WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Discussion and development of scenarios and campaigns for the game.

Moderator: Forum Moderators

Post Reply
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

weewah wrote: March 15th, 2021, 6:50 am First problem: it STRONGLY STRONGLY encourages mass unit recruitment. Like, hundreds of units. After all, they are now effectively sold at a ridiculously tiny fraction of their original recruit cost, since the gold you lose from recruiting them gets divided over and over until it becomes nothing. Seriously, buy 5 upgrades, and then any units you previously recruited each effectively cost you less than 1 gold!

Think about it this way: if each horseman cost 1 gold instead of 23, why would you do anything else but spam recruit horsemen every turn? Their cost effectiveness becomes so great that it doesn't even pay to train any of your units or use any tactics, just spam more 1 gold horsemen and swarm all enemies with them. Why wouldn't you when they are effectively so cheap?

Effectively, the upgrades encourage you to recruit even MORE units than before, even though having too many recruited units was the entire problem we were working to address in the first place!
Again, I have no clue what you are talking about or the logic behind it. We might be talking past each other here.
How exactly is the cost of recruiting going down? And how is that tied to the player's gold?

Edit:
Ok, let's try again. I'll try to explain the new features as clearly as possible.

If you have 600 gold to spare, you can use them to do one of these 3 options:

1) Upgrade the training XP from 1 to 2. It will reset back to 1 at the end of the season.
if you spend another 600 gold then the XP goes up to 3 ...

2) Reduce the mission requirement by 1. For example if you are doing the Drakes cut trees mission and you haven't done anything yet, then the required would be 5, and the current would be 0. After spending the 600 gold, the required would be 5 and the current would be 1. It's as if you've cut down a single regular tree.
If you spend another 600 gold then the numbers become 2 out of 5.

3) Third feature is for the market caravan. If you don't have any side 9 market caravans on the map, you can spend 600 gold and a market caravan would spawn at one of the map signs as usual.

Which one of these is saying to you that 1) it's better to recruit a lot of units, or 2) the recruit cost is going down?
weewah
Posts: 101
Joined: October 31st, 2019, 7:11 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by weewah »

Ok, I'll try to explain what I mean too.

Suppose that I am nearing the end of Summer. Training xps reset at the start of each season, so naturally, I would want to buy the training upgrades only when Autumn arrives, otherwise I would only get a few turns of XP.

Let's say that if I stop spending any more gold, then I would have 5k gold on the first turn of Autumn. Buying one upgrade would cost me 300 + 5000/2 = 2800 gold, leaving me with 2200 gold leftover.

But now suppose that during Autumn, I get bad luck: a bunch of enemies spawn, and I need to recruit 500 gold worth of units to deal with them. That leaves me with 2200 - 500 = 1700 gold (plus whatever income I get in autumn).

With this scenario in mind, I could look at it and think: wait, what if I just recruited 500 gold worth of units on the last turn of Summer? Well then I would have 4500 gold on the first turn of Autumn, buying one upgrade would cost me 300 + 4500 / 2 = 2550 gold, leaving me with 1950 gold leftover. And now I don't need to recruit another 500 gold worth of units because I already have those units recruited, so I end with 1950 gold (plus whatever income I get in autumn).

So from this, it can be seen that recruiting that bunch of units at the end of Summer is the superior strategy. After all, you end up 1950 - 1700 = 250 gold richer if you do that. In some sense, since recruiting these 500 gold worth of units in Summer makes you 250 gold richer than if you recruit them in Autumn, you could say that you got these units for half price in Summer!

But wait! Why stop at 500 gold worth of recruits? The Autumn enemies may only need 500 gold to deal with, but what about Winter? Or next year? Why not just recruit 3000 gold worth of units at the end of Summer? That would leave me with 2000 / 2 - 300 = 700 gold at the start of Autumn after I buy one upgrade, but I would have an additional 3000 gold of units that I will not need to recruit later.

Effectively, the strategy of buying no units at the summer gives me a networth of 1700 + 500 = 2200 gold after I buy the autumn upgrade. The strategy of buying 500 gold of units gives me 1950 + 500 = 2450 networth, and the strategy of buying 3000 gold of units gives me 700 + 3000 = 3700 networth!

Clearly, recruiting as many units as possible at the end of Summer becomes the superior strategy! And it only becomes more and more superior as you buy more upgrades. For example, suppose you had bought 2 upgrades at the start of autumn. If you didn't use any of your gold in Summer, that would be 5000 / 2 + 300 = 2800 for the first upgrade, then 2200 / 2 + 300 = 1400 for the second upgrade, leaving you with 800 gold. After you recruit the 500 gold of units needed for Autumn, you are left with only 300 gold! So your networth is 800 gold.

But if you bought 3000 gold of units at the end of Summer, that would be 2000 / 2 + 300 = 1300 for the first upgrade, and 700 / 2 + 300 = 650 for the second upgrade, leaving you with 50 gold. But you would have 3000 gold of units that you would not need to recruit later, so your networth is a whopping 3050 gold! A MASSIVE lead over the strategy where you don't recruit in Summer. Effectively, each unit you had recruited in Summer cost a quarter of the price it would have cost you to recruit it in Autumn.

So the optimal method of playing the game becomes: first calculate how many upgrades you can afford to buy and when. Then SPAM RECRUIT AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE before you buy those upgrades. After all, you would need to recruit those units later on anyway because you would often lose your units in battles and need replacements for them. Recruiting them now gives you a far better deal than recruiting later.

In fact, if you plan to buy at least 5 upgrades, every unit you buy before the upgrades effectively costs you 1/32 times as much as it would have cost you to buy after the upgrades. That effectively means that every one of your recruits only makes you poorer by <1 gold in the end! Spam recruits! Spam these effectively <1 gold-cost recruits all day! Spam them like no tomorrow, because tomorrow you will buy 5 upgrades and any units you recruit after these upgrades will effectively cost you their original gold price.

End result, I now have hundreds and hundreds of recruits that will eventually be useful but are almost completely useless at the moment, making each turn become incredibly tedious just controlling all these units. But since my choices are: (1) recruit all these units now and be rich later, or (2) recruit units only when you need them and so become incredibly poor in comparison, it feels totally wrong to choose (2). So I would always choose (1), having the ton of currently-not-useful recruits everywhere and making gameplay incredibly tedious.

So you see? The half-your-gold cost upgrades are ridiculously strong incentives for me to choose the strategy of massive massive unit recruitment, since that makes me far far richer over time. So now I end up having to manage way way way more units than before the upgrades were introduced. (Before upgrades I could just wait to recruit units only when I actually need them without making myself effectively poorer.)


Edit: Well the issue isn't actually that simple since you can spend gold on farms instead for profit. But if you plan to buy a lot of upgrades, the cost savings on early recruits can end up higher than the profits from farms. And since there is a limit to how quickly you can build farms everywhere, and a limit to how many farms the map can even have, the optimal strategy still ends up involving recruiting crazy amounts of units for their eventual usefulness and current "cheapness".
vorwi
Posts: 58
Joined: July 3rd, 2018, 10:11 am

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vorwi »

vghetto wrote: March 15th, 2021, 5:48 am Look, here is the line

Code: Select all

{VARIABLE wf_vars.gold_cost "$(300 + ceil( 0.5 * ($wf_vars.side1_gold + $projects_cost)))"}
Give me the formula of what you want it to be and I'll do it. I think you've earned it.
You can base it on number of villages+yield instead of gold if you like.
Ok so i dont like that, because its taking money from someone without logic reason.
Instead of that i propose something else to keep players gold level on low:
I bet that not only bandits like gold but for example big dragons therefore You can make some kind of event or regulard raid
that will happen to our city and for basic calculate power/regularity of that raid will be our present gold level.
It can be some kind of greedy level that will be shown to us in similar way that elves/dwarves hatress toward us is shown.
But this raid will be strong enough to make player dont want to face it.(also could be a great chalenge for hardcore players)
EDIT: However its easy to go around that and i dont have any idea to prevent player from for example buying big squad and puting it on recall list.
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

Ah, I see.
Well we can fix that by including the current units costs into the formula like so:
300 + (current player gold + running projects cost + current units costs) / 2
Spoiler:
vorwi
Posts: 58
Joined: July 3rd, 2018, 10:11 am

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vorwi »

Oh man that "spoiler" edit in messy changelog gives love to my eyes(and my scroll button).
It's so much easier to track changes now.
vorwi
Posts: 58
Joined: July 3rd, 2018, 10:11 am

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vorwi »

Could you add building that will spawn shrooms regularly?
It could work like farms:
building in the middle that will heal up 8hp every turn
6 hexes that will regrow shrooms ocasionally
3upgradable hexes that could regrow shrooms every turn
Thing is quite powerful with book of fungi so it can be expensive.
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

Sure. It will be like the farm yield.
I won't be doing the regrow every turn though. They'll regrow pretty fast anyway: small, middle, ripe. You can eat the ripe ones and that takes it back to small.
Changes are already on github
This addition breaks save compatibility unfortunately :(
vorwi
Posts: 58
Joined: July 3rd, 2018, 10:11 am

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vorwi »

That was fast :D
weewah
Posts: 101
Joined: October 31st, 2019, 7:11 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by weewah »

Two problems with the taunt system:

(1) You can mass summon wild guardians and they will just sit on all the map edges, and WILL kill any bandits/orcs/undeads that spawn for you. That seems kinda overpowered, so how about making the number of times you can taunt per season limited to say, 5 times?

(2) Bounties become ultra tiny. The taunted enemy spawns don't seem to create more gold for the side, they just divide the existing amount of gold of the side, until I only get 3 gold for killing an enemy leader. Yuck.

Also I have been wondering for a while: Why are bounties dependent on the amount of gold the enemy has? That's not how bounties work in real life...

Why not just have the bounty of each enemy leader be 50 * enemy leader level?
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

Hmm, ok taunting restricted to 3 times per type.

Bounty value will be based on side type and not the side's gold.
side 2 (40..50) animals
side 3 (50..60) outlaws
side 4 (60..70) bandits, they burn stuff...
side 5 (80..90) orcs
side 6 (70..80) elves/dwarves
side 7 (80..90) undead
side 8 (90..100) calamity
Gold no longer gets transferred between AI sides.
Unless there's anything else, I'm ready to upload later on today :)
Oh, and I changed the mushroom ripening to be any 3 randomly each turn. The more mushrooms farms you have the longer they might take to ripen.
weewah
Posts: 101
Joined: October 31st, 2019, 7:11 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by weewah »

vghetto wrote: March 17th, 2021, 2:29 pm
Oh, and I changed the mushroom ripening to be any 3 randomly each turn. The more mushrooms farms you have the longer they might take to ripen.
How about 3 + 1 per farm? Otherwise having lots of mushroom farms doesn't seem worth it?


Other things I noticed in my playthrough of 1.14.1 (replay probably doesn't work since the mushroom farm was introduced):
  • Taunting elves makes them spawn, and then they complain about you cutting trees even though I have literally not cut any trees whatsoever!
  • Why are the dark adept and loyal followers starting options free? *Confused*. If they are free anyway, why not just spawn them instead of making them a starting option?

    Alternatively, if you want to encourage certain starting options over others, you could have 30/20/10 Starting Points in each difficulty, and assign each starting option a different cost in Starting Points.

    The Powerful Mage option should probably be pretty cheap if so, because tunnels are going to make Silver Mage teleports obselete.
  • I have no idea where the upgrade options appear! What building am I supposed to right click to see the upgrades I can buy? Are they only visible if I have enough gold?
  • I don't understand tunnels. Is every tunnel entrance connected to every tunnel exit? Why are tunnels not bidirectional?
  • The three loyal followers are really annoying to level up. Their hp is tiny, so they get squashed by any random wolf or hidden wose. I can have them follow my stronger units and killsteal things, but if the RNG rolls are bad? My loyal followers just die. :(

    Then again, since loyal units can't' get training xp, and we have lots of gold to pay upkeeps, perhaps loyal followers aren't really that important to keep alive anyway?
Delicius169
Posts: 189
Joined: February 16th, 2015, 5:02 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by Delicius169 »

Hello,

I really enjoy your scenario - it is a big fan, and I have played it many times...
I am really enjoying creating big lakes and moats around my town, and inhabiting them with mermaids, and on one ocasion with one cuttle fish...

I was wondering about possibility to create a mermaide village? I am not interested in getting bigger income, but in having the possibility to heal my units. It could be some kind of fishing spot, which could be created only by mermaids with net?

Also how about some kind of calamity like attack of Dragon, who could even start fire in forests?
Or vulcano that could create rivers of lava? Or big drought in the summer, which could change some of the terrain into the sand? I believe the dunefolk units would be really usefull at that time....
I usualy stop playing after second year, as the game is no longer challenge to me.

thank you again for amazing scenario you have made...
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

Thank you for the feedback.
weewah wrote: March 17th, 2021, 6:22 pm [*] Taunting elves makes them spawn, and then they complain about you cutting trees even though I have literally not cut any trees whatsoever!
That would add pedantic code complications for an event that happens once anyways.
Low priority to fix.
weewah wrote: March 17th, 2021, 6:22 pm [*] Why are the dark adept and loyal followers starting options free? *Confused*. If they are free anyway, why not just spawn them instead of making them a starting option?
I'm leaving it up to the player to choose if they want to lug around those puny loyal followers.
I personally enjoy having the prisoner, but stand down the other 3.
weewah wrote: March 17th, 2021, 6:22 pm The Powerful Mage option should probably be pretty cheap if so, because tunnels are going to make Silver Mage teleports obselete.
Yeah, poor silver mage. But, he's still too powerful to be given for free. so I dunno.
Changing the type, to say white mage, would mean removing the teleport ability from the leader.
weewah wrote: March 17th, 2021, 6:22 pm [*] I have no idea where the upgrade options appear! What building am I supposed to right click to see the upgrades I can buy? Are they only visible if I have enough gold?
You're correct, they are visible when you have enough gold.
You can access them from the library or the lighthouse.
weewah wrote: March 17th, 2021, 6:22 pm [*] I don't understand tunnels. Is every tunnel entrance connected to every tunnel exit? Why are tunnels not bidirectional?
Yes every entrance can lead to any exit. I didn't make them bidirectional because I didn't want them to be that convenient :roll:
weewah wrote: March 17th, 2021, 6:22 pm [*] The three loyal followers are really annoying to level up. Their hp is tiny, so they get squashed by any random wolf or hidden wose. I can have them follow my stronger units and killsteal things, but if the RNG rolls are bad? My loyal followers just die. :(
Yeah sorry can't help there. :lol:
Delicius169 wrote: March 17th, 2021, 7:40 pm I was wondering about possibility to create a mermaide village? I am not interested in getting bigger income, but in having the possibility to heal my units. It could be some kind of fishing spot, which could be created only by mermaids with net?
Hi, thanks for trying it. And I like your suggestions.
I'll do the water village, the rest I need to think about more. I like turning the sand idea.
Delicius169 wrote: March 17th, 2021, 7:40 pm I usualy stop playing after second year, as the game is no longer challenge to me.
Yeah, I haven't settled on a good way for fixing that.
weewah
Posts: 101
Joined: October 31st, 2019, 7:11 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by weewah »

vghetto wrote: March 17th, 2021, 9:46 pm
Yeah, I haven't settled on a good way for fixing that.
Ultra hard mode where village support is always 0. Mwahaha. :twisted:
vghetto wrote: March 17th, 2021, 9:46 pm
weewah wrote: March 17th, 2021, 6:22 pm [*] The three loyal followers are really annoying to level up. Their hp is tiny, so they get squashed by any random wolf or hidden wose. I can have them follow my stronger units and killsteal things, but if the RNG rolls are bad? My loyal followers just die. :(
Yeah sorry can't help there. :lol:
You can if you let loyal units get training xp!

Edit:

Can Diplomacy be reworked so that multiple diplo missions can be active at the same time? I keep on forgetting to switch between missions, so I often end up killing wolves/woses or building trees/mountains for no reason since the wrong quest was selected X_x.
vorwi
Posts: 58
Joined: July 3rd, 2018, 10:11 am

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vorwi »

vghetto wrote: March 17th, 2021, 9:46 pm Thank you for the feedback.
weewah wrote: March 17th, 2021, 6:22 pm [*] Taunting elves makes them spawn, and then they complain about you cutting trees even though I have literally not cut any trees whatsoever!
That would add pedantic code complications for an event that happens once anyways.
Low priority to fix.
If you taunt elves with " hey long ears babygirl i chop trees for my daily activity" then what you expect them to say when they approach you?

weewah wrote: March 18th, 2021, 2:12 am You can if you let loyal units get training xp!
You could always try some modifications to play with.

weewah wrote: March 18th, 2021, 2:12 am Can Diplomacy be reworked so that multiple diplo missions can be active at the same time? I keep on forgetting to switch between missions, so I often end up killing wolves/woses or building trees/mountains for no reason since the wrong quest was selected X_x.
Would be cool if all missions could be tracked at once. Mission feature is cool but managing it is tiring. If its posible to make it more automatic then it would be much better IMO.
Post Reply