Topic: Tempo Training Tournament

hessenfarmer wrote:

Well, I would say we should aim at balancing all 5 tribes economically for the early game (Although we might not fully reach the goal). For this some may need a slight push some may need a little drawback.
The reason I suggested this tournament once before (many thanks to WorldSavior for organising) was exactly to get a better understanding of what might need to be done.
However we can't simply look at the times only, as for the rule of the tournament you need to skip some buildings in the economy. But you can make only 1 hero out of this settlement.

yes, we can't just take the times at face value. if we did, i just managed to go below 30 minutes with empire, so we should buff barbarians instead. but i'm not proposing that, because barbarians are fine.

however, i am of the opinion that marble economy is a bit too clunky. the problem is that you start with a small production capacity, because you only have 2 wine farmers. and you cannot increase your marble production without spending an inordinate amount of marble already. so it is very slow to increase marble economy.

and since the greatest marble cost is wineyards, you spend a lot of marble to get more marble... and then you don't need it that much anymore. Like, production of marble is low in early game and high in late game, but request of marble is high early and low late.

I would even consider removing the marble columns from wineyards and wineries and adding them to bakeries and breweries. marble cost of the economy would even be slightly higher, but it would be easier to start marble mass production. I think it would allow a more natural development of building material economy: first secure a steady supply of marble, and then use it for the rest of the economy.

But perhaps it is too big a change in flavor for some. I'm not sure I like how it would change the feel of the tribe myself, and I'm the one proposing it.

I believe what is interesting as well is having the second hero as you need a full economy for this.

I considered something along those lines. Like, the target is 3 heroes, and the total time is the sum of the three times at which one gets all of them.

anyway, making things more expensive or more cheap won't change focus on the economy. ultimately, the economy is the tool to produce soldiers to kill your enemy. if we can train the first hero after one hour or after two hours, if we can train a new one every five minutes or every ten, it does not change the game.

Here I agree only partly. if you make everything very fast you end up with what was once called speed widelands. And not everybody me including would love the need for fastclicking game. That is for what I always loved widelands, settlers Anno and so on, having time to think and click and having a beer while playing as well.

Agreed that we would not want to make things too fast. I also like to have time for breathing (though playing competitively while holding a beer is a bit too much. We may want to introduce a 0.5 speed for that).

but the game should not be slow because someone put a brake on it. it should be slow because you have many pieces in your economy to complete and improve.

So, if you cannot make a hero immediately because you first need to make a gold mine, that's what we want out of this game (i myself suggested to change some prices for atlanteans to get there). If you need more famrs to get a sustained production, that's good. but if you cannot make a hero fast because you only have a trickle of marble, and you cannot get more marble because all the marble-producing buildings cost lots of marble themselves... or if you have all your economy in place, but you must wait because there is one worker that needs a lot of promotions and works very slowly... or if you have all your economy in place but you must wait for a building that's ridiculously expensive... those feel like artificial limitations.

And I'd say we are already in a good place. especially compared to a few years ago. we removed a lot of artificial limitations (mostly the barbarian blacksmith needing a staggering 24 experience to level up)

Being late on the first hero would only leave you a chance if you are faster on the second and third and the next ones. Which is only the case in very rare corner cases.

actually, it is the case if your opponent took too many shortcuts and doesn't have a fully developed economy. which doesn't usually happen only because if one has the skill to build up the economy for a fast hero, one generally also knows what he's doing.

Mostly in a fight of different tribes. If both are playing the same tribe a 10% early advantage of a player should give him the chance to built up his economy any further while the other player is still struggling with its first hero.

and that's why i proposed some defender bonus. because right now, whether the slight advantage is a faster hero or some more half-trained soldiers, the correct thing to do is to kill your opponent with your early advantage without letting him develop. but this is for another thread

But I found out that the thing which really matters is build order of your economy. Which building has to be built and when is crucial to avoid any waiting times in your setup. And this would always matter irrespective of how easy or hard it is to manage a hero being built. As this continues to be the main part in the game placing different buildings in advance to counter a material shortage before it happens.

Yes! this actually sums up economical skill much better than my attempts at explaining.

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king_of_nowhere wrote:

however, i am of the opinion that marble economy is a bit too clunky. the problem is that you start with a small production capacity, because you only have 2 wine farmers. and you cannot increase your marble production without spending an inordinate amount of marble already. so it is very slow to increase marble economy.

and since the greatest marble cost is wineyards, you spend a lot of marble to get more marble... and then you don't need it that much anymore. Like, production of marble is low in early game and high in late game, but request of marble is high early and low late.

I would even consider removing the marble columns from wineyards and wineries and adding them to bakeries and breweries. marble cost of the economy would even be slightly higher, but it would be easier to start marble mass production. I think it would allow a more natural development of building material economy: first secure a steady supply of marble, and then use it for the rest of the economy.

But perhaps it is too big a change in flavor for some. I'm not sure I like how it would change the feel of the tribe myself, and I'm the one proposing it.

I have never challenged your observation about empire marble production and I won't do so. I just wanted to emphasize 2 things: we have 5 tribes to balance as far as possible and we should consider the whole picture of all tribes (including 2 and ongoing hero production) for balancing.
The latter would be best to do in a separate thread after the tournament though. so far I acknowledged your proposals for atlanteans and empire which I would support, however we may discuss the finetuning and size of each change (might need testing and refining).

anyway, making things more expensive or more cheap won't change focus on the economy. ultimately, the economy is the tool to produce soldiers to kill your enemy. if we can train the first hero after one hour or after two hours, if we can train a new one every five minutes or every ten, it does not change the game.

Here I agree only partly. if you make everything very fast you end up with what was once called speed widelands. And not everybody me including would love the need for fastclicking game. That is for what I always loved widelands, settlers Anno and so on, having time to think and click and having a beer while playing as well.

Agreed that we would not want to make things too fast. I also like to have time for breathing (though playing competitively while holding a beer is a bit too much. We may want to introduce a 0.5 speed for that).

That is the reason why I don't do Multiplayer that much ;-). However making it so fast that we really need 0.5 speed does sound weird. So I believe we could agree it to be playable on normal speed, without the need to click once every second or even faster.

but the game should not be slow because someone put a brake on it. it should be slow because you have many pieces in your economy to complete and improve.

So, if you cannot make a hero immediately because you first need to make a gold mine, that's what we want out of this game (i myself suggested to change some prices for atlanteans to get there). If you need more famrs to get a sustained production, that's good. but if you cannot make a hero fast because you only have a trickle of marble, and you cannot get more marble because all the marble-producing buildings cost lots of marble themselves... or if you have all your economy in place, but you must wait because there is one worker that needs a lot of promotions and works very slowly... or if you have all your economy in place but you must wait for a building that's ridiculously expensive... those feel like artificial limitations.

But most of these things seem to be more severe in the special setup of this tournament. E.g. I would build the colosseum only if I can afford it and stay with the arena so long which gives you some evade without gold in a normal game (learned this in last years tournament). However I am fully with you we should consider buildcost in this special case (and maybe others as well that just need to be discovered)

And I'd say we are already in a good place. especially compared to a few years ago. we removed a lot of artificial limitations (mostly the barbarian blacksmith needing a staggering 24 experience to level up)

What is interesting about the numbers provided so far is that depending on players abilities and experience the times for each tribe are not that different (around 40 mins for me, 30 mins for you, with an advantage on the atlantean side for everyone) so this means we made a good job so far in balancing I believe and we could use the results now to improve even further.

Being late on the first hero would only leave you a chance if you are faster on the second and third and the next ones. Which is only the case in very rare corner cases.

actually, it is the case if your opponent took too many shortcuts and doesn't have a fully developed economy. which doesn't usually happen only because if one has the skill to build up the economy for a fast hero, one generally also knows what he's doing.

Exactly.

Mostly in a fight of different tribes. If both are playing the same tribe a 10% early advantage of a player should give him the chance to built up his economy any further while the other player is still struggling with its first hero.

and that's why i proposed some defender bonus. because right now, whether the slight advantage is a faster hero or some more half-trained soldiers, the correct thing to do is to kill your opponent with your early advantage without letting him develop. but this is for another thread

and it is not forgotten

But I found out that the thing which really matters is build order of your economy. Which building has to be built and when is crucial to avoid any waiting times in your setup. And this would always matter irrespective of how easy or hard it is to manage a hero being built. As this continues to be the main part in the game placing different buildings in advance to counter a material shortage before it happens.

Yes! this actually sums up economical skill much better than my attempts at explaining.

Unfortunately it is easier to explain as to do

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hessenfarmer wrote:

king_of_nowhere wrote:

however, i am of the opinion that marble economy is a bit too clunky. the problem is that you start with a small production capacity, because you only have 2 wine farmers. and you cannot increase your marble production without spending an inordinate amount of marble already. so it is very slow to increase marble economy.

and since the greatest marble cost is wineyards, you spend a lot of marble to get more marble... and then you don't need it that much anymore. Like, production of marble is low in early game and high in late game, but request of marble is high early and low late.

I would even consider removing the marble columns from wineyards and wineries and adding them to bakeries and breweries. marble cost of the economy would even be slightly higher, but it would be easier to start marble mass production. I think it would allow a more natural development of building material economy: first secure a steady supply of marble, and then use it for the rest of the economy.

But perhaps it is too big a change in flavor for some. I'm not sure I like how it would change the feel of the tribe myself, and I'm the one proposing it.

I have never challenged your observation about empire marble production and I won't do so. I just wanted to emphasize 2 things: we have 5 tribes to balance as far as possible and we should consider the whole picture of all tribes (including 2 and ongoing hero production) for balancing.
The latter would be best to do in a separate thread. so far I acknowledged your proposals for atlanteans and empire which I would support, however we may discuss the finetuning and size of each change (might need testing and refining).

I just opened a thread for this topic: https://www.widelands.org/forum/topic/4822/?page=1#post-32606 So we can have here the Tournament Themes

anyway, making things more expensive or more cheap won't change focus on the economy. ultimately, the economy is the tool to produce soldiers to kill your enemy. if we can train the first hero after one hour or after two hours, if we can train a new one every five minutes or every ten, it does not change the game.

Here I agree only partly. if you make everything very fast you end up with what was once called speed widelands. And not everybody me including would love the need for fastclicking game. That is for what I always loved widelands, settlers Anno and so on, having time to think and click and having a beer while playing as well.

I dont think the game should be aiming at "to kill your enemy"

In first place its a strategy game, a game where you build up and maybe more about collecting ressources and saving areas like in mentioned in "Makrobalancing". Today all the maps are build with almost infinte gold ressources (same as Iron) so many startegic possibilities are lost in the game.

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the-x wrote:

I dont think the game should be aiming at "to kill your enemy"

In first place its a strategy game, a game where you build up

a strategy game is a game where you have to defeat your opponents. you defeat your opponents through stragtegy. in the vast majority of strategy games the final purpose is to kill the opponent with military (the one exception i know, the civilization games, where you have other victory conditions like science victory. but you still must have an army if you don't want to be annihilated by someone else). in a strategy game you build up, and what you build up is military power to defeat the opponent.

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i realize the barbarian time can actually be improved by several minutes. one has to make a second metal workshop and upgrade it to war mill before the blacksmith is ready. that way, when the blacksmith has finished gathering experience, there is already the war mill ready. no need to lose time to finish it. this way it will be possible to go below 30 minutes.

i don't think i will want to actually do it, though. i'm feeling lazy

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