Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980

Even a highly "scripted" AI can be made to play "better". Afterall the AI knows the intimate details about how the game is programmed, it knows all the forumulas, precisely, so it should know exactly how much force is needed to prevail in a particular operation based on its knowledge of the enemy forces there. There is no reason, during the first six months the Japanese AI could not have been programmed to operate precisely as experienced players operate as Japan. Only sending heavily escorted TF's into known harm's way, always invading with overwhelming force so as not to bog down into an infamous "death spiral". Only attacking targets under establish Japanese Air Zones of Control. Only supplying the important bases and leaving the others for much later, thereby ensuring there is always adequate supply on hand for operations. Performaing all the player tricks of maximizing pilot experience at the front and so on.

Developers can make the AI play "perfectly" if they wanted to. And that is not the same as having it cheat, just always playing to absolutely maximize its performance under the rules (formula) in place. But they seldom do this. I don't know why, but probably so as not to discourage new players the first time through.

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The perfect attitude for this game. It's about playing the game, not about winning or loosing.

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The *win* or *loss* is a thing that comes along to simply tell you that it's time to start up again.

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The "win at all costs" leads down the path of excessive micromanagement to the point that you start loosing the fun and replace it with frustration.

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It is about being able to be there, not winning or loosing.

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But.. if you take that stand... shouldn't that mean you would be FOR an auto victory toggle? So that we don't need to have the game deciding for us when its won?

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I am "against" opening up a new can of worms full of bugs due to enabling something that is completely untested and against the design of the game.

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Anything that doesn't improve the game play strikes me as time taken away from things that could improve the game play.

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I am also "againt" wasting programmers time implementing things that don't make game play better.

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You still don't get my position do you?

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Thats why I fight against these types of enhancements. There are 8 hours in a business day. If Mike spends 4 of them to add new code to deal with disabling auto-victory, thats 4 hours not spent correcting the bug that results in units vanishing.

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Which is more important to game play?

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Which is better: a solid bug free game with less features, or a buggy game with more features that you can't play?

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I think the most important thing to game play is the ability to actually PLAY your game. Auto victory can stop that. The toggle will allow a player to opt out.

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ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

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ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980

Even a highly "scripted" AI can be made to play "better". Afterall the AI knows the intimate details about how the game is programmed, it knows all the forumulas, precisely, so it should know exactly how much force is needed to prevail in a particular operation based on its knowledge of the enemy forces there. There is no reason, during the first six months the Japanese AI could not have been programmed to operate precisely as experienced players operate as Japan. Only sending heavily escorted TF's into known harm's way, always invading with overwhelming force so as not to bog down into an infamous "death spiral". Only attacking targets under establish Japanese Air Zones of Control. Only supplying the important bases and leaving the others for much later, thereby ensuring there is always adequate supply on hand for operations. Performaing all the player tricks of maximizing pilot experience at the front and so on.

Developers can make the AI play "perfectly" if they wanted to. And that is not the same as having it cheat, just always playing to absolutely maximize its performance under the rules (formula) in place. But they seldom do this. I don't know why, but probably so as not to discourage new players the first time through.

And the customer is willing to wait an hour for the AI to process the perfect turn everytime too right Zoomie?

You don't know why because you seem to be stuck in a dream world where everyone has their own personal Cray XD1's to run the game on. It has nothing to do with discouraging new players, it has to do with the very real limitation of PC computing power. Statements like this really make me wonder about your programming skills. Programmers are bound by the conditions of what they have to work with. There is zero point writing a software application that requires processer performance that does not exist in the marketplace.

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Of course every player can already fix this problem himself by using the editor to make both Tokyo and USA worth 50,000 points. No toggle required.

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ORIGINAL: Captain Cruft

How about background AI processing while the player enters their orders?

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ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

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But.. if you take that stand... shouldn't that mean you would be FOR an auto victory toggle? So that we don't need to have the game deciding for us when its won?

You still don't get my position do you?

I am not "for or against" changing VP conditions.

I am "against" opening up a new can of worms full of bugs due to enabling something that is completely untested and against the design of the game. I am also "againt" wasting programmers time implementing things that don't make game play better. Anything that doesn't improve the game play strikes me as time taken away from things that could improve the game play.

Thats why I fight against these types of enhancements. There are 8 hours in a business day. If Mike spends 4 of them to add new code to deal with disabling auto-victory, thats 4 hours not spent correcting the bug that results in units vanishing.

Which is more important to game play?

Perhaps in the process of adding this he makes a mistake that creates a brand new bug.

Now we have a feature that does not help game play, we have a new bug that will take time to fix and we are now short on time to fix the existing bugs not to mention having to spend time fixing this new bug that was not there before.

Does that explain why I fight over what some of you may see as trivial things?

Which is better: a solid bug free game with less features, or a buggy game with more features that you can't play?

The games that stay on my system are the ones without the bugs. They have staying power simply because I know I can put the time into them and not get burned.

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ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

Once again, you are completely missing the point that both Mogami and I have made time and time again.

If you get auto-victory conditions prior to 1945, then the game is *broken*. Turning off the *broken* checking does nothing to fix the problem that the game is *broken*.

Time spent improving the game to make it not *broken* is time well spent. Time spent turning off the *broken* check instead of trying to figure out what went wrong is wasted.

As long as you continue to gloss over the *broken* fact, there is little point discussing it as you can't see the reality right in front of you on your screen as you play the game. Hopefully others will catch on to this fact. You seem determined to completely ignore it and consider yourself to be a great player because you won the game instead of being willing to question *why* you won the game.

This is what a properly running game should look like when 1943 starts:

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Time spent improving the game to make it not *broken* is time well spent. Time spent turning off the *broken* check instead of trying to figure out what went wrong is wasted.

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If you get auto-victory conditions prior to 1945, then the game is *broken*. Turning off the *broken* checking does nothing to fix the problem that the game is *broken*.

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As long as you continue to gloss over the *broken* fact, there is little point discussing it as you can't see the reality right in front of you on your screen as you play the game.

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Hopefully others will catch on to this fact.

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consider yourself to be a great player

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This is what a properly running game should look like when 1943 starts:

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Hi, What this thread needs is an Auto Victory Toggle. You have it for the game I want it for this thread so I can turn it ON.

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ORIGINAL: Grotius

Someone asked about AI "thinking" in the background while the player makes moves. Didn't "Galactic Civilizations" implement such a system? Mind you, that game had a very small rectangular battlefield with limited variation in terrain and units, so it's a whole different animal.

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The thing is, if we let naysayers hold sway, we'd still all be thinking we lived on a flat world and "bleeding" sick people....

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ORIGINAL: samuraigg



You call the game *Broken* while to others its "THEIR" game that they want to continue playing.

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Time spent improving the game to make it not *broken* is time well spent. Time spent turning off the *broken* check instead of trying to figure out what went wrong is wasted.

Time spent improving the game to make it so that the player can keep playing is time well spent.

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If you get auto-victory conditions prior to 1945, then the game is *broken*. Turning off the *broken* checking does nothing to fix the problem that the game is *broken*.

How is the game broken? Because we are leading the war based on a point value? Was the end of World War Two *broken* because the Allies were winning against Japan?

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As long as you continue to gloss over the *broken* fact, there is little point discussing it as you can't see the reality right in front of you on your screen as you play the game.

What reality? That we as a community want to keep playing the game that we have spent so much time on and not be told by the game that, since we are winning by too much, it has decided it wouldn't be fun for us anymore to keep playing? Seems to me that the player would know best when it would no longer be fun for him to play anymore.

And once again, this is not just me. A lot of people have asked for this. I am just one of the more vocal ones.

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Hopefully others will catch on to this fact.

People have caught onto the fact that their game is in jeopardy of ending suddenly just because they lead by a certain point value. And they want a toggle for it.

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consider yourself to be a great player

When did I say I was a great player?

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This is what a properly running game should look like when 1943 starts:

Now this just makes no sense whatsoever. A properly running game is one that the player is running.

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Hi, What this thread needs is an Auto Victory Toggle. You have it for the game I want it for this thread so I can turn it ON.

Agreed.. lets end this. Ugh.

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ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

No point getting into it Warspite ... you are arguing against people who find it perfectly normal for Japan to conquer the world in 400 days.

What cracks me up is there are no Allied fanboys jumping into this and screaming like mad. In the UV days, we had 50 page long threads because a F4F got shot down by a A6M2. Here we have Japan conquering the world and not a peep!

I guess it's true, there really are no Allied fanboys left.

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I think I see your point. Am I correct in assuming that what you are saying is the main source of all of our problems is that China is included in the game? And if China was removed, then in theory many of these issues would go away?

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Just to compare my game to this, are you saying if I confine myself to just holding Rangoon (which is primarily what I am doing now), then theoretically the problem shouldn't crop up?