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Topic: Frisian Balancing

WorldSavior
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Posted at: 2018-10-02, 23:30

GunChleoc wrote:

New merge request for WorldSavior's changes: https://code.launchpad.net/~widelands-dev/widelands/frisian_balancing_worldsavior_201809/+merge/355907

Thanks

Nordfriese wrote: I´m fine with the changes to training camp and tavern. Having the aqua farm consume just 1 water is illogical, because the water is needed to fill a pond. It should be at least 2 water per cycle.

There is no reason why this is illogical. If one fish costs 3 water it's somehow just too much, and if it costs 2 water it's probably too much as well.

I am very unhappy about the experience changes, since large experience demands are part of the tribe´s character.

And I am unhappy about the fact that Frisians are still too disadvantaged and about the fact that you don't tell how they could be not disadvantaged - especially when large experience demands are still existing. Isn't it enough that there are many experience demands?

Just 10 XP for the brewer?!? That´s much to few,

Why? It's like with barbarians

and he must need more XP than the baker.

Why?

Perhaps lowering the baker from 16 to 13 (that´s already very few!)

Lowering experience of the baker is a good idea. My newest playtesting showed that those 16 points are putting Frisians even more into trouble. By the way, I think that honey bread takes too much bake-time. the bake-time of bread is okay because Frisians need no mill, but honey bread is much slower.

and the brewer from 19 to 15? No more than that please. And the decrease for the blacksmith is far too great as well. Perhaps to 18 or even 17, but not more.

Barbarian smiths need only 12 exp. If smith-exp of frisians stays high, they need more time for training their first supersoldier, which could be even more problematic because it looks like Frisians are too slow at training their first group of them.

By the way: I played some games with Frisians recently and they still seem to be too weak in autocrat matches. So maybe we should continuing at making them a bit stronger?


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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2018-10-03, 14:21

WorldSavior wrote:

Nordfriese wrote: I´m fine with the changes to training camp and tavern.

@ Nordfriese: i would be interested in your opinion about the change to the training arena (attack training now costs only 1 mead instead of two) for me this seems to be a reasonable change

Having the aqua farm consume just 1 water is illogical, because the water is needed to fill a pond. It should be at least 2 water per cycle.

There is no reason why this is illogical. If one fish costs 3 water it's somehow just too much, and if it costs 2 water it's probably too much as well.

I don't consider this an improtant change to reduce the water for breeding fish, as on the majority of maps aqua farms are required only after a couple of hours when normal fish has all been caught. At this stage water is cheap as the build costs for wells are cheap. So although aqua farms lead to a high water demand this has been manageable quite well (I have to admit that I forgot this sometimes and run into water shortage but that was just an error of my gameplay). So from my side consuming 2 water might be a good compromise

I am very unhappy about the experience changes, since large experience demands are part of the tribe´s character.

And I am unhappy about the fact that Frisians are still too disadvantaged and about the fact that you don't tell how they could be not disadvantaged - especially when large experience demands are still existing. Isn't it enough that there are many experience demands?

In my opinion everybody has the right to be unhappy without telling a direct alternative. As Nordfriese has made his point clear that this is a main part of the frisian character as he designed it I have tried and will continue to do so to respect this as far as possible, especially as he has already signaled to be open for compromises. So from my point of view we should lower the necessary experience in very slow steps and see if there can't be another solution. BTW Frisians just have one experienced worker in addition to the barbarians and we added one of them to the starting conditions (master seamstress). So in my point of view we don't have so many experience demands in addition.

Just 10 XP for the brewer?!? That´s much to few,

Why? It's like with barbarians

But as already told frisians are different to the barbarians, and they should be imho. Furthermore with the change to the training arena mentinoned above we have enough mead (5) in starting conditions (at least for HQ) to fully train 1 supersoldier, so the pressure for having faster mead production should have been lowered.

and he must need more XP than the baker.

Why?

Perhaps lowering the baker from 16 to 13 (that´s already very few!)

Lowering experience of the baker is a good idea. My newest playtesting showed that those 16 points are putting Frisians even more into trouble. By the way, I think that honey bread takes too much bake-time. the bake-time of bread is okay because Frisians need no mill, but honey bread is much slower.

Perhaps it would be helpful to have some replays ore at least some benchmarks of your tests to see where the trouble is located and to get a better understanding of your argument.

and the brewer from 19 to 15? No more than that please. And the decrease for the blacksmith is far too great as well. Perhaps to 18 or even 17, but not more.

Barbarian smiths need only 12 exp. If smith-exp of frisians stays high, they need more time for training their first supersoldier, which could be even more problematic because it looks like Frisians are too slow at training their first group of them.

I can see the problem with the smith. For frisians the expereinced smith is more crucial than for other tribes as you need the weapons of an experienced smith for the basic training as well. (at least for the second and third attack upgrade). But we should try to find out what might be a good compromise for this tribe to improve his chances in battle, while definitly keeping his character.

By the way: I played some games with Frisians recently and they still seem to be too weak in autocrat matches. So maybe we should continuing at making them a bit stronger?

Weak with regard to which atttribute? At which level? My experience with the new values is that they are more unpredictable than other tribes. For example while testing the 2nd frisian scenario I had to fight empire and barbarian heroes. One time the frisian hero won the fight with almost no harm done to him and the next time he lost with the enemy keeping almost half of his life points. So although this levels out in a large number of fights (with einsteins program they still are the most volatile tribe regarding the results of 10000 fights) in a particular situation this might be a big problem. Generally I have made the experience that the frisians should keep a more defensive strategy in contact with the enemy to ease this problem a bit.


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Nordfriese
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Posted at: 2018-10-03, 14:48

hessenfarmer wrote:

WorldSavior wrote:

Nordfriese wrote:

I´m fine with the changes to training camp and tavern.

@ Nordfriese: i would be interested in your opinion about the change to the training arena (attack training now costs only 1 mead instead of two) for me this seems to be a reasonable change

The change to the training arena is also fine for me. It should now store only 6 mead though, like for all other foods, as it needs less of it now.

Just 10 XP for the brewer?!? That´s much to few,

Why? It's like with barbarians

True. Barbarians need so little experience that it leads the whole concept ad absurdum.

and he must need more XP than the baker.

Why?

  • Advanced Bakers are needed also for mining (meals require honeybread), advanced brewers are needed only for advanced soldier training; therefore master bakers should be cheaper than master brewers

  • The brewery is cheaper than the bakery, so it´s worker should be costlier to train as a recompense

Barbarian smiths need only 12 exp. If smith-exp of frisians stays high, they need more time for training their first supersoldier, which could be even more problematic because it looks like Frisians are too slow at training their first group of them.

I can see the problem with the smith. For frisians the expereinced smith is more crucial than for other tribes as you need the weapons of an experienced smith for the basic training as well. (at least for the second and third attack upgrade). But we should try to find out what might be a good compromise for this tribe to improve his chances in battle, while definitly keeping his character.

We could use the same compromise as for the master seamstress: Leave the XP as it is and add yet another experienced worker to the starting conditions…


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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2018-10-03, 16:05

Nordfriese wrote:

hessenfarmer wrote:

WorldSavior wrote:

Nordfriese wrote:

I´m fine with the changes to training camp and tavern.

@ Nordfriese: i would be interested in your opinion about the change to the training arena (attack training now costs only 1 mead instead of two) for me this seems to be a reasonable change

The change to the training arena is also fine for me. It should now store only 6 mead though, like for all other foods, as it needs less of it now.

ok so these things seem to be agreed. Perhaps we can have them already in b20 if our chieftain agrees.

Just 10 XP for the brewer?!? That´s much to few,

Why? It's like with barbarians

True. Barbarians need so little experience that it leads the whole concept ad absurdum.

and he must need more XP than the baker.

Why?

  • Advanced Bakers are needed also for mining (meals require honeybread), advanced brewers are needed only for advanced soldier training; therefore master bakers should be cheaper than master brewers

  • The brewery is cheaper than the bakery, so it´s worker should be costlier to train as a recompense

Barbarian smiths need only 12 exp. If smith-exp of frisians stays high, they need more time for training their first supersoldier, which could be even more problematic because it looks like Frisians are too slow at training their first group of them.

I can see the problem with the smith. For frisians the expereinced smith is more crucial than for other tribes as you need the weapons of an experienced smith for the basic training as well. (at least for the second and third attack upgrade). But we should try to find out what might be a good compromise for this tribe to improve his chances in battle, while definitly keeping his character.

We could use the same compromise as for the master seamstress: Leave the XP as it is and add yet another experienced worker to the starting conditions…

But that would contradict the concept of needed experience too. Wouldn't it? I could agree on that for b20 as a quick workaround but imho this doesn't seem to be the best solution.

What I really don't know is how far we are still away from the other tribes. So I will use the bank holiday for some further testing.


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Nordfriese
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Posted at: 2018-10-03, 17:11

We could use the same compromise as for the master seamstress: Leave the XP as it is and add yet another experienced worker to the starting conditions…

But that would contradict the concept of needed experience too. Wouldn't it? I could agree on that for b20 as a quick workaround but imho this doesn't seem to be the best solution.

Yes, it would, But not as much as lowering the experience IMHO. With just 1 master blacksmith, you´ll get an easier start and can start training your first soldier much faster. But that´ll help you nothing later in the game, when you need more experienced workers for more enhanced buildings. So this solution applies mainly to the start of the game, and not the entire game, as lower XP demands would.

And it is of course suboptimal. What I could imagine as a long-term solution is that – for all tribes that need experience – all XP levels are multiplied with 3-5, and there is for the HQ starting condition (which appears to be the "default" regarding balancing) a well-balanced multiplayer variant that has experienced workers to compensate this, and there is a (not necessarily balanced) singleplayer variant (could also be called "HQ (challenging)") with fewer wares&workers, and no experienced workers, for more interesting gameplay.


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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2018-10-03, 18:51

Ok with current trunk I did a test round on "the far north". I took me 80 minutes for the first supersoldier. But maybe this can achieved a little faster. The biggest problem was indeed the blacksmith. I'll keep testing.


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GunChleoc
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Posted at: 2018-10-04, 09:15

I have updated the branch.

I am OK with adding balancing changes to the Frisians until the last minute. It shouldn't break the engine, and it'S still early days for the tribe.

Collectors win condition update: https://code.launchpad.net/~widelands-dev/widelands/worldsavior-frisians-collectors-fix/+merge/356118

Edited: 2018-10-04, 09:25

Busy indexing nil values

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WorldSavior
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Posted at: 2018-10-04, 23:48

hessenfarmer wrote:

WorldSavior wrote:

Having the aqua farm consume just 1 water is illogical, because the water is needed to fill a pond. It should be at least 2 water per cycle.

There is no reason why this is illogical. If one fish costs 3 water it's somehow just too much, and if it costs 2 water it's probably too much as well.

I don't consider this an improtant change to reduce the water for breeding fish, as on the majority of maps aqua farms are required only after a couple of hours when normal fish has all been caught.

It's also possible that there is almost no fish...

At this stage water is cheap as the build costs for wells are cheap. So although aqua farms lead to a high water demand this has been manageable quite well (I have to admit that I forgot this sometimes and run into water shortage but that was just an error of my gameplay). So from my side consuming 2 water might be a good compromise

Frisians still need advantages, so I think that it would be fair if one fish costs not two water, but one.

I am very unhappy about the experience changes, since large experience demands are part of the tribe´s character.

And I am unhappy about the fact that Frisians are still too disadvantaged and about the fact that you don't tell how they could be not disadvantaged - especially when large experience demands are still existing. Isn't it enough that there are many experience demands?

In my opinion everybody has the right to be unhappy without telling a direct alternative. As Nordfriese has made his point clear that this is a main part of the frisian character as he designed it I have tried and will continue to do so to respect this as far as possible, especially as he has already signaled to be open for compromises. So from my point of view we should lower the necessary experience in very slow steps and see if there can't be another solution. BTW Frisians just have one experienced worker in addition to the barbarians and we added one of them to the starting conditions (master seamstress). So in my point of view we don't have so many experience demands in addition.

Frisians need experienced workers for mines, breweries, smithies, bakeries and tailor shops. Barbarians need them only for mines, breweries and smithies. Barbarian level-2-mines can be skipped face-wink.png

Just 10 XP for the brewer?!? That´s much to few,

Why? It's like with barbarians

But as already told frisians are different to the barbarians, and they should be imho.

Yes, I just mention it because of the balancing reasons.

Furthermore with the change to the training arena mentinoned above we have enough mead (5) in starting conditions (at least for HQ) to fully train 1 supersoldier, so the pressure for having faster mead production should have been lowered.

That's true, but actually it's difficult to train the second Frisian supersoldier....

and he must need more XP than the baker.

Why?

Perhaps lowering the baker from 16 to 13 (that´s already very few!)

Lowering experience of the baker is a good idea. My newest playtesting showed that those 16 points are putting Frisians even more into trouble. By the way, I think that honey bread takes too much bake-time. the bake-time of bread is okay because Frisians need no mill, but honey bread is much slower.

Perhaps it would be helpful to have some replays ore at least some benchmarks of your tests to see where the trouble is located and to get a better understanding of your argument.

Replays are broken. Which benchmark do you mean? If you want, we can play some matches against each other?

By the way: I played some games with Frisians recently and they still seem to be too weak in autocrat matches. So maybe we should continuing at making them a bit stronger?

Weak with regard to which atttribute?

For example weak at training fast their first group of supersoldiers. And berry farmers plant often the wrong types which are not growing well, so they are not that efficient. And if you want to play with deep mines, there is some trouble because many master bakers are needed.

At which level?

At the economical one

Nordfriese wrote:

hessenfarmer wrote:

WorldSavior wrote:

Nordfriese wrote: Just 10 XP for the brewer?!? That´s much to few,

Why? It's like with barbarians

True. Barbarians need so little experience that it leads the whole concept ad absurdum.

I don't think so. One still has to manage the workers because they need experience...

and he must need more XP than the baker.

Why?

  • Advanced Bakers are needed also for mining (meals require honeybread), advanced brewers are needed only for advanced soldier training; therefore master bakers should be cheaper than master brewers

Not necessarily

  • The brewery is cheaper than the bakery, so it´s worker should be costlier to train as a recompense

It's already slower than the bakery.

hessenfarmer wrote:

Nordfriese wrote:

hessenfarmer wrote:

WorldSavior wrote:

Nordfriese wrote:

I´m fine with the changes to training camp and tavern.

@ Nordfriese: i would be interested in your opinion about the change to the training arena (attack training now costs only 1 mead instead of two) for me this seems to be a reasonable change

The change to the training arena is also fine for me. It should now store only 6 mead though, like for all other foods, as it needs less of it now.

ok so these things seem to be agreed. Perhaps we can have them already in b20 if our chieftain agrees.

Actually it is no problem if the arena can store 8 mead. It's not worth to bother about that.

Nordfriese wrote:

We could use the same compromise as for the master seamstress: Leave the XP as it is and add yet another experienced worker to the starting conditions…

But that would contradict the concept of needed experience too. Wouldn't it? I could agree on that for b20 as a quick workaround but imho this doesn't seem to be the best solution.

Yes, it would, But not as much as lowering the experience IMHO. With just 1 master blacksmith, you´ll get an easier start and can start training your first soldier much faster. But that´ll help you nothing later in the game, when you need more experienced workers for more enhanced buildings. So this solution applies mainly to the start of the game, and not the entire game, as lower XP demands would.

It's possible that it's okay if the experience of the smith stays high if one starts with one master smith. But I didn't test that.

And it is of course suboptimal. What I could imagine as a long-term solution is that – for all tribes that need experience – all XP levels are multiplied with 3-5, and there is for the HQ starting condition (which appears to be the "default" regarding balancing) a well-balanced multiplayer variant that has experienced workers to compensate this, and there is a (not necessarily balanced) singleplayer variant (could also be called "HQ (challenging)") with fewer wares&workers, and no experienced workers, for more interesting gameplay.

I don't think that this is a good idea. High experience requirements can also be a problem in the late game.


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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2018-10-06, 23:21

WorldSavior wrote:

I don't consider this an improtant change to reduce the water for breeding fish, as on the majority of maps aqua farms are required only after a couple of hours when normal fish has all been caught.

It's also possible that there is almost no fish...

You are right, but in this case all other tribes except barbarians are somewhat disadvantaged as well. Most comparable imho in this situation is the empire. And consuming 2 water and 1 fruit is a fair match for the piggeries cause the aqua farm is slightly faster if build properly.

At this stage water is cheap as the build costs for wells are cheap. So although aqua farms lead to a high water demand this has been manageable quite well (I have to admit that I forgot this sometimes and run into water shortage but that was just an error of my gameplay). So from my side consuming 2 water might be a good compromise

Frisians still need advantages

Agreed but this advantage would only really count on maps with few fish. Although I am open for discussions how to give them an advantage in a particular sector of the eonomy to compensate for for other disadvantages. This could probably allow us to accept some disadvantages in other parts (e.g. reaching the first supersoldier or similar).

Frisians need experienced workers for mines, breweries, smithies, bakeries and tailor shops. Barbarians need them only for mines, breweries and smithies. Barbarian level-2-mines can be skipped face-wink.png

That is true but you need 2 experienced workers in every level 3 mine from which one needs to be at least a chief and the other a master. So you can make good use of level 2 miner although you don't need the level 2 mine.
But this leads me to another idea that might be worth discussing. Perhaps we could lower the individual experience somewhat more if we introduce more needs for experience in the tribe. This could allow for faster upgrades while still having a tribe that needs lots of experience and so keep its character. @ Nordfriese what do you think about this?

Perhaps it would be helpful to have some replays ore at least some benchmarks of your tests to see where the trouble is located and to get a better understanding of your argument.

Replays are broken. Which benchmark do you mean? If you want, we can play some matches against each other?

I was not aware of the replays beeing broken. Playing a match against you would only lead to frustration on my side, and I am already frustrated enough by my gameplay. Reason is, I was not able to be significantly faster in training my first soldier on "the far north" with or without your initial changes. So I can't evaluate whether a change is necessary, what are its effects and how far we are from the goal.
For this I had hoped to get some information aboiut the effect of a change from some replays. A valuable Benchmark would be for example: if you do playtests just note your fastest time for a frisian supersoldier on a specific map and compare this with other tribes. Or take the time to achieve e.g. a military power of 500. And so on. Every value that can be compared with other tribes could help.
I will keep trying to see an effect or at least find out what I am doing wrong.

By the way: I played some games with Frisians recently and they still seem to be too weak in autocrat matches. So maybe we should continuing at making them a bit stronger?

Weak with regard to which atttribute?

For example weak at training fast their first group of supersoldiers. And berry farmers plant often the wrong types which are not growing well, so they are not that efficient. And if you want to play with deep mines, there is some trouble because many master bakers are needed.

At which level?

At the economical one

Ok I thought you meant the strength og the soldiers in battle. Thanks for the clarification.

Nordfriese wrote:

hessenfarmer wrote:

WorldSavior wrote:

Nordfriese wrote: Just 10 XP for the brewer?!? That´s much to few,

Why? It's like with barbarians

True. Barbarians need so little experience that it leads the whole concept ad absurdum.

I don't think so. One still has to manage the workers because they need experience...

and he must need more XP than the baker.

Why?

  • Advanced Bakers are needed also for mining (meals require honeybread), advanced brewers are needed only for advanced soldier training; therefore master bakers should be cheaper than master brewers

Not necessarily

  • The brewery is cheaper than the bakery, so it´s worker should be costlier to train as a recompense

It's already slower than the bakery.

hessenfarmer wrote:

Nordfriese wrote:

hessenfarmer wrote:

WorldSavior wrote:

Nordfriese wrote:

I´m fine with the changes to training camp and tavern.

@ Nordfriese: i would be interested in your opinion about the change to the training arena (attack training now costs only 1 mead instead of two) for me this seems to be a reasonable change

The change to the training arena is also fine for me. It should now store only 6 mead though, like for all other foods, as it needs less of it now.

ok so these things seem to be agreed. Perhaps we can have them already in b20 if our chieftain agrees.

Actually it is no problem if the arena can store 8 mead. It's not worth to bother about that.

Nordfriese wrote:

We could use the same compromise as for the master seamstress: Leave the XP as it is and add yet another experienced worker to the starting conditions…

But that would contradict the concept of needed experience too. Wouldn't it? I could agree on that for b20 as a quick workaround but imho this doesn't seem to be the best solution.

Yes, it would, But not as much as lowering the experience IMHO. With just 1 master blacksmith, you´ll get an easier start and can start training your first soldier much faster. But that´ll help you nothing later in the game, when you need more experienced workers for more enhanced buildings. So this solution applies mainly to the start of the game, and not the entire game, as lower XP demands would.

It's possible that it's okay if the experience of the smith stays high if one starts with one master smith. But I didn't test that.

And it is of course suboptimal. What I could imagine as a long-term solution is that – for all tribes that need experience – all XP levels are multiplied with 3-5, and there is for the HQ starting condition (which appears to be the "default" regarding balancing) a well-balanced multiplayer variant that has experienced workers to compensate this, and there is a (not necessarily balanced) singleplayer variant (could also be called "HQ (challenging)") with fewer wares&workers, and no experienced workers, for more interesting gameplay.

I don't think that this is a good idea. High experience requirements can also be a problem in the late game.

I am not a big fan of fixing things in the starting conditions. But this has the advantage that you can set different difficulty by different starting conditions. But as there is no "default" starting condition for balancing the tribe should have a fair chance in every normal starting condition. Of course this is a different story for "hardcore" starting conditions.


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WorldSavior
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Posted at: 2018-10-10, 00:54

hessenfarmer wrote:

A valuable Benchmark would be for example: if you do playtests just note your fastest time for a frisian supersoldier on a specific map and compare this with other tribes.

The last time I did this (on a map where everything is well reachable, crater i guess) I played with my values and it took more time than with atlanteans, but less than with barbarians. I've noticed that experience of the smiths has been increased again despite my suggestion, so I don't know if Frisians can still reach the first supersoldier at the same speed, but I guess that they are still not disadvantaged there. Conclusion: All tribes are more or less balanced if it's about reaching the first supersoldier on a map where everything is easy to reach.

Or take the time to achieve e.g. a military power of 500.

I didn't do that yet (no motivation), and this is probably only meaningful if one recruits mainly supersoldiers.

By the way: I played some games with Frisians recently and they still seem to be too weak in autocrat matches. So maybe we should continuing at making them a bit stronger?

Weak with regard to which atttribute?

For example weak at training fast their first group of supersoldiers. And berry farmers plant often the wrong types which are not growing well, so they are not that efficient. And if you want to play with deep mines, there is some trouble because many master bakers are needed.

At which level?

At the economical one

Ok I thought you meant the strength og the soldiers in battle. Thanks for the clarification.

You're welcome

, but the following should be changed as well

helmet_golden from 6 to 7 (same costs as a double sword) fur_garment to 2 (needs 2 fur) fur_garment_studded and fur_garment_golden should stay as they are

Oh, that's right, sorry for the mistakes. I've already provided a correction file.


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