Wesnoth 1.13.6

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The_Gnat
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Re: Wesnoth 1.13.6

Post by The_Gnat »

I agree with nuorc that building units up levels is part of the strategy and fun of the game, however i agree with wussel in the fact that if you do choose the easy difficulty it would be nice to have be able to buy cooler (and higher level) units.

However the price changes make very little difference to campaigns, in fact the main reason i am proposing these price changes is because having incorrect prices (even for units rarely purchased) is like leaving an incorrect unit description in the wesnoth game. (note that this is my opinion, but it is supported with evidence) The current prices of many units (which i have mentioned) are broken. Changing the price of these dozen or so units would most likely be very quick (comparatively) for a developer and so i see absolutely no reason to not make the necessary price adjustments. Furthermore in my era The Reign of the Lords, players always recruit 3rd level units and suddenly the price discrepancies become very obvious and begin causing issues.

@ the Devs: you probably have other things you are doing but i doubt it would take much time to adjust the mentioned 3rd level units pricing and so would much appreciate if one of you did for the next 1.13 version. Of course if you think that i have made mistakes, or my new prices are not justified i would appreciate you voice your thoughts, and am happy to revise this list of price adjustments if necessary. Thank you.
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Re: Wesnoth 1.13.6

Post by Wussel »

There was the question: what means "tomato easy"?

Easy means actually the difficult level of the campaign. It is choosen at the beginning. It is usally EASY, medium or hard, but other option are widely available too. For the records: You can call it as you like, but most designers call the first level of difficulties: EASY.

Tomato might be a bit more difficult to understand. If you design campaigns, the guideline urges you to avoid "tomato surprises". That means (they explain it there): Little scenraio twists, which forces you to (re)-play the szenario again in a complete different way, once you know of it.

So what should "tomato easy" be? I am asuming a player playing a campaign on EASY expects it to be in fact easy. I sincerely hope that I am not reaching to far here.

HOWEVER many campaigns on the easy level will sink you in gold, but will not confront you with experience points. That means allmost no enemies to level your troops. After a few scenarios you still have mostly first levels and several hundred gold. Please keep in mind that beginners usualy loose their units from time to time, thus deprieving themself from the scarce experience even further. Since the AI recruits better now, you can not win the scenarios anymore as it is virtually impossible to beat the high level AI units with a level 1 spawn strategy for beginners.

THEREFORE the easy setting is infact not easy but brings unique challenges after a few scenarios. If you ask in the forum for help you get answers along the line: Play it on hard, than it will be easier!

The SOLUTION would be to let you buy the units, which you should have for the scenario on the EASY level with your extra gold.

It is very good for you that you are such a great player, who never played anything on easy. Maybe you are even able to beat the game on easy, but I doubt that.

Would it be save to call it a tomato surprise, that many campaigns on easy are in fact not easy, but impossible?
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nuorc
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Re: Wesnoth 1.13.6

Post by nuorc »

Wussel wrote:There was the question: what means "tomato easy"?
Thx for the explanation. I'm aware of the problem of too little XP for later stages of a campaign, but if high level units are essential, I think you could also balance that with more but less dangerous enemies.
I have a cunning plan.
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Re: Wesnoth 1.13.6

Post by Wussel »

Campaign designer are not doing that in general. They usually give less gold resulting in less walking experience. I would not say that you should buy higher level at easy. I just suggested that it would be a nice option for the inexperienced player.
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Re: Wesnoth 1.13.6

Post by Crow_T »

Wussel wrote: I would raise one more point: I believe there is still a lot of tomato easy campaigns. To fix this I would suggest to allow the player to recruit second level units on easy. Maybe after a few scenarios in general. On top maybe even third level before the end. That way the player should be able to fix the list of not enough recalls and excess gold, while having an enjoyable easy ride.
This is a nice option to explore, and could be balanced by limiting the type of high level unit as well as the number of them that can be recruited. When I level up units a big factor is their traits- I think paying the big dollar and upkeep for high level units but having to deal with random traits is a decent negative trade off.
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Re: Wesnoth 1.13.6

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

The_Gnat's price changes have now been implemented.
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Re: Wesnoth 1.13.6

Post by The_Gnat »

Awesome!!! :D Thank you very much Celtic Minstrel!
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Re: Wesnoth 1.13.6

Post by gfgtdf »

One more thing. The level 3 General of the loyalist faction currently has only 50 hitpoints. (compared to the level 3 Royal Guard who has 74, the Orcish Sovereign who has 75, the Drake Flameheart who has 72 and the Elvish Marshal who has 62.) These units all also have leadership and are level 3
Execpt the Royal Guard which doesn't habe leadership, i fully agree here. The general migth have a little better resistances but it does not fully comensate the worse hp, also those other units have better attacks.

I think the main reason why the general line is so weak is that is was balanced with singleplayer in mind and that 1) generals often appear as loyal units 2) generals can advance to level 4 thus giving a you a no-upkeep unit with level 4 leadership.
Scenario with Robots SP scenario (1.11/1.12), allows you to build your units with components, PYR No preperation turn 1.12 mp-mod that allows you to select your units immideately after the game begins.
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Re: Wesnoth 1.13.6

Post by The_Gnat »

gfgtdf wrote:I think the main reason why the general line is so weak is that is was balanced with singleplayer in mind and that 1) generals often appear as loyal units 2) generals can advance to level 4 thus giving a you a no-upkeep unit with level 4 leadership.
True, however if there is an issue with the generals leadership it should be solved by the removal of the grand marshal advancement (through the #ifdef DISABLE_GRAND_MARSHAL) not by the unbalanced change of hitpoints.

A solution could be creating a new [base_unit] of the General, one would be the multiplayer version with appropriate hitpoints compared to the Elvish Marshal, the second would be the campaign General with less hp.

The main reason i present this is similar to the cost issue: though it is only significant in Age of Heroes, and other high level multiplayer factions i believe discrepancies in balance should be rectified if possible.

The Grand Marshal is the only mainline level 4 leadership unit (and one of the few level 4 units) maybe level 4 leadership should not be an increase of 25% but instead merely 10%.

With all this said, it is not a huge concern and if the dev's and yourself do not believe a change would improve the mainline game i do not think it is a major issue, and am perfectly happy to continue correcting it in my add-ons with a modified version of the General (using [base_unit]).
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Re: Wesnoth 1.13.6

Post by gfgtdf »

hmm well what i said in my last post is not really a reason fpor not increaing this units hp since campaigns can always compensate that for example by giving the unit a negative trait. (i also think campaigns generally give the author too little options to change unit types, since you cannot just change a base unit and have to createa completeley new unit with [bast_unit] but that's a different issue)

But that a unit is weaker than unit with an same role on another faction isnt nesasarily a reason to change them eigher, since i heared multiple times now
multiplayer matches are balanced factions against faction, not unit against unit
Not sure if this applied to higher level unit aswell though.
Scenario with Robots SP scenario (1.11/1.12), allows you to build your units with components, PYR No preperation turn 1.12 mp-mod that allows you to select your units immideately after the game begins.
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Celtic_Minstrel
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Re: Wesnoth 1.13.6

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

gfgtdf wrote:since campaigns can always compensate that for example by giving the unit a negative trait.
I think this would be a bad idea, unless you made your own trait. Giving a general traits such as "weak" or "dim" would be quite bizarre.
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Re: Wesnoth 1.13.6

Post by gfgtdf »

Well yes i never though of using 'weak' or 'dim', if we increase generals hp 50->62 they could for example just use a trait that drcreases hp by 4*level
Scenario with Robots SP scenario (1.11/1.12), allows you to build your units with components, PYR No preperation turn 1.12 mp-mod that allows you to select your units immideately after the game begins.
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Samonella
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Re: Wesnoth 1.13.6

Post by Samonella »

I've just started moving some of my work to 1.13.6, and here are my observations so far:

1) loading/displaying unit/terrain graphics is noticeably laggy compared to 1.12 (my computer is pretty slow) EDIT: disabling "Animate water" in preferences helped a lot
2) using a comma separated list for team_name doesn't seem to work like it should
3) I really dislike the way [message] re-centers the screen every time a new unit talks. I almost want to set scroll=no in all my messages, but of course that's trouble if the units are actually more than a screen's distance apart.
4) the big warnings about using debug mode commands are a good feature I guess, but they sure get annoying. Is there a way to turn them off, or at least turn down their duration?
5) not sure if it's a bug or a feature, but using [music] in scenario top-level used to act like I set immediate=yes, now I have to do that explicitly.
6) This one is just a nuance: Iron Mauler's sprite and profile shows a flail like the shock troopers, but the sound effect, attack icon and attack name match the heavy infantryman's mace (and the 1.12 iron mauler's)

All the UI changes are great though! And I'm pretty excited to finally use all the new wml tags.
Last edited by Samonella on February 18th, 2017, 6:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Wesnoth 1.13.6

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

I think I had a fix for #3, actually... that should definitely be merged in. Totally agree on #4. I really hate those warnings.
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Re: Wesnoth 1.13.6

Post by The_Gnat »

Hello, not to distract from samonella's very good questions, but i was wondering, while we are considering balance changes, if you would also consider changing the xp of level 2 units that have reached maximum level.

Currently lvl 2 units with no advancement have 100xp, however this is approximately 20xp more than most other lvl 2 units.

For Example:

javelineer (xp 100) - compared to - longbowman (xp 65)
orcish slayer (xp 100) - compared to - orcish crossbowman (xp 80)
saurian oracle & soothsayer (xp 100) - compared to - elvish druid (xp 80)
ogre (xp 100) - compared to - orcish warrior (xp 60)
deathblade (xp 100) - compared to - revenant (xp 85)
goblin pillager (xp 100) - compared to - goblin knight (xp 65)

These units all should have reduced xp because units with AMLA instead of an advancement have a disadvantage, this disadvantage compensates for the fact that they are specialist units.

For example the Goblin Pillage is a stronger unit than the Goblin Knight and so it is understandable it should have an disadvantage in terms of advancement, this is why it is good that the Goblin Knight advances to the Direwolf Rider. However also making the Goblin pillager have 35 more xp seems like a unnecessary handicap. Similarily the Ogre is a type of unit which should require low xp, because it has a AMLA instead of normal advancement means that it should have less xp than a normal unit.

The gryphon master, lancer, tabib, troll shaman, troll rocklobber all have appropriate comparative xp for their type of specialist unit.

I understand what the dev's have attempted to do here: create a standard 50xp per level for units that do not have an advancement. However it should be realized that 50xp is greater than normal and AMLA is worse than an advancement.
Suggested price changes
Javelineer xp 80
Slayer xp 95
Saurian oracle xp 95
Saurian soothsayer xp 85
Ogre xp 60
Deathblade xp 85
Goblin Pillager xp 85
Thank you! Thoughts are welcome
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