time limit misery

[telly]

I saw another topic about time limits and I thought I'd post my complaint/idea.

I was playing a game last week with three very inexperienced players and like my teammate rushed with his white on the front line and lasted like 3 turns oh dear :). So I took all his villages and had a comfortable position but still had to surrender. The time limit was on and even though at that point I felt I had the advantage and was winning the game I didn't have nearly enough time to move all my units as I had basically twice as many units as either of the other two players but half the time to move them. If you follow. Which was just really annoying. Maybe there should at least be a basic time bonus for each unit you have like +10 or 15 seconds that gives you at least a realistic amount of time to move them.

[UngeheuerLich]

you can get an action bonus, so start with the units on the front lines (you don´t lose because you have more units, even if they are standing still in a corner.

although it should not be too difficult to add a slider which allows giving some seconds of bonus for each unit moved, or redefining the "action" so that moving is enough to get the bonus...

but it depends on the developers if they think it is worth the time unless someone else does it... (not me )

[Sapient]

Action Bonus is granted for exactly that purpose, so that your time to play your turn will scale upward with your army size. It sounds like the host set the game up with the time limit set to a lower amount than you desired.

Turn Bonus is the time you need for general re-positioning and strategizing each turn. If you do not attack / recruit / or capture a village, then you do not get an action bonus. This is to prevent people from sliding walking corpses back and forth to cheat the timer system.

[telly]

The action bonus is the worst idea ever. You can't just recruit extra units or take villages whenever you want extra seconds or just attack randomly either for that matter. Unless you want to lose. Just don't give a time bonus for level 0 units if you're worried about that sort of spam.

[IB]

You could just refuse to play games with time limits.

[Imp]

I agree with IB.

On that note, the action bonus is the most awesome idea ever in this context.

[irrevenant]

I think a flat X seconds per unit (to a minimum time of Y) is more elegant than an action bonus.

If you recruit a unit, presumably you would have X seconds added for that, too.

[Sapient]

I think a flat X seconds per unit (to a minimum time of Y) is more elegant than an action bonus.

If you recruit a unit, presumably you would have X seconds added for that, too.

Getting time for every unit means that you could recruit a bunch of walking corpses just to boost your timer. This may not seem like a big abuse to you, but if you think about speed matchups it really does matter. If you don't believe me, just try to implement it and then see how many people complain.

[Weeksy]

I think that anyone who'd abuse something like that would wind up getting kicked or would wind up with a bit of a disadvantage... If you don't like it in your speed games, don't turn it on, but those of us who would use it would greatly appreciate it if one more slieder was added to the time menu, and I personally would like it a little bit more if the sliders were in a separate menu like the one for the settings on a random map... but that's just my take on things.

[zookeeper]

Getting time for every unit means that you could recruit a bunch of walking corpses just to boost your timer. This may not seem like a big abuse to you, but if you think about speed matchups it really does matter. If you don't believe me, just try to implement it and then see how many people complain.

How is wasting your gold to buy some time a problem? Going to waste 6g just to buy a few seconds more? Sounds like a plan for losing to me.

[UngeheuerLich]

first of all, you still don´t have a disadvantage when you have more units. you get the same time bonus per round and maybe an action bonus, so even if you can´t move all your units, you can still move equal or more units as your enemy... in the worst case, your enemy turns the game a bit in his favour but he can´t overtake you. In chess, it is exactly is even worse... you can have the best position, and when time is over, you lose... in wesnoth you just have to skip a turn... and your units retaliate...

now where i think about walking corpses, i must test if you get action bonuses for recruiting them, undo, recruiting...

[Sapient]

Here's the orginal timer thread: http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic. ... highlight=

Now how would you like to be on the losing side and watch your enemy with an oversized army sit idly for long periods of time? That defeats the entire purpose of the timer system. Action bonus rewards players for taking action, and it already scales upwards with army size, thus solving exactly this problem!

I'm tired of debating this, though. If you want a straight per-unit time bonus, just consider me to be in disagreement despite my lack of further comments.

[telly]

first of all, you still don´t have a disadvantage when you have more units. you get the same time bonus per round and maybe an action bonus, so even if you can´t move all your units, you can still move equal or more units as your enemy... in the worst case, your enemy turns the game a bit in his favour but he can´t overtake you. In chess, it is exactly is even worse... you can have the best position, and when time is over, you lose... in wesnoth you just have to skip a turn... and your units retaliate...

now where i think about walking corpses, i must test if you get action bonuses for recruiting them, undo, recruiting...

;)

You didn't read my original post or maybe I wasn't clear enough. This was a 2v2 which turned into a 2v1 after my teammate got annihilated very early on. So they got twice the time bonus I did, with the same number of units.

[telly]

Now how would you like to be on the losing side and watch your enemy with an oversized army sit idly for long periods of time? That defeats the entire purpose of the timer system. Action bonus rewards players for taking action, and it already scales upwards with army size, thus solving exactly this problem!

If someone doesn't want to move, they can just do nothing and end turn. The action bonus makes things worse even, as they can just spam level 0 units or whatever and bank even more time each turn.

[Imp]

I think Sapient has made some stellar points. As somebody who enjoys a variety of games at the speed of lightning, this kind of abuse would give the abuser a large advantage.

However, I think telly's idea has merit - time bonus per unit except for lvl 0 units. It stops the zombie spam abuse while allowing time to think at the start of the player's turn before making poorly thought through attacks due to having only 1 second left. Perhaps the extra time should also be scaled based on the unit's cost. After all, 3 drake burners vs 5 elvish fighters cost the same, but the difference in time the players get can be quite large. Yet both sides would require roughly the same amount of time to think through their moves - fewer units require more carefully thought-out moves per unit as the loss of a unit represents a larger loss of gold. Balance it out with the fewer units, and we should arrive at a time requirement proportional to the gold ratio used.