Topic: More economic?

I also think that Widelands is too military-focused.

Currently there are three ways of playing:

• Collectors or similar where the match is over after a short time, but you only need a small fraction of the economy to win the pretty pointless objectives. Trainingsites and the like are not needed.

• Peaceful matches without such objectives, where the only goal is to have fun – but here, almost the whole economy is superfluous, because without the need to train soldiers there's basically nothing to do.

• Fighting matches that are all about destroying every enemy in your path.
  (EDIT: Some of them are very economy-focused initially, e.g. no metal challenge, but in the end it boils down to "conquer everything".)

And none of these really appeals to me at least. Casual players like me who don't care much about fighting are stuck in the dilemma that without fighting, the economic aspects also go away. (You only need a building material economy and nothing else to explore the map).

I have been thinking about making a "busyness" win condition that frequently gives the player new economic objectives like "operate 100 mines at > 90% productivity while keeping the ore target quantities below X" and allows to play indefinitely (no time limit) while not decreasing the fun… but again the problem that such objectives are ends in themselves.

What we need are more production pathways that do not lose their purpose in non-fighting games. These would not be needed in performance-centered MP matches (therefore, no balancing required as long as the existing pathways are not affected) to keep up an economic aspect for casual players in endless 1-player games. A possibility would be to have some singleplayer scenarios that add a bunch of special buildings with completely new pathways, but in the long run it would be desirable to expose such approaches to free games as well (as an option, so that MP players are not forced to change their gameplay at all, e.g. by having a singleplayer only game-setup option "Economy Ultra Mode").

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Another idea to solve the problem is rare ressources you do not find in any game

must not be that much, maybe only diamond or silver

and depending on that you have a completely different build up

• silver for a economic ware that makes production faster

• diamond for the highest upgrade for a hero

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hessenfarmer wrote:

According to our homepage it is "Widelands is a free, open source real-time strategy game" so for an RTS it is not that much military focused in comparison to other RTS games.

Looks like page was rewritten some time ago, it used to say it was an economy simulator, more about building up than tearing down.

If this is the direction WL is going then I will restart my Widerland fork and have fun my way.

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Nordfriese wrote:

Perhaps I didn't express very clearly what is the deciding factor for long-term singleplayer fun to me.

Let me compare to OpenTTD: There, I transport cargo, to gain money, to build new transport routes, to transport more cargo, to gain more money, to build new transport routes, and so in indefinitely. This is a very fundamental positive feedback loop that only ends when every last town and industry is connected to my transport imperium which would take hundreds of years gametime. No chance that this self-supplying way of playing ever ends before I decide to hit the Quit button.

Correct but OpenTTD is a completely different type of game. And after a while it does not deliver any new mechanics or objectives as well. So if you have no opponent there isn't much of a challenge in it after some time. I am playing an endless game of Patrizier2 from time to time but I am in a state where this is only fun if all other games including widelands are to challenging due to me being tired from the day.

In Widelands, the entire economy is focused on one purpose: Train soldiers. With them I can defeat the enemies – but there is a finite number of them, and once the last one is defeated, soldiers are useless. Now a strong and well-balanced economy does nothing to help me continue having long-term fun. Highly trained soldiers don't get more ores or fish. They don't contribute anything to my economic success. There is no fundamental feedback loop in Widelands except the extremely simple construction materials industry.

I think Widelands isn't about playing endless games as in its whole concept it is finite in a single game. Finite ressources, finite space, finite opponents, and so on. The only thing that is not finite theoretical is maps, scenarios and tribes. So for me long term fun can be genereated by trying to play every map with every single tribe in every single start position. By this you get endless hours as well but in different games. Once a challenge is mastered. you go to the next one. In this sense MP is only another flavour of challenge but with a different focus then in singleplayer.

BTW. how difficult it could be to manage even the small complexity of widelands economy could be seen in 2018 tournament of einstein where the aim was to produce the biggest amount of heros, stored in militarysites in a 24 Hours gametime game in a single player no opponents setup. And in this type of game heros were only needed as measurement for the economic output.

That is why I want Widelands to offer more such fundamental economic loops as found in e.g. OpenTTD: So that there can be a very complex economy, where every single building plays in, to get the economy ever growing, with economy growth resulting (by complex mechanisms which must be managed by the player) in more economy growth.

I can't remember any complex loops in OpenTTD though I haven't played it recently. Above you mentioned exactly one everlasting loop to earn money.

The Tech Tree concept suggested by the-x would be a way to achieve this: The economy grows, so I can afford to buy plans, which make the economy grow more, so I can buy more plans, and so on.

Something similar was introduced in later Settlers parts. And something at least pointing in this direction is contained in the ideas for europeans tribe by MarkMcWire. However I am afraid that this concept is finite as well and in the end it ends up again with the need to have more land, more ressources and this leads to fight the enemy.
So as long as we don't change the type of game that widelands is from RTS to economic simulation (where different tribes wouldn't make much sense) we won't find a solution that brings that kind of fun into endless games that you described.
And I wouldn't vote for such a drastic fundamental change.

This is the kind of concept that Widelands needs and lacks. In my opinion.

In my opinion it doesn't lack much, rather then more variety in terms of tribes, maps, different AI and especially scenarios.

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hessenfarmer wrote:

In Widelands, the entire economy is focused on one purpose: Train soldiers. With them I can defeat the enemies – but there is a finite number of them, and once the last one is defeated, soldiers are useless. Now a strong and well-balanced economy does nothing to help me continue having long-term fun. Highly trained soldiers don't get more ores or fish. They don't contribute anything to my economic success. There is no fundamental feedback loop in Widelands except the extremely simple construction materials industry.

I think Widelands isn't about playing endless games as in its whole concept it is finite in a single game. Finite ressources, finite space, finite opponents, and so on. The only thing that is not finite theoretical is maps, scenarios and tribes. So for me long term fun can be genereated by trying to play every map with every single tribe in every single start position. By this you get endless hours as well but in different games. Once a challenge is mastered. you go to the next one. In this sense MP is only another flavour of challenge but with a different focus then in singleplayer.

Exactly. The game is made to be finite. But resources are not really finite because mines still produce when resources are depleted, and then it is merely required to have many of them, and a strong food economy. Space is also not a real issue – on a 512×512 map it is practically impossible to really fill the whole map with buildings.

Also there are two ways of defining long-term fun. For you it mainly means the initial challenge of building up a settlement from scratch. For me it means keeping the economy running for a very very long time and ever increasing. Widelands currently only supports the first way of playing, the second one becomes pointless when the last enemy was defeated. That's what I want to change.

BTW. how difficult it could be to manage even the small complexity of widelands economy could be seen in 2018 tournament of einstein where the aim was to produce the biggest amount of heros, stored in militarysites in a 24 Hours gametime game in a single player no opponents setup. And in this type of game heros were only needed as measurement for the economic output.

That is why I want Widelands to offer more such fundamental economic loops as found in e.g. OpenTTD: So that there can be a very complex economy, where every single building plays in, to get the economy ever growing, with economy growth resulting (by complex mechanisms which must be managed by the player) in more economy growth.

I can't remember any complex loops in OpenTTD though I haven't played it recently. Above you mentioned exactly one everlasting loop to earn money.

In the base game it's the only one, but with a few clicks one can enabled the FIRS addon which introduces more industries with multiple in- and outputs, some of which can be used to boost the production of other industries. This makes for many interesting feedback loops. (e.g. Wald produces Holz, Sägewerk turns it into Schnittholz, Holzverarbeitung turns this into Ersatzteile, which boost the production of Steinbruch, which produces Stein, Kalkbrennerei turns this into Landwirtschafts-Betriebsmittel, which is accepted by the Wald to boost Holz production).
A concept that is perfectly imaginable for Widelands but not present here.

The Tech Tree concept suggested by the-x would be a way to achieve this: The economy grows, so I can afford to buy plans, which make the economy grow more, so I can buy more plans, and so on.

Something similar was introduced in later Settlers parts. And something at least pointing in this direction is contained in the ideas for europeans tribe by MarkMcWire. However I am afraid that this concept is finite as well and in the end it ends up again with the need to have more land, more ressources and this leads to fight the enemy.
So as long as we don't change the type of game that widelands is from RTS to economic simulation (where different tribes wouldn't make much sense) we won't find a solution that brings that kind of fun into endless games that you described.
And I wouldn't vote for such a drastic fundamental change.

As an additional game mode perhaps? How about a new game mode "Economy Challenge". Some buildings (trainingsites, weapon industry) are disabled there, and many other buildings are enabled only in this mode. So this would extend Widelands to provide another way of playing without affecting the other ways of playing at all. So we'd have a "high complexity" game mode with many buildings, which only makes sense for very long games for players who don't think in terms of winning or losing, and the default "balanced" modes.

EDIT: We frequently get suggestions about more complex economic pathways (e.g. using food to improve farms, making foresters having to water trees, hop for making beer…) which are always rejected because they would screw up balance and change the tribes too much. Such a mode would allow us to implement all such suggestions and make the suggesting players happy.

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