The Settlers Era

[Dovolente]

The Settlers Era brings very simple resource management to the game, inspired chiefly by Age of Empires/Kings and Settlers of Catan.

Overview
In the Settlers Era, players begin in wild, unsettled lands with a leader and three peasants. The peasants collect food, wood, stone, and gold, and they construct villages, towers, and walls as well. The leader can recruit more peasant laborers or an army to defend his region or attack other players.

Win the game by killing the enemy leader(s), or by being the first to collect 150 food, wood, stone, and gold.

The era is designed to work for noncomputer players on Wesnoth's standard and random multiplayer maps (it will adjust the maps, removing the usual villages and castles/keeps before the game starts).

Resource Collection
You begin the game with 15 of each resource. At the start of each turn, peasants automatically collect various resources, depending on the terrains they are in.

food: flat terrains and shallow water, except ice, sand, and cave floors
wood: any forest except hill forests
stone: all mountains
gold: all hills

Peasants bring in 2 units of the given resource, unless next to a village. They bring in 5 units of the resource if next to a village.


Building
Right-click next to a peasant, choose BUILD STRUCTURE and select the desired structure. One can build villages, walls, and towers.

Villages can only be built on flat solid ground (like dirt and grassland), but walls and towers can can be built anywhere on unoccupied hexes with solid ground (including hills, forest, etc).

Walls and towers are not terrain--they can be destroyed. Towers have some defenses (ballista and burning oil).

Recruiting
Right-click next to your leader in a village, choose RECRUIT UNIT and select the desired unit. One can recruit peasants, spearmen, bowmen, cavalrymen, heavy infantrymen, and mages.

Each village can sustain up to 8 units. If you cannot recruit more units, you need more villages.

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Current era status: My goal is to keep it simple and easy to learn and play--and to require no add-on downloads (except for the host). Version .9 updates the era for compatibility with Wesnoth 1.8. All features should be working correctly.

[Chronos45]

Hey, this is great stuff. I'm a huge Age of Empires fan. Couple of questions though. Can the player only choose Loyalists as a faction? If so maybe it be a cool idea to have the ability to recruit mercenaries from other factions, like dwarf fighters and elf archers.

What about sea units, like mermen and naga? They could go into deep water for the food resource. Maybe you can make it so that the leader can make a village in shallow water and recruit them from there.

I agree that road and dirt should be left alone, but what about sand? Maybe have the player get a random change to find a couple of pieces of gold if a peasant steps into a sand tile.

This could work a lot like Bob the Mighty's ANL, and other factions could be used.

Just some thoughts, but I can't wait to try it out.

[Blarumyrran]

one thing, i think you should leave gold for very few units, only the more "noble" units (=not archers). i think having gold as an elitist resource would add more to its feel.

another thing, mountains for stone and hills for gold? i think the other way would be better, as mountains are harder to access (it has higher mp cost for the peasants than hills), as gold should be.

and yet another thing. recruiting units should probably also work by clicking on near-by hexes, as building structures does, and its easier getting used to the era when things work in similar way.

the amount of resources would be nice to be viewable via right-click menu. and the minor thing that in unit-recruiting and structure-constructing menu, it would be good to have different resources in different colors.

cavalry & sergeant, especially the cavalry, way overpower the other leaders, dunno what to do with them. in case you are not planning on adding new factions, you can always have leaders from other DEFAULT factions too, eg poachers & thieves and adepts and stuff.

its kind of pity having to resort to no-download-necessary as custom tower/wall graphics would make them much more immersive. but yea i understand why you want no-download-necessary

[Dovolente]

Thanks for the comments, guys.

Hey, this is great stuff. I'm a huge Age of Empires fan. Couple of questions though. Can the player only choose Loyalists as a faction? If so maybe it be a cool idea to have the ability to recruit mercenaries from other factions, like dwarf fighters and elf archers. What about sea units, like mermen and naga? They could go into deep water for the food resource. Maybe you can make it so that the leader can make a village in shallow water and recruit them from there.

I'm aiming for simplicity, and don't want to go overboard with too many units. But I think adding one of the mer units is a good idea.

This could work a lot like Bob the Mighty's ANL, and other factions could be used.

Yes, I could add lots of things and it would become more like ANL--I loved the concept of ANL but the play was too complex for my tastes. I thought about doing a second orc/gobbo faction, with spearmen like peasants, but that brings up balance issues I'd rather not deal with. At least at this point.

one thing, i think you should leave gold for very few units, only the more "noble" units (=not archers). i think having gold as an elitist resource would add more to its feel.

another thing, mountains for stone and hills for gold? i think the other way would be better, as mountains are harder to access (it has higher mp cost for the peasants than hills), as gold should be.

I think that could go either way. I'm not sure if you've played Age of Empires, but I'm more or less "inspired" (sounds better than "imitating") their application of gold and stone (e.g. archers in AoE also cost wood and a little gold). One good reason for this is that in AoE stone is actually more scarce, so the structures that depend on it are a little more scarce--and not to be made willy-nilly. As mountains tend to be more scarce than hills in Wesnoth maps, that fits nicely. Also, we want to be able to make the interesting units and have varied battles, and thematically having units cost 'stone' doesn't make sense...so for these reasons I think the AoE model is best to follow.

Plus, you can shout "There's GOLD in them thar hills!"

and yet another thing. recruiting units should probably also work by clicking on near-by hexes, as building structures does, and its easier getting used to the era when things work in similar way.

Good suggestion. I will probably do that. People who don't know the spawn-over-unit system will be less confused, and it would be more appealing to do things like build a village below a swamp.

the amount of resources would be nice to be viewable via right-click menu. and the minor thing that in unit-recruiting and structure-constructing menu, it would be good to have different resources in different colors.

Good points. I don't think it's possible to put the resources in different colors unless they're each on a separate line. I'll play around with it and see if it looks ok to do that at the top, at least.

cavalry & sergeant, especially the cavalry, way overpower the other leaders, dunno what to do with them. in case you are not planning on adding new factions, you can always have leaders from other DEFAULT factions too, eg poachers & thieves and adepts and stuff.

I think that most default factions are like this too. There are obvious choices, but if you want to play a standard unit for variety, you can.

[Blarumyrran]

one thing, i think you should leave gold for very few units, only the more "noble" units (=not archers). i think having gold as an elitist resource would add more to its feel.

another thing, mountains for stone and hills for gold? i think the other way would be better, as mountains are harder to access (it has higher mp cost for the peasants than hills), as gold should be.

I think that could go either way. I'm not sure if you've played Age of Empires, but I'm more or less "inspired" (sounds better than "imitating") their application of gold and stone (e.g. archers in AoE also cost wood and a little gold). One good reason for this is that in AoE stone is actually more scarce, so the structures that depend on it are a little more scarce--and not to be made willy-nilly. As mountains tend to be more scarce than hills in Wesnoth maps, that fits nicely. Also, we want to be able to make the interesting units and have varied battles, and thematically having units cost 'stone' doesn't make sense...so for these reasons I think the AoE model is best to follow.

Plus, you can shout "There's GOLD in them thar hills!"

youre talking about AoE 2 here, not AoE.
in AoE, archers costed only food and wood, i remember clearly. maybe Composite Bowman costed gold too, cant recall. i agree units costing stone would be silly, but peasants/spearmen/archers costing only food&wood wouldnt be that strange imo.

also, how about having a lvl 2 recruitable unit that costs eg 5f 0w 0s 25g or something, in case one would have gold surplus and wants to spend it? like, Rogue (since rogue is interesting to play with, too)?

[Dovolente]

youre talking about AoE 2 here, not AoE.
in AoE, archers costed only food and wood, i remember clearly. maybe Composite Bowman costed gold too, cant recall. i agree units costing stone would be silly, but peasants/spearmen/archers costing only food&wood wouldnt be that strange imo.

True, I mostly played AoE2 (and loved the no-village, 'nomad' start variant ). In the next version 'll try archers with 5f 10w and see how it goes.

also, how about having a lvl 2 recruitable unit that costs eg 5f 0w 0s 25g or something, in case one would have gold surplus and wants to spend it? like, Rogue (since rogue is interesting to play with, too)?

If someone has a gold surplus they can make mages and HI. Rogue, with skirmish, would probably be too nasty a peasant raider. That's why fencers aren't included... with 10-hp peasants, skirmish is just too good.

Anyway, here are a few more changes I plan to try out for the next version, in addition to changing the archer costs:
-mermaid initiate (5f 15g) .. another impact unit (already have enough pierce)
-max population of 32 per side .. to keep things at least a little sane for longer games.
-tower attack animations
-changing wall/tower defense from 50% to 30%, and impact resistance from -120% to -50%
-making towers not able to attack the turn they're constructed
-bumping wall/tower hp up a little (75 tower, 50 wall)
-setting wall to level 0 and trying out wall zoc--they've been fairly useless (except to level enemy units) otherwise.
-not allowing walls/towers to be build adjacent to a village or an enemy unit or structure.

I'd like to make it so that one could right-click next to leader in village, to recruit to a particular spot. But I can't come up with a decent way to filter that (WML filtering makes my head hurt).

[Sapient]

Code: Select all

 [set_menu_item]
 ...
 [filter_location]
  [not]
   [filter]
# make sure nobody standing there first
   [/filter]
  [/not]
  [filter_adjacent_location]
# adjacent to a leader on this side
   [filter]
    canrecruit=1
    side=$side_number
   [/filter]
# also the leader must be on village
   terrain=*^V*
  [/filter_adjacent_location]
 [/filter_location]
 ...
[/set_menu_item]

[Dovolente]

Thanks for the help.

With version .8, these changes were implemented:
-recruiting by clicking next to a leader in a village
-replacing map roads with grassland
-added mermaid initiate (5f 5w 10g)
-set max population of 32 per side
-tower attack animations
-changed wall/tower defense from 50% to 30%
-changed wall/tower impact resistance from -120% to -50%
-eliminated building next to villages and an enemy units/walls/towers
-bumped wall/tower hp up (75 tower, 50 wall)
-set wall to level 0 and gave it zoc

[Dovolente]

The era is now on the add-on server. After some thought, I've decided to put it in with my other user-made content in Dov's MP Maps. The era is not a map, but the other items in the add-on are more scenario/mods than basic maps also; it fits in and helps keep the add-on clutter down a little.

So, further discussion will be found in the Dov's MP Maps thread.

[Dovolente]

I've finally gotten around to updating this. It is now available on the 1.8 add-on server as "Settlers Era" v.9. I'll be keeping it separate from the Map Pack now, so it is easier to find by 'era' type on the server.

I welcome comments and suggestions.

[IPS]

I remmind it, when it was in Dovolente's maps hehehe.

Yeah, it was a great era, I frequently accumulate resources to win

[batoonike]

I suggest that you multiply everything by 10. It should be rather impossible to reach a reasonable balance with so small numbers as integers. Though its sweet with small numbers if you dont plan to get very serious about tweaking everything to perfection.

[Lollipopz]

You really should set needed resources in some sort of start box. Some players might want kill leader oly game...

[Dovolente]

I remmind it, when it was in Dovolente's maps hehehe.

Yeah, it was a great era, I frequently accumulate resources to win

Thanks. I hope resource collection didn't seem too easy.

If you try to 'economy boom' with, for example, 4 new peasant recruits while someone does 4 new cavalry recruits, I'd put my money on the cavalry recruiter.

You really should set needed resources in some sort of start box. Some players might want kill leader oly game...

Good point. I'll probably add that in the next version.

I suggest that you multiply everything by 10. It should be rather impossible to reach a reasonable balance with so small numbers as integers. Though its sweet with small numbers if you dont plan to get very serious about tweaking everything to perfection.

Thanks for the suggestion. Right now the balance is playable but imperfect and still not really thoroughly tested. I probably played 30 games of the previous version ( .8 ), and 5 of the latest, which has the same numbers. That seemed to be enough to take care of obvious problems but not enough for really high-end tuning.

If a lot of people started playing and I had a lot of balancing feedback, then I may consider changing to higher numbers if that seemed helpful.

[Mica]

This looks like good work Dovolente. I'll give it a shot one of these days.