Topic: multiplayer feature

widelander___ wrote:

Hi, After long hours in singleplayer, I just had my first multiplayer game. There is one feature that would be very nice.

It would be great if players of the same team could exchance ressources. Trading would be great (f.e I sell 3 wood against 1 hardwood), or even gifting ressources (maybe simpler to code).

Yes, this leaves room to nice features

Suggestion: a new button next to the store and outsource options to "outsource to [player2]" [player1] can then "Store from [player2]". The only thing missing is then the possibity to connect two players roads (with a special kind of flag.). Then ressources could be transferred from a warehouse of player1 to a warehouse of player2, and vice versa. Maybe this concept is even easier to accomplish via ports?

Yes, with ports it would be the easiest way before any land-trade gets implemented.

Notice that there is already some kind of mode which comes more or less near to trade: The shared kingdom feature (multiplayer only). It's especially interesting if you connect the kingdoms by ships. At the other hand it's not really trade, the kingdoms just share everything with each other as soon as they are connected.

Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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Yeah, this idea is far from the original widelands and would change far to much

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widelander___ wrote: It would be great if players of the same team could exchance ressources. Trading would be great (f.e I sell 3 wood against 1 hardwood), or even gifting ressources (maybe simpler to code).

Nice idea!, I like it.

But I think it would be even better to extend this idea to allow trade between any two players, i.e. even between nominal "enemies".

Trade would fit well with the game's focus on economy rather than on detailed military tactics.

I imagine situations where players all have resource scarcity but where each has access to a different kind of resource. So a player in a "green" area might trade food, against granite/iron with a player who has a mountain.

Would make for strategically interesting gameplay: Do I keep an enemy alive whom I trade with for a resource I need, or do I try to conquer him and grow/mine that resource for myself? And also would make multiplayer games strategically more complex and interesting. I think this is a simple idea that would add much to the depth of the game.

Port idea also would extend to land: namely with an additional "trader" building. Then the trader could range around in the terrain off-road (similar to a woodcutter or hunter), and trade with any enemy trading stations within his range. I.e. for the trader worker, the enemy trading stations are like resources to extract (with the difference that the trader has to give back some resource that the enemy wants). No change required in the game with respect to roads that connect to the enemy road network. (Would however therefore mean that any player who wishes to trade with another player has to have at least one trader station near the border with that player.)

I am imagining here that trade would run largely autonomously, with some kind of settings dialog where one can configure the goods one wants to give and receive from each player. So that trade will run continuously (similar to how a woodcutter or farm runs continuously) unless you change those settings. (Which would also make it a relatively small step to extend the AI to doing trade.)

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MRubingh wrote: (Which would also make it a relatively small step to extend the AI to doing trade.)

Here I disagree. Making the AI using this feature in a suitable manner would need major work, due to the design of our AI

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There is little point discussing such niceties because the actual implementation is already functional. (Since before Build 20 by the way). "Only" the user interface is missing.

Edit: If you are using a git/bzr/zip checkout you can have a sneak peek using ./regression_test.py -b ./widelands -r trade

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