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General Ludd
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Minion of the Dominion
Aug 2001
time: 05:36
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I've played a few games as drakes against elves today and have come to the conclusion that elves are the best race, while drakes are the worst. 
Seriously, some things to consider:
Elves:
Almost every unit has a ranged attack
Very good defense in most terrain, and especially forest.
A scout unit that moves 9 spaces (fastest in the game?) and can go through forest with no movement penalty.
Woses which are a mega-powerful melee unit and also capable of ambush an regeneration. (Granted, they are slow and weak to fire and have no ranged attack, but it seems odd to stick such a powerful melee unit in with the same race that has the best archers.)
Mermen, a very powerful melee unit for water.
Druids, capable of both slowing enemies and healing comrades.
...
Do they have any downsides?
They aren't the strongest melee fighters, but that's about it.
Drakes:
Most units have a very powerful ranged attack.
Many units that can fly over all terrain at no penalty.
A melee unit that has the choice of a blade or pierce attack.
A mage that not only has a magical cold attack but also a fire breath attack and a mediocre melee attack.
...
Their downsides?
Extremely poor defense, with the highest bonus possible being 40% for most units.
Their units cost a large amount, almost double that of most other races.
The few regular-priced units they have lack any ranged attacks and have only average melee abilities.
The mages can strangely not fly over water, tundra, or swamp, despite being able to fly over everything else.
How do the two compare in combat?
For starters, something that I found incredibly annoying was that to be equal in defense with an elf I had to be in my most prefered terrain (hills & mountains) while the elf had to be in one of his least prefered (grasslands) this puts us both at 40% defense. If the elf moved onto the hills (which is supposedly the drake's prefered terrain) he actually has a higher defense value than me at 50%
Extremely frustrating.
But, you say, you can fly! you can out manouvere the elves and force them to play by your rules! This is true in mountains but, again, the elves actually have a higher defense than you do in mountains and hills so it becomes preferable to "hold the line" at the edge of the mountains rather than leading them around and engaging them at will, as you would think you should do.
But what about water, you say? Yes, I thought this would be the ideal scenario. Being able to fly out into the ocean for sanctuary or to outflank the opponent. Only... they have mermen. Fighting mermen in the water is almost as bad - perhaps even worse - than fighting elves in the forest. They do massive amounts of piercing damage (which drakes are susceptable to) and have 70%/60% defense bonus for shallow and deep water respectively, while drakes get a whoping 20% and 10%
And, again, I remind you that the elvish scout units can move at 9 squares (and have no penalties in forest) while the petite drakes can only move 7.
So, to recap: Despite being able to fly, the drakes can only out-manouver elves in mountains and water. Yet, even in those 'prefered' terrain types, they are still at a disadvantage to the elves in terms of defense even though those are supposed to be the least prefered terrain of the elves.
What I think should be different about these two races?
Elves:
Reduce the speed of the scout to 7
Lower their defense in hills to 30% and in mountains to 20% (They've got to have some terrain that they're no good in._
Remove the merman and perhaps replace it with a flying unit.
Drakes:
Raise the defense in shallow/deep water to 30/20% and raise the defense in mountains to 60%
Increase the speed of the petite drake to 8 and the Drake Fighter to 6
Allow the the mage to fly over water and tundra like all the other flying units. (what's the point of out-manouvering the enemy when you have to leave your mages behind?)
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CapTVK
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Voorburg, the Netherlands, Europe
Jan 1970
time: 05:36
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quote:
Originally posted by General Ludd
I think elves are too powerful. I played a 4 player team game and each team had an elf and a non-elf. Both non-elves (myself as drakes and the other as humans) where completely devastated by the opposing elf. |
I'm not sure about that. Elves are mostly dangerous on maps with lots of forest and thanks to their range attacks. If they have to leave the forest and fight against units that shoot back .They can be quite vulnerable.
Part of the "Elves are too powerful" may be down to the fact that Wesnoth is still being developed. In that sense Elves are the most 'evolved'. Based on user feedbackI've seen new units/tweaks in many of the releases.
A 2nd issue is that many players are simply more in tune with the elves because they play a major role in the standard Wesnoth scenario. Learning the skills, strength/weaknesses and abilities of other races only happens when you start to check out the other scenarios or in MP.
Third is that Elves have a simple basic rule: stay in the forest. this isn't so clear wtih the other races. In that sense Elves always know what to do*. Orcs and humans have a far larger selection of units at the start. And learning where a unit is best used takes time.
Final advice: Live, learn and give feedback to the developers
P.S
Yes, I think the Drakes are a weak race as well.
*This is also their weakspot
Last edited by CapTVK on 27-06-2004 at 22:27
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CapTVK
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Voorburg, the Netherlands, Europe
Jan 1970
time: 05:36
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quote:
Originally posted by General Ludd
Yeah, skirmishers are deffinately a very valuable unit. They're quick, ignore zone of control, and have good defense. Good for out flanking, and depending on the terrain, they would be excellent at doing what I did with my flying units that battle. (occupying towns behind enemy lines and tying up or slowing down units)
I'm surprised you didn't make more heavy infantry, though. They do a ton of impact damage and skeletons are extremely weak to that. They just have to watch out for the adepts, since they are weak to cold.
EDIT: Then again, since heavy infantry are so slow they may of been a poor choice for that battle after all, with the way I was fighting. |
The reason that heavy infantry units are so effective against the undead is because of their impact weapons. cheaper human units have spearweapons. I retrospect archers are probably more effective against undead their spearmen. The problem is that heavy infantry are, indeed, very slow. I would have needed to buy them right at the start but i didn't know you had the undead until later in the game.
P.S
It took four turns to get my heavy infantry near the battlefield.
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Fatchris
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I think Ive got a post squeezed somewhere in the middle here.
How long are you guys finding games take? I played a few real quick (`1hr) 1on1 games, but both the 2vs2 bridge games went on for 3hr+.
What was that 5 ppl free for all like?
Having a pretty good win rate at the moment, are there lots of newbies around, or have i just been lucky?
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Fatchris
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GC survived? Well done. When I looked in he was getting pasted by the drakes.
I heard someone talking about playing in two games at once. I just opened up two programs and found I could have two copys running even on my old box. Potential for abuse there in free for all games?
Then again given the turn lengths in some of the bigger games, two games might be a better idea as its virtually like playing pbem.
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Fatchris
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Afaik anyone can see normal chat and observers cannot see team chat.
One trouble comes in when fog of war and/or shroud are enabled. Then the dual login would have an advantage of knowledge of the map.
Also the game I played last night had a long term flanking manaevour (coming in from the sea in the sw corner in the bridge map). All the time spent on that plan would have been blown if the other players could observe. fortunatly the opposition were also fair minded.
On a different subject, what are your opnions on the %xp slider? Ive come to favour about 50%, although the free total heals the upgraded unit gets can be a pain.
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CapTVK
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Voorburg, the Netherlands, Europe
Jan 1970
time: 05:36
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The designers also posted this about further improvements. No major new features till 1.0.
Gamewise all the rules and units seem to be in place. From now on it will a a long beta/bug hunting phase stage until 1.0 Mostly cleaning up and doing spit&polish on graphics and scenarios.
Do hope they make a few fixes for MP though
http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2190
quote:
I've been asked by Steelp (and others) to write something on where we plan to take Wesnoth next. So here is my opinion on where we should take Wesnoth next, as at version 0.8:
I am now happy with Wesnoth's game rules. I think it is a good, fun, simple, and addictive game. A game that is fun to play, and challenging.
I don't think we need any more game rules, or any game rule changes. The game has met and exceeded most of its original design goals.
We have met many challenges during Wesnoth development, but we now have a new challenge: making Wesnoth a polished and high enough quality product to declare it 1.0, and show it to 'the world at large'.
I think that we have a very real chance of failing. That we can continue adding features, debating changes, going sideways, and end up with a product that is too large, too bloated, too unstable to make it to 1.0. With a development team that is too burned out on adding features and debating insignificant changes to polish and debug the program enough.
I think we have to accept that version 1.0 need not have every feature imaginable. That we will in fact have to leave out good ideas in order to deliver a finished product.
I want to start moving aggressively toward a version 1.0. I think the longer we delay, the more developers and users will become frustrated at slow progress. My feeling is that the time is now to finish off all engine features, or decide that they will be left until after 1.0.
IMO the engine is now feature-complete enough for a 1.0. It'd be nice to add a few more features, but it has enough features to ship a 1.0 already. gettext support would be especially nice, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary.
I think that I would like to declare a feature freeze sometimes within the next few weeks. Features that are not added in this time will have to wait until after 1.0. I think we've been waiting long enough for this already, and I am unwilling to wait much longer. We have stayed in the very dangerous '90% done, 10% to go' state for far too long now. It is time to move toward 1.0.
To ensure that 1.0 is a stable program, we will take a number of measures. We will have a fairly long beta-testing period, in which time bugs will be hunted down and squashed. We will take a more rigorous approach to squashing every minor bug we can find than previously.
During this time, campaigns will also be completed, as will graphics, sound and music. Translations will be finished, documentation written, and balancing done.
I will discuss this further with developers, but IMO, campaigns that are not completed by 1.0 should be removed for the 1.0 release. 1.0 should be an entirely finished product, with no 'loose ends' at all.
After 1.0, I still don't think that we will have too many game rule changes. However, I would like to put some effort into making Wesnoth more flexible, to allow people who want to make forks to make their own projects.
Personally, I am mostly committed to getting the project to 1.0 at the moment. After that, we can decide what will happen next.
David
_________________
"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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27-06-2004 21:57
They only go from the last time it loaded.
... but only ours. I'd like to be able to see what our enemies where saying. 
Attachment: 
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