WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Discussion and development of scenarios and campaigns for the game.

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weewah
Posts: 101
Joined: October 31st, 2019, 7:11 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by weewah »

Found a bug: the 3 loyal followers spawned are the default peasant/woodsman/ruffian instead of the WF versions that need blacksmith/archery range/armory to level up.
OTna
Posts: 27
Joined: April 26th, 2019, 1:41 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by OTna »

eyyy, really like your idea weewah. When I can play another round, I would love to have that guardian and curb-storm my way towards any early raids! The 'retreat' (or should we call it 'fall back'?) will greatly help improve his efficiency once it's implemented as well.

@vghetto I have played a lot of add-ons where you could change the behavior of the AI into 'aggressive', 'defensive' or 'focus on killing X specifically'. Maybe if you use that mechanic ('defensive' in this case) and combine it with the allied AI's tendency to gather around tavern, it could (in a way) be treated as ordering your allies to retreat?
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

i implemented the fallback/retreat thing. I'm not sure how well it will work out. we'll see.
What it does is release the unit from the zone_guardian/healer micro_ai. I've set the default side ai grouping to defensive, but kept the default caution and aggression. If it doesn't work out well, i'll increase the side's caution and decrease their aggression. I don't think these values play a part when the zone_guardian ai is enabled, so it might be safe to increase them for the side as a whole.

I don't know if aggression and caution can be set on a unit level anyway.

I didn't want them to switch to a coward micro_ai because that would cause them to scatter randomly when near an enemy or stand still if no enemy is nearby. (this is the fallback behavior of the market caravan when the windmill gets destroyed before it gets to it btw)
I didn't want fallback to mean head back to the tavern either.

some other changes, the right behind you units will spawn near the fool. I increased the treaty book cool down to 2 per turn. gave the ai caravan a melee weapon. non-hilly forest destroyed by termites becomes mushrooms.

I meant for the three followers to be special, i wanted that option to be worthwhile selecting in comparison to the other options. In the latest upload I created three new types based on the peasant, ruffian and woodsman. These units can advance independent of the recruiting buildings. other than their original advancement defaults, the peasant can advance to a sergeant, the ruffian to a heavy infantryman and the woodsman to a thief.
thanks

Edit: Well that was an epic fail. I'm changing aggression and caution to 0.1 and 1.0, hope that will work out better. It'll be in the next upload. I need to test if the change will mess with the guardian duties :annoyed:
@weewah, ok taking the treaty book option will reduce the number of spawned elves/dwarves raid by 2.

Edit2: I want to make each starting bonus selection to be worthwhile considering. so ...
Starting fund adds 200. increased by 100
Loyal followers, didn't change anything, but if you have a suggestion to other types they could advance to, leave them here.
Loyal workers, gives 1 loyal peasant workers, but it also unlocks the 'Peasant Workers Bonus' given when you complete 5 faction quests.
Strong Guardian. gives the Grand Knight, but also increases the number of allied units by 1 when they spawn.
Powerful Mage, no change. gives a silver mage. should the type be random? or any suggestions for an extra bonus along with her?
A prisoner, no change. gives a dark adept. any suggestions for an extra bonus with this one would be welcome.
A rare artifact. gives artifact and all future AI market caravan have a ranged and melee weapon. If the list of artifacts given here should be limited to something else or if there are special items that should be more frequent, then let me know.
Termites, increased the radius of the cleared area to 9. this does not carry a penalty with the elves and dwarves.
book of treatises, no change, cool down by 2 per turn, first spawning gets thinned, and all future spawning gets reduced by 2 units.
book on fungi, no change. Should I take away the poison healing ability unless this option is selected?
A possible a new bonus that i'm not sure about, a map that clears shroud except for the area near the edges. would that be something useful?

Edit3: changes mentioned above are all included in the latest upload, the fungi now restores attacks and movement points as well as curing. non fungi book mushrooms will no longer cure poison.

Edit4: @weewah, peasant worker bonus is finishing work in half the time. most projects will finish in 1 turn.
weewah
Posts: 101
Joined: October 31st, 2019, 7:11 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by weewah »

Powerful Mage, no change. gives a silver mage. should the type be random? or any suggestions for an extra bonus along with her?
Maybe she could give the Hero the teleport skill? Right now my hero basically does nothing but sit on the keep and occasionally look at library options. With teleport he could teleport to the front lines to apply leadership then teleport back to the keep to do more recruiting.
A prisoner, no change. gives a dark adept. any suggestions for an extra bonus with this one would be welcome.
Maybe an event that triggers when the prisoner reaches level 3?

Prisoner: At last, I have gathered enough power for my grand magic. ARISE!

<every farm spawns a side 1 walking corpse, maybe a few spawn skeletons/ghosts?

Fool: Eek! The undead! They are everywhere!
Cynic: T-this is impossible! How did you set up such a huge magic ritual without our notice?
Prisoner: I was sent to this distant land while guarded only by philistines without the slightest knowledge of magic. Was it really any surprise that none of you noticed?
Advisor: Everybody calm down! This undead army is large, but weak. If you think this is enough to defeat us, then you are sorely mistaken!
Prisoner: Then it is a good thing that I have no intention of defeating you, only to bargain for my freedom.
Hero: A bargain is it? Well then, state your terms.
Prisoner: I offer you two options. First option, you can simply kill me. Activate the enchantment of flame that your father's mages placed around my neck, and I shall immediately perish. Then my army will rampage through your city, and drown your people in a tide of rotting flesh. The greatest few among you like <Advisor> may survive and eventually destroy my army, but at what cost?
Prisoner: Second option, you can release me, allow me to flee beyond the range of your control runes, and I shall relinquish control over my undead army to you, leave, and never return to your lands. No lives will be lost this day.
Fool: I like that option! Please choose option 2!
Advisor: You think we want your undead?
Prisoner: If you do not want them, then simply have them stand down and dismiss the magic that animates them. It makes no difference to me, for I shall be long gone. Now choose: accept my bargain and everyone gets to live, or refuse and stain your city with blood!
Hero: I choose:
  • Option 1: ...to kill you. *Activates control runes*

    <Animate fiery explosion on Prisoner>
    Prisoner: Argh!
    <Prisoner dies>
    <All the newly spawned undead convert to side 7>
    Advisor: To arms!
  • Option 2: ...to release you.

    Prisoner: You have made a wise decision.
    <Prisoner disappears>
    Cynic: Was this truly the best choice?
    Fool: My head remains safely attached to my body, so I would say Yes!
OTna
Posts: 27
Joined: April 26th, 2019, 1:41 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by OTna »

@weewah unfortunately we can hire undead mercs so having a dark adept prisoner as a starting bonus option then proceed to have him betray you later on would require a serious retcon with the undead diplomacy (even if it is just a zombie being silly at the moment)

I can think of a way to deal with this problem: keep the dark adept prisoner as a starting bonus, but he will be locked on the path of becoming a necromancer instead of a lich. Over the course of leveling up, there will be dialogs about why he chose the dark art and once he plagues an enemy into a zombie, a similar scene plays out like the one you wrote (minus the zombies everywhere since he is trying to convince instead of threatening you). Activating the rune control will kill him and the newly created zombie; agreeing to his offer and you can now recruit dark adepts and the option for undead diplomacy to get undead units will become available

If you want to keep the scenario where he raises zombies everywhere and threaten you into freeing him, maybe we can have a dialog option beforehand where you can either choose to agree with his method (using the dead to reduce your casualty) or reject his view (thus making it clear that you would never agree with using undead units)
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

Latest upload includes teleport and prisoner stuff (for now).
Not sure who in their right mind would pick option 1. :lol: try it once to see what I mean.

Taking the prisoner bonus as a pathway for unlocking undead diplomacy sounds tempting too. The reason I included the prisoner was to give the player a chance to start undead quests without having to build a 3rd library first. But what you said is something that I'll reconsider.

Btw, I don't know if you noticed or not, undead quests are all race based unlike before. 1-Animals 2-Humans 3-Elves 4-Dwarves 5-Orcs

Edit: @weewah, about relocation. It's free. It cannot be done in the first season, after that you can relocate once per season as long as you haven't converted it into a stone keep. Stone keeps cannot be relocated.

Edit2: The fallback didn't always give good results. I didn't want to crank up caution more than 1.0, so in addition to fallback I added the option Craven retreat. Basically it's coward mode :whistle:
Switched diplomacy ally to side 9. It's no longer possible to spy on the map edges.
weewah
Posts: 101
Joined: October 31st, 2019, 7:11 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by weewah »

Started and completed a Hard game on v1.3.0, here's how it went:
WF-A New Beginning replay.gz
(180.12 KiB) Downloaded 248 times
When it offered me a starting bonus, I chose the book of finance because I suspected it was very very overpowered. It was.

Right from the start, I recruited 4 peasant workers. Because even without the 200 starting gold bonus, the half price on all projects meant I could get a lot more building at once.

I got some nice artifacts for my starting loyal units, but they didn't really help much because I placed them in the wrong locations, far far away from where the actual battles took place later.

Overall it was a pretty normal beginning.
WF-Summer of Dreams replay.gz
(277.83 KiB) Downloaded 278 times
Here's when book of finance showed its true worth. I recruited a hundred workers and spread them all over the map, building farms everywhere. By the end of the first Summer I had more farms than I usually did at the end of the second Spring. I was all set to finish the campaign in early autumn.

This is also when I figured out how keep relocation works, so I closed off the gaps in my farms and just built a tiny group of encampments in the center.
I later burned down the center encampments and relocated my keep to the west side, intending to build a ring of encampments around my entire city.
(The campaign ended before then though.)
WF-Autumn of Gold replay.gz
(341.05 KiB) Downloaded 231 times
Here's when book of finance gave a nasty surprise.

Outlaws/Bandits/Elves/Dwarves don't seem to scale based on the number of farms, and while Orcs do, the fact that they can only recruit 3 units per turn makes it easy to kill them and loot all that extra gold they have. Undead on the other hand, DEFINITELY scale with the number of farms. I was just happily playing, thinking how all the enemies were sooo easy to defeat, when turn 8 came along and the Undead spawned. And spawned. And spawned. And continued spawning in a massive blob of 100+ units that spilled over my city walls INTO my city. They literally took a few of my farms the moment they spawned, before I could do anything.

Not that I could do anything considering they massively outnumbered my defenders and spawned behind them as well, so I couldn't even retreat or use villages for healing. Every unit on my city wall was already dead. To make matters worse I had just relocated my keep and hadn't built it up yet, so I couldn't even reinforce my defenders properly.

As the turns progressed the undead slaughtered all my defenders, including my level 2 elder wose with marksman bow and level 2 flame drake :x. They just continued spreading out, taking/burning my villages like an unstoppable tide. This continued until I built a lighthouse and started spamming loyalist reinforcements behind them, which finally wiped them out. But not before they killed literally every single peasant worker I had in the area so I couldn't rebuild the burned out ruins. :cry:

Still, despite the horrific losses of units and territory, the sheer mass of farms I had elsewhere gave me enough income to finish the campaign before ever seeing a winter.

Feedback based on this replay

Bugs/Oddities:
  • Making mud moats takes .| workshifts. Which means 1 I guess?
  • 3 Elf waves spawned, but no Ancient Woses appeared? The third wave also spawned quite a bit further north for some reason.
  • There does not seem to be any messages in game telling you about how 5 diplomacy missions gives you faster workers?
Balance Suggestions:
  • I suggest major nerfs for Book of Finance. Completing the entire campaign in only 3 seasons is crazy fast. I didn't get to face any of the challenges of winter's snow, spring's deep waters, and summer's calamities. I was even rushing through diplomacy missions to try to get faster workers ASAP, but the campaign ended just before I could complete the 5 easiest loyalist missions.
  • Shouldn't Bandits and Outlaws scale with the number of farms? They seemed the same as ever, just around 7 units each time, with plenty of level 0s.
  • Orcs should make bigger keeps if you have lots of farms. Or maybe have better units in their recruit list. Otherwise all that extra gold they spawn with just ends up increasing their bounty instead of their difficulty.
  • Lighthouse reinforcement still seems very overpowered. Even the massive undead blob that was wrecking my city fell to the reinforcements really quickly and easily. Maybe have them spawn a few turns later like the mercenaries? And maybe also weaken the summoned units, because of bunch of level 2s and 3s is really strong for 100/175/250 gold.
  • Artifact seems to be the weakest starting bonus now. Unless you are pretty lucky, a single random artifact is not as good as the strong guardian/teleporter mage, and the permanent bonus is only arming market caravans. Market caravans are allied with wild animals, and armed or not, they will get destroyed by any other enemy, so this is not a particularly useful bonus. Maybe it should spawn 2 quick market caravans per season?
Feature Suggestions:
  • Can library give a report on what the workers are doing? For times when the player has so many workers that it is hard to keep track. So something like a Project Report menu item that says:

    "You have 50 workers.
    4 are idle.
    20 are constructing buildings, of which 7 will complete this turn.
    10 are cutting trees, of which 5 will complete this turn.
    6 are planting trees, of which 4 will complete this turn.
    ..."

    This would make it much easier to complete terraforming diplomacy missions. For example, I wasted a few turns trying to complete the first orc mission, because I had too many workers planting trees compared to chopping trees.
  • Similarly, can library give a report on farms? For times when the player has so many farms that it is hard to keep track. So something like a Farming Report menu item that says:

    "You have built 120 farms.
    10 have burned down.
    100 are manned (owned).
    10 are vacant (unowned)."

    This is useful because sometimes wild animals spawn in the fog, next to a farm that is also in the fog. Then they capture the farm and there is no sign of it happening other than the number of owned farms changing on the top of the screen. That can be quite hard to catch, leading to lots of vacant farms being left vacant for long periods of time simply because the player hasn't noticed that the farm has been lost.

    (Also when you have more than a 3 digit number of villages, the game no longer tells you how many farms there are in total, it just says "134/...". >_<)
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

Thank you so much!
I haven't seen the replays yet, I will.
git revision c8cd761

Upcoming changes ...
When it offered me a starting bonus, I chose the book of finance because I suspected it was very very overpowered. It was.
I'm nice, what can I say :)
Outlaws/Bandits/Elves/Dwarves don't seem to scale based on the number of farms, and while Orcs do, the fact that they can only recruit 3 units per turn makes it easy to kill them and loot all that extra gold they have.
Most Calamities scale with farm numbers too, but they start after the third year, I don't know if you ever got to one :lol:
Bugs/Oddities:
  • Making mud moats takes .| workshifts. Which means 1 I guess?
mud moats is a bug that will be fixed. This is the problem faced when converting macros into variables, this happens :roll:
  • 3 Elf waves spawned, but no Ancient Woses appeared? The third wave also spawned quite a bit further north for some reason.
I need to see the replay to see what happened with the elves, it's not based on the number of spawns, but on the number of elves leaders killed by side 1. if the elvish leader was killed by other means it won't trigger the wose.
It might also be the case that woses start after the 4th raid, not sure. I have to revise the code. I'm aware that the warning dialogue about them comes way before that though. So when you get the dialog about wose, they won't appear in the following raid, but in the one after that.
  • There does not seem to be any messages in game telling you about how 5 diplomacy missions gives you faster workers?
Yeah, I need to mention that somewhere. Now it only shows if you unlocked the bonus or not.
  • I suggest major nerfs for Book of Finance. Completing the entire campaign in only 3 seasons is crazy fast. I didn't get to face any of the challenges of winter's snow, spring's deep waters, and summer's calamities. I was even rushing through diplomacy missions to try to get faster workers ASAP, but the campaign ended just before I could complete the 5 easiest loyalist missions.
book of finance will be 20% off instead of 50% off.
  • Shouldn't Bandits and Outlaws scale with the number of farms? They seemed the same as ever, just around 7 units each time, with plenty of level 0s.
I might make Outlaws scale with the number of farms... not sure yet.
They spawn level 0s in the first year only. They level up after that and new types start to appear.
  • Orcs should make bigger keeps if you have lots of farms. Or maybe have better units in their recruit list. Otherwise all that extra gold they spawn with just ends up increasing their bounty instead of their difficulty.
The orcs henchmen get stronger after the first year but their recruit list stays the same. I'll give them better recruiting units. (not in the first year though)

I don't know if I want to change their keep size/shape because I could mess it up code wise. It's one of those things that is scattered around in the code and changing it one place and missing it in another will lead to problems. (like the mud moat thing)
  • Lighthouse reinforcement still seems very overpowered. Even the massive undead blob that was wrecking my city fell to the reinforcements really quickly and easily. Maybe have them spawn a few turns later like the mercenaries? And maybe also weaken the summoned units, because of bunch of level 2s and 3s is really strong for 100/175/250 gold.
I'll add a delay like the mercenaries. I'm leaving the rest the same.
  • Artifact seems to be the weakest starting bonus now. Unless you are pretty lucky, a single random artifact is not as good as the strong guardian/teleporter mage, and the permanent bonus is only arming market caravans. Market caravans are allied with wild animals, and armed or not, they will get destroyed by any other enemy, so this is not a particularly useful bonus. Maybe it should spawn 2 quick market caravans per season?
hmm... For that bonus only, I'll increase their hitpoints, give them quick trait, and spawn 1 more. or 2 more? or 3?
one from each direction? what do you think?
  • Can library give a report on what the workers are doing? For times when the player has so many workers that it is hard to keep track.
hmm, I try to keep non-essential code to a minimum to reduce overall memory size and keep it fast. I try to avoid using loops whenever possible.
I generally use "Unit list", sort by type and look at the peasant workers with moves to know which are idle.

But having said that, if i can keep the code concise I'll add it.
  • Similarly, can library give a report on farms? For times when the player has so many farms that it is hard to keep track.
Same as above, but I might do it anyway. I can't track burned down though.
  • (Also when you have more than a 3 digit number of villages, the game no longer tells you how many farms there are in total, it just says "134/...". >_<)
Can't help with that :)

Edit1: watched the whole thing. my finger is numb from pressing the shift button for I don't know how many hours :lol: . I enjoy watching these replays. Nothing to comment, except yeah special units appear on the 4th raid and the reason they spawned further north is because that was the closest tree to the sign post. elves need trees to spawn into, dwarves need hills or mountains. If there aren't any then a random location gets selected.
Loyalist mercs will spawn units that you don't have buildings for. undead quest will spawn dark adept if you didn't have a 3rd library yet.
What else, yeah, the message about orcs getting angry or loyalist not being happy, that means the completed project decreased the score.
Should I scrap the 20,000 and just make it survive for 6 years? or is that extreme?
I forgot to mention this earlier, but the number of spawned outlaws increases by 1 every year up to the sixth year then it stops increasing.

I did all the changes, they are on github, I need to test them first to make sure I didn't break anything.
The reports are very basic, no details about the type of projects or turns.
You can see what a unit is working on with Project status. I'm sure you knew that already.

Market bonus will spawn 2 caravans on the first turn. Their direction is random, chance of them both spawning from the same direction is possible. You have to sentry one of them before it gets to the windmill otherwise it will overwrite the first displayed artifact item.

Summoning allies will have a delay like the mercs, between 1 and 3 turns, unless you have the strong guardian bonus, then it's as usual.

Orcs will recruit level 2 units after the first year.
Oh, how about that cursed ring? It's a good XP factory :)

Edit2:
1.3.2 uploaded.
campaign victory requires 4 years along with the 20,000 :twisted:
Market won't have the quick trait, but I gave it an implicit resilient effect. turns out both trait slots are taken with mechanical and loyal :doh:
report shows the number of projects with 1 turn left.
@OTna, I forgot, why do dwarf mercs spawn north again? everything else dwarvish spawns from the east. :oops:
Last edited by vghetto on June 13th, 2020, 6:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
weewah
Posts: 101
Joined: October 31st, 2019, 7:11 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by weewah »

Most Calamities scale with farm numbers too, but they start after the third year, I don't know if you ever got to one :lol:
Oh. Then no lol. :oops:
elves need trees to spawn into, dwarves need hills or mountains.
So I should leave one tree and one hill? Noted.
Should I scrap the 20,000 and just make it survive for 6 years? or is that extreme?
Ruffians cost only 6 gold each. The map is roughly 80 x 80. So with ~38k gold a player could fill every single spot on the map with ruffians and win forever since no more enemies can spawn... unless that breaks the game.
The reports are very basic, no details about the type of projects or turns.
Hmm, I was hoping for at least reports on how many trees/hills/swamps/streams are being made/destroyed. The whole reason I asked was so I could tell whether ending a turn now would result in increased or decreased diplomatic mission standing. Maybe that could be part of the diplomacy mission status? Like for the terraforming missions, it would tell you not just your current standing, but what your standing would be at the start of the next turn?

(Random great trees would be a problem though. Hmm... :hmm: )
Oh, how about that cursed ring? It's a good XP factory :)
I love it. It's my favorite artifact. :D

Edit: Just thought of something that could make orcs more interesting: Orcish henchmen could be defensive. You could give them a guardian ai around their keep/leader. That would make it much harder to sneak around the orc forces and snipe the orc leader early to loot a huge bounty and stop the recruiting of more orcs.
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

Some of the latest changes.
* I gave hero a name. he's unrenamable. I was sick of getting blah bleh names.
* Better library report on orcs and necromancer raids. 0 means there are none for this season.
* changed the turns jitter to be between -6 to 6 turns. This means that a second orc or undead raid is more likely than before!
* paid allies will spawn at random map signs! Free allies will spawn south. Mercs will spawn at usual locations.
* bandits and outlaws scale with farm size. 1 more bandit per 10 farms! 300 farms will spawn 30 additional outlaws plus the year minimums :P
* scaling of outlaws and bandits is disabled in the winter. I'm not that cruel.
@weewah, there was a protect_unit goal that I disabled a long time ago, it's function was to protect the leaders of their group. I might reinstate it. I need to see how it plays out first.
weewah
Posts: 101
Joined: October 31st, 2019, 7:11 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by weewah »

Started a No-Keep Recruiting Challenge on v3.03, and I just wanted to share this monstrosity before I restart with v3.04.
WF-A New Beginning replay.gz
(178.18 KiB) Downloaded 190 times
Since there was no keep, I had to choose loyal worker for the starting bonus. This entire city would be built by one worker.

On turn 36, I found out not having a keep means defeat :hmm:. So I reloaded and built one, but still made sure to never recruit anything.
WF-Summer of Dreams replay.gz
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Gold. Lots of gold. I never realized how much gold I was just sinking back into more construction projects until I tried this. With only one worker and no recruiting, I had barely any way to spend my gold. (It doesn't help that a lot of the diplomatic missions are terraforming missions, which are kinda hard to do quickly with only one worker.)

(I actually "lost" the game once here, since I foolishly continued constructing while the green outlaws approached, and they killed my one and only worker :doh: . I forgot that that one worker is the single most important unit in this challenge and should be kept far far far away from any enemies. I restarted the turn and made that worker flee.)
WF-Autumn of Gold Turn 18nk3.03.gz
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The undead spawned and I trembled, because I had gotten really bad merc rolls for impact/fire attacks, only 1 wose, 1 dwarf fighter, 1 drake burner, and 1 drake clasher instead of the usual 2.

Somehow pulled through because the undead were much smaller than normal (thanks farm scaling!). Then this happened:
berserkfail.png
My loyal Dragoon attacked the undead Leader with the berserk potion's attack. He DIED despite having 98.6% chance of killing the enemy! :augh:

I was so shocked my brain couldn't even comprehend what happened for a moment when my Dragoon disappeared. Look at the calculation screen! The odds of my Dragoon dying were so low that the screen didn't even display a bar for 0 hp! :shock:

Anyway, lesson learned: Never use berserk unless you are okay with your unit dying x_x. *Develops a mortal fear of bunnies.*

EDIT: Started v3.04, and noticed that the outlaw/bandit spawn rates have skyrocketed. It feels like there are at least 3 times as many bandit/outlaw waves as before. Is that intentional?
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

weewah wrote: June 15th, 2020, 4:57 pm EDIT: Started v3.04, and noticed that the outlaw/bandit spawn rates have skyrocketed. It feels like there are at least 3 times as many bandit/outlaw waves as before. Is that intentional?
hmm, yeah, the jitter change has something to do with that.
Do you find this change manageable? positive? negative? too much? not fun to play?

When outlaws spawn, 9 turns get subtracted from the counter shown in the library. That is the default rate for outlaws.
Jitter, which is a random number between -6 and 6, gets added to that counter. That means the next outlaw side spawning could happen after 15 turns or as soon as 3 turns.
The old approach had jitter between 0 and 18 turns, which meant they respawned between 9 and 27 turns later.

Do you find this change is made worse by the farm scaling?

If this change is not fun to play, I could make jitter to be between -6 and 12, and maybe set the farm scaling to be 1 per 20 farms.
I'd love to see a replay of how you're handling this change. :)
I know it's more challenging now, but overall in WF I'm more concerned if the changes I make are more fun to play or not. Personally, I find "Expert" campaigns NOT fun to play at all, and I have no intention of turning WF into one. So, please let me know if this change is not fun and I'll address it right away.
Thanks for the latest replays, even though you "lost", I thought it was your best performance :)
git revision 4aa95f5
weewah
Posts: 101
Joined: October 31st, 2019, 7:11 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by weewah »

Here's spring and summer for now.
WF-A New Beginning replay.gz
(177.18 KiB) Downloaded 209 times
WF-Summer of Dreams replay.gz
(229.44 KiB) Downloaded 185 times
I don't mind the difficulty increase (I actually quite like it), I just wanted to check whether anything broke because the raids intelligence reports look kinda weird.

Also it caught me off-guard to have outlaws spawn that early, as you can see in this replay where I had to fight off an outlaw wave with only my starting units. The AI seems to be playing smarter as well (what micro ais did you use :shock:?), with all their units moving as a lethal backstabby blob instead of separating into manageable chunks. So that early wave was really hard, I actually had my leader die and had to reload. Though honestly that was just because I refused to recruit anything. Would be way way easier if I had a few level 0s to block those backstabbing thieves.

And indeed once I started hiring mercenaries I could take on the outlaws/bandits just fine.
Do you find this change is made worse by the farm scaling?
No idea, I had barely any farms in this replay.
I know it's more challenging now, but overall in WF I'm more concerned if the changes I make are more fun to play or not. Personally, I find "Expert" campaigns NOT fun to play at all, and I have no intention of turning WF into one.
Hmm... I personally would like more of a challenge though (hence me doing all these weird replays on hard difficulty :whistle:), but maybe that's just because I haven't seen a calamity? Perhaps this can be achieved without making the game too hard for other players by using the difficulty settings more? Right now I actually don't see much of a difference between easy and hard difficulty: you have less starting gold and a higher cap on elves/dwarves attacks per season, but otherwise it looks the same... :hmm:

Edit: I forgot farms give more gold and support on easier difficulties. Hmm...
So, please let me know if this change is not fun and I'll address it right away.
I'm finding it great fun :D. Before this update there were quite a lot of times when there were basically no enemies to fight, so I could only pass the time with more construction projects and trying to hunt down the few wild animals that spawn each turn. Now there's almost always something to fight.

The only change I would suggest is making it so outlaws/bandits are a lot weaker in the first season (like half the unit numbers?). Ideally the first outlaw/bandit wave should be weak enough to defeat with just the starting units, so any player that has been too focused on economy can survive the wave and see it as a warning sign that they need to recruit more defenders soon.

Edit: Autumn and Winter.
WF-Autumn of Gold replay.gz
(231.7 KiB) Downloaded 174 times
WF-Winter of Storms replay.gz
(244.49 KiB) Downloaded 201 times
Winter with only one worker sucks :lol:. Can't spare the worker to build roads, so caravans just get stuck in the snow.
vghetto
Posts: 755
Joined: November 2nd, 2019, 5:12 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by vghetto »

Thanks weewah, in the latest updates I tried to make use of the difficulty settings.
I made 2 rapid updates because one of them wasn't well thought through as usual :oops:

The most significant change is reducing the campaign victory years.
It's 2 years for normal-hard, and 3 years for easy.
Calamities take place on the second year instead of third for normal and hard. No good reason to delay them on those difficulties, and the 4 years requirement was a bit too much.

I reinstated the protect the orc leader thing that you mentioned. it's not a micro_ai, just plain protect_unit goal. the micro_ai is used in the period before the leader sets up camp "messenger_escort".

I'm not using micro_ai for the outlaws or bandits, that was the regular wesnoth ai behavior with aggression 0.7 and caution 0.2. It looks cool when it works out. still, I'm not sure why fallback with aggression 0.1 and caution 1.0 is suicidal in comparison :hmm:

I changed the cursed undead ring to side 4 because I didn't want to prematurely fire the undead sighting text, but then thought well why not exclude that cursed unit from the sighting :doh: So it's back to side 7 :)

I also made some changes to the library report, I hope it's more helpful. I think the time when you opened it and it looked confusing, the counters just so happened to be all zeros for outlaws and bandits!

I also made the map starting bonus remove fog from all seasons to make it worthwhile.

Personally, the powerful mage is my favorite, while the undead is my goto faction :lol:
plague everything in the winter! that's my approach. it's so much fun.

As for your suggested change, I reduced the number of outlaws raids to 2 on the hard difficulty. This limitation is lifted the following summer. Hope that helps.

Oh, I said in a prior post that relics don't respawn. They don't, but new relics gets added to the spot where a leader died the previous season, that's what the bones are. Leaders killed by side 1 don't count.
I'm saying that just in case my previous statement was confusing, and I noticed in the replay that you went for a leader kill when you didn't have to.
If you don't think the outlaw will give you much gold, and an ally is nearby to finish him off, leave it to the ally to take care of business, it might be more rewarding :)
weewah
Posts: 101
Joined: October 31st, 2019, 7:11 pm

Re: WF - Wild Frontiers [SP Campaign]

Post by weewah »

Year 2 without Recruiting:
WF-Spring of Raindrops replay.gz
(227.2 KiB) Downloaded 175 times
WF-Summer of Dreams replay.gz
(271.02 KiB) Downloaded 181 times
That didn't go so well. Spiders are super scary, and the enemies were now strong enough that I really needed those level 0 fodder to protect my level 3 mercenaries :(. I had to reload the game quite a few times because I kept losing my important units. I doubt I could take on a calamity in this state, so I'm ending this no-recruit challenge run here.
Oh, I said in a prior post that relics don't respawn. They don't, but new relics gets added to the spot where a leader died the previous season, that's what the bones are. Leaders killed by side 1 don't count.
I'm saying that just in case my previous statement was confusing, and I noticed in the replay that you went for a leader kill when you didn't have to.
If you don't think the outlaw will give you much gold, and an ally is nearby to finish him off, leave it to the ally to take care of business, it might be more rewarding :)
Mind = Blown.

My play-style is going to change 540 degrees! No more hunting down wild animals for xp, I need them to kill the bandit/outlaw leaders! Unfortunately elves/dwarves/undead are allied with wild animals, so I'm not sure how to get them killed.

I hope side 9 (friendly) leaders don't drop relics though, otherwise spamming lighthouse summons then telling every non-leader ally to craven retreat while the leader does a suicide charge on his own would be a really really easy way to get tons of relics.

Edit: !!! The undead curse ring spawns undead that would kill every enemy leader except for undead! :shock:

Edit 2: Farming relics is harder than expected. Enemy leaders tend to either attack those of my units that can't retaliate, or get themselves killed by my units' retaliation. :roll:
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