Topic: fri03 observations

The images are just placeholders because my portrait drawing skills are less than zero
I could create unique images in the style of the fri01 "portraits" (for 1.0) though tbh I don't know if this would be better or worse…

The purpose of the diker is intended to be somewhat obvious. You're just not meant to do this before having conquered the whole starting island.

I failed miserably, as all of the Northern island was occupied by the Empire by the time I got through

Wow, they never did that to me
I had initially included a debris barrier that vanishes into thin air when the player settles on the northernmost island, to prevent the AI from claiming the port space. But I removed this because the only problem actually observed was that the AIs expanded way too slowly and had to receive considerable help. (see https://github.com/widelands/widelands/issues/4558)

I think dreams and omens would not fit very well to the story. But when the player has seen the whole southern coastline of an island and is seeing that the only port space is blocked by another tribe, Lembeck could say "Oh no, there's nowhere to land here, we're stuck. This is the end of our journey, we have failed."

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Nordfriese wrote:

I think dreams and omens would not fit very well to the story. But when the player has seen the whole southern coastline of an island and is seeing that the only port space is blocked by another tribe, Lembeck could say "Oh no, there's nowhere to land here, we're stuck. This is the end of our journey, we have failed."

The idea was to tell the player that he has lost in the exact moment the portspace is blocked imho.
until we may invent naval warfare we could simply activate the 2 hour mark to try to obtain an even bigger amount of gold alternatively. For the storyline the news about the blocked way north as well as the fare for the trip could be delivered by a foreign scout.

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@Nordfriese
I am totally fine with this. However it meight be you did not get the point of the suggestion. the idea was to give the exact time of loosing to the player to selfevaluate his current progress (how far did I reach, how much should I have done), because he can't tell if the Port was blocked only minutes ago or hours ago.
But this is definitly not for v1.0 and for 1.1 we might better aim in having scenario replays rather than having such a feature that is hard to explain storywise.
For the images I would like the suggestion of tothxa better than the new images

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Okay, adding a few messages along the way "There seems to be a bad storm coming, better be quick" – "The storm is getting worse, we must hurry" – "The storm has broken, it's too late now" would be doable for 1.1.

Regarding mountains, if that's meanness then nearly half the official maps are mean in this sense Lots of maps have mountains where you need to send geologists at every spot to discover the few precious mining places among all the worthless ones.

Replays for scenarios are a long-standing wishlist item. And with the new training-wheels feature under development (which is also affected by the same mechanism) those may well become a must-have for v1.1.

Re. diker: What's the point when I already went all around? OK, some routes get shorter, but by that time it hardly matters.

Well giving you such a shortcut right at the start would really be too easy wouldn't it The shorter routes are very valuable in this scenario though, the shape of the starting island forces players to build an inefficient economy layout unless you plan ahead in veeery great detail. So this tends to be a useful bonus. Additionally you can use diking to gain some land to the north and south as well, making it even more useful; and if you still don't think it useful you don't have to build one. Lembeck says that it would be slow and expensive and leaves judgement whether the use is actually worth the cost up to the player.

Re. AI expansion: Doesn't the bug report say that after save and reload the AI starts working properly?

Yep, and the time of the first save-reload does have a significant impact on the AIs' performance despite the efforts to mitigate it. What we have currently is the narrow middle ground between way too easy and unmanageable, which works fairly well at least most times. When the bug is fixed the AI difficulty may need to be revised.

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Nordfriese:

Regarding mountains, if that's meanness then nearly half the official maps are mean in this sense Lots of maps have mountains where you need to send geologists at every spot to discover the few precious mining places among all the worthless ones.

The meanness is in fooling the poor player into believing that the volcano island is useless, when it's actually full of resources once the Atlanteans are beaten — just when the player doesn't need those resources that much any more for a while.

BTW it's also mean, as in more painful than hard, that we have to expand one small spot a time in the only possible direction a lot: both on the original and the volcano islands.

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Re. diking: I didn't want to post a spoiler, but now it's out anyway, so yes, I managed to do it early too. At first (fourth…) I did it the slow and expensive way, but hessenfarmer's post started me thinking about the efficiency, and it made me realise that there is a good old method to prevent workers working at spots where they shouldn't… So I started over (the brand new translation should be tested anyway ), and indeed, the "ford" is ready in a snap. The Eastern direction is just so much better for expansion that it's now definitely worth it. — As for the purpose of gaining land: I don't think so. I had left it running out of curiousity in the old game, and it only gave me 2 medium spots in the end. Quite a few triangles are filled with beach sand instead of arable land.

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