Topic: "Northmen" Tribe Page

ok got it.
so I'll wait until somebody with the right knowledge could review it. Just for my curiosity how will savegame compat be maintained? I always thought that the scripting is saved within the savegame.

Just to make it clear I didn't want to offend anybody. I am still learning. and sometimes I am just wrong in my thinking.

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Most workers are done now. Only hunter, fisher, new reindeer, trainer and soldier and the beekeeper´s beeswarm animation are still missing.

I started with first new buildings now. I applied the player color to frames and windows after all. Here are the two buildings, furnace and blacksmithy:

(EDIT: the links were broken…)

Since in-game image scaling consumes a lot of memory, I´ll scale the images down by a factor of 6.2 eventually.

Unfortunately, these buildings look less good at the default zoom level in the game. The brick walls especially become very weird, and the player color frames blur and almost disappear.

I´m still trying to get rid of that strange shadow in the furnace working animation (the chimneys also have one, but it blends in well). Further opinions/ideas/criticism?

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Nordfriese wrote:

Also, the frisians should be fairly well balanced against the other tribes now.

I'd not be so sure about that. I didn't playtest yet, but I was curious about the .lua-files and checked a lot of them out. I've got the impression that frisians have some serious disadvantages, for example:

• Their supersoldiers need a lot of equipment which costs a lot of metal. For example the doublesword costs as much as a barbarian elite-ax (which is two-handed, while the swords are one-handed). So Frisians will need a very big amount of smithies, furnaces+recyclers, mines and so on. Furthermore a supersoldier requires 8.5 gold ores (the first one even 11), while imperial supersoldiers require 3 and others 4.

• Their trainingssites are probably significantly slower than others because the trainer needs to put out scrap metal and there is no compensation for that, at least I didn't see it.

• Deep gold&iron mines seem to be very inefficient and slow

• Lots of workers need experience and you need to enhance a lot of buildings, and it seems to be harder to train workers because you cannot train them often in enhanced buildings, right? This saves tools, but I imagine it as complicated

• I've got the impression that in the tavern the programs "cheap" and "fast" are mixed up with each other. Can smoked fish be really cheaper than berries?

So, this list concerns mainly the "production" of supersoldiers.

Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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Nordfriese wrote:

WorldSavior wrote:

• Their trainingssites are probably significantly slower than others because the trainer needs to put out scrap metal and there is no compensation for that, at least I didn't see it.

Well spotted,

thanks

I´ll slightly decrease the working times by 3.6s×(number of produced wares). The training sites will be exactly as fast as other tribes´ then.

Good idea

(Edit: I think the time the worker needs to drop out one ware is 3.6s, or am I wrong?)

I think that this is correct

• Deep gold&iron mines seem to be very inefficient and slow

Seems I overlooked them when I tweaked the mines… if they produced twice as much ore in the same time, they would be a bit faster and about as efficient as a barbarian deep mine; would this be too good, too bad or just right in your opinion?

I don't know exactly how expensive honey, barley and fruit are (fruit is relevant here because it can be needed in aqua farms), so I don't know how to compare it exactly with barbarians, but I guess that the mines are now not too good. In case that testing will give me at any point the impression that the mines should be improved even more, I would tell it...

• Lots of workers need experience and you need to enhance a lot of buildings, and it seems to be harder to train workers because you cannot train them often in enhanced buildings, right? This saves tools, but I imagine it as complicated

Actually, most enhanced buildings have one experienced and one new worker, e.g. a honey bread bakery has one master baker and one baker, who gets trained. Same as for the barbarian brewery. I never experienced problems with worker training here…

Okay, sorry for that mistake...

The fact that there are lots of upgrades for buildings and workers is because the Frisians are intended to have a more complex economy than the 'classical' tribes.

• I've got the impression that in the tavern the programs "cheap" and "fast" are mixed up with each other. Can smoked fish be really cheaper than berries?

Eek, I gave these programs very confusing names. But the cycles do make sense. The result is: If you can supply the tavern with fruit/bread and smoked food, you'll get rations at an average time of 33s per ration.

That's fast, but not cheap...

If you have only fruit, the tavern is slowed to 49.5s per ration.

Actually rather 80s, because there will be always an additional sleeping time of 28s from the other cycle. And this is not "fast", but I expect fruit to be cheaper than smoked fish/meat, even if fish/meat will not come from the aqua farm...

Here is the current code:

produce_fast = {

     -- TRANSLATORS: Completed/Skipped/Did not start preparing only one ration because ... (can produce more efficient when supply is good)

     descname = _"preparing only one ration",

     actions = {

        "return=skipped unless economy needs ration",

        "return=skipped when site has fruit,bread_frisians and site has smoked_fish,smoked_meat",

        "sleep=21000",

        "consume=fruit,bread_frisians,smoked_fish,smoked_meat",

        "animate=working 28500",

        "produce=ration"

}

}

  produce_cheap = {

     -- TRANSLATORS: Completed/Skipped/Did not start preparing rations because ...

     descname = _"preparing rations",

     actions = {

        "return=skipped unless economy needs ration",
        "sleep=28000",
        "consume=fruit,bread_frisians smoked_fish,smoked_meat",
        "animate=working 38000",
        "produce=ration:2"

}

Suggestion for a change:

(sketch)

produce_cheaply = {

     -- TRANSLATORS: Completed/Skipped/Did not start preparing only one ration because ... (can produce more efficient when supply is good)
     descname = _"preparing only one ration",
     actions = {
        "return=skipped unless economy needs ration",
        "return=skipped when site has fruit,bread_frisians and site has smoked_fish,smoked_meat",

        "consume=fruit,bread_frisians,smoked_fish,smoked_meat",


 "animate=working 28500",
        "produce=ration",

"sleep=21000"

},

  },

  produce_fast = {

     -- TRANSLATORS: Completed/Skipped/Did not start preparing rations because ...
     descname = _"preparing rations",
     actions = {
        "return=skipped unless economy needs ration",

        "consume=fruit,bread_frisians smoked_fish,smoked_meat",

     "animate=working 38000",
        "produce=ration:2",

"sleep=28000" },

• Their supersoldiers need a lot of equipment which costs a lot of metal. For example the doublesword costs as much as a barbarian elite-ax (which is two-handed, while the swords are one-handed). So Frisians will need a very big amount of smithies, furnaces+recyclers, mines and so on. Furthermore a supersoldier requires 8.5 gold ores (the first one even 11), while imperial supersoldiers require 3 and others 4.

The greater demand for furnaces and other infrastructure is intentional (because this tribe is supposed to be complex, as I said above)

Would the tribe be less complex if the smithies would be faster and if the equipment would just be cheaper? I didn't say anything against the big number of different buildings...

– but if highly trained soldiers cost so much more metal than other tribes´, that might be a real problem. If a player has a full economy with a lot of well-working infrastructure and enough resources in stock, this shouldn´t be a serious issue.

Well, the enemy could have easily a much more efficient infrastructure if he plays another tribe, or don't you think so? I wouldn't be surprised of a serious balancing problem...

But in the earlier game, this might be problematic. On maps with fast contact I usually won with frisians by making masses of untrained soldiers, who cost only one iron. On maps where the enemy is far away I always found that I started recruiting/training soldiers much later than the AI. But once I got the economy running, I trained them efficiently; by the time I sighted the enemy, I was stronger than the AI. Of course this might be different against a real opponent.

Better players than me will need to test supersoldier-training to determine whether this issue is acceptable for a complex tribe, or whether weapons will need to be made cheaper to balance this.

I could imagine to test it when it's in trunk...

Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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hessenfarmer wrote:

WorldSavior wrote:

I could imagine to test it when it's in trunk...

I really would prefer to have you testing the tribe more intensively before that exactly. That would really add some additional value to the great amount of work that Nordfriese has put into this branch. So please consider to grab the build from appveyor or travis depending on your OS. Personally I will try the tribe as well as soon as I could spare some time.

Okay. Luckily, I already started testing the day before yesterday, I found out how to download the files and how to move them In general I like the tribe, even though he is not working good enough yet, imo.

I've discovered some important aspects:

Barley farms need ca. 200s for barley, while atl. corn farms need ca. 75s and barbarian grain farms ca. 100s.

Berry growth in dependence of terrains is a huge problem. For example frisians are very bad at Ice Wars or other wintermaps, as you need in the tundra ca. 4 berry planters for 1 collector. Wouldn't it be better to simplify it a lot so berries have perfect growth like other plants? (By the way, what about allowing fruit collectors to harvest from imperial whine?)

All things considered the tribe seems to be very disadvantaged to me, especially at huge maps. Even the case that the starting resources are unusually high cannot compensate that... It is possible that frisians are stronger than I think at small maps, but I already tested two strategies (barracks only and attack-1-upgrade only) and they don't lead to big success.

But at the other hand: Towers are maybe overpowered buildings? They make fortresses almost superfluous, as you can just build a tower and an outpost instead of a fortress, or even two towers.

And wooden towers and high wooden towers are also very powerful tools, as they are small buildings with 15 / 17 sight range while atlantean small towers have only 13. I don't know if one should make them less powerful, but are there some opinions about it?

By the way, there is a bug with aqua farms. If not supplied by claypits, they will consume 3water+1fruit but not do anything. By the way, what do you think about allowing atlantean fish breeders to breed in the ponds? And maybe there could be interaction with fishers, too?

Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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