The Battle for Meridia: Startng balancing: alpha 0.1.7

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jonadab
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Re: The Battle for Meridia: Startng balancing: alpha 0.1.7

Post by jonadab »

As it currently stands you cannot tame horses (which are fairly strong creatures in their own right).
As a rule, horses are generally already pretty solidly domesticated. They've been raised in captivity generation after generation since approximately forever. A campaign writer might occasionally want a special exception to that (the stupendous wild horses of such-and-such a prairie or whatnot), but for general purposes I think you can safely consider horses to be domestic animals as they stand, without any special tamer unit ever needing to lay a hand on them.

If Wesnoth were fully realistic, it'd be possible to kill the horse without killing the rider (reducing his movement points and hitpoints and probably changing his movetype...), or vice versa (in which case virtually anyone with riding skills could then take the horse and ride it, unless they were of some exotic race that makes other races' horses nervous (such as, presumably, undead)). But that's all very complicated. Just getting the player to understand it would be a struggle, and nevermind about what it would do to the game engine's codebase. Treating the horse and rider as an atomic unit is a very useful simplification that makes both coding and gameplay more straightforward.

So I would say it's very reasonable for the tamer to ignore already-fully-domestic animals, especially horses. (In the real world, horses are pretty much the most thoroughly domesticated kind of animal ever. People have been using them to pull plows and whatnot since nobody knows when. Idioms fail me -- every emphatic expression I can think of for a really long time ago, like "since the bronze age" or "since the stone age" or "since God was a boy", falls well short: horses have been totally domestic for much longer than any of that. To the best of my knowledge, all the wild horses that have ever been known in recorded history were descended from formerly domestic horses that got loose somehow or another, which implies that in all probability not just some horses but virtually ALL horses worldwide had been domesticated before the advent of writing, or at least before any writing that survives to the present day.)

If you want an in-universe excuse, say that the horses of Wesnoth are so well trained that they become irrevocably loyal to their individual riders, kind of like the dragons in whatshername's books or the pteradactyl things in Avatar. Countless millennia ago, somewhere around the time spears were invented, the humans and various other races learned some super-duper horse training technique from the elves, who probably learned it many millennia previous from some even older race, and it's been passed down through the generations since time out of mind. It's just standard stable-keeping technique now, worldwide, so all horses are specially trained starting before they're even weaned. Or something along those lines.

But frankly I'm not sure you need that detailed of an explanation. They're horses. I've heard of taming lions and tigers and crocodiles and maybe even dragons, but I ain't never heard of taming no horses. What kind of lame circus would have a horse tamer? I've seen an act that featured a group of horses doing what basically amounted to coordinated choreography (try *that* with cats), but I've never seen a horse-taming act. The only chair you need for them is a saddle, and the only reason you use a whip is to suggest they should go faster. You don't have to actually hit 'em with it: they recognize the sound of the whip. They'll eat oats out of your hand without severing your fingers, fer cryin' out loud. Whaddaya mean, you're gonna tame 'em? It's a no-op.

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Drakefriend
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Re: The Battle for Meridia: Starting balancing: alpha 0.1.7

Post by Drakefriend »

No, there are surviving real wild horse populations recorded into historical time- the tarpan only went extinct in 1909, and the Prewalski's horse is still extant. And the domestication only started 4000-3000 BC, so not really extraordinarily ancient. And of course we have proof of prehistoric wild horses, and their ancestors. And if by "completly domesticated" you mean there are no really wild (no domesticated) specimen alive, then the dromedar and the cow are the most throughoutly domesticated, as the Aurox is extinct, and we have no wil dromedars. Remember, "there are none now" is very different from "there never were".

Maybe horse cavalry should in future belong into the "Horse" race, as wolf cavalry are "Wolfes" and gryphon cavalry are "Grypons"?
OR, of course, the Tamers are only used to the wildlife of Meridia? Allthough the Kaliphate uses horses... but maybe they are quite different in temperament to other (maybe even Wesnothian) horses, so they can tame only the horses of a Rami or Kaiyal?
Or can one define movement types as another possible trigger, so we at least have all mountsthat use one of the mainline or default cavalry movement type?

By the way, it has to be "Starting".
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Thrawn
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Re: The Battle for Meridia: Startng balancing: alpha 0.1.7

Post by Thrawn »

Please don't revive old threads, especially not to argue a minor point of realism that contradicts the creators idea.
...please remember that "IT'S" ALWAYS MEANS "IT IS" and "ITS" IS WHAT YOU USE TO INDICATE POSSESSION BY "IT".--scott

this goes for they're/their/there as well
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Atreides
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Re: The Battle for Meridia: Startng balancing: alpha 0.1.7

Post by Atreides »

Nice to see this for 1.16. Surprised it is so old, thought it was new.

Found a typo in a weap. spec. "wit" instead of with

Also found a WML error (well Lua I guess) when you attack a Serpent it reports game error unknown unit type (no doubt an id somewhere doesn't match - the usual) and the Water Serpent unit vanishes.
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Atreides
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Re: The Battle for Meridia: Startng balancing: alpha 0.1.7

Post by Atreides »

Serpents work fine now, thanks!

Something to add to the to do list: found a typo in 0.1.9a

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Temuchin Khan
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Re: The Battle for Meridia: Startng balancing: alpha 0.1.7

Post by Temuchin Khan »

Thank you! Glad to have Meridia back! I've always appreciated this era's creativity!
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Re: The Battle for Meridia: Startng balancing: alpha 0.1.7

Post by Lord-Knightmare »

Era's missing its 4th action: Dunefolk
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hermestrismi
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Re: The Battle for Meridia: Startng balancing: alpha 0.1.7

Post by hermestrismi »

Lord-Knightmare wrote: July 23rd, 2022, 10:21 am Era's missing its 4th action: Dunefolk
Whaooo
Thank you to mention it. It looks amazing
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