Richard's comments about Dawn in the D7 comments thread are very interesting in that they show a stability "problem".
Minor, or unrelated changes, in the code, may turn a winnable scenario into a very hard one.
Here is an example I just experienced:
I implemented wall removal: Breached walls will now disappear, thus cities should fall even faster after walls crumbled.
Just before that, I had implemented the new tech model based on knowledge instead of levels.
I tested the siegewars scenario just to see if the walls disappeared correctly when I would breach them.
I couldn't breach the walls. I tried 4 times and lost every time. I thought either I was playing badly or something else. I played the D7.2 jar I had instead of my current development code, and I won, piece of cake.
So I checked the tech code. The new RP fed haven't been adjusted to give the same results as the previous version. I divided the growthrate by 10, and I won. The goblins got too much tough out of tech growth.
Conclusions:
The tech model rewrite has deep impact on gameplay even in scenarios where it wouldn't be expected to.
I am quite sure every other change (like making the ai be more aggressive for Jericho) can have impacts on all scenarios.
Thus I suggest that we do heavy testing of all the scenarios before we release a next version (be it 7.2.3 or 7.3 or whatever).
Minor, or unrelated changes, in the code, may turn a winnable scenario into a very hard one.
Here is an example I just experienced:
I implemented wall removal: Breached walls will now disappear, thus cities should fall even faster after walls crumbled.
Just before that, I had implemented the new tech model based on knowledge instead of levels.
I tested the siegewars scenario just to see if the walls disappeared correctly when I would breach them.
I couldn't breach the walls. I tried 4 times and lost every time. I thought either I was playing badly or something else. I played the D7.2 jar I had instead of my current development code, and I won, piece of cake.
So I checked the tech code. The new RP fed haven't been adjusted to give the same results as the previous version. I divided the growthrate by 10, and I won. The goblins got too much tough out of tech growth.
Conclusions:
The tech model rewrite has deep impact on gameplay even in scenarios where it wouldn't be expected to.
I am quite sure every other change (like making the ai be more aggressive for Jericho) can have impacts on all scenarios.
Thus I suggest that we do heavy testing of all the scenarios before we release a next version (be it 7.2.3 or 7.3 or whatever).
Comment