WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

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vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

That looked AWESOME!

It was very intense. Are you sure you want to nerf antagonize?
The gold looked stable hovering around 200-300. It even got below 100 right before the caravan :)
Maybe what is needed is reducing the caravan gold further. What do you think?
I'll do the random delay on antagonize, that's fair.
Limiting the number of antagonize might also be reasonable. Maybe rank+1.
I won't place a cap on the hunting gold. Seems unfair.

git checkout -b 3.1.0 fbbcd884
to watch the replays above.

Edit: Going with 9 for the caravan.
weewah
Posts: 101
Joined: October 31st, 2019, 7:11 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by weewah »

WF-Autumn of Gold-Auto-Save13.gz
(636.43 KiB) Downloaded 36 times
Here's a bit of autumn before I update.

At this point I'm basically just amassing a large army of units at each of the four signposts, where I then summon enemies directly into my armies so I get to destroy them immediately before they can take any turns.

By the way, what do the braziers do? I built one but I still have no clue what it does.
vghetto wrote: October 20th, 2021, 8:37 pm
The gold looked stable hovering around 200-300. It even got below 100 right before the caravan :)
Maybe what is needed is reducing the caravan gold further. What do you think?
Edit: Going with 9 for the caravan.
I'm not sure the caravan gold is really relevant actually. I already reached rank 5 before I even sent the caravan off. The caravan gold only looks large because you get it as one lump sum, whereas the thousands of gold you get from hunting is divided up over many turns.

I guess I just have three main issues, though they are really more a matter of preference than actual problems.
  1. Too much gold: In my opinion rank 5 shouldn't be something you can reach in 1 year, much less in 2 seasons.

    But that's difficult to fix because gold income works in a cycle: if you start out with a bit more gold, you can use that gold to recruit more hunters, which then make more gold, and soon you are thousands of gold richer than someone else with a bit less gold.

    In the farming economy, there are many brakes on this snowball: farms take space and turns to build, and then need caravans to actually produce gold. They even cause more enemies to spawn, which means more gold needs to be diverted into defense.

    In the hunting economy, the brakes are loose/non-existent. Every additional hunter you build can get more enemies to slay thanks to antagonize, and they recoup their costs FAST. Just kill a few enemies and the hunter has repaid its recruitment cost, allowing you to immediately summon more hunters with little delay. Which causes the second issue:
  2. Too much unit spam: Especially spearmen. Spearmen cost only 14 gold, and have enough hp/movement to get in fights then get back to healing over and over. They are really cost-effective and work on every enemy except the undead which don't spawn before autumn. The optimal strategy at this point primarily involves recruiting hordes and hordes of spearmen (plus a few healers) and just flooding the map in all directions.
    (And I personally somewhat dislike playing spearmen because they are very very average.)
  3. Too little city-building: I mainly play this campaign for the city building aspect, but in the hunting economy the city is kind of... irrelevant. Villages heal, but so do white mages. Villages give gold support, but the army pays for itself plenty.
I'm not really sure how to handle these issues though.
  • Hunting gold caps that are limited by buildings would help (a) and (c)?
  • A reverse-loyalty trait that increases every unit's upkeep by 1 to deal with (a) and (b)? Combined with larger village gold supports for (c)?
  • Delay part of the hunting gold for the caravan to help (a)? So instead of 5 * (enemy level + 1), you get 3 * (enemy level + 1) immediately and the rest of the gold only when you get the caravan to the edge? Maybe add more frequent caravan spawns so there isn't thousands and thousands of gold riding on the survival of a single caravan.
  • Add a barracks building that gives every newly recruited soldier a well-trained trait that adds +10% hp, but only if the number of barracks is at least 5 times the number of well-trained soldiers so far? And maybe cap the number of barracks you can build at 3 per city rank?
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

Thanks for the replays.

I'm still thinking about what you've said in the last two posts, so I'm not going to address everything now.

Here is what I've changed in that regard. I might upload it later today.
I linked the number of waves to the town rank and implemented the random delay on antagonize as suggested.
I reduced the base kill gold to 3, and it gets bumped up back to 5 when the caravan reaches the edge.

Let's see how those changes hold up. Besides, I don't think it is fair for me to penalize those that like to play in an aggressive manner. As someone else has put it, antagonize and have epic battles :)
weewah wrote: October 20th, 2021, 5:34 am Even the book of finance starting bonus, which is usually ridiculously overpowered.
I thought this was settled :?
It is a 20% discount on the cost. Would it be better if it is a 10% discount instead?
weewah wrote: October 21st, 2021, 7:16 am Too much gold
Let's face it, I can never get this right :lol:
weewah wrote: October 21st, 2021, 7:16 am [*] A reverse-loyalty trait that increases every unit's upkeep by 1 to deal with (a) and (b)? Combined with larger village gold supports for (c)?
[*] Add a barracks building that gives every newly recruited soldier a well-trained trait that adds +10% hp, but only if the number of barracks is at least 5 times the number of well-trained soldiers so far? And maybe cap the number of barracks you can build at 3 per city rank?
These two are difficult to implement code-wise.
vorwi wrote: October 18th, 2021, 9:38 am I mean something like 2/3 value of things that weewah said but thats if you apply that 0level units spawning on farms every season
What did you think of vorwi's suggestion about the leader kill bounty?

In the replay, you remarked something about the dwarves bandits being fighters and scouts. Yes, I removed wesnoth default eras from the main map. I tried to keep the bandit spawning to one fighter type and one archer type where possible.
Wesnoth default eras factions, like Knalgans and Northerners, still make an appearance in the sub-missions.
weewah wrote: October 21st, 2021, 7:16 am By the way, what do the braziers do? I built one but I still have no clue what it does.
In wesnoth 1.14, not much, just aesthetic. In wesnoth 1.16, they give off light and behave like standing next to a lighthouse or a mage of light. I think you need to be on top of it for it to work. Not sure, I haven't tested WF on 1.16 in a long while.

---------------
In the upcoming version 3.2.1, I nerfed a lot of things.
Market caravan spawn is not a guarantee for every season. Bone drops on leader kill is not a guarantee.
All relics and artifacts that give a new attack have damage=9 and attacks=3 across the board, except for Storm Trident and Scepter of Fire. Those two still have mainline wesnoth values, which makes the SoF the strongest weapon available to buy.
Potion of Animal Nature no longer compels Ogres to hunt you down. There's another item for that.
I disabled a lot of market items that either didn't make sense to me, never bought myself or screwed up with the base unit a bit too much.
I disabled:
Chain armor that gave 10% attack parry. I still have no idea what parry in wesnoth means.
Ring of magnetism. Screws with chance to hit and might be in conflict with other mods.
Potion of Illumination and Gloom. Mage of Light and Shadow Lord should be enough for that.
Potion of Stoneskin.. again! I never learn.
Potion of Flight. Creates problems for units that don't have defenses over mountains.
Holy Water.. why did I even have that? :/
Orb of Steadfast. We have enough resistance stuff.

Other changes:
In the cave tunnel, I increased the number of zombies.
In the trek scenes. A couple of level two will spawn around a fire camp.
weewah
Posts: 101
Joined: October 31st, 2019, 7:11 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by weewah »

vghetto wrote: October 21st, 2021, 10:20 pm
weewah wrote: October 20th, 2021, 5:34 am Even the book of finance starting bonus, which is usually ridiculously overpowered.
I thought this was settled :?
It is a 20% discount on the cost. Would it be better if it is a 10% discount instead?
It's fine, I'm just making a comparison that the hunting economy snowballs way way faster than the previous main snowballer: book of finance.
vghetto wrote: October 21st, 2021, 10:20 pm
weewah wrote: October 21st, 2021, 7:16 am [*] A reverse-loyalty trait that increases every unit's upkeep by 1 to deal with (a) and (b)? Combined with larger village gold supports for (c)?
[*] Add a barracks building that gives every newly recruited soldier a well-trained trait that adds +10% hp, but only if the number of barracks is at least 5 times the number of well-trained soldiers so far? And maybe cap the number of barracks you can build at 3 per city rank?
These two are difficult to implement code-wise.
Aww.
vghetto wrote: October 21st, 2021, 10:20 pm
vorwi wrote: October 18th, 2021, 9:38 am I mean something like 2/3 value of things that weewah said but thats if you apply that 0level units spawning on farms every season
What did you think of vorwi's suggestion about the leader kill bounty?
Shrug. At this point I think you actually get far more gold if you don't kill the leader, just let it die to an animal, and now you can trigger its bones to keep on spawning undead you can hunt forever...
vghetto wrote: October 21st, 2021, 10:20 pm
In the replay, you remarked something about the dwarves bandits being fighters and scouts. Yes, I removed wesnoth default eras from the main map. I tried to keep the bandit spawning to one fighter type and one archer type where possible.
Wesnoth default eras factions, like Knalgans and Northerners, still make an appearance in the sub-missions.
Eh? Does this mean there will be no more dwarven guardsman/thunderer enemies? Because that would change the gameplay quite a lot. I normally don't like summoning dwarven enemies because I heavily focus on cavalry and horsemen recruits, and these recruits will get absolutely slaughtered by thunderers. And the very idea of attacking dwarven guardsman with horses is pure insanity. Meanwhile fighters and scouts only use blade/impact attacks, which both cavalry and horsemen have resistance against.
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

weewah wrote: October 22nd, 2021, 3:28 am Eh? Does this mean there will be no more dwarven guardsman/thunderer enemies?
Oh, no, no. They still spawn as side 6 dwarves or side 8 calamity. They won't spawn for side 4 bandits.
vorwi
Posts: 58
Joined: July 3rd, 2018, 10:11 am

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vorwi »

vghetto wrote: October 21st, 2021, 10:20 pm In the upcoming version 3.2.1, I nerfed a lot of things.
Market caravan spawn is not a guarantee for every season. Bone drops on leader kill is not a guarantee.
All relics and artifacts that give a new attack have damage=9 and attacks=3 across the board, except for Storm Trident and Scepter of Fire. Those two still have mainline wesnoth values, which makes the SoF the strongest weapon available to buy.
Potion of Animal Nature no longer compels Ogres to hunt you down. There's another item for that.
I disabled a lot of market items that either didn't make sense to me, never bought myself or screwed up with the base unit a bit too much.
I disabled:
Chain armor that gave 10% attack parry. I still have no idea what parry in wesnoth means.
Ring of magnetism. Screws with chance to hit and might be in conflict with other mods.
Potion of Illumination and Gloom. Mage of Light and Shadow Lord should be enough for that.
Potion of Stoneskin.. again! I never learn.
Potion of Flight. Creates problems for units that don't have defenses over mountains.
Holy Water.. why did I even have that? :/
Orb of Steadfast. We have enough resistance stuff.

Other changes:
In the cave tunnel, I increased the number of zombies.
In the trek scenes. A couple of level two will spawn around a fire camp.
How its already 3.2.1 while latest patch note on forum is still 3.1 :hmm:
weewah
Posts: 101
Joined: October 31st, 2019, 7:11 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by weewah »

Questions!

If you build a unidirectional tunnel before you reach rank 5, does it automatically become a bidirectional tunnel?

Does sacrificing a unit to the altar do anything in the hunting economy? (Other than slowing all enemies for the season?)

The starting funds option gives +1 village income in the farming economy. Does it do anything for the hunting economy?

Why are sprained ankles a thing? I started a new game, built an altar, and almost immediately the pilgrim sprained its ankle :S. I'm not going all the way out there on turn 6, so he's just gonna die to the outlaws now. At least just make it slow the unit instead of totally immobilizing it.
WF-A New Beginning-Auto-Save8.gz
(471.23 KiB) Downloaded 43 times
Two pilgrims sprained their ankles and I don't even know where they are! Screw this run! :evil:

Edit: Ok, ok, new plan: summon pilgrims in summer when I actually have map control, not in spring.
Last edited by weewah on October 25th, 2021, 5:39 am, edited 2 times in total.
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

vorwi wrote: October 22nd, 2021, 7:37 am How its already 3.2.1 while latest patch note on forum is still 3.1 :hmm:
3.2.3 actually :lol: I'll update the changelog soon. Last update was due to a stupid lua error bug. I uploaded 3.2.2 without testing it first. It was completely my fault :oops:
weewah wrote: October 25th, 2021, 3:34 am If you build a unidirectional tunnel before you reach rank 5, does it automatically become a bidirectional tunnel?
Yes, if you have an entrance and an exit side by side, you could destroy either one them, it doesn't matter. They both behave the same way after rank 5.
weewah wrote: October 25th, 2021, 3:34 am Does sacrificing a unit to the altar do anything in the hunting economy? (Other than slowing all enemies for the season?)
No, I forgot to add something there. It doesn't do anything extra for now.

I'll throw in an additional +2 gold to the kills if you have unlocked the dwarves bonus. Bringing the total to +4 extra gold per kill.
weewah wrote: October 25th, 2021, 3:34 am The starting funds option gives +1 village income in the farming economy. Does it do anything for the hunting economy?
Yes, it gives +2 extra gold on each kill. For the first season only!
weewah wrote: October 25th, 2021, 3:34 am Why are sprained ankles a thing? I started a new game, built an altar, and almost immediately the pilgrim sprained its ankle :S. I'm not going all the way out there on turn 6, so he's just gonna die to the outlaws now. At least just make it slow the unit instead of totally immobilizing it.
Cute right?
I felt the allies were finding their way too easily without much player interference. One way of addressing this is by stopping them in their tracks. I thought slowing them down won't cut it.
This *injury* applies to the Market Caravan and the fighting allies too!
For the caravan, you'll need to send a Peasant Worker. For the rest, any unit would do. I keep an Elvish Scout on standby for this :)
The injury for each allied unit can happen only once. So if you healed one, you'll know that it won't stop again in the future.
weewah wrote: October 25th, 2021, 3:34 am Two pilgrims sprained their ankles and I don't even know where they are! Screw this run! :evil:
Better get used to it. It's here to stay.
It scrolls to the location of the injured unit. You could keep track of that.

Edit:
Ok. I just added a new option to the lighthouse to call out for the injured units. It will scroll to each location to make it easier for you to find and keep track of.
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

Yikes!
Does this look reasonable for the normal difficulty?!!
128 farms gave me that!
Keep it? change it? What say you?
I should have checked the spymaster report and better prepared for it. It came as a surprise :augh:
lich.png
vorwi
Posts: 58
Joined: July 3rd, 2018, 10:11 am

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vorwi »

vghetto wrote: October 25th, 2021, 9:37 am Yikes!
Does this look reasonable for the normal difficulty?!!
128 farms gave me that!
Keep it? change it? What say you?
I should have checked the spymaster report and better prepared for it. It came as a surprise :augh:

lich.png
cool looking map.

if its first year then i guess its too hard for normal but if its second year then everyone should have enough money to run them down with freshly recruited mages
weewah
Posts: 101
Joined: October 31st, 2019, 7:11 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by weewah »

More questions:

Does dwarves diplomacy bonus stack with book of finance? What about outlaws and book of fungi?

Why do the side 2 roamers not have any traits?

Does antagonizing at the end of a season do anything? As in, will the raiders be summoned next season?
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

weewah wrote: October 25th, 2021, 11:27 pm More questions:
Keep them coming :)
weewah wrote: October 25th, 2021, 11:27 pm Does dwarves diplomacy bonus stack with book of finance?
No, it doesn't stack.
Book of Finance gives the 20% discount.

Dwarves bonus gives the same 20% discount
It allows for having negative gold without defeat
It allows for +1 village income (farming) or +2 kill gold (hunting) on each sacrifice
It allows for doubling the caravan lump sum gold when it reaches the edge (hunting)

A very important quest bonus from the look of it :)
weewah wrote: October 25th, 2021, 11:27 pm What about outlaws and book of fungi?
These don't stack up either.
The book of fungi adds +4 points to the healing formula.
It restores attacks and movement on healing.
It allows for planting Mushroom grooves on regular terrain.

Outlaws bonus does the same in addition to reducing the cost from 5 to 2 gold for eating.

The cost becomes 0 either way when you reach rank 5, and either have the fungi book or the outlaws quest bonus.
From the sound of it, the outlaws quest is the least useful quest to finish if you already acquired the starting bonus :/

I guess I could make the finance book 10% discount and the book of fungi be +2 healing points. Or maybe not. Not too inclined to change these for now.
weewah wrote: October 25th, 2021, 11:27 pm Why do the side 2 roamers not have any traits?
I wanted them to be as basic and generic as possible because they are the first ones that hunt you down before you've had a chance of to build any recruiting buildings.
weewah wrote: October 25th, 2021, 11:27 pm Does antagonizing at the end of a season do anything? As in, will the raiders be summoned next season?
There's a small chance for them to spawn at the end of the current season, but not in the following season. If they missed the window to spawn, then that's that. Same thing for antagonizing then starting a sub-mission before they spawn.
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

Version 3.2.6
* Fixed wolves spawned on plain grounds not attacking
* Added new market item "Book of traps" that allows the unit to behave as a Peasant Worker and lay traps.
* Peasant Workers, Casters, Destroyers and the Poacher line can't pickup this item.
* The Poacher line gets this ability by default. After all they advance into Trapper :roll:
* The traps can be laid in the main map and the sub-scenario maps like URM. Cave Uu, Uue are now valid terrain for projects.
* Currently they can do: Spike trap, Slow trap, plant mushroom (even without book of fungi), Brazier, Plow Snow in the winter, Remove traps.
weewah
Posts: 101
Joined: October 31st, 2019, 7:11 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by weewah »

Here's a better replay for hunting economy, WF 3.2.4, Wesnoth 1.14.14. No mods.
WF-A New Beginning replay.gz
(319.07 KiB) Downloaded 52 times
WF-Summer of Dreams replay.gz
(434.69 KiB) Downloaded 43 times
WF-Autumn of Gold-Auto-Save24.gz
(763.72 KiB) Downloaded 53 times
I made a few realizations since the last replay:
  • There IS actually a lot of city-building. Farms aren't for village support, they are for increasing the number of enemy units that spawn with each antagonize! I forgot they did that! But it became very very obvious that more enemies were spawning when I had over 100 farms, and more enemy spawns = more money.
  • Spearmen are awesome! I didn't like them before because spearmen are units with no future. Sure they are cheap and decent at every task, but they aren't great at any task. Dwarves tank better, mages and horsemen kill better, gryphons and elves scout better, etc. etc. Once you have built up some gold and made the diplomatic connections, spearmen simply cease to be a part of your army: they just can't compare to the specialized units.

    But I was wrong, spearmen do have a future! As SACRIFICES! Spearman -> Swordsman -> Sacrificeman (also known as Royal Guard) is one of the easiest ways to get a level 3 unit. The xp required is small, and the units are both decently tanky enough to survive retaliation and decently powerful enough to get a killing blow. They are the best sacrifices you can gather! I was happily throwing one royal guard after another onto the altar throughout autumn. :lol:
Some balance suggestions:
  • Add a cap on the number of altar sacrifices per season. After I sacrificed my 6th royal guard on turn 21, I was getting 6 x 2 + 2 (caravan) + 3 (base) = 17 gold per kill, on level 0s! 34 for level 1s, and that's not counting the natural bounty value that takes the enemy unit cost and multiplies it by... 13 / 100? I think? Either way, each wave of antagonized enemies gave me over 1000 gold, which I then fed into another city rank up so I could antagonize another wave of enemies, and so on and so on in an endless loop. :shock:

    In fact, maybe only allow 1 sacrifice per season.
  • Make city rank up costs keep on increasing, instead of capping at 1000.
  • Divide up the diplomacy bonuses for the hunting economy. Dwarves are way way way better than the other diplomacy factions by far. I maxed out my relation with the dwarves, then started considering which faction to work on next, then realized they all kinda sucked so badly compared to dwarves that it wasn't really worth working on them.

    Maybe each faction should have its own unique way of generating more hunting gold?
    • Undead bonus: If any unit has been sacrificed this season, +1 hunting gold bonus. (This should really have been the undead's bonus.)
    • Outlaw bonus: Kills made by outlaw units gain +1 hunting gold bonus (They are outlaws, they know how to properly pickpocket/loot enemies.)
    • Loyalist bonus: Permanent global +1 hunting gold bonus. (This is better than the other factions, but the loyalist faction's mercenaries suck so it balances out.)
    • Dunefolk bonus: Caravan gives +3 hunting gold bonus instead of the normal +2 hunting gold bonus. (Story-wise, these guys are rich desert people, who would probably pay handsomely for your food gained from hunting animals. Just uh, ignore the fact that you also get hunting gold from killing people.)
    • Dwarves bonus: Between book of finance and how strong dwarven units are, this faction probably doesn't need any hunting gold bonus?
    • Elves bonus: Something to do with trees? Maybe +1 hunting gold bonus in each season where you do not chop any trees? Or +1 hunting gold bonus for kills on forest hexes?
    • Orcs bonus: ?
    • Drakes bonus: ?
  • Cap the number of tunnels in the same way as farms. Preferably 1 tunnel per city rank. Or less.

    Tunnels are really really strong, in my replay I was building tunnels next to mushroom farms, then repeatedly sending injured units to eat the mushrooms via tunnels over and over and over without needing to end turn.

    Unfortunately, tunnels also make the game really tedious to play. I think I scroll all over the game map at least 30 times per turn, looking for units near tunnels that I can use to reinforce battlefronts where things have gone badly, or looking for mushroom farms that are fully grown for my injured units to eat. That's so so tedious...
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

Thank you for the replays, It took me over 7 hours to watch the whole thing! It was funny and entertaining as usual :)
git branch 3.2.4 cb68635

Linking the sacrifice extra gold with the undead quest does make more sense. I'll see about fitting that in.
I'll keep the caravan extra gold with the dwarves for now.

I won't limit sacrificing per season. I'll make the effects of sacrificing (slowness, extra gold) happen for rank+something turns instead. Not sure what value to put there, maybe random 1 to 3.
I'll do the same for the effects of traps.. Traps are on a timer but not linked with rank. Max for trap effect is 3 turns.
I'll see about limiting tunnel digging to rank*4. too much work not worth it.
Moved unwalkable castle and bi-directional tunnels from rank to orcs and undead quests respectively.

With the given changes, there won't be a 3.2.6. It will be 3.3.0.
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