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Topic: Tempo Training Tournament

hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2020-04-20, 11:23

king_of_nowhere wrote:

kaputtnik wrote:

I like empire (who didn'tt noted this face-grin.png ).

I think we shouldn't make empire buildings cheaper or the marble mine work faster (except if there is really a bug), but make creating heroes more expensive for the other tribes. This should give more focus on economy... Otherwise now we make empire cheaper until we notice that barbarians are more expensive than empire and make barbarians cheaper until we notice that atlanteans are more expensive than barbarians and empire and make atlanteans cheaper until we notice that frisians are more expensive than the others and make frisians cheaper until...

In the end we'll have cheap training buildings and the game get's really boring.

we should try to balance the three tribes, though, and I am of the opinion that empire is somewhat weaker than the others. atlanteans, on the other hand, may need a slight nerf.

Well, I would say we should aim at balancing all 5 tribes economically for the early game (Although we might not fully reach the goal). For this some may need a slight push some may need a little drawback.
The reason I suggested this tournament once before (many thanks to WorldSavior for organising) was exactly to get a better understanding of what might need to be done.
However we can't simply look at the times only, as for the rule of the tournament you need to skip some buildings in the economy. But you can make only 1 hero out of this settlement. I believe what is interesting as well is having the second hero as you need a full economy for this.
If there are some differences in tribes abilities, that will make them incompetitive in a defined setup one could choose a more competitive tribe, but we should aim to minimize this.

anyway, making things more expensive or more cheap won't change focus on the economy. ultimately, the economy is the tool to produce soldiers to kill your enemy. if we can train the first hero after one hour or after two hours, if we can train a new one every five minutes or every ten, it does not change the game.

Here I agree only partly. if you make everything very fast you end up with what was once called speed widelands. And not everybody me including would love the need for fastclicking game. That is for what I always loved widelands, settlers Anno and so on, having time to think and click and having a beer while playing as well.

and i believe faster heroes for all are desirable, as it removes the push to get the first one. if it takes two hours to make a hero, and you are 10% slower than your opponent, your opponent has 12 minutes to attack you unopposed. if, on the other hand, everyone can make a hero in 50 minutes, then being 10% late will only leave you open for five minutes. you will get away with dismantling your immediate front. also, if your hero fight the enemy's and loses, and it takes you 10 more minutes to make a new one, you basically lose the game. if you can replace it faster, the game is less dependent on luck in a single fight.

Being late on the first hero would only leave you a chance if you are faster on the second and third and the next ones. Which is only the case in very rare corner cases. Mostly in a fight of different tribes. If both are playing the same tribe a 10% early advantage of a player should give him the chance to built up his economy any further while the other player is still struggling with its first hero.

because some of you may not like it, but this game is centered around making heroes. they are the keystone of the economy. all buildings are focused on making them. if we make them harder to get, it will not enforce balance. it will just make them all the more important. having the first hero will just be an even greater advantage.

Agreed. However we shouldn't use balance in this context. The hero making abilities should be balanced between the tribes. Costs should be balanced as well. The rest is player ability which can't be balanced.
one of the things I learned from this tournament is that micromanaging some productionsites is needed to direct your ressources in the best way to produce a first hero, but it is not that big deal to do that as it is always the same and should be clear how to do by reading the online help. (Just count the weapons needed and sum their cost and give each productionsite only these wares while controlling the economy demand). But I found out that the thing which really matters is build order of your economy. Which building has to be built and when is crucial to avoid any waiting times in your setup. And this would always matter irrespective of how easy or hard it is to manage a hero being built. As this continues to be the main part in the game placing different buildings in advance to counter a material shortage before it happens. In my playstyle it still happens far to often that I react on the economy rather then act.


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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2020-04-20, 12:12

hessenfarmer wrote:

Well, I would say we should aim at balancing all 5 tribes economically for the early game (Although we might not fully reach the goal). For this some may need a slight push some may need a little drawback.
The reason I suggested this tournament once before (many thanks to WorldSavior for organising) was exactly to get a better understanding of what might need to be done.
However we can't simply look at the times only, as for the rule of the tournament you need to skip some buildings in the economy. But you can make only 1 hero out of this settlement.

yes, we can't just take the times at face value. if we did, i just managed to go below 30 minutes with empire, so we should buff barbarians instead. but i'm not proposing that, because barbarians are fine.

however, i am of the opinion that marble economy is a bit too clunky. the problem is that you start with a small production capacity, because you only have 2 wine farmers. and you cannot increase your marble production without spending an inordinate amount of marble already. so it is very slow to increase marble economy.

and since the greatest marble cost is wineyards, you spend a lot of marble to get more marble... and then you don't need it that much anymore. Like, production of marble is low in early game and high in late game, but request of marble is high early and low late.

I would even consider removing the marble columns from wineyards and wineries and adding them to bakeries and breweries. marble cost of the economy would even be slightly higher, but it would be easier to start marble mass production. I think it would allow a more natural development of building material economy: first secure a steady supply of marble, and then use it for the rest of the economy.

But perhaps it is too big a change in flavor for some. I'm not sure I like how it would change the feel of the tribe myself, and I'm the one proposing it.

I believe what is interesting as well is having the second hero as you need a full economy for this.

I considered something along those lines. Like, the target is 3 heroes, and the total time is the sum of the three times at which one gets all of them.

anyway, making things more expensive or more cheap won't change focus on the economy. ultimately, the economy is the tool to produce soldiers to kill your enemy. if we can train the first hero after one hour or after two hours, if we can train a new one every five minutes or every ten, it does not change the game.

Here I agree only partly. if you make everything very fast you end up with what was once called speed widelands. And not everybody me including would love the need for fastclicking game. That is for what I always loved widelands, settlers Anno and so on, having time to think and click and having a beer while playing as well.

Agreed that we would not want to make things too fast. I also like to have time for breathing (though playing competitively while holding a beer is a bit too much. We may want to introduce a 0.5 speed for that).

but the game should not be slow because someone put a brake on it. it should be slow because you have many pieces in your economy to complete and improve.

So, if you cannot make a hero immediately because you first need to make a gold mine, that's what we want out of this game (i myself suggested to change some prices for atlanteans to get there). If you need more famrs to get a sustained production, that's good. but if you cannot make a hero fast because you only have a trickle of marble, and you cannot get more marble because all the marble-producing buildings cost lots of marble themselves... or if you have all your economy in place, but you must wait because there is one worker that needs a lot of promotions and works very slowly... or if you have all your economy in place but you must wait for a building that's ridiculously expensive... those feel like artificial limitations.

And I'd say we are already in a good place. especially compared to a few years ago. we removed a lot of artificial limitations (mostly the barbarian blacksmith needing a staggering 24 experience to level up)

Being late on the first hero would only leave you a chance if you are faster on the second and third and the next ones. Which is only the case in very rare corner cases.

actually, it is the case if your opponent took too many shortcuts and doesn't have a fully developed economy. which doesn't usually happen only because if one has the skill to build up the economy for a fast hero, one generally also knows what he's doing.

Mostly in a fight of different tribes. If both are playing the same tribe a 10% early advantage of a player should give him the chance to built up his economy any further while the other player is still struggling with its first hero.

and that's why i proposed some defender bonus. because right now, whether the slight advantage is a faster hero or some more half-trained soldiers, the correct thing to do is to kill your opponent with your early advantage without letting him develop. but this is for another thread

But I found out that the thing which really matters is build order of your economy. Which building has to be built and when is crucial to avoid any waiting times in your setup. And this would always matter irrespective of how easy or hard it is to manage a hero being built. As this continues to be the main part in the game placing different buildings in advance to counter a material shortage before it happens.

Yes! this actually sums up economical skill much better than my attempts at explaining.


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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2020-04-20, 12:20

I managed to improve a lot on empire time and get to 29:45. turned out, the key to it was on one hand to build lots of quarries (the only way to get marble without spending more marble first) and on the other to reduce marble use as much as possible and recycle any marble column that can be recycled.

Some more minutes can surely be shaved from this time, but not too many. there really is no way to get much more marble fast enough. The hard limit should be around 25 minutes.

I also tried to build up more marble economy, with a toolsmith and two more wineyards, but could not go below 35 minutes. it just took so long to set up the initial production that it would offset any later advantage. of course, that would be the best way for a long game, though.


Attachment:
KoN imperial hero 2945.zip (316.5 KB)

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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2020-04-20, 12:56

king_of_nowhere wrote:

however, i am of the opinion that marble economy is a bit too clunky. the problem is that you start with a small production capacity, because you only have 2 wine farmers. and you cannot increase your marble production without spending an inordinate amount of marble already. so it is very slow to increase marble economy.

and since the greatest marble cost is wineyards, you spend a lot of marble to get more marble... and then you don't need it that much anymore. Like, production of marble is low in early game and high in late game, but request of marble is high early and low late.

I would even consider removing the marble columns from wineyards and wineries and adding them to bakeries and breweries. marble cost of the economy would even be slightly higher, but it would be easier to start marble mass production. I think it would allow a more natural development of building material economy: first secure a steady supply of marble, and then use it for the rest of the economy.

But perhaps it is too big a change in flavor for some. I'm not sure I like how it would change the feel of the tribe myself, and I'm the one proposing it.

I have never challenged your observation about empire marble production and I won't do so. I just wanted to emphasize 2 things: we have 5 tribes to balance as far as possible and we should consider the whole picture of all tribes (including 2 and ongoing hero production) for balancing.
The latter would be best to do in a separate thread after the tournament though. so far I acknowledged your proposals for atlanteans and empire which I would support, however we may discuss the finetuning and size of each change (might need testing and refining).

anyway, making things more expensive or more cheap won't change focus on the economy. ultimately, the economy is the tool to produce soldiers to kill your enemy. if we can train the first hero after one hour or after two hours, if we can train a new one every five minutes or every ten, it does not change the game.

Here I agree only partly. if you make everything very fast you end up with what was once called speed widelands. And not everybody me including would love the need for fastclicking game. That is for what I always loved widelands, settlers Anno and so on, having time to think and click and having a beer while playing as well.

Agreed that we would not want to make things too fast. I also like to have time for breathing (though playing competitively while holding a beer is a bit too much. We may want to introduce a 0.5 speed for that).

That is the reason why I don't do Multiplayer that much ;-). However making it so fast that we really need 0.5 speed does sound weird. So I believe we could agree it to be playable on normal speed, without the need to click once every second or even faster.

but the game should not be slow because someone put a brake on it. it should be slow because you have many pieces in your economy to complete and improve.

So, if you cannot make a hero immediately because you first need to make a gold mine, that's what we want out of this game (i myself suggested to change some prices for atlanteans to get there). If you need more famrs to get a sustained production, that's good. but if you cannot make a hero fast because you only have a trickle of marble, and you cannot get more marble because all the marble-producing buildings cost lots of marble themselves... or if you have all your economy in place, but you must wait because there is one worker that needs a lot of promotions and works very slowly... or if you have all your economy in place but you must wait for a building that's ridiculously expensive... those feel like artificial limitations.

But most of these things seem to be more severe in the special setup of this tournament. E.g. I would build the colosseum only if I can afford it and stay with the arena so long which gives you some evade without gold in a normal game (learned this in last years tournament). However I am fully with you we should consider buildcost in this special case (and maybe others as well that just need to be discovered)

And I'd say we are already in a good place. especially compared to a few years ago. we removed a lot of artificial limitations (mostly the barbarian blacksmith needing a staggering 24 experience to level up)

What is interesting about the numbers provided so far is that depending on players abilities and experience the times for each tribe are not that different (around 40 mins for me, 30 mins for you, with an advantage on the atlantean side for everyone) so this means we made a good job so far in balancing I believe and we could use the results now to improve even further.

Being late on the first hero would only leave you a chance if you are faster on the second and third and the next ones. Which is only the case in very rare corner cases.

actually, it is the case if your opponent took too many shortcuts and doesn't have a fully developed economy. which doesn't usually happen only because if one has the skill to build up the economy for a fast hero, one generally also knows what he's doing.

Exactly.

Mostly in a fight of different tribes. If both are playing the same tribe a 10% early advantage of a player should give him the chance to built up his economy any further while the other player is still struggling with its first hero.

and that's why i proposed some defender bonus. because right now, whether the slight advantage is a faster hero or some more half-trained soldiers, the correct thing to do is to kill your opponent with your early advantage without letting him develop. but this is for another thread

and it is not forgotten

But I found out that the thing which really matters is build order of your economy. Which building has to be built and when is crucial to avoid any waiting times in your setup. And this would always matter irrespective of how easy or hard it is to manage a hero being built. As this continues to be the main part in the game placing different buildings in advance to counter a material shortage before it happens.

Yes! this actually sums up economical skill much better than my attempts at explaining.

Unfortunately it is easier to explain as to do face-wink.png


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the-x
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Posted at: 2020-04-20, 13:25

king_of_nowhere wrote:

I managed to improve a lot on empire time and get to 29:45. turned out, the key to it was on one hand to build lots of quarries (the only way to get marble without spending more marble first) and on the other to reduce marble use as much as possible and recycle any marble column that can be recycled.

Some more minutes can surely be shaved from this time, but not too many. there really is no way to get much more marble fast enough. The hard limit should be around 25 minutes.

I also tried to build up more marble economy, with a toolsmith and two more wineyards, but could not go below 35 minutes. it just took so long to set up the initial production that it would offset any later advantage. of course, that would be the best way for a long game, though.

Nice, 29:45 is really good i think. The hard limit around 25 - maybe a bit longer about 27

Also had the same thing with marble face-grin.png its areal lot, though it also makes fun to optimize the economy to marble. If you see my first build orders you will get the opinion that marble is the only thing that counts, like the toolsmith with frisians. I am so excited forf the times, and liking to post mine also but only if world also tooks place, since there are many things he wants to copy since i have some new ideas how to optimize eco to perfection.


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the-x
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Posted at: 2020-04-20, 13:32

hessenfarmer wrote:

king_of_nowhere wrote:

however, i am of the opinion that marble economy is a bit too clunky. the problem is that you start with a small production capacity, because you only have 2 wine farmers. and you cannot increase your marble production without spending an inordinate amount of marble already. so it is very slow to increase marble economy.

and since the greatest marble cost is wineyards, you spend a lot of marble to get more marble... and then you don't need it that much anymore. Like, production of marble is low in early game and high in late game, but request of marble is high early and low late.

I would even consider removing the marble columns from wineyards and wineries and adding them to bakeries and breweries. marble cost of the economy would even be slightly higher, but it would be easier to start marble mass production. I think it would allow a more natural development of building material economy: first secure a steady supply of marble, and then use it for the rest of the economy.

But perhaps it is too big a change in flavor for some. I'm not sure I like how it would change the feel of the tribe myself, and I'm the one proposing it.

I have never challenged your observation about empire marble production and I won't do so. I just wanted to emphasize 2 things: we have 5 tribes to balance as far as possible and we should consider the whole picture of all tribes (including 2 and ongoing hero production) for balancing.
The latter would be best to do in a separate thread. so far I acknowledged your proposals for atlanteans and empire which I would support, however we may discuss the finetuning and size of each change (might need testing and refining).

I just opened a thread for this topic: https://www.widelands.org/forum/topic/4822/?page=1#post-32606 So we can have here the Tournament Themes

anyway, making things more expensive or more cheap won't change focus on the economy. ultimately, the economy is the tool to produce soldiers to kill your enemy. if we can train the first hero after one hour or after two hours, if we can train a new one every five minutes or every ten, it does not change the game.

Here I agree only partly. if you make everything very fast you end up with what was once called speed widelands. And not everybody me including would love the need for fastclicking game. That is for what I always loved widelands, settlers Anno and so on, having time to think and click and having a beer while playing as well.

I dont think the game should be aiming at "to kill your enemy"

In first place its a strategy game, a game where you build up and maybe more about collecting ressources and saving areas like in mentioned in "Makrobalancing". Today all the maps are build with almost infinte gold ressources (same as Iron) so many startegic possibilities are lost in the game.


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niektory
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Posted at: 2020-04-20, 18:32

hessenfarmer wrote:

niektory wrote:

I think the marble mines are simply buggy and are sometimes producing less marble than they should. I'm going to investigate this more closely. Perhaps fixing the bug is all that needs to be done.

How do you come to this conclusion. They produce exactly what is defined in their program (1 time stone and 1 time marble). However this could be changed like KoN suggested but it is not a bug.

I'm pretty sure it is: Wrong ratio of Granite:Marble produced by Empire Marble Mine #3863


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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2020-04-20, 19:07

the-x wrote:

I dont think the game should be aiming at "to kill your enemy"

In first place its a strategy game, a game where you build up

a strategy game is a game where you have to defeat your opponents. you defeat your opponents through stragtegy. in the vast majority of strategy games the final purpose is to kill the opponent with military (the one exception i know, the civilization games, where you have other victory conditions like science victory. but you still must have an army if you don't want to be annihilated by someone else). in a strategy game you build up, and what you build up is military power to defeat the opponent.


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WorldSavior
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Posted at: 2020-04-20, 23:00

niektory wrote:

hessenfarmer wrote:

niektory wrote:

I think the marble mines are simply buggy and are sometimes producing less marble than they should. I'm going to investigate this more closely. Perhaps fixing the bug is all that needs to be done.

How do you come to this conclusion. They produce exactly what is defined in their program (1 time stone and 1 time marble). However this could be changed like KoN suggested but it is not a bug.

I'm pretty sure it is: Wrong ratio of Granite:Marble produced by Empire Marble Mine #3863

I vote for fixing that bug before b21. If one changes two lines only slightly, the stone program gets executed only when stone is needed, and this should solve the problem. It also improves marble efficiency by 50% like i suggested.

This would reduce the problem that imperial buildings are so expensive.

niektory wrote:

Perhaps fixing the bug is all that needs to be done.

No, even without the bug, the buildings are too expensive because of the marble.


Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2020-04-22, 23:46

i realize the barbarian time can actually be improved by several minutes. one has to make a second metal workshop and upgrade it to war mill before the blacksmith is ready. that way, when the blacksmith has finished gathering experience, there is already the war mill ready. no need to lose time to finish it. this way it will be possible to go below 30 minutes.

i don't think i will want to actually do it, though. i'm feeling lazy

Edited: 2020-04-22, 23:47

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