[0.95] Game Pacing: What is the purpose of the wildlands?

Good ideas here!

I would at the very least like this to be a "game type" available to us. Not sure I would want to have to do it all the time, but in terms of what FE is story wise, it would actually be more appropriate to actually have to conquer all of your surrounding lands than the way it is currently structured.

Good suggestions.  This had kind of bothered me as well, especially considering that one of the premises of the game is that it takes place some years after a cataclysmic event destroyed much of the old civilizations.  With that background, I kind of expected much larger areas of very dangerous territory, i.e. the wildlands.

Agree entirely that the Wildlands are irrelevant - they're usually out of the way and if you're strong enough to take them then you're probably strong enough to wipe out the other players. 

The wildlands function is a great idea, but it is not a balanced idea. The late game has yet to see any balance and wildlands is just one part of it. For me at least, reaching the point when wildlands are a feasible thing to conquer, I no longer need to. The bosses are so strong, if you can defeat them, you can generally defeat anything. So why not just go after your enemies? 

I am much more in favor of making wildlands easier to beat for the most part. To do that, we should limit the current possible wildlands to one per map. Then have the masterquest one as well. Instead of 20 or so expansion areas littered randomly about the map, use weaker wildlands. Tribes of Ogres, or Trolls, or Butchers. Things that are currently in lairs, but lack any sort of continuity or story. I would much rather have each expansion area tell me a story. Then I want a small war with the monsters. Each lair should be popping out units like a city. After I conquer the lairs, let me build an expansion base. Give me a relic or trophy for each one. 

This would fix so many problems with the game. If monsters only came out after you entered their lands, no random roaming. The pioneer/city spam is suddenly gone without months spent fine tuning the AI and game mechanics. All the code for this is already present. You can even add minor factions that start on a wildlands and then become neutral civilizations. This is a great mechanic. Use it.

thats the point

the wildlands per se is a great idea but it seems to hardly find a good spot in this meta

if wildlands would be weaker it would be just a race for who farm more which is unfun and ofc would be much random and favor who is closer etc

no this cant work

apart from the reason above which is more than enough to not nerf wildlands the point is then we are again weak of end game monster if we remove wildlands as end game

the "solution" imo is just keep improving AI and make maybe defense stronger

wildlands cant find its spot cause like you said if you can defeat it you can win the game

but if AI is much stronger that statement is false

so then you CANT win the game but at some point you can defeat the wildlands

and thats how it should be, wildlands should be some end game "quest" to get the ultimate power to win the game

power you would need cause you couldnt defeat your strongest ai opponent without

I like the idea of introducing MINOR wildlands into the game. They can be one or two ogre controlled lairs that have a ZOC, a few bandit camps or some such.

Kind of like hostile city states, but I don't feel they need any special behavior or creating additonal units. They can be the exact same lairs and wandering monsters as we have now, just with a ZOC and area of operation.

This would make killing monsters much more fun and rewarding as you get more of a feeling of conquering the territory.

The further you go from starting locations, the stronger these generic wildlands get. Then of course you would have a few of the special, big wildlands as well.

I feel this would make the world feel much more alive as well.

Heroes of Might & Magic basically uses the same system and I don't think anyone disagrees that it works great there.

I'm completely with seanw3 in this; this would be a HUGE improvement to the monster-part of the game. Almost warrants a separate thread.

I'm also disappointed with the current role the wildlands seem to play in my games, because they mostly don't play any. I'd like them to be the "expansion blocks" they are allegedly supposed to be, but to achieve that they would need to be placed around the map in a way that would prevent players from easily bypassing their area. As it is now they just turn into islands of nothing amidst extreme city spam.

Agreed. It needs to remain an option on the game's horizon as the final "raid content" for top tier gear, but the relevance is related to the amount of times it's needed to win the game. The relevance is the problem (ie. needed for defeating a tougher AI, or a more defensible AI), not the content itself.

Even if they gave you a title like 'Conquerer of the Plaguelands' and a shed load of Influence and perhaps coin from grateful inhabitants that would be something.

sounds good.  leave the current wildlands but introduce more weaker ones guarding expansion points.

This wildlands idea is a far better idea then the one I posted earlier in regards to slowing down pioneer and city spam. It would also move all the more difficult monsters into the wildlands making city placement outside of the wildlands far better.

Make it so that starting locations have enough room for one or two cities but after that the rest of the world is covered in weak, moderate, and strong wildlands that must be conquered in order to further expand. It would completely change the game play in a good way. No more mindless pioneer, outpost, city spamming at the beginning of games. And the act of taking territory seems like a lot of fun.

Make it so that monster lairs in wildlands produce a unit every x turns. Once the number of monsters in a wildland reaches y than z number of monsters will leave the wildlands in search of a fight. At the beginning of the game only weaker monsters will be sent out but in mid to late game more and more powerful monsters will form war parties and go a raiding. Thus the faster you conquer the wildlands the better.

The game should also insure that at least one weak wildland borders starting locations so that you, and AIs, have a direction to expand in. However the difficulty of all other wildlands in the game should be a decision made at world creation by the player with the following options:

-Weak Wildlands

-Weak/Moderate wildlands

-Weak/Moderate/Strong wildlands

-Moderate/Strong wildlands

-Weak/Strong wildlands

-Strong wildlands

The stronger the wildland conquered the better the fertile land/city build location(s), the better resources it will have and/or the better loot the monster lairs will have.

If you were to inter into a wildland it would be considered an act of war by the monsters of that wildland and they will actively try to destroy you. They will send monsters to attack your people and cities so don't inter into strong wildlands unless you are truly ready for that challenge. AIs should be programmed to not go waltzing into strong wildlands unless their armies/champions are strong enough. It would be sad to see the AI players taken out of the game because the monsters wiping them out do to the AIs stupidity in arousing the ire of the strongest monsters in the game.

This would also allow nations to increase their armies and champions level allowing each nation to have some strong units. The AI would need to actively insure that their units heal between battles by avoid combat until healed so that they can build up some high level armies. But if monsters inter into their territory they will use whatever forces they have available to take said monsters out even using damaged units. After all protecting their territory should be of higher priority then building up high level units.

By the time nations are bordering each other they will have each conquered a few wildlands, have multiple cities, and have experienced armies/champions. Thus when the game inters the final nation against nation phase it will be far more interesting. Overall this would make the game far more exiting and fun to play.

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Just thought of something. If this was adopted then putting a unit into auto explore would be a bad idea unless auto explore avoided strong and moderate wildlands.

you guys are really starting to complicate things too much

also this is still a random world, its not final fantasy where you have to get your own boss to farm and loot

you have to adapt to your surrounding, if you dont find wildlands for hundreds of turns its likely someone else had already... maybe going there is not wise and you have to play accordingly, maybe rush an army and attack etc etc

I'm enjoying wildlands the way they are, actually. I wouldn't mind seeing the difficulty ramped up a little bit and the rewards made a little more unique and a little more powerful too. I've only been playing large desert map games with 8 AI nations, but I like the way the game is headed in terms of difficulty, reward, and city placement (mostly - my only beef is with a player being unable to re-locate their capital leading often to the pita dicision of settling subpar locations early or roaming ten or twenty years desperately searching for 2-3 essence territory).

The few times in games when I've reached the wildlands, they're usually cleared between turns 150-300. It doesn't take much more than a strong sovereign for Imperium, and the arctic wildlands can be done by a warlock firemage or anyone with some berserked bowmen and a line of fodder troops pretty reliably. You just have to pick and choose your units, spells and gear well.

The two biggest challenges I have had so far in 0.95 (on normal difficulty) are finding decent settlement locations early so I don't get boxed in and forced to develop in a resource poor location while the AI nations outpace me and eventually decide to gang up on me because I've fallen behind in the rankings, or with running into a powerhungry Kraxis early on in the game and having to face the hoarde of shieldbearing spearmen he sends my way while recruiting/killing all champions he sees with his stockpile of wealth (even if you survive against him, odds are good your rating has fallen so low that all the other nations will swoop down on you as they find you!).

Wildlands though? Not an issue for me. I'm happy to see them and I am in love with the idea of powerful monsterlands that you can't just steamroll early with a lucky spell or critical, and it's always fun to snag a shiny piece of loot (a spell, a city, a 3x powernode) for your trouble when you actually can clear them.

I understand where you are coming from but I still like the idea of building armies, conquering wildlands, opening up that territory, and expanding your empire into that newly conquered territory. There just isn't anything quite like utterly destroying a bunch of monsters, taking their stuff, stealing their land, and expanding your empire.

And as I said before by the time nations start bordering each other they will be actual nations with cities, resources, experienced armies/champions, and a hunger for even more territory. It would really make nation against nation game play a lot more interesting.

Yep, my thoughts exactly.  Especially when it means opening up a bit of wildness territory that gives you an extra 3 water shards worth of power on Top of having a large crossroads like region to place a city which your opponents have to go around, but you can march straight through quickly. Or when it means getting a spell that will let you boost your Sov's health well into the hundreds! If anything, I wouldn't mind seeing the wilderlands being made a little more powerful, but don't weaken them!

I'm not a fan of having a too complicated system. I would just like to have lairs having a ZOC and function as minor wildlands that you have to clear to settle in that ground, and maybe group a few lairs together.

Weak wildlands offer small rewards, moderate wildlands offer moderate rewards, and strong wildlands offer large rewards for those who conquer them.

but i like that too!

its very cool as its cool the idea of wildlands

what is not cool is having a personal "wildland" for every sovereign

that wouldnt even be wild just a personal garden where to collect your fruits

Pretty much. Although you could make it informal so that you simply can't place ZoC over monster lairs or even on tiles beside a monster lair. So if you want the resources you have to beat the lair. The whole system where super late game monsters randomly wander the map when placed under ZoC is really really broken.

Tougher monsters like Dragons could function as mini Wildlands though, they deserve their own painting, ZoC, and territory. I always thought they were underwhelming as currently implemented.

I would like to have them exude a ZOC and not make it informal.

I kind of like the idea that when players start the vast majority of the map belongs to different minor wildlands, and if you would look at the game progressing in cloth map you see the wildlands being pushed back little by little.

Finally towards the end game most of the minor wildlands are gone and only the strongest, special wildlands remain untouched.

It would also make the gameplay clearer to the player if they knew that if they step into a certain ZOC, monsters inside that ZOC will attack them.

And we could have one of those pictures pop up and give a little lore to the player when he enters each minor wildlands. Ever wonder who made the shrills and why they are hanging around that temple? Go inside their territory to learn more!