Topic: New resource indicators

I think this must be part of overall overhaul of editor, what we should discuss is existence and use of terrain attributes like

valid_resources = {"water"}, # this is not questionable in fact
default_resource = "water",
default_resource_amount = 10,

Either we should get rid of default resources or have them treated properly - I mean they should be applied in editor to new terrains (anytime the author changes the terrains in the map), should be visible as resources (immediately) and should be removable in standard way. Now we have some kind of duality - user allocated resources vs default resources...

Terrains have only two types of default resources - water and fish. We dont need water, wells (future deep wells) can mine based on terrain humidity, but what with fishes?

EDIT: bit of explanation: if map creator forgets to put water in map, even without default water resources, deep well will be able to mine water.

But without default fish, the map will stay without fishes completely

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Just to avoid misunderstanding - an map creator will still be allowed to manually add fish and water. I am considering removal of default resources that are kind out of sight and out of control for map creator... Or made them more "official"/visible..... When you create a water - default fish will appear there immediately, but you will be allowed to modify the amount. Now also the game can query default resources and it is bad design. Default resources should be used only in editor and since then there would be only resource + amount stored in map.

Currently when you set amount 0 - resource is set to kNoResource. But that default resource is still lingering under the hood...

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Deep wells

I think this is a an idea worth considering. It strengthens the economic aspect of the game because the player now has to choose between enhancing existing wells and building new ones (at positions he has to search for first). It would also increase the importance of the water resource, which is adjustable by the map maker. At the moment, it's relatively unimportant (on the maps I made so far, I never placed water resources).

king_of_nowhere wrote: justify why the advanced atlanteans would need to upgrade a building; they were simply building the cheaper version first.

In this case, it would make sense if the Atlanteans could build both wells directly: If they know how to build deep wells and only chose the smaller version because it's cheaper, there is no reason to always choose this way. We could name their well "Small well" to show they know about the deficiency from the beginning and to underline the difference to the other tribes. Alternatively, we could make the two wells completely unrelated buildings, where the small well has to be dismantled after some time (well, the Atlanteans have never been good at enhancing buildings, have they?).

Technically, "inventing" a new building is trivial and needs no changes to the c++ code (if the AI can cope with it). Just add a lua file, register it within the tribe's init.lua, and make the well enhanceable. The bigger problem might be to get three more graphics that are sufficiently distinguishable from the normal wells. If you want the productivity of the wells to depend on the terrain and/or other wells in its vicinity, this requires changes how the mine command works.

Default water resources

I like the suggestion 1 from king_of_nowhere. When the player places water terrain, fish is added automatically. The player can the change the amount at will, even set it to zero (which will result in zero fish in the game). To make this suggestion work, two things are required: Non-matching resources have to be removed when the terrain changes (implemented in trunk, I believe), and the display of resources shoudl be switchable.

For the water resource, the case is a bit more difficult. If a place a meadow (let's say default water amount = 20) and change it to steppe (dwa = 10), how should the game know if value has to be changed or not. The player might end up with a steppe full of water. If he had chosen a desert first (dwa = 0) and the changed it to steppe, there would be no water (because water is allowed in the desert, there is no need to add it). This is a problem, but not a critical one. If, in the end, we make the well productivity depend on the terrain, we could get rid of default water resources completely (they only mimic the desired behavior for a short amount of time).

"Only few people know how much one has to know in order to know how little one knows." - Werner Heisenberg

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Barbarian wells are much smaller than Atlantean and Empire wells. Therefore, if we add deep wells, I recommend using the current Barbarian well graphics for small wells, and the current Atlantean and Empire wells for deep wells.

As for soldiers, yeah, Atlanteans and Empire are usually close at minimum and maximum power (with Barbarians a bit weaker) -- but if you train without gold, Atlanteans are the weakest of the three.

Here are the numbers I got for power ratings; all numbers are linear, so (on average) a battle between a power 10000 soldier and a power 8000 soldier would have the power 10000 soldier win with 20% of his HP left.

Rookies: Atlanteans 2872.34, Empire 2736.84, Barbarians 2501.72
Heroes: Atlanteans 28868.09, Empire 27268.70, Barbarians 24022.91
No gold: Empire 16038.78, Barbarians 14914.09, Atlanteans 13081.4

Details are here: https://wl.widelands.org/forum/post/11199/

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wl-zocker wrote:

Deep wells ....

In this case, it would make sense if the Atlanteans could build both wells directly: If they know how to build deep wells and only chose the smaller version because it's cheaper, there is no reason to always choose this way. We could name their well "Small well" to show they know about the deficiency from the beginning and to underline the difference to the other tribes. Alternatively, we could make the two wells completely unrelated buildings, where the small well has to be dismantled after some time (well, the Atlanteans have never been good at enhancing buildings, have they?).

I like the idea. So atlanteans could build directly the deep well, and it would be cheaper than building the small well and upgrading it - or upgrade would be impossible. That would not affect the atlantean early game, because they could still make small wells, but it would make their transition to late game more expensive, because for them upgrading the wells would be more expensive than for others. And since atlanteans already have a good late game, they can afford a small penalty for it. EDIT: in very late game, they woould directly build deep wells which would be cheaper than those of other tribes, but that would not really affect the balance because constrution materials are always plentyful in late game.

For the water resource, the case is a bit more difficult. If a place a meadow (let's say default water amount = 20) and change it to steppe (dwa = 10), how should the game know if value has to be changed or not. The player might end up with a steppe full of water. If he had chosen a desert first (dwa = 0) and the changed it to steppe, there would be no water (because water is allowed in the desert, there is no need to add it). This is a problem, but not a critical one. If, in the end, we make the well productivity depend on the terrain, we could get rid of default water resources completely (they only mimic the desired behavior for a short amount of time).

How about resetting the amount of water every time the terrain is changed? if one place a meadow, it will have 20 water. If one then changes it to steppe, it will have 10 water. it would therefore be better to only adjust water once you set all the terrains, but that's not a problem.

kaputtnik wrote:

Removing default resources would break game play on older maps, where no water is explicit set.

Not really. Deep wells would work without water resources. So removing default resources would certainly alter the gameplay on older maps, where you'd need to build deep wells from start, but it wouldn't really "break" the map. It would still be absolutely playable. Furthermore, something could be done to ensure that older maps made before build 19 would still use the default.

Humidity vs. Water
If could follow this discussion the idea of using the humidity-value for mining water is still there. What about wasteland terrains, which have less humidity, as king_of_nowhere explained? What about having terrains with high humidity and no water resource is placed? How does the map designer knows that there is enough water?

I thought about that myself before posting; those numbers I proposed were not at random, but I thought about them to address those concerns and make sure that the presence of water, the humidity of the terrain, and the distinction well/deep well would all rremain meaningful.

Going with my numbers, a deep well would produce (barring the penalty for other close wells, in case we want to make it) (50+(50 * average humidity))%. That means that, if the average humidity of the surround terrain is 0, it would produce 50%. If the average humidity is 1, it would produce 100%. Summer meadows have high humidities, so a deep well on them would produce at around 80-90%. Wasteland hard ground have poor humidity, a well on them would produce around 60%. So, there would be a gameplay difference between the different biomes in that you'd need roughly 50% more wells on wasteland. This, in my opinion, is not a bad thing; it is enhanced customization. Also, you could get a much better productivity by making wells close to water (because that humidity of 0.999 will wheight on the average). And in summer, if you make wells on steppe or barren steppe they will produce less, but never a deep well will produce less than 50%. Notice that even deep wells will get a slight production boost as long as there are water resources. So again, smart buildings will increase your productivity, but less smart buildings will still work to some extent; i think this could be a good thing, in that a pro player could gain an edge by the placement of wells, while an amateur could still play without knowing anything about well productivity equations.

For regular wells, without water I proposed (30 * average humidity)%, which would translate in 0% to 30% depending on humidity. So, a well on summer meadow and close to a river would get a productivity around 25%, while in wasteland ashes it would have 5%. In any case, it would be convenient to upgrade it to deep well when no water is left. ( EDIT: you may notice that if upgrading a well cost twice the well, so a deep well cost thrice a normal well, it would always be convenient to upgrade rather than build more wells without resources, even assuming space is not a problem. On wet land, producion would go from 25% to 90%, and on dry land it would go from 5% to 60%. It would also make deep wells more important in dry lands, which again is something I like. On a dry land, you need to dig deeper to get water).

By the way, it would be nice to be able to distinguish water (river) from water (sea), because a river would benefit a well nearby, but a sea would kill it. Lacking an easy way to make that distinction, especially for old maps, it works to consider all water as freshwater.

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