Era of Ilthan

[Civhai]

Era of Ilthan

This site will be updated continuously.

My brother and me made a small era, it is still a lot of work to do, but I hope you can give us some feedback on the things we have already done. It takes place on an island in the ocean, far away from all other wesnoth histories. First, our goal was not to overdo anything, because we saw many user made eras with tons of extremely special units, traits and so on, so we tried not to overdo those sepcial things and to use normal profiles without any extreme deviations. Now, we are a bit less strict, because making a user made faction is of course not about not using any special rules at all, but just not to overdo it, but now and then it is even okay to use slightly more of them than in mainline just to give your units an individual note. Still balancing is an important point for us and we still don't want to overdo anything. The art is not finished at all as one can see, but that is just the main part one is working on while creating an own era.

You can download our era here: Era_of_Ilthan-0.0.4.tar.gz

Mountain Mages

Main author: My brother

History: The mountain mages are very good friends of the Artons, because they need to trade with them because the Artons are much better at creating things then they are. They teached the Artons to use magic and help them in battle sometimes. But they also have a bad side: They are very arrogant, especially towards those among themselves which are not able to use magic and treat them extremely badly. Furthermore, they always slaughter the earthmen in a cruel way during their expeditions in the caves of their home mountains.

Playing: They have of course the best mages, but if I play them, the biggest part of my army consists of fighting mages. They are neither as strong as other melee fighters nor do they have extremely good ranged combat and their hp are mediocre, too. But the fact that they are decent at both of them makes them an extremely powerful unit.

Art TODO: Some units are terrible and have to be repainted, this has mediocre priority.

Rules TODO: Almost nothing except balancing.


Earthmen
Main author: Me

History: The earthmen live in tunnels in the mountains and have a cruel war against the mountain mages. Usually, they are not evil, but since they have to defend themselves against the mountain mages every day, they are pretty critical towards strangers.

Playing: They have a lot of cost efficient lvl 0 units and some strong monsters inclusive one with berserk, but they have some problems with ranged combat.

Art TODO: The earthmen and onoloms are considered pretty finished unless we get more ambitious one day. The other monsters still have only one sprite for all levels, which is not enough.

Rules TODO: It is possible that the earthmen and/or the monsters get (different) custom traits. I want to add another monster as a special unit as soon as I get an idea and maybe, the normal monster gets a small ability just to give it an individual note. Furthermore, a lot of balancing work has to be done.


Artons
Main author: My brother

History: The Artons are the main "good guy" faction and consists of humans. They are defending themselves against frequent attacks by swamp undead, wood pirates and the black army. Sometimes they get help from their friends, the mountain mages and in very bad times, it occurs that even the lizard alliance helps them.

Playing: The Artons have the best archers and solid decent melee fighters, horsemen and mages. They are the most versatile faction, maybe they are slightly similar to Loyalists, but their mages and horseman aren't that awesome, therefore, their bowman are better.

Art TODO: There is obviously still much to do, especially for units > lvl 1. Most sprites are terrible and have to be repainted.

Rules TODO: They'll get a trait called "honourable" or something like that. This leads to an advantage against fully healed units. They get a different kind of swimmer than now, too.


Lizard Alliance

Main author: My brother

History: The lizards live in the desert and want to be left alone there. They have an eternal war with the Desert Undead, which live in the same desert and sometimes have to defend their coast against Wood Pirates. Usually, they don't like human beings in their desert, but in very bad times, it occurs that they help the Artons to defend against attackers. The lizards made an alliance with the highly intelligent people of the Ural swamp, which have a lot of problems with the desert undead and the dragons from the southern mountains which are quite friendly towards almost everyone except desert undead.

Disclaimer: They are NOT inspired by Saurians and Drakes. We invented the lizards first (those were inspired by another self created game) and added the dragons much later.

Playing: The AI fights worst with this faction and loses every match with it, but I think that it is great for a human. They are pretty versatile, but in general, they have very mobile hard hitting units with few hp and bad resistances and a very good blocking unit. So time of day is extremely important for them and their mobility has to be used to take advantage of this. That's my favorite faction to play with.

Art TODO: It's the first faction we made the art for and it has been redone and improved several times. Still, it has to be improved, but right now, the priority is lower than for other factions.

Rules TODO: Almost nothing except balancing.


Swamp Undead
Main author: My brother

History: Once upon a time, a huge army of Artons wanted to eradicate the black army for once and for all, but they were ambushed, hunted into a swamp and killed. Now some strange people use black magic to use the bodies of that army for their evil purposes.

Playing: I personally don't like to play them very much, they are slightly similar to normal undead, but have a bigger focus on walking corpses and no skeletons. If you play them, you can feel that they are obviously not finished.

Art TODO: It's one of the two factions we're working most for, obviously, most sprites have to be repainted.

Rules TODO: We have to rethink the whole faction, since right now it seems too weak and not really playable.


Desert Undead

Main author: Me

History: A very long time ago, a powerful and highly developed people lived in the desert, now, many thousand years later, the skeletons and mummies of those people raise again and fight against the lizards, the new inhabitants of the desert for their formal home.

Playing: Their main melee unit is the strongest lvl 1 melee unit of the whole era. If you manage to advance one, chariots are also quite effective. But their best unit is probably the mummy, which has both melee and ranged attacks, which turns them into a very strong unit although both attacks are worse than that of a normal ranged/melee unit.

Art TODO: Mostly frankensteined, so it needs to be repainted, the chariots are just terrible, but I'm pretty happy with the mummies. They still need some improvements to make the different lvls more individual and I'll have to add team colors, too.

Rules TODO: They need a real scout, their rider is not really capable of doing that job. We'll maybe give them a flying unit.


Black Army

Main author: Me

History: The black army lives in a long valley in the mountains of the north eastern part of the island. Once in a while, they build a big army and attack the Artons. Their goal is to kill all other factions although they sometimes work together with the Swamp Undead.

Playing: They have strong melee units, their ranged unit is also rather stronger in melee, but weaker in ranged combat than other ranged units. They're mostly neutral and most units are not very mobile. They have to make use of the ninja unit, which has poison and backstab. I'd hate to play them without the ninja, but that unit actually makes it funny to play them.

Art TODO: Everything is either frankensteined or terrible, so most units have to be repainted, some have to be improved. But this hasn't very high priority yet.

Rules TODO: Once upon a time, we wanted to give them a "black mage" unit, but probably we skip that, because they already have too many units. They need some kind of swimmer, though.


Wood Pirates
Main author: My brother

History: They hide in the north western forest and are one of the most aggressive people. Those wood pirates at the coast are feared among other coast cities because of their frequent raids. Those more inside the forest are much less aggressive, because they only kill people who come into their forest, but that is rather understandable because they only defend their home.

Playing: Their pirate is a cost efficient decent melee unit which does well in shallow water, too, but I rather prefer to play the forest units, which are less cost efficient if you only look at direct combat, but you can build a whole army with the ambush rule, which is actually quite funny, especially because you can really win against computers with a lot more money. I don't know how to estimate the potential of the slave catcher, who generates gold in case of a kill.

Art TODO: It's one of the two faction we are working on right now. We finished some lvl 1 units, but the others have still the old terrible sprites.

Rules TODO: We'll maybe add a boat unit or something like that. A lot of balancing tests have to be done, since the effect of their ambush ability can't really be tested against the AI in a meaningful way.


What you can help:
It's probably still too early to ask for help, but I'll still point out what would be the best things you could help us with:
Give feedback/playtest
Help us with the descriptions, since we are both not really heroes in writing English texts.
Answer my questions

------------------------------------
Original first post (Don't read it )

I began to create a new era with my brother. We will probably never publish it, because there are already tons of eras and ours has really terrible pictures and is not balanced at all, we only did it because it's funny to create ones own era. Maybe if it gets better, we'll still publish it, but that's not very probable at the moment.
But related to this project, we have a few questions:

1. One faction has got a ballista. It's a really bad and slow unit wich I only created for role playing reasons, but now the Computer doesn't understand that and always builds these ballistas. Is there a way to avoid that? Can I tell the Computer not to build any ballistas any more? (Or maybe 1 ballista per 1000 units)

2. Can I tell the AI something about the values of units in general? There are some really good units wich he never uses, while he always builds the same two units. Can I change that?

3. For the ballistas, I had a really complicated idea. I don't know if I'll really do that, if it is that difficult, but maybe you have a good idea. I wanted it to change sides, if it is in contact with an enemy unit and with no friendly unit. So you can conquer ballistas.

4. Ballistas should be immune to poison.

5. There's a unit wich is only living due to magic forces. But however, these forces become weaker from turn to turn. So this unit should lose 2 HP per turn without being poisoned or anything. He should even die because of this, if he has only 1 or 2 HP left. This shouldn't be healed by villages or anything. In villages, they should regenerate 6 HP.

6. Once, we tried to create a szenario for our new era, where the computer has to defend one side of a river while the human player has to come across that river. However, instead of waiting on the other side of the river to kill the weak units in the water, he tried to cross the river himself wich made the battle really easy. How can I tell the AI, that he should concentrate on defending or something like that?

I think some of the questions are really difficult problems, so it's not important to solve all of them, even though it would be nice, but I hope I can still solve some of them.
Thanks in advance.

[Skizzaltix]

@1+2: Set the usage of the ballista to something you won't use very much ("mixed fighter", maybe) and then in the faction definition area, stick:

Code: Select all

		recruitment_pattern=(a whooooooole bunch of other recruitment types),mixed_fighter

Or, if you don't want it to use the thing at all, just don't have it in there.

@3: This should be perfectly doable with a little bit of WML. It's been a long time since I did anything with it, so I can't tell you how exactly, but if you look at the "charm" ability that some people cooked up and Melon used for his Youkai faction, that should give you half the script.

@4: Set the ballista's race to "mechanical".

@5: This should be perfectly doable in WML. I'm not sure what the exact tags would be, but you would stick something into the "new turn" event that looks something like this:

Code: Select all

		[filter units]
		[if]
		unit type is "undead thingum"
		[then]
		remove 2 health
		[/then]
		[/if]
		[/filter units]

Not sure that syntax is all correct, but whatever.

@6: Again, WML. Stick this in the "new turn" event:

Code: Select all

		[avoid]
		x=xval1,xval2,etc,etc
		y=yval1,yval2,etc,etc
		side=whatever side that computer is
		[/avoid]

Edit:

Wait, no, you don't even need to do that. The only reason I was doing it that way is that it was something likely to change. I'm pretty sure that if you stick the same stuff in the side definition area, it'll work just fine.

[Civhai]

Thanks a lot for the quick and helpful answer. The era begins to take form.

But where do I have to add the new turn event or where do I find it?

I've still some more questions:
Ok, now we wanted to make a slave trader. If he kills units, the player gets money for this.
Does anyone know how to do that? And does anyone have an idea how much money this should be to get the balance right?
It is to say that he is a mediocre ranged unit, so he won't kill a huge amount of enemys, but here and then, it should be possible to win some money.

Is there any support for automatic balance testing? Something like let the computer fight 100 battles and print some statistics about wich fraction did best.

[Lizard]

Ok, now we wanted to make a slave trader. If he kills units, the player gets money for this.
Does anyone know how to do that?

It can be done rather easily with a die event + some filters

And does anyone have an idea how much money this should be to get the balance right?
It is to say that he is a mediocre ranged unit, so he won't kill a huge amount of enemys, but here and then, it should be possible to win some money.

Is there any support for automatic balance testing? Something like let the computer fight 100 battles and print some statistics about wich fraction did best.

No, the enemy AI is to bad to give useful results, though it IS possible to do with a script, but I won't recommend it.

[Velensk]

You can't realy test with the AI, because the AI does not play well. It'll make stupid mistakes a human wouldn't, it won't nessisaraly see abuses humans would, it does not understand most weapon specials ect. The AI also is not the best at asertaining the value of certain units and less obviouse unit counters (for example, you may have noticed that the AI as loyalists will recruit many heavy infantry and few spearmen, whereas when playing a human the resverse will ussualy be true, and a human player will know how to punish you for going so heavy on heavy infantry)

You could of course just have it play local games against itself on max speed and record the results, but the results won't be very conclusive for how the era would play with humans

[Lizard]

allefant made a script to let AIs fight each other in nogui mode, though that was to test AI strength, not Faction strength (lock for tommy AI)
So basically you could run 100 matches while you sleep (if you do that).

[Civhai]

Yes, I know, the AI is really stupid and does even worse in our era, but I don't want to do the balancing fully relying on this results, but I want to get a rough estimation for the starting phase, if I made a terrible balancing error, for example, if one faction wins 80 of 100 games, it would be quite obvious, that this fraction is a bit too strong.

However, are there any other tipps related to balancing? I tried to compare everything with the mainline factions. Mostly, that gave me a good guideline, but some times, this was quite difficult, since there are no comparable units in the mainline factions. But who would make a new factions with only the same profiles as the mainline, only changing the names and giving them terrible pictures?

One of the next factions we create will be a mountain and cave faction. First, we tought to do something similar to dwarfs, but then, we thought, that this was boring because they appear almost in every fantasy world, so we began to think about something totally different. After thinking a lot, we had an idea that fits brilliantly into our era. The faction contains small and thin earthman. We estimated their height to about 50 cm. (1.64041995 feet Never know wich system I have to use in wich forum). They have few clothes, are very thin and pale and have no hairs, so they look heavily ill. They are slightly inspired by the earthman of Narnia, if someone knows them. They appear in the fifth or sixth book or something like that, I forgot where exactly that was. They walk around as if they had been hypnotized.

They live deep in the caves in the high mountains. They are rather on the good side, although they are not that interested in the things above the ground. If you travel through their caves, they'll mostly ignore you, if it is obvious that you only want to travel through the caves or do something they are not related to. They'll rarely invite you exept if they have a problem they can't solve, but they'll not attack you either, but if you do something against them or take something away of the caves, they'll fight against you, even if you take gold or something, wich they don't even use, wich causes them to be in war with one of the good factions. They have got primitive weapons and a little bit more advanced technical stuff, like cranes, wich they use to build something. But they are always a bit inexplicable and nobody really knows what they are doing, although it always seems as if they WERE doing something important. They are always a bit busy, although they act very slowly. They know how to get iron out of the stone although they don't overdo that either. They seem to be a bit stupid and are sometimes a bit easy to guide, which gives us more possibilities for role playing stuff, if we want to create campaigns, later, like this, they can also be told that they should come out of their caves and fight against the good guys, so sometimes, they are on the bad side, too. They are organized in big cities wich are leaded by a king. There is no fighting amongst them, the different cities don't have too much contact, but there can never be any conflicts between them and they would cooperate, if there is any reason to do so, for example for a war.

Now I wanted to ask, if you have any good ideas for the units of this faction. I think it is clear, that they should be terribly weak and good in mountains and caves. Because we wanted to make them playable in multiplayer battles, too, we decided, that it would be a bit too stupid, if they only had a lot of very weak units, so they also have learnt to cooperate with the monsters of the caves, so they have some of them as pets and use them for fighting, too. So we'd need some ideas for different earthman units and for some pet monsters. If anyone has an idea, pleas tell us.

[Turuk]

However, are there any other tipps related to balancing? I tried to compare everything with the mainline factions. Mostly, that gave me a good guideline, but some times, this was quite difficult, since there are no comparable units in the mainline factions.

If you look at other era (EoM is a good example), trial and error is the best method for figuring out how to balance an era that is unique and differs from mainline. You will have to playtest each faction against the other and see where they suffer, and what can be done to fix that. Then you have to test that those fixes do not offset the balance of that faction versus the other factions. Part of this is why many people do not tackle making a whole era, as the issue of balance tends to be the hardest to surmount. It can be done if you have the patience and the time.

But who would make a new factions with only the same profiles as the mainline, only changing the names and giving them terrible pictures?

You would be surprised...

[Thanatos]

But who would make a new factions with only the same profiles as the mainline, only changing the names and giving them terrible pictures?

You would be surprised...

That really really made me laugh.

[Civhai]

So there are indeed people who do that.

By the way, you are the first guy I met in a forum, who uses the name tanatos and actually seems to know what it means.

[Thanatos]

By the way, you are the first guy I met in a forum, who uses the name tanatos and actually seems to know what it means.

Well, thanks for the compliment, although I don't know how you can grasp the term wrongly. It has only one translation from Greek, and that should be obvious. Still... how did you recognize, that I know what it means? And what do others think about it?

If this is spoiling your thread too much, just PM me. Thanks.

[Civhai]

Another question. Now, the ballista can be overtaken, if it is attacked and no adjacent unit is friendly. (Code can be found in WML-Workshop Board) How do you think about balancing this ability? Is this something small, where you just always send another unit adjacent to this ballista, and then this is not worth anything or is this really a strong disadvantage, so that I have to make this unit much cheaper?

You mentioned a script, where I can let the AI fight 100 matches against each other in nogui mode over night. Can you tell me where I can find this script?

Do you know, where I can find a documentation, how the recruitment pattern works? (Or tell me directly^^)

[Turuk]

Another question. Now, the ballista can be overtaken, if it is attacked and no adjacent unit is friendly. (Code can be found in WML-Workshop Board) How do you think about balancing this ability? Is this something small, where you just always send another unit adjacent to this ballista, and then this is not worth anything or is this really a strong disadvantage, so that I have to make this unit much cheaper?

I think it could go either way. A unit that switches hands could change the tide of a battle as having that extra unit can mean the difference. At the same time, a smart player would just keep it behind the line of battle (as it is a ranged unit) and just move it forward to finish off other units, thus meaning it would never really be in danger of changing hands.

Do you know, where I can find a documentation, how the recruitment pattern works?

The recruitment pattern works by telling the AI what units to recruit and in what priority based on how the unit is defined in their usage.

Look here at the usage key to see the different types explained. Unit WML

For more detail on the recruitment_pattern key, you can look here. AI WML

[Skizzaltix]

Civ III did the same thing with artillery units, and it worked pretty well--Though, there you could stack other units on top to protect the cannon or whatever, so...

[Civhai]

I'm trying to create some kind of desert undead. They have rather strong elite units than many weak units. They are a little Egypt-style, however, there are also some other things wich are not at all Egypt-like. I'm half finished with doing the art and creating the units. However, I think you can't do this without a mummy-like unit, so I want to create one of those. But I have no idea yet for this unit. Because many people have more ideas than they can do themselfes, I wanted to ask, if anyone here has good ideas for the mummy? Of course, bad resistance against fire as in all games. Maybe a small ability to make this unit a little different from the normal units or something like that. Furthermore, I have no idea, how I could call the lvl 2/3 mummys and it would be boring to call them elite mummy or something like that. Thanks in advance for any ideas.

Still lacking of ideas for the earthman, although I gave them a slinger and a normal fighter. We decided, that they'll get a unit with the ability of the Ulfserkers. (Forgot the english name)

And then, I don't know how much money I should give the slave trader for catching one unit.

First results of the ballista-ability: AI doesn't understand anything of course, for human, this ability is only a small disadvantage, since it is no problem to keep another unit adjacent to the ballista.

But now I'm in the mood to shortly describe our era:
There are the following factions: black army(finished except some animations and balance), lizard alliance (finished except some animations and balance), mountain mages (finished, except some animations and balance), wood pirates(almost finished), undead (half-finished), earthman (only some ideas), main human faction (not even found a name)

black army:
---------------
They live in a valley in the northeastern part of our eras island. They are extremly evil and try to conquer the main good faction now and then. They are human, but somehow extremly evil and kill everything. Could write more about them, but you can imagine. Most units are neutral, but the ninja line is chaotic.
Unit tree:

black infanterist ----- black fighter ---------------- black warrior
---------------------------- black count ----------------- black duke
---------------------------- black knight (my avatar)- death knight
slow and strong melee fighter with mounted/leadership advancement option.

black bowman ------ black crossbowman ----- heavy crossbowman
(lvl 1-2 are normal ranged units, lvl 3 is something between crossbowman and heavy infantery)

ninja student ------ ninja --------- master ninja
------------------------ flying ninja - flying master ninja
The special troop of this faction, has poison, backstab, skirmisher/fly, is not visible at night, maybe a bit overloaded with abilities, but a niceunit in multiplayer.

ballista -- catapult
(no melee, one strong ranged shot, extremely slow, rather a joke, can be overtaken by the opponent)

doggy -- dog -- hound
begins at lvl 0, cheap scout, better movetype than most scouts, extremely weak

light cavaleryman--scout
good scout with some ranged attack, too.


lizard alliance
-------------------
Yellow lizards, who live in the desert in the south, rather no technical developement (no iron or something like that), but very intelligent and a bit arrogant. Their role is pretty similar to the elves in the mainline, maybe even more radical. They aren't interested in things that happen outside their desert and they hate people who come into their desert. An exception are only the few races, they are allied with since many thousand years. They fight always with the desert undead, wich causes them to suffer, without the desert undead, they could be a flourishing people, but like this, they are always at their limits, however, they are rather winning this war and right now, they control most of the desert but every now and then, there comes an army of the desert undead out of the desert and then, they have problems again. They live in small villages and there is, as in almost all factions in our, no fighting between them.
However, this faction does not only consist of lizards but also of dragons. These two races have an alliance and help each other. (Although until now, the dragons where never those who needed help.)
The dragons live on vulcanic islands in the south and only few peoples have seen them and they could be only invented by those people (From the viewpoint of the main human faction).Those are incredibly nice and not at all like the wizards if you once get there. However, they forget sometimes, that not all people are immune to fire... But they are always very hospitable and like to talk a lot and tell funny things. However, they only have much contact with the lizards and those admire them because of their fire breath, wich makes them a good weapon against the desert undead, wich are their most hated enemys.
The Ural swimmers wich live in the swamp in the east are also allied with them. They are a bit better developed and have some spears, too. They are rather nicer than the lizards, but normally, they don't play such an important role, because they are not a very big people. In this swamp, there is also the violet mud, wich is a very strange people wich lives together with the Ural swimmers.
There is also a subspecies of the lizards in the desert near the border of this swamp. The black head lizards. They have black heads, probably to avoid being seen to easily while swimming through the swamp. They are rather stupid and weak and regarded by some lizards as inferior. However, they are included in their alliance as well.
Mostly lawful, although some exceptions wich I don't know by heart. One of the dragons, I think.

lizard -- fire lizard --- vulcano lizard
---------- giant lizard - royal lizard
The normal fighter, gets leadership or fire attacks (ranged and melee) at the second level

mage lizard -- yellow mage lizard -- orange mage lizard
------------------- healing lizard --------- apothecary lizard
mediocre mage, should be self-explaining

black head lizard -- black claw lizard
weak melee fighter, but gets more attack types, lvl1 blace and pierce, lvl2 +impact

ural swimmer -- ural fighter -- ural warrior
amphibic unit, decent melle fighter with pierce attack

violet mud -- violet giant mud -- violet death mud
----------------- green mud
hard to kill without fire, extremely good against impact, slow, regeneration, 1 weak attack in melee, no ranged exept lvl3, wich gets a minimal ranged, green mud has poison.

dragons are rather expensive, mostly bad at level 1 and get much stronger in later levels, although I think, they aren't overpowered or something, just a little stronger than most units.
blue dragon -- grey dragon -- black dragon
melee dragon, gets charge in lvl 2, decent cold range, chaotic

green dragon -- yellow dragon -- red dragon -- fire dragon
good ranged fire attack, slightly better in melee, though, charge from lvl2 on. Fast, but weak scout in lvl 1, gets extremly fast and very powerful in later levels

pale dragon -- white dragon -- silver dragon
ranged dragon, arcane attacks, decent melee, though

Uh, more work than I thought, I will post the rest later. Ideas are welcome, but it is said that we will probably only make small changes to this two factions and rather avoid adding or killing another unit. I know, lizards have a bit too many units and three dragons are a lot, but you'll avoid skipping units for which you already did the art. But critics and improvement suggestions wich do not include things like skipping a whole unit are welcome. (Although this won't be possible until now, because you don't know anything else yet.)

Language critics are also welcome. Please not for my posts only for the names or anything that is part of the era.