PickYourRecruits Era

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TL
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Post by TL »

Jami wrote:Thief, DA, Elvish Fighter, Merman Hunter, Saurian Augur, and a Drake Flare as a leader.

A flying Leadership unit, cheap and potent fodder units, a healer with a nice magic attack, mixed with two high-damage units = win!
Skeleton. GG.

Of course, that's what makes the era so fun, trying to guess what you're going to face and coming up with combos to try to cover all your bases...
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zookeeper
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Post by zookeeper »

Updated the 1.3 version. 1.3.9 required to play now (1.3.8 might work too, but I didn't test).

I fixed some location filtering in the way keeps and castles were generated temporarily for a player who would otherwise be able to pick their recruits, because it didn't work with newer versions anymore.

Then I renamed a few variable names and stuff like that, not worth a mention.
Velensk
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Post by Velensk »

TL wrote:
Jami wrote:Thief, DA, Elvish Fighter, Merman Hunter, Saurian Augur, and a Drake Flare as a leader.

A flying Leadership unit, cheap and potent fodder units, a healer with a nice magic attack, mixed with two high-damage units = win!
Skeleton. GG.

Of course, that's what makes the era so fun, trying to guess what you're going to face and coming up with combos to try to cover all your bases...
Accualy the Dark adepts are pretty good at killing Skelotons now. Personaly the times I've played it against a human (twice olny) I've found thieves and saurian skirmishers to be potent (as long as they have other support)
"There are two kinds of old men in the world. The kind who didn't go to war and who say that they should have lived fast died young and left a handsome corpse and the old men who did go to war and who say that there is no such thing as a handsome corpse."
Gogora
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Re: PickYourRecruits Era

Post by Gogora »

I'm never on forums, but...

Yeah I received input while running the era.
Suggestion...
1. Add more leaders.
- Although I disagree and love the fact that there is a limited selection of leaders (for balance reasons), having non-leadershipped units one level higher might even things out a bit. Some things just don't work well enough (the dwarf). I suppose one of my pet peeves is the idea that "Oh, I can take that unit" comes to mind, but no one ever chooses it because there is always something better.
2. Balancing the customization factor.
- Too many people are saying it's unbalanced. I disagree 80% and agree 20% with that.
- The only thing I can see is that often popular units like "Ghost" are picked. And often the best of each race are a "good" idea. But, some units are too weak against ALL of the popular choices and SHOULD not be picked (without cost reduction) inside the customization. Having a limit of the three races to choose from and/or making certain units cost less, is a idea.
- Reducing costs and limiting race choices, make the game less determinable and more fair. In general - it's fun to customize, but I hate it when my partner picks units that cannot damage a Wose or Skeleton enough. (Ghost, merman hunter, troll, crappity crap, etc...)
3. !MOST IMPORTANT! Adding some interesting twists in "traits".
- Often I like seeing a added element of randomness, which is what's great about this era. Adding new "traits" might make this era more attractive, not to mention fair.
4. Following 1-2-3 may increase long-term player usage.
- Often I see new players, but they don't like the game because they don't understand what they do wrong when more "veteran" MP players are swearing and getting angry at them. Following the top suggestions might reduce the amount of strategy involved with THIS era, but it will create a harbour for new players to evolve from and develop their own MP wesnoth skills. I haven't seen any addon eras that are this well-adapted to training n00bs. And personally, I make my fair share of strategic disasters, and don't mind more randomness.
- As with the above... There may be many more ways to improve this era either one way (strategically) or the other (balance adjustments). Asking for more suggestions on it, knowing where you want to take it, was a good idea in itself.


All my suggestions are actually decent ideas for this era, if you give it some thought.

(As far as things go, the era is already good. The default units is a excellent way for new players to learn. And players I've played it with, agree that this is just plain great. They often ask me who made it.)
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zookeeper
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Re: PickYourRecruits Era

Post by zookeeper »

Gogora wrote:I'm never on forums, but...

Yeah I received input while running the era.
Suggestion...
1. Add more leaders.
- Although I disagree and love the fact that there is a limited selection of leaders (for balance reasons), having non-leadershipped units one level higher might even things out a bit. Some things just don't work well enough (the dwarf). I suppose one of my pet peeves is the idea that "Oh, I can take that unit" comes to mind, but no one ever chooses it because there is always something better.
More leaders? Yeah, why not...just not lvl3 leaders, as I have trouble seeing how those could not always be preferable to pretty much any lvl2 leader. I'll be glad to add more lvl2 leaders. Alternative: remove leadershipped leaders (and add more leader options). There's plenty of lvl2 units for each faction which could be used instead, after all.
Gogora wrote:2. Balancing the customization factor.
- Too many people are saying it's unbalanced. I disagree 80% and agree 20% with that.
- The only thing I can see is that often popular units like "Ghost" are picked. And often the best of each race are a "good" idea. But, some units are too weak against ALL of the popular choices and SHOULD not be picked (without cost reduction) inside the customization. Having a limit of the three races to choose from and/or making certain units cost less, is a idea.
- Reducing costs and limiting race choices, make the game less determinable and more fair. In general - it's fun to customize, but I hate it when my partner picks units that cannot damage a Wose or Skeleton enough. (Ghost, merman hunter, troll, crappity crap, etc...)
Well, I really, really don't want to start messing with the costs. The era was meant to be extremely simple and while supposed to be fun in the short term, not something that's supposed to be tuned so that top players could have "serious" interesting matches with it. It'd easily become confusing if some units would have, for example, a cost different from their standard recruit cost.
Gogora wrote:3. !MOST IMPORTANT! Adding some interesting twists in "traits".
- Often I like seeing a added element of randomness, which is what's great about this era. Adding new "traits" might make this era more attractive, not to mention fair.
4. Following 1-2-3 may increase long-term player usage.
- Often I see new players, but they don't like the game because they don't understand what they do wrong when more "veteran" MP players are swearing and getting angry at them. Following the top suggestions might reduce the amount of strategy involved with THIS era, but it will create a harbour for new players to evolve from and develop their own MP wesnoth skills. I haven't seen any addon eras that are this well-adapted to training n00bs. And personally, I make my fair share of strategic disasters, and don't mind more randomness.
- As with the above... There may be many more ways to improve this era either one way (strategically) or the other (balance adjustments). Asking for more suggestions on it, knowing where you want to take it, was a good idea in itself.
I'd be open for suggestions on alternate PYR eras (bundled with the same download of course), with different sets of units to choose from. However, I'd be very reluctant to change how the current one (default era units) works, as well as to change how the basic rules (cost of each unit being their recruit cost, for example) work (even with different unit sets). You can always propose (or better yet, create; I've made that pretty easy) a new variation of the era with a different unit pool.
Gogora wrote:(As far as things go, the era is already good. The default units is a excellent way for new players to learn. And players I've played it with, agree that this is just plain great. They often ask me who made it.)
It's interesting that you find it a good training tool for newbies, as I never really thought about it myself. My original intention was just to make a simple, fun and pretty light-hearted variation of normal MP for people to take a casual break with. If newbies like it, all the better!
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TL
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Re: PickYourRecruits Era

Post by TL »

zookeeper wrote:Well, I really, really don't want to start messing with the costs. The era was meant to be extremely simple and while supposed to be fun in the short term, not something that's supposed to be tuned so that top players could have "serious" interesting matches with it. It'd easily become confusing if some units would have, for example, a cost different from their standard recruit cost.
Question: is there really a need to have variable costs at all, as opposed to just having a fixed number of units? It's always seemed to me that the current system is unfairly weighted against more expensive units since you effectively have to pay twice for them, first just to add them and then again to actually recruit them in-game. Since expensive units are already balanced by the fact that you can afford fewer of them, is it really necessary to penalize them further by having them take a larger chunk out of your recruit-building fund? As it is, inexpensive units seem disproportionately dominant; you can get away with having one pricy unit, maybe two if you stretch things a bit, but the more you include the riskier it gets. I think that allowing players to simply pick 5 or 6 units without regards to cost would make sense both from a balancing perspective as well as a fun messing-around perspective, since it would give players greater freedom to explore high priced specialist units instead of being forced to rely even more than usual on inexpensive generalists.
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zookeeper
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Re: PickYourRecruits Era

Post by zookeeper »

TL wrote:
zookeeper wrote:Well, I really, really don't want to start messing with the costs. The era was meant to be extremely simple and while supposed to be fun in the short term, not something that's supposed to be tuned so that top players could have "serious" interesting matches with it. It'd easily become confusing if some units would have, for example, a cost different from their standard recruit cost.
Question: is there really a need to have variable costs at all, as opposed to just having a fixed number of units?
No, not really.
TL wrote:It's always seemed to me that the current system is unfairly weighted against more expensive units since you effectively have to pay twice for them, first just to add them and then again to actually recruit them in-game. Since expensive units are already balanced by the fact that you can afford fewer of them, is it really necessary to penalize them further by having them take a larger chunk out of your recruit-building fund? As it is, inexpensive units seem disproportionately dominant; you can get away with having one pricy unit, maybe two if you stretch things a bit, but the more you include the riskier it gets. I think that allowing players to simply pick 5 or 6 units without regards to cost would make sense both from a balancing perspective as well as a fun messing-around perspective, since it would give players greater freedom to explore high priced specialist units instead of being forced to rely even more than usual on inexpensive generalists.
Seems like a reasonable idea. I could indeed bundle an extra variation like this with the era. 6 units would probably be ok, that's the smallest number of recruits any default era faction has.
Gogora
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Post by Gogora »

Yes, thanks for replying, =D

I agree with TL on the costs of some of the higher units. Having a 5 and 6 unit limit option is a good idea for the era instead of messing with unit costs. I could imagine the kind of hassle you might go through balancing it out just right (and it would probably still be unbalanced).

I don't think extra "new" units would improve the era, just make it harder to use. I was suggesting traits because they could be randomly generated with existing traits. And it might be easier to add that to this era. As for suggestions, I'm sure there are tons of those. It would be cool to have some advanced traits like "nightstalk" or "ambush" assigned to any unit, with the right kind of dice roll (similar to how dexterity, strong, or quick is applied). That would be fun to work with or against, if one particular unit got it. Is that possible?

I like the era with how it uses default wesnoth options, not requiring additional downloads. Noobs can join the game without going to the addon sections. That's the BEST part of this era. An 1.2.x era everyone can play! What a concept. (Please don't hurt me EE fans)
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zookeeper
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Re: PickYourRecruits Era

Post by zookeeper »

I've uploaded a new version on the 1.5 add-on server.

Changes:

- a right-click option with which you can reset your picks during the first turn (in case you make a mistake and pick something you don't really want)
- all default era leaders now available as leaders
- general WML cleanup

Next on my list is finally implementing that idea about allowing the players to pick x units regardless of costs.
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Lizard
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Re: PickYourRecruits Era

Post by Lizard »

:shock: this must be a sign or something ... I begun a mod an hour ago.
Is your current version compatible with 1.4?
About my Idea: I want the player to choose/unchoose the units via a message. This way it will be faster and easier. You also can only delete the one unit you mis recruited instead of starting from zero again.
I'll try coding this now, but I'm slow. I'll ask you for help when I get stuck.
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Have a look at the Era of Strife, featuring Eltireans, Eventide, Minotaurs, Saurians and Triththa
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zookeeper
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Re: PickYourRecruits Era

Post by zookeeper »

Lizard wrote::shock: this must be a sign or something ... I begun a mod an hour ago.
Is your current version compatible with 1.4?
No, the new one on the 1.5 server isn't.
Lizard wrote:About my Idea: I want the player to choose/unchoose the units via a message. This way it will be faster and easier. You also can only delete the one unit you mis recruited instead of starting from zero again.
Two downsides: you can't view unit stats and access the help pages like you can in the normal recruit menu, and also your WML will be a lot bigger (a separate [option] for every unit type).
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Re: PickYourRecruits Era

Post by Lizard »

Zookeeper wrote:
Lizard wrote:About my Idea: I want the player to choose/unchoose the units via a message. This way it will be faster and easier. You also can only delete the one unit you mis recruited instead of starting from zero again.
Two downsides: you can't view unit stats and access the help pages like you can in the normal recruit menu, ...
Sure, that's a Blocker I didn't thought about that. But I think I can compensate it with displaying some stats on the Option.

:arrow: I'm now moving this to an own thread.
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Have a look at the Era of Strife, featuring Eltireans, Eventide, Minotaurs, Saurians and Triththa
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zookeeper
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Re: PickYourRecruits Era

Post by zookeeper »

Ok, the version on the 1.5 server updated again.

Now there's support for unit limits in addition to cost limits. Included is an era with a unit limit of 5, meaning that you can freely pick any 5 units you wish regardless of their costs.
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zookeeper
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Re: PickYourRecruits Era

Post by zookeeper »

I might also add that it's dead simple to give yourself extra variations of the era if you want to.

Just open your <userdata>/data/campaigns/PickYourRecruits_Era.cfg, scroll to the bottom and you'll see lines like this:

Code: Select all

    {PICK_YOUR_RECRUITS_ERA_WITH_COST_LIMIT pick_your_recruits_era_cost_limit_75 _"Pick Your Recruits (Default Era, 75g limit)" 75}
    {PICK_YOUR_RECRUITS_ERA_WITH_COST_LIMIT pick_your_recruits_era_cost_limit_90 _"Pick Your Recruits (Default Era, 90g limit)" 90}
    {PICK_YOUR_RECRUITS_ERA_WITH_UNIT_LIMIT pick_your_recruits_era_unit_limit_6 _"Pick Your Recruits (Default Era, 5 unit limit)" 5}
So, if you wanted to be able to play with a cost limit of 150g and a unit limit of 4, you'd just need to add these two lines there:

Code: Select all

    {PICK_YOUR_RECRUITS_ERA_WITH_COST_LIMIT pick_your_recruits_era_cost_limit_150 _"Pick Your Recruits (Default Era, 150g limit)" 150}
    {PICK_YOUR_RECRUITS_ERA_WITH_UNIT_LIMIT pick_your_recruits_era_unit_limit_4 _"Pick Your Recruits (Default Era, 4 unit limit)" 4}
And only the host needs to do that, players that join the game don't have to worry about it.
Valenwood
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Re: PickYourRecruits Era

Post by Valenwood »

zookeeper wrote:Ok, the version on the 1.5 server updated again.

Now there's support for unit limits in addition to cost limits. Included is an era with a unit limit of 5, meaning that you can freely pick any 5 units you wish regardless of their costs.
Are you uploading this version for 1.4.x as well, or is it possible to use the 1.5.x version on 1.4.x? I am asking because this addition is a good one, and I would like to use it on 1.4.x as well :) I've been playing this era a little now and then, ever since you added it to 1.2.x, and I very much enjoy it. I've always wondered why you made so few leader units to select from, though. Why I never got around to asking it until now; I don't know, lol :)

Anyways, it's great to see you're still working on this :)

EDIT: Also, did you leave out the Peasant, Woodsman and Ruffian from being picked, on purpose?
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