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Topic: More economic?

ilguido

Joined: 2009-03-04, 17:19
Posts: 22
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Pry about Widelands
Posted at: 2020-05-05, 22:05

king_of_nowhere wrote: then again, we can't make big difference between the various economies, because we have very different maps.

we have very fast maps like crater, where you make contact with your enemy immediately. a tribe that is too strong early would win crater automatically. and there are slow maps like the nile, where you take hours to even make contact with an enemy; a tribe with a late game economy would dominate there.

so, differences between tribes are there, but they can't be too great, least some tribes become unplayable on some maps.

I think that the game should emphasize them instead. The trick would be resource management: more complex societies should be critically dependent on some limited resources for their complexity, so if the Barbarians can get a very large empire early on and then wear out the inevitable Atlanteans come back, they should find themselves in a good position in a late game with low iron, coal etc. For example, is water a limited resource? I think it should be.


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hessenfarmer
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Joined: 2014-12-11, 23:16
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Location: Bavaria
Posted at: 2020-05-05, 22:19

ilguido wrote:

king_of_nowhere wrote: then again, we can't make big difference between the various economies, because we have very different maps.

we have very fast maps like crater, where you make contact with your enemy immediately. a tribe that is too strong early would win crater automatically. and there are slow maps like the nile, where you take hours to even make contact with an enemy; a tribe with a late game economy would dominate there.

so, differences between tribes are there, but they can't be too great, least some tribes become unplayable on some maps.

I think that the game should emphasize them instead. The trick would be resource management: more complex societies should be critically dependent on some limited resources for their complexity, so if the Barbarians can get a very large empire early on and then wear out the inevitable Atlanteans come back, they should find themselves in a good position in a late game with low iron, coal etc.

The point of King of nowhere was that there isn't any late game in about 25% of our maps. They are over after an hour of playtime if played against any skilled player, even if 2 of them are playing a game. so we can't be to different. It is already the case that e.g for crater you simply can't choose anything else then atlanteans. Som the aim is to make another choice at least thinkable.

For example, is water a limited resource? I think it should be.

I made a proposal to implement this some time ago. Although I am still appealed by this there were a lot of good arguments against it.


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ilguido

Joined: 2009-03-04, 17:19
Posts: 22
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Pry about Widelands
Posted at: 2020-05-05, 22:44

hessenfarmer wrote:

For example, is water a limited resource? I think it should be.

I made a proposal to implement this some time ago. Although I am still appealed by this there were a lot of good arguments against it.

My point is that complex economies should be able to produce more at the cost of consuming more. Natural resources like trees or water should be naturally replenished, but the Atlanteans, for example, should exploit those resources at a rate much faster than the natural replenishment rate, so risking to ruin their economy if they are not quick enough to take out their enemies when they are in a winning position.

Edited: 2020-05-05, 22:45

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niektory
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Joined: 2019-06-03, 20:06
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Posted at: 2020-05-05, 23:26

king_of_nowhere wrote:

last year tournament, me against the-x on ice wars is a good one. i can't think of others.

I can't find that one...


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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2020-05-06, 08:23

niektory wrote:

king_of_nowhere wrote:

last year tournament, me against the-x on ice wars is a good one. i can't think of others.

I can't find that one...

Seems like memory is fading some times. Last years schedule was round 5 Kon- Mars on Ice wars face-wink.png Don't know if he meant this game though. But you can try https://www.widelands.org/forum/post/29945/


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kaputtnik
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Joined: 2013-02-18, 20:48
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Posted at: 2020-05-06, 09:24

huh, what have i done? So many posts and thoughts... face-smile.png

Probably the easiest thing to implement is the idea of a more detailed won dialog (last paragraph). I like this idea very much, but it might be difficult to get a clue which values to show there.
In the same post the idea of specialized workers was made. I think this is also a good idea, but without needing more (spezialized) tools. What about giving some basic workers some kind of experience? E.g. a woodcutter gains experience after cutting 100 trees, resulting in slightly more speedup in woodcutting. New players shouldn't be affected by this, but very experienced players can use this to speed up woodcutting. No idea if this will have any effect in the gameplay though face-grin.png

I am not convinced about implementing a tech tree. This feels like replicating other games and would probably change widelands too much.

An add-on system is a nice idea, although i think: There are not many people contributing to the game right now. I wouldn't estimate much more contributes if an add-on system will be implemented.

In general i agree to all posts from hessenfarmer and king_of_nowhere.


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

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JanO
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Joined: 2015-08-02, 11:56
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Posted at: 2020-05-06, 17:19

I like Nordriese's view most face-wink.png

Can we make a list for all the suggestions, that is a little bit more handy than all those long texts? For example to put it into the first post?

  • Experience to (basic) workers
  • Tech-tree
  • Maintenance costs
  • slower fights, adjust movement speed
  • more stats at least for the end-of-game-window
  • more complexity by more wares and pathways
  • trading (under construction)
  • more economic win conditions (e.g. based on productivity stats)
  • more starting conditions
  • mods

May I add two more own points:

  • a bit like in age of empires, a building called "wonder". Extremely expensive (like material equivalent to many many heroes), attackable from any point of the map and brings victory once finished. Maybe as an upgrade for headquarters.
  • Limited capacity of warehouses

If I forgot something, please add it. I just wrote them down from memory without reading the whole thread a third time.


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hessenfarmer
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Joined: 2014-12-11, 23:16
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Posted at: 2020-05-06, 17:32

In all my arguments for not changing the game much I forgot one elemental one:
As soon as there is a new feature it won't take long for somebody complaining that the AI can't handle this. As we already struggle to bring the Ai into shape (it can't handle waterways, and it will not handle amazons treetop sentries I fear) we need to consider that every new feature would need at least a training cycle of the AI and most probably some major codework as well.
So for me the way is rather use the current mechanics and implement more variety by having new tribes, Win conditions, Starting conditions, maps, Scenarios and so on.
Imho this would add more long term fun and is much cheaper in terms of work required. Especailly on the AI side.


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ilguido

Joined: 2009-03-04, 17:19
Posts: 22
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Pry about Widelands
Posted at: 2020-05-06, 20:37

I think that more than having new features the game needs to refine the old one. In my opinion refining is better than adding.

For example, balancing the old tribes, because I think that Atlanteans are a bit too unbalanced and out of focus. They are supposedly the advanced, slow-burner faction, but they are actually the stronger starter among Barbarians, Empire and Atlantis. I gave a look at their respective basic (small) military buildings and here it is the list: (Legend: x(y) means that the building needs x wares of y types; the .0 .1 .2 .3 means that said ware is produced by nature 0 or a small 1/medium 2/large 3 building, with the complete chain of production of that ware, the ! means that the ware is consumed by some other building and is not just building material)

B. 2x60+80 2(1): 2 blackwood.2.1.0

E. 1x6+60 3(2): 1 !log.1.0 2 !planks.2.1.0

'- 2x6+80 3(3): 1 !granite.1.0 1 !log.1.0 1 !planks.2.1.0

A. 2x6+75 3(3): 1 granite.1.0 1 !log.1.0 1 !planks.2.1.0

A. 3x5+100 5(3): 2 granite.1.0 1 !log.1.0 2 !planks.2.1.0

.

So the Empire has got the worst building, quite expensive and underpowered, while the Atlanteans have by far the best selection. Their guardhouse is on par with the Barbarians' sentry and while it costs a little more, it actually uses less precious materials: granite is free stuff for the Atlanteans (they use it only for construction), log is a quite basic ware and then they only need one refined good, one plank, while the Barbarians need two refined wares, two pieces of blackwood. So, actually, the Barbarians need to develop more their economy to build their sentries than the Atlanteans have to build their guardhouses. Then the Atlanteans have the small tower which is the stronger defensive building of the lot and it is not very expensive compared to other buildings (e.g. the medium sized Empire's outpost).

With the barracks it is the same situation basically, with the Atlanteans having it easier (when they are supposed to have it harder) with, probably, the cheaper barrack.

I think that creating a more diversified and balanced selection of tribes is a priority over technology trees, wonders, trade etc.


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WorldSavior
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Joined: 2016-10-15, 04:10
Posts: 2091
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Version: Recent tournament version
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Location: Germany
Posted at: 2020-05-06, 22:49
  • Every time the game changes by new development, players can be unhappy with the changes.

So the best idea in this post is Nordfriese's Add-On-Idea, because it will not harm anyone. New winconditions or starting conditions are also not so "dangerous".

  • The mysterious Ice Wars match of KoN against the-x was not a tournament match, but a rated match after the tournament. I'm still waiting for the replay face-wink.png

  • In another recent discussion, I already made some suggestions to make Atlanteans slightly weaker on small maps.


Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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