"Courteous Villaging"

MrGrendel · Post by **MrGrendel** » July 14th, 2006, 2:37 am

Playing with a friend, we often exchange villages for the purposes of healing units. Later on, when the other person has a unit in the area, he'll take his village back. (Yes, we're obsessed with the details.) Anyhow, I thought it would be nice if damaged units didn't take over allied villages. I mean, 90% of the time, you're probably just moving it in there to heal up, not to steal a village from your ally.

On the other hand, if you move a fully healed unit into an allied village, chances are pretty high that you're wanting to take it for yourself. (Or comitting yourself to it's defense, which is good enough for me to say it should be ceded to the defending ally.)

JW · Post by JW » July 14th, 2006, 3:26 am

What if a hurt unit wants to take the village for gold? He is punished in this case, is he not?

Post by **Kestenvarn** » July 14th, 2006, 4:16 am

JW wrote:What if a hurt unit wants to take the allied village for gold? He is punished in this case, is he not?

Pretty much.

(Edited quote since it was unclear what you were proposing.)

player · Post by **player** » July 14th, 2006, 4:23 am

so, why just not put an option if he wanted to heal only or take the vill entirely? (like the option you have when an elvish fighter leveled up)

Post by **Kestenvarn** » July 14th, 2006, 4:44 am

Slows down gameplay. It'd have to be a keypress or something non-intrusive to work, not a dialogue box.

Tux2B · Post by **Tux2B** » July 14th, 2006, 8:02 am

But this can change a lot in the gameplay. You should put this shorcut in an option in the lobby.

Post by **Kestenvarn** » July 14th, 2006, 8:09 am

That's another 'all or nothing' proposal. Simply discarding the old system in favor of the new for select matches would not improve the game, since the change can possibly punish players more than help.

The only way this would work would be a non-intrusive way of meshing the two together. Like if there was a right-click command to give a village to an allied player during your turn.

xtifr · Post by **xtifr** » July 14th, 2006, 11:40 am

This is dangerously close to an FPI.

Dave wrote:There are also a few ideas that have been ruled against for other reasons. These include:
...
* Transferring gold or villages or units between allied players (Reason: decreases individual tactical responsibility).

The original proposal is enough of a special case that I think some discussion may be justified, but people proposing alternatives should keep this in mind.

What is being discussed is effectively just a transfer (back) from the newly occupying player to the original owner. It is a very limited form of transfer that only occurs under very limited circumstances, so it's not as bad as unlimited transfer abilities would be. But I would definitely say that it's a proposal that's on thin ice.

MrGrendel · Post by **MrGrendel** » July 14th, 2006, 12:05 pm

Right, I didn't want it to be another option to have to click, since that would be undesirable in Wesnoth. (See, I'm paying attention.) But almost every time I take an allied village, it's purely to heal up my unit. If I only played with the AI, it wouldn't matter much, but my human companions tend not to appreciate if I kept junking their tedious expansion efforts so I can heal up units.

Now, based on...

* Transferring gold or villages or units between allied players (Reason: decreases individual tactical responsibility).

...I believe that the idea is completely in the spirit of the reasoning. The quote emphasizes getting villages on your own, not letting your allies do the work for you. If anything, this suggestion is "on the same page."

FleshPeeler · Post by **FleshPeeler** » July 14th, 2006, 2:25 pm

What about holding down a key while moving your unit onto the village to bypass capturing? This could also be useful for a player whose leader has died and has units left to help their ally (From what I recall, moving a leaderless unit onto an ally's town will take down their flag, which is an utterly useless move for an ally to take and not worth the healing).

I wouldn't limit it to allies either. Go ahead and make it useable against enemy towns as well. Aside from a psych-out factor, I can think of one other use for this. Suppose I'm exploring Fog of War and I want to be careful of where I move to see ahead of me. I might want to land on an enemy town just to look ahead and proceed rather than take it and sacrifice the rest of my movement points. Worse yet is when a unit comes into view while my scout happens to be passing over an enemy town, and the game stops the scout on the town and automatically captures it and ruins the rest of my move (Note: This hasn't actually happened to me yet, so I'm not certain whether or not this would happen. I imagine it would).

I do believe that allied villages should be more intuitive. Often, if my units are on my ally's side of the field to help fend off an invasion, I have to walk back to my side which might be 3 turns away to go heal, then take 3 turns coming back to the fight, when there are towns 1 turn away that belong to my ally. This is always bothersome.

xtifr · Post by **xtifr** » July 14th, 2006, 8:59 pm

MrGrendel wrote:...I believe that the idea is completely in the spirit of the reasoning. The quote emphasizes getting villages on your own, not letting your allies do the work for you. If anything, this suggestion is "on the same page."

Yes and no. In terms of income, you're correct, but in terms of strategical placement of your healing sources, you are letting your ally do the work for you. If you don't have any of your villages in easy range to provide healing, then (currently) you need to get some, even if it means taking one from an ally. Or do without. If you can get healing from an ally's village, then a strategical element of the game is lost.

In the FPI thread, Dave adds more details later, including:

Dave wrote:The developers feel that this would reduce the semantics of a team game to little more than players sharing control of a single side.

Sharing villages (which is essentially what you're asking for) is dangerously close to this.

FleshPeeler wrote: What about holding down a key while moving your unit onto the village to bypass capturing?

If it were to be done, then that's an excellent suggestion. On the other hand, I'm still not convinced that it's something that should be done. I strongly disagree with Fleshpeeler's arguments in favor of the idea. If leaderless units don't need to capture a village to get healing, then there is (slightly) less incentive to protect your leader. Not capturing an enemy village is just silly. And as for his last set of arguments, they seem to me to boil down to "the game would be easier if there were less strategy involved." Which is true, but not much of an argument, IMO.

MrGrendel · Post by **MrGrendel** » July 14th, 2006, 9:20 pm

Hmm... xtifr, getting healing is as simple as moving onto a village. That will be unaffected. However, the one change this would bring about is less unwanted transfer of income from one player to another (allied) player.

I'm fairly certain that "transfer of something from one person to another" is the very definition of "sharing" at it's most basic; and therefore, this suggestion is anti-sharing. (Moderately, since it still provides instances where it can happen, as with full-hp units.)

xtifr · Post by **xtifr** » July 14th, 2006, 9:52 pm

MrGrendel wrote:Hmm... xtifr, getting healing is as simple as moving onto a village.

At the moment, you can only get healing from your villages. What you're suggesting is, effectively, sharing the healing. Not, I admit, sharing the income (and, yes, that element of the proposal is good). But still sharing the healing.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that this is the FPI, and deserves to be rejected out of hand. I think it's a new idea, and worth some consideration. I'm just saying that it's close to an FPI, and may be rejected for some of the same reasons, so don't get your hopes up.

MrGrendel · Post by **MrGrendel** » July 14th, 2006, 10:16 pm

xtifr wrote:At the moment, you can only get healing from your villages.

No, you can get healing from any village. You just happen to also get a village from the village at the same time.

Slayer · Post by **Slayer** » July 16th, 2006, 7:39 pm

Pretty good idea. But I agree with xtifr, it is getting really close to FPI.