Topic: Economic Part versus Heroes

Indeed with wares I mean the curve and the Steigung of it, so of course it gets lower the beginning with both player but later it is rising upwards a bit faster So how can we solve Problem Nr. 2. 1 and 3 probably dont have to be solved, but should to make an easier handling possible, since not doing the same steps or clicking fast (which can also be honestly boring in an 3 hour game doin the same prodecure for every hero - thats not skill. Skill are more decisions than prodecural work? I mean its first place a game and therefore it should be fun a nice game when you come home and not hard work clicking and prodecural, since gamespeed often has to be even 2x to avoid playing 4-8 hours an evening.

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the solution lies within the algorithm to send soldiers to the training sites which is part of the warehouse I believe

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blind3rdeye wrote:

Native wrote:

Also another point is that the randomness of fights is too big in my oppinion. More often than not a full rookie defeats a half trained soldier, which shouldn't happen when looking at how difficult it is to train them.

So my proposal/wish would be to reduce the randomness and make the game automatically train full heroes instead of the current "train all soldiers a little bit".

I disagree with both parts of this. Firstly, I think it's good that it's possible for a rookie to defeat a half-trained soldier. I don't want few points of training to be a guaranteed victory - but rather just a significantly higher chance of victory.

that is the case currently, however it depends on the constellation of which attributes have been trained. Randomness increases with trained evade only.

Prompted by your post, I was thinking about what I reckon the probably should be, and I came up with this. I understand that the actual combat mechanics don't involve any probability formula like this, but I'm just trying to describe what I reckon a good curve would look like. Obviously when soldiers have the same level of promotions, it should be 50-50. In my curve, 1 level difference makes it 67-33, 2 levels: 80-20, 3 levels: 89:11, and so on. ... with that, a rookie could defeat a half-trained soldier roughly 5-10% of the time; and I think that's about fair.

This curve would need a monodimensional training which we don't have. As we have four attributes to train a soldier, we have 4 dimensions. And some upgrades are more useful against others, while others are more useful against a different one.

As for favouring training full heroes; that might be advantageous with the current balance and meta-game... but I think it would feel a bit weird for the player. Imagine this: you set up a training camp, you give a bunch of soldiers and a bunch of resources, you tell your military buildings that you want trained soldiers... and after spending a heap of resources you get 1 elite soldier and 20 rookies. It might be tactically useful; but I think from a flavour point of view that would feel bad.

I disagree, as this is only a snapshot in time, after having spent another couple of ressources you will have 20 elite soldiers. even back in settlers 2 it was useful to not distribute gold evenly amongst military sites, but to try to get fully trained soldiers instead of only half trained.

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blind3rdeye wrote:

the most powerful strategy by far was to have a soldier of every different level in a single castle, because each coin would promote one soldier from each level. You're right that you certainly didn't want to distribute the coins to all buildings. That would be a huge waste; but the efficient coin usage does have you training several soldiers at once; not just one. I'd be happy enough if the training priorities of Widelands were a little bit like that. For example, for each type of promotion, the training site could choose to train the highest level soldier that there is more than one of. (ie. before training a soldier to level 3, there must be a level 1, 2, and two levels 3s.)

sounds interesting

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the-x wrote:

which can also be honestly boring in an 3 hour game doin the same prodecure for every hero - thats not skill.

If it doesn't require skill - why do you do it so rarely?

Furthermore, you don't do that in a 3 hour game. In a long game, you can set your economy so that it makes heroes automatically, with minimal micromanagement. you only need to micromanage hardest for the first few, because you have fewer resources at the beginning.

WorldSavior wrote:

hessenfarmer wrote:

I have seen a lot of replays from him to learn about how he is playing and he manages to outproduce every other player nearly every time so it is not all about heroes in his game play. He is just using all his ressources in a very efficient way plus he is doing a lot of micro in the meantime.

In the last tournament we had a nice match between KoN and WorldSavior where even the random luck component played almost an important role and this was on fjords which is rather a small map.

"almost" is an understatement imo. It was rather a very important role: I trained heroes faster as he trained heroes without shields, and the winning chances in duels of those are like 67-33, but still it was very close.

By the way: I didn't achieve that difference by better micromanagement, but rather purely by a better eco.

yes. luck played a bit of a role in the first fights, where i lost and was forced to retreat. that means ws got more land, so more economy. Still, he started stronger due to making more wood. he was at an advantage when we had contact, but in that moment luck could have change the game in my favor. After that, no longer.

We both had fully trained soldiers, or close enough (really the odds for lack of shields are so great? I was still stuck at the time where shields would not change the number of hits your soldier could tank from an enemy hero, except a barbarian one. But I guess this was before we updated the fighting stats). The difference was that he produced more of them. me getting a lucky streak for a while only delayed the inevitable. there really was no way the game could have ended differently after the hour mark. and the reason was. Purely. economy.

For that matter, the reason ws has a better economy than me is that he managed to get a better wood production in the first 10 minutes of game. he started ahead of me, and he was ahead of me on first contact. i was close enough that luck could have turned the table in my favor, but it didn't, so i lost.

the one game I managed to defeat him was also the one game where I managed to keep up with his economy

So, you think economy does not matter? think again. economy is everything. you just can't see it.

the-x wrote:

Indeed its not true that the stroger economy wins. For example i played a lot of games against WorldSaviour, i am always ahead in Economy, Wares, Military and every statistic except land (by ahead i mean of course also the ware curve, that it gets the same way low but then getting a high Steigung)

If you still think that economy and wares graph mean anything, then you are less skilled a player than I thought. Wares means how many wares you have in warehouse. So, unused wares. wares that are not being converted to troops. Having more wares is actually bad, especially at the beginning.

Military only counts soldier promotions. So, 3 soldiers trained in evade are counted as much as a hero. But they are much cheaper and much less effective.

So, you think you are doing great with economy and military, when in truth you are not using many of your wares and you are using inefficiently those you have.

If you like economic gameplay so much, why do you spezialize on short distance battles and not on long distance battles? For me it looks rather like you don't care that much about your economy, you rather prefer to launch an early attack and try to win by that ;)

that too. You talk so much about economy, but all you do in every game is a few quick promotions, a lot of military buildings close to front, and a rush atttack with everything. is that how you try to favor economy?

the-x wrote:

I mean, yes we can let it that way but then multiplayer might stay rarely played cause so much difference

not true.

personally, the major reason i don't play multiplayer is that i prefer to play civilization 4, which has a fairly similar concept (strong focus on economy and growth) and I just happen to prefer it. Also, we regularly have 4v4 games there, while here 1v1 is already rare.

If we could have meaningful team battles i'd consider widelands more, but even then i'd probably stay with civ 4 most of the time.

And I'm sure everyone has different ideas. Certainly your hypothesis may explain why nobody plays against worldsavior, but there are a lot of players who are balanced against each other.

the-x wrote:

Who has some Ideas, that make new concepts, strategies and therefore the economic part more deciding?

Current status: more economy produces more hero soldiers, which win the game.

I really don't see how changing it would favor economy.

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