NoLuckEra

[Danceman]

Oh just remember, just like in Chess, the player that plays first can be a advantage. In other turn base games the first to play, can't attack (but this is on smaller boards like chess).

What I want to say is that you want to take out randomness attack, but still have random terrain and also a player playing first can have a advantage. The game will not be perfect. Or am I messing something around your logic?

I think theres no perfect turn based game. Even chess is played out over many games to even out the fairness. Sadly, if I understand what you want to do, I think its not possible. There will always be in turn base games a small advantage to one of the players. Thats why maybe many games have complex rules to even it out: chess plays over many games, wesnoth has randomness attacks and terrain, some games have a initial deployment, others have a cards abilities to use over the units on the board, etc... I think this is what games become fun, theses limitations and tweaks.

Maybe you will find that perfect balance. We are here to test it out

[Dixie]

Which is of course nonsense as generalizations are in general.

Am I the only one to appreciate the sweet, sweet irony in these words? If there was still a FFM thread, I'd definitely post that there!

Back on topic:
I had given this project some thought some time ago, but there were three main problems (arguably flavour ones) that I couldn't find solution for and that this era does not address (AFAIK, I have not actully tested it). They are:

1) Slow and poison: If you auto-inflict them, it's clearly unbalanced, but if you let them be random, it kinda defeats the purpose of the project, which is to be 100% deterministic. If you were to play-test enough, maybe the solution would be to make it deterministic, but weaken the unit in some way to compensate...

2) The flavour-loss of many-strike units: With the randomness, many strike units were good unit finishers. But with deterministic damage... What's the point? Maybe their damage is less influenced by defenses/tod/etc. because of rounding? Than again, I don't know how this era threats attacks: does it condensate everything in a single big strike? That would be a mistake, imho, because the attacker would have a huge advantage/first strike would be clearly overpowered.

3) The flavour-loss of dodgers vs resisters: Let's assume that a fencer with his dodge - poor resistances is well worth an heavy infantry with his resistances but low defenses, max hitpoint considerations aside. So as I was saying: let's assume they are equivalent: I feel this is a big flavour loss. In standard wesnoth, being a dodger feels really different than being a resister, but they are the same in a deterministic environment. If anything, being a resister is now better because it is not terrain dependant. Though I haven't done the math, but my gut feeling is that fencers would be virtually useless, with less HP and less damage output, for only two more moves gained and skirmisher. (Ok, this last point isn't phrased pretty fluidly and coherently, but you get it anyway, do you?)

[Mabuse]

btw, one last note:
(btw, this NoLuckEra is based on something that was mentioned in this thread
http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=21187)
to be exact this post:
http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php ... 03#p296903

i mention the source here since pauxlo emailed me and told me something about that he feel i give unjustified credits to him

of course zookeeper and tsr (and maybe others) also worked on this
so the full credits go to pauxlo, tsr and zookeper

Mabuse: Is the damage dealt by weapon specials that inflict status still random, or just whether or not the special activates?

yes, the damage dealt is still random.
as said this was a quick fix.

an enhanced version would make the damage non random, and exchange the original poison and slow specials, with custom-specials, that check based on defenders terrain (or influenced by other specials like marksman) wether a special hit on each strike or not.



btw, i just uploaded the era for completion. because no-luck is definately possible in wesnoth without big problems. the purpose of the thread was not to start a discussion about that.

i personally think that huge quantities of strategy go lost when random is FULLY removed from the game though. so even a no-luck mod could or should include some minor amounts of randomization.
i think it is more fun, since you always have to adapt to the situation.

the way to add/substract random-amounts of damage per strike (based on the "main-damage") is imo no bad idea. i think this would not be shown in the battle-calculations though

this might be also something for further versions.
so you might add after each hit -20%,-10%,0,10%,20% of the damage done to the targets HP
so each strike could do slightly less or more damage

[Mabuse]

btw, about these points i feel we can debate.

1) Slow and poison: If you auto-inflict them, it's clearly unbalanced, but if you let them be random, it kinda defeats the purpose of the project, which is to be 100% deterministic. If you were to play-test enough, maybe the solution would be to make it deterministic, but weaken the unit in some way to compensate...

hmm, in first place the purpose of the project is to make a mod that makes the players feel that they are not helplessly bound to luck.

of course slow and poison cant be 100% deterministic

imho, an optimal version of this mod would even include small proportions of randomization for the damage each strikes does.

2) The flavour-loss of many-strike units: With the randomness, many strike units were good unit finishers. But with deterministic damage... What's the point? Maybe their damage is less influenced by defenses/tod/etc. because of rounding? Than again, I don't know how this era threats attacks: does it condensate everything in a single big strike? That would be a mistake, imho, because the attacker would have a huge advantage/first strike would be clearly overpowered.

tbh, more strikes are a disadvantage in a no luck-era.
(except that STRONG trait has a better inluence.)

strong trait adds +4 total damage to a 4 strike unit, while it adds only +2 to a 2 strike unit)

still non-luck also makes the gambling units (like thunderer) less luck dependent
"no wonder you won, my thunderers never hit anything" "no wonder you won, your thunderers didnt miss a single time" "hey, playing again that adepts hits 0,1,2, game ?"

3) The flavour-loss of dodgers vs resisters: Let's assume that a fencer with his dodge - poor resistances is well worth an heavy infantry with his resistances but low defenses, max hitpoint considerations aside. So as I was saying: let's assume they are equivalent: I feel this is a big flavour loss. In standard wesnoth, being a dodger feels really different than being a resister, but they are the same in a deterministic environment. If anything, being a resister is now better because it is not terrain dependant. Though I haven't done the math, but my gut feeling is that fencers would be virtually useless, with less HP and less damage output, for only two more moves gained and skirmisher. (Ok, this last point isn't phrased pretty fluidly and coherently, but you get it anyway, do you?)

in long run (=if luck evens out) a fencer wont win versus hvy infantry, no-luck or not.
because no-luck simply deals out the average damage, which the unit is supposed to take anyway.

since if a fencer (on 70% def terrain) win versus HI on Flat (30% def) then it is luck i'd say
( i just made 3 fights in normal (=random) wesnoth, HI (flat, 30% def) versus fencer (hills, 70% def) and the fencer always lost. as expected. statistical luck was in normal numbers and kinda balanced.)

so in normal wesnoth fencer cannot fight HI, randomness or not doesnt chnage this in any way
(the reason why hi cannot fight fencers is because they are inferor in moves and cannot cath the skirmishing fencers anyway. so HI cannot catch fencers and also is not able to deal enough damage to them in time. no-random also doesnt change these facts. (but it may prevent a fencer die due to some incredible bad-luck becasue the HI kill it with its first two strikes )

being a dodger in wesnoth means just that you can easily die when you suffer from bad luck

well, and two more moves and a much better move-type is a good advantage if you ask me.
i must state here that even in random wesnoth i dont use fencers too much (because they are too luck dependent, with some bad luck, they simply die like flies), and if i do then because of their BLADE-Damage, MOVETYPE and SKIRMISHER ability

due to this i come to the conclusion that fencer (=dogers) really benefit from not having luck installed in the game. since they wont die fast due to bad luck, and their benefits like superior movement and skirmishing can be fully outplayed

[pauxlo]

btw, one last note:
(btw, this NoLuckEra is based on something that was mentioned in this thread
http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=21187)
to be exact this post:
http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php ... 03#p296903

i mention the source here since pauxlo emailed me and told me something about that he feel i give unjustified credits to him

of course zookeeper and tsr (and maybe others) also worked on this
so the full credits go to pauxlo, tsr and zookeper

I didn't even remember having done that - it was three years ago. Thanks for giving the link.
I think that my contribution was not this big - the main point was the addition of magic and marksman.

Thus the main credit should go to tsr (for the original idea) and zookeeper (for the implementation), I think. (And Mabuse, for updating it to current WML.)

[SKAcz]

Well I think terrains and fog of war doing a lot more than chess from wesnoth, even without randomness, but still close to chess thinking (calculating with full information).
Sure there can be maybe minor 10-20% random (lets test it without random first and then with, well good to compare).
I played with chess players in past also civilization and civilization 2 and have to say Civ1 was too random (battleship could be destroyed by militia) and Civ2 was we can say about fine enough. When we started playing wesnoth here was too often "damn unlucky, damn lucky" - a bit better than in Civ1 but still too high role compared what one could expect from chess view (yeah sometimes can one pawn do some little damage but still should be killed by tank (if here is not possible play with 100 tanks vs 100 pawns (what its not possible due to win means killing opponents leader, what with much more units is quite impossible in some solid lenght of game like 2-3 hours, not mention in multiplayer of 4 players for exmple - for this purpose I came with Gold Win concept, but I have no idea how to realize it, it could allows to make much more villages on map and much more units buy and who reach first some quantity of gold will win, and in multiplayer it can allows also play for silver and bronze place or even for some elo loike rating in game each vs each of 4 players for example, in game of two it will offer interresting possibility of thinking about war for resources in some time) front to make it in bigger pattern as 1 vs 1 unit again) - that was principle civ2 added - every fight was composed from like 10 or more subfights whar decreased level of randomness to some much more intuitive even for small number of units, compare to this wesnoth with like 1 attack in dwarf case, but also with 4 attacks is much more random for chess thinking (I can call it chess thinking and chess player define how somebody who use it, then chessplayer playing wesnoth and using poker player thinking is no more chessplayer in that moment - what i actually do all the time)).
So I am very happy now here is version with none or atleast almost none randomness in game.
PS. and u dont have to try balance units, here is always possibility to play same race like in chess, and still here will be 6 kinds of game atleast.
So lets test first with minimal randomness and we will see ... (well if here will be more versions with low or none randomness it cannot hurt in exploring space of games with low role of randomness)

[Mabuse]

ok, the era has a bug - that is
leveled up units need to get unluckyfied again

atm leveled up units dont get unluckified

also i will add 0.05 to each damage multiplier for better rounding effect
(atm it is 0.015 which is a bit too less)

attacking a unit with 50% cth, gives a 0.55 multiplier then

[Mabuse]

version 1.1.0 is uploaded an recommended to be used

PS. and u dont have to try balance units, here is always possibility to play same race like in chess, and still here will be 6 kinds of game atleast.

basically there is no need to rebalance units.
the balance of the original units is good enough for noluck

units with many strikes still get their "strengh" or "dextrous" advantage
units with less strikes are no gambling units anymore, so they wont do extremely high damage when they have lucky streaks (or no damage at all if they have bad luck)

of course the 0.05 multiplier favors units with less strikes and high damage, but that applies to any multiplier. at least a 0.05 multiplier has some effect on a low damage unit, while a 0.015 has practically no effect.

still the units ususally differ more than just having different numbers of strikes.

for example the orcish wolfriders are the scouts of the orcs and will be still used for that purpose, while the grunt is and was the base unit

[Aidoneus]

I thought that I would try No Luck Era in Random Campaign. Although I turned off map settings (needed?), units still hit randomly. And not just specials like poison.

Edit: To clarify, I loaded Random Campaign in multiplayer, local server.

[tekelili]

Agree with Velensk, I also find myself ofended sugesting chess players dont like wesnoth with randomess.

I also find it offensive towards all mathematics developed around random enveiroments, theory of games and risk managaments.

[Mabuse]

I thought that I would try No Luck Era in Random Campaign. Although I turned off map settings (needed?), units still hit randomly. And not just specials like poison.

Edit: To clarify, I loaded Random Campaign in multiplayer, local server.

what excatly is random campaign ?
a random map ?

i tried random map (map settings off) and it worked

[Aidoneus]

Random Campaign is one of the multiplayer add-ons from the official server. That is, it is a multiplayer, multiscenario campaign.

[Mabuse]

AFAIK, random campaign is a single player scenario/campaign -
how can you play it in multiplayer ?

noluckera is a multiplayer add on, that means it gets only loaded if you use the multiplayer button in the main menu

[Aidoneus]

Mabuse: Yes, I see that No Luck Era works with Random map. In addition to Random Campaign, No Luck Era did not work for me with Dark Forecast (in both cases with map settings turned off). Any idea how to use this era with more campaigns/scenarios? I would really like to widely test this era with a friend of mine before commenting on the play mechanics versus the standard game. (Which, no doubt, still will come down to a matter of taste.)

[Aidoneus]

Mabuse: I should have refreshed my browser. But you are mistaken. Random Campaign is a multiplayer campaign. I know, I have played it with a friend over the official server.