Topic: "Northmen" Tribe Page

Nordfriese wrote:

WorldSavior wrote:

Okay. Luckily, I already started testing the day before yesterday, I found out how to download the files and how to move them

Glad you got it working at last

Barley farms need ca. 200s for barley, while atl. corn farms need ca. 75s and barbarian grain farms ca. 100s.

The extra-slow growth was discussed before.

Yes. But I still think that it doesn't mean that the farm works slower in general. It just means that the farm is surrounded by more fields at the same time...

It just means frisians need ~ twice as many farms as empire or barbarians. I never found this a big problem, even on maps with few big plots…

I think it is a problem. And so far I played only with surface mines. I don't really want to know what happens if one plays only with farm-needing deep mines

I recommend to remove between 100 and 140 seconds from the slow-down-times of barley farms...

Notice that empire and barbarians need sometimes also a very high amount of farms, so if frisians need right now twice as much farms as them, it is not a good balance...

Berry growth in dependence of terrains is a huge problem. For example frisians are very bad at Ice Wars or other wintermaps, as you need in the tundra ca. 4 berry planters for 1 collector. Wouldn't it be better to simplify it a lot so berries have perfect growth like other plants?

I can fix this by revisiting the terrain affinity parameters, so each terrain has at least one well-growing bush (>70% ?)

This would be a step in the right direction, I guess. 70% could be still too low, as berry farms are not super cheap... (Compared with barbarian game keepers for example)

(By the way, what about allowing fruit collectors to harvest from imperial whine?)

This would make sense. After all, grapes are fruit too, and bee-keepers can already use other tribes´ fields/shrubs for honey…

That would be a funny detail, as you could steal from hostile whineyards, or you can - under circumstances - exploit whineyards of an allied player which he doesn't need anymore

All things considered the tribe seems to be very disadvantaged to me, especially at huge maps. Even the case that the starting resources are unusually high cannot compensate that...

What do you suggest to improve this? More efficient mines, perhaps?

As I said, improving the barley farms and the berry growth... Effiency of mines? Good question. Maybe deep mines (coal, iron, gold) could have 25% more effiency and speed? (By the way I didn't thought much about rock mines yet).

Other improvements could be to speed up weapon smithies significantly, especially the big ones.

And I thought about the following changes:

• removing 1 iron from helmet costs
• removing 1 iron from curved sword costs
• after training with curved swords, let trainers put out only 1 scrap iron (per curved sword) instead of 2
• removing 1 iron from golden helmet costs
• removing 1 gold from double sword costs

What about letting fur clothes cost only 1 fur instead of 2?

It is possible that frisians are stronger than I think at small maps, but I already tested two strategies (barracks only and attack-1-upgrade only) and they don't lead to big success.

Build a basic infrastructure, a small mining economy with one coal mine and one iron mine, a small armour smithy, a reindeer farm, a seamstress, a barracks and as many farms as possible. Doing this quickly allowed me always to beat the AI if I met it before it started training its soldiers.

I did that and build even more, but every other tribe is much better in recruiting new soldiers... And if you want to use small training camps which should train in attack 1 or attack1+health1 they work really slow, because they possibly try to equip with fur before helmets and before swords (and fail and wait), so I think that it would be better if they start first with attack 1, then with health 1, then continue with other stuff...

But at the other hand: Towers are maybe overpowered buildings? They make fortresses almost superfluous, as you can just build a tower and an outpost instead of a fortress, or even two towers.

How about reducing the tower´s conquer range

Yes, 10 or 9 would be better. I'd vote for 9.

and healing rate slightly

I don't have that much against it's healing rate, it's 190 and the atlantean high tower has 170...

and increasing its buildcost of bricks,

I don't know

and letting the fortress store one or two soldiers extra?

Maybe one extra? They seem to be cheaper than atlantean castles...

And wooden towers and high wooden towers are also very powerful tools, as they are small buildings with 15 / 17 sight range while atlantean small towers have only 13. I don't know if one should make them less powerful, but are there some opinions about it?

Wooden towers have a good vision range, but they are very vulnerable in battle. They have only 1|2 soldiers and a terrible healing rate…
If you use them near the front line, the enemy should be able to destroy them fairly easily unless you give them good protection, or he even captures them and then he gets all the advantages

Capturing military buildings is never necessary

If you say so

Anyway, as frisians cannot build "normal" towers at medium building places, it is good that they can at least build high wooden towers there

By the way, there is a bug with aqua farms. If not supplied by claypits, they will consume 3water+1fruit but not do anything.

I could fix this by letting the worker start work only if the 3water+1fruit are available and consume them after the pond has been filled…

That would be unusual, but probably a good solution

A check for availability of a dry pond before consuming the wares would be better but is not possible.

By the way, what do you think about allowing atlantean fish breeders to breed in the ponds? And maybe there could be interaction with fishers, too?

All fishers and the atlantean fish breeders are completely incompatible with these ponds. They look for fields with the resource fish (which then gets depleted/increased), but a pond is a field that is occupied by an immovable (a program of which is called by the worker). I cannot imagine a way to allow this without reducing them to 50% productivity when there are no ponds nearby.

Okay...

Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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Tinker wrote:

I have been testing Frisians almost from the beginning, probably several hundred games on various maps, and do not find them to be greatly disadvantaged.

Maybe you overlook something? Or you don't know the other tribes that well?

They do need skill to play well and their small disadvantages in some areas are made up for by advantages in others.

I've got some skills and I see that they have huge disadvantages. By the way, for example they need for every training step of soldiers some metal, while every other tribe has got 2 trainings steps without any metal.

Which advantages of frisians do you see? They need very few wood, all of their towers are an advantage, but which of their advantages can compensate their disadvantages?

Fruit dependencies on terrain is a new problem and the proposed fix should be good. There is no need to speed up production massively as proposed as that would make the tribe to easy to play.

Yes, frisians need a significant speedup. Still it would not be too easy to play them, and they would be still very complex.

There have to be economic problems to solve to keep the game interesting otherwise WL just becomes a race to create level 10 soldiers and jump on any enemies, which is the most boring way to play.

What is boring about that? If you play that way, you have to solve as many economic problems as possible. How do you play widelands instead?

Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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Nordfriese wrote:

There have to be economic problems to solve to keep the game interesting otherwise WL just becomes a race to create level 10 soldiers and jump on any enemies, which is the most boring way to play.

What is boring about that? If you play that way, you have to solve as many economic problems as possible. How do you play widelands instead?

When I started playing Widelands (build 16), I didn´t care at all about making strong soldiers quickly. For me, Widelands was about discovery, expansion, and solving the problems that kept appearing in my economy. I enjoyed this, and Widelands soon became my favourite game.
When I switched to build 19, I started caring about getting supersoldiers fast. Widelands then lost most of its fun for me.

Why?

Nowadays, I usually play a worse strategy than I could, sometimes being defeated by the AI, but to me, this way of playing is much more fun.

This is to say, there are as many ways to play as there are players, and the development shouldn´t be focused too much on one strategy.

I also have always the win conditions collectors, wood gnome, territiorial time and territorial lord in mind.

That is why it is important that supersoldier training is not greatly disadvantaged, but players who just want a complicated economy with many things that can go wrong and need clever management mustn´t feel like this extra-complex tribe is too focused on efficient military training.

So you never wanted that the tribes are balanced?

Frisians are in my opinion focused on being complex. But I didn't say that much against that, I just think that they are too slow. As I said, speeding them up wouldn't simplify them.

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I renamed the tavern´s cycles to produce_malus and produce_bonus for clarity. I fixed the programs so the tavern is not slowed by the additional sleep time any more when using only fruit for rations.

The tower had its conquer radius reduced to 10. I´m against lowering it to 9, because it would be no better than an outpost then.

Okay...

The fortress now stores 12 soldiers. I don´t think it´s really cheaper than an atlantean castle…

As it contains 10 bricks, it's hard to say.

Berry bushes now have excellent growth chances (~90%) on their best terrain, and each terrain has at least one bush with a very good chance.

Really each terrain instead of each "world"? That would be good

Didn´t playtest the new values much yet, but they seem good. Some bushes now prefer completely different terrain, e.g. the black current moved from greenland meadows to blackland (otherwise some terrains would not have a typical bush).

What about letting fur clothes cost only 1 fur instead of 2?

No. In my experience, the limit of soldier recruitment (especially on small maps) is nearly always the production of fur.

Yes, it is

This change would be a massive speedup and a much too great advantage.

I don't think so. Atlanteans and Empire need also only one farm ware for clothes...

Other improvements could be to speed up weapon smithies significantly, especially the big ones.

I´m against the metal cost changes,

Even if you'd not have to implement them? The current metal costs don't make that much sense. Probably they should be reduced even more than I suggested. For example long swords could cost one iron less, so equipping a soldier with a long sword wouldn't consume iron ore as you can recycle...

but a speed bonus (33% faster for big and 10% for small smithy?) might be good…

I was rather thinking about something like 150% faster (big) and 66% (small) as the current speeds don't make that much sense... Mainly the higher weapons need a speed up, by the way.

Farms: Perhaps they could be a bit faster, but not that much.

Why not? Do you really want that barley farms are ridiculously slow, so the tribe has got no chances against other tribes?

Or how about increasing the growth times from 3× as wheat to ~4×, and having the farmer produce 2 barley from one field?

Barley fields look similar to wheat fields, so why should they give an amount which is twice as big?

By the way: Why deliver reindeer farms sometimes 1 fur and 1 meat and sometimes only 1 meat? And what about implementing economy settings for meat?

And what about increasing the default economy settings of clay from 10 to 40? I mean, clay costs only cheap water, but the clay pits are much more expensive than wells.

Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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kaputtnik wrote:

Why don't you play some test rounds with different win conditions against each other

I've never seen Nordfriese and Tinker playing online, so I believe that they usually don't do that

Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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Nordfriese wrote:

WorldSavior wrote:

Nordfriese wrote:

There have to be economic problems to solve to keep the game interesting otherwise WL just becomes a race to create level 10 soldiers and jump on any enemies, which is the most boring way to play.

What is boring about that? If you play that way, you have to solve as many economic problems as possible. How do you play widelands instead?

When I started playing Widelands (build 16), I didn´t care at all about making strong soldiers quickly. For me, Widelands was about discovery, expansion, and solving the problems that kept appearing in my economy. I enjoyed this, and Widelands soon became my favourite game. When I switched to build 19, I started caring about getting supersoldiers fast. Widelands then lost most of its fun for me.

Why?

Better question: Why do you enjoy extra-fast soldier training more than a slow-paced game of expand-and-discover?

(The question is not better )

Because the latter is boring for me. I've already discovered enough maps in Widelands, I rather look at new maps in the map editor than discovering them by playing, because this bores me. And expanding is contained in every normal match which I play anyway.

At the other hand, playing as well as possible in Widelands is simply one of the most complex tasks which the game offers. When I was a newbie in the game, I had some problems with playing well, and I liked to learn how to solve the problems and how to apply the solutions in new matches...

And in online matches, most people just want to play autocrat. Winning is fun.

So, how can Widelands become less good if one starts caring about training perfect soldiers?

Nowadays, I usually play a worse strategy than I could, sometimes being defeated by the AI, but to me, this way of playing is much more fun.

This is to say, there are as many ways to play as there are players, and the development shouldn´t be focused too much on one strategy.

I also have always the win conditions collectors, wood gnome, territiorial time and territorial lord in mind.

And there´s the difference in your and mine approach to the theory of tribe balancing: You want the tribe to be well-balanced against the others with regard to the chance to win the game, whereas I think about the fun it is to play with the tribe and build up a good economy. …

The good thing is that both wishes are completely compatible, aren't they? I don't see a problem here

That is why it is important that supersoldier training is not greatly disadvantaged, but players who just want a complicated economy with many things that can go wrong and need clever management mustn´t feel like this extra-complex tribe is too focused on efficient military training.

So you never wanted that the tribes are balanced?

See above… of course balancing is important, but for me, having fun while playing is even more important… If one tribe had a great advantage over the others, this would be a problem. But let´s assume for a moment that the disadvantages were not fixed. Then players playing Frisians would be at a disadvantage if they want to win the game (like you). Players who care less about winning (like me) than about the fun of playing would still have an interesting, complex tribe; the disadvantages become permanent challenges to overcome.

So basicly you want that frisians are not a normal tribe, but a challenge tribe? What about achieving that they are a normal tribe with headquarters and implementing a new start condition which is challenging?

Frisians are in my opinion focused on being complex. But I didn't say that much against that, I just think that they are too slow. As I said, speeding them up wouldn't simplify them.

That´s true, but I still think a major speedup would make the tribe less interesting to play with.

How?

Some time ago, I suggested some changes to barbarian mining economy, including speeding up the barbarian tavern, and you (and others) provided an impressive number of reasons why this would not be a good change. Quite many of these arguments are applicable here…

Barbarians are one of the established tribes, Frisians are under big development and not even part of the official game...

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The fortress now stores 12 soldiers. I don´t think it´s really cheaper than an atlantean castle…

As it contains 10 bricks, it's hard to say.

It´s like comparing apples to pears

Actually one could at least compare how much space is required for producing each building ware per time But it's not the perfect comparison

But I think their costs can be considered roughly equal.

I don't know

Berry bushes now have excellent growth chances (~90%) on their best terrain, and each terrain has at least one bush with a very good chance.

Really each terrain instead of each "world"? That would be good

Each world has some typical bushes. These grow really well (>90%) on the most common terrains of the world. Each terrain (with few exceptions of rarely used terrains, such as beaches) has at least one bush with a fairly good (>>70%) growth chance. The overall growth is now very good in nearly all places. After all, the principal idea of terrain-dependant growth for bushes is to bring more variety into the landscape, rather than force players to build berry farms only on the best terrains.

Okay...

What about letting fur clothes cost only 1 fur instead of 2?

No. In my experience, the limit of soldier recruitment (especially on small maps) is nearly always the production of fur.

Yes, it is

This change would be a massive speedup and a much too great advantage.

I don't think so. Atlanteans and Empire need also only one farm ware for clothes...

I´m certain that it would really make Frisians too strong in games with fast fighting. You could try this out, but I´m sure you´ll find it ridiculously easy to win then without even training your soldiers…

I don't think so: Atlanteans are very strong in those matches, as they can use their labyrinth and reaching supersoldiers very fast; the empire outmatches frisian rookies easily with arena and/or colosseum and barbarians can outnumber the frisians quickly or outclass them by using their trainings camp...

Other improvements could be to speed up weapon smithies significantly, especially the big ones.

I´m against the metal cost changes,

Even if you'd not have to implement them? The current metal costs don't make that much sense. Probably they should be reduced even more than I suggested. For example long swords could cost one iron less, so equipping a soldier with a long sword wouldn't consume iron ore as you can recycle...

If long swords were one iron cheaper, they´d cost the same as basic swords. Seriously?

Yes, seriously. Barbarians also have to different axes of same costs. Frisians should use this principle somewhere imho... Or theoretically it's possible to add one coal to the long sword costs then.

but a speed bonus (33% faster for big and 10% for small smithy?) might be good…

I was rather thinking about something like 150% faster (big) and 66% (small) as the current speeds don't make that much sense... Mainly the higher weapons need a speed up, by the way.

We have a different way of measuring the percentage here. When I say "33%", I mean decreasing the current work+sleep times by 33%. I don´t know how exactly you mean 150%…

Decreasing sleep times by 33% doesn't means that buildings become 33% faster, but 50%. The frequency of the buildings gets lowered by 33%... So speeding up by 150% means simply that the frequency gets lowered by 60%. Speeding up by 66% means lowering the frequency by 40%.

Farms: Perhaps they could be a bit faster, but not that much.

Why not? Do you really want that barley farms are ridiculously slow, so the tribe has got no chances against other tribes?

That´s not at all what I experience whenever I play frisians

Why? Do you play against human players of your skill levels, which play other tribes, but you defeat them? Oh wait, you don't do it, because you don't play online

Or how about increasing the growth times from 3× as wheat to ~4×, and having the farmer produce 2 barley from one field?

Barley fields look similar to wheat fields, so why should they give an amount which is twice as big?

Perhaps because I just didn´t bother to create graphics that look more different?

So barley has got a much bigger efficiency per space than wheat - in reality?

If they were as tall as corn and blackroot fields, would you then say this makes sense?

Depends on the circumstances in reality...

By the way: Why deliver reindeer farms sometimes 1 fur and 1 meat and sometimes only 1 meat? And what about implementing economy settings for meat?

They never produce only meat. They make fur, and additionally produce 1 meat on every 3rd fur production cycle. And reindeer farms produce fur (with 1/3 meat as a by-product) if and only if fur is needed. If your economy needs meat but no fur, they won´t produce.

I know

Reindeer farms are not intended to work like of imperial piggeries.

But if one wants that they work like that, one has probably to increase the fur economy settings all the time

And what about increasing the default economy settings of clay from 10 to 40? I mean, clay costs only cheap water, but the clay pits are much more expensive than wells.

40 is a bit high, but 20-30 would make sense.

If the claypits don't start to work immediately (by default) - does it make sense?

kaputtnik wrote:

Why don't you play some test rounds with different win conditions against each other

That would be very interesting…

Also for me? Not boring?

But I have little time to play at the moment, and anyway I doubt my internet connection is good enough

That's a pity

Wanted to save the world, then I got widetracked

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