bit far from the first one (what do you mean poor building placement ?!) I obviously want my soldiers on the front to be replaced by the one in second line, but I didn't find an adequate way of doing so right now. If i reduce the capacity of my second line, I feel like the soldiers decide half at random if they go on the front, on training, or on the other side of the map to replace someone else. So I guess there is a well thought logic here, but I haven't understood it yet. Can anyone help me?

  • i have soldiers in the arena and training camp, and I need them even though they are not always fully trained. When I clic to send them away, they sometimes just come back immediately, even though I'm pretty sure I have towers that favour strong soldiers in proximity who are full with weaker soldiers. At the time, I mostly reduce capacity of my training structures to 0 when I need the soldiers, but I get the same problem as with first question, they don't always go on the front where I want them, even though there is place in my buildings.

  • I might be real dumb, but I haven't found how to send a scout around.

I also ha d questions about how the economy works in more details, but that's gonna be an other topic

Thanks to everyone in the community, that's amazing work !


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WorldSavior
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Posted at: 2019-02-21, 12:53

BoeseKaiser wrote:

I've got a couple of questions regarding troops, I didn't find an answer after a quick search. I'm mostly playing barbarians right now, (build 19) but I guess it's pretty much the same for every faction.

Yes

  • I want my troops focused at the front. So I reduce the capacity of my military buildings everywhere else, set the prefered soldiers on weak, and do the opposite near the front. My question is : let's say I have enough soldiers, and I have two lines of defense, with the second a bit far from the first one (what do you mean poor building placement ?!)

No, not poor. It can often be useful to have additional military buildings behind the front, so if you lose to many buildings at the front you have luckily a second line. It could just be a disadvantage if you cannot send your soldiers in the second line to attack because they are too far away.

I obviously want my soldiers on the front to be replaced by the one in second line, but I didn't find an adequate way of doing so right now. If i reduce the capacity of my second line, I feel like the soldiers decide half at random if they go on the front, on training, or on the other side of the map to replace someone else. So I guess there is a well thought logic here, but I haven't understood it yet. Can anyone help me?

I don't know it neither, but it looks like soldiers often prefer to go to training. Maybe this has priority...

  • i have soldiers in the arena and training camp, and I need them even though they are not always fully trained. When I clic to send them away, they sometimes just come back immediately, even though I'm pretty sure I have towers that favour strong soldiers in proximity who are full with weaker soldiers. At the time, I mostly reduce capacity of my training structures to 0 when I need the soldiers, but I get the same problem as with first question, they don't always go on the front where I want them, even though there is place in my buildings.

See above... Here it can be useful to have additional soldiers in stock. So if you kick one out of the training, he will rather not go again in that building, because a soldier from the stock will go in first.

  • I might be real dumb, but I haven't found how to send a scout around.

If you build a scout's hut and if you supply the scout with food, he will scout in random directions with a nice range.

I also ha d questions about how the economy works in more details, but that's gonna be an other topic

Just go ahead

Thanks to everyone in the community, that's amazing work !

You are welcome face-smile.png


Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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BoeseKaiser
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Pry about Widelands
Posted at: 2019-02-21, 16:25

Thanx for the infos.

No, not poor. It can often be useful to have additional military buildings behind the front, so if you lose to many buildings at the front you have luckily a second line. It could just be a disadvantage if you cannot send your soldiers in the second line to attack because they are too far away.

yeah, I still have to get used to the range of buildings and generally speaking building placement, I still waste a lot of efficienty/space. in this particular game, one of my tower was more 5th line than anything else ^^
The interactions between different contraints are really nice !

If you build a scout's hut and if you supply the scout with food, he will scout in random directions with a nice range.

How do I supply the scoot with food? just having stock in the building is enough, or do I have to do some extra action?

I also ha d questions about how the economy works in more details, but that's gonna be an other topic

Just go ahead

Will do, but I was busy doing a save tree to try and not lost after having made a couple of questionable choices face-grin.png


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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2019-02-21, 16:52

Generally speaking, you cannot control your people directly, so you have no saying on where the soldiers will go aside from the preferences.

Basic algorthm is, buildings that can house soldiers request soldiers if they are not full. If no soldiers are requested, they go to the nearest warehouse. if they are requested, they are taken from a warehouse, or made new from raw resources if soldiers are not available and there are resources.

What you describe looks like you don't have soldiers in warehouses, because if you kick soldiers out of military buildings they try to come back. Yes. the building i still requesting a new soldier if you kick the old one out, and if you don't have a new soldier... you guess it.

So, first thing you should do is reduce the number of soldiers in the training sites to 1 or 2. That way you won't have a dozen soldiers out of the action. Second is to only fill with soldiers the buildings that you really need. Concentrate yur soldiers, especially when you have few of them. Third is to try and get more soldiers, of course.


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WorldSavior
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Posted at: 2019-02-21, 17:40

BoeseKaiser wrote:

Thanx for the infos.

You're welcome

No, not poor. It can often be useful to have additional military buildings behind the front, so if you lose to many buildings at the front you have luckily a second line. It could just be a disadvantage if you cannot send your soldiers in the second line to attack because they are too far away.

yeah, I still have to get used to the range of buildings and generally speaking building placement, I still waste a lot of efficienty/space. in this particular game, one of my tower was more 5th line than anything else ^^
The interactions between different contraints are really nice !

Contraints?

If you build a scout's hut and if you supply the scout with food, he will scout in random directions with a nice range.

How do I supply the scoot with food? just having stock in the building is enough, or do I have to do some extra action?

Just having stock in the building is enough

I also ha d questions about how the economy works in more details, but that's gonna be an other topic

Just go ahead

Will do, but I was busy doing a save tree to try and not lost after having made a couple of questionable choices face-grin.png

Okay


Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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BoeseKaiser
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Pry about Widelands
Posted at: 2019-02-21, 18:15

Contraints?

ressources delivery time, space for big buildings/rangers hut, speed of expansion and number of soldiers, etc. that was more an off topic remark.

What you describe looks like you don't have soldiers in warehouses, because if you kick soldiers out of military buildings they try to come back. Yes. the building i still requesting a new soldier if you kick the old one out, and if you don't have a new soldier... you guess it.

absolutely right, in the couple of games that I played untill now, i expand much faster than i tech up to ax production. I don't know how well it could be included in the gameplay, or if it's even something the community would like, but it would be nice to have an option on training buildings like "send units to military buildings if free space y/n" and/or in the military buildings "call soldiers currently training y/n". Or anything to set priority on training or in guarding buildings.


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kaputtnik
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Posted at: 2019-02-21, 19:37

Widelands is basically a game of managing an economy, not combat face-smile.png If you want to exclude soldiers from trainingcamps, you have to set the amount of soldiers to 0 in the trainingcamps manually. Providing options you suggest will make the game much more boring, imho.


Fight simulator for Widelands:
https://wide-fighter.netlify.app/

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BoeseKaiser
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Pry about Widelands
Posted at: 2019-02-21, 20:36

@ kaputtnik : I get what you mean, and I really like that about the game. I'm really bad at combat anyways face-grin.png

Still, I think there is a case for this option and that it doesn't "cross the line" :

  • Like the option of having preferences for strong or weak soldiers, it's more a strategy option than a combat thing. you can decide to focus on defense/offence or training depending on the situation.

  • still no question of micromanagment watsohever. I mean, compared to for instance selecting the amount of soldiers you're attacking with, this proposal seems closer to the economy side.

Then again, while writing this, new ideas come to mind. I guess I'm just gonna play more and get a better understanding of the subtelties.

Edit : format

Edited: 2019-02-21, 20:54

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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2019-02-22, 00:11

BoeseKaiser wrote:

absolutely right, in the couple of games that I played untill now, i expand much faster than i tech up to ax production.

you know you can dismantle your military sites inside your borders without losing any terrain? this will allow you to recover all the soldiers. though you'll need a tower here and there because losing vision of your land is annoying. and you can still keep a citadel here and there as fallback position, but yoou don't need to have dozens of sentires all around.

or, you could make more soldiers. it's really easy with barbarians. You only need a hunter, a gamekeeper and a tavern to operate a mine. you can also avoid building a helm smith, you don't really need helmets while you are short in soldiers. Aside from that, just make more copies of hunter, gamekeeper, taver, mines.

You do have upgraded your ironworks to axe factory, right? Otherwise you won't be able to produce the axes at all.


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BoeseKaiser
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Pry about Widelands
Posted at: 2019-02-22, 00:31

you know you can dismantle your military sites inside your borders without losing any terrain?

... now I do. I actually checked that this evening and had a real facepalm moment.

You only need a hunter, a gamekeeper and a tavern to operate a mine.

... and here I was, building farms all around the place face-grin.png I thought they were making sandwiches or so and needed bread and fish/meat. I guess I should read the descriptions in more details.

That is gonna make things easier !

You do have upgraded your ironworks to axe factory, right? Otherwise you won't be able to produce the axes at all.

Yeah this one I did know. Took me a bit of time in my first game, but I figured it out.

thanx a lot face-smile.png


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