Magitek

It doesn't have to be about NOW. In ten months someone could easily discover this game and start an upgrade project, which would go a lot further than some ghetto fix. Don't you think if he could have fixed it easily, he would have? I'm pretty sure I explained in the last update thread the effects of doing what you asked. Maybe you can't wait that long for someone to pick it up, but atleast the game might aspire to something greater in the future.

Because C++ is hard! Right? I fail to see your motivation here, unless you're looking for some other improvement to the game first?

You don't really have to be an expert, just have the motivation to keep working on it. Since no one is making money out of it and the playerbase is not exactly huge, chances of someone actually willing to take it on properly are indeed slim. I'm willing to take a look, but I doubt motivation will carry me much further than that as I already have a number of other mod projects active. I'm glad Brit is taking the initiative still, so in the future perhaps we might see something nice.

Although I doubt its hardware related, can you post your DXDIAG for those of us here? (run dxdiag.exe from the start menu and then save the data to a textfile which i think you can attach to your post) Seems a bit odd that its just crashing right there. It's remotely possible that a virus has modified the executable and is causing it to crash: Try uploading the EOS.exe to virustotal.com just to be sure. A single anti-virus is rarely enough to catch every virus strain even today. It's also possible you need to try different video drivers, if you haven't already; Even if everything else works. I can't imagine another reason why it would crash right as things were being initialized.. usually either a problem reading/writing, corruption, missing files, or drivers crashing. So ultimately I can only suggest the good old fashioned trial and error now.

I've already written about your behaviour, and why it's disrespectful, you don't care, I understand. I also never asked you to stop posting, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest. Think I'll just do that. I now fully understand the ramifications of what happens when you stay for too long. Farewell!

It doesn't make any difference to me if you think I'm not paying attention. It's your attitude towards this, and everyone can see it. The fact that you made yet another post complaining about AI when you said you were done, makes it pretty obvious you're just out for vengeance. You express you will go through lengths to mention EoS doesn't have fog of war when it gets mentioned on other forums, as to obviously deter them from getting the game. These are just digs at the developer for not implementing what you want; and this is just lashing out. You're even calling people names, I can't see your objective here? To rile more people up so you can keep ranting about the AI?

I don't get it. Compare that behaviour to what you're doing. The reason why everyone is lashing out at you, is because you're lashing out at them, and not only them, but the developer of the game. If you want it to stop, avoid making aggravating posts and claiming to defame the game on other forums. Ridiculous behaviour.

You're welcome to write out a line of wargames that have working fog of war and those that don't. Don't expect me to do your homework for you, it's not me that wants the unreasonable CMSF: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/combatmissionshockforce/review.html Gamespot even go out of their way to mention just how broken the AI is. I don't even see how "fog of war" is used here, it just looks like line of sight and tactical, which should not be confused with strategical intelligence. SC2: You can also adjust the difficulty of the game, which essentially gives bonuses (positive or negative) to the AI (just cheats). The AI in the game is slightly disappointing, mainly because it’s not aggressive enough and seems to only respond to a pre-determined script or the human player’s actions. Empire Deluxe: Your own words from a yahoo discussion. "After a while Empire Deluxe Enhanced Edition will fall on the pile of failed game sequels where it rightly belongs." - guess you can't put much stock in that AI either? http://www.gameskb.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx/pc-games-strategy/2670/Empire-Enhanced-is-Doomed PS. I did not play the games in question, it's obvious I don't need to now. Most amazing thing about my ten minutes of searching about empires and AI? Rich12545 is featured on each page, complaining about AI for each one, ontop of being banned from forums taking it too far. You are however, welcome to continue mentioning games which actually have all-seeing AI (ironically abysmal AI also).. So far I'm still waiting for a single one with useful AI that doesn't cheat. As for Brit doing the AI in question.. Could he do it? Sure. I believe just about anyone can program something complex so long as they have the time and commitment. does he have the money to do it? no. does he have the time to do it? no. does he have the motivation to do it? no. does he have moral obligation to do it? no. For the record, I've read what you have written, there's no meaning in continuing to bark up that tree. By all means, continue...

Yes well, everyones definition of playable seems to be different. Yours perhaps slightly more so..

Brit has given you more than enough information on the issue. It's time to follow your own advice and read what Brit has written: He has absolutely no obligations to anyone except his investors, anything extra he does to Empires of Steel is purely donation work. He doesn't even have to respond to you; maybe he will? It's not because he has to, but because he doesn't believe in just dropping everything and running off like many other developers. He's been doing support and fixes for a year or more; and been making next to nothing.. just how much does $20 entitle you to?

If YOU don't remember the post, how am I supposed to be able to? I'm pretty sure I don't need to read the entire forum to understand the implications of fixing the AI. A game-play situation so you understand what goes wrong when you do this: Let's say you have ten tanks in a stack, the AI scouts these incoming tanks with a fighter. Knowing that your tanks will horribly crush everything it has in the region, it sends a squadron of bombers to neutralize them. You know all about the AI's woes and predict the bombers or scouted them earlier, and deploy sufficient fighters. Now lets say the AI knows you have fighter technology, and sends an escort of fighters because it knows you have the capability, and that losing its bombers or not destroying the tank squadron will cause it to lose the war. But, oh, damn? what's this? You send a wave of bombers at the same time over to his now undefended city knowing that hes going to send his fighters to your tank squadron every time. Repeat this until you win the game. Which AI is the most fun now? You can continue to exploit this time and time again, because the AI is not thinking forward into the future, or thinking about all possible strategies, or memorizing your strategies. It's these things that make fog of war AI such a difficult task versus reactive AI. With the all-seeing AI, it can counter all of this far more effectively, is atleast five times or more easier to write, relies on less other cheats and it's also much harder to exploit. I have a background in programming, and have touched on fog of war AI myself; I don't need to cite random references. If Brit said he could implement something like this easily, It's likely his tune changed once he saw what was involved in doing it. If you think I still don't get it, why don't you actually explain what I don't get. Because I'm doing you a favor, explaining this, so that you can understand, no matter what Brit said, this is a serious undertaking when done properly; he may not have understood it at the time. I don't see why you thought his word was iron law. Adding "scouts" into the existing AI won't change anything, it'll just give you the illusion of the AI using fog of war.. like every other game.

You still don't seem to understand that these are connected. You can't simply "remove" the AIs ability to see information it's not supposed to. This AI simply cannot function without this so called "all-seeing". I explained this in detail in case you missed it: TLDR: AI basically needs to be recreated from scratch to work with fog of war. It's not something the developer can just do in 5 minutes.

There are so few games using true fog of war for the AI. I don't understand how anyone can contest this. If you played games for 20-30 years then you may want to revisit those titles; next to all of them are not using fog of war or intel properly. I can't even remember the last game that didn't cheat in this fashion, many games might seem as if they don't know you're there, but often it's simply the AI not understanding that your incoming forces are a threat- it's just following it's goal. The issue in EOS is slightly exaggerated due to the fact that its very transparent to player, with submarines, and how it engages the player in general. I hope that Brit continues to work on the game from time to time, even with its lack of popularity/income. I would also really like to keep modding EOS. Some suggestions for the future: I wanted to expand the 1900-2030 rule set some more, but it's really difficult to create unique units and structures without overlapping existing units. Might we see a few additional abilities for units? Amphibious movement type. Adding our own tags, like parachute/nuclear: I mainly want this so I can add units with unique icons. Ability(and chance per turn) to subvert specific units. (all units with certain tag/modifier) Research branching: one type of research prevents the other. (nuclear/green etc)

It's unfortunate, but unless said person shares the vision with you, you have to dangle carrots in front of them at every opportunity. I've had zero success with volunteers over the many years. Maybe I'm just not good enough at cracking the whip?

Sadly, if AI is made without the concept of fog of war in mind, it is often extremely difficult to fix. In doing so, the AI must now calculate possible strategies instead of simple reactionary measures. The difference between the two is staggering. One is artificial intelligence and must make real strategical decisions with the future in mind, the other is merely calculation of battle outcomes to form a superior result. If you apply a band-aid fix to an AI that doesn't understand fog of war, it will completely annihilate its ability to fight properly. You will roll in with countless things the AI could not "see" or "predict" and it will lose every single time. If you give the CPU player knowledge of the players forces but not locations, it will match you but not strategically; it will constantly lose conflicts because it could not predict what your forces could be. Should it assume that your force is always the strongest where ever it goes, it will simply be vulnerable to surgical strikes and flanks before it can compensate. In any case, it will horribly exploitable unless done properly or is given cheats. Unless the developer wants to invest a serious amount of time into this, which I'm pretty sure he doesn't, no amount of complaints into the issue will help. It's too bad, because EOS is the only real war game I've ever managed to get my friends to play. Other than a few AI quirks, it is very exceptional in many ways, among hundreds of war games. I hope that for the next game, if there is a next game, it will keep fog of war for the AI in mind; it is what sets apart a good AI from a calculator. However, you'll find that it is rarely done properly, and even more rarely appreciated for it.