Hubert Cater

Hi Mike, Yes and I think a lot of this we will be looking at for SC3 Hubert

Hi Eisenhammer, Just in case and in order to clarify, my comment regarding the campaign adjustments that helped balance games out in multiplayer I would say for the most part also help out in AI games and not necessarily the reverse by making the AI worse. Or at least that is our guide for making these changes. Just meaning that a gamey tactic in multiplayer can also just as easily be employed (if not more easily employed) against the AI so any solution that helps to eliminate gamey tactics in general should help no matter how you play the game. Numydar, for the AI building in pockets, this could be the case but it could also be the case of the AI receiving specially scripted reinforcements in those pockets to help balance the game out as well, i.e. to not make it so much of a pushover in certain situations. It is hard for me to say without seeing the game in progress or key turns but if this is the case then some of those pocket builds by the AI are not necessarily lost units that it could have built elsewhere as it would never have otherwise received the units in the first place. BF is for the Brute Force campaigns that were included in GOLD. Hubert

Hi Sharkman, I think at one time we did have a stronger Corps unit in Oslo and often we found it too difficult to dislodge unless you just had the right combat rolls. It was sometimes a 50/50 chance and this required the German player to bring in much more than what would typically needed for the assault just to be on the safe side. This was also even more of an issue for the AI. For Narvik and the other towns away from Oslo, after years of play balance testing, we arrived at the current solution which not only helps the AI but also in multiplayer games. One gamey tactic was simply for the Allied player to anticipate a Norwegian invasion and park a ready to land amphibious unit to take Narvik before the Germans would have much of a chance to do anything about it. We realize that having a good fight for Norway, at land and at sea, including the possibility of Allied landings in the north, would be closer to historical but in game play terms it always ended with a clear advantage to the Allies with very little that the Axis could do about it. It might not be a perfect solution but considering the time frame for Denmark, Norway and then the subsequent invasion of the Low Countries and France it has almost become a necessary evil for maintaining play balance as we unfortunately found there was very little chance for the Axis player to take all of Norway effectively otherwise. Hubert

Hi Numydar, Just looking at the code again, naval units do lose supply each time they raid and perhaps I could go further to adjust their raiding effectiveness by having it relative to its supply (right now it is just relative to raider strength)... but in your specific case if they are still in range of a friendly port near Ethiopia, then it is not likely to make much of a difference. The US AI naval action where it sends US naval units to the Japanese Home Islands in 42 should also be corrected for the first patch. Hubert

I should add one thing after re-reading what I wrote above, many of the gamey tactics that we attempted to resolve for multiplayer games did kill AI games for a lot of players as well. For example, the idea that a country like the USSR could be cut in half in terms of where it could place new units was a game breaker that made defeating the AI too easy as well. Hubert

Hi Scook, Glad you like the map and the game and while we don't usually have a definitive list until we are ready to release it shouldn't stop you from sharing anything you might have found even if it has come up before. Let us know what you might have found and we'll do our best to address any bugs/changes you might have in mind. Hubert

Hi Numydar, You are not necessarily wrong on your points but at the same time it is very much like Bill mentioned a matter of attempting to balance history, playability as well as game balance for each way that SC can be played... be it against the AI or in a competitive multiplayer game. The current setup really does attempt to address all of these issues and potential game breakers and while it could be viewed that we are just trying to make the game "fun", really we are just trying our best to keep the game play consistent for everyone to the best of our abilities. * * * It sounds like you mostly play against the AI and perhaps the idea that a game breaking multiplayer strategy won't ever resonate as being at the top of your list, which is definitely fair enough, but again from our end whether we would like to or not we simply have had to address the issue as otherwise multiplayer would be broken. So as Bill mentioned, our original setup for areas like Stalingrad was exactly as you would have imagined and as much as we wanted to keep it exactly as it should have been historically it just killed multiplayer games as any surefire path to victory, i.e. one that doesn't require any real element of planning or surprise with very little in the way for your opponent to counter/prevent essentially killed the game. For example, and this goes all the way back to SC1, at one time before we introduced industrial centers, Axis players would simply surround Moscow without taking it (as that was the only industrial center for the Soviets) and as you can imagine this became a very gamey tactic that killed the game as there was very little the Soviet player could do to mount any sort of counter attack to the tactic. As a result we started placing key industrial centers on the map so that countries like the USSR could not be as easily cut in half and for the SC community it has been more or less accepted as a tradeoff for playability. Keep in mind this has been a set of campaigns and a gaming system that has been constantly developed for over 10 years now, so while some of this may be surprising to anyone new to the game, and while we definitely won't suggest we've got everything right, we would need a lot of convincing to change certain elements knowing it will break the game on some other level. But that being said, we are always open to ideas and suggestions and for anyone that has been around since the beginning we do end up making a lot of changes and sometimes do indeed go back on an implementation that didn't quite work out as expected. At one time the maps were also much smaller and having key industrial centers might have made much more sense whereas with a bigger map it could very well be that a more detailed set of alternatives, as suggested in this thread, could be the way to go... but I would still caution that they would have to be really thought out as well. At one time, keep it simple was a standard we lived by, and in that vein every new rule and every new detail is just one more thing to remember and one more potential source of confusion especially when things don't work out as you would expect them to. For example, we could start limiting industrial centers to only allow for certain builds and for limited numbers and so on but in the end we always have to ask ourselves how much do we gain from much more detailed approaches? Is the game now less approachable to the average player, is it too detailed, is it less playable and more confusing and so on. This is one of the reasons we provide the Editor as well. While we may feel some set of constraints to design a game that we think will play well for our target audience and for the various game play methods, we never want to limit anyone from making any changes that they see fit for their own personal pleasure. Hope this helps, Hubert

A big thanks from me as well Amadeus, very glad to see you enjoyed the package

Hi Eisenhammer, Bill and I finally narrowed this one down and it is a bug on my end in the code and not actually related to the event Bill was originally suspecting... if you disable the applicable War Entry events for any of the minors that you might be targeting diplomatically that would do the trick. So in this case, if you disable the WAR ENTRY event named the following this will resolve it for you until the first patch. Mexico Joins The Allies (Variable) Hubert

Too funny and thanks for this llhnickerson, this will be fixed for the first patch

Hi Numdydar, Some good thoughts here and we did have a different supply model for naval units at one time but without changing the game engine it didn't work out as we had hoped as a constantly reducing supply for naval units gave units that stayed near ports a significant advantage in naval engagements. Now we just reduce supply during engagements and it helps to keep naval units on a more level playing field no matter where they engage and how far they need to get into position and so on. We will likely be making changes for SC3, including some randomized spotting, but in the meantime there are things you can experiment with in terms of spotting ranges by editing the campaigns using the Editor. It's a nice way to try out some of your ideas and see how they go in game Hubert

Hi Bob, Do you have an installer 'Setup' file for SC Global? If so that is all you would need and a new version of it, as far as I know, would not make any difference to your installation issues. If you have the installer file, in order to get AoD running I would suggest the following: 1) Uninstall SC Global using the uninstall EXE found in your SC Global installation folder. 2) Uninstall AoD using the uninstall EXE found in your AoD installation folder 3) To be on the safe side, reinstall SC Global using the setup installer you have on your end to the default recommended folder. After that apply the v1.04 patch and confirm that SC Global is running as expected. 4) Reinstall AoD to the default recommended folder If you do all of that the game should launch as expected, let me know if this helps, Hubert

Hi Chargin Smith, Sorry to hear about the trouble, can you send me the ERROR.sav file at support@furysoftware.com This file can be found in your AoD installation folder under the ERROR folder. Thanks, Hubert

Hi Lefty, 1. I think you would be just fine playing GOLD as it does include the many enhancements over Global. 2. This is fine, there are several events with the same name that actually perform alternative functions, i.e. they just have the same name. Hope this helps, Hubert

Oops, my fault for reading your post too quickly, this is a bug and we should have it fixed very soon via an official patch. Mike, send me an email at support@furysoftware.com and I can send you a test version of the Editor that should be able to resolve this for you in the meantime. Hubert

Hi Mike, Under proper event checking circumstances by the Editor, the error message at line 240 simply refers to an event error that starts with the event beginning at line 240. In this case it refers to an issue with the FRIENDLY_POSITION or the lack of one. As far as I can tell LOOPS only use FRIENDLY_POSITIONs, not ALIGNMENT_POSITIONs and perhaps this is the problem if you are using older scripts with the latest AoD engine? For your idea on using an off map area tile to help control LOOPs I think this should work fine. Hope this helps! Hubert

Hi Numdydar, For spotting, have you tried doing reconnaissance flights with your land based air units, from key Pacific islands, to see if that helps? I only ask as players seem to enjoy the cat and mouse portion of the naval game and I think this would be missed if spotting were made too easy. Hubert

Hi Lefty, It should not matter that you installed and patched GOLD before patching the base game... just to confirm, are GOLD and the base game installed into separate folders? Hubert

Thanks for the feedback Numdydar and I've made several adjustments to the AI scripts that should improve US naval behaviour as described above as well as their amphibious invasion planning. The UK Home Island should play a bit better now as well for the next patch and some of the UK units that you are seeing in other theaters are pre-set events so it is not necessarily a matter of them ignoring the home islands or sending units to other theaters, but more of an abstraction to show interest on the part of the UK in the battles that continue to rage elsewhere at the same time.

Ah yes and that is actually an error on my part as the UNIT map should not be importable at all due to the number of unit map layer data changes. That certainly explains the error and thanks for reporting this. Hubert

Could you tell me the exact tile? I only ask as I don't see it in the default map but it might be related to a TERRITORY event later in the war.

Hi MonsterClaude, 1) This should be accessible by Allied units is it not? Or is the issue that Japan cannot enter? 2, 3) Fixed 4) I believe we implemented this change so that naval units cannot block passage since land units cannot attack a naval unit there as it is not in a port. Hubert

Very true and I think we just use Germany as a dummy condition... I could certainly adjust it so that it would fail if Egypt had surrendered and it would resolve a part of the argument but not still if Gibraltar was Axis held. Either way I could see it as an improvement. Looking at the event, I see that the ports at Alexandria are included as well as Cairo and I could certainly remove those if that is agreeable.

Hi Gustophus, In the localization.txt file, found in your installation folder, if you do a search for 'Allies' and 'Allied' simply changing these to French Union will change 'Allied' to 'French Union'. However, I would make a copy of the localization.txt file and place it in your campaign subfolder and change the line in the campaign.ini file to #CUSTOM_LOCALIZATION= 1 For assigning tiles to a country, all you have to do is make sure that the country has a capital or it will not allow you to proceed. To do this, simply select the RESOURCE layer when editing the main map and place a 'capital' resource on the map within the tiles that you want to assign to a particular country. This should do the trick when you then select tiles to assign to a country. I hope this helps, Hubert

Not a bug but just a limitation in the game engine in that the only way to eliminate the threat from Malta is to capture Malta. We can look into making this more dynamic for SC3 but in the meantime it is more or less the only way to go for this game. Hope this helps, Hubert