Topic: High demand for iron with Romans

carli2 Topic Opener Joined: 2023-08-17, 20:13 Posts: 26 OS: Linux Version: git Pry about Widelands	Posted at: 2023-08-18, 19:18 When playing with Romans, the tribe has two disadvantages: * the strong reliance on marble * the heavy use of iron IMO one of these disadvantages must be reduced. Amazons don't need any iron, they just grow everything from trees. In the old Roman days, Iron was not harvested with chisels from rocks but rather boulders are molten and the iron is extracted from it. So there could be a building for the Romans that digs out boulders from the ground and together with coal, makes iron of it. This way, the survival of a Roman civilization can be prolonged. What do you think? Edited: 2023-08-18, 19:20 Top Quote

kaputtnik Joined: 2013-02-18, 20:48 Posts: 2552 OS: Archlinux Version: current master One Elder of Players Location: Germany	Posted at: 2023-08-18, 20:25 The Empire tribe is based on the romans, but hey, this is widelands and not the real world But i think also that Amazons have some advantages. The main Reason for me is that they need only two finite resources: Stone and Gold, whereas other tribes have to look for coal, iron stones and gold. But balancing is very difficult, because the tribes are are different, and have to be different. If all tribes needs the same resources the differences vanishes. Amazons, in contrary to Empire, is a young tribe in widelands. So if balancing is needed it should be on the Amazons side, imho. But balancing is a hard task because it depends not only on the tribe and its economy but also on the map. On one map one tribe has advantages on another map a different tribe has advantages. If all players play Amazons, they definitely need adjusting Edited: 2023-08-19, 08:03 Top Quote

hessenfarmer Joined: 2014-12-11, 23:16 Posts: 2745 One Elder of Players Location: Bavaria	Posted at: 2023-08-18, 21:17 just some background information from the amazon development. We were fully aware of the advantage of the amazons, however we built in some disadvantages. The basic idea for them was to be a steampunk stoneage tribe, meaning making much out of little. their disadvantages are: - woodcutters and stonemasons and other workers need longer to produce one item as they on ly use stone tools. - they need a lot of space - they need coal for rations to mine any ressource and coal is very expensive as it has to be produced from wood. and takes a lot of time. - they need a lot of water, wood and other wares and they have a lot of relations between productionsites, so they are (theoretically) more susceptible for traffic jams. - their fighting is based on evasion and therefore more susceptible for luck /bad luck. - they need open water for gaining water, which might take time to reach. - they need micromanagement for workers. - they can't train any skill without weapon / armor or boots - they need food and two equipments to recruit new soldiers Edit: deleted the part for not beeing able to mine full gold amount for not being true Edited: 2023-09-19, 11:39 Top Quote

tothxa Joined: 2021-03-24, 12:44 Posts: 485 OS: antix / Debian Version: some new PR I'm testing Tribe Member	Posted at: 2023-08-18, 23:31 On the Empire side: they have the cheapest basic weapon, and the total cost of new soldiers is relatively low they have clearly the cheapest evade training their economy is IMO the most straightforward, with only a little reliance on experience (and it's the closest to the original Settlers economy) they are the only tribe that has a very efficient weaker medium military building that can even be upgraded to the "default" one (this is often very handy when defending) The Amazons should probably require gold for one more training level, and should use rations for some training to force them to build charcoal kilns and food preservers. @the-x perfected his Amazon economy build-up with the assumption that the rocks on most maps will provide enough granite without ever needing to mine any. This way they're really very easy to play, but he got in trouble when he ran out of granite at least in 2 matches in the last tournament, because he didn't know where the mineable stone was on the maps. Top Quote

hessenfarmer Joined: 2014-12-11, 23:16 Posts: 2745 One Elder of Players Location: Bavaria	Posted at: 2023-08-19, 12:26 if the original granite is run out which happens earlier or later they need rations to mine stone which they need for weapons. They need rations for gold as well and they need as much gold as others to train soldiers. so they are strong on calvisson because iron is far away, but lets see how they do on the next map Top Quote

the-x Joined: 2019-01-19, 13:23 Posts: 967 One Elder of Players	Posted at: 2023-08-19, 17:07 tothxa wrote: @the-x perfected his Amazon economy build-up Yes ;-D indeed i have perfected any tribe. only seen large disadvantage for Frisian and Barbarian tribes. If any player likes to challenge me in a mirror match, any tribe, i can still show dozens of micromanagements to an incredible economy. But i must say AI has grown faster the last months, where as i was winning 16 AI's without any problem 4 months ago, there are even some games where 7 AIs are able to beat me (ofc same team and any advantage AI) kaputtnik wrote: balancing is very difficult, because the tribes are are different, and have to be different. If all tribes needs the same resources the differences vanishes. Excactly, that's the strenght of widelands - Balancing needs to be seen also imo on the macro side, so that the sum of every ability added is for all 5 tribes equal. (-> military and economically added, what we have is same strenght military and different economically) Edited: 2023-08-19, 17:14 Top Quote

the-x Joined: 2019-01-19, 13:23 Posts: 967 One Elder of Players	Posted at: 2023-08-19, 17:10 Balancing also grown a lot better, especially towers and buildings : ) only things remain i agree on the marble thing with imperium frisian and barbarian traing sites have a bug (you cant select the needed workers, i need dozens of clicks to train and always the wrong unit comes to the sites) AI's need to train a lot faster Today my Empire Ecomomy is the strongest, then Atlanteans and then Amazons Edited: 2023-08-19, 17:15 Top Quote

carli2 Topic Opener Joined: 2023-08-17, 20:13 Posts: 26 OS: Linux Version: git Pry about Widelands	Posted at: 2023-08-19, 18:50 I read a bit into the AI code. Yes, it has changed a lot. Back when I participated in wl development, I still fine-tuned some constants which is now solved much better. When I get some spare time, I have two plans: a) inventing a new tribe (hebrews) which get a lot of training and strength from their religion (!they can fight the romans!) b) tweaking the AI and evolution/training mechanism. The performance of any AI configuration must be evaluated during the game. There I'd like to introduce new metrics: Land growth / time, soldier growth / time; AI training can become default; Based on that evaluation, a well performing AI can be chosen from the game pool (weighted by performance) - the best performing AI is sent back to some server for some training exchange Top Quote

tothxa Joined: 2021-03-24, 12:44 Posts: 485 OS: antix / Debian Version: some new PR I'm testing Tribe Member	Posted at: 2023-08-23, 02:38 hessenfarmer wrote: [Amazons] need as much gold as others to train soldiers. They only need 3, which is the same as the Empire, but Atlanteans and Barbarians require 4, and Frisians 6 (of which they can recover I think 2). But all other tribes need coal and iron already for recruitment, and also for most training steps, while Amazons can get soldiers up to level 7 without mining anything (as long as they have rocks), so they can do quite well without charcoal kilns, furnaces and gold diggers, while they have the fewest kinds of production sites even with those included. That's the rationale for my earlier proposal. Top Quote