13 replies to this topic

[sniggles]

I wish i could drop in more often but life has been a bit hectic of late - damnnn real life - LOL.

I realise it's a formidable statement for a new topic from me after many months away but i don't use it flippantly and have done many days of testing first.

I have REALLY REALLY got back into the game recently and i have decided to bring my original 1.04b version up to date with many new ideas i have been having.

I love the SEE mod and what they have done - and i share a lot of ideas with Naz and Sul about the overall goal of our mods.

I feel there is still a place for my poor old original mod (when i have revamped it) because it can offer some players an alternative or addition to the SEE experience.

E.G. - Although it has no where near the excellent features of SEE it does have a fully functional WOTR and campaign mode and also the CAH works okay and you can save and load any games etc.

Many of these things i'm sure will be fixed over time with the dedication of the SEE team. They will probably expand on it - LOL

OKAY - now introductions are out the way and you all know what i am up to - i want to ask Naz and Sul if i can still post any ideas i come up with on this forum.

I really like you guys and everyone is so much more mature and sensible then the horrible EA forums.

What i would like to do is share my looong experimentation with the complex AI and hopefully give Naz and Sul some ideas to play around with and get everyones opinions.

For instance -

Let's talk THE BIG PICTURE - AI and FEAR!

The SEE team have kept the basic premise of my mod - DEFENSE

All our buildings and units are tougher and so battles last longer and allow you time to think and plan a strategy to hopefully ' OUT THINK ' the AI.

It was the original concept of my mod and why i got into modding BFME2 in the first place and why Naz got so frustrated with the game and startred SEE.

The only downside to this approach is that you lose the FEAR factor of enemy rushes to attack your base early on. We all remember the horrible vanilla game but it did have that sense of 'OH MY GOD' here they come already and KAPOW - all your base buildings are destroyed in seconds - NOT FUN but there was the element of fearing the AI and the possibility of early defeat.

We have lost a lot of that with our approach but gained so much more (try attacking there base early on - LOL - no chance you can rush them and win either)

For a long time i thought that this was an acceptable compromise and indeed it was a lot better then the vanilla approach with 'paper thin' units and fortresses.

NOW I HAVE HAD A BRAINWAVE! .......

I hope a lot of you who love this game can spare 5 minutes to read what i have done to bring that sense of FEAR and possibility of early defeat back into the game.

I have been tinkering with a way to keep the building and unit strenghts high and intact but somehow also get that initial FEAR of possible early defeat back into the game. I think i have really stumbled on a very good way to implement this without radically altering my own mod or the SEE file structures.

The approach is two fold

1) reduce the offensive capability of our defenses so that enemy units are not quickly slaughtered and can actually swarm over us early on and force us to use things like boiling oil or spiderling expansions to survive..

2) make money a much more critical aspect of the game early on so that low tier spells like industry and devastation (think that is what it is called - for harvesting trees etc) are really important to survive the early game period and you will need to think hard on what to buy - finacial mistakes should be devastating.


Okay - achieving target 1)

The answer for me lies in a most innocent set of macros that are so easy to adjust i don't know why we have avoided playing with them before.

The macros are in the gamedata file (water file in SEE) and are basically the ' delay between shots ' control macros for virtually all our base defences.

Have you noticed how fast every single battletower and fortress in the game fires! Just observe - it is pretty unrealistic as well for a simulated archer to fire that fast anyway (apart from maybe Legolas)

You could argue that it is a team of archers firing from the structure but that would mean multiple arrow trajectories (which is only reserved for garrisoned structures) - so in my opinion - fortresses and towers start with a single guard and he is really there to alert the rest of the army and hold off as many as he can untill you bring reinforcements or garrison some archers to make the structure effective (or build multiple towers in the case of fortress expansions)

By GREATLY lowering the delay between shot from milli seconds to actual seconds (1 to 2 seems good in my early testing) we have made our defence more realistic and not impegnable any more.
We have also kept the enemies base defense high since he will always have at least 6 battletowers and all his expansions ready for your onslaught later in the game (with everything upgraded).

In my test battles the TRADE OFF is definetely worth it and the effect on the enemy AI defence is hardly noticable (once it's base is up and running - pretty quick now)

In addition - although this is very optional - i have lowered the attack damage of all my fortresses and towers by about a third - but some of you might think this too extreme.

OKAY - target 1 achieved (in my humble opinion)



Target 2)

MONEY MONEY MONEY - i'm afraid it's time for BFME2 to feel the CREDIT CRUNCH! Why should we be the only ones to suffer! - LOL

The best way i have found to easily reduce our early money income without crippling the AI - is the MONEY_AMOUNT resource income values for farms, outposts and our fortress!

We are still becoming tooo rich tooo early in both the SEE mod and my original mod - money is an essential strategic aspect of the game and is just as important (and hard) to balance as unit strenghts etc.

Those early spells a lot of factions have to increase farm output or get money from killing unit's is just not as important as they should be.

WELL - not anymore - in my tests to really make money critical and important early on you have to reduce farm output by two thirds! TWO THIRDS - WTF - i hear you say!

Vanilla farm output is 30 (rising to about 40 with farm promotions/upgrades) and now i have reduced this to 10 (rising to about 14 at level 3).

Fotress and outposts can be reduced by half or left as they are - it is the farms reduction that is important.

This immediately radically changes the gameplay for the better for a number of reasons.

Maps with outposts are now much more important since you will want to keep control of them as an essential necessity to help with your income and also to prevent the AI getting rich too quick (delay it's attack untill you are ready etc) If you set the outpost income at 80 every 10 seconds compared to 10 every 6 seconds for farms - well - you see my point.

Can make for rather interesting mini battles all over the map as you struggle to hold these points (you really didn't need to bother before)

Also - in my testing - i find i am constantly on the edge of my required money needs in the early game phase and have to reaaly think what i want to upgrade or buy etc. - just as it should be!

It makes purchasing siege kegs or boiling oil etc important as you may not have enough money to get all your towers up and running and besides they fire slower now and do less danage - DECISIONS DECISIONS!

Your defensive structures are no longer so powerfull that once you have 2 or 3 arrow towers up and running (with fire) - you can literally go and make a cup of tea and leave the game running - I've done it - LOL.

In mid to late game though i still have adequate money but not so much that i don't have to worry about my income. Money is an important feature during the whole skirmish battle now as it should be.

In testing it really affects your income and buy strategy when the AI starts destroying your resource buildings - it didn't really matter before as long as you had 4 or 5 good level 3 farms protected by your fortress - WELL - not anymore - every penny counts!

OKAY - sorry to woffle on - i love this game so much.

Target 2 achieved (again - in my opinion and through many days of testing)

Right - be very interested in your opinions and i will paste the settings i am currently using below for anyone that wants to try them out and put the FEAR back into BFME2 and SEE.

IMPORTANT - most of you don't need to be reminded but for newbies reading this -

ALWAYS MAKE A BACK UP COPY OF ANY FILE BEFORE YOU ATTEMPT ANY CHANGES.

In this case the WATER.INI file.

Located in SEE / data / ini / default


Tower and Fortress attack timings i used......


#define GONDOR_STRUCTURE_ARCHER_BOW_PREATTACKDELAY 20
#define GONDOR_STRUCTURE_ARCHER_BOW_DELAYBETWEENSHOTS_MIN 1000 // 20 (in milli secs = 1 second)

#define GONDOR_STRUCTURE_ARCHER_BOW_DELAYBETWEENSHOTS_MAX 2000 // 50
#define GONDOR_STRUCTUR_ARCHER_BOW_FIRINGDURATION 20

#define KEEP_BOW_PREATTACKDELAY 20 // 5
#define KEEP_BOW_DELAYBETWEENSHOTS_MIN 1000 // 20
#define KEEP_BOW_DELAYBETWEENSHOTS_MAX 2000 // 50
#define KEEP_BOW_FIRINGDURATION 20 // 5


Resouce building income

#define ELVEN_MALLORN_TREE_MONEY_AMOUNT 10 // 30
do the same for other 5 resource buildings



Tower and Fortress attack damage - OPTIONAL

#define STRUCTURE_BOW_DAMAGE 50 // 75

#define KEEP_BOW_DAMAGE 50 // 75
#define KEEP_BOW_UPGRADED_DAMAGE 60 // 75


Be very interested in your opinion guys and give it a go - it may need some minor tweaking to make it more easier but it works.

Vetereran players like me and most of you should just try my settings for now - BOY - is it a challenge!

All the best,

Mark.

[ttandchotmail]

G'day Sniggles

I have to get to work in a few seconds but will read the rest when I get home. Sounds good so far

[zachdaddy_3000]

This sounds some really good idea sniggles! I'm all for them!

I just hope that the S.E.E. team gets that Evil Men fortress done soon so we don't completely fall by the wayside!

[sniggles]

Hi again,

Maybe better settings for any of you guys wishing to try this is.....

Half the 6 resouce building incomes to 15 (not 10 as i first advised)

Leave the tower and fortress attack damages as they are - 75 (was optional anyway)



My initial settings make the game very hard but still fun.

In the middle of a 3 hour skirmish battle at the moment so that's why i am advising the new settings above to start off and then you can always change them if you find the game still too easy and want an epic challenge!

[ttandchotmail]

G'day again sniggles

Ok I've read thru the post and those guys from the EA forum were immature hahahahah. . . hang on a minute I'M FROM THE EA FORUM

But getting over that little step I read thru the rest and what you say does sound good but ( their's always a but ) I'm not sold on the credit crunch. You've mentioned that you want to make spells like the deforestation more important but not all factions have spells like that. I don't think gondor does and if/when rohan gets split I kind of doubt rohan would either. I don't think the elves have anything like that either. I'm all for a good couple of hours of good rts bashing but this might make the games even longer, from 1-3 hours to 3-5 hours long per battle. I don't think that would appeal to many gamers out there. Even the few die hard rts players out there might chringe at that a little.

Perhaps leaving the $$$ income the way it is and increasing the output of those spells when applied might work better. This would also make the spells more important to the player.In your testing how long did the games go for?

Edited by ttandchotmail, 27 April 2009 - 05:41 AM.

[zachdaddy_3000]

Ah, TTandC, You forget about MotW's marketplace, as would anyone else who doesn't really feel like it's very necessary! The farms indeed SHOULD be brought down, especially considering the extremely small radii that they have now, so as to fit more closer to the fortress. This would only give more of a sense of REALISM which S.E.E. is going for! Of course elves shouldn't have that much in the way of income! I believe that more people would USE MotW's marketplace in order to boost their farms and so on and so forth. This lower income from farms is a great idea that should be put in IMMEDIATELY by the coders of S.E.E.

[Sûlherokhh]

Very interesting.

[sniggles]

Thanks for all your excellent ideas guys.

Regardless of how long or short these adjustments will make our skirmish battles the more i test out the changes i can see that we should definetely lower the income from farms and the 'delay between shots' to some extent.

It may not be necessary to use my extreme settings but if i can win a skirmish battle with farms set on a third then we do need to drop the income by some amount.

You could say that my initial settings of 10 for farm income and 1 to 2 seconds for delay between shots would be classed as very hard and lead to loooong epic skirmish battles.

Therefore if you use 15 for farm income and say 500 milli seconds to 1 second for delay between shots (hereafter now abbreviated to 'DBS') - this would represent a medium difficulty and lead to average length skirmish battles.

You get my drift.

What the SEE team have to decide is what would be a good compromise - how long should a skirmish battle last.

That's like asking how long is a piece of string - actually if anyone uses that old proverb on you just say - twice the distance from the ends to the middle - LOL - SORRY - my sense of humor is crapp.

About the idea to have a more complex economy system - very interesting - BUT - we mustn't forget that this is not Settlers or Civilisation. The gameplay is pretty fast and fluid really (even though it has been slowed down a lot with SEE) - and i don't think a really complex farm system is worth the efort to mod.

Maybe farms could be a bit more involving like someone suggested whereby there production and 'value' is very low at level 1 but a lot more at level 3 and it takes a lot longer to reach these levels. In other words a more extreme version of what the game already uses.

Would make resource buildings more valuable when they reach level 3 and i may actually care if they get destroyed at this level! At the moment - farms promote so fast i just plonk them all over the place and forget about them - interesting - i may play around with there production values and do some testing.

May even be worth building walls around a group of farms you want to level up and protect!

Remeber - MODDING - is addictive - just because we can mod something doesn't mean we should!

Anyway - back to my testing.

[sniggles]

OKAY - more ideas

Thanks to suggestions from ' guest ' i may expand the economy system slightly or make it more complex if you like.

Originally i wanted to make money harder to accumulate in the early game and you can easily achieve this by lowering farm incomes from 30 to 15 or even 10.

The new idea is to also make us care about the level or promotion status of our resource buildings so it is a sort of mini worry or challenge in the early phase of the game when you are setting up your base and getting your economy going.

To achieve this is not too difficult and all the macros (settings) are already in the water (gamedata) file.

A typical vanilla farm in the game has......


Income - 30

Experience needed to reach level 2 - 1200
Level 2 bonus production multiplier - 1.25

Experience needed to reach level 3 - 2700
Level 3 bonus production multiplier - 1.5


The new settings i am testing at the moment are.......


Income - 10

Experience needed to reach level 2 - 2400 (double - but could try 1800 if you are impatient)
Level 2 bonus production multiplier - 1.5

Experience needed to reach level 3 - 5400 (again double or try 4000)
Level 3 bonus production multiplier - 2.0


You can see from the stats that it now takes longer (double the experience needed) to reaach level 2 and 3 but the production output is higher when our farms get promoted.

This means the player is still struggling with money management and hard financial decisions early in the game and for longer (when he is only getting 10 income per farm) but if he manages to look after his farms (or at least a small group of them) he will reap the rewards in mid to late game and have adequate to good money for his plans.

In early testing it looks good and it really hurts now if the AI takes out too many of your promoted resource buildings.

This is probably as complex as we should go with the economy system because this game is very hectic and action orientated in mid to late game and as i have mentioned befroe - it is not settlers or civilisation.

Let me know what you guys think.

[ttandchotmail]

G'day Z

Doh!! forgot about that but still each faction should have something similar or something to counter this. Not sure which elves should get. Cheaper elvish forge maybe? Not sure, that's just off the top of the head.

G'day Sniggles

In concerns to how long a skirmish battle should last your absolutely right about the length of string. I can only speak for myself and say no longer than 4 hours for me. I'm not sure what other gamers are like though The rest of what you have said here though is sounding damn good to me though

Perhaps different settings for diffferent levels of difficulty would be the best way to go. Harder the difficulty the longer the game goes for and harder teh economy is to build

[Hel Gast]

I am the original poster of: http://forums.revora...&...st&p=707631

I will look into the suggestions of snuggles, sounds good.

I hope I can find the time to do my own testing in the summer holidays. But can keep up with all ideas and provide input until then.


Further:
Bad guys: deforestation, producing enhancement spells and other spells,
Idea: Quick 'magic' based resource gathering


Good guys,
Gondor: Marketplace improvements,
Dwarven: These super-expensive-super-resource mines,
Rohan: If separated, then they can have lower farm prices (they are all farmers), lower production but quicker level up and a marketplace like-improvement that affects all farms (but not as great as it benefices Gondor).
Elves: I don't know what the current status of elven resources is. Read somewhere that they are also going to get farms? So can't decide what to give them. But if they get farms, then I can imagine a per-farm upgrade to enhance production.

Idea: Structural slower resource start, but improvements can lead to a better economy later on (marketplace upgrades, mithrill mines?, upgraded elven farms).

[Lord of the Rings Junkie]

I agree with you somewhat on the money issue, but I heartily agree with reducing the DBS on towers. This would give ents and other siege equipment a much needed boost against towers with fire arrows.

Limiting funds would also limit heroes to later in the game, which I think is a good thing.

Edited by Lord of the Rings Junkie, 07 October 2009 - 01:11 AM.