What has happened?

[gil]

KGB

http://www.warbarons.com/wiki/terrain
i cant figure that wiki page out where in there can i find the power of a Minotaur will it get a castle terrain bonus in a ruin

[gil]

SnotlinG my way of knowing unit properties is going into "fight order" from inside the game i looked up wiki and it seems movement is updated there but if you look in fight order it shows other movement properties

[SnotlinG]

SnotlinG my way of knowing unit properties is going into "fight order" from inside the game i looked up wiki and it seems movement is updated there but if you look in fight order it shows other movement properties

If you look in Fightorder inside the game, the Ranger has move-symbols for Forest, Hill and Swamp, which is the terrains she is moving in at a reduced cost. Maybe I misunderstand your question?
If you look at the Horselord in the fightorder he is showing symbols for Hill and Swamp, since these are the only terrains that he move in at a reduced cost.

[SnotlinG]

KGB

http://www.warbarons.com/wiki/terrain
i cant figure that wiki page out where in there can i find the power of a Minotaur will it get a castle terrain bonus in a ruin

If you look in the wiki, under the Terrain Types table, you have a column for Combat Terrain. If you look at Ruin, it will tell you that the combat terrain for a Ruin is indead "Ruin", i.e. not City (which is what a Minotaur has bonus in)

[KGB]

What SnotlinG mentioned above about the terrain table is correct. You then check the unit you are interested in:

http://www.warbarons.com/wiki/units2

Check the Minotaur and mouse over the icons to see descriptions. The far right icons for the units are the ones that are combat related. There you will see the Minotaur gets a +5 combat bonus in cities and not ruins.

KGB

[KGB]

I cannot see why this would be a bad thing! Having the right units available at the right place at the right time is the essence of the game, nothing else!

Not true. Misdirection (sneaking around enemies), traps (projecting weakness when you are actually strong), bluffs (projecting strength when you are weak) are all the essence of the game too. These are what separate new/average players from good/great ones. I'd argue the game doesn't even go far enough in this manner and that all units in cities should be hidden as they are in towers. So that you either attack totally blind or scout the city to know what's there.

A calculator does not help with having the units available, it only helps to plan ahead and filter out the bad plans - the ones that a veteran player would never do anyway.

So you want to automatically filter out all bad plans? That's a horrible idea. It's like 2 players sitting down to play chess and both having a computer next to them to advise them of their moves. What's the point of playing then since the computer will always do a better job than the players.

KGB

[gil]

KGB was that for real?

"computer will always do a better job than the players"

did you just say that game AI is better then human player
or that chess world chmpion can be won by my home desktop computer?

[Chazar]

A calculator does not help with having the units available, it only helps to plan ahead and filter out the bad plans - the ones that a veteran player would never do anyway.

So you want to automatically filter out all bad plans? That's a horrible idea. It's like 2 players sitting down to play chess and both having a computer next to them to advise them of their moves. What's the point of playing then since the computer will always do a better job than the players.

I want to filter out boring games, such as a new player, who has seen my assassin approaching for 5 turns, specifically decides to buy archons as a counter measure, since he has heard/learned that archons are good at countering heroes. Ouch. This isn't just bad play, this is simply ignorance of the game rules - and this is simply uninteresting. A calculator prevents such simple misunderstandings easily in an intuitive manner, that allows players to play around with the units.

Look at the above discussion on the minotaur! What a nightmare! There is pointing at several different places, including disagreeing game warpedia pages! Are you really expecting a new player to read that much text and tables and then sort out the disagreeing parts? Explanations have to be more intuitive and transparent nowadays to entice players to a new game! Hell, I know this game pretty well know and even translated part of the warpedia, but I still need several tries to find the right warpedia page to retrieve the information that I need. Ugh.

Of course, it is simply not feasible to keep the Warpedia updated and in synch with the current game - especially since a player might still have old-version games running. So within the game there needs to be a prominent button that explains the active rules, taking its information from the actual game data to avoid the problem of outdated documentation.

Now the already included "Army Simulator" could fill that role perfectly. However it is both hard to find for a new player and rather useless since it doesn't deal with the important corner cases, like the aforementioned bridges: What is the point of ripping off a new player once, just because he did not study page over page of warpedia and thus did not yet knew that bridges provide both open and water terrain bonus? Boring.

The simulator must list of all possible battle terrains, which makes it immediately clear that these battle terrains do exist. No need for digging through tables then! In my own web-interface to teach the game, I even included "Razed", "Temple" and "Ruin" as terrains right form the start, so even at a time when minotaurs and spiders did get their city bonus on "Ruins" in Warbarons, the then unnecessary terrains where shown and yielded the correct bonus, just as it now for the current versions shows Ghosts getting their bonus. It also alerts to wall bonus for the latter two, all straight away.

So it is a central location that fits on a single screen, that can teach all terrain and battle mechanics at the precise point that a player is asking for it...that is much better than several screens of texts and tables (and easier to maintain as well). Now displaying the resulting strengths after bonuses is nice, but it does not say much to a new player. Giving a simple winning percentage breaks this down easily - and it does not even provide more information than editing a simple map to play out specific battles would.

[gil]

SnotlinG my way of knowing unit properties is going into "fight order" from inside the game i looked up wiki and it seems movement is updated there but if you look in fight order it shows other movement properties

If you look in Fightorder inside the game, the Ranger has move-symbols for Forest, Hill and Swamp, which is the terrains she is moving in at a reduced cost. Maybe I misunderstand your question?
If you look at the Horselord in the fightorder he is showing symbols for Hill and Swamp, since these are the only terrains that he move in at a reduced cost.

sorry i cant figure it out i really tried this will be a good time to ban me for stupidity
where is it explained ranger have 2 cost at trees and 4 cost at swamp

do move-symbols for Forest, Hill and Swamp have types or powers?

[KGB]

KGB was that for real?

"computer will always do a better job than the players"

did you just say that game AI is better then human player
or that chess world chmpion can be won by my home desktop computer?

1) The World Chess Championship can definitely be won by your home computer. Nov 21 2005 was the last time a human grandmaster defeated a computer in tournament mode. As in won a single game not a best of X match. Since then the computers have only gotten stronger and there are currently no games between humans and computers in tourney mode any more.

2) The Warbarons game AI isn't better than a player. But a game battle simulator will be better than any player since it can 100% produce the outcome of any battle. Thus you'd always know exactly what the odds of winning any battle were if you were allowed to enter the stacks of both players.

KGB