rich12545

Yes I always update to the latest. Please let me know if there's an ai problem with the demo. Btw, running overnight might not tell you how aggressively the ai expands. He might expand too slowly but an overnight would give him plenty of time.. In my example, the ai had three islands so he did expand, just not very well. You might try running for 100 turns on a medium map and then check. Just an idea.

I guess everybody is wondering - when this is implemented in Normandy, will BF go back and patch CMSF to include the new system?

It looks very much like EoS now works fine on my computer since I installed win7. I still don't know what the problem was but it was obviously software and not hardware related. But the game imo has a way to go. The ai players simply don't expand well. I'm playing the demo, had virtually the whole map and the ai (the highest) had three islands. I sunk a transport that had one artillery on it and that's all. This was on the 1940 ruleset so the ai had no complicated stuff to mess with. I'm going to see how things go in the next month or two before repurchasing. Unless there are some positive things regarding the ai that are in the release version that aren't in the demo.

I would think one problem would be to get the AI to build para and transport units close to each other and not halfway across the map. And then get the AI to be smart enough to drop paras in a place where they could do some good. I hope you can get it to work. I've always wanted paras in an Empire game.

Here's an idea for redoing paras. Instead of separate units for infantry and transport, make them one. A city can build a "para transport" aircraft that can be sent up to a maximum number of pixels. When it arrives, it can convert to the para infantry unit. Something like this should be able to be programmed with better success.

It seems that when dealing with an open ended game like Empire, it's difficult (or impossible) to program the AI to handle certain details well and some things are useless when playing solo. That's what the situation was with Empire Enhanced so I took the things the program did well and set up a mod designed for solo play. Looks like that would be helpful here as well.

When modding Empire Deluxe I always wanted to include this unit but the AI couldn't handle it well. So I'm wondering if the EoS AI can. Does the AI know to produce para and air transport near each other? Does it know to load paras onto air transports? Does it know to move air transports to a strategic distant location and drop paras? Seems a lot for an AI to be able to do.

The first game I played on the demo last week I played against two ai veteran players. When I got down to the end it looked like those two were fairly close to each other. This may or may not be the reason for the lack of early expansion. Your plan for no bunching is an excellent idea. Maybe it doesn't work in the demo. Btw, still so far so good. Might not be a bad idea, though, to run some tests to see how the veteran ai players expand. What I'm doing is strictly ad hoc. I think iirc elite has some cheats and would rather play against ai players that don't.

I can see the problems with larger maps. Not immediately necessary of course but would be nice in the future if possible. Yes if the game resources are increased they aren't as important. I think this would be simple to implement, just move the slider a little more to the left for 0 instead of rare. I agree with the terrain. Add about five or six more and it's done. Much easier and simpler.

If the borders are drawn not far from cities, units and resources, ok. I think the criteria is how far. Brit, I haven't seen some of my suggestions hit the light of day and was wondering if you're still considering them. lol, looks like you've been spending most of your time squashing bugs. But things like larger map sizes, zero resource options, reinforcements, terrain sets...?

I think you should be able to adjust this in a ruleset. Make it so a battleship can't attack a sub. Or a transport. Or a carrier. I think those are options and should solve the problem.

I recently got win7 and so I'm trying out the game again to see if it will play without errors. So far so good but I want to give it a very good trial. In the meantime a few observations. The AI still doesn't seem to expand well even on elite. It plays well though. Mixed feelings on the new border thing. Best probably would be to stop the notification emails. The intent was to eliminate surprise attacks. It's not necessary to tell the other party that it invaded space it already knows. And mixed feelings about eliminating surprise attacks. These borders serve as blanket sentries and that's not all that good an idea. All those AI requests for peace can get annoying. Maybe a way to turn them off or turn off diplomacy entirely.

Sorry I don't agree. I think it's fine the way it is. Probably because I rarely pick money.

You're not going to get paratroops until you do a lot of research. Unless you make your own ruleset and include them at the beginning. I'm out of play anyway due to a crash bug until it gets fixed.

In the hope that bug was in fact fixed I started another game. Setup was on an island with two starting cities. Island was a bit bigger. I could not build a ship or shipyard in either city because it apparently wasn't a coastal city although both looked it. One of the cities already had a destroyer in it. I was able to move the destroyer into the ocean, even though neither was a coastal city.

Fixed a crash that occurs when loading certain files. Error in a compression algorithm Is this the one from the files I sent you? Has that been fixed? EDIT: No need to answer. I found out it hasn't been fixed.

I just downloaded the blitzkrieg scenario. And a new (Lighthorse) official ruleset. What's the difference between this one and the one that came with the game? Then I looked in the ruleset folder. There are three official 1900-2030 rulesets. And three official 1940 rulesets. Why? What's the difference?

Heh, I can answer that one. Yes. That's how wego works. Same with combat mission and tacops.

Just a follow-up. I had played maybe half a dozen turns on this game. Went to play some more and got that gray window again. This has to be it until you fix this. Hopefully soon. :-) The small island start is a good idea, everybody starts pretty even, so long as the AI is worked on some more. Otherwise the human will have no problem winning every time.

Couldn't stay away after all. So I started a new game. Largest map, large continents, 7 players, all ai players veteran. 1900-2030 ruleset (I always used the 1940 but thought a change would be nice). Got it all setup and pressed start. Got the ms gray window of death and the ensuing crash. Went into windows explorer and moved both save games out. Started over with the same parameters and it went fine. So the problem occurs when the corrupted save files are there whether or not they are being accessed. That's kind of weird. Game start, I'm finding I get two cities on a small island regardless of the large continents on setup. Wondering why? After pressing end move, it takes a loooooong time for units to start moving. And btw, where are the other maps? Only the world map is in the release edition.

Just had the same one again. This time I didn't go near the editor. Got the microsoft gray window on my save game file and the autosave. And it had that same checksum error. I can send these files if you want but they're likely the same as the others. Brit, this is happening on every game. I'm going to have to wait until it's fixed before continuing.

Brit is working on the freezes. There are a few different ones. Agree on the AI. I'm playing a medium size map, 3 veteran ai opponents, own about a fourth to a third of the map, and have not encountered the enemy. The ai needs to be made way more aggressive. I know the beta is officially over, but it feels like it's still going on. I think the next few weeks will see the crashes fixed and other improvements, hopefully the ai.

I think the hotkey that cycles through all the units that have movement is working well. I suggest a couple of changes. 1. When a unit comes up and not moved it should come out of the queue. Otherwise it just keeps cycling. 2. Add a "wait" hotkey to put the chosen unit at the end of the queue. This way, if there are 20 units and the player only wants to move 10, the queue will end after viewing all units only once unless the "wait" hotkey is used.

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Brit, I've been doing that and it doesn't work. Some pages, like "FieldOrders" and "Map Editor Interface" are supposed to have images on the left but they are missing. Try it and you'll see. They show up when looking at the manual in-game but not through a browser. Also, in the Contents in the browser, "<%ExtraUnitsetsListForGameManualContents%>" is in black type and is not a link. If you try all the links when looking at the manual through the browser by using "/Data/GameManual/Contents.html" you'll find all the missing material. I can't make a pdf file or print the manual until it's fixed. An alternate method would be to make it possible to save manual pages in-game. Currently this doesn't work. I can hi-lite but then when right-clicking it doesn't bring up a menu to save. EDIT: I was just looking at the in-game manual. Some of that stuff you can't even hi-lite. Looking at ruleset buildings, the buildings on the left and the descriptions on the right can't be hi-lited or saved.