Comment 47 for bug 654078

I try to reply short to not keep this thread from exploding.

> this isn't just any mutual exchange of arguments about any old feature.
I disagree. This is just another feature - I feel that there are a lot of emotions around it, but in its core it is just the question: is it good for widelands or bad.

[fighters vs optimizers]
> Doing away with it would totally ignore the preferences of the Optimzers.
I can buy into this concept of categorizing the players. But Kristin (for example) would be a very clear Optimizer - and she hates the tree cycle too (she is also a very skilled map maker, which might also feed into this). So this is not a strong argument for me. Besides - optimizing seems to have to do very little with if trees are already there when you reach a certain point in the game later rather then earlier. Fighting trees is not much optimizing.

["The whole fighting and military business is an alien element in WL."]
Yes - I always made the point very clear. Widelands lays the focus on building up, not ripping down. That is why the military is very economic focused too - if your economy works well, your military is strong. I tried to design the game to reduce military even more, but to this point, it is still the sole point of interaction between the players. The game you describe, without military, means that you are playing alone - even in network games, because there is no interaction at all. This is hardly a multiplayer game at all.
Tangent: I personally love collectors for the very thesis you wrote down there - military and warefare consume the wares that give the most points, so you actually have to balance protecting yourself and hording wares that give you points. This emphasises a strategic concept that takes away from conquering and adds an economic parameter while still allowing interactions between the players.

> It really is, what gives WL "a life of its own", adds credibility etc.
I challenge this conclusion. Widelands life of its own is in the economy and its interaction which is plenty. The tree life cycle has no impact on your inner economy - you never notice it in areas you owned for more than 15 minutes - I looked at all the replays from the widelands tournament so far and saw many a game and I find this to be a true statement everywhere (please, proof me wrong). You only see it outside your territory - and this might have been designed by the map maker just as well.

[Tree0 concept]
I think you mean it in a different way, but to me this reads like suggestion to remove the tree spreading feature in some places - through a new concept. Inpenetrable forrests are a map design aspect - they can be great (I remember a S2 map where you where separated by your enemy through a huge forrest - you could choose to cut it down or build more trees to make it harder to penetrate - a nice interplay of map designers decision and players decision - in Widelands the thickness of this barrier would be a function of time you took to expand to this place. The map designer can not work on any assumptions in this area to further design the map really).

> Generally speaking, I would like to suggest to give the mapmakers more control over the trees.
That is a strange conclusion to me as well - this is exactly what I am suggesting. Let the map designer decide where trees should be when the player arrives.

Thanks for taking the time for writing all this Astuur, I interpret a lot of things quite differently though as you can see.

Gee, this post got very long too.