Battle for Wesnoth: open-source, turn-based strategy game(wesnoth.org)

442 points | by akyuu 12 hours ago

34 comments

  • jjmarr 11 hours ago
    Highly suggest connecting with one of the lead developers, Charles Dang/Vultraz, if you have any C++ jobs in the USA.

    He's been a developer on Wesnoth since 2012 but only graduated university in 2024. Unfortunately, it's been an absolutely brutal market for new graduates. Even if you're a maintainer on one of the most popular OSS C++ projects on GitHub.

    I can't recommend him enough.

    edit: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-dang-10994b1b4

    • wwilson 10 hours ago
      Thanks,our company is in the DC area so I just reached out with an offer to chat. Wesnoth is an incredible project, I can't believe he doesn't have a programming job.
    • EmeraldSky 9 hours ago
      Even with 5 (albeit small) linux kernel patches, 2 Firefox patches.. employers weren’t interested. I’ve stopped contributing to open source completely. I’m considering switching fields. It was interesting but these days I need some ROI, personally.
    • DDR0 13 minutes ago
      Would highly recommend. Worked with Vult for years, on Wesnoth and on Frogatto, a sister project from some of the same folk who did Wesnoth.

      So, uh, I'm now one of the leads of Frogatto and boy howdy could I use a job too after a recent mass staff reduction at my day job.

      edit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-roberts-b9410654/

    • ecshafer 10 hours ago
      I am very surprised if he can't find a job, as an American, in DC, with 12 years of C++ experience. Sure companies aren't great at assessing open source experience, but there is one area its easy to find a job as a dev: work that requires a clearance.
      • setgree 9 hours ago
        St. John’s college is a great place that draws a special type of young person, but its graduates are not very STEM-legible. As far as I know they still offer no choice of major & no hands-on classes — just the great books.

        Of course that makes this person’s skill all the more impressive.

        • bandrami 2 hours ago
          Huh. I graduated from there and about a third of my class (including me) works in tech in some form. Though being a sysadmin seems to be more common than being a programmer. But I had no idea the Wesnoth dev went there too!
        • gowld 4 hours ago
          For software development, degree is irrelevant. Employer-managed competency exams and public experience dominate.
      • henryfjordan 7 hours ago
        Not everyone will take a job that requires clearance because they are usually "defense" related.
        • nimih 7 hours ago
          Also, acquiring said clearance is not always straightforward, even if you lack sufficient scruples to be willing to pursue it in the first place.
          • Suppafly 3 hours ago
            >Also, acquiring said clearance is not always straightforward

            This, had a friend whose clearance was held up because he knew a bunch of foreign people, people that he had met through a government job with a lower level of clearance.

    • FrustratedMonky 10 hours ago
      That is sad. Maintaining something like this really takes almost all the skills also needed for enterprise, or a dozen places.

      That it doesn't get him instant hired is the sad part, what are we coming to.

    • szmarczak 10 hours ago
      > Unfortunately, it's been an absolutely brutal market for new graduates.

      Furthermore, more and more companies are looking for "professional" devs using AI tools such as Claude Code. By "professional" I mean proficient in using those AI tools, not actual knowledge. And they don't even specify this in the job offer and you learn this during the interview.

      • jjmarr 9 hours ago
        I don't understand why you're downvoted. Many of my 2025 graduate friends are seeing this problem.

        Unlimited token-based usage of Claude Code is not in the budget for many students and employees.

        At the same time, companies are demanding experience with these tools.

        This is stratifying the industry. I have many talented classmates that can only use free GitHub Copilot. They're likely being screened out in favour of rich classmates with $200/month Claude subs.

        As a result, they'll be more likely to get low-paying jobs that don't provide access to top-tier AI tools and the effect will compound.

        I think this'll be even worse as Claude phases out subsidies.

        If $2000/month subscription to Claude for 4 years of university is the minimum required for a Big Tech job, this field is going to become law/finance levels of cliquey.

        Nobody is talking about that because it's bad for both AI booster and skeptic narratives but it's happening.

        • 8note 7 hours ago
          i expect students have or will get claude access via their university, pr at a discount if they register with their university email?

          students generally get specific subsidized/free tiers for all kinds of tech

          • jjmarr 7 hours ago
            Claude has partnerships with specific universities but not the one I attended.

            I don't believe there's a general student discount for Claude.

        • gowld 4 hours ago
          $2000/month is cheaper than university tuition. Why attend the university?
  • rhdunn 11 hours ago
    My only gripe with the game is that healing doesn't give XP to the healing units. This means you need to place them in combat to level up instead of placing them behind the fighters like they are intended to be, and with them initially having low health they are very squishy. I know you can kinda cheese it by reducing a monster to 1-2 HP and then getting them to attack, but it feels like going against their role.
    • thih9 10 hours ago
      > Frequently Proposed Ideas (FPIs)

      > 7. Healing/leadership should give experience

      > It is felt that allowing units to gain experience without risk would make leveling-up of such units inevitable. Further, one of the motivating examples of this is so that units such as shaman can have a hope to level up in multiplayer. It is pointed out that if the experience gains were high enough to allow shaman to level up in a single multiplayer game, then it would be trivial to gain the best type of healing unit in a campaign very quickly.

      https://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=34904#w0fpi7 (2011)

      • a_t48 10 hours ago
        There's various ways around this (like capping amount of experience per level by source), but ain't game design fun?
        • shevy-java 9 hours ago
          It depends. Personally I think they should make alternatives more easy. For instance, under Options, for people to pick other ways to level up. Does not have to be 1000000 ways, just, say 3-5 ways in total, first one being the main default and only the main default is kept balanced, the rest can be unbalanced, just allowed per option as-is.
      • SubiculumCode 9 hours ago
        Other aspects of the game or mod-able, but such things as this I guess is against the grain enough to probably be difficult.
    • jjmarr 11 hours ago
      I've enjoyed this, honestly. There's a whole short-term pain/long-term gain tradeoff to risking healers that adds more strategy to the campaign.

      > I know you can kinda cheese it by reducing a monster to 1-2 HP

      In practice, I've found it difficult to get monsters to 1-2 HP since it often means not using your most powerful attacks. On harder difficulties I usually can't afford the opportunity cost.

      • gwerbin 10 hours ago
        Yeah I personally found this to be a big part of the tactical and strategic challenge. It reminded me a lot of Pokemon where you have a similar challenge, of slotting "exposure to fighting" into a limited action and HP budget.

        Edit: Now that I think about it, most turn-based games have this mechanic. It's almost an idiomatic balance/design decision in gaming.

        Compare to Dota where support heroes have acquired more and more opportunities for assist gold/XP, it does in some sense make the game "easier" for the support players, but then the game is harder in other ways because now the supports are all way more farmed and dangerous than in older versions. It's the difference between controlling an army of many units and having to manage them all, versus controlling one unit and needing to work together within a team.

        • vkou 9 hours ago
          Dota/League does this because each hero is controlled by a human, and humans don't like playing low-impact, low-wealth, low-exp supports.
      • 8note 7 hours ago
        gloomhaven has a reasonable solution to this - some heals give experience, others dont, and often times gaining experience comes with giving up other resources
    • otikik 9 hours ago
      Isn't the strategy then to keep them behind the fighter units, wait until an enemy is 1 HP away from death, make the healer advance and make a kill, then put a fighter in front of them again?
      • bluGill 8 hours ago
        Yes, but people don't like that because everyonce in a while a unit misses completely and then it will be targeted and die the next turn.
        • otikik 8 hours ago
          No risk, no gain
    • MarsIronPI 3 hours ago
      There's actually an add-on for this (and a bunch of other things too): Advance Wesnoth Wars. It adds options for XP-for-healing but also for making terrain affect damage taken rather than chance to hit (which is fun when you get tired of the randomness).

      This fork[0] of a fork of the original allegedly works with 1.18. I haven't tested it, because these days I play with the built-in predictable RNG and it suffices for me.

      https://github.com/ilya-ilya/Advance_Wesnoth_Wars

      • tasuki 18 minutes ago
        > built-in predictable RNG

        What's that?

    • shevy-java 9 hours ago
      An indirect compensation is that these units require less XP to advance, but I understand your concern too.

      > I know you can kinda cheese it by reducing a monster to 1-2 HP and then getting them to attack, but it feels like going against their role.

      This is a problem with the XP-per-kill system. Wesnoth could use a variant instead. I use the above strategy all the time to level the healers up.

      Note that elven units have slow (their healers), which is very powerful in its own right for getting a kill on a unit. First slow, then deal damage with other units.

    • marknutter 11 hours ago
      It's OSS, no?
      • tmtvl 11 hours ago
        It is, but making a change that doesn't mess up the balance of the game can be tricky.
  • everdrive 11 hours ago
    I played the heck out of this about a decade ago. It's an amazing game, and I'd love to return to it and see what has changed.
    • myky22 10 hours ago
      Same, i think It was on my first Linux OS. The good old days hehe
    • thatoneengineer 11 hours ago
      Same!
      • drob518 10 hours ago
        Same! Just downloaded the latest version for nostalgia’s sake.
        • MarsIronPI 3 hours ago
          I'm still nostalgic for the pre-1.12 Heir to the Throne portraits. Bring back anime Konrad and Li'sar!

          (There's an add-on for that too btw)

  • dragontamer 2 hours ago
    Because of the level-up mechanics of Wesnoth, I don't think its really possible to balance a long-running campaign. The tier3 or tier4 units are just so much more powerful than the earlier tiers... and yet a "recall" costs only 20G.

    I'm not sure how I'd balance the game. You want the feeling of progression, but its too "slippery", the game gets easier if the player feeds their units and lets them grow. But it feels like the player could get "trapped" if they had unfortunate or unlucky losses at the incorrect time.

    On the other hand, I always thought the "single map" or "scenario maps" of Wesnoth were excellent. I mean, I like the campaigns its just... tough to figure out the proper design scope there.

  • ramses0 11 hours ago
    A+! They even had an iOS version a while back: `https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-battle-for-wesnoth/id14507...` (this may be the "Mac" version, see: `https://www.reddit.com/r/wesnoth/comments/1pjkwbw/i_had_wesn...`).

    If that's your jam then there's also a (non-open-source) "Hero's Hour" which tickles the old Heroes of Might and Magic stylings, works reasonably well on Xbox, where I've been doing most of my gaming lately.

    As far as Open Source gaming success stories, I'd put this up there in the Top 5 for "Original IP and Concept" (if that makes sense). Just a stellar labor of love, worth giving it a shot to play!

  • rpmisms 11 hours ago
    Grew up playing Wesnoth, still adore the game. There is a TON of third party content and a serious extended universe, too!
    • hyperionultra 11 hours ago
      Could you name a few places to find 3rd party content?
      • rpmisms 10 hours ago
        It's under the "add-ons" menu in game. I would recommend playing the top-ranked campaigns. Some amazing stuff in there. I adore Legend of the Invincibles. Fun story, tons of new gameplay mechanics.
        • bandrami 2 hours ago
          There was (still is?) a Middle East themed campaign with just absolutely gorgeous artwork.
      • tmtvl 11 hours ago
        Last time I checked there was an option on the main menu to download user-made campaigns.
      • IsTom 11 hours ago
        There's a "addons" browser in the game.
  • wiradikusuma 10 hours ago
    Sweet! Does anyone have a list of high-quality open source games like this?

    (Subjective interpretation, but something like, "I couldn't believe it's free, I would have paid for it anyway.")

    • fwipsy 9 hours ago
      Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead: Like Dwarf Fortress but post-apocalyptic survival horror. Endless Sky: top-down space shooter inspired by Escape Velocity SuperTux: inspired by Super Mario SuperTuxKart: inspired by Mario Kart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_video_game... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_video_games...
      • MarsIronPI 3 hours ago
        Seconded SuperTuxKart! The engine is really impressive when they push it.
      • anthk 9 hours ago
        Well:

        - Supertux2, it got recently revamped, the quality skyrocketed. Much better controls and artwork.

        - Supetux Advance, this is really great too.

        - Retux (More Wariolike than Mario)

        - Nethack/Slashem. A Roguelike more bound to interaction/exploration/mechanics than combat, but Slashem makes combat crazy with the Doppleganger Monk, which is basically a Shonen Manga, the role. (Dragon Ball/Naruto depending on your age).

        - DCSS. Basically, not Nethack/Slashem, much more combat oriented than the Slashem combinatorics playing with the Monk a la Jackie Chan, this is more like an ARPG made a Rogue.

        - Frotz/Lectrote/Winfrotz/whatver Z Machine interpreter and "All Things Devour". Spiritwrak, too. Great libre text adventures and still enganing because of weird mechanics.

        - Frozen Bubble

        - OpenArena.

        - FreeDoom, better compiled with Deutex on daily builds.

        - FreeCiv.

        - OpenTTD today can be standalone enough.

        - Frozen Bubble

        - Minetest+tons of subgames such as Glitch, Nodecore...

        - OOlite

        - Speed Dreams. If the controls are hard, try the arcade mode. If the controls are still hard, get SupertuxKart, pick some real life car from the addons and get all the SD tracks from the inline downloader, they are several.

        • tasuki 5 minutes ago
          > Speed Dreams

          I wonder why that isn't in the Debian repos?

        • MarsIronPI 3 hours ago
          > Minetest

          Heads up: they recently changed name to Luanti to get away from the "it's Minecraft but worse" perception. They also un-bundled the built-in game and are trying to be a game engine these days.

          I recommend looking into Age of Mending. It's still in alpha, but if it's ever finished it'll give Minecraft a good run for its money, especially among the builder-minded players.

          • fwipsy 2 hours ago
            Luanti had an annoying habit of regenerating terrain while I was still walking on it. In my book it is very much still "minecraft but worse." I was on a very weak ARM device though.
        • avadodin 8 hours ago
          OpenArena even has a browser version these days but sadly it doesn't seem to have any active servers anymore. I had progressed to the point where I could strafe jump and rocket jump all day.
    • somat 5 hours ago
      If you like RTS Beyond All Reason is pretty amazing.

      https://www.beyondallreason.info/

      The amount of care they put into the little quality of life ui stuff is impressive. Something about how you can tell when the developers enjoy playing their game.

    • jordigh 10 hours ago
      I know it's a very niche domain, but I feel this way about Lizard.

      My lizard is the lizard of website: https://rainwarrior.ca/lizard/

      My lizard is the lizard of source: https://github.com/bbbradsmith/lizard_src_demo/

    • jpwgarrison 6 hours ago
      https://www.beyondallreason.info/ is high quality and in active, open development. And fun. For some weird reason 8v8 is the default experience but there are several other modes: PVE, 1v1, etc.
    • ecshafer 10 hours ago
      The Free Civ and Free Colonization games are good. Brogue, Nethack, DCSS are good if you like roguelikes. OpenMW is a totally open source reimplementation of Morrowind, so that might fit the bill.
    • efskap 9 hours ago
      If you like arena shooters, Xonotic is quite remarkable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xonotic
      • tzot 8 hours ago
        Oh, yeah! And I believe there are not many games which have Linux, Windows and MacOS versions allowing interplay. Several years ago we had one or two LAN parties with hardware running all three operating systems.
    • danso 1 hour ago
      Star Control 2 —- one of the greatest action adventure games ever made

      https://sc2.sourceforge.net/

    • workethics 8 hours ago
      Mindustry is worth a look if you like factorio and tower defense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindustry

      Edited to add:

      If you like RTS then Beyond All Reason is fantastic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_All_Reason

      • MarsIronPI 3 hours ago
        Oh, I need to get back into playing Mindustry.

        Wait, on second thought if I did that I wouldn't get anything done.

    • nilslindemann 8 hours ago
      Not Open Source but still/now free to play (these are my favs, I played them through back and forth):

      - Trackmania Nations Forever (e.g. via Steam) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj2u2OrZ2vI

      - Starcraft Brood War - though I have not tested it via the battlenet.exe, played it when it still was payware.

      - Gemcraft Labyrinth - played it when flash was a thing, but now it is again, e.g. on Armorgames

      And, I got games like Portal 1 & 2, Outer Wilds, Osmos, Manifold Garden, Planet Crafter and many more for under ten, some for under five Euros each when they were on special offer on Steam. I once got Just Cause 3 for three Euros.

    • overhead4075 4 hours ago
    • throw_await 9 hours ago
      Luanti aka minetest

      Widelands as a settler clone

    • reddalo 10 hours ago
      OpenRCT2 is a reimplementation of RollerCoaster Tycoon 2.

      Just like its cousing OpenTTD which is a reimplementation of Chris Sawyer's Transport Tycoon.

    • gowld 4 hours ago
      Stardew Valley isn't open source, but it has been decompiled (.Net) and has a an open-source modding API inclding Harmony integration for patching the base game code and and a huge open-source modding community.

      ttps://github.com/pardeike/Harmony

    • FergusArgyll 9 hours ago
      0ad https://play0ad.com/

      My first reaction was exactly that; I can't believe it's free!

    • mikkupikku 8 hours ago
      Endless Sky, GPLv3 space trading game. Being a space trucker is dangerously addictive.
  • rdevilla 9 hours ago
    I loved this game playing on an Arch Thinkpad in university with budget graphics capability.

    The best part is being able to pin locations on the map for your teammates, so we were able to plot the adventures and battlegrounds of a goated unit by naming the pins "Ronant's Triumph," "Ronant's Revenge," "Ronant's Folly," and ultimately "Ronant's Last Stand." Great times with a few beers and the lads.

    RIP Ronant, Wesnoth will never see another hero of your like again.

  • dhbradshaw 10 hours ago
    My kids and I have been playing this for about 20 years. It's worked on Linux, Mac and Windows and has never stopped working.

    In the meantime so many other favorite games have disappeared or become obsolete.

    There's no absolute reason great games can't be as immortal as chess. Maybe Wesnoth can be.

  • bedroom_jabroni 12 hours ago
    An absolute gem I came across randomly many years ago. Picked up Mewgenics and it left me wishing it had some mechanics from Wesnoth like faster animations (Mewgenics caps at 4x), undo action (at least if the action doesn't trigger any rng/damage behavior), skip enemy turns.

    I only wish they added more campaigns into the official lore.

  • freetime2 4 hours ago
    It's been probably 20 years since I played this game. But I still think it's the best Open Source game I've ever played. I had lots of fun, and more than a few late nights, running through some of the campaigns.

    I would love to see a Nintendo Switch port of this game, if anyone is interested in making one!

    • MarsIronPI 3 hours ago
      > I would love to see a Nintendo Switch port of this game, if anyone is interested in making one!

      I think many would be, but AIUI it's illegal. It would require modifying the source to use Nintendo's SDK which is under NDA. The GPL would require releasing the modified source, which would be prohibited by the NDA. So it's legally impossible without special permission from every single Wesnoth contributor ever.

      Unless you mean a homebrew port, in which case it's doable.

  • throw7 2 hours ago
    It's been a long time ago since I last played and I was one of those rng haters (that's why i never got hooked... i want to have fun, not some pseudo random roll the bones simulator). I just took a look and I see three different "rng modes"... i have to laugh and give credit to the devs for sticking to their guns.
  • MarsIronPI 3 hours ago
    Someday I hope Wesnoth will have Fire Emblem-esque cutscenes. I can dream.

    Oh, and I'd really like them to be in the original style of Heir to the Throne. I'm a sucker for the old anime style of 1.10.

  • everdrive 6 hours ago
    Just downloaded Wesnoth due to this post. I'll try it out this weekend maybe. I was wrong in my other post -- I believe I played it around 20 years ago.
  • philip-b 10 hours ago
    I heard about this game many many times due to software developers showcasing it as an example of a good libre videogame. However, I don't know a single person who played it and I have never seen anyone recommending it for its gameplay.
    • azrazalea 10 hours ago
      It is a relatively simple formula that is very combat heavy with extremely simple economy. The campaigns are excellent though and as long as the true randomness of attacks/defense doesn't drive you crazy it is a lot of fun. Very challenging and has real strategic and tactical depth as well as pretty well balanced.

      I personally never did multiplayer but last I checked the multiplayer community was pretty healthy.

    • bitwank 9 hours ago
      That’s absurd. It is the only game I’ve ever played other than chess. Maybe it’s not popular with FPS gamers, but a lot of people don’t like FPS.
    • Quarrelsome 10 hours ago
      i played it, its fine, its a solid game. Easily can lose several hours in a session and probably played over 40 in total. Its enjoyable to play through due to the upgrading mechanics and wanting to see all the potential evolutions. That said, I'm not always a huge fan of the level design as you're often encouraged to play into negative fights (e.g. the timing for meeting the enemy aligns with their daytime bonuses) which forces you to play a bit more defensively than I'd like.
  • vivzkestrel 2 hours ago
    stupid question: if your game is open source, how do you prevent some random dude from ripping your code and releasing a slightly different version?
    • wavemode 11 minutes ago
      > how do you prevent

      You don't. Giving people the right to do this is the whole point of open source.

      If that possibility is not acceptable then don't open source your game.

    • TYMorningCoffee 2 hours ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_Dungeon is an example of that. The bad forks dont become popular
      • kbelder 1 hour ago
        And if it's a better fork... it's still open source, so you can switch to it or fork it back.

        Open source licenses shouldn't be viewed as a marketing strategy; it's a gift.

  • mattlondon 11 hours ago
    Blocked by Anubis? Just says "invalid response" with no explanation or instructions for how to fix it. Chrome on Android - not exactly niche.

    Thanks for that.

    • tetromino_ 10 hours ago
      Same happened for me when I clicked on the link, I had to delete the cookies for wesnoth.org and then load the site again. I think their Anubis setup might be broken a bit
  • midzer 7 hours ago
    There is even an Android build since this year https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.wesnoth.Wesnoth/
    • MarsIronPI 3 hours ago
      Wait, how is that build different from the one Alessandro Pira (?) has been publishing for years now?
    • pferde 7 hours ago
      I tried it on my tablet last month, and it's pretty unplayable. The touchscreen input needs a lot of work, half the time it does something completely wrong and random, like selecting a tile halfway across the screen from where you touched.
  • coolgoose 10 hours ago
    I've been playing this for 10+ years :) it's one awesome game and the details for sprites and art direction is sweet.
  • uberman 12 hours ago
    I love this game. It is also fairly easy to tinker with the units if you are like me, that is a big win.
  • plutokras 10 hours ago
    In high school I kept a USB drive full of portable apps. This was one of them. I can still recommend it.
  • orangesilk 11 hours ago
    What would need to happen that more players are available for online games?
    • MarsIronPI 3 hours ago
      I would need more time on my hands.
  • steviedotboston 9 hours ago
    I remember playing this a lot back in the Ubuntu 6 days.
    • totetsu 6 hours ago
      I think this was featured on the Ubuntu software manager at some point and that’s how I discovered it. It was one of the few games on Linux that’s was genuinely fun to play
  • helle253 10 hours ago
    Fond memories, playing this throughout my youth :')
  • macleginn 10 hours ago
    So it's like HMM but the whole map is in battle mode?
    • Svoka 6 hours ago
      It feels more like a war game to be honest. I played both for a while and they share some aesthetic, but not much beyond that.
  • MinimalAction 10 hours ago
    Interesting! Is this similar to Age of Empires?
    • mdtrooper 9 hours ago
      0 A.D. https://play0ad.com/ is more similar to Age of Empires.
    • garretraziel 10 hours ago
      Not at all. That would be a game called 0ad.
    • phamilton 10 hours ago
      More like Fire Emblem
    • Quarrelsome 10 hours ago
      think more hexbased, turnbased, terrain and dice roll mechanics with unit upgrades being extremely important.
    • butlike 10 hours ago
      More like Final Fantasy Tactics
    • brendoelfrendo 10 hours ago
      More like Heroes of Might and Magic. It's a turn-based strategy game where battles take place on a hex grid map. It's got full campaigns, lots of factions and units, resources to gather... it's one of my favorite OSS projects. Wesnoth has been in active development forever and is a real labor of love, as well as a showcase of collaborative game development.
    • CivBase 10 hours ago
      Not really. This game uses a turn-based combat system with a hex grid. It's more like Sid Meier's Civilization, but with a drastically simplified economy and a strong focus on battles. It also has a Tolkein-esque fantasy theme instead of a real-life history theme.

      If that sounds at all interesting, I suggest giving it a shot.

  • steveharing1 10 hours ago
    Open Source Games are really underrated Gems
  • shevy-java 9 hours ago
    What is pretty cool is how long-living the project has been. I have seen many open source games die over the last 2 decades; some were quite cool. So wesnoth staying alive is pretty epic in itself.
  • jcmontx 11 hours ago
    Never heard of this game. Is it similar to Warcraft III?
    • markatto 11 hours ago
      It's turn based, the most similar game I've played is probably Fantasy General. Closer to Advance Wars or Fire Emblem than Warcraft.
    • orangesilk 11 hours ago
      No. Warcraft 3 ist real time strategy, Wesnoth is turn based strategy.
    • the_af 11 hours ago
      No. This is turn based, it doesn't play like any RTS game.
    • aetherson 11 hours ago
      Not really. It's turn-based and hex-based.
      • shellwizard 9 hours ago
        Similar to panzer general then?
        • MarsIronPI 3 hours ago
          Yeah, except that troops in Wesnoth don't require fuel or ammo. And you have to explicitly recall veterans. And leveling up makes units grow into different, stronger units.
  • anilkuscu 11 hours ago
    only missing point about this game is some of the real word parameters like moral,flanking etc. Maybe a real history mod would be amazing like ancient era or medieval ages.
    • Terr_ 11 hours ago
      Modern strategy games for leisure can be traced back to actual militaries or hardcore history buffs—systems that would try to model morale etc., often to a degree which, er, doesn't have mass-market appeal. :p

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsspiel

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chainmail_(game)

    • MarsIronPI 3 hours ago
      > flanking

      The Zone of Control mechanic kind of simulates this. If you're not careful about unit placement, you may find your units ganged up on by more enemies then they can handle. On the other hand, if you keep a good formation, you can pretty much hold a solid line with a fairly modest number of troops. Unless of course the enemy soldiers have "skirmisher", in which case they'll waltz right past your ZoC.

      Actually, Wesnoth's ZoC is the reason I never could get into Fire Emblem. I couldn't get used to not being able to protect my injured units without completely surrounding them.

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  • asdfghjhgfdsd 10 hours ago
    [flagged]
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