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Topic: Problems

Tricksty
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Joined: 2017-01-02, 07:01
Posts: 7
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Pry about Widelands
Posted at: 2017-01-02, 07:32

Hi to all,

as professional game developer I would like to congratulates with you all (coders / community) for the nice quality of the game (which I found quite robust).

As gamer I would like to share with you some consideration especially to the game designers in order to maybe shed some light on the reason of some specific weird behaviors.

Point 1 - I see the enemy fort behind his line and I can't attack it

Ok this embarrass me a little when I was playing with a friend of mine.

He was literally stuck for 40 min because the AI destroyed an own turret(Point 3) he was attacking leaving him unable to increase his range of sight in any way.

He could not build longer range construction. He could not gain any territory in any way(only flags could be planted near the enemy line). He could not (and he tried) gain visibility of the enemy fortress using the explorer (which was just randomly going around)

The only thing that broke the stale was that after 40 min the AI decided to plant a turret near their border.

Suggestion: I leave this to much more skilled player here in this forum.

Ahh as side note the explorer also did not work because when after 30 min he decide to light the enemy fortress the military we sent were intercepted by the AI defending troops too far for us to be able to send other.

Point 2 - The explorer

The explorer is really not deserving his food. His random walking did not help at all when it was needed and especially did no help in the stale situation at the point 1.

Suggestion: improve the AI over the explorer or let him do his job without food. (like the ranger or the lumberjack which is indeed a work much harder)

Point 3 - The suicide building

I notice that sometime when capturing an enemy building when the last soldier died the building burn itself. This is Mehh considering that even a surplus bread need a miner to be taken out I wonder who and how is destroying the building given the fact that no soldier is still inside.

This behavior is dangerous and can create stale and problem as Point 1

Suggestion: once a building is attacked the destroy functionality is deactivated until no attacker is in the area.

Point 4 - The mountain road

This is a minor one but still.

we found quite annoying that we could not have a road passing from one side to the other of a mountain that was totally inside our territory.

I thank you for paying attention at my though and wish a nice and profitable discussion

Edited: 2017-01-02, 07:35

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tuggyne

Joined: 2011-07-22, 00:27
Posts: 42
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Pry about Widelands
Location: TN
Posted at: 2017-01-02, 08:24

Tricksty wrote:

Hi to all,

as professional game developer I would like to congratulates with you all (coders / community) for the nice quality of the game (which I found quite robust).

As gamer I would like to share with you some consideration especially to the game designers in order to maybe shed some light on the reason of some specific weird behaviors.

Point 1 - I see the enemy fort behind his line and I can't attack it

Ok this embarrass me a little when I was playing with a friend of mine.

He was literally stuck for 40 min because the AI destroyed an own turret(Point 3) he was attacking leaving him unable to increase his range of sight in any way.

He could not build longer range construction. He could not gain any territory in any way(only flags could be planted near the enemy line). He could not (and he tried) gain visibility of the enemy fortress using the explorer (which was just randomly going around)

The only thing that broke the stale was that after 40 min the AI decided to plant a turret near their border.

Suggestion: I leave this to much more skilled player here in this forum.

If I had to guess, carefully manipulating local trees and buildings would, in most cases, solve this stalemate. It's still certainly rather surprising, though.

Point 2 - The explorer

The explorer is really not deserving his food. His random walking did not help at all when it was needed and especially did no help in the stale situation at the point 1.

Suggestion: improve the AI over the explorer or let him do his job without food. (like the ranger or the lumberjack which is indeed a work much harder)

There's actually a current thread about improving scout AI.

Point 3 - The suicide building

I notice that sometime when capturing an enemy building when the last soldier died the building burn itself. This is Mehh considering that even a surplus bread need a miner to be taken out I wonder who and how is destroying the building given the fact that no soldier is still inside.

This behavior is dangerous and can create stale and problem as Point 1

Suggestion: once a building is attacked the destroy functionality is deactivated until no attacker is in the area.

I can't quite tell if you're referring to military sites being demolished when an enemy is attacking, or non-military sites being destroyed when their territory no longer belongs to the player who built them. If it's the latter, that's by design and is probably not going to change: only military buildings can survive changing borders. If you meant the former, it's a bit of an underhanded tactic in normal play, but it doesn't give enough of an advantage to make it really unfair in the long run.

Point 4 - The mountain road

This is a minor one but still.

we found quite annoying that we could not have a road passing from one side to the other of a mountain that was totally inside our territory.

Yeah, some slopes are just too steep to run roads across. Most maps pay considerable attention to where roads and buildings can and can't go, and deliberately control that to achieve a particular effect or just to govern map difficulty.


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Venatrix
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Joined: 2010-10-05, 20:31
Posts: 449
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Posted at: 2017-01-02, 08:55

Tricksty wrote:

Hi to all,

Hi and welcome to the forums. face-smile.png

Point 3 - The suicide building

I notice that sometime when capturing an enemy building when the last soldier died the building burn itself. This is Mehh considering that even a surplus bread need a miner to be taken out I wonder who and how is destroying the building given the fact that no soldier is still inside.

This behavior is dangerous and can create stale and problem as Point 1

Suggestion: once a building is attacked the destroy functionality is deactivated until no attacker is in the area.

I would guess that the behaviour you mentioned is not about destroying the building by whim of the player but because of the change of military influence. It can happen that the influence of the captured building is not high enough to capture enough land for itself to stand, so it burns down. A similar behaviour could be seen in the Settlers™ games as well. It’s something you have to expect especially when capturing smaller buildings in the vicinity of bigger enemy buildings.


Two is the oddest prime.

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einstein13
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Joined: 2013-07-29, 00:01
Posts: 1118
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Location: Poland
Posted at: 2017-01-02, 09:02

Welcome to the forum!

Point 1 - I see the enemy fort behind his line and I can't attack it

Consider building towers. They are middle-size buildings and have best vision range in the game.

If you can't build close enough, probably map maker prevent attacking in this particularly place.

Point 3 - The suicide building

There are two ways of destroying building:

  1. When you conquer small building very close to a big one (sentry next to the castle). Then the borders can't exist so close and your building is destroyed (as a smaller one).

  2. When the enemy decided to destroy building just before it would be taken by your troops. It is common player behaviour. Very useful when you want to stop a bit the enemy (he/she has to build new military buildings to reach your territory). Currently AI don't destroy building this way.

In the Settlers II there was a rule that military buildings can't be built too close to each other. The didn't have to provide rule 1.

Point 4 - The mountain road

Some of the terrain types aren't walkable. For example ice in the mountains (greenland). Maybe this is the reason for this behaviour? Big slopes usually make a spot not buildable.


einstein13
calculations & maps packages: http://wuatek.no-ip.org/~rak/widelands/
backup website files: http://kartezjusz.ddns.net/upload/widelands/

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Tricksty
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Joined: 2017-01-02, 07:01
Posts: 7
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Pry about Widelands
Posted at: 2017-01-02, 10:43

tuggyne wrote:

Tricksty wrote:

Point 1 - I see the enemy fort behind his line and I can't attack it

Ok this embarrass me a little when I was playing with a friend of mine.

He was literally stuck for 40 min because the AI destroyed an own turret(Point 3) he was attacking leaving him unable to increase his range of sight in any way.

He could not build longer range construction. He could not gain any territory in any way(only flags could be planted near the enemy line). He could not (and he tried) gain visibility of the enemy fortress using the explorer (which was just randomly going around)

The only thing that broke the stale was that after 40 min the AI decided to plant a turret near their border.

Suggestion: I leave this to much more skilled player here in this forum.

If I had to guess, carefully manipulating local trees and buildings would, in most cases, solve this stalemate. It's still certainly rather surprising, though.

Sadly there were no trees and no way to change building that matters (we tried for more than 30 mins) as soon as I can I will post a screenshot to help you all understand what I am talking about.

Point 3 - The suicide building

I notice that sometime when capturing an enemy building when the last soldier died the building burn itself. This is Mehh considering that even a surplus bread need a miner to be taken out I wonder who and how is destroying the building given the fact that no soldier is still inside.

This behavior is dangerous and can create stale and problem as Point 1

Suggestion: once a building is attacked the destroy functionality is deactivated until no attacker is in the area.

I can't quite tell if you're referring to military sites being demolished when an enemy is attacking, or non-military sites being destroyed when their territory no longer belongs to the player who built them. If it's the latter, that's by design and is probably not going to change: only military buildings can survive changing borders. If you meant the former, it's a bit of an underhanded tactic in normal play, but it doesn't give enough of an advantage to make it really unfair in the long run.

Yes I am referring to military sites being demolished by the AI while you attack them and you happen to kill the last of their defending military

Many Thanks for giving me your thoughs


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Tricksty
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Joined: 2017-01-02, 07:01
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Pry about Widelands
Posted at: 2017-01-02, 10:47

einstein13 wrote:

Point 3 - The suicide building

There are two ways of destroying building:

  1. When you conquer small building very close to a big one (sentry next to the castle). Then the borders can't exist so close and your building is destroyed (as a smaller one).

  2. When the enemy decided to destroy building just before it would be taken by your troops. It is common player behavior. Very useful when you want to stop a bit the enemy (he/she has to build new military buildings to reach your territory). Currently AI don't destroy building this way.

In the Settlers II there was a rule that military buildings can't be built too close to each other. The didn't have to provide rule 1.

Mmm I saw the fort that I just conquered exploding as the AI has destroyed the building just before it was taken by my troops. You said that the AI does not do that but what I saw was very close to it. Can some developer confirm that the AI do not self destroy his military building in some specific case?


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Tibor

Joined: 2009-03-23, 23:24
Posts: 1377
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Location: Slovakia
Posted at: 2017-01-02, 12:20

Tricksty wrote:

Mmm I saw the fort that I just conquered exploding as the AI has destroyed the building just before it was taken by my troops. You said that the AI does not do that but what I saw was very close to it. Can some developer confirm that the AI do not self destroy his military building in some specific case?

I can confirm, that AI has not such logic to destroy militarysite under attack. Generally it destroys the militarysites in inland, not nearby enemy or close the borders. And it does not have any logic for retreat from a territory altogether.


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kaputtnik
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Joined: 2013-02-18, 20:48
Posts: 2434
OS: Archlinux
Version: current master
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Location: Germany
Posted at: 2017-01-02, 15:03

Tricksty wrote:

Point 1 - I see the enemy fort behind his line and I can't attack it

Point 4 - The mountain road

we found quite annoying that we could not have a road passing from one side to the other of a mountain that was totally inside our territory.

As einstein13 already said, there are maybe some types of terrains which prevents

  1. Building of roads
  2. Attack an enemy, because there is terrain which makes the enemy unreachable

E.g. if there is Lava between you and your enemy, you couldn't pass the Lava. Same goes for Water, Lava Rocks(1,2) and snow from Greenland. Just take a look into the editor and open "Tools -> Terrains". On the bottom of each type of terrain are little pictograms which shows if this type of terrain isn't walkable (crossed out flag).


Fight simulator for Widelands:
https://wide-fighter.netlify.app/

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Tricksty
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Joined: 2017-01-02, 07:01
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Posted at: 2017-01-02, 16:21

Here it is the screenshot This is the moment when the AI (lower) has build a new tower giving us the ability to be able to attack after 30 min that did not do anything (in that part of the map) https://s27.postimg.org/jlfbt5swz/2017_01_02_16_14_28_Widelands_build_19_Release.png

Under my two fortress I tried to build the only building i could (1 space red -) simple barraks but those (which are not in the screenshot now) did not move the line at all very near the enemy line I could only plant flags.


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king_of_nowhere
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Joined: 2014-09-15, 18:35
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Posted at: 2017-01-02, 18:45

the front line does not move when new buuildings are made. once a military building is made and is controlling some land, the only way to conquer that land is to destroy/conquer the building; this is a difference with settlers 2.

Scouts are a real problem and several times a solution was proposed. so far nothing has been done, but they are definitely on the to-do list. Anyway, in your specific case, you could have fixed it in two ways: upgrade the fortress to citadel, which has higher sight range, or dismantle it and make a tower in its place.

As for the dismantling of military buildings under attack, you are not the only one who think it should be forbidden, but it's actually a VERY important part of game balance. In this game there is no defender bonus, so careful strategic retreat and dismantling of buildings under attack is the only way a player can stall against a stronger army. Without that factor (and also the sight range on fortresses) the game would always end very fast as soon as someone gained a small military advantage, and the game would be much less interesting. In fact, I even proposed to teach the ai to do it, but turned out that there was no easy way to code for that. Regardless, the ai is at the moment not instructed to dismantle buildings, so it is a mistery why it did so to you.


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