WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Discussion and development of scenarios and campaigns for the game.

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vorwi
Posts: 58
Joined: July 3rd, 2018, 10:11 am

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vorwi »

vghetto wrote: September 1st, 2021, 11:52 am
vorwi wrote: August 31st, 2021, 7:42 pm -that never ending story with mission after mission makes game too easy. 10k gold in first autumn?(and it could be more) Thats wrong.
Yeah, this is WF achellis heel which I don't have a solution for yet.
Edit: Were you referring to the side-missions (sigurd's missions and fief stuff) and not the regular seasons for the last point? I might have misunderstood you.
Sure, I could limit that to be no more that 3 at a time.
Yes i was referring to side missions i did 7of them in a row (maybe more) and it just feels like exploit or something. With proper start on your mainland you could basically finish game in first season by doing side missions one by one. Would be nice to make it more risky especially that game shouldnt be easy on hardest diffculty.
Honestly i was having so much fun playing and then i found that exploit and i just lost reason for progressing further in the mainland. Ofc you are the creator but imo WF is about establishing a new power on north lands, not about running around and colecting money.

Edit: ok i see that there is a limit now. Thats better.
Wibdrac
Posts: 6
Joined: May 19th, 2018, 8:21 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by Wibdrac »

Hi about the problem with the scenario se can go through to get gold. I love the idea of allowing us to get out of the WF monotony and get other things going, but it would love o suggest ideas to improve that mechanic, especially the infinite gold cheating gain we can get from playing multiple scenarios.
Wild frontier is always about managing your amount of troops and ecos. Which mean loyal units are incredible. Giving us loyal units at the start of scenarios is far too strong.
Then the gold we have in those scenarios doesn’t come from us. If you want to help the player for this scenario make it so that for the first one the king ask us to intervene in whatever and to thanks us offer us only for the first time a gold pouch. Then all scenarios with only be about how much gold do we have, not some random generated gold.
Then instead of gaining gold from villages and farming freely as we wish we won’t get gold in the scénario at all, villages only allowing us to maintain upkeep.
And finally the reward will be dependant of the type of scenarios with some giving more than just gold. For example helping stopping the uprising of a fellow lord would make him send some troops to us if we need by forging an alliance of sending some loyal troops.
On the other failling won’t be about us losing our character but would rather have negative impact on the following season or year even. For example failling to kill the dragon, may make him awake and attack us at some point.
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

Hi Wibdrac, thank you for your input.
Ok, it seems I was giving out a lot of gold for the raids missions. The ones where you go and burn down enemy villages like bandits. The player was getting double the intended amount. That was a mistake, I'll fix it.

Another reason for the ton of gold in the rest of sub-missions seems to be the early finish bonus. I'll have it set to no early finish bonus instead.

Here is my current thinking about the sub-missions gold. The player starts with (cost of the enemy recruit list x 2) plus 100 gold per enemy leader.
The enemy side starts with the cost of their respective recruit list times two, but without the added 100.
Previously, on finishing non-guardian sub-missions, the player would get about 75 to 100 gold. As for the guardian sub-mission, the player was required to loot a chest that gave more than 150, I really don't remember why I had set it so high.
I'll change all of that. I'll make sub-missions require looting the chest, but it will be in the range of 90 to 100 gold instead.
If you get 2 enemy leaders, you'll get 2 chests to loot.
Wibdrac wrote: September 4th, 2021, 8:19 pm ...
Wild frontier is always about managing your amount of troops and ecos.om generated gold.
...
Then instead of gaining gold from villages and farming freely as we wish we won’t get gold in the scénario at all, villages only allowing us to maintain upkeep.
That is already the default behavior in hard mode. Well, kind of. In the hard difficulty, villages won't give income unless you move the caravan to the edge. I might set that to be the default behavior for the normal difficulty. I'll need to try it out for myself first and see if it will be enjoyable or just piss me off.

The game's starting scenario (a new beginning) gives out some loyal units, you weren't referring to those, were you?
I'll assume you meant the sub-missions starting loyals. Again I was giving double the intended amount in the raids missions, 8 instead of 4 :/
I need one loyal to say some stuff. I'll cut out the rest. The question now becomes which are the ones that I should keep? I don't know yet. They differ depending on the sub-mission. Indoors get loyalists, uprising or guardian get elves, caves get dwarves and raids get outlaws types.
I might opt for the fighter types for the respective sub-mission: Spearman, Elvish Fighter, Dwarvish Fighter and Thug.

About alliance and giving troops, finishing quests already does something similar. It will be redundant doing it for the sub-missions.
As for the dragon. Hmm, maybe I'll turn it into a summer calamity :)

Edit: Update
In the sub-missions, the enemy recruit gold will be the average of the leader cost and its recruit list times num_outlaws parameter which defaults to 4
The players starting gold will be that + (20 * num_outlaws)
I hope this wouldn't come short in the free beast (guardians) sub-missions.
I'm also removing the gold chest from the free beast sub-mission.
Dragon mission will have 2 chests even though it's just one dragon.
In the main scenarios, on normal, the villages produces income in the summer only. Move the caravan for the rest of the seasons to get the income.
On easy, the farm income is set to 1 for all except winter.
Wibdrac
Posts: 6
Joined: May 19th, 2018, 8:21 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by Wibdrac »

About the village income I did not mean the way income work in the main map but in sub missions. In one of the map I just went to gather all villages and farm this way a lot of gold.

By the way I saw you did something for era of the myth on the forum. Any chance you’re thinking about doing the same with Reign of the Lord or is too much time consuming ? Cause the lv5 plus unit added by the mod would work nicely with the lenght of the campaign, for us and for the opponent.
vorwi
Posts: 58
Joined: July 3rd, 2018, 10:11 am

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vorwi »

vghetto wrote: September 5th, 2021, 4:37 am
That's a lot of information at once.
vorwi
Posts: 58
Joined: July 3rd, 2018, 10:11 am

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vorwi »

Wibdrac wrote: September 5th, 2021, 6:53 pm By the way I saw you did something for era of the myth on the forum. Any chance you’re thinking about doing the same with Reign of the Lord or is too much time consuming ? Cause the lv5 plus unit added by the mod would work nicely with the lenght of the campaign, for us and for the opponent.
My brotha from another mother and father!

I saw only 2 messegaes from you and i already 100% agree with you.
vorwi
Posts: 58
Joined: July 3rd, 2018, 10:11 am

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vorwi »

Wibdrac wrote: September 4th, 2021, 8:19 pm Wild frontier is always about managing your amount of troops and ecos.
Ye thats important point.


Side missions should somehow affect main story.
It's already giving us oportunity to leave unwanted season.
Extra gold is a little out of story. Like we are going to put down rebelion and we recieve gold? How? They are destroyed they need to rebuild how can they pay us? We could get some loyal units instead or guardians in next season.

I feel like in WildFrontiers we can write down our own story how we take over land on north border of the river.
Every aspect that destroys immersive gameplay is bad imo:
  • multiple side missions during one season? (time machine not included)
  • [side mission] clearing cave for what? (how about extra building: MINE that will produce 5gold... number_of_mines=succesfully_cleared_caves
  • [side mission] raiding village and nobody goes angry cause of that?
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

Wibdrac wrote: September 5th, 2021, 6:53 pm By the way I saw you did something for era of the myth on the forum. Any chance you’re thinking about doing the same with Reign of the Lord or is too much time consuming ? Cause the lv5 plus unit added by the mod would work nicely with the lenght of the campaign, for us and for the opponent.
In what sense? I did a search on level=1 in that mod and got like 5 secondary type units.
So, it's not integrating in terms of having them as enemy spawns.
As for having them as player units, I tried Reign_of_the_Lords with WF by enabling "Reign of the Lords Advancement Modification" from the campaign menu and it seems to be compatible and it works fine. The player units seem to be capable of leveling beyond lvl 3 and still get the WF specific amlas once they max beyond level 5.
I'm not sure what exactly you want me to do with RotL. It works as is, no special coding needed.

Era of Myth was a bit different, it introduced new units that can be spawned within WF as raiding enemies in place of the outlaws, orcs, elves, etc. I just don't see how RotL is applicable in this case.
Wibdrac
Posts: 6
Joined: May 19th, 2018, 8:21 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by Wibdrac »

Well I meant that it would be nice to see the ennemy use those new unit. Early on it won’t change much as you said but later on it would open a vast number of opponent.
And yes you can actually go in a game with this mod but when you have t5 units and the ennemy send you t2 and t3 that feel a little to easy.
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

Oh. I see.
I have no plans in supporting levels 3 or 4 directly.
WF does support something similar, not enough to level up to 3 or 4 though.

After the 4th season, the enemy spawns and enemy recruits might occasionally auto advance randomly.

You could edit the files and make them advance twice or thrice to reach the desired level suitable for RotL.

Just change these two lines like so: experience = "$($this_unit.max_experience * 2)" to advance twice or experience = "$($this_unit.max_experience * 3)" to advance three times.

For enemy recruit like orcs or undead change the following line
https://github.com/virtualghetto/Wild_F ... .cfg#L2117

For outlaws and bandit spawns change the following line.
https://github.com/virtualghetto/Wild_F ... s.cfg#L400

Ofcourse, have the RotL mod enabled. :)
Delicius169
Posts: 189
Joined: February 16th, 2015, 5:02 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by Delicius169 »

Hello,
I really love this game, thought I am giving a bit of critic now, as hard difficulty isnt as hard as it used to be...

I have recently replayed the WIld frontiers, as usually on hard difficulty.

The truth is that I am not big fan of last updates, which made the game easier.

The hill villages/watter villages now cost 20gold, I believe they cost 60+ before;
The farm yiel cost 15, and takes 2 turns to complete; it was the same cost as village 30 gold, 3turns.

These are big changes, which allows the player to manage the first season more easily, than before. Because of this, it was

I really like the updated price for merchant caravan (250 gold), and training (250gold) - I think it is good price.


The calamities.
In my last playthrought I experienced th Lich calamity, which was kind of... lame. I got Ardonna (the dark adept) in the beginning, which gives the bonus to lower undead forces - the bonus I never wanted to get.
The Lich calamity was about 6-8 undead, and I wiped them out really soon.

The ability to antagonise enemy. I used to think that it is good mechanic, which allows us to more easily complete quest, or to create epic battles, but it gives the player too much control. It actually gets easier because it allows me to control the waves of enemies.... but if I wont use this mechanic, I feel like nothing is happening... So how about increasing the chances of enemy spawning on hard difficulty?
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

Hi,

I reduced the cost of the villages to be more consistent with the farm cost (30).
A hill costs 10 and the village on top would be 20. 10+20=30 same as farm.
The yields are 15 which is half of farm cost because they don't heal. That's the basic logic behind it anyway.
Previously the costs were based on laziness, tbh. I assigned the village cost to WELL_COST (60) and WELL_TURNS (4) because I hadn't created a separate category for them at the time. i.e. VILLAGE_COST, VILLAGE_TURNS.
I'm not inclined to changing these values currently. The players could tweak them for themselves here.

It is true that Ardonna used to lower the number undead forces but that is no longer the case in recent versions. Having or leveling Ardonna no longer interferes with the number of undead spawn size. It's something else that is screwing up the numbers, I'll come back to it later in this post.
I agree about the lich calamity being too weak in comparison to the other calamities. I'll boost up their numbers.

About antagonize and spawn frequency. Except from the Elves and Dwarves spawning. the Antagonize does not interfere with the spawn frequency, it doesn't reset it nor does it change it.
If an orc or outlaw raid is due and you antagonize them, you'll get both, the regular spawn and the antagonize spawn.
I haven't messed with spawn frequency in ages, so changing it now wouldn't be something that I would like to do at this time.
Again the player could tweak them here

Which brings me up to the root change that made WF easier for you, and that is the reduction of blob_limit and num_outlaws here
blob_limit is the upper limit to how big the blob spawn could get. It used to be 12. Now it is 9.
num_outlaws is the lower limit to how small the starting spawn group could be (without considering the number of villages). It used to be 6, Now it is 4. These units are usually denoted with the loyal band as in the case of orcs and undead. The rest of the spawn group units depend on the number of villages and are limited by blob_limit.

The reason I lowered them is because the original numbers pushed me to recruit more units for dealing with them, and I didn't like that.
I could change back those numbers for the hard difficulty, maybe even go beyond it for blob_limit. i.e. set it to 99 so there is no upper limit, like WF of old. Hopefully that would address your issue. What do you think? Do you have a preference here?

Edit: Oops, Antagonize does interfere with the regular spawn when min_spawn is taken into consideration :/

Edit2: Proposed changes:
On all difficulties, Lich calamity will get double num_calamity initial spawn and it will raise 3 new undead each turn while the master lich is still alive.

On the hard difficulty
blob_limit and min_spawn is bumped up to 99, so no upper limits.
num_calamity is bumped up from 6 to 12.
num_outlaws is bumped up from 4 to 6.
lich.png
Too much? :)
vorwi
Posts: 58
Joined: July 3rd, 2018, 10:11 am

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vorwi »

vghetto wrote: September 8th, 2021, 3:44 pm lich.png
Too much? :)
If it's not during first year then it looks cool :)
Wibdrac
Posts: 6
Joined: May 19th, 2018, 8:21 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by Wibdrac »

I really like the idea, I too had the feeling they was nothing to take care of.
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

There are no calamities in the first year.

I uploaded latest version which includes this scary looking change on the hard difficulty. I hope it's satisfactory.
If it turns out to be a bit too much, don't hesitate to let me know :)

There were some other changes to the code, but the most notable change is that you can get to keep Ardonna even if you haven't started with the powerful mage bonus.
Completing 10 undead quests and unlocking their bonus allows you to keep her.
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