GambCiv • A civ-like Wesnoth add-on

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Gambit
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GambCiv • A civ-like Wesnoth add-on

Post by Gambit »

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GambCiv Adding civ-like features to Wesnoth


Features
GambCiv aims to add many common strategy game features that are missing from vanilla Wesnoth
More resources - You don't just have to worry about gold anymore. There is also food and material.

Construction - You can expand your castles, bridge rivers, and construct other things to help defend your kingdom or crush your enemies.

Destruction - What goes up must come down. Siege and eventually destroy enemy fortifications!

Terraforming - The very terrain of the map is at your disposal! Drown your enemies. Dig moats around your towns.

Dozens of units - You aren't limited to recruiting one faction in GambCiv. A wide array of units are at your disposal. This number is growing with every update.

Download
The add-on is made for version 1.9.8 and above. You can download it from the add-on server in the game. You can also get the bleeding edge version at the official website. You can play it with nearly any existing Wesnoth map, and easily create your own. That screenshot above is actually Cynsaun Battlefield!


Comparison to GEB and similar add-ons
This add-on is the spiritual successor to — the now discontinued — GEB. I've put a lot of thought and effort into improving playability. Games take hours instead of weeks on most maps. I've cut the amount of clicking you have to do dramatically. The menus are all much more exposed and accessible.

You can build in a radius around peasants instead of right under them. And doing things doesn't cost moves from those individual peasants. No more massive peasant armies. And since you can attack enemy fortifications, the defender no longer has such an absolute advantage.

There is an "action points" system now. You can only do so many things each turn. No more four hour long turns!

All the code is side-number-agnostic. You're no longer limited to four players. Though I'd question one's sanity if they hosted a nine-player game with this...


Video tutorials
Part 1 - User interface, resources, and huts
Part 2 - Bridges, castle, and tracks
Part 3 - Getting ready for combat
Part 4 - Advanced resource gathering
Part 5 - Advanced combat


Thanks
Thanks for taking time to try the add-on. Questions, suggestions, and feedback are very much welcome. And if anyone wants to play some time let me know. :)
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Dunno
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Re: GambCiv • A civ-like Wesnoth add-on

Post by Dunno »

Wow. I mean, WOW. I knew that sooner or later an add-on like this will come out, but still I am impressed by amount of work you had to put in it. I'll download it ASAP and let you know how I like it :)

See shadowmaster, yet another place to put a jaw dropping smiley :mrgreen:
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Re: GambCiv • A civ-like Wesnoth add-on

Post by PeterPorty »

BTW, it has the Pete Seal of Approval, and he almost didn't bribe me!

no, but really... It's an awesome add-on... It does take a while to kill someone, though. :P
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Re: GambCiv • A civ-like Wesnoth add-on

Post by Gambit »

Longer than normal Wesnoth, shorter than other add-ons like it.

And like everything, the length is a function of the size of the map, number of players, and how evenly matched they are.
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Re: GambCiv • A civ-like Wesnoth add-on

Post by PeterPorty »

True. I'm just saying they shouldn't start a match if they don't have time... ^_^
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Re: GambCiv • A civ-like Wesnoth add-on

Post by Gambit »

I'm planning a series of video tutorials (the first one is already up in the first post). A big problem in GEB was teaching new users how to play. I simply could not come up with good enough [message]s to give them all the information they needed.

I figure if a picture is worth a thousand words, then fifteen pictures per second has got to work pretty well. :)

Please forgive the hard P's. I only have a cheap gaming headset for recording.
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Re: GambCiv • A civ-like Wesnoth add-on

Post by uncleshelby »

Looks a lot like the mainline MP scenario "A New Land". Is it?

I think I might try it.
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Re: GambCiv • A civ-like Wesnoth add-on

Post by Crendgrim »

Yes, but it's a lot better even than Bob's work; especially because you can play it on any map (thus the replayability is very high).
The biggest difference is probably that you don't play together vs an AI, but against each other. This allows much more flexible and interesting gameplay and strategies.


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Re: GambCiv • A civ-like Wesnoth add-on

Post by AlaskanAvenger »

Just played this and I gotta say this is an amazing add-on. All kinds of cool features and options I never thought I'd see in any add-on. Only things I could think of to improve it slightly would be to make certain things a little more automatic such as allow an auto-mining option, which might have to be mine specific. Also again not sure how this would affect if, but I think it might improve game play to decrease the amount of experience a unit can gain from a university down to maybe 16 per turn as well as drop the university cost slightly.
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Re: GambCiv • A civ-like Wesnoth add-on

Post by Gambit »

I'm against automation of tasks that cost AP. You might set things to automatically do stuff, but then an emergency comes and you need that AP for something else. But crap, the game already used it. Though I guess there is the possibility of having the game remember which mines have already auto-mined, and letting you undo them...

I don't see the need for a cap on university usage. You can't generally afford to use all your AP that way, or if you can: Awesome!
I dunno. I'd need you to better explain why you think that change needs to be made.
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Re: GambCiv • A civ-like Wesnoth add-on

Post by Great_Mage_Atari »

I also noticed that when I started I had absolutely no idea how to play. A good feature would be a how-to (if you want it. It may not be a bad idea to have anyways). I got halfway in and just realized features that I didn't even know about.
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Re: GambCiv • A civ-like Wesnoth add-on

Post by AlaskanAvenger »

Just wanted to apologize for hasty posting, played it a bit more and now I realize it is better as is. One thing that doesn't quite make sense to me is how peasants can change terrain underneath enemy units. I do not say that it would make the game play better to change this, its just that it seems a bit odd. Congratz again on building this fantastic add-on.
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Re: GambCiv • A civ-like Wesnoth add-on

Post by Lollipopz »

I would be thankful for a version without action points...
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Re: GambCiv • A civ-like Wesnoth add-on

Post by Crendgrim »

Great_Mage_Atari:
Have a look at the first post here, where now (one) video tutorial(s) are linked.

Lollipopz:
So, how would you limit the turns then? People could spend hours on just doing stuff... have fun waiting. :P


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Re: GambCiv • A civ-like Wesnoth add-on

Post by Gambit »

Lollipopz: Action points are rather integral to balance and keeping things moving in multiplayer.

At this point it is too late to remove action points from all the code and balance and design even if I wanted to. However one possibility is allowing the host to adjust the scale of the action points received per hut.

If you explained why you want this change, I might be able to come up with a good solution.


Great Mage Atari: Rest assured, documentation will be high priority on my todo list, but not until the core mechanics are finished. I am still only at version 0.2 which I am dubbing a "pre-alpha".
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