Couple of thoughts on the game

[BRO,JD]

-Artillery? Should only be able to fire at naval ships along the coast. I lost a destroyer with a Level 1 Arty unit firing at me out at sea.

-Interface should be easier to use with scrolling, zooming, etc. Make it like other games with the wheel as a zoom/unzoom.

-Much of the interface, especially with loading transports and such, is clunky and difficult. SOmetimes I can't get my transports loaded.

-I can't get the AI to make any resource trades or alliances, even when we're fighting the same country.

-I want more a of a wargame/strategy game and less of a Civilization game. I like the old Command HQ -- simple and elegant. I want to go out, build my army, and conquer the world. I don't want to be in a tech race with the other players so that my Dreadnoughts aren't being sunk by jets.

It's an enjoyable game based on the demo. Still, I'm not sure if it's enough of a break from the Civilization games to warrant buying.

[N3rull]

Artillery - one of the biggest threats to ships were coastal batteries. Ever watched "the guns of Navarona"? Ever wondered why british navy didn't shell the coasts of normandy before they deployed their men into the fray?

That artillery can shoot some distance into sea is perfectly well. Artillery sucks at it anyway because a single battleship can take 8 artillery units at once and win without a single hit point lost, which is screwed imo.

You can already scroll by holding the middle mouse button and zoom by rolling the mouse wheel. Are you sure you're having your demo updated regularly?

Loading interface is just different. It is a powerful tool that allows you to queue a conquest of the whole map, having your infantry unit disembark, capture stuff and embark again, sail to another island, disembark again.... ten times in a row.

Just try to learn it and you'll appreaciate it. It's better to learn first, complain later when you know what you're complaining about, not the other way around. I've made at least two posts explaining how to use boarding, so use Search please. This forum ain't too huge.

The most I think should be done by Brit in this matter is a more extensive tutorial for using the magic yellow circle.

AI will not cooperate diplomatically, that much is right.

Use the 1940 ruleset that does just what you want.

[BRO,JD]

Artillery - one of the biggest threats to ships were coastal batteries. Ever watched "the guns of Navarona"? Ever wondered why british navy didn't shell the coasts of normandy before they deployed their men into the fray?

That artillery can shoot some distance into sea is perfectly well. Artillery sucks at it anyway because a single battleship can take 8 artillery units at once and win without a single hit point lost, which is screwed imo.

Notwithstanding the fact that coast artillery is not the same as field artillery (generally they are different branches, with different training and skill sets, and only the most basic of interchangeable weapons), artillery defending coastal areas is historical and logical. Coast artillery was generally a line-of-sight weapon. Artillery firing multiple spaces into the open ocean and sinking ships? Unrealistic and baseless.

[N3rull]

Well, yeah, why not. Give artillery minimal range against ships. Let's enjoy the battleships raping everything some more. I am sure history had a million examples of heavily defended coastal cities conquered by invincible battleships sailing into the port in full daylight, blasting away all the dozens of tanks and infantry and artillery that for some reason could not even fart at them.

[Soul]

LOL I couldn't agree more N3rull, people don't want a balanced game, they want a uber super unit they can build and kill everyone. That is not the kind of game I want to play.

Artillery and Missile launchers are necessary to keep battleships and crusiers from bombarding cities right now

[BRO,JD]

LOL I couldn't agree more N3rull, people don't want a balanced game, they want a uber super unit they can build and kill everyone. That is not the kind of game I want to play.

Artillery and Missile launchers are necessary to keep battleships and crusiers from bombarding cities right now

I never said anything about BBs or CAs. I complained because I had a destroyer transiting on the high seas sunk by an artillery unit in a nearby city.

BBs and CAs should also have to be immediately adjacent to a city or other ground location to bombard it.

[Soul]

I never said anything about BBs or CAs. I complained because I had a destroyer transiting on the high seas sunk by an artillery unit in a nearby city.

BBs and CAs should also have to be immediately adjacent to a city or other ground location to bombard it.

Like that won't happen nowadays with crusie missiles and coastal batteries. It may not be artillery but they are anti-ship missiles, so I think its a good trade-off.

[BRO,JD]

Like that won't happen nowadays with crusie missiles and coastal batteries. It may not be artillery but they are anti-ship missiles, so I think its a good trade-off.

Level 1 Artillery is anti-ship missiles?

[rich12545]

What is the point in hassling bro? Do you guys get some kind of perverse pleasure out of it? Why shouldn't he be able to play the game the way he wants?

Bro fyi when the game comes out, you can change the ruleset to do what you're asking. It will be easy and you can save the rules so you don't have to do it every time you start a game.

[N3rull]

Bro fyi when the game comes out, you can change the ruleset to do what you're asking. It will be easy and you can save the rules so you don't have to do it every time you start a game.

As he says.

With the 1900-2030 official ruleset, only two things could be done if your complaint was to be taken into consideration:

1) Reduce artillery ranges against ships, then reduce battleship/cruiser ranges against ground units. Which will lead to further sophistication of the game. "WTF why are there four different circles around that ship/artillery unit? which one's which? lol, wth?"

2) create new coastal batteries unit - which will, again, sophisticate the game even further, because a combo of SAM sites + coastal batteries would lock an island down completely. In Normandy, allies landed because they used a huge number of fast and small transports, that were just too fast and too many for cannons to take out. We don't have that unit, we have slow and expensive (production cost-wise) transports that die like flies. Moreover, the combat system makes all units simultaneously shoot all enemy units they have in range, so one coastal battery would wipe a dozen transports in split second. So a ton of further tweaking would have to be brought in.

It just has to be like that.

You just have to watch out where you order your ships to sail about.

[rich12545]

Your attitude is "my way or the highway."

This isn't real life. Empire is an abstract game. It's not even close to being real.

The ruleset is completely modifiable. For a reason. So everybody can play the game the way they want. They can even make new units to suit what they want to do.

But you don't give a sh!t about that. You want everybody to play the game the way YOU want them to.

[N3rull]

rich, I see you're in a bloodrage of some sort.

I don't mind some primitive behaviour now and then from people like you, but at least try to put one spark of sense into your comments.

My attitude is "my way or suggest better, wiseguy"

You can make your own ruleset alright.

But this one ruleset the OP is playing is the official ruleset, managed by Brit, and it is THIS ruleset the OP wants changed. The only thing we can do about THIS ruleset is discuss possible changes that might fix what OP thinks is the problem (and hope Brit reads that).

I have given arguments why I think there is nothing wrong with artillery shooting at ships, even though I'm fully aware most AT guns and howitzer didn't quite match the range of ship cannons.

I have given arguments why fixing that towards realism would sophisticate the game more than it would help. At this point I would like to remind you, rich, that it is YOU who is b!tching everywhere about how complicating the game is the road to Hell.

Do you have anything constructive to say at all?

And please don't blame it on resources again.

[rich12545]

Hey, I'm sick and tired of arguing with you.

Go ahead and do whatever you want.

[Soul]

Most of the issues I've brought up have resulted in changes. I don't think any of the issues these two guys will bring up will every result in a change.

Now if only we can get the seeing radius larger for the higher tech units, fix the battleship owns all problem, and find out a way in which a combined attack will actually be useful (as in stacking) or 1 attack per .10 ticks of a turn instead of each unit getting an attack aganist every unit

[N3rull]

I don't know who you meant by "these two" as there were three of us arguing, but if you look over my posts and the patch log changes, you will notice some correspondence. Moreso with bug reports I haven't posted. Of course, I think not that it is wholly my doing, but not a completely random coincidence either I believe.

I don't know where "get the seeing radius larger for the higher tech units" comes from. Surely, there is not much reason for a modern tank to see through hills or thick woodlands much better than his WW2 counterpart. I think I know what you may want to say, but maybe you could care to explain?

Also, I ran a handful of tests on groups. Well, the results were weird and I will have to repeat the tests again. Enough said that they didn't fit the "all attack all" mechanic.

[Soul]

I was not talking about you N3rull, just the OP and Rick. We are talking about balance here, and this is just a game design thing, the higher tech units might need a larger seeing radius because of the increased movement rates of the higher tech units. They move farther and faster per turn.

This is overall a game and in some cases, may not be realistic for balance purposes but it needs to be balanced.

We all know airpower is Overpowered in real life, it does not have to be in EoS (just as an example)

[dieseltaylor]

Null:

In Normandy, allies landed because they used a huge number of fast and small transports, that were just too fast and too many for cannons to take out.

Your understranding of EoS may be fine but your understanding of history sucks. BRO was correct in that historically nailing ships from shore guns was a hard trick in the period say 1890 to the arrival of nuclear tipped shells or guided missiles.

Anti-shipping fortifications have never really been tested as without invading what is the point of a ship duelling any battery that can hurt it? Even the coastal batteries at Dover and the Pas de Calais were fairly impotent at stopping ships using the Straits which are a mere 20 miles wide.

Risking ships to bombard for a reason is documented. More than soft skinned artillery was crushed by capital ships firing during the Normandy campaign as Tiger battalions were also beaten up.

In early wars you kept a fleet in being to protect your coasts so complaining about BB's being too powerful seems to ignore history. They were dammed powerful. Of course the arrival of small subs to lurk in coastal waters and powerful torpedoes, and then the aeroplane altered the equation on whether a force of BB's was required as a the only appropriate counter.

The game has too many technology advances to comfortably accomodate them all under one set of rules. Apparently the 1900-1940 is not trialed but the 1900-2050 is what people are playing and having a problem with making sense of.

[Boris Balaban]

For the 1900-2030

INF can build super rails from one city to another city and the speed of travel would be 2x to 3x the speed of armor traveling on roads? They would first have the technology learned.

This would help on a map of a large land mass.

The construction would need oil and iron.

[N3rull]

Your understranding of EoS may be fine but your understanding of history sucks.

I never really studied history too much so I may be off.

It is still quite amusing to see you, the one who always complained how my posts lack facts, talking how I'm completely wrong and how things were vastly different but not backing it up with a single external resource or example.

Shame on you.

And it's not Null, please. One could doubt your sanity for talking to "nothing".

[Brit]

Hey guys. I'm a big fan of free-speech, I'm happy to hear your comments, and debates are fine, but I don't want arguments to get too heated here on the forums.

[dieseltaylor]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastal_artillery

From the wiki piece you will see the paucity of shore guns versus ship actions. The only one of interest being the Toulon guns vs. a battleship in which the BB won. And there was a reason for the duel .The Dardenelles Gallipoli action shows how not to go about the matter.

Thread on shore batteries at Dover:

http://www.ww2f.com/weapons-wwii/12290-big-guns-dover.html

As for a fleet to chase of a fleet this from WW1

I've read about the German High Sea's Fleet bombardment of some British coastal towns, Scarborough, Hartlepool etc in December 1914, and I think Yarmouth later in 1915.

While I understand that these actions were primarily aimed at drawing the Royal Navy out into the North Sea to be engaged in a full scale action were there other lesser reasons for these activities? For example was there an intention to take the action further and land parties of marines or soldiers to create further havoc?

BTW as I have a distaste for typing strange phrases would D3 do?

It is still quite amusing to see you, the one who always complained how my posts lack facts, talking how I'm completely wrong and how things were vastly different but not backing it up with a single external resource or example.

I think if you check carefully I have always asked you for information to give body to your assertions. You being the only one who knows how many times you have played are the only source.

As you see from the above links all the information you might require if you doubt my assertions is freely available.

[dieseltaylor]

Sorry I posted that before seeing Brit's post. I am not upset. I think the other guy does a very good job on exploring the game system - I honestly do.

And I am sure D3 understands that statements are better accepted if there is some figures to back it up*. And he does not jump down other contributors throats** so much - I exclude myself from this restrcition as I think lively debate actually helps better thinking.

* Our different percentages in the opening moves for successful city taking showing the benefit

** The loading of transports appearing so often as a comment would tend to show that it is not intuitive. D3 says its very powerful and that is good - and just means the explanation is skipped by many or not sufficiently explained.

[EoS]

I consider correct that a battleship has the long rank of attack and easily destroys land units. Battleships are very expensive also their building occupies a lot of time. Maintain of a battleship is 3 food and 3 oil. Two submarines have chance >50 % to cope with a battleship, cost as much and can be built in 2 cities in 2 times faster.

I would reduce AA attack of battleships so that carriers were really kings of the seas and protection of coastal zones could be assigned to aircraft. Now the carrier with 3-4 tactic bomber is weaker as a battleship though a battleship and a carrier cost equally.

As a whole it seems to me that the aircraft is weak. Especially against artillery. There is not present flak in ruleset 1940 and power of artillery against aircraft is OK (artillery meet flak's engagements) but in ruleset with a flak, artillery and especially rocket artillery should be favourite dainties for aircraft.

The infantry is OK against aircraft because the infantry is universal protective unit. Tanks attacking unit, it should be more vulnerable from aircraft fire. But not so strong as artillery.

AI does not use absolutely aircraft, though...

[Clarke]

Rather than open a new thread I thought I would post here. No hijack intended. I thought this thread was a good fit.

What I have observed is an apparent ability of the AI to upgrade units either sea or land without moving to cities. Has anyone else noticed this? Could the Developer or anyone else confirm it? They seem to all upgrade on one turn without moving to an upgrade area.

That got me wondering if the computer opponents pay for their upgrades. They seem to need resources to build units, but I would like to know if they need resources and time/turns to upgrade. I guess that would be one only Brit could answer.

Also, I have seen several combat resolutions finish in an odd kind of draw. These no last man standing fights between two units involve trying to take a resource or city. Here is what seems to happen based on the animation. The attacker kills the defender but the defender seems to be counter attacking and is shown moving forward out of the city or resource area. Then the attacker moves onto the city or resource and simply disappears. The defenders flag still flies over the city or resource.

I have seen this at least once when the AI was the attacker and four times when I was the attacker. Usually at sea with a resource, but this morning I attacked a city with an infantry two unit. The AI had only a fighter or biplane defending. Plane counterattacks and gets shot down, infantry moves into city and is gone. Tri- color still flying over city no units left in area. Odd what? Anybody else seen this?

[Brit]

Rather than open a new thread I thought I would post here. No hijack intended. I thought this thread was a good fit.

What I have observed is an apparent ability of the AI to upgrade units either sea or land without moving to cities. Has anyone else noticed this? Could the Developer or anyone else confirm it? They seem to all upgrade on one turn without moving to an upgrade area.

Oh - right. I had put that code in a while ago because it was difficult to fit upgrades in with the rest of the AI's decision-making process. In other words, the AI was planning and moving units around, capturing things, planning invasions, etc. It was difficult to figure out how to fit the "upgrade" task in with everything else because the unit had to be in a city, and spend one or more turns there. Obviously, if the AI was about to invade an island, it wouldn't want to suddenly turn it's transports around to go get upgraded. I was meaning to fix that.

Also, I have seen several combat resolutions finish in an odd kind of draw. These no last man standing fights between two units involve trying to take a resource or city. Here is what seems to happen based on the animation. The attacker kills the defender but the defender seems to be counter attacking and is shown moving forward out of the city or resource area. Then the attacker moves onto the city or resource and simply disappears. The defenders flag still flies over the city or resource.

I have seen this at least once when the AI was the attacker and four times when I was the attacker. Usually at sea with a resource, but this morning I attacked a city with an infantry two unit. The AI had only a fighter or biplane defending. Plane counterattacks and gets shot down, infantry moves into city and is gone. Tri- color still flying over city no units left in area. Odd what? Anybody else seen this?

Haven't seen that, but I'll make a note of it.