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Topic: Wincondition: Cold War

stonerl
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Posted at: 2019-03-13, 11:41

Wincondition: Economy War

At first, I wasn't sure whether to call it Cold War or Economy, but I think Cold War is quite fitting. The idea came to me, after realizing that I always lose the End-Game by military defeat face-grin.png

So I'd like to outline the basic ideas of this mode. It is a mixture of Wood Gnome, Territorial & Collectors with some additions.

A Game last 4 hours and can either end with a winner/winning team (most points) or everybody losing. Peaceful play will be rewarded while aggressions result in negative points.

We have several categories to which points are awarded.

Category Points
Trees 100
Territory 100
Wares 200
Military 200
Defeat -300
Lost 300

The points are proportionally awarded to the players.

Let me explain the categories and how the points are distributed.

Trees

Basically Wood Gnome. For example: Player 1 has 10 trees and Player 2 30 trees. Player 1 gets 25 points and Player 2 75 points.

Territory

Basically Territorial. For example: Player 1 has 20% of the map and Player 2 30%. Player 1 gets 40 points and Player 2 60 points.

Wares

Basically Collectors. For example: Player 1 has 20 collectors point and Player 2 also has 20 points. Player 1 gets 50 points and Player 2 50 points.

Military

We look at the military strength and award points. Since a growth in military strength results in a loss of points in wares, It gives the same amount of points. I know that we need more resources to achieve this, but we don't want to reward military aggression too much.

For example: Player 1 has military strength of 100 and Player 2 also has 50. Player 1 gets 66/67 points and Player 2 33 points. (Implementation detail, whether we ceil or floor fo such numbers)

Defeat

Every building we defeat gives us negative point, because we don't like war.

For example: Player 1 has defeated 1 building and Player 2 has 0. Player 1 gets -200 points and Player 2 -0 points.

Lost

Civilian buildings lost. Again, we don't like war. If a player gets attacked and loses civilian buildings he gets reparation in the form of points.

For example: Player 1 has lost 1 civilian buildings and Player 2 has lost 3. Player 1 gets 25 points and Player 2 75 points.

As pointed out above, this game can be won either by points or has no winner. What does this mean? As soon as one faction is eradicated, everybody loses. For Example in a 1v1 game one may not defeat the other player totally. In a team match this means: Having 4 Player, 2 in each team, allows us to eliminate one player per team but not the entire team.

What do you guys think? Maybe we need to weight the point's differently? I'd really like to hear your opinions.

Edited: 2019-03-14, 13:54

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Tribal-Chief
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Posted at: 2019-03-13, 12:07

Any game that does not involve fighting is good, one that discriminates against violence is even better.

I will need to consider further the points before adding comments, my big initial problem is the AI will fail to play, AI cannot play any win condition at all yet and this seems to complicated for the current crap AI code.


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stonerl
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Posted at: 2019-03-13, 12:21

Tribal-Chief wrote:

seems to complicated for the current crap AI code.

Hold your horses here and mind your wording. Please don't call the code crap. Someone put a lot of time and effort into it. The best way to improve the AI is to train it, ATM.


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Nordfriese
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Posted at: 2019-03-13, 14:54

I also like the idea of a win condition where fighting is penalized face-smile.png

But I think the compensation for lost buildings should be much higher. If I get penalized only a bit for destroying my enemy, I could conquer his entire territory except for one warehouse and win the game. That strategy should be prevented by making the penalty so high that no player dares strike the first blow.


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Tribal-Chief
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Posted at: 2019-03-13, 15:26

Training the AI is pointless when the basic code is crap, so someone wasted a lot of time 'improveing' it but it is still flawed in in basic premise. And who the fuck are you to tell me to 'mind my wording'? If something is crap I will say so.


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WorldSavior
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Posted at: 2019-03-13, 15:30

Mixing the win conditions sounds good.

Is there a difference between "everybody loses" and "the game ends in a draw"? I think that a peaceful mode (already discussed) has higher priority than this new win condition for some reason. Stonerl, your idea still rewards defeating the opponent: If a player recognizes that he is probably going to lose, he can still defeat the opponent in order to reach at least a draw face-wink.png

By the way, your idea also works only if every player has headquarters. If you play with fortified village you cannot be defeated if you destroy yourself before the end.

Edited: 2019-03-13, 15:31

Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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GunChleoc
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Posted at: 2019-03-13, 15:57

Tribal-Chief, tone it down right now please. How motivated would you be to work on anything at all for Widelands if somebody said that your work was crap? Writing good AI is very hard. If you think you can do better, please be our guest and contribute an AI that will outperform the current one, or at least provide constructive criticism. And who the **** is Nordfriese? He is one of our senior developers who has made lots of really valuable contributions while being also a polite person, so stop calling him names.

Back on topic, I think the idea sounds interesting face-smile.png


Busy indexing nil values

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stonerl
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Posted at: 2019-03-13, 17:31

I realized the problems with the points, I adapted the points in the table accordingly. I know that we cannot use fortified village. it possible to disable starting conditions from withing the win condition Lua files? In general if someone else has an idea as how the points for each category should be I'd like to hear them.


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Nordfriese
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Posted at: 2019-03-13, 17:37

The points distribution among the categories looks good now IMHO. This will need testing of course. I also like the idea of proportionally distributing a fixed sum among all teams face-smile.png

it possible to disable starting conditions from withing the win condition Lua files?

Sadly not, and I believe this couldn´t be implemented without generally redesigning the concepts of Starting Conditions and Win Conditions, which are currently completely independent…


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stonerl
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Posted at: 2019-03-13, 17:43

Nordfriese wrote:

The points distribution among the categories looks good now IMHO. This will need testing of course. I also like the idea of proportionally distributing a fixed sum among all teams face-smile.png

it possible to disable starting conditions from withing the win condition Lua files?

Sadly not, and I believe this couldn´t be implemented without generally redesigning the concepts of Starting Conditions and Win Conditions, which are currently completely independent…

Well that isn't a problem at all, we must tell the players that with choosing this very starting condition, comes with great responsibility face-grin.png

Since the host chooses the starting condition for each user I don't see a problem.


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