ARCTICA PHASE 2 RELEASE - Finally xD

Entelect Challenge 2022 Announcements
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Entelect Challenge Arctica - Phase 2 Release - Version 2022.2.0 :ice_cube: :icecream:

Welcome to phase 2 of The Entelect Challenge. Thank you for waiting so patiently for the new release! The code is out, go and pull!

There are a few new features to spice up the game play, as well as provide an entirely new approach to the PVP strategy.

New features:

  • Buildings: :building_construction: :house: :bank:

    • As the game is based on an RTS (real-time strategy), we decided to bring in the building feature to allow villages to start claiming land and expanding their reach.
    • A building is placed using the appropriate command for a specific building.
    • There is currently only one building type that you can place, Quarry, but we will be adding more ASAP!
    • Each village now starts out with the Base building as its base. Bases cannot be placed.
    • Each building comes with an associated resource cost and build time.
    • Buildings can only be placed within your territory on empty nodes (i.e. positions that don’t already have a resource node or building).

  • Territory: :fr: :it: :south_africa:

    • Territory is a claim on a piece of land. Each building has a square of territory around it, where the building’s associated territory size is the side-length of the territory square.
    • Territory cannot change once it has been claimed. This means it is first-come, first-served:
      • You cannot steal another village’s territory (see game-rules.md for an example)
    • Buildings can be placed in order to expand your territory in the direction you wish.

  • Gold: :1st_place_medal: :moneybag: :dollar:

    • This is a new resource that is required to fund the development of your village. Each building has a gold cost among the resource costs that are required to build it.
    • Gold is obtained through mining:
      • Since stone and gold are both obtained through mining, the action has stayed the same but the resource acquired depends on the resource node that is targeted.

  • Buffs/Debuffs: :muscle:

    • This is the benefit of buildings and territory.
    • Buildings and territory provide different types of advantages:
      • Increases in resource rewards
      • We are also contemplating a decrease in travel time - comment in this thread if you would like that

  • Project Structure Change:

    • To make development a bit simpler for us, we have merged the Logger and GameRunner projects into the game-engine solution. This shouldn’t affect the starter pack, however you will see a slightly different project/folder structure in the Arctica codebase.

  • Bugs: :bug: :lady_beetle:

    • no, this is not a feature… :stuck_out_tongue:
    • there are a few bugs around territory and available nodes that we are aware of and in the process of fixing. We thought it was more important to release the game than fix the bugs at this stage.

We hope that you enjoy these new changes and that the next stage of Arctica is super exciting!

As always, please feel free to post any questions, concerns, and bugs on the forum! Once again, thank you for your patience :heart: :pray:

2 Likes
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Thank you for this, Now I know I will truly have a crazy weekend.

My thoughts on travel time. In the last harness we had too many workers to begin with towards the end.
So I ended with a lot of workers I dont need.

I love the thought of territory and Gold.

I will test the weekend and take things from there.
First just assessing some rules.

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Quick Question,

What is the scoring implications now?

Do we get points for territory?
Do we get points for Gold?

I do believe both of these should impact scoring as well.

I have not tested the new version yet.
Only read the new rules so i can think about Strategy

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Thanks for the new release! I didn’t compete in the first phase so it’s hard to tell if it’s just me, but I’d like to check if it would be possible to decrease (or completely remove) the population requirement for each tier.

If the the population requirement for the tiers are decreased (or removed) you don’t end up in a situation where you need a ginormous population that you can’t sustain resource-wise (because everything is depleted), but which you need to acquire in the first place in order to lift your resource caps. I think that decreasing the population constraints could lead to a more interesting situation where managing your population size becomes an option.

PS: I think you need to publish the 2022.2.0 release for it to become downloadable as a normal release. For those wanting to download the release from a constant url so long (I use the release urls in a dockerfile) you can use my fork here (same as the main repo, just published the release for download): Release 2022.2.0 · kobus-v-schoor/2022-Arctica · GitHub

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Hi @WillieTheron currently we only give points just for the new buildings. We will consider your ideas too while we are rebalancing :slightly_smiling_face:

Thanks for the input!

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Hi @kobus-v-schoor

That is something we have considered. As we are balancing we will be adding new buildings with different status effects. So we could add a building that assists with population control. :wink:

Thanks for letting us know about the git hub release we will look into it :slightly_smiling_face:

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Thanks Jenique, does this mean that more buildings will be added for the second phase before the 9th of July?

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Im pretty happy with the last balance,

I would not comment on balance until I tested myself.

The great thing about the last harness was it was long enough for everything to run out. So you had to plan for that.

I know a few users who ran their aggressive bot against a conservative one and the problem is that even if you conserve the larger bot might not and you get messed around later.

Efficiency is absolute. Though we still had what I call margin for error.
It would be interesting to see what happens now that that margin of error is away.

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So everything is about territory now?

That sounds very nice. Extremely nice.
Balancing Advancement with conquest will be an interesting problem.
I can already see my implementation theoretically.

I might be misunderstanding. But I do feel the whole civilization should play a role endgame.

Points for Resources
Points for Population
Points for Buildings

But in a balance where 1 building is worth more than the resources required to build it.
Same as Population.

Its better to have a unit endgame than to have 1KG wood and 1 KG food.

An Age of empires style scoring where you get points for your whole endgame state can be nice.
One person might have a stronger Population focus,
Another might have more territory.
Another might have resources.

And then maybe for event 3 we can allow people to take and defend buildings.
**Maybe 100 units can take a building of the enemy over 20 ticks. But if they send 100 Units to defend the attack is defended immediately. Attacker should disadvantage himself here. Units will need to travel normally.

Attacker’s disadvantage is travel time + 20 ticks. Defenders advantage is travel time only.
So if one attacks a territory thats even distance from the opponent. The defender has a unit advantage.

Plus it will be impossible to take buildings thats next to a player base. it will be a 40 tick comitment of 100 units that can be defended by 3 ticks. Anyways, just had this thought.

So distant territory will be very hard to defend.

This isnt balancing for now. But It would be wise if the team can finalize plans for the final event without changing too much foundationally.

I do feel we need takeovers though. Takeovers will turn this years problem into the perfect challenge.

Both of you lose units for a while. And it will give other players advantage.

**Leading to a back and forth waste of units in some cases.

Yeah, that is probably what we need for the finals…
But let me test the system a little first.

1 Like
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Yes we be adding about 5 over the next week. depending on the feedback from the community :+1:

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Hey, Thought i will just extend on this Discussion:

It appears that Gold mining does not work at all.

My units are sent with mine, and the Node state from the JSON shows my units under Current units for the Gold Node.
But Gold is never actually farmed.

Know there was mention about bugs being worked on. Just thought id mention anyways.
Gold is the first step to updates.

Im looking at territory now. Basically knew exactlky how I was going to handle Gold so implimentation was easy.
Now I just need to add territories to the visualiser. And start looking at that aspect

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When will the readme be updated with the new rules?