Re: [Wesnoth-dev] The problem with Knalgans....

[David White]

Richard Kettering wrote:

> I mean, the whole goal, I think, should be that the dwarves are 
> significantly more powerful, but less numerous than other races 
> (except maybe drakes).
> In a 3 vs. 3 fight between dwarvish fighters and orcish grunts, the 
> dwarves should win, hands down,  For the price of the three dwarves 
> 17*3=51, you can get four orcish grunts 12*4=48.  Dwarves should 
> always be singly superior in strength to enemy orcs/trolls/humans/elves.

I would think that the dwarves would always win....except perhaps at 
night, so I ran a test:

at http://www.wesnoth.org/data/challenge.zip there are two save files, 
one with three dwarvish fighters against three orcish grunts in 
grassland. Another with three dwarvish fighters against four orcish 
grunts in grassland. Both sides are controlled by the AI, and the orcs 
get to move and attack first in both cases (a big advantage). In each 
case, it is possible for three orcs to attack a single dwarf. (So 
basically the dwarves are in a very bad position). The game is set up so 
that neither day nor night have any effect.

The result of the 3 on 3 is that the Dwarves almost always win, with an 
average of slightly less than 2 survivors. The result of the 4 on 3 is 
that the Dwarves win a slim majority of the time, and I never saw a 
situation where more than one unit from either side survived the encounter.

If the Dwarves are made to attack first, they tear the orcs to shreds in 
the 3 vs 3, and in the 4 vs 3 they almost always win (this turns out to 
be a variation of the 3 vs 3 with the orcs moving first...the dwarves 
can kill off one orc with fairly little damage on their turn, and then 
the orcs get to move).

The Dwarves did do a little worse than I expected, though not too much 
so. After consideration, I feel that the Dwarvish Fighter should perhaps 
get a hitpoints increase: maybe of 4 hitpoints, giving it a total of 40. 
I don't think it should get better defense on grassland.

Also, running this scenario with troll whelps gives worse results for 
the dwarves than I expected. I think increasing the cost of troll whelps 
to 13 or 14 might be justified.

> The better resistance might make them equal to the elvish fighter in 
> combat prowess, but that's not good enough - they should be 
> unmistakably, and clearly more powerful, because their opponents will 
> always outnumber them.  Right now, they are about equal to their 
> opponents in power, but are much more expensive.

I disagree. I think in combat prowess, a dwarvish fighter is a 
reasonable amount better than an elvish fighter.

David