[1.13+] Oten's Mods

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Otengam
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[1.13+] Oten's Mods

Post by Otengam »

Hello! These are some mods that I have created to provide players more options and control over the game. You can think of them as advanced options to the normal game. They can be extremely game changing and it could take you time to decide for yourself what settings are fair however I believe these MP Modifications provide a lot of interesting ways to play Battle for Wesnoth especially for multiplayer.

It's also possible to play these mods in single-player mainline Campaigns too (scroll to the bottom of the Campaign window) but the same warning as before applies it can be easy to unintentionally make the campaigns much easier. It's not my intention to make these mods overpowered even if it can seem that way against the AI.

The best advice I can offer is just to try the modifications out yourself and if you want to play without these advanced options you can click "Defaults" to play as if the addons are disabled. Let me know what settings you like playing with and what values could be good for competitive play.

Commerce Guilds
*Right click your leader to discretely transfer gold to other players
*Transfer ownership of one of your villages to a different leader
*Accrue interest every X turns (6 turns for 1 day)
Bounty Hunter
*Scale how much gold you gain for killing enemy units
Disavow
*Dismiss units to control gold per turn and deny enemies
*Set how much it costs/you gain to disavow a unit
Terms of Surrender
Choose what happens when a leader dies:
*Surrender defeated leader's gold
*Treasury shared amongst victor's allies
*Take over vanquished leader's villages
*Villages can be evenly shared amongst allies (if unequal leader killer gets larger share)
*Enlist services of defeated leader's units
XP Control
*Change how much XP units gain for killing units
*Gain XP per turn
*Adjacent units/Witnesses to a killing gain XP
*Change the % chance adjacent units gain observer XP
Last edited by Otengam on May 4th, 2016, 9:10 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Eagle_11
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Re: [1.13+] Oten's Mods

Post by Eagle_11 »

Dismiss could get potentially abused to deny enemy's kill, i suggest extra condition like unit not having lesser than 1/4 of it's health to be dismissed.
Otengam
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Re: [1.13+] Oten's Mods

Post by Otengam »

Eagle_11 wrote:Dismiss could get potentially abused to deny enemy's kill, i suggest extra condition like unit not having lesser than 1/4 of it's health to be dismissed.
The 1/4 health is a good idea but I'm not sure it's necessary (I will try to add it if more people want it though). I did consider that people could deliberately deny enemy kills (as mentioned in the description) but then the person dismissing would lose the unit that may or may not be the intended target. Also, in some situations you do want the unit to be there to absorb a turn from one enemy unit so tactically I didn't feel a limitation needed to be added.
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Yomar
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Re: [1.13+] Oten's Mods

Post by Yomar »

I just saw your post, so I did not tried your mod yet, but I find it very interresting, so I will add it for sure to the game and leave it there.
As for the dimiss, may you can also add a "Conditional Dimiss" option, were the unit has to return in a castle hex to be able to dimiss him.
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Otengam
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Re: [1.13+] Oten's Mods

Post by Otengam »

Yomar wrote:I just saw your post, so I did not tried your mod yet, but I find it very interresting, so I will add it for sure to the game and leave it there.
As for the dimiss, may you can also add a "Conditional Dimiss" option, were the unit has to return in a castle hex to be able to dimiss him.
Thanks! That's actually a neat idea too. I'm not sure I would walk my unit all the way back to get +1 gold per turn but it would be a nice way of limiting "deny abuse". As another option though it's something I can consider.

Edit:
Ok updated "Disavow" with the 2 new options. Let me know if there are any bugs.
Last edited by Otengam on April 26th, 2016, 2:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Yomar
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Re: [1.13+] Oten's Mods

Post by Yomar »

You could also reofund the money spent for the unit (or just a part of it like half, one third, one quarter or a specific percentile, in fact it would be also nice if you could select the ammount before the game in the options, if possible, but a fixed ammount is ok too), so if you need some extra money to buy an expensive unit, that you may really need in that tactical moment, you can do it.
Actually you could create a new option called like Reimburse, Refund or Recoup.
Just an idea but neat I think, For example, like when you really need that mage for the next turn against that incoming Wose, but you don't have enought money. (Or if you need a Wose against al thoose incoming spearmans, but you can' afford him because you miss just 1Gp),
Just an idea, but let me know what you think.
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Otengam
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Re: [1.13+] Oten's Mods

Post by Otengam »

You should have downloaded it first :P It already has that feature with a slider to choose how much money each unit would cost to dismiss before their "retirement". If you use a negative cost for dismissal then that unit will give you money back ("contractual early retirement"). The justification (in the addon description):
"...Choose to provide a severance package or require contractual payment for early retirement of units."

I put in the "Flat unit dismissal cost" slider because I wanted to make dismissing units non-trivial because you are disavowing units so the enemy doesn't get the benefit of XP (or if you use my Bounty Hunter addon too then gold). There should be a cost for every tactic. At the same time, I also wanted the addon to be flexible enough to allow people to manage gold better too. With this in mind, I also realised that this could be abused so I put a limit there.

For example, if you can get a flat 20 gold for disavowing a unit and you only recruited a 8gold zombie then you could cheat and keep getting 12 gold for free. Afaik, the cheapest unit that is recruitable (from mainline) is the zombie at 8gold so that's why "Dismissal cost" only goes down to -8. I did consider a non-flat or proportional dismissal cost but I had not looked into how to get the unit recruit cost so I just stuck with what was doable at the time. It's actually commented out code in the addon so I might look into it some more later.
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Yomar
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Re: [1.13+] Oten's Mods

Post by Yomar »

Ops, sorry, Yeah You right, I should have tried it first, but I have installed V1.12 of the game, and have little Hd space, If I download the mods from the server and install them manually, there is any chance that they will be compatible with BFW 1.12.5 ?
Beside I tought that the Mods where combined in one download, I did not expected many mods when I saw them, lol.
I thought it wad one Add-on that contains many mods. :/

Anyway combined with the Diplomacy mod they will be very interresting to use in MP.
Beholded Wesnoth's Origins.
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Otengam
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Re: [1.13+] Oten's Mods

Post by Otengam »

I probably wasn't very clear about that in my op. They are separate addons ^^ I haven't actually tried them on 1.12 you can let me know if there are any problems but I don't really plan to make it backwards compatible.

I've played BfW a few times in the past before but I only came back this April. On my computer 1.12 has some annoying bugs (unrelated to addons) that make me very reluctant to play that version (fullscreen monitor resolution, non-functioning hotkeys etc). I know that I am missing out on all the UMC of 1.12, in fact you have very likely played more addons than I have. I need to go have a look at what Diplomacy does.
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tommy2teeth
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Re: [1.13+] Oten's Mods

Post by tommy2teeth »

The only mod that does not work correctly on 1.12 is the Commerce Guild; I am unable to right click on my leader to send villages or gold. However, the interest part of the mod does work (not bad considering you did not make the mods for 1.12).

I have no idea what Diplomacy Mod is and would like to know more about it, but I have unable to find information on it.

These mods are wonderful additions to multiplayer (which I feel sometimes gets overlooked in favor of campaigns), thank you Otengam.
Otengam
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Re: [1.13+] Oten's Mods

Post by Otengam »

Thanks for saying! I feel I've added more options to the normal gameplay and changing the values by even 1 can have subtle and powerful effects. The interesting thing would be finding a good balance for those settings that multiplayers can agree on. For campaigns, all these mods add a bit more fun at the expense of balance.

I've tried to make mods that wouldn't overly bias against AI play but some can't be helped. Interest rates (Commerce Guilds) gives gold to players who have to decide to save gold for that specific turn when it collects or to use the gold instantly. The AI however doesn't know to save up for a specific turn. On the other hand, Kill gold (Bounty Hunter) and XP Control, the AI benefits in some cases more than human players due to their generally more aggressive tendencies. Also, in campaigns players should be wary of 1000 starting gold AIs XD

Really though, I'd love to get feedback on what settings people use and how it affects their gaming experience.

Bounty Hunter:
200% scaled gold
Makes it so that in large battles you can recoup losses of unit(s)
Commerce Guilds:
Interest Rate: 3%
Turns before collect: 3
Allow tributes + Tribute cost: 20%
Allow village owner change + Cost: 3 gold
The interest rate is set low and doesn't feel overpowered until/unless you can build up a large gold amount. At that point along with Bounty Hunter mod (later) you can maintain more higher level units (XP Control) even with negative gold per turn.
Tributes cost I've used this in single-player (mainline) campaigns to give AI allies a bit of an assist. This does vary from campaign to campaign. In multiplayer, you can have an ally be a village stealer and then have them reassign villages to help fund heavier hitting race allies.
Disavow:
Allow units to be disavowed + Cost: 0
Dismiss-able with more 1/4 health: Disabled
Units can only be dismissed in castles+villages: Disabled
With Commerce Guilds and Bounty Hunter managing gold by dismissal isn't as necessary so the other reason to use this is to deny enemies (eg against enemy units that you know are about to level or collect gold from the Bounty Hunter mod). It's easier to use Disavow against AI players because their behaviour is much easier to predict ("Go after the weakest+Surround").
With the "dismissed in castles+villages" option on I tend to forget I can dismiss units XD so I'd recommend to leave it disabled. I added the castles+villages limitation because of comments where denying might seem unfair but I think it is a tactical decision. You reduce your military power and potential position, and lose a possibly strategic unit but deny the enemy significant gold and XP.
Terms of Surrender:
Surrender defeated group's coffers: Enabled
Treasury Shared among allies: Enabled
Sign over vanquished leader's villages: Enabled
Share vanquished leader's villages: Enabled
Forcibly enlist services of capitulated combatants: Disabled
One of my personal favourites. I like the idea of allies having a share of the spoils ("King Slayer" player gets the larger share if unequal). The majority of campaigns and games has the goal of killing the enemy leader first so being able to do so can decisively change the outcome of the rest of the game. I don't use the last option because it's a little too decisive XD I allow the defeated leader's player to keep trying to assist their allies to victory. They aren't able to use gold any more anyway so villages are only for healing to them. It also plays thematically (at least to me) where some defeated units are still rebelling if they happen to be in a village that's been surrendered.
XP Control
XP per turn: 1
XP per kill: 8
XP adjacent units gain when witnessing a kill: 1
Percent chance adjacent units gain % when seeing a kill: 50%
I added XP Control because it allowed for more refined control compared to the game's normal "Experience modifier". XP per turn is quite a powerful setting so I keep it at 1, it lets units in the field gradually improve so over time they can become their highest form. It's not always a good thing though if you play campaigns especially if the AI vastly outnumbers your units!
XP per kill is another option that I added for more control rather than because of some need to change it. I suspect the default game value is fair enough. Decreasing it would de-value killing units if you compare it against +XP/turn. Increasing this value and you could level up units too fast.
The adjacency settings are also quite powerful. I kept mine low and even added a % chance option to make gameplay fairer.
Imo, the default game doesn't feel like it uses higher level units enough so that's why I made XP Control. XP Control also brings to the forefront a powerful fact that if you "pop a level" you get full HP back (aside from the obvious promotion to a new unit). It's not just human players that benefit from this and the AI to some degree also does make use of the full HP level popping. In campaigns, the XP Control settings will greatly change the balance so you might want to turn off XP per turn in favour of different adjacency XP settings.
If I get enough feedback, I can edit my original post to include recommended settings for multiplayer and "for fun" settings (note some options can go into the negative!).
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