The Mental Khalifate / Rework / Map Pack - feedback thread
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The Mental Khalifate / Rework / Map Pack - feedback thread
Ok under this thread you can give feedback about all my 3 addons,
let me know if there is anything like bugs that need to be squashed etc.
let me know if there is anything like bugs that need to be squashed etc.
Last edited by Eagle_11 on January 15th, 2014, 3:14 pm, edited 4 times in total.
Re: Mental Khalifate
/shameless post splitting into new topic to avoid hijacking.Eagle_11 wrote:/shameless thread-highjacking attempt
You might want to note what branch your era is available on (1.10 and not 1.11). I gave it a quick play-through, and it is extremely overpowered, particularly with the ability to recruit the level 3 Djinn. It may be 60 gold, but that and a few other units meant that I just wiped the floor with the opposing faction.
Mainline Maintainer: AOI, DM, NR, TB and THoT.
UMC Maintainer: Forward They Cried, A Few Logs, A Few More Logs, Start of the War, and Battle Against Time
UMC Maintainer: Forward They Cried, A Few Logs, A Few More Logs, Start of the War, and Battle Against Time
Re: Mental Khalifate
Ok, it's for 1.10 branch.
I dont get it. Was there some sort of a bug that let you recruit the lvl3 right out ? You can recruit only the lvl1 djinn. If you meant availability of lvl3 then yeah its available as advance.
Thanks for feedback at all.
I dont get it. Was there some sort of a bug that let you recruit the lvl3 right out ? You can recruit only the lvl1 djinn. If you meant availability of lvl3 then yeah its available as advance.
Thanks for feedback at all.
Last edited by Eagle_11 on January 1st, 2014, 2:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Mental Khalifate
I had to track it down through a few add-ons, but your era conflicted with another era I had installed, which uses the id=Djinn for a third level advancement (Great Legends Era). So the game searched for the ID and got to that one first before pulling it from the Mental Khalifate era. I would suggest adding MK to the beginning of your IDs.Eagle_11 wrote:I dont get it. Was there some sort of a bug that let you recruit the lvl3 right out ?
Mainline Maintainer: AOI, DM, NR, TB and THoT.
UMC Maintainer: Forward They Cried, A Few Logs, A Few More Logs, Start of the War, and Battle Against Time
UMC Maintainer: Forward They Cried, A Few Logs, A Few More Logs, Start of the War, and Battle Against Time
Re: Mental Khalifate
Sorry for double-posting but let me know if the AI is functioning incorrectly when in bigger maps as not recruiting cavalry at all, ive encountered it once in a single map so far. Also if anything is bugged..
Re: Mental Khalifate
In making an era, I wouldn't worry too much about AI behavior as you should be balancing it for player versus player match-ups (who will recruit differently than the AI). If this was ever used in a campaign, the player can indicate which recruits it wants the AI to make, so it's less critical if it avoids choosing the cavalry. It also might say something about what the AI thinks of the usefulness of that unit against whatever faction you were playing.Eagle_11 wrote:Sorry for double-posting but let me know if the AI is functioning incorrectly when in bigger maps as not recruiting cavalry at all, ive encountered it once in a single map so far. Also if anything is bugged..
Mainline Maintainer: AOI, DM, NR, TB and THoT.
UMC Maintainer: Forward They Cried, A Few Logs, A Few More Logs, Start of the War, and Battle Against Time
UMC Maintainer: Forward They Cried, A Few Logs, A Few More Logs, Start of the War, and Battle Against Time
Re: The Mental Khalifate / Rework / Map Pack - feedback thre
nvm, its still broken beyond relief..
EDIT: I wanted to re-release Khalifate properly classified as mp-faction however doing so lost access to current mp-era one. How do i take the former obsolete one down now ?
EDIT: I wanted to re-release Khalifate properly classified as mp-faction however doing so lost access to current mp-era one. How do i take the former obsolete one down now ?
Re: The Mental Khalifate / Rework / Map Pack - feedback thre
Hey, Eagle_11, I kindly want to inform you, that I did bring out a similar era recently, functioning. 
- Era_Al-Qedarites --
http://forums.wesnoth.org/posting.php?m ... 19&t=39413
The fruit of a righteous man is the tree of life, and the wise man acquires souls.
And I said, I will perish with my nest, and I will multiply days as the chol.
And I said, I will perish with my nest, and I will multiply days as the chol.
Re: The Mental Khalifate / Rework / Map Pack - feedback thre
As per your request, I've looked over it and I think I'm going to have divide my feedback into technical feedback, personal feedback, and suggestions.
Technical stuff:
-Faction as a whole: This faction simply has too many options. Aside from issues of style, this also causes a situation where your faction has essentially no weaknesses and access to a wide variety of strengths. The only two weaknesses I see that stand out (but don't seem enough to cripple the factions power to me); namely that it has no very effective ranged attacker and that it is particularly bad at fighting in forests. As a whole the faction has access to plenty of mobility that is reasonably cost efficient, a freakily strong tank, both fliers and a strong dedicated water unit, and many powerful special abilities.
-Jundi/Hillman: These guys were already pretty scary before. Making them neutral is a huge boost even if you've made them a more typical melee unit rather than the mixed fighter they were. Now they're basically a faster, stronger, elvish fighter that costs only one gold more. The extra mobility is a huge strength and should probably cost a bit more.
-Berserker: Stealth abilities on a berserker will cause serious problems. It'll force enemies to have to play a guessing game but instead of say a wose which is slower (thus harder to get into position without the enemy seeing) and can't kill most units with more than 32 hitpoints in a turn you have to deal with a berserker who might be able to strike from up to 6 spaces away. This particular berserker is also very powerful for it's cost. When it's on a hill even when it isn't dawn or dusk it can frequently take down the kinds of units that would normally counter berserkers. On a hill when it is dawn/dusk it's even more scary. Off a hill they can still do what berserkers do but cheaper than an ulfserker. I like the idea of a liminal berserker though.
-Elephants: I'm not sure what you were hoping to do with these. What you have is a slow but indomitable melee tank. Even though it's pretty expensive, there's really not a lot an enemy can do about these things. You'll notice that all the heavy tanks in default wesnoth come with distinct weaknesses. For woses/heavy infantry it's magic, especially ranged magic, for clashers it's arrows, for guardsmen and trolls it's their inability to inflict damage. The elephants are relatively vulnerable to magic relative to anything else but even if your enemy pulls out a couple magic units at the right time of day they still aren't going to be able to take out an elephant and as is often the case, there's nothing that stops an elephant from effortlessly returning fire and crushing the (usually expensive) mages who attacked them but failed to kill them. I suppose that compared to many tanks your elephants will counter melee units less hard but it more than makes up for it by hitting harder than any of them and yet still having almost guardsman level toughness. So if the the enemy faction is lacking heavy magical attacks (like say the knalgans do), then they'll be hard pressed to find anything to remove these killing machines from the field.
-Novice: This unit doesn't really fill any roll on the faction. As a mixed fighter, jundi's preform better at almost everything and are cheaper, Djinn provide a better magical ranged attack, several other units do impact damage.
-Hakim/Herbalist: There was a reason in the Khalifate these guys had fewer hitpoints and were liminal. It is because +8 healing is freakily strong on a recruitable unit especially on a faction like this one where units are expensive and have good resistances. Having this unit be more vulnerable creates a tension between wanting to have this power and having it create a weak point in your forces.
-More testing would be needed, but I strongly suspect that your horse archer will be a bit strong both as support and as a village stealer. I'm also perplexed as to why he resists pierce.
-Another capability this faction has that I'm not sure is a positive thing is lvl0 capability which can make it so that stalemates will always break in their favor.
My personal take on it:
First Point: <I'm going to elaborate extensively but the main idea here is that I like the way the original Khalifate are and here is why I like them better than this.>
Quite aside from any balance issues my biggest question about this faction is 'why'. It looks to me like the faction was created on the idea of 'lets do the Khalifate except less boring' but didn't understand how the Khalifate played originally. The resulting faction has units from the Khalifate but modified in such a way that the faction as a whole wouldn't play the same way.
-In regards to what you said about the Khalifate being just another balanced realistic combined arms faction. I think that you looked at the face but missed the main point. The way the Khalifate are currently structured was such that their only cost efficient unit, was a mobile but terrain dependent mixed fighter. This alone makes them play very differently than any mainline faction, and every user made faction that I know about. Most factions rely on cost efficient melee oriented units of various styles, the undead rely on a powerful cost efficient magician, other user made factions have their own tweaks and styles but no other faction plays this dynamic the same way the Khalifate does that I know of (and your faction is no exception, it plays very differently due to changing the Jundi). The other units fill out an assortment of other roles giving the faction a bit more versatility and depth but are restricted by nature of their cost to being auxiliaries who each bring a very specific feature to the field.
-On the flip side, I've seen plenty of factions that take a more fantastical approach to a theme. I'd say it's far more common for me to see factions that look like they were put together with a more fantastical approach to an idea and I find the way the Khalifate do what they do without magic or overly flashy elements to be refreshing and different. If you don't believe me just go through the factions in the ageless era.
-However my biggest issue with what you've done here is that you've removed the names. I like that the khalifate use names based on the land they're from because this way I get to learn them (assuming the game uses them well). Not only do I find your english names less interesting and informative but some of them feel simply insulting; for example "curved sword". Common! Even the average high schooler knows what a scimitar is. Your audience by and large are on the geeky side and don't need to be treated like idiots. Strangely, when you use your own unit which you created you have no problem pulling out a Turkish word for it. Throughout my time in wesnoth I've fought all kinds of fighters, infantries, veterans, soldiers, footmen, and such I don't find having to see even more varieties of them a strength.
Point 2: <Things I think you've done well>:
Although this faction isn't really like the Khalifate much you could do some interesting things with some of the ideas you have here. It's hard for me to give too much credit though when all of your units/art are stolen from elsewhere. I like the idea of liminal berserkers and I think that if you decided to head your own way losing some of the Khalifate stuff you could create some other interesting things to go with them. There's definitely a wide range of potentially good factions that could use a similar theme to the Khalifate/Summoners but take the gameplay it's own way rather than trying to make some kind of crazy highbred between them. Balance and theme issues aside, it's not unfun to play.
Point 3: <Other thematic issues>
I can't say I really feel that the units you've added feel to me like they fit in thematically (except the adept but it doesn't fit into the gameplay all that well). The Khalifate inspirations seem to me to be a mixture of peoples like the Turks, the Pushtoons, the Mongols, and the Arabs. None of these people would be fielding elephants though they might be facing them. Ninja berserkers named after enforcers, djinns, mermen, and the jihadist also all feel kind of out of place to me with the rest of the khalifate though not as harshly. (Although there have been many Jihads, the idea of an ideology so strong that people would call themselves after it feels out of period).
-If you're going to have an ability that works exactly like marksman then just use marksman. Precision in some eras gives 80% accuracy and could thus lead to confusion.
-I'm not sure why the elephant is steadfast. I mean, sure it's tough but they weren't exactly line holders historically. Also, considering the most famouse historical use of war elephants it ought to be able to enter mountains.
Point 4: <Counter Design>
I feel like you designed this faction with the idea of 'this will be so cool to play with' and forgot to think about how fun it would be to play against. I think several of the problems here (such as stealth berserkers and elephants) stem from that. For more details on the theory try checking out "Extra Credits 5:13 Counter Play"
Suggestions:
I really feel that if you're trying to do something here it would be best for it to go it's own way and not either name itself or rely overly much on the Khalifate or the summoners but be quite distinctly it's own thing. It's already heading that way. By choosing your own theme and building on it from the ground up you can also make it so that random things you want to throw in feel less out of place.
-I think a lot of people dismiss it as a rip off. If it both doesn't look like one and isn't one people would have more reason to try it.
Either way, try to find ways to simplify the faction and build it around a more consistent gameplay theme.
I think you can just remove the merman. As long as you keep the Djinn and the falcon you'll have sufficient air power for water control (remember magical is very powerful in navel combat).
Balance:
-Remove the stealth abilities from the berserker.
-I think that simply making the elephant so that it isn't steadfast might be a good start to making it manageable, it'll still be quite tough but this will give it a more strait forward aggressive stance which would also help distinguish it from other units of it's class. You could also lower it's defense making it easier to hit (which just makes sense it's hard to miss an elephant).
-Either make the Hakim weaker in some way or reduce the toughness of the entire faction.
Technical stuff:
-Faction as a whole: This faction simply has too many options. Aside from issues of style, this also causes a situation where your faction has essentially no weaknesses and access to a wide variety of strengths. The only two weaknesses I see that stand out (but don't seem enough to cripple the factions power to me); namely that it has no very effective ranged attacker and that it is particularly bad at fighting in forests. As a whole the faction has access to plenty of mobility that is reasonably cost efficient, a freakily strong tank, both fliers and a strong dedicated water unit, and many powerful special abilities.
-Jundi/Hillman: These guys were already pretty scary before. Making them neutral is a huge boost even if you've made them a more typical melee unit rather than the mixed fighter they were. Now they're basically a faster, stronger, elvish fighter that costs only one gold more. The extra mobility is a huge strength and should probably cost a bit more.
-Berserker: Stealth abilities on a berserker will cause serious problems. It'll force enemies to have to play a guessing game but instead of say a wose which is slower (thus harder to get into position without the enemy seeing) and can't kill most units with more than 32 hitpoints in a turn you have to deal with a berserker who might be able to strike from up to 6 spaces away. This particular berserker is also very powerful for it's cost. When it's on a hill even when it isn't dawn or dusk it can frequently take down the kinds of units that would normally counter berserkers. On a hill when it is dawn/dusk it's even more scary. Off a hill they can still do what berserkers do but cheaper than an ulfserker. I like the idea of a liminal berserker though.
-Elephants: I'm not sure what you were hoping to do with these. What you have is a slow but indomitable melee tank. Even though it's pretty expensive, there's really not a lot an enemy can do about these things. You'll notice that all the heavy tanks in default wesnoth come with distinct weaknesses. For woses/heavy infantry it's magic, especially ranged magic, for clashers it's arrows, for guardsmen and trolls it's their inability to inflict damage. The elephants are relatively vulnerable to magic relative to anything else but even if your enemy pulls out a couple magic units at the right time of day they still aren't going to be able to take out an elephant and as is often the case, there's nothing that stops an elephant from effortlessly returning fire and crushing the (usually expensive) mages who attacked them but failed to kill them. I suppose that compared to many tanks your elephants will counter melee units less hard but it more than makes up for it by hitting harder than any of them and yet still having almost guardsman level toughness. So if the the enemy faction is lacking heavy magical attacks (like say the knalgans do), then they'll be hard pressed to find anything to remove these killing machines from the field.
-Novice: This unit doesn't really fill any roll on the faction. As a mixed fighter, jundi's preform better at almost everything and are cheaper, Djinn provide a better magical ranged attack, several other units do impact damage.
-Hakim/Herbalist: There was a reason in the Khalifate these guys had fewer hitpoints and were liminal. It is because +8 healing is freakily strong on a recruitable unit especially on a faction like this one where units are expensive and have good resistances. Having this unit be more vulnerable creates a tension between wanting to have this power and having it create a weak point in your forces.
-More testing would be needed, but I strongly suspect that your horse archer will be a bit strong both as support and as a village stealer. I'm also perplexed as to why he resists pierce.
-Another capability this faction has that I'm not sure is a positive thing is lvl0 capability which can make it so that stalemates will always break in their favor.
My personal take on it:
First Point: <I'm going to elaborate extensively but the main idea here is that I like the way the original Khalifate are and here is why I like them better than this.>
Quite aside from any balance issues my biggest question about this faction is 'why'. It looks to me like the faction was created on the idea of 'lets do the Khalifate except less boring' but didn't understand how the Khalifate played originally. The resulting faction has units from the Khalifate but modified in such a way that the faction as a whole wouldn't play the same way.
-In regards to what you said about the Khalifate being just another balanced realistic combined arms faction. I think that you looked at the face but missed the main point. The way the Khalifate are currently structured was such that their only cost efficient unit, was a mobile but terrain dependent mixed fighter. This alone makes them play very differently than any mainline faction, and every user made faction that I know about. Most factions rely on cost efficient melee oriented units of various styles, the undead rely on a powerful cost efficient magician, other user made factions have their own tweaks and styles but no other faction plays this dynamic the same way the Khalifate does that I know of (and your faction is no exception, it plays very differently due to changing the Jundi). The other units fill out an assortment of other roles giving the faction a bit more versatility and depth but are restricted by nature of their cost to being auxiliaries who each bring a very specific feature to the field.
-On the flip side, I've seen plenty of factions that take a more fantastical approach to a theme. I'd say it's far more common for me to see factions that look like they were put together with a more fantastical approach to an idea and I find the way the Khalifate do what they do without magic or overly flashy elements to be refreshing and different. If you don't believe me just go through the factions in the ageless era.
-However my biggest issue with what you've done here is that you've removed the names. I like that the khalifate use names based on the land they're from because this way I get to learn them (assuming the game uses them well). Not only do I find your english names less interesting and informative but some of them feel simply insulting; for example "curved sword". Common! Even the average high schooler knows what a scimitar is. Your audience by and large are on the geeky side and don't need to be treated like idiots. Strangely, when you use your own unit which you created you have no problem pulling out a Turkish word for it. Throughout my time in wesnoth I've fought all kinds of fighters, infantries, veterans, soldiers, footmen, and such I don't find having to see even more varieties of them a strength.
Point 2: <Things I think you've done well>:
Although this faction isn't really like the Khalifate much you could do some interesting things with some of the ideas you have here. It's hard for me to give too much credit though when all of your units/art are stolen from elsewhere. I like the idea of liminal berserkers and I think that if you decided to head your own way losing some of the Khalifate stuff you could create some other interesting things to go with them. There's definitely a wide range of potentially good factions that could use a similar theme to the Khalifate/Summoners but take the gameplay it's own way rather than trying to make some kind of crazy highbred between them. Balance and theme issues aside, it's not unfun to play.
Point 3: <Other thematic issues>
I can't say I really feel that the units you've added feel to me like they fit in thematically (except the adept but it doesn't fit into the gameplay all that well). The Khalifate inspirations seem to me to be a mixture of peoples like the Turks, the Pushtoons, the Mongols, and the Arabs. None of these people would be fielding elephants though they might be facing them. Ninja berserkers named after enforcers, djinns, mermen, and the jihadist also all feel kind of out of place to me with the rest of the khalifate though not as harshly. (Although there have been many Jihads, the idea of an ideology so strong that people would call themselves after it feels out of period).
-If you're going to have an ability that works exactly like marksman then just use marksman. Precision in some eras gives 80% accuracy and could thus lead to confusion.
-I'm not sure why the elephant is steadfast. I mean, sure it's tough but they weren't exactly line holders historically. Also, considering the most famouse historical use of war elephants it ought to be able to enter mountains.
Point 4: <Counter Design>
I feel like you designed this faction with the idea of 'this will be so cool to play with' and forgot to think about how fun it would be to play against. I think several of the problems here (such as stealth berserkers and elephants) stem from that. For more details on the theory try checking out "Extra Credits 5:13 Counter Play"
Suggestions:
I really feel that if you're trying to do something here it would be best for it to go it's own way and not either name itself or rely overly much on the Khalifate or the summoners but be quite distinctly it's own thing. It's already heading that way. By choosing your own theme and building on it from the ground up you can also make it so that random things you want to throw in feel less out of place.
-I think a lot of people dismiss it as a rip off. If it both doesn't look like one and isn't one people would have more reason to try it.
Either way, try to find ways to simplify the faction and build it around a more consistent gameplay theme.
I think you can just remove the merman. As long as you keep the Djinn and the falcon you'll have sufficient air power for water control (remember magical is very powerful in navel combat).
Balance:
-Remove the stealth abilities from the berserker.
-I think that simply making the elephant so that it isn't steadfast might be a good start to making it manageable, it'll still be quite tough but this will give it a more strait forward aggressive stance which would also help distinguish it from other units of it's class. You could also lower it's defense making it easier to hit (which just makes sense it's hard to miss an elephant).
-Either make the Hakim weaker in some way or reduce the toughness of the entire faction.
"There are two kinds of old men in the world. The kind who didn't go to war and who say that they should have lived fast died young and left a handsome corpse and the old men who did go to war and who say that there is no such thing as a handsome corpse."
Re: The Mental Khalifate / Rework / Map Pack - feedback thre
Hey, you bothered. \o/ (<- happy guy)
About the biggest issue:
Well, when i play a game in english, i expect things to be in english. However this doesnt mean there cant be an arabic translation where their original names are being used.
OK ill rename the Fedai too and Jihadist came into being because i didnt want to name it just 'Peasant'.
Couldnt use Marksman, wanted it to work on offense only. If you can suggest a not used name for it ?
Stolen is a comical word there, since no one restricted me from taking those things and shaping them into whatever i would like to.
I didnt forget about how fun it would be to play against, because i had nobody to play the faction against me.
So to summarize what will come next update:
- Hillsman will cost more
- Elephant loses steadfast. At the begin of the road they didnt have 'Steadfast' but could gain it as an AMLA option. Since it was silly to have it as an AMLA option(you wouldnt pick anything else over it, (fail-)logic) But now i will remove this ability from this unit all together.
- lvl1 healer will heal only +4, the entire healer line will be a few HP more vulnerable.
- Merman will be removed.
- When i remove stealth abilities from berserker i have to put it somewhere else, now i have an idea to make the novice useful
(Dont worry, he wont gain stealth.. something new will)
Thanks for the effort.
About the biggest issue:
Well, when i play a game in english, i expect things to be in english. However this doesnt mean there cant be an arabic translation where their original names are being used.
OK ill rename the Fedai too and Jihadist came into being because i didnt want to name it just 'Peasant'.
Couldnt use Marksman, wanted it to work on offense only. If you can suggest a not used name for it ?
Stolen is a comical word there, since no one restricted me from taking those things and shaping them into whatever i would like to.
I didnt forget about how fun it would be to play against, because i had nobody to play the faction against me.
So to summarize what will come next update:
- Hillsman will cost more
- Elephant loses steadfast. At the begin of the road they didnt have 'Steadfast' but could gain it as an AMLA option. Since it was silly to have it as an AMLA option(you wouldnt pick anything else over it, (fail-)logic) But now i will remove this ability from this unit all together.
- lvl1 healer will heal only +4, the entire healer line will be a few HP more vulnerable.
- Merman will be removed.
- When i remove stealth abilities from berserker i have to put it somewhere else, now i have an idea to make the novice useful
(Dont worry, he wont gain stealth.. something new will)Thanks for the effort.
Re: The Mental Khalifate / Rework / Map Pack - feedback thre
Marksman only works on offense.
"There are two kinds of old men in the world. The kind who didn't go to war and who say that they should have lived fast died young and left a handsome corpse and the old men who did go to war and who say that there is no such thing as a handsome corpse."
Re: The Mental Khalifate / Rework / Map Pack - feedback thre
I. somehow.
understood that as permanent 60% hit chance.
Anyways uploaded an new version, dunno how far i could adress those issues, or if i could at all.
understood that as permanent 60% hit chance.
Anyways uploaded an new version, dunno how far i could adress those issues, or if i could at all.
Re: The Mental Khalifate / Rework / Map Pack - feedback thre
Eagle 11 ,
you do not have a changelog, so I could not spot out myself, to which of your works, you atributed the uploaded new version, or did you mean all were new? Got me a little bit confused here.
Will you publish your work on the 1.11.8.x development line also?
you do not have a changelog, so I could not spot out myself, to which of your works, you atributed the uploaded new version, or did you mean all were new? Got me a little bit confused here.
Will you publish your work on the 1.11.8.x development line also?
The fruit of a righteous man is the tree of life, and the wise man acquires souls.
And I said, I will perish with my nest, and I will multiply days as the chol.
And I said, I will perish with my nest, and I will multiply days as the chol.
Re: The Mental Khalifate / Rework / Map Pack - feedback thre
We were talking about Khalifate, so its that.
Id rather tend to be uninterested for moving on until an stabile version comes out.
Id rather tend to be uninterested for moving on until an stabile version comes out.