Topic: Shipped maps overhaul

DragonAtma wrote:

It's usually better to balance an unbalanced map than to drop it.

In my opinion, it is even better to document the balance (which slots are in handicap and why (like "yellow slot practically unplayable with Atlanteans", or whatever the issue is)

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I've never played Volcanic winter, but it looks nice I think we should

1. tag it as imbalanced
2. add a hint like "Blue player has lesser space than red player"

Are you fine with this suggestion?

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

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it's red player that has less space.

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Well, you can always test it the way I do -- run it on multiplayer, Endless Game (no fog)( two CPU players, both set to Fortified Village. It'll take a bit of time for the game to finish (maybe an hour or two IRL, if you run it at 5x speed the way I often do), but nothing prevents you form putting it in the background and doing other stuff while blue and red squabble -- especially since your other stuff can be windowed (and, thus, let you see widelands' minimap and chart).

As for "who has less space?" that depends on where thwe two forces meet. The big river can't be crossed, so red has the west, blue has the east, and the disputed area wqill be the souyth, between the big river's two sources. That said, red's path down the west side of the map is awfully skinny. While the AI may not block itself off from expansion, I imagine it'll slow down red's progress. Blue, meanwhile, has a fairly wide path down the east side of the island.

In any case, graphically this is a nice-looking map; I should try creating something similar, especially since most of my previous maps were symmetrical maps designed for testing and total equality.

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Hello. First of all, I am only one of those playing occasionally, and checking the website once every 2,3-6 months. Yes, it means that I will probably not read answers to this, so I will try to be as understandable as I can, with as objective as possible arguments. Might be a long post, still can't know (writing while thinking).

First of all, I have read the whole discussion. Second, I do play to widelands since ages... can't say how many years (I would not be surprised if it is something more than 7 years, but, from time to time, not often), but as for settlers, it is not a game I play often. So, about that topic. If I understand correctly, you seems to search which maps to add to the official package, which ones to remove, and which ones to update. This message might seems to ressemble

My opinion here, as a (very) casual wideland player, is that you could decide it according to the «balance» between several axes:

• general playability, or AI playability 0. Some mods are not playable on many maps. They are just, impossible to win (at least, without an hour minimum of boring conquer&refactor). Typically, mods where you need to control a certain % of the whole map can not be done when the map is filled more than 30% with water. Ok, they can: you can kill all ennemies, always, or control more than half of the water area, that nobody can claim. Suggestion: calculate the maximum controlled area, and use 50% of this one. Note that AIs will suck, because they probably won't build undefended castles with only one basic soldier just for territory. Another idea would be to be able to regulate the percentage of the surface to conquer to win, and the time to hold it, by the starting menu (but then, hints would still be useful to keep the game finishable).
• AI playability, 1st. Like someone else said, widelands AI is not smart. I know that building AIs is a hard task, so no blame here. The main problem is that AI usually builds a random structure. Castle density percentage ( over houses and middle buildings) might give some rough AI playability level to the player. But, I have some suggestions to improve it, which can be hard or easy to implement depending on the arch of the soft (and that I might think easy depending on my own lack of skill in AIs programming!). For example, allow players (all players, not only humans which know from experience, but AIs and first time players) to know what they can build in a larger range than their line of sight (I was near to write frontiers, but some actually strategies imply to use «extend fast and quickly retreat» in single-player, to block AI... which might, or not, be desired). And when this would be done, for AI, preserve the higher value places: typically, AIs tend to build useless things on ports slots, which makes AIs unable to seafare. It also might help AIs to build farms and alike in smarter places. Anyway, maps that AI can't play or where it will be easy to play are not interesting for players like me. Eventually, Ais that refactor their inner industry to optimize (this sounds really hard) rarest places depending on their safety (nearby military power weighted against enemy probably military power in the same area... well, you got the idea(, but it's probably hard to keep the game resource efficient, given the troops moves and the constant refactoring idea) ).
• AI playability, 2nd. AI is only able to try to conquer. It does not seems to be able to create great forests, or stack tons of high value resources. For forests, it won't even try, it is only able to block itself with those. When it comes for stacking resources, it will spend all of those into trained soldiers, which does not seems to be in the count (only stuff into warehouses are used, am I right?). No idea at all about how this could be improved, maybe, for "gnome des bois" (where you need to have trees on territory) compare against enemy stats regularly to stop woodcutters (or fill frontiers with people adding trees?)? But then, how could the AI could still control the trees density? Hard problem, again. This might be linked to AI building everywhere without regard about the rareness of the spot (see AIs playability 1.) Instead of reserving spot, a better, but by far harder to code, idea would be to allow AIs to focus buildings according to the space they generate or need... ( really, reeeeallly hard to do, and I probably under-estimate it).
• AI playability, 3rd. AI difficulty is very hard to guess, and in balanced games, there is no hint about the favored side. I would second the idea to say what are the more advantaged sides, with a note (say, between 1 and 10, which, depending on the power you can use, might be calculated by single AIs fights. This might even say which «AI personality» is better for which map? Hard.) for the AI on every side. But even if it is hard to implement, it would be better if AIs would be at least nice to fight (not ending up into stalling), so I would say that imbalances favoring the AI are a requirement: the player only needs to know which side to play to have the higher (or the lower, depending on his level) difficulty
• what about multiplayer? I can't say, I have never seen any multiplayer games, and so, knowing how long are widelands games (which is nice, I like the side «long game against enemy») I am not really willingful to try. No way to imagine how a that long game could be played in multiplayer across the world. Just to say it, I am... well, was at least, a frequent long-game player on wesnoth multiplayer games (stopped because of too many random for my taste). What made me playing long games (night-long ones, sometimes) were: 1) I was able to take a look at multiplayer games before; 2) I was able to play fast games 3) survivor mods (very hard, when not impossible, to finish) sometime during a full night. Widelands might earn benefits for it's multiplayer side to have observers and fast games (typically for wesnoth, Issar's cross is not very interesting, but a nice way to start multiplayer fights).

I do not mean to insult anyone here, and certainly not people building that game that I know and occasionally (but still) follow since all those years. Those are just thoughts, that I thought might have their place on this particular thread (about that: 1) keep up the good work and 2) it is very nice to have some recent forums thread s on a side note from the main page). I hope you might find ideas from this, and improve once again that nice game.

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