Impressions of this game (Full Version)

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Chopain -> Impressions of this game (11/30/2008 4:38:17 AM)

I've own this game for awhile now so lately I decided to figure out how to play it. I decided to start a game on easy as Spain. It took me awhile to get use to the transportation of units on ships but eventualy I owned Africa and Italy. I figured out that I knew what I was doing and it was time to try out France. I won the game with ease taking over basicly everything. Noticed that the game wasn't a challenge at all. That it was kind of strange thinking that since it was my first time that I shouldn't win the game. So I decided to go all out and play France against "hard" ai. I can't tell the difference.

Things I noticed. The ai does not DOW each other. The ai does not attack. IE. Turkey has been siting on the border inside Egypt for over a year now not moving an inch. Austria has been siting in Naples not doing anything. Russia sits one square into Sweeden and thats it! I have never seen the ai do anything vs any neutral contry unless it is a one province country just a forever stalemate war all over the place.

When my allies join a war they don't attack. Nor do they get attacked. The countries never come to peace terms. I was at war with Austria. Turkey was with me. Two thirds of the Austrian army sat on the Turkish border while as France I took over the rest of their country. The only offence I ever saw was sometimes England and or Russia will go after the Netherlands. Once Russia took Denmark from me.

So is this all normal? Is there no challenge unless I play ancient email swaping? Thanks and I look foward to any responces that follow.



eske -> RE: Impressions of this game (11/30/2008 8:19:43 AM)

The AI is known for its passivity - especially after the first year.

But take a look at the threads around here, and you will get a clearer picture of, what to expect.

Oh, I make sure you are playing the last patch, 1.04. A lot of bugs and AI stupidity has been cleared out.
Still a some way to go along that road though...

/eske



iamspamus -> RE: Impressions of this game (11/30/2008 4:30:09 PM)

Yep, the AI needs some help. I just played as France for the first time. I've done Russia, Spain and Turkey, my favorites.

France was really no problem at all. I built up as many ships as I could. By 1811, I took on the Brits and handily beat them. I don't know what they were building, but it wasn't ships...or troops...[>:]

Anyway, the AI definitely needs some direction after the first year. It just kinda sits. It doesn't go for depots. Wehn at peace, the Spanish sat in one space with 8 armies (they couldn't have been full strength, as I eviscerated them in the war) and ROLLED FOR ATTRITION, losing factors. No scattering to get good Mods, nothing. Austria did the same thing.

So, there still is some work needed to be done. Believe it or not, it's getting better.

Jason



iamspamus -> RE: Impressions of this game (11/30/2008 4:33:23 PM)

One more thing. I have suggested that the AI has some type of checklist of options that it goes through when making decisions. I'm not a programmer at all, so I don't know the difficulty of it. However, I saw this model on the World in Flames Matrix game forum. Basically, there is a checklist of options that it goes through. In addition, there is a somewhat randomized set of "postures" that the country picks, ie. aggressive, passive, etc. In our case, for Russia it could be: aggressive towards Pru/Aus; agg vs. Fra; agg vs. Brit (ie. builds ships); agg vs. Caucasus, etc.

Just a thought.

Jason



pzgndr -> RE: Impressions of this game (11/30/2008 6:06:36 PM)

quote:

Yep, the AI needs some help... Anyway, the AI definitely needs some direction after the first year.


Looking at the upcoming fixes, v1.05 resolves some of the known AI weaknesses, and v1.06 has some more fixes for the long game AI passivity. Other than being anxious to see more improvements implemented faster, like everyone, I'm content to wait for the bug fixes and game enhancements and ongoing AI improvements. I don't think anyone has promoted the idea that this is all normal, ie the known AI weaknesses. Once the game bugs are resolved and the focus eventually shifts to serious AI improvements, it should be possible to develop a more challenging computer opponent. [8D]



iamspamus -> RE: Impressions of this game (11/30/2008 9:52:46 PM)

Oh, I'm all for continuing to play, while waiting for the AI to gain, well, AI and take over the world by controlling Skynet...

Reference?

Jason



ndrose -> RE: Impressions of this game (11/30/2008 11:08:39 PM)

The AI certainly has room for improvement, but it is getting better. (Its current passivity seems to be an artifact of the fixes to keep it from the frenetic and suicidal hyper-aggression of earlier versions.) There are ways to mae the game interesting by making things difficult for yourself. Some of the "house rules" I adopt when playing againt the AI:

No allies. Go it alone, even if you're Prussia, in which case, DOW Austria.

If you're France, start by invading Spain, and get yourself into war with Austria and Prussia while most of your army is in Spain. Special Spanish campaign subrule: no attacks on Madrid until all provincial capitals are garrisoned.

If you're Britain, build a land empire. I fought one very challenging using this rule when I conquered Naples after Austria had expanded in central Italy. I thought I was being clever by putting an Austrian buffer between me and France. Instead, Austria allied with France and declared war on me. The rest of the game, the tiny British army fought its way up the Italian peninsula against both Austria and France, marched on Vienna (ending up with several provinces including Bohemia), and finally wrung an unconditional from France. At that point I thought about DOWing Prussia and Russia with the aim of creating Poland as a British client, but ultimately abandoned the game, as it was too silly, and I'd already won.

Despite the silliness of the result, it was an interesting problem throughout to fight the dimwitted but enormous armies arrayed against the little British Expeditionary Force.



Marshall Ellis -> RE: Impressions of this game (12/1/2008 12:30:36 PM)

Just an FYI that I have made some pretty decent breakthroughs in 1.06 code that should help the AI actually fight a war with a major to completion!



Chopain -> RE: Impressions of this game (12/2/2008 8:36:17 AM)

Thanks for the input. Maybe one day my dreams will come true and I'll get invaded on more then one front. Better yet I'll be happy with the chance for just one defensive war. [:)]



iamspamus -> RE: Impressions of this game (12/2/2008 8:51:37 AM)

Answer myself...Terminator...sigh.
[:D]

Jason
quote:

ORIGINAL: iamspamus

Oh, I'm all for continuing to play, while waiting for the AI to gain, well, AI and take over the world by controlling Skynet...

Reference?

Jason




adamcs -> RE: Impressions of this game (12/2/2008 1:55:09 PM)

In the Napoleonic Wars there were coalitions fighting against Napoleon. I can't really make any coalition here although I have several allies. Whatever I do they just sit patiently. One of the amazing things about this era was that it needed the whole Europe to defeat Napoleon at Leipzig, and I think, that was the 5th coalition. In this game it seems absolutely impossible to fight battles like that. For some reason I can never make my allies join me and fight even if they are all in war with France.
Oce I wanted a unit from one of my allies and the message was that I could take it for something like 150. We were both allies and war with France. That's crazy.



Marshall Ellis -> RE: Impressions of this game (12/2/2008 1:56:06 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Chopain

Thanks for the input. Maybe one day my dreams will come true and I'll get invaded on more then one front. Better yet I'll be happy with the chance for just one defensive war. [:)]


Yea, I agree. I played 4-5 games real deep in over the holidays and was able to see the AI just simply not do much of anything after the initial DOWs that basically lined up the allies vs Fr and Tu. The political behavior was good but the military behavior was horrid. I hope this really changes in 1.06



ndrose -> RE: Impressions of this game (12/2/2008 3:01:13 PM)

My impression is that while the AI has some of the basic mechanics down much better (no longer sending corps every which way without supply), it's making movement decisions based on a one-month horizon. So until you get close enough to poke it with a sharp stick, it just sleeps.

So the Russian AI, say, may think "Time to beat up the Turks," and declare war. Good. But then it looks around and says, "Hmm, that's strange, I don't see any Turks right here around Brest-Litovsk. Oh, well...zzzzzzzz...."



mr.godo -> RE: Impressions of this game (12/3/2008 5:58:56 AM)

The AI is too soft at the moment. There should be a level that no one can win. Just tack on an extra level where you give the AI a lot of resources and make them aggressive. Then when people complain about that, you can dial it down a few notches.

However, I believe this whole AI effort should be abandoned in favour of tcp/ip and multiplayer enhancements. I've dropped all my mp games as they are just too painfully slow.



Marshall Ellis -> RE: Impressions of this game (12/3/2008 12:35:39 PM)

Curious, what is an MP game? I'm assuming PBEM?
I think phase skipping (1.05) will really speed things up a bit! I'm seeing it!







NeverMan -> RE: Impressions of this game (12/3/2008 1:48:35 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis

Curious, what is an MP game? I'm assuming PBEM?
I think phase skipping (1.05) will really speed things up a bit! I'm seeing it!







I don't think phase skipping is going to do THAT much simply because then I have to think about which phases I want skipped and make sure I want to skip them and 9 out of 10 times I'm not going to skip a phase "just in case".

Of course, that's just me.

Simul will go MUCH MUCH further in helping game speed.



Dancing Bear -> RE: Impressions of this game (12/3/2008 11:56:58 PM)

I also think Simul dip will be a big break through in game speed.

However, I suspect that the skipping will work better than most people are anticipating, perhaps not in the first 9 months of the game, but certainly later in the game, when everyone is basically licking their wounds. It will depend on the group, and likely would work better with some house ettiquette rules around when it will used.

I'd still love to see more advances in the PBEM game speed, along the lines that have been discussed elsewhere.



Marshall Ellis -> RE: Impressions of this game (12/4/2008 10:57:14 AM)

I agree that skipping will make some big gains. I am seeing this already in my tests.



mr.godo -> RE: Impressions of this game (12/4/2008 3:38:49 PM)

sorry, mp=multi player. pbem.
it's not really multiplayer.

i played out france monday-wednesday. boring, except for the battles.

try waiting an hour after every player's diplo phase. see if that affects your time tests. seriously.



Marshall Ellis -> RE: Impressions of this game (12/5/2008 12:46:25 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: mr.godo

sorry, mp=multi player. pbem.
it's not really multiplayer.

i played out france monday-wednesday. boring, except for the battles.

try waiting an hour after every player's diplo phase. see if that affects your time tests. seriously.



Why wait the hour?




bresh -> RE: Impressions of this game (12/8/2008 9:27:01 AM)

Well the AI still needs alot.
I wanted to check something about Poland, so started a quick-test-game vs Hard ai's as Prussia. Did nothing only forage alliances nothing else.

1805. January, Austria DOW'ed Laulitz even when it was out of reach ??
Another thing, Laulitz appears to transform itself without Prussia doing so to a conq(Notiched this in March) ?
And in March 1805 Austria with 1 corps present in Bologna, DOW's Tuscany+Papacy+Naples ????
Havent checked what the other MPs been doing.

Regards
Bresh





GShock -> RE: Impressions of this game (12/8/2008 10:38:18 AM)

Carry on Ellis, im happy to see it's getting along better lately. [:)]



Marshall Ellis -> RE: Impressions of this game (12/8/2008 1:25:59 PM)

Thanks guys!




gazfun -> RE: Impressions of this game (12/9/2008 7:12:30 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis

I agree that skipping will make some big gains. I am seeing this already in my tests.


Is it equal to or better than your original estimate of 30% faster Marshall?



Marshall Ellis -> RE: Impressions of this game (12/9/2008 1:05:54 PM)

It greatly depends on who you are playing.
If I am playing Au or Pr then skipping the naval is expected and AWESOME! Add a continuous skip in the reinf phase also helps! I will be playing a timed solo without skipping and with skipping to compare, hopefully this friday. I will let you know what I find...

I am thinking that for Pr Au that the gains may be more than 30%! Think about it...

Standard non eco turn = Dip, Reinf, Nav, Land, Land Combat
With skipping = Dip, Land, Land Combat

I'm excited at what I see so far!








gazfun -> RE: Impressions of this game (12/9/2008 8:09:55 PM)

well im looking forward to it, I hope it will be official soon, as we have that back to counter pool bug still, after redoing the turn.
I think it originats from those ships outside portugal, that where sent to holland in the game



mr.godo -> RE: Impressions of this game (12/10/2008 5:36:38 AM)

quote:

Why wait the hour?

As part of your 'tests'. Simulate the pain players experience in waiting for a phase that should take five minutes max. How long does it take to process a diplomatic phase in your group? Time it. Player gets the file, saves it in the folder, starts the game up, loads the turn, processes the turn, saves the file, zips it, then emails it. What does that take? Three minutes? Then for seven players, that should take about 20 minutes. It should take 1/7 of the time if you could submit the turn simultaneously from all players, although the limiting factor then becomes the host.

A non-happening phase like diplomacy shouldn't take that long. Us working stiffs may not have the luxury of waiting twenty minutes for a file. I'm usually doing something else, then check my mail and notice I received something an hour ago. Then I'll process it to the next player, who is likely gone to bed and the phase takes another day.



gazfun -> RE: Impressions of this game (12/10/2008 7:15:36 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: mr.godo

quote:

Why wait the hour?

As part of your 'tests'. Simulate the pain players experience in waiting for a phase that should take five minutes max. How long does it take to process a diplomatic phase in your group? Time it. Player gets the file, saves it in the folder, starts the game up, loads the turn, processes the turn, saves the file, zips it, then emails it. What does that take? Three minutes? Then for seven players, that should take about 20 minutes. It should take 1/7 of the time if you could submit the turn simultaneously from all players, although the limiting factor then becomes the host.

A non-happening phase like diplomacy shouldn't take that long. Us working stiffs may not have the luxury of waiting twenty minutes for a file. I'm usually doing something else, then check my mail and notice I received something an hour ago. Then I'll process it to the next player, who is likely gone to bed and the phase takes another day.

Well in our group where we have a minimum of a 24 hour turn around for files to be uploaded, now sometime there is 3 to 5 files uploaded in the same day. sometimes less, but the game keeps ticking
So at the moment we have done 1.5 game years in about 6 months, with the skipping feature this will change by at least 30% therefore we should do 2 years of gaming in the same time.
Probably more because you would get a higher involvement from players because of the faster game file returns.



Tanan Fujiwara -> RE: Impressions of this game (12/12/2008 5:31:25 PM)

In one of the pbem groups I am, we did try the mp option but called it off after the fourth restart due to multiple bug issues… this was a couple of months after the game was released and I believe that this problems have been solved with the more recent patches.

In any case and just for feedback, right now I am in two pbem games through Cyberboard. In “Mosquetes”, a 1796 campaign game, after a year of playing time we are in September 1799, that is almost three years of game time… In “Tintas & Espadas”, also a 1796 campaign game, we are moving at a slower pace, about 2 game years in about 9 months…

Imo, if the pbem feature does not let you choose among the different options, rules EiA vs EiH or scenarios; the phases are going to be simultaneous or skipped; and the playing pace is slower than a cyberboard game, which does let you choose all of the above at the players will, then pbem really needs to be changed or improved a lot for the game to offer a rich and rewarding mp playing experience… right now, I think it comes out on the loosing side if you compare it with the vassal or cyberboard…

In regards to AI, imo the game is not suited for solo play whatsoever under any circumstance…

I believe that the game needs a complete overhaul and needs to be redone from scratch, but I now that this is by now totally impossible, so I would settle for a mp that would offer at least the same degree of playability than vassal or cyberboard…

My best.



pzgndr -> RE: Impressions of this game (12/13/2008 1:44:16 PM)

quote:

I believe that the game needs a complete overhaul and needs to be redone from scratch, but I now that this is by now totally impossible, so I would settle for a mp that would offer at least the same degree of playability than vassal or cyberboard…


A complete overhaul, in what way?? VASSAL supposedly has everything the pbem gamer already wants/needs: original map, classic EiA OOBs, strict adherance to the original rules, etc. If that's all some players want, then that's already available. But it is no doubt a PITA to exchange email files back and forth among several players in various locations and time zones. So what exactly is this lofty "degree of playability" all about? How is it that VASSSAL might be more playable than what the current EiANW offers?

Beyond being just another pbem software package, which is relatively uncomplicated, a computer game version of the boardgame should provide more. At the top of this list is AI; a competent computer opponent is necesary for decent solitaire gaming, as well as having a decent opponent to fill in for when less than seven human players are available. Game options for things like real fog of war, where the computer can honestly mediate between players, would provide some valued added. Game options for different rules/options should be available in both EiANW and other pbem software, so that's nothing new.

But a complete overhaul? Completely change the game, or change the EiH stuff back to EiA? With the editor and forthcoming scenarios, we should begin to see more classic EiA OOBs and scenarios; that's easy. But to significantly change gameplay, which is already pretty close to the original gameplay, then you're proposing to change the game itself into something different. There's already plenty of angst that this game isn't pure gospel EiA, as if that means something. If one wants a new game redone from scratch which is designed as a computer game for computer gamers, then Crown of Glory or some other PC game may be the ticket. The challenge of taking a classic board wargame with all of its inherent face-to-face player interactions and trying to bang such a square peg into the computer game round hole is bound to generate criticism, as it has.

EiANW, once it is truly completed with all planned bug fixes, addition of new scenarios and game editor, robust game options to choose between EiA and EiH, AI improvements and other game enhancements, should be fine. It should not need a complete overhaul.



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