Golden Age of Kylandra

[TT-Kylandra]

Overview

The Golden Age of Kylandra is a balanced multiplayer era Add-On that introduces 10 new, balanced factions, along with 9 more additional factions which may or may not be balanced.

I started working on the project years ago so it was developed with Wesnoth 1.14. I have updated it for Wesnoth 1.16 but there were some problems with deprecated macros. I believe I fixed all of them but please give any feedback for bugs you might discover.

The philosphy of the Golden Age of Kylandra was to create a larger selection of factions which blended well with the default factions. The models strive to be as seamless as possible, following the art style of the base game whenever possible. Any new abilities are likewise intended to expand upon the original game and add tactical and strategic variety without unbalancing or replacing any of the original abilities.


Notes about the eras

The Golden Age era is balanced, as far as I can tell. Please contact me with any problems or suggestions. I have included 2 eras, one without the default factions and one with them included. Both are balanced.

The Complete Kylandra era is mostly balanced, although there are a few factions that are weaker than others. Every faction is winnable though.

The Extended Kylandra era is not balanced and not intended to be, with minor factions meant to be slightly weaker than the major factions.


Final Notes

Many of the unit models used in the Golden Age of Kylandra have been tweaked, spliced, or outright taken from other Add-Ons. There are too many to mention, but Extended Era, War of Legends, and Era of More Units have all been heavily sourced from, as well as many other great Add-Ons.

However, all units, with very few exceptions, and most of the Abilities, macros, and other codes included in this add-on are of my own creation, although I have shameless used other Add-Ons as inspiration and guides for many new abilities, especially War of Legends. WML guides on wesnoth wiki have also been invaluable.

I have done my best to note any abilities which have been copy and pasted from other Add-Ons, but this has been a project of several years, so doubtless some have fallen through the cracks, as I did not intend to publish this Add-On when I initially began creating it. If you feel your Add-On has contributed to this project without getting appropriate credit, feel free to contact me and I will be happy to add a reference to your original work in the code.

[Mechanical]

Oh, another era of remixes. It's not fresh. It's not needed. There is already Ageless, War of Legends, there was a Golden Age (FD didn't port it to 1.16) and many other eras of this kind.

You are great that you were able to find sprites on the forum and change them a little in a graphic editor, but in general it does not look interesting. That's life.

It would be better if you directed your creative forces to create something unique, and not another era-clone.

[TT-Kylandra]

Oh, another era of remixes. It's not fresh. It's not needed. There is already Ageless, War of Legends, there was a Golden Age (FD didn't port it to 1.16) and many other eras of this kind.

You are great that you were able to find sprites on the forum and change them a little in a graphic editor, but in general it does not look interesting. That's life.

It would be better if you directed your creative forces to create something unique, and not another era-clone.

Well in my experience many of the other eras are not properly balanced or the artwork is jarring for some factions. Plus I have added several new and unique ability types that I have not seen anywhere else, hopefully for people to use or copy for their own projects.

I'm sorry you feel that it is not needed, but I honestly made this era for my own enjoyment. Publishing it was more of an after-thought than anything else. However, I would appreciate it if you did not post negative comments just because it is not interesting to you. Please reserve the forum for constructive comments or bug reporting.

[Mechanical]

Oh, another era of remixes. It's not fresh. It's not needed. There is already Ageless, War of Legends, there was a Golden Age (FD didn't port it to 1.16) and many other eras of this kind.

You are great that you were able to find sprites on the forum and change them a little in a graphic editor, but in general it does not look interesting. That's life.

It would be better if you directed your creative forces to create something unique, and not another era-clone.

Well in my experience many of the other eras are not properly balanced, plus I have added several new and unique ability types that I have not seen anywhere else, hopefully for people to use or copy for their own projects.

I'm sorry you feel that it is not needed, but I honestly made this era for my own enjoyment. Publishing it was more of an after-thought than anything else. However, I would appreciate it if you did not post negative comments just because it is not interesting to you. Please reserve the forum for constructive comments or bug reporting.

I gave a completely constructive assessment of this era. The forum is not only a place to write praises or report bugs. When you post an era here, you should be prepared to hear people calling your work generic or mediocre.

[TT-Kylandra]

You are entitled to your opinion. I personally believe that you probably did not play the era much and instead just looked at the faction rosters and unit models, as the abilities included are most definitely not generic and where a large amount of the work was done.

A constructive comment is "This is what I don't like, I suggest you do this instead."
A constructive comment is NOT "I don't like your work, you should do something else."
See the difference? I can edit or modify the era based on constructive comments, but your suggestion that I just create an entirely new project is not constructive.

But I do not want to clutter this thread up with arguing with you. You find the era uninteresting/generic. That is okay, I am not offended. Like I said, I made this era for me, I am just sharing in case anyone else likes it. If you don't like it, please move on and spend your time doing something that you do enjoy

[Mechanical]

You are entitled to your opinion. I personally believe that you probably did not play the era much and instead just looked at the faction rosters and unit models, as the abilities included are most definitely not generic and where a large amount of the work was done.

A constructive comment is "This is what I don't like, I suggest you do this instead."
A constructive comment is NOT "I don't like your work, you should do something else."
See the difference? I can edit or modify the era based on constructive comments, but your suggestion that I just create an entirely new project is not constructive.

But I do not want to clutter this thread up with arguing with you. You find the era uninteresting/generic. That is okay, I am not offended. Like I said, I made this era for me, I am just sharing in case anyone else likes it. If you don't like it, please move on and spend your time doing something that you do enjoy

Do not think that everyone who has considered your era generic is interested in its development and should offer some ideas for improvement.

Also, if you created an era for yourself, it's strange to write "I'm sorry you didn't like it."

In general, I also do not want to develop this conversation. I said everything I wanted to. This is my last post on this subject.

I hope to see more original addons from you in the future

[Atreides]

Just downloaded this and played a quick game. Looks nice. No bugs to report. Well I did find one unit had a duplicate special notes (no doubt an old 1.14 note left in).

[TT-Kylandra]

Just downloaded this and played a quick game. Looks nice. No bugs to report. Well I did find one unit had a duplicate special notes (no doubt an old 1.14 note left in).

Great! Thank you, could you tell me which special note it was? You are probably correct that it was left over from 1.14.

[Atreides]

Just downloaded this and played a quick game. Looks nice. No bugs to report. Well I did find one unit had a duplicate special notes (no doubt an old 1.14 note left in).

Great! Thank you, could you tell me which special note it was? You are probably correct that it was left over from 1.14.

Well I didn't note which unit, but the faction was the dwarvish one. If I recall correctly you could search the whole era for {SPECIAL_NOTE to find any and all leftovers.

[dwarftough]

Nicely made, each unit has descriptions, animations, even there is a status icon for ensnare in the right bar. I definitely liked it. Not very balanced to my taste. Many swordsmen with 6-4 or even 7-4 damage that cost 15/16 gold, it feels very op. It's near lvl 2 damage with other units being near-default stats. Drake Clasher has 6-4 in default, and it costs 19. Infantryman has 6-4 blade and costs 15, that's too strong I think

[dwarftough]

There is a bug, leftover from 1.14. You use [advancefrom] tags for Troll Shaman, Runesmith and some other units to add advancements to them for lvl 1s. In 1.16 it doesn't work, you should use [modify_unit_type] inside [era][/era] for corresponding units.

[IPS]

Nicely made, each unit has descriptions, animations, even there is a status icon for ensnare in the right bar. I definitely liked it. Not very balanced to my taste. Many swordsmen with 6-4 or even 7-4 damage that cost 15/16 gold, it feels very op. It's near lvl 2 damage with other units being near-default stats. Drake Clasher has 6-4 in default, and it costs 19. Infantryman has 6-4 blade and costs 15, that's too strong I think

Drake Clasher should not be a great example of Damage cost effiency. It features some few aspects which makes it be real worth 19g's

1.- Two damage types, 6-4 & 5-4 on pierce/blade
2.- Much better movement costs than average units, exceptions is frozen, because it's even average in caves.
3.- It has some ressists and GOOD HP as lv1 unit, it's good for offensive and if exposed to few tiles, better dessign for 1vs1 duelist.

But in overall, a 6-4 lv1 unit with 35 hp, costs would be around 15g's as long it has XP of like 40 , only arcane ressistance , 5 movement and no terrain movement cost or terrain defenses. EE Invader is 8-3 blade melee , 36 HP, only 10% fire ressists and costs 15g (and like 85% of cost efficiency of Loy Spearman , as first strike and ranged retaliation/farming method does quite much).

And yeah, 6-4 with aligment is bit better than 8-3 attack because of strong being 9-4 is extremely nice, so in case of a 6-4 with 35 HP's 16g is fine unless you nerf its XP to make it 15g or even 14g.

[dwarftough]

unless you nerf its XP to make it 15g or even 14g.

To be honest I don't believe in this. How would XP nerf justify the lowered cost? If you are able to destroy your enemy buying many of this unit with superior damage, you would need no advancing, why would you care about delayed level-up if you just straight-up win?

I also think that 4 strikes when the strong trait is possible is very strong, due to obvious reasons, so it should be taken into account when comparing.

But actually, the relation between units among different factions is more important. And here, maybe I was just unlucky to get that pair, I see a gap. Do other factions have comparable strength units? We played a game on a small map, and there were half-elves vs humans. Humans have lawful infantryman with 6-4 15g. Half-elves have half-elf fighter with less hitpoints, less arcane res, same damage and alignment, same dodge, but 16g. The only real advantage he has is 1 move in forest. Yeah, higher mobility, but same 50% def, in defense makes no real difference when you stand on a village and have nowhere to retreat. Faction-wise I don't think he should cost more, half-elves don't have any other option for tanking, while humans have spearman 14g, infrantryman 15g, heavy infrantryman 19g, so I see half-elves at a disadvantage here

[IPS]

I've reviewed a bit more the era, and got some conclusions.

About the case of half-elf humans, sowrdsman is defenetively at disadventage ... 1 mp cost in forest is not worth +1g difference, 10% arcane res is not a big problem to be honest. But thing about THAT SPECIFIC unit comparation.

1.- Human swordsmen are very , insanely, cost efficient. 6-4 , 34 hp and 5 movement for 15g's is somewhat too nice, despite they STILL have SPEARMEN in their build (HI still sucks, but good stuff to own). I would increase swordsmen price to 16g .

2.- Half-elf human swordsmen, they would need 6th movement to be 16g cost, despite of human swordsmen advantage. Still I would go for 5-5 and 6th movement to make them differ more from human variations. It's a problem in half elf not having more melee options, they really need more.

3.- There are TWO human factions with same Lv1 6-4 blade and same stats swordsmen , but different sprites... at least some effort in making them more different (one with more ressists but more expensive, or just more HP but more expensive, idk).


Also there are few some things I didn't like about the era, is that there are too much defaultish stats, with very low variations, even from units in different factions being too similar between themselves and default, as faction they need more differences in gameplay and idk, maybe some stuff to make era more unique somehow...


Also some notes for era author, you can make very slight variations in +10/-10% ressistances or flat defenses to make things bit different, or try different mount of damage/strikes (for example, 5-5 on lv1 , 7-5 on lv2 , etc) , try some features like 50% on flat or secondary melee/ranged attacks in certain fighters to AT LEAST not make them a clone of SAME UNIT BUT DIFFERENT NAME/SPRITE in some other faction in the same era.

Main issue is that content in this era looks to repetitive and copypaste from default, with some variation or more differences could be a more interesting experience to try out.