Cities of the Frontier - now for BfW 1.11

Discussion and development of scenarios and campaigns for the game.

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Gwynnedrion
Posts: 136
Joined: February 26th, 2010, 8:42 pm

Re: Cities of the Frontier (aka sim-Wesnoth)

Post by Gwynnedrion »

MRDNRA wrote:A quick question: how do roads affect gameplay? I've not used them just yet so I've not found out.
In winter, the entire land is covered in snow. If you don't have roads, it takes a long time to get somewhere (say, between the keep and villages, encampments, etc.) while roads fasten that travel a lot. They're , in my opinion, very usefull and a good implementation for this game.
”Rise, adept, and tell me about the enemy.”

You are a Horseman: you charge ahead without thinking of the consequences.(80%)
Daravel
Posts: 310
Joined: August 30th, 2008, 10:39 pm
Location: England

Re: Cities of the Frontier (aka sim-Wesnoth)

Post by Daravel »

Just to note: I didn't build cavalry or archers building at all. I decided that the gold requirement on them just slowed your development of villages too much. To compare, I finished the first winter with 14 villages.
AfterDawn
Posts: 50
Joined: February 3rd, 2012, 6:51 pm

Re: Cities of the Frontier (aka sim-Wesnoth)

Post by AfterDawn »

I just had an epiphany. I don't know how much you're involved in debugging what you have now but have you ever seen the campaign bad moon rising? I believe it implements something like a world map that the player uses to move to the various scenarios. what if you created a game that allowed the player to also go out and conquer other cities or castles?
AfterDawn
Posts: 50
Joined: February 3rd, 2012, 6:51 pm

Re: Cities of the Frontier (aka sim-Wesnoth)

Post by AfterDawn »

Daravel wrote:Just to note: I didn't build cavalry or archers building at all. I decided that the gold requirement on them just slowed your development of villages too much.
I noted the same thing. I did fine with just the spearmen because they upgrade pretty well. I even got some peasants to turn into archers. granted I played it on easy and I ended up winning after the first winter with 28 villages. Anyway, I can't believe how entertaining your campaign is.
I was thinking that you could put in mines, a source of income that persists through winter but can only occur on a specific terrain.

EDIT: I would like to emphasize that the strongest attraction of this game is the expanding and terraforming.
with that said I would like to suggest that in order to entice the player to want to build bowery and stables you might want to give the buildings bonuses or abilities that are awarded to the player with the existence of those buildings.
esci
Posts: 42
Joined: September 4th, 2006, 12:07 am

Re: Cities of the Frontier (aka sim-Wesnoth)

Post by esci »

Thanks to all for the comments. I finally had a chance to sit down and watch the replays posted by Daravel and shadowblack, and both of you play quite differently than I did. I tend to build up many encampments and try to use as few units as I can, while both of you tended towards using more units for defense. This is excellent -- I'm hoping to ensure that there are several successful strategies.

@Daravel
You clearly didn't benefit that much from taking out the orc leader. I'd like to encourage raids like that, so in future versions there will be a gold reward for doing so. This also means that there is an alternate path to gold accumulation rather than just amassing villages. I'm not looking to force a player away from playing only spearmen, just to make alternate strategies also viable without making it too easy. Eventually I think I'm going to aim for comparable costs for, say, combined Heavy Infantry and Archer-enabling buildings as for just the Blacksmith. Sort of a several specialist units vs. one generalist unit decision.

@shadowblack
The first orc you fought was actually supposed to have just as much gold as the second one. He apparently got distracted by getting attacked, and so never built a keep or recruited. This is a bug that I need to fix at some point. You were somewhat unlucky that your starting position was not particularly defensible, and I'm not entirely sure the archer-cavalry strategy is viable yet. Incidentally, you can now upgrade wooden encampments to stone. The only benefit is that they can't be burned, which I've only occasionally found useful.

@AfterDawn
I'm actually currently (slowly) playing through BMR. I'm not sure whether or not Peasant Workers changing terrain would work in shorter scenarios with fixed maps. A lot of the benefit of building, say, encampments is that you keep them for the whole campaign but they don't require upkeep. In a short scenario where upkeep is not much of an issue, you might be better of recruiting more units instead.

I've got a long to-do list of things I want to add to CotF, so I'm not going to be making a new campaign based off of it anytime soon. If you or anyone else wants to try, however, I'm happy to walk you through the steps to get Peasant Workers working in your campaign.

I hope to get a new version up in a few days. Comments on what you found fun or boring about the campaign are always greatly appreciated.
Original creator of the campaign Descent Into Darkness
Currently working on Cities of the Frontier
MRDNRA
Posts: 212
Joined: September 11th, 2009, 5:06 pm

Re: Cities of the Frontier (aka sim-Wesnoth)

Post by MRDNRA »

I've had a possible idea that there could also be small bands of undead that roam about from time to time. It would certainly mix things up a bit, and would also give a really good reason to introduce mages too.
esci
Posts: 42
Joined: September 4th, 2006, 12:07 am

Re: Cities of the Frontier (aka sim-Wesnoth)

Post by esci »

I've been trying to come up with ways to include undead as enemies, both to increase variety and to make the choice of what unit types to recruit more interesting. I haven't yet come up with a way to do that that satisfies me, though: small roaming bands of undead doesn't fit with Wesnoth lore (undead seem to either show up in large armies or stay put in a cave somewhere), but having a necromancer arrive at the same time as an orc raid would probably mean death for even the best players.
Original creator of the campaign Descent Into Darkness
Currently working on Cities of the Frontier
esci
Posts: 42
Joined: September 4th, 2006, 12:07 am

Re: Cities of the Frontier (aka sim-Wesnoth)

Post by esci »

CotF version 0.3.0 is up on the campaign server!

Changes include:
-Significant overhaul to both the construction "engine" and tutorial WML. You probably don't care about this, but please report any new bugs you might find.
-You now receive a gold bonus (currently 300 gold, may change) for defeating one of the orc leaders.
-Peasants can only level up into Spearmen or Bowmen if you can already recruit those units (i.e. have built the appropriate building). This makes some sense in terms of the campaign (hey, where'd that bow come from?). More importantly, I hope it will make the choice of whether or not to build a Bowyer more interesting.
-Farms are now snow-covered in the winter. This makes road planning and construction more important, and movement much more difficult.
-Slightly reduced cost for building stables to 30 gold.
-Minor UI improvements.

Enjoy!
Original creator of the campaign Descent Into Darkness
Currently working on Cities of the Frontier
AfterDawn
Posts: 50
Joined: February 3rd, 2012, 6:51 pm

Re: Cities of the Frontier (aka sim-Wesnoth)

Post by AfterDawn »

esci wrote:small roaming bands of undead doesn't fit with Wesnoth lore (undead seem to either show up in large armies or stay put in a cave somewhere)
you could make it like a side quest. a message could alert the player to the arrival of a necromancer. the necromancer would just hole up in a cavern and slowly recruit skeletons and he would be an enemy to the orcs and bandits. the player would then get either gold or an artifact for eliminating the necromancer.
(this might entail actually generating small caves on the map and i don't know how you would implement that)

also, ive already mention perhaps adding mines, but i thought of another resource building, the lumber mill.
the lumbermill does not provide upkeep but it could cut away adjacent forest tiles after a few turns and then provide some gold. however i think the lumbermill would have to be dismantable and relatively cheap in order to be space and cost effective.
MRDNRA
Posts: 212
Joined: September 11th, 2009, 5:06 pm

Re: Cities of the Frontier (aka sim-Wesnoth)

Post by MRDNRA »

Just encountered a bug with the latest update, when trying to order peasant workers to stop working on projects, they go through their usual "speech" about it, but carry on working on the project anyway.
AfterDawn
Posts: 50
Joined: February 3rd, 2012, 6:51 pm

Re: Cities of the Frontier (aka sim-Wesnoth)

Post by AfterDawn »

found two bugs with the update.
1. i got gold from killing the orc leader even though the bandits actually did it for me
2. (not much of a bug) the description for diverting stream is the same for building roads and so is the cost and time to build.
(I hope it was your intention to make divert stream cost 5 and take 1 turn b/c its really awesome).
MRDNRA wrote:Just encountered a bug with the latest update, when trying to order peasant workers to stop working on projects, they go through their usual "speech" about it, but carry on working on the project anyway.
I actually haven't encountered this problem.

By the way, this time i did build the bowyer b/c of the advancement it gives to peasants.
could you add in a peasant cavalry unit? they would make building stables more enticing b/c the peasant cavalry wouldn't be able to advance with out it.
(If you're interested I would certainly be willing to make it for you).

adding in the season and year at the beginning of each map was a nice touch.
esci
Posts: 42
Joined: September 4th, 2006, 12:07 am

Re: Cities of the Frontier (aka sim-Wesnoth)

Post by esci »

Thanks for the bug reports. I've uploaded version 0.3.1 to the campaign server. It includes the following changes:

-Fixed bugs giving you gold if sides other than you defeated orc leaders
-Fixed bug in which the divert stream action having the text and cost of laying a road
-Reduced the turns required to divert a stream from 4 to 2 and to build a bridge from 4 to 3

I actually forgot about diverting streams in my own playthroughs, so hadn't adjusted them at all. I don't want it to only take 1 turn, but comparable (and a bit more expensive) to putting up fortifications seems reasonable.

@MRDNRA:
I wasn't able to reproduce the bug you mentioned. If you see it again, can you let me know what the Peasant Workers were doing when you told them to stop? The Workers don't get movement points back if you cancel a project, but I assume that's not what you were talking about.

@AfterDawn:
If by "Peasant Cavalry," you mean a mounted level 0 unit, I think this would actually decrease the desire to build stables, as Cavalrymen are mainly useful as scouts. I've considered allowing Peasants to level up into Cavalrymen, but have avoided this as I have to create one new Peasant-like unit for each possible combination of units it can level up into. Since the number of possible combinations increases as N factorial, this gets ugly fast (and I'm planning to add in a couple more unit types). If you know a better way to automate this, I'm open to suggestions.
Original creator of the campaign Descent Into Darkness
Currently working on Cities of the Frontier
MRDNRA
Posts: 212
Joined: September 11th, 2009, 5:06 pm

Re: Cities of the Frontier (aka sim-Wesnoth)

Post by MRDNRA »

It just happened the one time, I've actually used the same command successfully since.
Gwynnedrion
Posts: 136
Joined: February 26th, 2010, 8:42 pm

Re: Cities of the Frontier (aka sim-Wesnoth)

Post by Gwynnedrion »

I like to suggest you implement mines like in ANO. It would help with the gold upbring. I now just keep on settling, never reaching the 1000 gold because it's way too much fun btw.
”Rise, adept, and tell me about the enemy.”

You are a Horseman: you charge ahead without thinking of the consequences.(80%)
Desertos
Posts: 3
Joined: February 23rd, 2012, 6:12 pm

Re: Cities of the Frontier (aka sim-Wesnoth)

Post by Desertos »

you should make more buildings like mines,watchtower and defence towers
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