a new way for Wesnoth

[Wismerhill]

Hello all, thanks for your reading and sorry in advance for my mistakes, my primary langage is french.
I read the topic for Ideas, and don't find my suggestion, so I write this here :

I really love strategic games, and often play wesnoth in the biggest random maps with 9 players, etc etc. But I just play with one friend, and 7 computers. Why ? because at the turn 30, each turn last 20 minutes per player. Imagine with 9 players, it's impossible to play.

So I thought a fews suggestions :
- We could select more than 1 unit at the time and could do mass movements, we could save time like that when we have more than 100 units.
- Have better intelligents computer players in multiplayers maps, because they are really easy to beat. in fact, I tried all IA (dfool, brute_force etc) but they never move, I don't know why

And I thought a big suggestion, please be really careful about this
Now, we have to wait that all players finish their turn before starting our turn. Why can't we do all our movments together, and when all the players have finish, the movments will be done together. That involve lots of news things, that's why I called this topic a new way, for a new version of Wesnoth. For example,a blue soldier and a red one want to take a village : if the blue soldier take the village before the red soldier, the red player can change his soldier's move to go in another place, or to attack the blue soldier. If 2 units intersect during their walk, they'll fight each other. etc.

Finally, in a big map with 9 players and 100 units per players, we just wait that all players have finish their turn instead of 9*20 = 3 hours before play another turn !!!!

I really hope you understood me, because it wasn't easy at all to explain this in english lol. Thanks for your responses

Bests Regards,
Wismerhill

[zookeeper]

All of these have been discussed before. Group movement most likely will never happen, a better AI system is being developed and simultaneous turns won't happen (exception: simultaneous moves for sides within the same team might be made possible some day).

This thread might or might not get locked because of this, but be aware that you probably won't get meaningful discussion anyway since the developers won't be interested in repeating themselves and their reasons for these things in yet another thread.

[Wismerhill]

ok

Thanks for your answer, zookeeper.

[mameluke]

Somehow I think it's funny if all move at the same time... then the fights are very surprising
But it's definitely something completely different and would turn the game upside down.

And I also don't want to think about all the technical stuff that would change.... just to much work!

[Gauteamus]

If I remember correctly, a forum search (using google, as the internal search function still is down) for the words "Diplomacy" and "movement" should bring up the most recent thread on the topic. I think the strongest contra argument was that Diplomacy style movement will change the game to the core, to the point where it is a completely new game. Of course the Wesnoth artwork and engine coding could gracefully be used in a project like this, if someone has the skills and willpower to give it a try.

[Wismerhill]

lol ok... I'll think about this, because I really want to begin the development of a game by 3 years, when I'll finish my informatic master. if it's possible to use the Wesnoth artwork and engine coding ...

[cool evil]

Mass movement is not possible, because it would be unfair, if everyone moved at the same time it would be chaos, who moved first would have an advantage, because they get to attack first and can retreat at a moments notice. If we implemented your suggestion, which is for everyone to make their move and when everyone is finished it gets carried out. But the problem is, what if you were to attack an enemy, and they moved before you? Or you want to retreat back, but the enemy is one step ahead of you and blocks your path?

Since that is not a good suggestion, i have a solution to your problem, when setting up a game, set a time limit for the match, for example, every player would have 1 or 2 minutes to think about their strategy, and move units. But i doubt you can find 8 other players online, it's virtually impossible. If you can find picture of this, i'll be pleased to show it to other wesnoth players as the first "the most amazing picture of the year". Frankly, the last time i checked, i'm having trouble getting even a 5 player match.

[Shadow]

You would have to split it into a movement and battle resolvement Phase.
First Phase moving and initiating battles.
Second Phase let the dices role.

[mowerpower]

You would have to split it into a movement and battle resolvement Phase.
First Phase moving and initiating battles.
Second Phase let the dices role.

More accurately: in the first phase players signal intentions, in the second phase the server resolves outcomes. Since intents might be frustrated by the results of other player's actions, and so players will not know what has taken place, so one really needs a third phase: server communicates outcome to players. This third part may actually present the hardest software design issues.

[TheArchitect]

I agree that group movements would save time in multiplayer as well as campaigns. However, I am against simultaneous turns simply because it would make wesnoth way too confusing.

[Rad3k]

Actually I know of such a game that uses simultaneous turns. It's totally different from all turn-based games that I know. In fact, it's both turn-based and real-time strategy (I know it sounds confusing, but it's true!) - you can check it yourself (google for "Laser Squad Nemesis" and play a trial - sadly, that's not a free game). Implementing such an idea in Wesnoth would be as easy as turning it into RTS, belive me. Just try to play chess making simultaneous turns or group movement and you'll get it I think that discussing it further is pointless.

And as for the problem - setting a time limit for a turn seems to be the only reasonable solution. Or, just play smaller maps with less units - sometimes biggest doesn't mean best. I know from my own experience that playing on the largest maps possible quickly becomes boring, because it takes lots of turns just to get to your enemy.

[Edward V Riley]

I don't support all moving at the same time, as that would make it a RTS and completely change the parameters of Wesnoth, but ways to make games like the one you described faster should be explored.

Perhaps units could be "linked" to another in groups of five, making a brigade. The Brigade's units move with the one they're linked to. However, to do this, group actions would have to be implemented for attacks. Perhaps the brigade can have different formations, similar to Ogre Battle, with 9 hexes delegated for it, of which you can maneuver the units however you like in those 9 hexes, and that is their battle formation. When two of your brigades are side by side, some of the cohesion is lost in the confusion, and your units attack with a 10% penalty. Perhaps the brigade can attack as one, making the strategy of what to put in the brigade another tactical decision. But once the designated brigade leader is killed, the unit loses all cohesion and reverts back to individual units. Maybe they even panic for a turn and all move randomly once the leader is killed, with you unable to control them. A very old Civil War game I had often had units panic and run to the rear if mauled enough. You could spend valuable morale points trying to stop their panic flight, which had a 50% chance of working. This was represented by a bugle icon.

The upside to this is you're now moving 5 units as one, thereby speeding things up again.

Another, but probably unrealistic, suggestion is to move your entire 'army' as one, only deciding the attacks when one of your units moves next to an opponents. For this, tons of whole army commands would have to be implemented along with any whole army tactics that exist. You could have them try the Cannae tactic for example, or a wedge. I doubt this could be done though. Individual decisions on these movements would be to move a wounded unit to the rear and replace it with a healthy one from the back.

[turin]

When I read posts like Riley's above I can't help but think that the poster has never actually played Wesnoth - hiss post just so misunderstands how the tactics of the game actually work, and how useless formations would actually be...

[Aethaeryn]

Some formations could make sense, but only in really rare situations on bland terrain. Most of the time you want a line across the whole map or area, and you want your support units and hurt units behind that line. The line can't really be set with a formation since you need it on good terrain (though if you had a system that detected the terrain and tried to set up a ZoCed line for you, that would be interesting, but too much work to actually program). Group moving would be a time saver for large maps (especially in single player), however, especially if you got it to stop with a few MP to go on the last turn of moving (or at first sight of enemy) so you can set up a "formation" manually.

[200g]

Being able to select multiple units in a RTS style could be a nice feature, but only to cover huge distances on even bigger maps (you can't imagine how big these maps are). Attacking should be impossible and formations are quite useless. In my humble opinion group movement should only be considered as a way to make the player's lifes easier, not to brutally change the mechanics of a great game people have been working on for four(?) years.

I also thought that a menu item that creates a rally point somewhere on the map would be neat. All your newly recruited units would go there and you don't have to waste a zillion light years to send them from A to Z (could even be done via WML).