Playtesting Feedback

[Ploeperpengel]

EL Loco Mono gave an awesome report I invited him in for that and hope to welcome him as new forum member soon.

Here is the link:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=4350002&postcount=998

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=4350013&postcount=999

Bad news. Lot of crashes with Orcs I wonder if that's because of Dawn of War parts. I really hope not. Does someone get an idea?
Crashes seem only to occur if Orcs attack Warrios not the other way round. ELM suggested could be the combat odds calculation. But have a read yourself.

For Bughunting purposes you get the version that work with the savedgames here:

http://www.civfanatics.net/warhammer...-TEST-MOD7.zip

Caution needs patch link below!!!

http://www.civfanatics.net/warhammer/files/Assets.zip

 

[Ploeperpengel]

Balance changes I'll do:
Instead of giving orcs a higher str than average units I set up a freepromotion called "thick skull" giving +20% icombat. This should hopefully balance them a little better compared to the firststrike humies get.
Until we restrict the mercmod to unitclass_mercenary only I will disable it until era_medieval.
Wyvern str. was reduced to 14 and it got 3 firststrike chances instead of 50lol: )
And I think it's time we design some early buildings...

 

[woodelf]

Not too many buildings. You want to force the AI and player to be making units most of the time.

 

[Duke van Frost]

IMO techcosts are WAY too high, I started a game yesterday on monarch and when I selected agriculture as my second tech to discover I saw that it would take me 33 turns to discover that (had already 2 cities both with floodplains and one with an oasis - very much commerce for the early game) this doesn´t encourage warmongering, because you can´t get your infrastructure build up (because no worker actions are available) and you´ll need all commerce for research so you can´t buy mercenaries, upgrade units or hurry your production.

Techcosts for early units were 4-5 times as high as in vanilla civ.

 

[Ploeperpengel]

@Duke
I orientated myself on FFH. I guess an early building that gives +1 research could easily fix that. Also Monarch is way to high for balancing. I think this should be made interesting on noble and challenging on Prince already. Monarch already makes you very slow compared to the AI.

 

[Duke van Frost]

ok, but that´s my Lvl right now and I don´t think +1 research will help if the total costs of Agriculture (very basic tech) is at 200-250.

I have been thinking before that maybe we should give players a second settler from the start to speed up the early build-up and settle phase of the game and get right to the point of a Total-World-War.

But having to research for about 300 turns (maybe the first 10-15 techs) and then having 250 turns to battle wasn´t the kind of mod I was thinking we were doing here - I thought we would get away from Research-Hammer (I think Olleus called it that) and get to Warhammer.

 

[Duke van Frost]

And I think the AI is just to stupid to be interesting at noble. But I´ll do the next playtestings on Prince, that should be ok.

 

[Ploeperpengel]

My intend was to have long battles in each era and not switch too fast to others. I guess we can also simply raise the total number of turns or simply remove the victorytype time I allways hated that one. Everytime my game started to be really interesting there was this damn timelimit and this annoying whitetext spoils the game!

The problem with Prince and higher difficulty range is simply that the AI is cheating even more than normal and we can't really balance it.

 

[El Loco Mono]

OK, updated the doc with the latest playtest. Ran into another CTD with the shaman unit. I haven't had a chance to install the tools for debugging yet so I can't give more info than "it happens when I do this..."

Generally, as I've seen noted, the major issue is the Techs are to expensive. It drags the game out and no one (even the AI) ever gets the to funky cool units at the end of the tech tree.

In fact I consider this game a losing game, as running out of turns but still having the highest score is for "flower sniffing dance around the maypole" girly High elves

Anyway enough babling, enjoy the read.

 

[El Loco Mono]

If everyone wants more violence and less Research. Why don't you implement some mechinism where research is for Prod / Culture / GP addition and have all units avaliable at the start. It would not be fesible to build a dragon riding hero in the first go because of the cost but you code try if you wanted.

Also you could set the research to increase the "pool of total allowed units of type X". I spose I should have had a browse throw the code first to see how difficult this is, but I yet to find something impossible to do in C - even if it will take the rest of my living days to complete it


E.L.M

 

[Ploeperpengel]

OK, updated the doc with the latest playtest. Ran into another CTD with the shaman unit. I haven't had a chance to install the tools for debugging yet so I can't give more info than "it happens when I do this..."

Generally, as I've seen noted, the major issue is the Techs are to expensive. It drags the game out and no one (even the AI) ever gets the to funky cool units at the end of the tech tree.

In fact I consider this game a losing game, as running out of turns but still having the highest score is for "flower sniffing dance around the maypole" girly High elves

Anyway enough babling, enjoy the read.

Yep you're right I'll turn off the turnlimit completly. I like long games. The goal is having violence throughout the ages(certainly not ended by an enddate).
Your info really helps. Thx

 

[Ploeperpengel]

Ok I had my read.
The bug with the shaman no idea will again need help to solve this. (Kael! help please!).
The mercmod definitly shouldn't be used in this way. In final version it will only contain true mercs(Dogs of War) which will be available with currency or a yet to do tech "mercenary contracts".
We are currently working on the AI settings to make them research military stuff better.(I also noticed some techs weren't flavored I fix this.)
I will reduce the cost of early techs until libraries are available. Can you give me some more details when techs were discovered?
We need a couple of early buildings -definitly will come. Maybe a Sage's hut to give extra research and something else for commerce.
Exspect a new version in a couple of days. Maybe I can fix some of those balance issues. The CTDs worry me though.
The halflings will also be a little more agile

Edit:
For now I suggest playing quickgames and turn of time in customgame.

 

[El Loco Mono]

OK, this time I had a chance to read through the Warhammer forum to get an idea of the type of game you are all aiming for. Hopefully the comments are more relevant this time. I removed the previous test cases, the comments are only for the woodelves in this doc. I am in the process of playing test case 4, but I just wanted to give an update.

OVERALL COMMENTS

After playing 4 (well 2 full and 2 part games) the gneral balance I have noticed is this:

Orcs maybe slow and strong, but with the automatic promotions they are too strong either as AI or Player. The strenght is fine OR the promotions are fine but both just generates killing machines.

Horse Units seem a little to strong considering their movement amounts. It's frustrating to see a bunch of horsemen pillage you villages. But even more frustrating when they are very difficult to kill

NEED TO CHANGE THE MAINTANCE PENALTIES! - Going to war is the aim of the mod, but doing so with a large army leaves you in the stone age due to huge maintance costs. THe closer boarders are, the more nattles, the better, promote expansion and reduce the costs.

Right now, my vote is Play en the Era of Magic from a custom game. It adds just enough units to make an intersting battle while still leaving the big units in the research tree.

Can we have a "Hate" factor for diplomacy e.g. Dwarves -5 diplo against greenskins. If Everyone hates the Orcs, they will be at war more and can justify their powerful army.

OK enough yapping for now. Good news though, no crashes in the woodelves games (once I deleted every Shaman I saw!).

 

[woodelf]

Thanks for more great feedback.

I suggested a while ago having the default civics give +X free units. All civics should give 5-10 free units so you can field HUGE armies without crippling your economy. THe number could be tweaked, but we need less unit upkeep.

Can we have a "Hate" factor for diplomacy e.g. Dwarves -5 diplo against greenskins. If Everyone hates the Orcs, they will be at war more and can justify their powerful army.

Check my leader traits thread. We were just discussing this very idea.

 

[seZereth]

building camps with my scouts would have taken 29675628 turns or something... i played a quick one, had no resources or something, so coul donly field warriors... i played with raging barbarians and next to me a barbarian city was founded, that gave a huge bnoost of fun, cause i was under permanent attack by archers and warriors from the barbs but the bad thing is, the combat zoom didnt work!!!! and unberogen warriors should not use spearman animation well did not have time to do more... but are looking forward to the next version, as i feel this mod is going to be huge fun and yes i think we should reduce maintanence costs !!!!!

 

[Ploeperpengel]

Another great report E.L.M.!
The woodelves shouldn't have neither chariots nor Axemen at all. I fix that. The missing scout is also by design but it seems to be balanced by the +2 movement enough for me. Woodelf workers will be able to build camps next upload(expect that in a couple of hours). Woodelf cottages shouldn't be buildable in jungle I hope I can fix that.
You're earlier testreports were already considered in the changes I did for that one and were far from being irrelevant. You'll see.
Major changes for next version are reduced early techcosts and AI-xml settings changed to encourage even more warfare(I hope-this will have to be tested if it works the way intended).

@seZ
spearman ani I'll look at that. Campbuilding is fixed next upload.

@woodelf
Yes we need to start a thread about civics, giving free units is a good idea.

I wasn't able to fix the CTDs yet.

Edit: I will take out the shamen for now. And probably have to disable Orcs until we find that bug.

 

[Ploeperpengel]

Ok I also gave the civics free units now. I will remove the homelandpromotion until our programmmers included the scripts for that too.

 

[El Loco Mono]

Just a few updates - they're in red. Watching the woodelves infantry fight is quite ammusing since they all use the Archer animation




I had some time to set up the python and C++ tools, so I can finally take a browse through the code at any new problems that might arise. Had a problem trying to compile the new files - Link errors, when compiling some of the added functions in CvInterfaces3 and CvUnit, any ideas?.

Also, are the C++ files from the mod all suppose overide the standard SDK files? I noticed 2 C++ directiores, what's the significance? At least the code looks more interesting than the C++ I do each day at work !

 

[Ploeperpengel]

The folders are just for reference all SDK is in the one single file CvGameCoreDLL.dll as far as I know. About the other questions I can't help. Ask TGA or set up a thread in the maincreation forum normally you get fast response there. It's good to finally have a capable bughunter in the team! Im very happy to have you here

Edit:
Gladeriders had the wrong unitcombattype assigned-fixed
Waywatchers fixed
The unitclass mercenary is going to be the only units you will have available as mercs(Dogs of War)
Early tech are all made cheaper so I guess goldtrading will be earlier
I will keep open borders I think we still can have better ways to ensure warfare(it shouldn't be everyone at war with everyone else all the time-not every civ follows chaos!)
Commando prom is a left over- not intended by design we will find better stuff for the orcs after we fixed the ctds.
I like the idea of limiting stacks!
I don't have any idea what's wrong with that unicorn-archer thingy, totally puzzles me Can you be more specific what archer it is? Or is that happening to any kind of archer?
Promotions are yet to design. A little was talked about it in the unitstaats thread but we didn't open the discussion really yet-that's after next release, same as magic, civics etc.

Another Edit:
Ok I noticed a LOT of wrongly assigned unitcombats. Will go through this tonight. Sorry this will add another delay.

@Everyone
I just added the required pythoncode for the Homeland promotion. It works, we'll have elves capable to resist the worst enemies in there own territory!

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

Yay! Homeland! good job ploe

Great Work on the bug hunting E.L.M. keep it up