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Topic: Amazons balancing

tothxa
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Posted at: 2023-09-19, 14:20

hessenfarmer wrote:

Well I did not intent to make it the equivalentof iron for all tools and as a general build material. I really just meant to add it to the cases I mentioned.

I know, but it just fell into place like this. Tools are not a running cost anyway, and the 2 pieces needed for soldiers wouldn't justify the addition alone IMO.

By this all other additions like rare kilns are being superfluous imho.
Amazons were designed a tribe with not that much buildings but with requiring more of each type.

Hey, I was just having fun. face-smile.png It's just an enhancement anyway, so not a big addition to the number of building types. Also they help to compensate the increased demand for coal. In that regard they also just fell into place.


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tothxa
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Posted at: 2023-09-19, 15:25

hessenfarmer wrote:

tothxa wrote:

I've noticed one more advantage for Amazons: Both of their medium buildings use much less material than other tribes. I think I'll increase their costs too.

Agreed. Adding 2 Ironwood to the dwelling should be ok.

Made it +1 ironwood and +1 granite. Ironwood already tends to be scarce in the beginning, and this way returned materials are better balanced too.

I think the tower is already ok as it has only conquer 8 as the dwelling too. Maybe adding a quartz to the observation tower might be a good idea as well.

Done.

I realised that quartz became a too easy deadlock with the previous change. Now I reverted all production sites buildcosts to not need it. (Tools are the same as iron for other tribes.)

Edited: 2023-09-19, 15:27

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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2023-09-20, 20:37

tothxa wrote:

hessenfarmer wrote:

However mining is still very expensive for Amazons in comparison because to produce one gold you need 2 coal (furnace and ration) which is 12 logs, 7 water (5 to mine 2 for bread), one cassava root, one fish/meat which is 21 wares.
Barbarians will only need 2 meat (one to mine coal and one to mine gold).
So I really think all gold requiring steps are expensive enough already.

You should also consider all the iron that Amazons don't need before it comes to needing gold in the first place, as well as all the coal that is used by the various armour and weapon smithies of other tribes, but not Amazons.

Also, 1 raw food item is only enough to mine 1/3 of the available gold for Barbarians (1/2 for Empire and Frisians IIRC), so the costs of all mine depths should be averaged too.

I'll try to do a bigger assesment, but that'll take time.

i once tried to summ up all economy costs for all tribes to produce soldiers and to balnce this but in this attempt i got lost when I realized that the tribes have different timings as well and we would need to average/baseline that as well to get comparable numbers.

to keep it short I would be happy with using quartz for speartips and some sharp tools but not for durable ones (so please revert the pick to granite also to avoid deadlocks).
I can accept the new tool firestones for the charcoal burner as long as there is a burner ore a firestone in the start conditions.
Having quartz for advanced military buildings is ok as well, but not for the dwelling as no other tribe needs iron for a very basic medium miltary building so make the quartz a granite for the dwelling please.
eventually we might add a quartz to the hero boots as well, but that should be the only change so I strongly vot to reduce the needed gold again to 3.

that should be enough to do the balancing.
I can live with the invention of an upgraded kiln but I still think it is not of much use for the same reason as Nordfriese said. And by this making new graphics and maintaining it does not add much and still creates some workload.
having a new and different tool (selected_firestones) for this is an overkill imho. If you really insist on having this kiln you might add a normal chrcoal burner as a second worker.

Imho I still recommend to do the necessary balancing in the most simplistic way, to not modify the tribes character too much.


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tothxa
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Posted at: 2023-09-21, 02:05

Here's my calculation. Indeed, it does not consider time, however it does consider the involved buildings and processing steps. This is actually quite likely to come pretty close to the elaborate time calculations, because most comparable buildings have similar times between tribes. BTW Amazons have advantages here too: the food preserver makes 2 rations in similar time to other tribes 1 ration, and the training glade has 15 and 22 second upgrade step times while other tribes have almost uniformly 30s. I think I'll have to fix these.

The near double time of the gold digger hardly matters: a single gold digger can produce 4 bowls of gold dust in the time required to fully train a soldier. [edit: Sorry, that was wrong. It can only do a little more than 2 if the training times are not increased, and 3.4 if they are.] Also the furnace only takes about 30% longer to smelt gold than other tribes, but it only has 1/4 to 1/3 as much work to do.

I also checked bread, water and cassava, but they're all similar to other tribes.

As for the rare tree kiln, rare trees take the same times as world trees, it's only the management of the 3 types that makes them harder, and the required experience by a little bit. So the main problem with the advanced kiln is more that it undoes some of the other balancing efforts. face-smile.png

As for the evaluation of results: I think this shows pretty well that all these changes are only enough to bring the sum of raw materials + processing steps in line with the other tribes, but the requirement for non-renewable materials still remains much lower. More explanation for the spreadsheet later.

Edited: 2023-09-21, 15:04

Attachment:
wl_econ_comp.ods (38.5 KB)

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tothxa
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Posted at: 2023-09-24, 02:00

I simplified the stone mine program, but that means it now always produces 1 granite and 1 quartz, so quartz is slower.

I also noticed in my above calculations that Amazons need a little less than half of fish/meat than the other tribes. (both in master and in the PR) As my modifications increased water requirement significantly, and that was already about twice of other tribes, I'm considering lowering water requirement of cocoa and bread to 1 like other tribes, but add one water and one more fish/meat to ration. This would mean only a very small increase of water compared to current master, and bring fish/meat to be similar to other tribes.

But I also recognise that this is now indeed getting too big a change, so I'll split out quartz as requested into a separate PR. However I'll be away for a few days, so this will only happen when I'm back.

I'd really like to still replace one rubber with 1 gold for evade 2, because that one's too cheap as compared to others at similar and lower levels. (but not increase evade 3 itself to 2 gold) Would that be OK for the minimal PR?


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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2023-09-24, 15:18

tothxa wrote:

I simplified the stone mine program, but that means it now always produces 1 granite and 1 quartz, so quartz is slower.

quartz mining should be dependent on economy settings imho.

But I also recognise that this is now indeed getting too big a change, so I'll split out quartz as requested into a separate PR. However I'll be away for a few days, so this will only happen when I'm back.

I'd really like to still replace one rubber with 1 gold for evade 2, because that one's too cheap as compared to others at similar and lower levels. (but not increase evade 3 itself to 2 gold) Would that be OK for the minimal PR?

maybe instead of a gold add a quartz for the moment as it is not that expensive.


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mxb2001
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Posted at: 2023-09-24, 17:26

Sounds cool this quartz business. Keeps them in the stone age and makes mining more interesting for them. No comment on the balance, I'm just remarking on the aesthetics from the end user POV.

More stone types like flint, amber, jade would be cool too.


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tothxa
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Posted at: 2023-09-26, 18:42

hessenfarmer wrote:

I'd really like to still replace one rubber with 1 gold for evade 2, because that one's too cheap as compared to others at similar and lower levels. (but not increase evade 3 itself to 2 gold) Would that be OK for the minimal PR?

maybe instead of a gold add a quartz for the moment as it is not that expensive.

I considered and mentioned this earlier: The dressmakery already has 5 inputs, and I don't think quartz makes enough sense for dresses, armours or boots to add it as a new input.

Edited: 2023-09-27, 10:00

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tothxa
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Posted at: 2023-09-29, 18:27

Quartz only PR is up: https://codeberg.org/wl/widelands/pulls/4512 / https://github.com/widelands/widelands/pull/6170

Swift boot was left alone for now, due to the disagreement.

I left pick as log+quartz, because other tribes use iron for picks, so this shouldn't be any different deadlock-wise. However from a physical point of view, I don't think any kind of stone is suitable for picks and chisels that have to work on stone. So I'm open to making these require ironwood instead if needed. (that's a fictious very hard wood anyway, and any kind of wood is at least not brittle like stones – we could make stonecutters use wooden wedges with hammers, and levers, but that would need new working animations)

I also left the stonemine to always produce 1 granite and 1 quartz. I think this fits the character of the tribe, and also that we don't need to make quartz easier from the balancing POV either.

Edited: 2023-09-29, 18:28

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the-x
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Posted at: 2023-10-01, 09:28

tothxa wrote:

hessenfarmer wrote:

I'd really like to still replace one rubber with 1 gold for evade 2, because that one's too cheap as compared to others at similar and lower levels. (but not increase evade 3 itself to 2 gold) Would that be OK for the minimal PR?

maybe instead of a gold add a quartz for the moment as it is not that expensive.

I like that Idea very much, adding different inputs to make some more combinations - (only gold makes the game somehow a bit boring?)


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