Knights and Merchants.net Forum

Difficulty multiplayer maps!

How it works ?
Its simple, in lobby add new options: Difficulty

e.g (We host) ( lobby is full) We take map The Same Rocks, loc 2, team 1, colour grey, and take option Difficulty
- easy
- normal
- medium
- hard
- weteran

* easy + 50% raw materials in granary

* normal - In this option, the material in the granary are normal amount
stone 100
wood 70
gold 60
wine 50
bread 60
susages 30
fish 40
* medium - In this option, the material in the granary are in limited quantities
stone 80
wood 50
gold 40
wine 50
bread 30
susages 20
fish 40

* hard - In this option, the material in the granary are in limited quantities, and there is less at the start of helpers and builders

stone 60
wood 40
gold 30
wine 40
bread 20
susages 10
fish 15
- 2 helpers
- 2 builders

*weteran - In this option, the material in the granary are in limited quantities, and there is less at the start of helpers and builders

stone 50
wood 30
gold 20
wine 35
bread 15
susages 10
fish 10
- 3 helpers
- 3 builders

20 gold? Are you well?
Anyway it's totally useless imo, just would be some exploitable stuff that noobs would use on many easy maps like CC and TSR. And it would enable matches to be unfair.

i understand and love that concept, it is like a handicap you can set if another player feels confident enough, but i do not think it would be able to implement it since the lower/higher amount of resources greatly affects how fast you can build. 10 timber does not seem like it is much but it ia a veyr big difference, especially in the early game. what you can do is have a normal version of the map and a harder version of the map for the ones who want a challenge.

omg.. its proposal only ... -_- example

difficulty to apply to all players!!

I personally feel that this is in the Map maker's hands. It is his/her creation and they are the ones who think about this stuff.

- easy +50% raw materials to all players in begining
- normal +0
- medium - 20%
- hard - 35% and - 20% bulders and helpers
- weteran - 60% and - 40% bulders and helpers

This will not work, mainly because the goods are not distributed "equally" on every map - some have less food, some have less timber and/or stone, on some you get absurd amounts of some resource at start.. You could probably scale it up on some maps (i.e. make it easier) but scaling down would make it either unplayable or simply make the game longer, much longer.

If you really want to mess with game difficulty then change initial level of stamina of both "civilians" and soldiers.

In the way Paker described his idea I do not really like it, but difficulty settings should be available (and then it is up to the map makers how hard 'hard' is and how easy 'easy' is).

I think an idea like this would work better. I also had an idea to allow the map author to specific "game modes" for that map which are defined in different parts of the script. So you could name your own game modes that would load the same map but different parts of the script. This would not only allow difficulty settings but also any custom game mode you could think of for your map. But I think that's over complicated and only necessary for difficulty changes. If people are going to make a significantly different game mode (e.g. siege or tower defence) for their existing map it can be listed as a new map (since they might want to change the terrain a bit anyway).

So I'd rather call it "starting resources" not difficulty mode (since the skill of your opponents is really what makes the game difficulty). It could include a few sizes of pre-built villages (e.g. just to the inn, or just to the sawmill, or a large village with most buildings for a faster game), perhaps generated by the AI's city planner so they are randomised each game (IMO that would be pretty cool once our AI is reliable enough to plan a good village layout, but I guess we'll never satisfy the high level players since the AI's villages won't be as perfect as their own). There could also be options for the amount of resources you start with, the amount of troops you start with, etc. (these things probably need to be defined by the map author though because the amounts need to vary depending on the map) It could bring some interesting variety to the game so you don't always have to play a standard "60 minutes peacetime" game. But we don't want to make the interface too complicated (remember Krom's bus?) so there'll probably be quite a limited number settings (e.g. we won't have a slider to select the number of serfs/labourers or each individual resource )

I think we could have this as a part of the mutators idea - "Starting resources (x0.5 - x3)" and "Prebuilt City (Store - Small City - Big City)". AI city planner needs more polishing however. We have a special tool to test it (start each map and run it 10 times and see that every time AI made a working town), so that is a matter of time.

P.S. LOLs, I see references to "Krom's bus" everywhere now

Great! @ Lewin, Krom <3

Yes it was a perfect example which, I think, convinced everyone not to implement semi-useless features.

And yes, I was planning on difficulty settings for Tower Defence because the same waves over and over again would get a little boring. So in the 'hard' mode waves may be larger, you might get less resources or resources that must be processed before useful (e.g. tree trunks instead of timber, gold ore instead of gold chests), attacks might come more quickly after each other, etc.
Eventual support within Remake would be great, for now I could just make three different scripts (and so three different 'maps'). But that would add three more maps to the long list of maps currently in Remake...

@TDL: You might make the difficulty dependant on something that player can change himself. For example, if player builds 1 Fisherhut he has difficulty x1, if 2 - x2, etc. Something of that kind.

I guess the maps DAT file should have a flag if they support difficulties or maybe the scripts could query States.Difficulty. Just an idea yet.