I've been really enjoying a lot of the single player games, and some of the community levels have got me thinking.

Many of the single player levels on really big maps are fun for the first 10-20 turns, getting to the point where you're dominant and to the stage where any normal human opponent would surrender in a multiplayer game.

WarLight single player is a game of total and utter domination, where any tiny sliver of opposition must be extinguished to win. But why? Why not have the ability to set targets for staying alive for a certain number of turns, or unite a defensible section of a map into a single 'country', or eliminate a particular enemy before the huge one kills you, or, or or...?

Some levels (the GoT Historical Campaign levels by The Serpent, for example, which I really enjoyed) try to create these kinds of objectives by walling off large sections of the map, but that has limitations. It usually means that once you get reasonably close to the end the opposition becomes completely useless. Instead, if a large portion of the enemy income base was behind an insurmountable wall and all you had to do was eradicate the enemy in a particular region (but not the income base), that would mean the enemy was able to fight you fairly effectively until the point where you won, instead of fighting effectively for 3 turns while you spend the following 5 just mopping up.

I feel like it shouldn't be too hard to program, but I don't know what everyone else thinks about it.


Example mission complete criteria:
- Eliminate AI X and/or keep AI Y alive (e.g. kill the terrorists who are based in a semi-hostile country that you want to befriend later)
- Be alive at turn X (e.g. survive as the rebels during the final few years of the oppressive government collapsing)
- Control bonus X or combination of bonuses (e.g. your country has been invaded - take back your lands to force a peace treaty)
- Control at least X troops (e.g. have enough armies to discourage your neighbours from attacking)
- Control at least X troops in locations A-C (e.g. build an invasion force and land it on the beaches of Normandy/build the Maginot Line)


I'm sure there are loads more, but all of those could lead to interesting new scenarios where the game doesn't get a bit dull several turns before the end.

First off, all this would be cool.

Secondly, you can use some tricks to effectively make some of this possible. Think Cards.

On SP you can give players different card pices to start. For example a sanction card with 100% sanc for 100 turns in 100 pices, where the AI starts with 80 pices, effectively forces you to win in 20 turns.

not 100% true TBest. you could deny cardpieces :P

Forcing the win in 20 turns is cool but not what he was getting at. Too often the last handful of turns are autopilots and just drag out the game since AI won't surrender

Yes Richard, it's exactly that issue I want to prevent. Autopilot turns are not very rewarding, and multiple level storylines (e.g. invade Dorne and wipe out the people there, then spread to more areas and wipe out the people there [but they stay strong in the North, so you can't take that bit]) become kind of disjointed when you've just achieved a crushing victory in the previous level but then start even with the same enemy again when the next one starts.

On top of preventing autopilot turns in single player, if the first level of a longer storyline could end when you had united the area you were conquering, then you could have a realistic campaign where there is continuous struggle from the start of the first level until the final victory, several levels later.

Edited 7/13/2016 22:11:51

this is like what i posted a while back,about attack v defence.[1]need to take objective[s],[2]need to survive x ammount of turns,[3]complete task "a" or "b" in x ammount of turns.as you say,does it require different programming,or just new types of setting?.this might put a differt angle on the game we all love playing!
regards-zoe

While single-player mission objectives would be really cool, here are some things you can do in the meantime:

* Find a map which has a megabonus, and where the player starts inside the megabonus. Set the megabonus's value to be really high.

For instance, on an Earth map, you could set Asia's value to be really high (+500) and start the player in Japan.

Although the player will still need to PLAY out the entire scenario, they will effectively know that it's over by the time they have achieved this objective and the remaining turns will be simple enough.

* Find or make a map which has a bonus, with one territory at one edge of the map, and the rest of the bonus elsewhere. To use the Earth again for another example, imagine that one territory is in Australia, and the rest of the territories are in Greenland.

Set this bonus arbitrarily high. Once you've achieved the objective of capturing those distant territories, you've effectively won.

* To keep things interesting until the end, do the reverse: give the AI a really high-value bonus far away on the map.

Or provide really high-value Reinforcement cards and instruct the player to discard them (so only the AIs can use them).

Or provide each player with a Sanctions card, and instruct the player to discard their at the beginning of the turn.

I used to use negative Sanctions to control AI strength, but that's no longer possible, since the AIs will now play those cards on YOU at the beginning of the game.

None of these are great solutions, but they allow some variety in scenario design.

(I usually use that, yes.)