Feedback Request: About the goblin campaign

@mrxak, there’s only supposed to be three. That there are more than three… is a bug. Thanks for letting me know!

The first camp spawned up on the mountain nearby, could that be it?

Thanks everyone for the feedback, and please keep it coming. :slight_smile: From your comments, I think there’s at least three categories of things we need to do to make the combat scenarios more enjoyable:

a.) Refine, and then explain, the combat mechanics. How does the party system work? What does the red banner do? What does the blue banner do? What are the default behaviors of footmen? Why do footmen attack sometimes and not attack other times? If you want your footmen to retreat, how do you do it? Ideally, there would be an in-game tutorial of some sort addressing these points, but we haven’t made one because we expect the current system to change a lot as we add more to combat. (If you happen to know the answers and want to post a discourse tutorial, I suppose this is your opportunity!)

b.) Fix a bunch of bugs. The location of the goblin camp, the fact that goblins get stuck on roofs, the fact that your footmen sometimes don’t attack the cage, the fact that the wolf camps spawn infinitely, these are all bugs, and will get fixed over time.

c.) Balance, reward, and tune. This is the tricky one–how hard should each monster be, what is the progression of monsters, and how to clearly telegraph your options regarding fighting, not fighting, and defeating them. What rewards should each segment of the campaign give? What is an acceptable loss when nobody has prepared? How many footmen do you think you need at each moment in the game in order to defeat the challenge as presented?

If you have any thoughts as to the above three points, or if you just have more info about how you fight the goblins, please keep sharing. Some other points, in response to those above:

Stonehearth aspires to be both a sandbox and an RPG. What that means for now is that there will be elements that are systems, and elements that are storied, with scaled ramp-up progression. That’s why the goblins do the same thing every time right now; we’re trying to make a goblin campaign that’s challenging and fun to play. Then, once we have one of those, we’ll write another and another and another, until we have enough scaled content so that we can randomly pick and choose among them. Until we get enough content, the content will be the same each time.

We don’t want to add too much random to the game as we’re tuning it, because otherwise, it’s hard to tell whether you’ve gotten a lucky roll, or if you’ve actually tuned it right.

We’ve been thinking about cutscenes, but at the moment, we don’t have the tech yet to take in-game screens of your townsfolk to put in the cutscenes. So… maybe later, when we’ve built that!

Noted!

That’s a bug. Can you describe more? Maybe in a separate bug thread?

Net worth is calculated by buildings, stockpiles, farms, etc. Armor on footmen should count too, but that isn’t implemented yet. Thanks for calling it out!

There are 3 separate wolf camps at the moment

This has to do with the courage vs menace stats, mentioned here

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At the time of the wolf attack, I don’t recall there being any “active” camps. The one I’d attacked and freed the wolves at, they just sat there being adorable, but about one or two nights later, I got the tired guy running in and then wolves. I’ll keep an eye out on future playthroughs to make sure that there are camps to pair with the attacks.

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Wait, are the camps supposed to be showing up one at a time, or three at once? In my game I got 5 camps (and counting), but they arrived one at a time (and without any indication that a new one had spawned, I just happened to notice).

I think the wolves are awful for a variety of reasons, but I’m hoping that will get tweaked and the bugs will get fixed. My only complaint about the first phase of the goblin campaign is that the goblins never fight any of my footmen, they all either just run away from my footmen when they go on the attack, or they ignore my footmen while my footmen chase after them trying to kill them, while the goblin attackers run around destroying hundreds of items. The AI of the goblin raiders just seems insane to me. They should deal with the threat of my footmen first, and kill any hearthlings that get in their way, and then pillage. Right now they are just suicidally attacking my stored items. Equally bad from an AI standpoint, my footmen are like the scary wolves of the second part of the campaign. When my footmen go on the offensive, the goblins run away and put up no fight as my footmen destroy their camp.

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I’ve troubleshooted the issue enough that I could reproduce it and created [a bug report] 1 about it. It’s amazing how easy it is to think “everybody must see this” when I’m doing something quite specific to my play style that causes me to hit this issue every time.

On the other hand, since I figured out a workaround for the bug, I’ve also found the wolves… And the obvious solutions I see is free them (kill all goblins and destroy pens) and run (I guess by selecting a defensive position away from my village). I guess some other option, such as having your trapper tame them back, could exist, but it’s not clear from the messages. If such a “third way” exists then I suggest a popup suggesting the solution if you meed the conditions for it.

I’ve also found a bug with the wolves where the wolves fight (and kills) the footmen after they destroy the cage, but I have no clue how to reproduce it. Other than that the camp spawned very close to the town, close enough that normal footmen patrol routes found the camp. I can see if I manage to reproduce it tomorrow, and if so I’ll open a bug report thread about it.

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Ok, the build’s been updated with all the fixes we could reasonably make in four days. (More fixes coming, but they touch deeper structures than we safely could alter this week.) If you’re on Steam Latest, give it a spin and let us know how it goes!

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You guys and gals rock. :smile:

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OK since you guys told me that your updated the campaign before the weekend I played tonight to test. A few notes:

  1. Much improved. I like the little camps that spawn before the chief
    shows up. It will help new player ramp up instead of being run
    over.
  2. The chief’s camp works better than before, but it still ended
    up with 6 goblins stuck by the campfire with the chief. Please fix
    this before you go SEA. It’s so much more difficult (and so much
    more rewarding) to wipe out when those gobbos don’t get stuck.
  3. I freed 3 groups of wolves, then nothing. No completion message, no
    more wolves. Something didn’t end right.
  4. The game didn’t like me placing a flower garden in the yard of one of my hearthling’s homes.
  5. After almost a month in game, LUA suddenly jumped to 99.8% of
    processing and everything came to a screeching halt. Looks like
    this game is done with me.
  6. The blacksmith experience needs a tweak. I have 3 units with steel shortswords, steel shields, iron mail and almost 40 steel bars and I’m still stuck at level 2. Maybe we can convince you to sneak that archer in so we can level the blacksmith by making ammunition and/or bows? :grinning:

I have to say that this was a good set up updates. Keep going!

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Thanks for playtesting! We really appreciate it!

Can you describe how they got stuck? Like, were they just hanging out but moving/breathing etc, or were they on top of the fire/chest/house and unable to get off?

Just had time to set down and play through some of the content. So far I like the goblin camps and the additional gameplay elements they add. I do have a couple issues with the camps, but it’s nothing game breaking. Also, anything said is for the purpose of constructive criticism and should be read as such.

  1. We really need a way to keep villagers from wandering into a goblin camp. I had a villager die to a goblin by randomly walking into the camp while I wasn’t looking. Then the annoyance really started. Since the villager dropped an item in the goblin camp one of my other villagers would randomly go to pick it up. The only way to stop this was to leash the villager to the attack/defend feature. After that I had to toggle the marker until the villager changed their priority. This took a while.

  2. Wolves may need some balancing. I find it impossible to kill any wolves that attack. The ones included with the goblin camps can be avoided by freeing them, but there are the roaming ones every now and then. When i see them I immediately prepare to lose most of my stockpile. I have 2 high level soldiers in armor and best weapons yet they run away scared.

Those are the only major issues I have seen with the goblin camps so far. Other than the 2 issues above I have been having a blast with them. Keep up all the hard work!

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Thank you, fixed on my machine

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The 6 gobbos were all the unarmored footmen (unsure of the names you’ve assigned to these guys so I’m guessing here.) I don’t know if the unit type is significant or not. They were grouped tightly around the campfire, but where not directly on top of it like before.

However, I still say they are stuck because they never left idle behavior - not even as my 3 footmen descended on the camp and wiped them out.

The good news is that I was still getting raids even with those units becoming stuck.

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this may be due to them having a low courage stat.

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Yea, I understand the reasoning, but when you have no one with a high courage stat on Day 20 you’re kind of SOL.

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And this is why @yshan is working on the ability to roll stats for your hearthlings! :smiley:

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@sdee Can you make it so goblins open doors/fence gates? As of now, they walk through them. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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Here Is my experience with Goblins and Zombies since latest patch to A10.

First few days I reach about 1500 net worth or day 3 I start seeing a few Zombies or the small camp of Goblins (2 workers and 1 troop) at the time I normally have one fighter myself and rushed to get a Stone maul because the wood sword does close to nothing in terms of damage.

About day 8 I reach a worth of 3000+ and the camp spawns. I normally agree to pay while a train a few more footmen I form a party of 3 and attack before they ask for the payment a day later. but doing so promotes a bug because even if I kill them the dialog event still comes up a day later and I have to deny and pay up. I normally deny and defend myself.

Zombies tend to show up every few nights but defending myself from them is a little to easy. I’d like to see Zombies in larger numbers like 6-8 depending on how many days in you are or set net worth. Their movement speed is a bit to slow. Depending on how much I’ve explored they spawn to far away to arrive at my village before daybreak. Damage is perfect heath is right where I feel it should be at over all I’m pretty happy with Zombies just would like to see more horde tactics to them. (I love that they attack goblins its both funny and makes sense)

Wolf encounters are hard due to their speed. I get fair warning for the first one but you don’t get a warning the 2nd or 3ed time and sometimes I miss the camp being setup. when they do get to attack you before you notice I sometimes lose someone because they attack the same person at the same time leaving little room to save that person.

I fell they could be improved by adding warnings like (the forest animals has grown quite) or you hear howling in the distance. Also maybe add that if one is attacking a target the others in the party look for the next closest target.

Goblin thieves I don’t really see anymore. I think they could be really cool if they could climb your walls or terrain (ie cliffs and such) I don’t think they should be able to swim tho that just seems like something goblins can’t do. what I would like to see is them have grappling hooks or hand claws to scale walls and they they to steal your items. I feel you shouldn’t get a warning unless your hearthling sees them in the act and if you attack them they should fight back with tiger claw weapons or have smoke bombs they let them teleport a fair distance away.

I have an issue with Goblin workers running really far before stopping to cower in fear I feel its far different for your hearthlings because they stop almost right away and are easily killed because of it also as they are running away from you none of my hits land they make a bunch of swings at them but none of them land even though it makes the noise and particle effect of a hit.

Wild wolves these should be a thing they would attacked if approached I would make them tame-able by a trapper (if they get caught in a trap made for them maybe something for a higher level trapper). If you have sheep they would go after them and they would be able to hop fences. Your shepherd would have to ward them off when they attack your sheep. During the winter time they would get more desperate for food and attack Hearthlings.

Goblin Camps: they are a bothersome because I don’t like how they destroy they land because I can’t replant trees that I liked or planed to build around and I can’t fill in the holes they make with grass again. In the future id like to see them setup their camps by walking into the map with the chief marching along with a few guards and a few workers all carrying supplies and then they clear some room to make their camp and build it. This would give me time if I was paying attention to stop them from ruining anything I like in the first place and would also be really neat. Also I’d like for maybe every so often to be able to coexist with them maybe have a peaceful tribe they wants to get away for the whole goblin culture and live with you but that makes other goblins mad so they rally to attack you and kill the goblin betrayers. If you manage to defend them they become workers and live with you in your city. That would be really cool.

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i… i … i cant express how awesome this is :open_mouth:

The new goblin campaign changes resulted in me getting a new pet! Look at it, so cute sitting by my camp fire!

It went like this: A small camp spawn, goblins die, they drop their loot and i loot it with the loot-command. Second camp spawn, goblins dispatched, loot is dropped, however i forget to loot it - until the big goblin camp spawn. I agree to being peaceful/neutral and they send 3 workers out to “reclaim” their fallen comrades possessions, I however manage to loot 2 of 3 items while goblin workers are in running. One goblin return to their camp with a log the other two starts idling at my camp :smiley: They stand/walk around there doing their idle animations until nightfall when one of them got homesick and runs back to his friends to start their camp fire, one last goblin remains a neutral refugee with my hearthlings. :smile:

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