Topic: Economy tutorial - SPOILER WARNING

Hello!

I have a question: I went through the economy tutorial (in Widelands Version 1.0), and at one point the system said somewhat like, you know, "You reached the aim of the tutorial - but if you want to keep on playing this map, you can do this". So I went on and settled nearly the whole island map (a very nice map, thanks to its creators!), in every direction and to all coasts. But (like the Imperium Romanum in the Asterix comics, hehe), there's one spot on the map I just couldn't go to: the southwest corner of the island map. Because, west and south of it there's the ocean, north and east of it there are unpassable snowy mountain ranges. The only potential passage seems to be between both mountain ranges, where the old ruins are, but I can't expand into this territory, because there I can't build any (military) building, because there are only yellow flag symbols and no building symbols.

(a propos flags - can anyone of you please change on occasion in the economy tutorial and in the third empire campaign "neptune's revenge" (marble pillar production limiting task) the messages' wording from e.g. "Change the economy settings X and Y - you can do this by clicking on every flag" to "... - you can do this by clicking on every of your BLUE flags"? Because as I was new to the game, I struggled with the task to open the economy options window, because I clicked on the yellow flag symbols - and wondered why the heck there was no economy options window to open, hehe!)

But back to the topic: Northeast of the mountain ranges' gap, from the start on there existed thre castles - but even when I did upgrade all of them to fortresses and built a fourth one southeast next to them (even gave a very little bit additionally territory in the mountain gap, but still with only yellow flags on it), I can't find a way to expand through the wasteland between the mountains.

So I have no idea left what I could do to get to the southwest corner of the map, which would be very interesting though I guess, because in the statistic's section, you can clearly see, that there is a second, red player in the game. But how can I reach to him? Have you any hints for me please? That would be very helpful for me! Thank you!

Best wishes!

P.S.: I'm from Germany and long years ago I played "Settlers 2" and loved it. Now, a few weeks ago I searched for my old CD-ROM of it but couldn't find it in my rooms anymore, so I searched in the internet for it and that way I found widelands. And I have to say: What an amazing, great project! I have no programming skills, but I think it's unbelievable what all of you guys created and worked so much in the last two decades! I think your work is brilliant and I hope that you know, that all of you gave so many people so many joy through what you've done done and through what you are still doing. You are earning my deepest respect and my loudest applause - chapeau! Thank you so much!

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Hello mxb2001!

Ah, it's nice you're suggesting that, but probably there were many other players at this point, and I'm just the only one who's asking whether there's still any little chance left to go there by playing (concerning expanding territory, I forgot to say, that I went to all reachable coastlines, so I can see them, but did not settle all coastlines towards the ocean, so there theoretically could be a port space symbol anywhere there, but somehow I doubt it... coming just to my mind also is that I also should look up the savegame whether or not it is possible to build a shipyard or not...).

Concerning the possibilty of looking up the map in the editor: Thank you for that suggestion! Just as you're saying this, it comes to my mind that awhile ago I once read something like that somewhere in the forum, it also was about how to view the whole map of a game or so. So if there definitely will be no solution by playing, I surely will have a look at it in the editor, but if there's a little chance left for a playabale solution, I would first try that. Because as you said that maybe no one knows the answer, it came to my mind, that at least ONE person definitely for sure has to know the answer - the creator of the map/tutorial! So I looked it up in the tutorial menu, who the creator is, and it is wl-zocker! :-) As I don't know whether he did see this forum topic or how often he is online in the forum, I just send him a pm concerning this forum topic!

P.S.: I don't know if that would be too off-topic, but as I saw your signature, I wondered what your favourite star trek series is? (I like TOS/TNG/VOY)

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Hi,

it fills my heart with joy that my map is still in use and that you are enjoying it so much that you want to find out every detail of it. Had you not sent me a PM, I would not have become aware of your quest. Due to missing time, I have been absent from Widelands for a long time (since 2016, my outbox tells me). But maybe nostalgia brings me back one day. I see that Widelands has made great progress since I left. But Widelands remembered me and knows when to send me an e-mail for the important things.

Regarding your question: There is no intentional way to reach the red player – and it seems no unintentional way either. I wanted to make sure that that piece of land is completely unexplorable, in order to keep the secret of the unknown. You might have noticed that I disabled the scout as well. The idea of putting an actual player there was to reward the player for being fast or to punish them for being slow. The plan was to replace the ruins with military building and fill them with soldiers – either weak ones ("Luckily, we are well defended. Our fortifications and preparations paid off.") or overwhelmingly strong ones ("Sire, we should have taken our counselors' advice! The savage tribe has broken through our lines! We need to act quickly if we want to save our empire!"). But, in the end, I was too lazy to code all of that (the economy, the soldiers) and make sure that the AI actually does attack, so I scrapped that idea. I am not quite sure why I did not remove the player altogether – maybe changing the number of players would have broken the map.

If you want to find our more about that map (and the seafaring tutorial, which I also made), you could have a look into the Lua file (where all the scripting is done – I think I left a comment there as well), the old forum thread where I gathered feedback (it is labeled "spoiler" and probably dates back to 2014 or 2015) and maybe in the issue tracker (it was on Launchpad; I noticed that Widelands has moved to github). Wideland is open source, so feel free to alter the map, remove the player if it is confusing, or try to complete my idea and put your hands on some Lua scripting. Examples of all code parts should be around somewhere (except for forcing the AI to attack maybe, you have to rely on its goodwill) and there are surely lots of Widelanders who would gladly help you out.

As mentioned, I do not have time for such an endeavor, but I wish you lots of fun with Widelands – be it coding, designing or simply playing. Enjoy it and its community!

"Only few people know how much one has to know in order to know how little one knows." - Werner Heisenberg

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