[Historical] Changes to the gold carryover system

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Jozrael
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by Jozrael »

No fareley. I'm the dumb one. Somehow I ENTIRELY missed that post of yours. xD. And was confused when you were...nvm. I'm going to stop losing face there. :p

And zookeeper: I'm not arguing that it should be all about your units. I'm saying that I think that is what I think the new system is going to overemphasize.

Previous system flaw: Gold = too important, thus units = not important enough. You just mentioned this.

New system (perceived) flaw: Gold = not important enough, thus units = far more important than gold.

We're just arguing that 20% is a bit too low, and thus units are the only thing to focus on. Even with a MASSIVE bonus at the end of one level...that's going to buy you like 2 more units in the next one, and have absolutely zero effect on the next one. I also advocate carrying over (20%) negative gold modifications to the starting gold, to discourage just spreeing all your gold every scenario and running into upkeep debt (not bothering with villages, etc.) and doing a 100% units, 0% gold game.
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zookeeper
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by zookeeper »

Jozrael wrote:We're just arguing that 20% is a bit too low, and thus units are the only thing to focus on. Even with a MASSIVE bonus at the end of one level...that's going to buy you like 2 more units in the next one, and have absolutely zero effect on the next one.
Sure, I'm not at all surprised if we need to bump that to something like 40%, for example.
Jozrael wrote:I also advocate carrying over (20%) negative gold modifications to the starting gold, to discourage just spreeing all your gold every scenario and running into upkeep debt (not bothering with villages, etc.) and doing a 100% units, 0% gold game.
Well, that has the obvious drawback that if you happen to end up with negative gold, you're pretty much screwed the next scenario. That's a really bad thing considering that it'll happen to newbies, and they'll then be essentially stuck (being newbies, they'd already have enough trouble coping with the minimum gold).

I'm not sure it's really a problem if someone wants to do a 100% units 0% gold game. People can do it already. The bumping of the minimum gold to a manageable level is actually a rather separate change from the carryover change (the carryover change just depends on that change being done). A theoretical way to address the problem could be disallowing recruit/recall if you have negative income. But that'd seem to have serious implications in MP.
Jozrael
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by Jozrael »

Erm. I don't understand what you mean by disallowing recruiting/recalling.
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zookeeper
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by zookeeper »

Jozrael wrote:Erm. I don't understand what you mean by disallowing recruiting/recalling.
That it'd be impossible to recruit/recall if you have negative income, just like it's impossible to recruit/recall if you got no gold. As a core game rule.

But, as I said, that'd be quite a can of worms, so I'm not exactly proposing it.
Jozrael
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by Jozrael »

Whoa whoa whoa. I don't see how that makes sense :\. Nor do I see how it solves the problem. It just would slow down recalling/recruiting in the beginning of the level, making sure you got enough villages first to support your army.

Then you'd have to rebalance all maps so that there were enough attainable villages early on so that the player could field the army size you expected them to have. I go into negative income at some point early on in about 90% of my campaign scenarios, even if it's gone very quickly.
Max
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by Max »

Jozrael wrote:@Max: I tend to disagree. I find most hard scenarios playable with minimum gold assuming you have a decent recruit list -and you're willing to lose some-. You're supposed to manage your gold/units above the minimums in most scenarios, so if you hit bottom with gold, you've gotta expend some troops to get yourself out of the hole you're in.
without any prior knowledge of this campaign, without knowing the scenarios by heart, not being aware of the exact location of pick ups / goodies / traps? beginning a scenario with minimum gold, fog all around, tight turn limit - i doubt it.
is there any precise definition of "playable" for easy/medium/hard? what about prior knowledge?
anyway - i'll try to find some scenarios were i think the minimum gold isn't enough (on hard) and post some save games (i'll try to get a "decent recruit list").
Jozrael wrote:AFAIK there have been no AI improvements yet. The formula AI is going to be implemented soon, and then people can start writing AIs for it. As of now though, AFAIK its the same AI that's been around for ages. I still see Elvish Archers using their melee against melee-centric units all the time :roll:
after i've had a look at some of the files log - you're right, not that much has changed. but even small bug fixes can make a huge difference. and i don't think i'm imagining that in 1.0.x the two campaigns i've played (ei & row) were much easier. maybe the difference is that i've played it in the reverse order?
zookeeper wrote:
Jozrael wrote:Erm. I don't understand what you mean by disallowing recruiting/recalling.
That it'd be impossible to recruit/recall if you have negative income, just like it's impossible to recruit/recall if you got no gold. As a core game rule.
what would be the rational behind this? that's a bit like not being allowed to attack with badly hurt units...
Jozrael
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by Jozrael »

Max: I have not played every scenario on minimum gold, and I HAVE found ones that were -incredibly- difficult and frustrating to get through on them. I didn't mean to say you were wrong, just that I didn't think it was the case by and large. Apologies.

And it's very difficult to measure the prior knowledge thing. I've played every campaign, most many times, so I can't quite reconstruct what it's like to look through the eyes of a total newbie (not a bad player, just new). But the devs have to balance between the difficulty a total newbie may have with the ease a second-time player may have. They try to eliminate tomato surprises because of just that reason.

Tomato surprise: An event that occurs that, had you had knowledge of at the beginning of the scenario/campaign, would've caused you to act entirely differently. I.e. an ally you might've poured experience on turning to the enemy, etc.
Max
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by Max »

this excellent how-to actually puts the focus in terms of difficulty on the campaign (novice/intermediate/expert) rather than the level you choose (easy/normal/hard):
Wesnoth Campaign Design How-To

i always thought it's the other way round.

i like especially what he is saying in "Races Against Time" - the tight turn limit in some scenarios (with the exception of e.g. some scenarios like in utbs where it is part of the design) often is kind of annoying. it reduces your tactical options and it's only reason is to control the amount of gold the player gets.
Jozrael
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by Jozrael »

I agree. I've read that, hence my recent comments on #4 in SotBE.
Daxam
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by Daxam »

Let's say, in next scenario, you face 3 opponents, with average starting gold 300 (disregard the surprises)

I finish this scenario with 1000 gold.

What you can do:
- Limit how much I carry based on level of difficulty and opponents gold

E.g. On Hard - max gold I can start with is 80% x 300 = 240
The rest (760) I can carry over to next scenarios

On Medium - max gold I can start with = 100% x 300

On Easy - 110%

The min will still be 100 gold

Other possibilities - allow trading recall units for gold (say 50% of value)
Jozrael
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by Jozrael »

Hrm...that's an interesting proposal about 'selling' your hard-earned units that you doubt you will have a use for. Interesting. The thing is, gold is taxed, but units are not. Hrm. A longer-term investment.

I can't understand the sense of it though. Who are you selling it to @_@?
Max
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by Max »

Jozrael wrote:I can't understand the sense of it though. Who are you selling it to @_@?
who are you buying it from? ^^
Jozrael
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by Jozrael »

You're not, you're just paying their wages <.<.


I think you should only be able to sell a unit on a castle hex connected to a keep hex your leader is on, just like recruitment. With that, unit gold values above level 1 would need to be severely retooled probably, but otherwise it sounds great! I don't see the downsides offhand.
Max
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by Max »

Jozrael wrote:You're not, you're just paying their wages <.<.
at some point you've bought them. these units get their wages, but someone else get's the money you spent when you recruited them.
AI
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Re: Changes to the gold carryover system in the campaigns

Post by AI »

That's the cost for training them, or something. (or raising them in case of undead)

Typically, people receive money on retirement though...
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