Topic: Empire arena and colosseum with wine

MarkMcWire
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Posted at: 2025-04-11, 11:39

The Barbarian Arena requires strong beer to train its soldiers in evade, so wouldn't it also make sense to supply its Empire counterpart with wine? Especially since wine is really cheap to produce, since it only requires grapes. It would also make sense purely from a game logic perspective.

If the change is generally accepted, I'll be happy to make a pull request for this change.

Edited: 2025-04-11, 11:40

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WorldSavior
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Posted at: 2025-04-11, 11:53

MarkMcWire wrote

The Barbarian Arena requires strong beer to train its soldiers in evade, so wouldn't it also make sense to supply its Empire counterpart with wine? Especially since wine is really cheap to produce, since it only requires grapes. It would also make sense purely from a game logic perspective.

If the change is generally accepted, I'll be happy to make a pull request for this change.

-1

Wine isn't cheap at all, but expensive.

The rather cheap evade training is one of the few advantages of the empire.


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MarkMcWire
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Posted at: 2025-04-11, 12:03

Wine is cheaper than beer. You don't even need extra water from the wells to make it. Its production doesn't compete with bread, either, since wine and bread don't share any ingredients.


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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2025-04-11, 12:04

I am always very reluctant to change things in the legacy tribes.
Furthermore I totally agree with @WorldSavior, the empire needs rather some help then getting any additional burden. There are still some PR under discussion how much help and in which way, however this would definitly be contraproductive
so -1 from me as well


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MarkMcWire
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Posted at: 2025-04-11, 12:12

hessenfarmer wrote

I am always very reluctant to change things in the legacy tribes.
Furthermore I totally agree with @WorldSavior, the empire needs rather some help then getting any additional burden. There are still some PR under discussion how much help and in which way, however this would definitly be contraproductive
so -1 from me as well

The solution would be simple: give the Imperial soldier an extra level of training in evasion or defense. Wine can be used as an input for this.

The Empire has two fairly large training buildings, but they ultimately do relatively little. When you think of a Colosseum, you probably think of great battles or gladiators. In the game, the building is a bit of a snob because it "only" offers two training levels for evade and doesn't even require wine, while the Barbarians use strong beer, the Frisians use mead, and the Amazons use chocolate as their drink in the equivalent.

Edited: 2025-04-11, 12:13

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MarkMcWire
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Posted at: 2025-04-11, 12:39

hessenfarmer wrote

I am always very reluctant to change things in the legacy tribes.

I don't mean to offend you as a developer, but could this be one of the reasons why the more modern tribes offer better performance and a better gaming experience?

Widelands is a fairly old game, and the Barbarians and Empire were the only two tribes for many years. This is also evident in the fact that both tribes have a virtually identical economic structure, just with different wares. Defense training, for example, was only introduced with the Atlanteans. That's why I'm all the more surprised that the Barbarians have a drink in their training sites, while the Empire doesn't.


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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2025-04-11, 14:28

From my perspective one of the advantages of widelands over S2 is that the tribes are different not only in graphics but in game mechanics as well.
I do not agree for example that barbarians and Empire have the same economic structure. They are different in many ways. Mine supplies, build materials, renewable food component and especially different fighting capabilities just to name a few.
This leads to a tribe having strengths and weaknesses, which is intended. Having the ability to cheaply train the first level of evade is one of the advantages of the empire and should be maintained.
Requiring wine would be expensive as @WorldSavior mentioned as a fully effective wine production business costs relatively much marble, it cost space, it needs tools (shovel) that are needed for foresters as well, just to name the most relevant ones. This extracosts would heavily delay soldier training for the empire and thus really heavily effect Multiplayer balance of the tribe.
Furthermore the old tribes have a legacy to keep, so in my personal view we should keep their characteristics as much as we could and be very careful to do necessary changes for balancing reasons in the least intrusive way.


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tothxa
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Posted at: 2025-04-11, 14:37

MarkMcWire wrote

Wine is cheaper than beer.

But beer is not required by the arena and the colosseum.

You don't even need extra water from the wells to make it. Its production doesn't compete with bread, either, since wine and bread don't share any ingredients.

Wine uses 2 pieces of raw materials just like beer. Water can be considered cheaper, wheat more expensive than grapes. So net difference is not very big.

But currently you only need wine for marble- and gold mines. You can run a pretty big economy with only 3 vineyards and 2 wineries. That would certainly increase if wine was needed for training, and those are deliberately somewhat expensive buildings.


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Teayo
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Posted at: 2025-04-11, 14:38
Current
Empire
Situation
Suggestion
Rejected
by
Suggestion
Accepted
by
Suggested
Empire
Situation
Arena


* ( + ) = Evade 0 ---> 1

Colosseum


* ( + ) = Evade 0 ---> 1

* ( ) + ( ) ) = Evade 1 ---> 2
WorldSavior
Teayo
hessenfarmer
MarcMcWire
Teayo
Arena


* * ( + ) = Evade 0 ---> 1

Colosseum


* * ( + ) = Evade 0 ---> 1

* * ( ) + ( ) ) = Evade 1 ---> 2
Winery


=
Teayo
Winery


=

I'm more on the rejection side.
I would only support MarcMcWire's Suggestion , if wine becomes cheaper and the construction costs for the vineyards are also reduced. ( Marble columns [ 2---> 1 ] )

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Edited: 2025-04-11, 14:38

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MarkMcWire
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Posted at: 2025-04-11, 14:39

Settlers 2 is an old, dead game; you should rather focus on more recent versions when it comes to basic game mechanics. That's why Widelands is so great, because it's not a copy but a completely original system. The empire is comparatively weak militarily anyway. Since it was modeled on the real Roman Empire, which is more than obvious, it should actually be the strongest militarily. The Colosseum, as a large, expensive building, should also be used to train defense. I would adapt the Atlantean steel shield for this, since the real Romans also had one.


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