Contest idea: Multiplayer Siege That

[Nigel 71]

Lord Vetka and I tried out the maps today and got the skirmish map to work in MP.

Giving gold to the attacker has to be done using a resource cache but that does not seem to be a problem. After our test game, I was able to add a cache with 10,000 gold for the attacker and when I tried again in SP, I had that gold in my treasury a few seconds after the game started.

 

A few things still need to be ironed out - for example, is it fast enough to recruit a whole army that way? It would not be quite right if it took 20 minutes to build up the army and then 15 minutes to do the batte. Also, I am now thinking: what would be a good starting castle. How small at the beginning, how big in the end?

 

But it does work in principle, and this has made me very happy today :)

Edited January 13, 2015 by Nigel

[Mathew Steel 151]

Glad you've got what you wanted :)

 

As for castle sizes I think it would depend on how many enemy castles would exist. I'd say 3 is a reasonable amount.

 

1 small (1-2 towers and thin walls)

1 medium (1 small tower, 1 medium tower, thick walls)

1 large (1 big tower, 2 small towers, thick walls, more troops)

 

That's just an idea :)

[Lord Vetka 63]

I'm happy with the tests we did, we learned enough to continue on, I changed the skirmish map to a level 1 castle and tested it this morning and sent it to you for a look.

 

Thanks Mathew, but we are planning to have 1 castle to attack and then take the level 1 castle to a level 2 castle for the next stage then a level 3 castle for the final stage, that is sort of what we are looking for, Nigel can correct us on that.

 

The map I made has a level 1 plateau and a smaller level 2 plateau, the level 1 castle is built on the level 2 plateau with 4 towers regular walls and 1 gate, range units on the towers and melee units guarding the gate and keep, the second level castle will be the same castle but the lower level 1 plateau will get walls 4 towers and a gate at the other end from the level 1 gate, the towers will have range units and melee units guarding the gate, and the level 3 castle would be all of that and more troops and maybe 2 more towers, that is the general idea, we are still testing how we will do all of this, any more ideas are welcome!

 

You should have the map now Nigel, lets see what you have to say.

[Nigel 71]

This is coming along nicely.

We now have a small castle, which to me feels about right for a level 1.

I won't spoil your surprises, by telling more details, though :P

 

One thing occurred to me while testing.

Lord Vetka placed a stash with some weapons and we have the option to give as many weapons for free as we like.

 

This brings the question of how do we want to deal with weapons for a crusader army?

If we let the player buy all the weapons, an arabic army will probably be stronger than a crusader army (for the same gold).

If we give the player all weapons for free, i.e. only recruiting costs for the soldiers, then the crusader army seems to be more effective.

 

So what do we want to do?

Go one way or another? Or does it really matter? Perhaps I am making too much of it.

I don't really have a clear idea of what I want to do with this right now, but I am happy to hear peoples thoughts and opinions.

Edited January 14, 2015 by Nigel

[Nigel 71]

Well, Lord Vetka and I played another test game yesterday, wich answered this question.

 

I had fitted him out with a large amount of all weapon types, so that he did not need to buy any and could just recruit. This made it very easy for the attacker to go for a knight spam and just walk into the small castle with a wall of steel, regardless of any walls or gates in the way.

 

I think the way to go is to fit out the attacker with a certain number of weapons (given to him in the "baggage train" of his army). The attacker can use all of them or as many as he wants but if he wants more of a certain type, he has to buy them or hire mercenaries.

 

In the end, this is not too different from Matthew's suggesion in option 2. Good thinking, Matthew :)

Edited January 17, 2015 by Nigel

[Mathew Steel 151]

Good to hear you managed to get it sorted. Glad I could help :)

[Lord Vetka 63]

Yes That was a good test, I do think the weapons should be 160 armor and 40 each of the other weapons that go with armor and 100 each of the bows and spears, it's enough to start with then the player can sell some or buy different weapons for what they want, 10'000 gold is a bit to much as well maybe 8'000 would be better.

 

I have an idea for a win condition, the player with the most amount of gold at the end would be the winner, I think it would make each player take a little more time to plan his attack, the most gold at the end of 3 levels would determine the greatest sieger!

 

At first I was not sure about having an attending defender who could move troops and add in some traps and pitch and go out and attack some of the attackers, but maybe it is more fun this way, maybe you should have 1 pitch pit for a small amount of pitch and some gold to buy a few traps to place around the castle.

[Mathew Steel 151]

I like that idea. It sounds very fun :)

[Nigel 71]

I also like your idea for the win condition, Lord Vetka.

This way, we could be a bit more generous on the gold and still each player would be trying to use only as much as he thinks necessary.

 

I would still like to give an incentive for trying to capture the castle at the first attempt.

Perhaps we could say that the King will give a reward of 500 gold pieces for that - in addition to the gold that the attacker managed to save. Then, if you do need a seocnd attempt, you only get the gold you saved.

 

I will try a few more things with the map today and tomorrow and will then send it to you, Lord Vetka. Perhaps we will be able to do another test later this week (Wed. or Fr. would be good for me) and decide if we want to go on with this little test map or just say we used it to prove the concept and take what we learned to start on the real one.

 

 

If things go well and we don't encounter any unexpected glitches, we may be able to sound the call to arms sometime in February to get this contest started.

Edited January 19, 2015 by Nigel

[Lord Vetka 63]

After our chat yesterday I opened the map in the editor and made some changes to the castle and the map and the goods:-), you should have the new version in your mail. This looks like we have our first level 1 map, a few adjustments and I would say it's ready.

 

The gold win does seam like a good goal, I like the idea of extra incentive, maybe 1000 for first try 500 for second and well 0 for the final attempt.

 

I have a question, we have the level 1 map, do you want to make a contest for level 1 then later level 2 then 3, or run the whole thing in one go?

 

I would say February, either way we go, the hard part was making the first level, the next levels should be fairly easy to finish.

 

We have a position for an observer, does this sound like something you guys would be interested in, we could add in a few more spots for more observers? But, if we have observers, whats to stop someone who plans on playing the map to come and observe first and get a better start, well I guess the host would have to keep track of who is observing!

[Nigel 71]

Yes, this map looks good and we shall continue with it and build it up to be our level 1 castle.

 

 

My plan is to run the whole contest over the 3 castles - so the winner is, whoever collects most gold at the very end. That said, we can have a little celebration at the end of each level and say: "Lord A gets the intermediate victory and is the leading man now". This way the other lords know how much of an effort they have to make to catch up and race him to the end. xD

 

 

The spectator seat was more something I wanted to try out conceptually. We can use it if we think that we want a referee (or a camera man) in this or some other competition that we may want to do in the future. If we use the co-op function, we may even be able to place 2 or 4 player onto the one spectator seat that we have. But I think we should ask the players if they are ok to accept a spectator. Not everyone likes to be watched over the shoulder while he desperately tries to get over the walls of some castle. :D

[Lord_Chris 251]

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The spectator seat was more something I wanted to try out conceptually. We can use it if we think that we want a referee (or a camera man) in this or some other competition that we may want to do in the future.

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I'd be more than happy to referee if you're looking for someone. Sometimes being able to just sit back and watch is an easy way to learn more tricks, and means you don't have to worry about getting killed yourself.

[Lord Vetka 63]

A little more to be done with this map, then I will take it to the next level, but we should be able to test this level 1 map on Friday again.

 

We can see what people are thinking about the extra spectator seat before we make any decision, a referee would be good, but that does adds to the scheduling.

 

To make it more exciting we could have the player take a couple of trebs and kill the spectator for extra points:-)

 

I believe that we have given the player enough ways to attack the castle that we should see some varied results, should be interesting!

[Nigel 71]

Well, we tested on Friday, but had a bit of a hard time with it. Fortuna, it seems, was in a bad mood and did not smile upon us.

 

 

First, Real Life interfered, as Real Life sometimes does, and we got started later than planned and then I had to log off and run for my other activities after only 1 hour. Still, there was some time to do testing.

 

We tried one version of the map, that did not function correctly and decided to go back to an earlier version. Unfortunately, I had done some cleaning of my hard drive (yes, I know, I should never do such a thing :P ). By the time I had found the correct file, another 30 minutes had passed.

 

Eventually we got into the game, but I made a mess of the game set-up and Lord Vetka ended up on the spectator's seat watching me attack the AI controlled castle. :S

 

 

 

Well, I guess it is all part of the learning curve and at least now I know which mistakes to avoid.

We still had a good chat about our different experiences with the map. We have now played several battles against the AI and we both lost some and won some - so that is a good sign suggesting that we cannot be too far off.

 

Also, we could win against the AI while saving quite a lot of the gold that we started with. That is how it should be, too. Playing against a human defender should be more challanging and with that extra gold available, it could be just right.

 

 

We will do some more PvP testing next week, but even if our test last Friday did not quite go as we hoped, I feel this is moving in the right direction.

Edited January 24, 2015 by Nigel

[Lord Vetka 63]

Well I'm starting to learn how weak this map editor is, to many saves then deleting stuff, moving things around and more deleting, next thing you know, the map starts causing troubles, we also passed the map back and forth, making changes on each side.

 

I managed to get the map back in order by going back to an earlier save, then this morning I wanted to make a small adjustment on the resource piles and found a problem, now the map will not work properly in game, so I tried to check the editor verification on Steam but could not, I restarted my PC and finally managed to get the editor files verified, 4 files were messed up, that's fixed then I verified the game files and they were fine.

 

Then made the changes to the map that I wanted to do earlier, now the map is fine, what a head ache that was.

 

We should be good for some more testing Nigel, when your ready.

[Lord Vetka 63]

That was a bit of a rue, I had made a new map, the old one got to messed up to continue.

 

I wanted to surprise Nigel, well the surprise went well and we tested the new map, a few adjustments and we should be ready with our level 1 map, the next 2 levels should be fairly easy to put into the map.

[Nigel 71]

It was a surprise indeed. :D

 

We played the map with me as attacker - when I had not looked at the map before and I saw it for the first time in game.

I was badly beaten on my first try and inintially thought it was way too hard. But for my second try I changed my strategy and seem to have found the right one. I took the castle and even had a few goldpieces to spare.

 

We will do a few more adjustments and tests this week, but if all goes well, we could be announcing the start of this game during next week. :)

Edited January 27, 2015 by Nigel

[Lord Vetka 63]

After some more adjustments and testing, I believe we have the first Level 1 map, there is a bit of a challenge to win for the first time but not real hard, a power player should be able to win on the first try and good players should be able to win by the second try, Level 2 will be harder, but the hardest part is getting it done with the most amount of gold left over, that will be the win condition for the 3 level contest.

 

One thing about this idea Nigel, you want players to play the map for the first time without seeing it first, What's to stop the first player from giving away information on the map or giving the map to other people to practice on first?

 

Also, the amount of gold the player has at the end of the game, to get that we need to save the map at a point close to victory, that way we can run the save and tally the gold total for the player.

 

Well, now I can start working on the level 2 map, this one will be a bit harder, but we are trying to make the map playable for most players, we would like to see everyone have a chance to win and still have some fun doing it!

 

Anyone else have an opinion they would like to offer, any ideas to make this better! All ideas for this contest are welcome!

[Nigel 71]

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One thing about this idea Nigel, you want players to play the map for the first time without seeing it first, What's to stop the first player from giving away information on the map or giving the map to other people to practice on first?

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Well, nothing would stop them from doing this.But then, but why should they? They would only be giving an advantage to their competitors. So I don't think it is going to be a real problem.

 

Of course, if they want to give the map to a friend to practice with before they do their second attempt, that is fair enough and in the spirit of the game. For their second attempt, the players may use every means they can to plan and prepare for the assault. Only if they fail again in spite of all these efforts, they can get more money for the third attempt.

 

 

 

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Also, the amount of gold the player has at the end of the game, to get that we need to save the map at a point close to victory, that way we can run the save and tally the gold total for the player.

Read more  

 

I can see the amount of gold the players have at any time during the game in the Greatest Lord screen. So I can just take a screenshot when they are done recruiting and starting the attack. That gives me a record of how much money they have kept back for their own treasury.

 

 

 

I must say, I am really excited now to see what different tactics the players will come up with to assault the castle :)

Edited February 2, 2015 by Nigel

[Lord Vetka 63]

Just checking, people do all kinds of things you would not expect, it should be fine! If that is the case, maybe we should just post the map into the contest downloads and every one can get a chance to see and try the map, just a thought.

 

I forgot about the Greatest Lord screen, when I run contests I ask for the player to send me a save just before the end to confirm the score and check for cheating, it still would not hurt to get a save just before victory, not right at victory but say, as the troops start to enter the keep would be close enough so we can run the save and collect information that we might need.

 

Yes he opened the sub forum for you and in case we want to do more of these, I already have an idea for the next one!

 

We chatted about this and Chris has decided to be a contestant, so we have our first contestant, that would leave me and you to judge the entries, not that there is any judging to do but we do need to go over the details of each winner.

 

I'm excited to see how it goes as well, it should be fun and interesting to see how each player takes on the enemy castle, the next Level, level 2 is a bit of a different fight and should be even more fun to play and to watch.

[Nigel 71]

All right, the game thread is opened TATAA

 

It is in the Gaming Events forum right now, but Lord Vetka if you or some other moderator could move it to the new Contest forum that Chris has created for this game, that would be great.

 

Glad to hear that Chris himself is joining in on the fun. :)

I dont really think that we will need a referee for this particular game. Still, we have a free seat and could bring one in if we wanted to. And I like your idea of taking a save close to the end of the battle. That should be doable without too much trouble and will give us a good idea of how many and which troops survided etc.

[Lord_Chris 251]

As we agreed, your topic has been moved. :)

[Lord Vetka 63]

Thanks Lord Chris, glad to see that someone has some game, we should see a few people joining the fun.

 

I am looking forward to sitting in the observers spot for a few of these games, as the levels go up it will be interesting to watch the different tactics people will use to take the castle.

[Lord Vetka 63]

Keeping up to date, the final Level 3 map is done, just need to test and do a few adjustments if needed.

 

The contest has been announced and should be ready to start soon, so practice your sieging skills, it should be a fun contest, sieging against a live defender will be a little different than sieging an AI opponent.

[Nigel 71]

I thought I would add a few out-of-character comments on the learnings from the battle with Blobka today.

 

It was really amazing and unexpected to see how much money he could make out of taxation: 7k additional gold for a map that was considered a good challange at a gold level of 18k. We both felt that was really too much.

 

Also, considering that players were making a few hundred gold pieces on level 1, if you are able to make around 10k gold on level 2, it renders the earnings from level 1 totally insignificant. That, too, is not in the spirit of the game.

 

 

One of the reasons for allowing tax collection was that it is somewhat difficult to control a no-tax rule. Yes, I can see the tax level in the greatest lord screen, but in the heat of battle I might forget to look and the player might forget to turn them off and so, without anyone meaning any bad, some uncontrolled taxes are flowing. It just seemed easier to allow free taxation. On top of that, Lord Vetka's thinking is that allowing players more freedom is better anyway (and I am certainly not opposed to that).

 

 

 

But with what I have learned today, I think that a no-tax rule is the better way to go - at least for this particular contest.

I know that making rule changes in a running contest is never a good thing. But this is the first time we are trying this out and we probably can expect the rules to be far from perfect. So please be patient with me. I hope this is not distracting us from the fun we are having with the contest.

Edited April 15, 2015 by Nigel