Topic: Widelands tournament 2016; official announcements

When all artifacts are found, the match ends immediatly. If both players found the same number of artifacts, it will be a draw. I guess that both players will see the message "You won!" because they both have the most artifacts. Or, a question towards the game-makers: Does the player loose, who finds the artifact as the last one?

But I don't think that it will be a "race". If each player is close to two artifacts, they cannot win fast, but they don't want to have a draw. So it's not just a race

@toptopple: So I don't see your problem. Do you still think it is a problem?

Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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ah, this sucks! I should have playtested the win condition. I figured two players easily getting two artifacts both, fighting to get a third. Sort of like a checkpoint control. I don't want players to just expand their land as fast as they can. So, also using another artifact map would not fix the problem. So, I am conflicted between two alternatives:

1) keep things as they are. clearly specify before the game that no matter what the end screen says, 2-2 is draw, and that if one wants to try to win, he must not conquer the last artifact, but must protect it without annexing it to his terrain.

2) remove the artifact win condition entirely, and play maybe territorial lord, which also fits with the idea i had for that kind of game.

I'll decide in the next days, any imput will influence my decision.

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The game probably still has some misconception, or so I do see them.

1) Artifacts. May go with or without combat enabled. I would vote for the following sub-modi, available at game setup:
- Allow Combat: game continues until a majority of available Artifacts is captured by any side
- Non-Combat: game continues until all Artifacts are found (or a time-limit reached), then evaluation screen (may have several winners)

2) Territorial Lord. 50% is not a good measure for dominance! It may just incidentally happen your opponent wins despite the fact you have the most convincing economy (but didn't invest into expansion as much). I think other games with comparable conditions don't go below 60% and so should Widelands! My judgement: Not convincing in R19! Suggested submodi at game setup:
- Choose from 55, 65, 75 % dominance
- Enable/disable combat

3) Wood-Gome
- Enable/disable combat

4) Collectors, should always be peaceful. Although, theoretically, you also can add the combat choice here.
The game setup should allow to choose from a variety of goods which score in the collection. This adds largely to this game modus!

5) New game modus: "Economy Star". A totally peaceful modus which makes a complicated calculation of the worth of players' economy. Ends after time. The score of opponents should always be visible. Game setup may choose on the importance of Gold or Weapons in economy. Perhaps Silver Mines can be added to the game, where only slaves captured from the opponent can work as miners. New role / production house: Slave Makers.

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the problem with a totally peaceful mod is that it makes the whole economy totally pointless. Because you see, widelands is about building: you build farms and wells and hunters and fisheries to have raw food, you build food processing buildings to feed the mines, you make mines to get ores, you pass the ores through your ore-processing economy and you get soldiers, and better soldiers. But if you go with a totally peaceful game soldiers are not needed, so there is no point in making weapon smiths and smelting works, so there is no point in making mines, so there is no point in making bakeries and smokeries, so there is no point in making farms. So you go the whole game making nothing but lumberjacks, foresters, sawmills, and barracks. You don't even need quarries, because all those buildings either require no stone, or give it back upon dismantling. You may need soldiers and tools, but you start with enough, except on the largest of maps. And you don't need a donkey farm because you don't have many wares to transport.

Doesn't strike me as the most exciting game.

And that's why I also reject any option resulting in a pure artifact race: players would be encouraged to not build an economy, as it produces nothing useful and only wastes precious wood. And not building an economy is not playing widelands. Sure, theoretically you could conquer an opponent to stop him from getting the artifacts, but the way the map is made, expansion will find the artifacts before it finds the opponent, if played right. I'd be fine if there was a narrow passage needed to reach the last artifact, and only one player could pass, and players would fight there to be able to reach the artifact. but I've seen no such map.

That's also why I picked up, for wood gnome, a map where actual combat is possible.

EDIT: in fact, checkmate is probably the best map for artifact, because there are two artifacts in corners easily reachable one by each player, that can be easily defended without being conquered, so if a player wants to stall the artifact race and try a military solution, he can do so.

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For your convenience I just uploaded the modified Checkmate map to the Maps section. As I mentioned, it holds 7 artifacts in total at balanced places. I'd even recommend to take this map over to the "official" folder, if possible. If required the map can be deleted from the section after you have taken good use of it.

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