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Topic: early advanced soldier gameplay balance

ypopezios
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Posted at: 2018-10-05, 12:12

king_of_nowhere wrote:

Does that satisfy your "only at that point it becomes obvious who is making the best use of resources" condition?

It doesn't satisfy that condition, sorry. The failure of someone to capitalize on the early advantage doesn't mean that he/she shouldn't go for it. There can always be specific games that may not follow the general rule, but they remain the minority. The determination of the winner not before the late-game is an aspect missing from Widelands, and this goes back to Settlers being designed as (in @dreieck's words) "a military game with a strong focus on economy".

There is no point in recycling the same argument about supersoldiers (other people in this thread focused too much on them, but not me). Even a non-advanced soldier can decide a game, if he is available at the right time, to make the difference from a failed attack to a successful one. Cause he may be the last soldier to attack a building, kill the last exhausted defender and conquer a crucial area, and through that to set back the opponent's economy and make it lag behind for the rest of the game, no more having a chance to compete in equal terms.

It doesn't matter how complicated the game is. Cause if the players are experienced enough, all that complexity gets neutralized. And then what is left to make a difference is whatever detail (micromanagement, luck, etc.) It also doesn't matter which is the exact early advantage (supersoldier, map resource, bigger stock, etc.) Everything else being equal, this advantage can decide the game. For some players it is acceptable to play a game just to see which of them will manage to squeeze that advantage out (and maintain it long enough to win). There are high chances that they would also enjoy F1 racing (although most of its complexity is hidden from the spectators). Some other players find both of them boring.

Personally, I wouldn't be proud of "stealing" a victory by utilizing some detail of the game that my opponent wasn't aware of. I prefer the possibilities of the game to be as "transparent" to the players as they are in chess (although chess generally also suffers from the single-point-of-success issue, something apparent in its high rate of surrendering). I prefer the winner to be decided by the best strategy. If there is only one optimal strategy, then everyone will follow it, and the game will probably be won by AI, for being able to apply it with the highest precision. Widelands has enough depth to make viable more than one strategies, but it misses some design decisions that will make the military aspect less dominant. Not in the amount of buildings and the time spent in battles, but in its role in determining the winning strategy. Instead of the whole economy serving the military aspect, it should be the military aspect demonstrating the robustness of the underlying economy.


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ypopezios
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Posted at: 2018-10-05, 12:15

@einstein13

Making Widelands a non-strategy game is an option I don't consider at all, so most of the ideas in your post are not in my interest. Concerning the remaining ideas, adding complexity doesn't solve anything by itself. It has to be a well-targeted addition. And it seems that we disagree on the target.

By "single-point-of-success" we don't mean "single-victory-condition", neither "single-measurement-unit", neither "single-point-on-the-map" (they all start with "single", but they mean different things). The single-point-of-success in all the mentioned games is the point of military domination. That point can make mute every other point, and every other point serves that point. It doesn't matter if that domination refers to the whole map or to some parts of it. The points on the map can vary, but the single-point-of-success remains the same, having the potential to kill the interest early on, long before any player gets actually killed-in-game.

Risk comes in variants. I'm ashamed to admit that some of those variants have taken many hours from my life. But it finally got exhausted, after the optimal strategy became obvious. Risk certainly suffers a lot from the "single-point-of-success" issue, and the dice proved to be the most important factor in the game. It takes other players' coordination and tons of luck to "turn the tables" against a player who has early success. Game of Thrones belongs to a well-known genre of games, which I'm less ashamed of having spent many hours to. Although that genre is better than Risk, it also suffers from the "single-point-of-success" issue. Belonging to a different genre, Widelands is overall much better than both of those games, no matter it also suffers from the same issue. The thing is that Widelands has a chance to escape from that club of games, while remaining a strategy game and more fun than all of them.


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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2018-10-05, 22:29

I don't see in any way detrimental that a game can be adjudicated before its formal ending. Yes, a game between two experts is done when one get enough advantage. the more expert they are, the lesser the advantage needed. That's one way of telling they're experts. In fact, I even see it as a sign of sportmanship. By surrendering early, you acknowledge that your opponent is skilled. And you skip the boring part.

Of course, I come from chess, and that shaped my perception. In chess, not surrendering when it's clearly lost (or not accepting draw when there's clearly no way to win) is actually insulting. It means "you are such a noob, you could manage to throw this game". It also wastes everyone's time. I don't think I ever played to checkmate in a serious tournament in the last 15 years. And chess would be a perfect candidate for the single point of victory "problem", but chess games are never boring and they are uncertain to the end. Simply because when they reach the point of boredom, someone surrenders or agrees to draw.

So, chessmaster's solution to the single point of victory: don't drag it out, once it's clear who's the winner, surrender. And start a new game.

It's so natural, to me, that I cannot understand why my opponents in widelands won't surrender, or why they are baffled by my surrender. And I have a hard time processing any argument like "the game is boring because at this point it's clear who wins and yet the game goes on for hours yet". When it's clear who wins, the game is done, and why would anyone insist on playing?

P.S. on a tangent here, but my experience with risk is that whoever attacks first get ganged on by other players looking for a less-defended terrain, so mostly nobody attacks. Most games among experienced players end in a draw early on. And the point of victory is very difficult to achieve because as soon as someone looks like he's getting it, everyone else gangs up on that player. In fact, managing to get powerful while at the same time looking unthreatening is the real mastery of the game.

Edited: 2018-10-05, 22:34

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ypopezios
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Posted at: 2018-10-06, 13:12

king_of_nowhere wrote:

When it's clear who wins, the game is done, and why would anyone insist on playing?

That's the big difference between chess-like games and Widelands. Both are strategy games, but that similarity is misleading. Despite the towers and the horses, chess is a so-called abstract game, where a limited number of pieces gets rearranged. No matter the different arrangements, it is always the same 32 pieces (and half of them are boring pawns). It is a great board-game, but a boring video-game (among other reasons, because it fails to simulate a real battle).

In contrast, Widelands is an immersive simulation (despite its holes on realism). People insist playing it even without an enemy, cause they have fun watching the little humans, the rest of the animations, and overall their empire's operation (that goes back to the little child watching for hours a little train going around a railroad on batteries). They are also curious to see how their empire will perform in the test of time, or how the investment of their effort will pay-off. Thus when an early advantage determines the winner and brings the game into a practical sudden end, they have not satisfied their curiosity enough and they are not prepared to abandon what they have built so far (if they didn't care about those things, they would probably prefer playing chess).

As explained before, delaying the sudden end is not a solution, cause it means the destruction of an even bigger investment of effort. And so the waste of time from continuing the game competes with the waste of investment from ending the game. This is not the case in chess, cause the players there cannot build anything more than some defensive arrangement. While in Widelands it feels like working on a big project without saving backups, and suddenly a power outage erases everything. In other words, surrendering in Widelands is much more painful, and thus the early end remains a problem and the single-point-of-success is proved detrimental.

managing to get powerful while at the same time looking unthreatening is the real mastery of the game

Psychology games have their place, but Widelands is not one of them (especially AI in all games has zero psychology), so I'm going to skip commenting further on the strategically-inferior game of Risk.

However, I'm going to borrow the term "real mastery of the game" or the concept of balancing power with ...risk, to say that such kind of balance is what makes some strategy games superior, and what Widelands needs to adopt if we want to solve the single-point-of-success issue. Did you manage to produce more? Well done, but now you have to build more warehouses to store your wealth (which goes back to another discussion and disagreement). Did you manage to improve your army? Well done, but now you have to try harder to maintain it. Unless you come with a composite strategy, your advantage won't remain for long.

It is such trade-offs that can make a strategy game multidimensional and increase the number of viable strategies. If higher production, constant upgrading, and endless expansion are always the right choice, then the game degrades into a race. Widelands has plenty of dimensions (economy is actually more than one dimension), but its focus on the military dimension (because of the single-point-of-success of military domination) makes the rest of the dimensions secondary. We don't need to increase the size of those dimensions (e.g. by adding to them more time or complexity), we need to balance their importance. As much as balancing the tribes is a difficult job that improves the game, balancing dimensions across the whole game is harder but much more beneficial.


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Posted at: 2018-10-06, 16:36

As always ypopezios has managed to cut through the mindless arguing in circles to reach the kernel of truth.

I am one who will spend 30 hours exploring a large map with no other tribe present, usually starting with hardcore setting so I have almost no wares, workers or soldiers, because I find it fun.

Fighting games are just about the most boring games I can think of, I can enjoy chess as the fighting is abstract but in widelands it is the main reason most people play it. The race to promote soldiers seems the current aim which is adversly affecting gameplay as training time for workers is going down to ridiculous levels, players are getting advanced workers as part of the startup package, everything is a rush to beat the other players instead of getting joy from building a balanced economy. More micromanaging would be a joy to me.

Another problem is the AI has only one method of play. Admittedly AI has improved a lot from being totally crap to being mostly crap. The AI has no idea how to do much more than throw soldiers at an enemy, which can be a valid way to win any win condition but not in the way the AI does it.

The whole game needs a rethink, more types of building, more mangement decisions, more to do than just build armies, an AI that can actually play the game would be a good start.


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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2018-10-06, 18:30

playing widelands to explore is a completely different concept from playing widelands to compete at high level.

in the first, you can play without an opponent. if you have an opponent, that's not very immportant anyway. "winning" or "losing" are abstract concepts that don't matter much. And you are not necessarily using the best strategy, sometimes you are doing stuff just for the art, or to see what's behind the next hill. In that case, having a slight advantage that will snowball if managed correctly doesn't matter at all, because winning is not the point of that game.

Conversely, if one is playing to win at high level, one is not going to explore the map. One has likely already played the same map alone a few times to figure out the best starting arrangment. But even barring that, one is not there to look at the game going on, one is there to perform the best strategy he can and try to outdo the opponent. the opponent is the most important part of the game, and of course all players must be close in skill to make the game meaningful. And being able to snowball a small advantage is a fundamental part of the game.

the two ways of playing may as well be completely different games, and you can't apply the same considerations to both.

For example, @tinker, you say that you spend a long time exploring a large map without opponents. in that case, all this talk about victory conditions and single point of success should not bother you. Your point of success is the moment you launch the game, which according to ypopezios logic should make it boring.

As for you liking more chances to micromanage, well, I say that every single building you make is a micromanagement decision, and its placement is important if you want to squeeze the most out of the economy.

Myself, while I like having decisions to take, I like widelands as opposed to other strategy games because it let me relax. I don't have to micromanage 20 things. I don't have to press 500 buttons per minute to effectively micromanage, like starcraft gamers (starcraft is a fighting game, which you would not like, but the micromanagement principle is the same). nor do I want to feel like I should be able to do it to get the most out of the game. With widelands I have to make meaningful decisions while at the same time having enough time to think them through, and sometimes to just relax a bit and look around.

So in the end our disagreement is a simple matter of tastes. I like the amount of micromanagement required by widelands exactly how it is. You would like more micromanagement. Some people would like less micromanagement.

But what does all of this have to do with the original proposal of the thread? I assumed that all those philosophical talking about single point of victory and micromanagement had to do with whether it's better to allow for faster soldier promotion or not, since this was what I was originally proposing. You don't care about soldiers? Ok, so leave soldier discussion to those who care.

@ ypopezios, what you propose by tradeoffs does not change a bit for the single point of victory concept. You need to build morre warehouses to store your whealt? Ok, so you do it, since you have the production for it. Or you make sure to consume all your wares. You need to pay for army maintenance? Ok, so both players will reach the point where all their resources are devoted to maintaining the army, who produces more resources can maintain more soldiers and win. It doesn't change the snowballing of advantages, it only changes (and complicates) the strategy. And by your own argument, greater complication does not change the point of victory, it simply requires more skill to exploit.

Finally, do you have an idea how difficult it is to manage the optimal placement of buildings? In a small map, you have to keep making tradeoffs of building one thing or another with your limited space. In a large map, you go crazy figuring out road disposition, as well as building stuff so that it will shorten the travel time of wares and reduce traffic. If you think this game has a linear strategy and lacks tradeoffs, I say that maybe we are playing different games after all.


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ypopezios
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Posted at: 2018-10-06, 21:52

@Tinker

Thanks for the compliment, but I doubt that we have the same truth in mind. At best we share some parts of it, while disagreeing in some others.

Being a programmer, limiting micromanagement (through software automation) has always been my goal. On that aspect I will always be prejudiced.

Improving Widelands' AI is within my ambitions, but it practically cannot be the first priority. Still I believe that the problems of the AI are an interesting reflection of the problems of Widelands as a whole.

Starting with hardcore settings is a challenge that most players would like to face (and some campaign scenarios already explore that approach). But spending 30 hours with no other tribe present is a different enough game. Although Widelands provides it, it cannot be its goal. At the same time, finishing a normal game in less than 30 minutes is also undesirable. In any case, the goal should not be a specific amount of time, but a high level of interest. If a game can maintain my interest for 30 hours, that's a game I want in my collection. I don't know any game that can do that for more than 12 hours, and Widelands' score has been lower than that (but that can change in the future).

A fight in Widelands could be at least as enjoyable as a fight in chess, if it was less random, less chaotic, and less uncontrollable. Still fighting is not a problem in itself. The problem is fighting strictly through the total values of the two armies. Cause that is as simple and boring as a subtraction between the two values. While a fight through combinations (as in chess-like games) or better through weighted decisions (as in some other strategy games) can be very challenging and enjoyable. If we can agree on that, then let's not ...fight against neutral aspects of the game (like its military aspect), let's target instead the real enemy, i.e. the sources of boredom, frustration etc.


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ypopezios
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Posted at: 2018-10-06, 22:35

@king_of_nowhere

We still don't use the same concepts. The decision between consuming resources vs. storing them (and when to change from one mode to the other), it is a strategic decision (not yet in Widelands, as long as warehouses have infinite capacity). Likewise, the decision between maintaining a big army that stays idle in the buildings just in case of a sudden attack vs. saving those resources to use them after contacting the enemy (and again when to change from one mode to the other), it is a strategic decision (not yet in Widelands, as long as soldiers have zero maintenance-cost). If you cannot see how those decisions can affect an empire, then either we play indeed a different game, or you simply don't understand the concept of strategy. In its short definition, strategy is the general allocation of the available resources. Every time you limit that to a specific allocation of a single ware or worker or building cell, you move out of the realm of strategy and back to your next chess move.

It is a fact that many players cannot tell the difference in chess between its aspect of strategy (present mostly in lengthy games) and its aspect of combinations of moves (present particularly in the endgame, when surrendering usually takes place). The reason Widelands is a linear game has nothing to do with the many small decisions about every single detail (or every single move in chess). And the more repetitive the small decisions are (already knowing what to do and no more thinking about it, just clicking to execute each decision), the more boring the game becomes. The reason Widelands is a linear game has instead to do with the few big decisions about where to focus your economy and when to change that focus (or in chess the big decision of when to unleash your main attack against an otherwise equally strong opponent, pushing forward against the opponent king, by making your own king vulnerable to a counter-attack). As long as the only viable focus is military domination and it never changes, Widelands will remain a mostly linear game. You can have fun trying to run that line as fast as possible (which is not possible in chess, just the whites have the initial advantage), but this is not the fun of a general, it is the fun of a racing driver.


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einstein13
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Posted at: 2018-10-07, 00:35

@ypopezios

Sorry, that I misunderstood your "single-point-of-success". I couldn't read anything there about military. But if you stick to this definition, I have to tell you that you're wrong that Widelands (and other games) are like that.

First, Game of Thrones can be single-point-of-success, but one of my games were win only because I had good politics. I wasn't the strongest one from military point of view.

Also Widelands desn't have to be single-point-of-success. Look at our last tournament. It was mostly economy-like and soldiers were only point of measurement. But yes, Widelands in most of multiplayer games have to be single-point-of-success, because the Widelands' world is designed like that.

And as I told, we can change significantly win conditions and the game will never be like single-point-of-success any more. Adding more complexity will not change the state. It will only make the race longer.

Hmmm... chess discussion... I am not very experienced player, but as I can see, the game is a very-tight race already. Hundreds of players and years of thinking caused this situation. Imagine that we have thousand of WorldSaviors and kings_of_nowhere here. The tournament will be completely different.

@king_of_nowhere As it was told, draw here means that you don't have fun. Fun for the winner and fun for the other side. I like to see how long I can survive with a worse position. Some people find it hard to win with me, some not face-smile.png .

And about the ideas (@ypopezios): limit in Warehouse will change the game too much, but adding some maintenance cost to soldiers will not, and unfortunately it will not change the single-point-of-success. We still race for level 10 soldiers.


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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2018-10-07, 18:18

@ ypopezios:

oh, I finally get what you're saying. You complain that the winning strategy is linear, and while there are a lot of strategical decisions connected to it, mostly related to building placement and the order in which to build them, it still boils down to producing more army. Oh, there are several subtleties about troop movements and when and where to attack, but in the end 90% of it is having the bigger army. You'd like some drawback to having an army that makes it less linear.

I have to say, though, that I like the game as it is, and changing in the direction you'd like would require a complete rewrite of the game. I mean, if you want "keeping a light army and being ready to train a bigger one on a short notice" to be a viable strategy, you'd need to massively increase the speed of training sites, because as it stands now, there is no way to train an army fast enough if you are attacked. If you have the enemy on the border, I can't see any case where not having more army would not be the best choice. And instead of making warehourses to store weapons, make more farms in that space to feed the army. And if you make warehouses with limited space, you'd have to massively rescript all the economy. Especially primary producers like wells, farms and woodcutters, who would need to stop working at a certain point.

Anyway, this thread suggested a different things related to the balance of the game as it is, before it got sidetracked. I seem to remember you suggested your idea with maintenance cost and limited warehouses a while ago, and most people didn't like it. It's normal; most people here would like the game to go in a specific direction, and most times those directions are directly conflicting. I would like to see if there's some consensus on my proposal to force the production of several mildly upgraded soldiers before an advanced one can be made.

@king_of_nowhere As it was told, draw here means that you don't have fun. Fun for the winner and fun for the other side. I like to see how long I can survive with a worse position. Some people find it hard to win with me, some not face-smile.png

why would a draw not be fun? I like to play games of carefully planned strategies precisely implemented. I like games of equally skilled players balancing on a thin razor's edge of equilibrium, trying to push each other down. Such games often end up in a draw. It only goes to show that both players really did give it a good show. I really don't like the common perception of spectacular, which entails several recoveries from the brink of defeat, either by luck or by the strongest party catching the idiot ball. Both have little to do with skill and thus ruin my fun.


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