Descendants of the Dragon - 2.1 Released

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Lord Ork
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Re: Descendants of the dragon

Post by Lord Ork »

Maybe before putting it on the server you should provide graphics for the assassin/ninjas. How do you feel about providing orcish/human assasins graphics as temporal replacement?
It is ok to correct me if my English is too bad.

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mnewton1
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Re: Descendants of the dragon

Post by mnewton1 »

thats a good idea. I will do that and go through it and see if any others need temporary graphics
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Re: Descendants of the dragon

Post by bonehead11 »

No, assasin/bounty hunter line wont be added till both factions are done.
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Re: Descendants of the dragon

Post by mnewton1 »

Ok so am I good to start south faction and add this to add-on server once I get rid of the ninja line?
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Re: Descendants of the dragon

Post by Mu »

Hello guys.

First of all to say that I am really enthusiastic about this campaign. I like asian cultures, specially chinese.

I like the art very much, and I find very interesting the background as exposed in the first post.

I tested the era yesterday, some fixes were needed (specially in graphic names). My impression is that it is quite unbalanced. The North units are far too powerful compared with standard Wesnoth units.

Something that make them difficult to fight with, it's that almost any unit has a ranged attack in contradiction with the original idea, which stated that they would be unable to make ranged attacks excpeto for the Samurai. That makes frustrating to play agaisnt them, because it is very difficult to take use your own ranged units.

I would like also to compare some units of this era with the default era:

Code: Select all

Unit    Ashi.Sword.     Spearman        Pikeman         Javelineer
Level   1               1               2               2
Gold    17              14              25              25
HP      32              36              55              48
Move    5               5               5               5
Melee   9-3             7-3             10-3            8-3
Ranged  8-2             6-1             no              11-2
Skill                   Firststrike     Firststrike     Firststrike
The ranged attack, somewhat powerful, makes the Ashigaru too powerful for a level 1 unit. However, a swordsman throwing spears?

Code: Select all

Unit    Monk            Shaman          Sohei           White Mage
Level   0               1               1               2
Gold    11              15              20              40
HP      24              26              32              35
Move    5               5               5               5
Melee   5-2             3-2             7-2             6-2
Ranged  6-1m            3-2s            -               9-3
Skill   heals+4         heals+4         MShield,heals10 heals+8
The Monk should have level 1. The Sohei is too powerful. I can't recall a level 1 unit who can heal more than 4 hp. 10 hp is really unbalancing, even if it was level 2.

Code: Select all

Unit	Ninja           Assasin
Level   2               3
Gold    32              44
HP      32              51
Move    6               6
Melee   10-3backstab    8-3backstab
Ranged  6-4pois         5-3pois
Skill                   Skirmish
His two attacks are way too powerful. Combined with high defence, the ninja is near impossible to kill.

My suggestion for you is to test the units playing against them, not carrying them.

I'll stay tuned, impacient to see the South.

Thank you very much.
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Re: Descendants of the dragon

Post by mnewton1 »

Descendants of the Dragons 1.0 is out!!!



Thanks a lot for the feedback. I will work a little on balancing. Sadly bonehead11 (also the artist) has disappeared so I am stuck without art or guidelines... I would be happy to have your help though for balancing. I will put DotD on the add-on server. I have a more up to date version. I am going to kill the Ashi.Sword. ranged attack but I will keep his melee as is. I have redone the monk. He now has 16hp 3-2 melee and 4-1m ranged. Also edited ninja. What do you think? I also made the Geisha weaker and the sage and master sage. I have made a lot of changes to every unit. Please tell me what you think. A

Code: Select all


Unit    Monk       Ninja      
Level   0           2
Gold    11          35
HP      16          31
Move    5           6
Melee   3-2         10-2backstab
Ranged  4-1m        4-4pois
Skill   heals+4      



EDIT: It is on the add-on server now
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Re: Descendants of the dragon

Post by Mu »

That seems pretty fair. Swordsman doing high damage is not bad because it is expensive (17) and doesn't have ranged attacks.

I want to test them, but I can't right now. I expect to do in a couple of days or three. I will tell you my impressions.

As I said, I am quite interested in this campaign. I hope that the original author returns, because I have some ideas for the south faction (I know better the chinese civilization than the japanese one).

----

I forgot to say that I want post some of the ideas for the chinese faction this evening (it is 10:22am in spain right now).

Also that if there is something to help with, just say and i'll do if I can. I know a little of WML, I can surely edit units. Unfortunately, I don't know to draw sprites.

For now, I can test the units, compare them with mainline, and suggest changes.
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Re: Descendants of the dragon

Post by Mu »

Ideas for the South Faction. They are based in historical weapons and in the initial description of bonehead11:

* Fire lance: the first firearm of history. It was a spear with a powder charge inside its pole and a dart. It could be used in hand to hand combat, use the fire of the explosion, or the dart fired. The dart could be poisoned. Its unit would have 2 attacks of spear, 1 attack with fire (maybe melee), and 1 with the dart.

* Rockets.

* Multiple rocket launcher: a machine with many tubes with rockets to be lauched in chain.

* Handgun/Musketeer: I couldnt find the reference of wether chinese had their own muskets or they were imported from Europe or Turkey (in 17th century surely were imported). They had handguns for sure.

* Crossbow.

* Repeating Crossbow: a heavy crossbow with a magazine with bolts. The weapon was fired and recharged with a single hand movement, allowing to fire with and incredible rate. It would have 4 attacks, but would be slow (actually, I think it was stationary).

* Peasant: they would use a Gun (staff) as weapon. "Gun" is the name of the chinese staff, similar to japanese Bo, I am realizing that it could be confusing in English :D

* Soldier lvl 1: the unique tree oriented to melee. The won't have ranged attacks. The basic one would be armed with dao (the basic sabre).

* Soldier lvl 2: it would use Dadao, a greater form of dao.

* Soldier lvl 3: it would use the Guandao, a mix beetween a spear and a sabre, similar to japanese Naginata. A great hero of China, Guan Yu, is characterized by this weapon.

* Zhanmadao lvl 3: a HUGE sword. It was said that it could slash horse and rider in a single hit. Due to its limited move capacity, this soldiers had to be escolted. They would be similar two Iron mawlers, but with higher damage and less HP and damage reisinstance, since they wore few or no armour. In real life, this were an anticavaladry weapon, but in wesnoth no, because that would need piercing damage, so it would simply a huge damage sword.

* Leader: a soldier doing leadership. It would have a Jian, a straight sword.

* Chariot: in early history of China (way before firearms) it was used to carry archers. It was deprecated because it was difficult to use if the terrain was not flat. But I think it would be funny to have a unit quick in plains, but slow in hills or woods.

* Fire dragon: I didn't understand very well what bonehead meant, but it rememberd me of some chariot i saw in a game. I attached an screenshot. Anyway, I think it could be cool.
Fire dragon (?) in Knights of Valour 2
Fire dragon (?) in Knights of Valour 2
0003.png (29.7 KiB) Viewed 4197 times
* Civil officer: I liked the idea of reflecting the bureaucratic society in China, but I can not imagine how to do this well.

* Wooden ox: a very funny machine of the Three Kingdoms Period. It was a mechanical Ox which could walk when pushed. It could even walk in irregular terrain. It served to carry provisions. In this version, we can put more fantasy, and suppose it is animated without pushing it, maybe with pedals, and can carry a warrior in.


Here is a proposal of technological tree:

Code: Select all

Peasant Fire lancer     Poison fire lancer
                        Rocketeer               Canon
                                                Multiple rocket launcher
                        Gunner                  Musketeer

        Bowman          Crossbowman             Crossbow Master
                                                Repating crossbow
                        Master bowman           Zen bowman (with markmanship)

        Soldier         Dadao                   Zhanmadao
                                                Guandao
                        Officer                 General
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Horseman        Charriot                Fire Dragon
                        Horseman lvl 2          Horseman lvl 3



It could be strange that peasant becomes "fire lancer", but Wikipedia says that this weapon were often used in peasant revolts.


A problem with canons and repating crossbows, is that the units would be slow could not fight hand to hand, which would make them easy too kill, specially for lvl 3 units!

EDIT: added info in zhanmadao and fixed the advancement tree.
EDIT: replaced a spanish word *^_^*
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Re: Descendants of the Dragon - 1.1 Released

Post by mnewton1 »

Interesting ideas. I do not have much time on so I will edit this later. But maybe those units could become a new faction. I am saying this because they are all around the same sort of technology time and we have units for the south faction. I really need ideas for new names of the factions. Suggestions?
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Re: Descendants of the Dragon - 1.1 Released

Post by Mu »

OK, I didn't see nothing about South units, so I thought they were not made.

I don't see how another faction could fix here, but don't worry to discard this, they were only ideas. Also, feel free to use any of the ideas if you want to expand the faction in any moment.
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Re: Descendants of the Dragon - 1.1 Released

Post by Mu »

I really need ideas for new names of the factions. Suggestions?
I thought in calling both factions "Son of Dragon", but one in chinese and the other in japanese.

Searching in dictionaries, I think South would be Long Er or Long Nan (with doesn't sound like longer :D ), and North would be Ryoshisoku.

Problems:
1) Maybe they were identical when writen in kanji, this would be a problem for japanese and chinese players.
2) Japanese and chinese players could note translation errors.
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Re: Descendants of the Dragon - 1.1 Released

Post by Skizzaltix »

I'm guessing you could make them different character-wise. I don't know about Chinese, but, depending on what kind of meaning you're going for, Japanese has three different characters for "dragon"--one for normal use (竜), one archaic/fancy one (龍), and one for the Zodiac sign (辰). And then there's all the stuff you could get into spelling it with kana (りゅう、リュウ、リュー、etc). (Edit: just as an example, I would spell it as 龍神血統, "Ryuujin Kettou," [literally: Lineage of the Dragon King] or somesuch. You could also stick a "no" in there, to denote possession, but I feel like it breaks up the flow a little...)
And, if there are mistakes, they can always be fixed when some helpful Chinese player signs on to ask why one faction is called the "Sons of the Egg-Beater" ;)
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Re: Descendants of the Dragon - 1.1 Released

Post by mnewton1 »

Code: Select all

North faction:

                                                                      
        --Ashigaru Swordsman--Dragon Warrior--Son of Dragon--Bloodbrother
                                            --Dragon Raider--Winged Dragon
--Peasant
                                  
        --Ashigaru Longbowman--Samurai--Mounted Samurai
                                      --Elite Samurai--Daimyo
                                                     
                                          
        --Monk--Sohei
              --Bishop--Disciple of Dragon--Halfbreed
                         --Enlightened--Whiterobe
                         --Sage--Master Sage
              --Yamabushi
        --Assasin--Ninja--Geisha


 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -South faction - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

        --Ashigaru--Glaivier--Goldenspearman--GuanDao
                  --Headcutter--Axemaster--Kaze

       --Ronin--Swordsman--Kensei
                             
                             --Arquebusier--Musketeer
        --XbowAshigaru--Marksman--Sharpshooter
                             --Alchemist--Archalchemist--Dragonflame
        --Monk--Herbalist--Medicineman
                  --Hermit--Mountain Hermit
        --Bountyhunter--Mercenary--Shinobi
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Re: Descendants of the Dragon - 1.1 Released

Post by Mu »

My apologizes, I've seen it was in the first post.

I was confused because, IMHO, they doesn't seem very chinese for me (what doesn't mean that they can' t be a good faction).
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Lord Ork
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Re: Descendants of the Dragon - 1.1 Released

Post by Lord Ork »

Skizzaltix wrote:(Edit: just as an example, I would spell it as 龍神血統, "Ryuujin Kettou," [literally: Lineage of the Dragon King] or somesuch. You could also stick a "no" in there, to denote possession, but I feel like it breaks up the flow a little...)
I don't know much about japanese language, but if we were talking about chinese, I'd say that less is more (even if it makes it not grammaticality correct. Even, a four characters sentence is considered harmonious in chinese standards (as I have learnt recently).

But the question is: will the names be written on kanjis/hanzis? Because it could be difficult for non asiatic players to read or even to recognize one or other.

It is possible that "lineage of the dragon" sounds better than "sons of the dragons". In a similar fashion, we could look for the chinese equivalent of "dragon dinasty".
It is ok to correct me if my English is too bad.

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