Conquer Club

koontz1973 wrote:Questions?

• Who will do all of the coding (xml) for all of the maps as all maps will need to be coded again for this option?
• How will maps be made balanced for all sizes of games?
• Who will balance the maps for conquest style games?

Whilst the second and third option can be done, it is very time consuming. This setting cannot be random drops and would need to have a lot of work done to make the maps fair for all games. Alone, hours goes into each map to make it as fair as possible.

But the first one alone should of stopped this in its tracks. Who is going to code all the maps? We cannot expect map makers to do even more work and what about the maps already in play? Some do not even have the map makers around anymore. This is not something that can be done via a button on the start a game page until someone puts in hundreds of hours of work. Any volunteers for this?

Last point for this, as a map maker, I put in huge amounts of my time to make every map, I would not be happy if my maps where to go though a second round of foundry work.

Fazeem wrote:Wow the unwarranted hate on this idea is astounding people really do fear change I guess

OliverFA wrote:The fact that you would not play that setting does not mean that the setting should not be there. In fact that's the whole purpose of settings, tailoring the game to each player likes. Having settings that appeal to everybody is not always possible neither recomendable. Of course, if no one would ever use the setting, then that's another thing. But I believe that setting would have a more than decent number of users.

OliverFA wrote:I am not sure that maps would need to be recoded. Let's take World 2.1 as an example. What changes in the XML would the mal need? I don't see any needed change.

greenoaks wrote:Option 1 would require very little coding, everyone is randomly assigned a terit from the list of terits available.

Code: Select all

       <territory>
          <name>Anchorage</name>
          <borders>
             <border>Edmonton</border>
             <border>Vancouver</border>
             <border>Magadan</border>
          </borders>
          <coordinates>
             <smallx>30</smallx>
             <smally>125</smally>
             <largex>35</largex>
             <largey>145</largey>
          </coordinates>
       </territory>

Code: Select all

       <territory>
          <name>Anchorage</name>
          <borders>
             <border>Edmonton</border>
             <border>Vancouver</border>
             <border>Magadan</border>
          </borders>
          <coordinates>
             <smallx>30</smallx>
             <smally>125</smally>
             <largex>35</largex>
             <largey>145</largey>
          </coordinates>
      <neutral>3</neutral>
       </territory>

Code: Select all

    <!-- Start Positions -->
    <positions>
       <position>
          <territory>Raykjavik</territory>
       </position>
       <position>
          <territory>London</territory>
       </position>
       <position>
          <territory>Madrid</territory>
       </position>
       <position>
          <territory>Stockholm</territory>
       </position>
       <position>
          <territory>Moscow</territory>
       </position>
       <position>
          <territory>Berlin</territory>
       </position>
       <position>
          <territory>Istanbul</territory>
       </position>

koontz1973 wrote:

OliverFA wrote:I am not sure that maps would need to be recoded. Let's take World 2.1 as an example. What changes in the XML would the mal need? I don't see any needed change.

greenoaks wrote:Option 1 would require very little coding, everyone is randomly assigned a terit from the list of terits available.

All the maps would need to get a new xml written. It is how the games are played. As for recoding of each map, a completely new xml will need to be written. The following example is from Classic map.

Code: Select all

       <territory>
          <name>Anchorage</name>
          <borders>
             <border>Edmonton</border>
             <border>Vancouver</border>
             <border>Magadan</border>
          </borders>
          <coordinates>
             <smallx>30</smallx>
             <smally>125</smally>
             <largex>35</largex>
             <largey>145</largey>
          </coordinates>
       </territory>

This second one is the same apart from one line of code added.

Code: Select all

       <territory>
          <name>Anchorage</name>
          <borders>
             <border>Edmonton</border>
             <border>Vancouver</border>
             <border>Magadan</border>
          </borders>
          <coordinates>
             <smallx>30</smallx>
             <smally>125</smally>
             <largex>35</largex>
             <largey>145</largey>
          </coordinates>
      <neutral>3</neutral>
       </territory>

As you can see, one tiny but very important piece needs to be added to the code for every territory. This is the neutral tag that lets the game know it is a neutral territory. To get the single territory to be handed out for all players, positions would need to be added to the begining of the xml. It would look like this just for Europe on classic map but would need to include all territories.

Code: Select all

    <!-- Start Positions -->
    <positions>
       <position>
          <territory>Raykjavik</territory>
       </position>
       <position>
          <territory>London</territory>
       </position>
       <position>
          <territory>Madrid</territory>
       </position>
       <position>
          <territory>Stockholm</territory>
       </position>
       <position>
          <territory>Moscow</territory>
       </position>
       <position>
          <territory>Berlin</territory>
       </position>
       <position>
          <territory>Istanbul</territory>
       </position>

What will happen if you do not add these two parts to the xml (neutral and positions) you get what we have now, a random drop all over the board. If you add the positions, with a max of 1 to be handed out, what will happen is the machine will hand out one per player and all of the rest will be handed out randomly. Again, giving you exactly what we have now.

To get what is proposed, you will need to add a neutral tag to every territory and starting positions to the beginning of the xml. Without these two parts, it will not work. Hence the need to rewrite the xml for every map.

So again, who is going to do the work? Balancing the maps and writing the xml.

DoomYoshi wrote:What koontz is suggesting is pre-defined starting positions. We need a change in the way that the XML is read.

OliverFA wrote:Ok, let me ask a question. What happens right now with uneven territories? I mean, for example, in a 42 territories game if you have 8 players 2 territories start as neutrals. And how does the engine know how many neutrals to place in those 2 territories? The engine does it without modifying the XML, and that's no different about this option. I still think there is no need for XML change.

OliverFA wrote:Ok, let me ask a question. What happens right now with uneven territories? I mean, for example, in a 42 territories game if you have 8 players 2 territories start as neutrals. And how does the engine know how many neutrals to place in those 2 territories? The engine does it without modifying the XML, and that's no different about this option. I still think there is no need for XML change.

DoomYoshi wrote:What koontz is suggesting is pre-defined starting positions. We need a change in the way that the XML is read.

greenoaks wrote:it looks rather simple, tedious but simple.

exactly what i'm good at

Fazeem wrote:give a couple of us yay voters a crash course in private on how to and I would do it

DoomYoshi wrote:We need a change in the way that the XML is read.

koontz1973 wrote:

greenoaks wrote:it looks rather simple, tedious but simple.

exactly what i'm good at

Fazeem wrote:give a couple of us yay voters a crash course in private on how to and I would do it

Here is the xml guide book. This is what we have all learnt from so be my guest. Go and do it for classic map which is not a large map but the one most payers would like to see first. When you have done that, we can talk about game play and how to make it balanced better for all sizes of games.

OliverFA wrote:But couldn't the engine be coded to ignore the non-relevant part of the XML in this option?

Perhaps what should be done is to divide the maps between maps who already are conquest maps and maps who are not conquest maps. Playing conquest in Feudal War would give us exactly the same game we have now. And it's possible that a few maps could just not be suitable for this option because of how they are designed.

DoomYoshi wrote:

deathcomesrippin wrote:

Beko the Great wrote:I voted no, because this would imply to re-code a great amount of maps to make things fair.

If deployments were random, it could happen a player starting at the side of the other... The player that starts has almost 77% chance of winning, it's a russian roulette and it has no strategy at all.
Even solving this problem by coding starting positions, I guess a lot of maps would be pretty unbalanced as well.

This is my only issue with this suggestion. If I start with my terit right beside yours, and you go before me, I am dead before there is even a chance to play. I like the idea a lot, especially for maps with a medieval or historical slant, but this would be an issue I would find incredibly frustrating.

I already suggested a way to prevent this from happening. To repeat: only the red player's starting territory is randomized. Then a quick formula is run by the computer to make all the other starting territories as far as possible from that one and each other. This suggestion was shot down earlier, but how do you feel about it?

For the limited resources folks: a formula like this would be pretty easy to write, no comment on how difficult it is to code.

koontz1973 wrote:It really does not matter on the map itself how it gets done. The coding is pretty simple to do.
Take current xml, add the neutral line tag to every territory and then starting positions to the beginning with a max. This could probably be done quickly for the majority of maps. But it would then come down to game play and this is where most maps will fail with this style of game play.

Maps like Pot Morsbi already have starting positions coded along with a losing condition. But the player that starts left of the map gets easier access to bonuses. Add on top of that in a 5 player game, the other four start on the right hand side of the map, you have a game that is not very nice to play. Any map maker who would attempt to try that map in the foundry now would not get very far with iancanton. So maps would need to go through the foundry again. Not something map makes want.

But

What could be done and done pretty quickly is to have a limited amount of maps coded like this. Classic would be the obvious choice as would Eurasia and World 2.1 (both of these you would need the map makers permission). Then instead of having a button on the start a game page, you would have a choice of Classic or Conquest Classic. The maps on the home screen stay the same but in the drop down box with the list of maps, the second conquest map would be listed. But it would have to be up to the map maker if they wanted this to happen. Trying to balance a map now for all game types takes hours for every map. It is not something ian and I take lightly or do quickly.

Metsfanmax wrote:I don't understand some of the criticism being made here. Why does any XML need to be changed? What is being asked for is a change in how the engine decides which territories are assigned to players. Instead of dividing the legal starting positions evenly among players, we just give one (randomly) to each player. Then whatever code assigns the remainder to neutrals takes over. Is it not that simple for Classic-style maps?

koontz1973 wrote:

Metsfanmax wrote:I don't understand some of the criticism being made here. Why does any XML need to be changed? What is being asked for is a change in how the engine decides which territories are assigned to players. Instead of dividing the legal starting positions evenly among players, we just give one (randomly) to each player. Then whatever code assigns the remainder to neutrals takes over. Is it not that simple for Classic-style maps?

No. How do you think the engine knows on what to give and where? It all comes down to the xml. The xml tells the engine what to do and how to do it. It is the xml that assigns the territories, not the engine. Without the xml change, the engine will play it like it is.

What you are saying is like what drives a car? Is it the engine of the person? Neither can do it alone.

Metsfanmax wrote:Take Classic. If I understand the XML guide, the game engine sees every territory as a legal starting position. Then the game engine randomly assigns control of each of these territories evenly to all players. Then the game engine assigns the remainder automatically to neutrals. We simply change the first step from "randomly assigns control of all of the territories to players" to "randomly assigns control of one of the territories to players" (for Conquest game-mode only). Then the second step proceeds as normal (there are plenty of 'remainder' territories now, though). The only part the XML plays in all of this is to tell the game engine which territories are legal to start on, which it already does for these maps.

• The game engine sees territories as a default position as long as no starting positions are placed inside the xml. A lot of maps have starting positions so the engine will always assign those. You would need to remove all starting positions within all xml from all maps for this game engine modification to work.

• By changing the game engines default from dividing up all territories evenly between all players to only giving one out will effect all maps. There can only be one default.

• Lastly, gameplay would need to be worked out for each map. No way will a map like this ever get past game play in the foundry. You cannot assign a random drop like this for maps as it would be completely unfair 100% of the time.

koontz1973 wrote:But

What could be done and done pretty quickly is to have a limited amount of maps coded like this. Classic would be the obvious choice as would Eurasia and World 2.1 (both of these you would need the map makers permission). Then instead of having a button on the start a game page, you would have a choice of Classic or Conquest Classic. The maps on the home screen stay the same but in the drop down box with the list of maps, the second conquest map would be listed. But it would have to be up to the map maker if they wanted this to happen. Trying to balance a map now for all game types takes hours for every map. It is not something ian and I take lightly or do quickly.

Metsfanmax wrote:I don't understand some of the criticism being made here. Why does any XML need to be changed? What is being asked for is a change in how the engine decides which territories are assigned to players. Instead of dividing the legal starting positions evenly among players, we just give one (randomly) to each player. Then whatever code assigns the remainder to neutrals takes over. Is it not that simple for Classic-style maps?

greenoaks wrote:

Metsfanmax wrote:I don't understand some of the criticism being made here. Why does any XML need to be changed? What is being asked for is a change in how the engine decides which territories are assigned to players. Instead of dividing the legal starting positions evenly among players, we just give one (randomly) to each player. Then whatever code assigns the remainder to neutrals takes over. Is it not that simple for Classic-style maps?

it is that simple.