Comments and questions

[Aidoneus]

I think that Battle for Wesnoth compares most favorably to commercial turn-based games, such as Civilization and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The terrain, sounds/music, sprites, and balance of forces indicate a great deal of meticulous thought and effort went into creating this game. Everyone involved deserves congratulations and heartfelt thanks for a beautiful project--I only wish that I had discovered it sooner.

Now, having played through most of the mainline campaigns and dabbled with the multiplayer mode, I have a few observations and questions. If some veterans do not mind answering what may well be oft-repeated questions, I would be interested in and grateful for any reasoned responses.

Why hide the unit progression? It's as though one taught someone to play chess and then sprang pawn promotions on them out of thin air. Of course, one can look the unit progression online, but I see no reason to hide it from new players.

I understand that different terrain gives different units different evade percentages. It seems that this is never adjusted by the attacking unit (except for magic), right?

Why does Halberdier get pierce and Royal Guard get blade/impact resistance. Oh, of course, to balance the horseman's pierce charge. But shouldn't Royal Guard carry a shield to ward off arrows? And shouldn't charge attacks really be impact (weight of horse and rider crashing into enemy)? Why not switch Halberdier and Royal Guard resistances and make horseman charges impact? As for cavalryman, leave it be (unless it gets renamed to something like horse archer).

Why have a Level 5 Elder Mage. I know, I know, for campaigns...but, for the most part, it seems weaker than the Level 4 Arch Mage.

Please don't flame me but...for those of us who like less luck (yeah, I have read some of the posts on this subject), what would it take to change the evade percentage to a damage reduction percentage? I could even see it split into ranged and melee values. For example, ranged attacks could do less damage in forests and more in plains. Don't get me wrong, I'll play the game with dice (reminds me of old board games like Blitzkriege and Axis & Allies), but I would prefer less luck.

[Iris]

Why have a Level 5 Elder Mage. I know, I know, for campaigns...but, for the most part, it seems weaker than the Level 4 Arch Mage.

The Elder Mage was originally a hero character intended to represent just the elderly Delfador in Heir to the Throne, and that is IMO the only legitimate (mainline) use for it nowadays. It’s there just to add flavor according to the plot and make the characters seem less generic (Konrad could very well be yet another Sergeant or Spearman, for instance, but that wouldn’t be very interesting to play). Hence it’s not part of anyone’s advancement tree.

I’ll let the others answer the most er, “controversial” questions.(Play nice, people.)

[Pentarctagon]

A lot of your questions about units just comes down to WINR.

[Velensk]

Why hide the unit progression? It's as though one taught someone to play chess and then sprang pawn promotions on them out of thin air. Of course, one can look the unit progression online, but I see no reason to hide it from new players.=.

Developer preference in this case. I don't really understand it either.

Why does Halberdier get pierce and Royal Guard get blade/impact resistance. Oh, of course, to balance the horseman's pierce charge. But shouldn't Royal Guard carry a shield to ward off arrows? And shouldn't charge attacks really be impact (weight of horse and rider crashing into enemy)? Why not switch Halberdier and Royal Guard resistances and make horseman charges impact? As for cavalryman, leave it be (unless it gets renamed to something like horse archer)

Damage types are very much an abstraction representing not just the type of wound inflicted but the tactics involved as well. You could fidget around with them quite a bit and still justify everything as a result a lot of what is is a result of what was and because there is no major incentive to change the entire system when it works (as a volunteer project that regards itself fairly well balanced changes tend to operate on a bad idea until proven good). In the case of the horseman tweak there are lots of reasons why it would be a bad idea for horseman to have an impact attack. Balance vs undead would be one of them. If horsemen did impact damage then they'd be able to run over both skeletons and dark adepts with supreme efficiency and this isn't just on the offense but they'd retaliate very well against skeletons as well. It's not particularly desired to rework the balance of the entire game to make this thing or that thing a little more realistic in one way or another when the whole thing is an abstraction and we have a set-up that works. Pretty much any way you arrange it there will be unrealistic things (for example, horsemen armed with spears twice as effective at retaliating against skeletons as foot based spearmen. I don't really understand why a plate clad halberdier has absolutely no resistance to blade at all (though I understand being especially good against peirce as from what I've read the armor the swedish mercenary pikemen wore was very much designed to help against the biggest threats to pike formations (other pike formations, and archers) but it works in general and its hard to get people to agree on a change so we keep it the way things are unless we discover there is a problem with it.

Please don't flame me but...for those of us who like less luck (yeah, I have read some of the posts on this subject), what would it take to change the evade percentage to a damage reduction percentage? I could even see it split into ranged and melee values. For example, ranged attacks could do less damage in forests and more in plains. Don't get me wrong, I'll play the game with dice (reminds me of old board games like Blitzkriege and Axis & Allies), but I would prefer less luck.

There is an era that was recently published for if you prefer it (though no splitting for melee and range). Having tried it, I'll still hold that the game requires more thought, evaluation, and planning to play well with the dice but you're free to play without them if you prefer.

EDITED for clarity

[Aidoneus]

Gee, fantasy is not reality? But I Have a Dream...

[hhyloc]

Why does Halberdier get pierce and Royal Guard get blade/impact resistance. Oh, of course, to balance the horseman's pierce charge. But shouldn't Royal Guard carry a shield to ward off arrows? And shouldn't charge attacks really be impact (weight of horse and rider crashing into enemy)? Why not switch Halberdier and Royal Guard resistances and make horseman charges impact? As for cavalryman, leave it be (unless it gets renamed to something like horse archer).

I believe this is for balancing purpose, and it add some diversity to the strategy too, the player have to choose whether he want pierce or blade/impact resistance, fast and reliable Royal Guard or powerful and versatile Halberdier. Although I do agree with you that the Halberdier/Royal Guard have only Pierce/Blade & Impact resistance respectively seem kinda strange.
About the Horseman, he use his spear/lance to pierce the enemy and the horse's momentum to make a deadly charge, the spear will reach the enemy before the horse do so damage type is pierce. Oh and because of balancing purpose too.

[Aidoneus]

Thank you Velensk. Yes, I did wonder if my suggestion concerning Halberdier/RG/Horsemen would unbalance the game, and I can see where any such change might create a ripple forcing further adjustments ad infinitum.

Do you recall the name of the era you mentioned?

[Velensk]

The 'NoLuck Era'.

[Aidoneus]

Thanks again, Velensk. I downloaded it and will give it a try.

[Zerovirus]

I'm not sure how unit progressions are 'hidden' from players in the sense that pawn promotions could be considered to hop out of nowhere. Surely the XP bar in the side informs you that units can in fact be promoted? If you're questioning the sense of concealing higher-leveled upgrades after the first level-up, that's more metaphorically comparable to a pawn's promotion being promotable out of nowhere, which I admit would be something of a shock- if not for the fact that the XP bar still remains even after you level.

What would more surprising is when you hit the upper barrier and your XP bar fails to level your unit up- a surprise that's more often felt by new players than the surprise of the initial level-up.

[Iris]

I think he means why the help doesn’t have all available advancements in it by default.

(Which I thought was an FPI, but I can’t find it in the topic.)

[pauxlo]

Gee, fantasy is not reality? But I Have a Dream...

Ah, no. The Wesnoth game does not work as the (fantasy) Wesnoth world would work (which is quite similar to our reality, but with more intelligent races, addition of magic, and a medieval technology level).

The reason is that it is a game, and must be simplified to stay playable. Balance and fun in gameplay goes always over any realism concerns. (Of course, as much as possible we try to find in-universe lore explanations.)

[Caphriel]

I'm with Velensk on not understanding why you can't see what a unit promotes into until you level it up. How is a new player supposed to know which units are worth feeding experience to? Elvish shamans, for example, are kind of a mediocre level one unit in campaigns, but level up into awesome things. I've never seen a good explanation for this.

Terrain defense and chance to hit work as follows: If a unit has the "magical" weapon special, it has a 70% chance to hit, no matter what the defense value of the other unit. If the attacking unit has the "marksman" weapon special, it always has at least a 60% chance to hit. So it can have a 70% chance to hit, but never 50% or lower when attacking. When defending, its chance to hit is unchanged. If neither of these weapon specials is involved, then chance to hit is just dependent on terrain

[HomerJ]

I'm not sure how unit progressions are 'hidden' from players in the sense that pawn promotions could be considered to hop out of nowhere. Surely the XP bar in the side informs you that units can in fact be promoted?

IIRC, the tutorial lvl2 mentions promotions and the usefulness of these.

I don't think the hidden advancements are that big an issue, I mean if you play a campaign the first time you should probably start on easy, and you will try to level all available unit types anyway. If you want the bigger strategical challenge of higher difficulty levels you probably have played the campaign already at least once, and maybe taken a look at wesnoth.org anyway.

That being said, unlocking the helpfile would not harm the game IMHO, just take away some nice discovering flavour.

All this does not apply to MP obviously.


Greetz
HomerJ

[Elvish_Hunter]

Why hide the unit progression?

In case that someone wants to unlock immediatly all advancements inside help, it is possible using the debug console, by typing

Code: Select all

:debug
:discover