Looking for regular people to play with (is that the good place ?)

[Sinistra]

Hi there !
I am looking for people to play with (ingame name is Sinistra as well), I made this thread mostly to find people for 2 game modes that interest me but are pretty much impossible to pull off randomly on the official server. If you know some other cool game modes and wanna recruit me in I could be interested (depending of the mode of course).

1) Legend of the Invincibles multiplayer content. Legend of the invincibles is a very good (and 200 scenario long) campaign created by Dugi, but it also has some multiplayer maps (one is an arena, and one is a big battle). These maps like the campaign use Dugi's custom units (that go beyond the default units level, the custom amla's that allow to gain new skills, and Dugi's item system etc. To be brief : They are way too complicate for a pick up party when only one person knows what is going on. It's a bit like playing dnd or any board game (or like warhammer etc) it takes time to understand the system and also what works and what doesn't, so I hope to find regular and nice people here. I can explain a lot of stuff, maybe even a vocal would be useful for LOTI arena ("gladiators" map) in particular which is the hardest.

2) Battleground Europe era
It's a World War II era (and maps package) that attempts to simulate realism in various ways including dmg types, unit costs and battle tactics. It takes a bit of knowledge of WW2 tactics as well as of wesnoth of course. The reason for that is that the unit costs and dmg types are made realistic, which means you cannot apply some very common gaming mentalities such as "if you have several units and there is an enemy unit you will kill it in a reasonable time frame, no matter the units involved". In wesnoth default and most other eras this always works, even if you use fire vs drake or cold vs undead you will kill them in a reasonable time frame. In real life with modern weaponry it does not. Basically lets say they have a battleship. You cannot expect to do anything with small arms (bullet infantry) against it. You will never destroy it with rifles. But if you have submarines that can launch torpedos suddenly the ship is in serious existential threat. There are other solutions like using a dedicated bomber plane. Same for a tank, you need something that can go through it's armour. There are also more distances of attacks then the two default ones. This era is actually really strategic, fun and balanced once you understand what is going on but it is definitely noob unfriendly, this is why I'm looking for regular people for this as well.

I'm also available for different maps and eras. I like casual 2v2 maps and also coop survival games
Personality wise I'm nice until someone starts any argument, I don't react "well" or "nicely" to any aggression including verbal, so yeah I prefer chill and nice people and don't go well with bad manned people at all. I have much time available when I sit to play I wont leave due to time constraints ever even if a particular game goes late into the night but I will leave if people are toxic.

I just made this forum account but I have been playing under the nickname Sinistra on the official server already, and a much longer time as solo playing various campaigns.

[Elder2]

I have played battlegrounds europe and gave my opinion that it was way too campy and therefore unfun, I do not know if anything has changed.

[Paulomat4]

I'd be open for a game of LotI gladiators sometimes. If you want, drop me a message when you'd like to start a game.
It might also make sense to ask in the add-on specific threads to find other players .

[Sinistra]

I have played battlegrounds europe and gave my opinion that it was way too campy and therefore unfun, I do not know if anything has changed.

Intesting, could you please explain why you felt that way ? And what units/faction(s) were camped with. I have only played bge a little bit on the official server, mostly vs AI. I find the planes can remove camping pretty effectively, especially the bombers can destroy any camping position pretty much (and retreat to safety each turn if you have air superiority) and their bomb go above the anti aviation static defense reach. Plus the heavy bombers can destroy any town if its needed (like you think you will never be able to hold that town anyway). I play mostly germany and my favorite unit is the stuka (the cheap fighter/bomber mix with low defense) so I guess I am very biased since they tended to remove any camping pretty easily for me. Meanwhile they actually struggle seriously against dedicated high end fighters like the spitfire. I am aware the mod has issues however I found it a nice refreshing change over the heroic fantasy stuff (like default and most eras) which I also love but variety is good.

I'd be open for a game of LotI gladiators sometimes. If you want, drop me a message when you'd like to start a game.
It might also make sense to ask in the add-on specific threads to find other players .

Happy to hear and thanks for the idea

[Elder2]

Almost all if not all of the infantry and AT units had ambush so you can just put them in the forest and you can never really evaluate the strength of the opposing force (nor opponent yours if you do the same), also as far as I remember the units also had relatively very high defense on good terrain like forest and there was no way to create any dynamics as all the mobile mechanized or tank units vere relatively very expensive and got countered EXTREMELY hard by AT guns. Same with planes that got crushed by cheap AA guns.

Also I checked it out again and I see there appear to be some changes. Soviet conscript 0g? AHAHAHHAAHHA that sounds like fun xD

[Sinistra]

Almost all if not all of the infantry and AT units had ambush so you can just put them in the forest and you can never really evaluate the strength of the opposing force (nor opponent yours if you do the same), also as far as I remember the units also had relatively very high defense on good terrain like forest and there was no way to create any dynamics as all the mobile mechanized or tank units vere relatively very expensive and got countered EXTREMELY hard by AT guns. Same with planes that got crushed by cheap AA guns.

Also I checked it out again and I see there appear to be some changes. Soviet conscript 0g? AHAHAHHAAHHA that sounds like fun xD

It's gonna be a bit of a text wall because I will argue why I think the camping side is balanced and units that can camp can be dealt with. By the way the 0 cost soviets with teleport are okay in my opinion (I would prefer 1 cost or something, like just enough to give half of then a cheap rifle and let the others fend of for themselves xD), I admit it can be super annoying when trying to push vs URSS as like germany, because german infantry is the most expensive so you really cant afford to start dueling URSS 0 cost swarm, even 3 to 1 kill ratio for german riflemen against URSS swarm would be a loss of germany, but ultimately they are only target practice for anything but infantry units, so playing vs URSS just requires to adapt and bring more light tanks (cheap) and other armored vehicles and less infantry overall in the ratio of a land force. Armored cars wreck infantry and with their huge speed and high flat defense they provide a lot of area control and possibilities of attack that tanks cannot because of speed and defense issues.

URSS biggest strengh in my opinion isnt even the almost infinite infantry spam it's the very good power to price ratio on some tanks and some of their planes, the infantry spam makes it very hard to invade URSS controlled land but that's it, the 0 cost guys have horrible offensive potential since they have only 3 movespeed +teleport is mostly useless when attacking (since planes cant capture towns) and very bad survability, they also do cost a little bit of maintenance which granted really doens't matter if they are used as spam defence force against a land invasion but makes it impossible to stack a billion of them and use them offensively after a long camping time, that would eat away the URSS player's income while they move super slow.
I agree partially that it would be probably better if we can get some info at least (like a unit is present flag, is that even possible ?) when scouting around with planes or something. Its still not that much of a camping potential in my opinion unless a player really wants to do it and the map allows it (some of the maps designed for the era has huge clusters of villages, that are supposed to represent towns. It kinda makes sense, in real life as well every side basically camped in a way or another, Like for the battle of england it was much about camping from each side and using air force against to bomb the other. France whole grand strategy was camping.

For specifics rifleman infantry which is supposed to be the cookie cutter cost effective "spearman" of the era has only 40% defence in forest or village (the only places where it can be invisible) and is very exposed everywhere else, like it has 20% on flat and 30% on hills and mountains. Granted the machine guns can go a bit higher (it depends really, only the Heavy Machine Gun can go to 80% on village and 70% on forest and it only has 2 movement, and extremely low dmg potential except againt infantry in the open, I think it's fine and personally I almost never use HMG because it's super niche, it costs almost double a rifleman squad, is actually very hard to level up as well, has half the movement and the dmg is low as well. A single sniper can remove it in one turn with a little bit of luck.

I use mostly Submachine Gun (SMG) and sometimes Light Machine Gun (LMG) for nearby towns defence. SMG while cheap and very cost efficient on villages vs infantry (60% defence on villages) can only really go there because it has 30% defence in forest, and SMG have 0% on flat which means they are super hard to move around safely for long distances. LMG get 30% on flat but they have only 3 movespeed, cost more and while they do fine vs infantry and have a bit of utility with the frag and the covering fire they also cost more and are a disadvantage against normal rifleman on the attack, since rifleman lv1 can do 32/4 first strike retaliation vs LMG attack at 4/12 charge and low defense generally (they only get up to 50% in towns, forrest etc) so yeah any LMG attacking a rifleman will get destroyed even in town unless they use a frag or their far attack which both are for harass only and low dmg. Actualy a rifleman getting ambushed by an LMG can deal with it pretty easily by never attacking the LMG on medium range, only using frags (if they wanna take their time) or the close range attack if they wanna go for the kill. If the LMG decides to attack on medium they will get destroyed) it would be like trying to charge a pikeman with a horseman on default)

Mortar infantry is a bit disgusting and not worth camping with, I really dont even use them for the most part, bazookas are a supportive unit and not for camping since they can only do huge dmg to tanks when megabackstabing for 6 times the dmg, which is hard to set up with the low bazooka squad speed, they are also on the disadvantaged vs rifle infantry.

All infantries even the campers are vulnerable to bombing and tanks, even the bazookas are super vulnerable to tanks because tanks canon are on far range while bazookas on on close range only so a tank ambushed by a bazooka can kill the squad immediately without taking retaliation, alternatively even if their canon isnt strong enough (for a [censored] tank) they can gun the bazooka squad down. That makes bazookas horrible for frontline camping. So really there are only SMG and LMG for the infantry camping (and HMG if someone is filthy rich and only faces offensive infantry spam..) both only good vs rifles and the LMG cant even attack a rifle squad on your turn as I explained above.

So for the other potential camping type units, AntiAircraft gun and AntiTank gun, well AA gun are useful against planes, the problem is fighters usually have 80 or 90% defence and huge movespeed + get back movespeed once so they an attack and go back unless they are ambushed, even when ambushed its a bit hard to kill at 90% defence. Some planes have worst defence like the german stukas well they only get 60% but if they are ambushed, well the bomber planes are the ones with low defence usually so they can bomb the AA gun instead of trying to fight it (bomb goes above the AA range) so they might kill one AA gun (if they hit the single bomb) then granted next turn they might get destroyed easily by any other AA in the area is they lost their movespeed from being ambushed, but that would be a missplay on the stuka user side in my opinion so it was worth the punishment, stukas being best as supportive to a land force, hitting visible targets then retreating. If they werent ambused they can safely try to bomb and retreat in every case. This makes it possible to use something to scout a village or forest then a bomber to destroy it in the same turn.

Anti Tank guns can kill attacking tanks pretty well but they are vulnerable to bullets (which are super cheap to get, and that means being horrible vs all forms of infantry), also the heaviest tanks can shrug of anything but heavy AT guns which are not exactly spammable. Having a great tank while it costs more its much more flexible and has more potential to do as well then having a bunch of AT (a lot is about opportunity cost in this era since the high end units cost so much) because an AT gun once its position is revealed its gonna die very quickly in pvp to any bombing for instance or an infantry assault. And lastly the anti tanks guns are utterly useless against any planes, any bomb will destroy the AT gun instantly and its so one sided that the plane could stay at the tile (of course its better to hit and run using the planes ability to move after attack) and 1v1 the At Gun even if they only used flak attacks so even a cheap fighter plane can 1v1 an AT gun xD

[Elder2]

Well, I haven't played that many games of it, like 3 maybe, or 2 (I remember 2) but the thing is that an AT gun or AA gun costs 2-3 times less than a comparable tank or plane and can one shot it, the planes defense does not matter much because the AA guns have so many attacks that they are designed to be able to one shot or at worst 2 shot a plane or comparable cost class. Same with AT guns, tanks have relatively low defense so AT guns can one shot a tank or armored car that costs like 3 times more than the AT gun, what you will do is keep the AT guns or AA guns in the back and infantry in the front, so if infantry attacks you - high defense inf kills it, if tanks attack it - you bring AT guns, if planes attack it - you bring AA gun, and worse still everything is ambushed and also conscripts have teleport so the defending player has an insanely vast array of defensive tools and advantages that there are very little possibility to attack. Also if a player knows what he is doing he will have prepared cheap AT guns, AA guns etc, you don't even really need to see them to know that they should be there, so why every would you need to attack blind into a likely impenetrable defense?

But you could be right to a degree, I would need to play more games in it to be absolutely sure.

[Sinistra]

Well, I haven't played that many games of it, like 3 maybe, or 2 (I remember 2) but the thing is that an AT gun or AA gun costs 2-3 times less than a comparable tank or plane and can one shot it, the planes defense does not matter much because the AA guns have so many attacks that they are designed to be able to one shot or at worst 2 shot a plane or comparable cost class. Same with AT guns, tanks have relatively low defense so AT guns can one shot a tank or armored car that costs like 3 times more than the AT gun, what you will do is keep the AT guns or AA guns in the back and infantry in the front, so if infantry attacks you - high defense inf kills it, if tanks attack it - you bring AT guns, if planes attack it - you bring AA gun, and worse still everything is ambushed and also conscripts have teleport so the defending player has an insanely vast array of defensive tools and advantages that there are very little possibility to attack. Also if a player knows what he is doing he will have prepared cheap AT guns, AA guns etc, you don't even really need to see them to know that they should be there, so why every would you need to attack blind into a likely impenetrable defense?

But you could be right to a degree, I would need to play more games in it to be absolutely sure.

The pricing must be fair to some extent because it's based on real life as are unit stats (it does make it pretty much impossible to use navy which is sad tho). And the artillary is very hard to move around (trucks do help). However I can see your point after thinking about it for a large map with high income. Like a URSS player could probably make a literal wall of 2 depth trash infantry and put behind AA and AT guns (and infantry behind these again for reserves) and just keep advancing everything, add a few dirt cheap tanks in the mix in case the opponent answers with higher quality infantry, and to have a little bit of attack power at least. I think the issue ends up being wesnoth mechanics not allowing for planes going above unit walls, like to bomb something else then the frontline of an advancing force, this boils down to one unit per tile which can work in fantasy medieval settings but not with planes. Because in real life if someone tried this (advancing in the open and for weeks a huge and very slow formation of cheap infantry mixed with various unarmoured guns) well the whole army including all the useless guns on trucks would get destroyed by bombing. That's probably the root issue of the problem. It would be like trying napoleonic army movement in the era of tanks and planes.

[Elder2]

Not really, planes could not do all that much during WWII, the issue is rather about flanking and also because of the inability to assess the strength of the enemy camping hidden force, in real life you can do it with various scouting methods to get an idea. Wesnoth maps also do not simulatet he strategic plane very well, and also cost effectiveness of units does not capture the real life strategic level of war very well, at least with the values in the mod, but even if costs were lowered to better simulate the actual availability of assets then you probably could only simulate it to a degree, the matter is complicated anyway.

[Sinistra]

Not really, planes could not do all that much during WWII, the issue is rather about flanking and also because of the inability to assess the strength of the enemy camping hidden force, in real life you can do it with various scouting methods to get an idea. Wesnoth maps also do not simulatet he strategic plane very well, and also cost effectiveness of units does not capture the real life strategic level of war very well, at least with the values in the mod, but even if costs were lowered to better simulate the actual availability of assets then you probably could only simulate it to a degree, the matter is complicated anyway.

Yes it's pretty much impossible to implement country wide level assets simulation to wesnoth. I played a bit of Heart of Irons in the past which manages to handle that very well unfortunately combat isnt fun at all in HoI (at least in my opinion), it's basically boxes moving around slowly over a europe map...meanwhile combat is very fun in wesnoth. When units are provided at start it gets more playable (so there are actually ships used, since wesnoth economy doesnt allow to build ships on this mod) but its still very limitated, plus the money is caped by the system for the villages so this means maps need a huge amount of villages to produce decent income (decent as in able to buy medium tanks occasionaly).. which leads to the problem you explained with the camping. But removing concealment and ambush would mean it would be a cakewalk to attack (defender could really not do anything, so defence would be pointless). I guess a middle ground pricing would be best (not fully realistic but no 20 gold cost tiger tanks either. And additional revealing methods then going in melee range (maybe a scout type unit, or giving a revealing ability to fighter planes or something) so that concealement could be kept on infantry. I guess it makes sense they can hide in buildings in urban area after all. Ambush.. not sure if it should be everybody, snipers for sure but basic infantry I dont know, maybe removing ambush (and leaving concealement) on anything but snipers, commandos and U2 stealth bombers would deal with camping ? But many other units can probably hide in a forest if they really want to, with camouflage gear and staying still. And is it even worth thinking about all that ? I dont think many people playing wesnoth care about having a great world war II mod xD I wish they did but it's pretty much only about default and ageless for eras, and maps its about isar, colosseum, orocia, a few othe maps.. and thats' it. I tried pulling extended era yesterday on server and nobody ever joined. It's not even that weird of an era its way closer to default then ageless or battleground europe.

[Elder2]

I also played HOI, well at least in HOI III I would say it is relatively fun and quite deep in fact but the games are long and repetitive so that is the downside. I don't even know what is in extended era so yeah, also not many people have it.