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Topic: Frisian Balancing

hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2018-08-13, 14:03

WorldSavior wrote:

Maybe one should give barley the same rights as wheat (allowing some (?) water triangles around it).

From the lua files I can't see any difference between wheat and barley.


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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2018-08-13, 14:06

Agreed. For the Aqua Farm. Would like to have the change in a different branch though.


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stonerl
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Posted at: 2018-08-13, 14:11

I see. Wasn't aware that the claypits are needed for aqua farms. But even without aqua farms this seems to be a bug. Because the or-clause undermines the first one. The current implementation produces clay, as long as water is on site, regardless of the economy's demand for it.


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WorldSavior
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Posted at: 2018-08-13, 16:53

hessenfarmer wrote:

WorldSavior wrote:

Maybe one should give barley the same rights as wheat (allowing some (?) water triangles around it).

From the lua files I can't see any difference between wheat and barley.

That's interesting, because barbarian wheat allows one water triangle.

stonerl wrote:

I see. Wasn't aware that the claypits are needed for aqua farms. But even without aqua farms this seems to be a bug. Because the or-clause undermines the first one. The current implementation produces clay, as long as water is on site, regardless of the economy's demand for it.

That's what I mean with "economy settings not working anymore"

Edit: somehow I was wrong about Barley - it also allows water triangles around it. Sorry.

Edited: 2018-08-13, 16:56

Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2018-08-26, 17:47

Hi just some quick progress report .

  1. In another thread there was a suggestion to reduce costs for helmet to 1 iron and 1 coal instead of using 2 iron. I would not vote against this as it might ease the startup of military production a little bit. Of course we need to adjust the return of iron in the training arena accordingly.
  2. still digging into the issues that Nordfriese mentioned. Have done a round of archipielago sea. Frisian farms are difficult there unless you have conquered some land. Best stats I had was an average of around 60 to 70 % toggling between 40% and 90%. But spots for farms are very rare. Adiitonally a lot of other buildings need to be placed which is very demanding. My strategy was to use only fruit and fish for rations and limit the demand for barley as much as possible. In this case the hunter delivering fur in support of one reindeer farm was very helpful. I will try 4cells torus now to gain some experience with the hunter. Although I am lacking some time currently due to having to fix empire 04 scenario.
  3. Branch mines-worldsavior still needs review. As soon as this gets into trunk, I will open a new balancing branch.

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WorldSavior
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Posted at: 2018-08-26, 23:18

hessenfarmer wrote:

3 . Branch mines-worldsavior still needs review. As soon as this gets into trunk, I will open a new balancing branch.

I've looked at the changes and I didn't see a mistake in the code. How much playtesting would be required?


Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2018-08-27, 00:29

WorldSavior wrote:

I've looked at the changes and I didn't see a mistake in the code. How much playtesting would be required?

I have tested this branch while trying to figure out my opinion on hunters and farm working area. I would say testing it until you are sure it is ok to go in. If you have looked at the code and the values still fit your intention and you don't see any obvious errors. I would be ready to have it in, as soon as you give us a hint that it is ok for you as well. So test it how much you need to to be condifent it is worth going in.

Thanks for the review.


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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2018-08-28, 22:30

Hi, I have tested a farm radius of 3 on archipielago sea. My results (impressions) are:
1. It is slightly improving the situation. especially there is a big building spot south of the blue HQ near the iron mountain, where the farm reached 100% if you don't build a mine there.
2. In the beginning it will plant about 10 fields on a normal map, depending where they are located (near or far)
3. After starting to produce it will not block more then 8 fields, cause it is harvesting constantly
4. The radius is not necesarily slowing down the farm. on the contrary it offers possibilities to speed the walking distances up (by blocking the spots behind the farm, cause the waorker needs to walk around the whole farm building to reach that place).
So my conclusion is: it help when there is limited space and does no harm on normal maps so it is a +1 from my side. Any opinions?

Regarding the issue with the hunter producing a lot of fur I tested the map Nordfriese suggested (4cells torus):
1. I could reproduce a small pile of around 180 to 200 fur after the sewing room had stopped by reaching 40 garments. which means perhaps 280 or 300 fur in total resulting in a supply for 75 soldiers with defence 2.
2. this number was only aided by one reindeer farm to produce carriers.
3. On archipielago sea on the contrary fur was the bottleneck for training soldiers as barley is hard to produce. Unfortunately it takes some time until some game is found. but then a hunter really helps to get a slow soldier production running.
4. The hunter delivering fur was intriduced to overcome a severe timelock in starting to increase soldier power as the reindeer farm needs barley and it takes a long time to produce this (more then 10 minutes after the first farm has been build). this is even more hindering as the seamstress needs a lot of experience (28 fur a needed to get promoted to master seamstress from which 10 are provide in starting conditions means we need to gather 18 fur). one hunter produces a fur every 105 seconds plus the walking distances of 3 hunts which could easily add up to another 60 seconds. which means approximately a fur every 2,5 minutes while the seamstress is consuming at a rate of one fur every 20 seconds (2 every 40 secs) so even with 3 hunters fur should not pile up as long as the seamstress is working.
5. In comparison a reindeer farm produces a fur every 65 seconds.

in summary I am not sure whether a small pile of fur is really that big an advantage, cause the main problem is not to ensure a fur supply but to train the seamstress in the early game and in this stage it simply does what it should: give the training a kickstart while barley is not produced yet. Question is: Is there a way to ensure this kind of kickstart while not piling up fur afterwards?
Currently I can imagine the following solutions:
a. fiddling with the numbers in the hunter programm:
I. only produce fur every 4th cycle - will reduce the total amount of fur to gain from game, will not give a good kickstart on maps with few game.
II. add an additional production (sleep) cycle for producing fur - will slow down fur production, means you'll need more hunters to compensate for the advantage does not change the overall pile though
b. fiddling with hunter numbers and seamstress numbers - increase fur consumption from 2 to 3 per garment while producing a fur every 2nd cycle this will change the relation so that in the end less fur gets piled while a good kickstart could be provided as well.
c. increase starting condition amount of fur
d. decrease experience level for the seamstress
e. any combination of that

I would prefer b. or any combination with b. (the numbers are just a proposal and can be discussed to find the best ratio. Again any opinions how to solve that issue?

The things that have to be done after the mines-worldsavior branch is in are therefore: 1. adjust the condition for skipping clayproduction.
2. reduce costs for basic helmet by one iron
3. increase farm radius to 3 if no objections
4. implement solution for fur that we could finally agree to.

thanks for your contribution


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Nordfriese
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Posted at: 2018-08-29, 08:39

increase farm radius to 3 if no objections

Let´s have it then face-smile.png

in summary I am not sure whether a small pile of fur is really that big an advantage, cause the main problem is not to ensure a fur supply but to train the seamstress in the early game and in this stage it simply does what it should: give the training a kickstart while barley is not produced yet. Question is: Is there a way to ensure this kind of kickstart while not piling up fur afterwards?

The problem is that the hunter´s fur production is highly map-dependent. This gives frisians a huge advantage on some maps, in particular it may unbalance maps that are otherwise fair, or a disadvantage on maps with few animals.
I´d prefer to remove fur from the hunter output completely and instead give the player more starting fur. The seamstress needs 14 experience, which is already low, so it shouldn´t be decreased further. 28 fur are required for a master seamstress, the player currently starts with 10, how about giving him 20 or even more instead.


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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2018-08-29, 22:05

Nordfriese wrote:

increase farm radius to 3 if no objections

Let´s have it then face-smile.png

If no further objections raised I'll do it instantaneously after the mines-worldsavior branch has been merged. @Worldsavior Any objections from your side? have you tested it already? If you are content to have it, I would set this to approved, currently it is still pending. @Nordfriese Your judgement on the changes and a review for mistakes would be very much appreciated as well.

The problem is that the hunter´s fur production is highly map-dependent. This gives frisians a huge advantage on some maps, in particular it may unbalance maps that are otherwise fair, or a disadvantage on maps with few animals.

In my opinion it is not really an advantage for the frisians. Perhaps we could agree that on maps with a lot of game they are currently somewhat less disadvanteged.
I have done some maths today. Here are my thoughts (correct me if I am wrong)
The radius of a hunter is 14. The average walking distance can be assumed with 9 to 10 as this is the radius to have half the area than a radius of 14. The hunter walks 18 to 20 units per hunt accordingly. this results in 32,4 to 36 seconds walking. there is 1 second animation in the hunting cycle and there are 35 seconds sleep between the callworker commands. so we have an average hunting cycle of 67 to 72 sec. A fur is produced every 3rd succesful cycle. this means a fur every 201 to 216 sec. For mathematical convenience let's say every 200 secs. a sewing room consumes a fur every 20 seconds so we would need 10 hunters to support one sewing room constantly.
the reindeer farm needs 65 seconds to produce a fur instead which results in 3,25 of them to support a sewing room. So for me the advantage by having a lot of but still limited game is not that big, cause you would need a reindeer farm or 2 anyhow to have enough second carriers (although a pile of fur doesn't look nice). my main argument is that advantage can't be measurted by amount only. Time matters for the early frisians as this is the period when they still have the biggest disadvantage.
Taking this into account we could play around with the following values: Fur consumed by the sewing room, fur produced each x th cycle by the hunter, fur produced by the reindeer farm.
e.g. the hunter producing a fur every 2nd cycle while the sewing room consuming 3 per garment and the reindeer farm producing 2 fur each cycle (except when it produces meat additionally) would result in 10,5 hunters needed but only 2, 8 reindeer farms. so the advantage would be even smaller by doing so.
Another example could be to have a fur each 4th hunting cycle, but only 1 fur consumed for a garment leaving the reindeer farm as it is. resulting in a reduced yield of the hunter and only 7,2 needed of them while only 1.6 reindder farms required for the sewing room. In this case the 10 starting fur would be more valuable.

I´d prefer to remove fur from the hunter output completely and instead give the player more starting fur. The seamstress needs 14 experience, which is already low, so it shouldn´t be decreased further. 28 fur are required for a master seamstress, the player currently starts with 10, how about giving him 20 or even more instead.

Frisians already have much more starting wares than other tribes I am not in favor of increasing but decreasing these values a bit. So perhaps the second example would fit both of our views better. ( of course the recycling pattern has to be adopted as well)

Sorry to bother around but I think we are talking about an advantage which is more felt then real. But you have a good point that this should not be that much map dependent (however there are always maps where one tribe or the other is more advantaged - king of nowhere used this feature to have an increasing difficulty level for his already difficult maps)


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