A New Land addon - Wesnoth 1.4

[TL]

Something odd I've noticed. How come the AI behavior for The Last Stand has changed in the last few versions? The AI now sends units to attack the webbed units even before they're rescued, and the spiders will leave their caves to attack (although more often they attack the trapped units and die). This seems to make things generally a lot easier, since the trapped units will draw off and kill a lot of enemies (especially in the south) without the players having to do anything.

[Kernigh]

Something odd I've noticed. How come the AI behavior for The Last Stand has changed in the last few versions?

I have not noticed any changes, so I checked the WML. The settings for the AI side that holds the trapped creatures (before rescue) are the same in 0.8.5r02 and in 0.9.0a:

Code: Select all

[side]
        side=9
        canrecruit=0
        controller=null
        allow_player=no
        no_leader=yes
        team_name=1
        income=0
        village_gold=0
        team_lock=yes
        gold_lock=yes
        income_lock=yes
        allow_player=no
        [ai]
                ai_algorithm=idle_ai
        [/ai]
[/side]


The configuration of the spiders is the same:

Code: Select all

[unit]
        side=5
        type="Giant Spider"
        ai_special=guardian
        x=29
        y=13
        hitpoints=4
[/unit]


Even when playing my latest patch, I have not seen the orcs and undead AI send any units against the webbed units. I have sometimes seen the spider make a suicide attack after I injure it. In older versions, the spider would suicide on the webbed unit, while in newer versions it would suicide on one of my units just outside the cave, but I suppose that this is because I have changed my strategy to send more units north-south instead of west-east.

Perhaps the changes that TL observed are not changes in the AI settings, but an AI reaction to TL's newer strategies.

However, if TL does have a way to convince the AI to suicide many units against the webbed units, then we have a bug.

[TL]

Bizarre. I can't think of why the guardian AI would not be working but it definitely isn't for me. My last few solo games I generally find the spiders dead before I get there and the trapped units often wounded and poisoned. The exception is that the gryphon seems to die more often than not, at which point the spider charges my base even when I haven't bothered trying to rescue the trapped units and am several turns of movement away from the caves. I've seen the spider come down and capture the village even when I have no units there to attack, which should be impossible for guardian AI. Maybe this is a bug in 1.2.5?

Simply sticking to base and defending seems to be enough to get the southeast AI (white undead team) to send most of its zombies at the wose; in my last few offline game attempts I fought maybe 1 white WC tops in the first 10 or so turns. Southwest AI (orange orcs) seems to be splitting its units most of the time, I see some goblins but not as many as normal and I have spotted some heading south into the ogre cave. Black and brown AIs mostly seem to ignore the trapped units on their sides (although in black's case this might be because the gryphon tends to be dead anyhow, but I don't usually see any brown units heading for the drake even though I know it's alive).

[governor]

0.9.1 Status:

Replaced mobo on main machine due to IDE controller failure and south bridge issues (VIA chipsets suck, nForce from now on). New install of windows on new hd. Used HD caddy to transfer all files from old hd to new hd. NTFS partition failure while copying files. NTFS recognized as unformatted FAT32 - GAME OVER: I LOSE. No free tools (even on the UBCD) had anything that succeeded in recovering data.

Starting again. ANL was pretty much the only active project that was not backed up other than the 0.9.0a release on the add-on server.

Woot for windows.

[governor]

Uploaded 0.9.0b to the add-on server.

This is a maintenance release that I quickly made since 0.9.1 is now much further from completion. (Especially now that I need to motivate myself to do the same thing twice.)

Release Notes
Version 0.9.0b
-------------------

0.9.0a had fewer problems than I expected, and since I lost 0.9.1, I decided to release 0.9.0b for minor fixes.

- {BEGIN_BUILD_DIALOGUE} fixed an error that didn't use a parameter properly. This was a relic from a while ago.
- {BLKSMTH_OPTION} @+2 Ranged Damage.. costs 3 iron, as it should.
- Changed to a [filter_location] instead of an {IF_TERRAIN} for: leaders.cfg, mages.cfg, macros.cfg(x2). This should allow undos for combat units.
- Updated peasants.cfg and auto_peasant.cfg to comma separated terrain lists.
- Added G (Savannah) to cash crop initialization (builders and peasants).
- Added {BUILDER_FOREST_ACTIONS}, {BUILDER_WATER_ACTIONS}, {BUILDER_FORD_ACTIONS}, {BUILDER_RUBBLE_ACTIONS}, {BUILDER_CAVE_ACTIONS} macros. Didn't change any prices.
- Added G (Savannah) to autopeasant.cfg logic.
- Added {BUILDER_XXXX_ACTIONS) actions to scenarios.
- Added {SHOW_HELP_ON_MOVE} to misc.cfg.
- All sides now get the help dialogue.
- Added {REDRAW} macro to macros.cfg
- Added {CONCATENATE} macro to macros.cfg
- {FARM_MOVE} replaced by {AUTO_MOVE_INIT}
- Flooding the field now costs 4 gold. This option gives a player a huge advantage and I may considering upping the price further.
- All peasants/builders initialize auto farming/mining properly now. No more 1 turn lag. (For those interested: I used unit.description and string comparison to accomplish this task. Look at auto_peasant.cfg fpor details.)
- Removed "default" from release. I actually saw people playing this map in mp on the server. As if TLS isn't easy enough already. This map was for testing purposes only, especially for people like Kernigh which do their own patching.

Also, I would like to ask a moderator to give me the ability to change the thread subject.

[Kernigh]

I have heard that "A New Land: End Of Days" is so easy that one player can win by using the retreat-into-a-cave strategy. So I decided to test that.

Question: May a single player, starting with default 100 gold, win End Of Days, when the three other player slots are empty and the experience modifier is default 60%?

Answer: YES.

I started with a Rogue leader. I recruited four peasants and captured one of the four central villages. Then I fled to the north cave. I constructed the best fortification in A New Land: a wall of villages adjacent to a canal of shallow water. I had to build four of the villages (4 x 15) and five of the water hexes (5 x 4), but I could afford the bill of 80 gold.

There were some annoyances. My north cave was infested with two spiders, and I almost lost my leader twice. However, my leader prevailed and leveled from Rogue to Assassin. I also let a walking corpse crawl onto the center canal-village, because four peasants and a leader was not enough to hold the fortification and also build a castle to recruit more units. I finally killed the corpse and recaptured the village on turn 14. Later, a skeleton and a skeleton archer slew two of my more experienced peasants and occupied two of my canal-villages. By then, I could afford Mages, so I quickly retook the villages.

Ultimately, though I never was able to recruit any military units, the 60% experience modifier, the village-canal, and the large number of enemies made it easy for me to level some Peasants into Spearmen. It became apparent that I would easily survive to turn 25. It was a long wait, because the AI took long turns as it parked a mass of units in front of my village-canal. At one point, the moving of my gryphon, across four hexes, revealed 29 more enemy units. The attached image (turn25.png), except for that black rectangle, shows my winning situation at the start of turn 25.

[TL]

Oh, heck. You can survive with 25 gold. Take a white mage, recruit 2 peasants, and beeline to the northwest undead's mushroom farms (be sure to capture the side village on the way for a couple extra gold). Nuke the zombies, have the peasants flood the tunnel (the nice 1-hex-wide tunnel) behind you. Upgrade the zombie castle into a keep and build a castle off it for defense (you won't need to shell out for a village here, since your leader can heal anything holding the castle). Instead build a village behind the castle and upgrade it into a university; have your leader negotiate for dwarves and recruit one when you can afford it. You win (although it takes forever since you're killing at most 1 enemy per turn).

I was playing a game a while ago and someone (I think it was jb or Mythological) suggested that since the scenario is so easy it should have a more climactic ending, with each leader spawning one last super-powerful wave of level 3 enemies at turn 25 and rushing at the players with them, so that all those defenses the players spent 25 turns building up actually get a serious test. I would also knock down some of the cave walls at this point too.

(P.S. I just downloaded the latest version from the campaign server, and I don't know if this has been reported yet but it's giving me +4 gold every time I flood a hex instead of costing 4 gold).

[governor]

Uploaded a fix for 2 costs (0.9.0c):

- 4 gold for flood removes gold.
- Blacksmith cost discrepancy fixed.

[Kernigh]

I often seem to overlook the usefulness of a White Mage. Above, TL devised a strategy whereby a White Mage starting with 25 gold can win The Last Stand.

I decided to start a Lieutenant with 100 gold, fled to the west caves, and set up a defense of four peasants on villages, versus five hexes of shallow water and two hexes of sand. This game went better than my flight to the north; no enemy ever broke through my defense. I have attached a screenshot of turn 25.

I was playing a game a while ago and someone (I think it was jb or Mythological) suggested that since the scenario is so easy it should have a more climactic ending, with each leader spawning one last super-powerful wave of level 3 enemies at turn 25 and rushing at the players with them, so that all those defenses the players spent 25 turns building up actually get a serious test. I would also knock down some of the cave walls at this point too.

I would leave The Last Stand as-is. Instead, I ought to make a new scenario, where the four players are teamed against AI, but have no caves to hide in. This way, The Last Stand can remain a fun way to introduce new players to A New Land, while other scenarios may be more difficult.

[Kernigh]

Before we think that The Last Stand is easy for everyone, I have attached the result of a game in which my team barely won. Playing were player 1 (kernigh, Rogue), player 2 (The_Golden_Axe, Lieutenant), player 3 (Wolf, Red Mage), player 4 (iznogud, White Mage). We played on the version of A New Land that will become patch k7.

The game went well until player 4, unable to do much damage to skeletons, lost multiple villages to the skeletons. To make the situation worse, goblins and orcs broke through the pair of player 1 Elvish Druids guarding the west. Player 1 wasted gold paying upkeep for a military, while player 3 had no military (but attacked with leader). A skeleton killed player 4's leader and it seemed that the castle would fall. The_Golden_Axe, Wolf, and iznogud left the game, leaving kernigh in control.

Then player 2 (the only good player) managed to retake its keep on turn 23. With about 100 gold to spend, it recruited Dwarvish Fighters to repel the invasion and retake villages. At turn 24, a Ghoul moved through and killed player 1's leader. However players 2 and 3 won the scenario.

[Kernigh]

Announcement, 15 July 2007 --- I have attached patch k7 of my local modifications to A New Land and ANL_Maps. Among the most significant changes:

• I merged in improvements from governor's A New Land 0.9.0b and 0.9.0c.
• I redesigned auto-harvest/plant/mine; it now happens at the start of each player's side turn, not at the start of player one's turn, and it is much faster, in the style of the lost version 0.9.1.
• I restored the missing flags in The Great Wall.
• I added a story and objectives to 4p - Aybabtu.

For information about Kernigh's variant of A New Land, consult kernigh.pbwiki.com/NewLand. For specific information about changes in patch k7, consult the changelog.

[governor]

Kernigh, there was a very important reason that resource farming was changed to the current style. I am assuming that you are using the side_turn event, this was particularly notorious for causing OOS problems. Just a heads up.

[Kernigh]

Kernigh, there was a very important reason that resource farming was changed to the current style. I am assuming that you are using the side_turn event, this was particularly notorious for causing OOS problems. Just a heads up.

Yes, I use the side.turn event and the $side_number variable. However, my testing so far does not suggest that this is causing OOS.

Meanwhile, I am aware that the map Peasantry and the map Defense of the Goblin tend to suffer from OOS when a 1.2.3 player joins a 1.2.{4,5}-hosted game. Known symptoms include Peasantry failing to unstone units and DotG providing to wrong number of creeps for the 1.2.3 player. Now that I check, I notice that both the unstoning and the creep-spawning use side.turn events for their implementation.

[cobbaut]

Just to say thank you all for "A New Land", it is great fun!

A small bug ? When playing End of Days against computer players, when there is a popup window for a peasant of the computer, it is always on top of the peasant, making him invisible. Kinda hard to decide on flooding or castle then...
Is there a way to move the popup ? Or to make it appear next to the peasant ?
(i am playing with 3840x1200 screen resolution)


(simple imho) feature requests:
- include goldmines, ironmines, universities, blacksmit etc in the status table.
- update income in status table to reflect goldmines, and add iron nugget income

[Bob_The_Mighty]

I have revised and updated A New Land for 1.3

It is on the add-on server now. Currently, the download only includes The Last Stand. I'll get round the others sometime.

I have incorporated many of the changes made by governor and kernigh. I'd like to thank them a lot for their input.

However, making it compatible with 1.3 meant rewriting most of it - especially since I have used the rightclick menu for all the options. I've also added lots of icons.

I deleted 'builders', blacksmiths and iron mines. This might annoy some people, but I wanted to try to simplify it. I might put them back in if it seems overly simple, or if I'm convinced that were really worthwhile.

I have, however, added 'philosophy' as an area of research. Every advance in philosophy makes your mage produce +1 research. Though, I am tempted to delete this too. Let me know what you think.

In addition, mage research is now automated (like farming and mining). At the start of their turn, each mage in a university adds points to the study progress of the player's chosen area of research. You can right-click on a mage in a university to change what area of research to pursue.

I've also made the last stand scenario a bit harder by giving the computer a bigger income.

EDIT: Whoops, it was broken. Now it is fixed.