John C

I downloaded the demo but have been afraid to play it. What happens when I get to the end of the demo and am left with that unfulfilled feeling from not being able to finish my game? No thanks. No blue tanks for me! I'm still waiting for the box to show up at my door.

Military books are nice, but experience is by far the best teacher. Nothing shows what works or does not work as well as putting it to the test. Unfortunately, so much of the experience we gain these days comes with AI as the opponent and may actually be counter-productive, teaching that bad strategy is effective and fooling many into thinking that they are better than they actually are.

I read it. In fact, most of us old enough to have seen the movie WallStreet will have read it. But, truth be told, I find Machiavelli's The Prince to be far more thought provoking.

I am sure we were all hoping things would go smoothly and you would hit the aggressive side of your schedule, but anyone who has ever working in the software industry understands what you are saying about all the issues that inevitably arise. We have waited two years for this game and I am sure the vast majority of us agree that if we have to wait two more weeks or even two more months in order to get a quality product, then so be it. Thanks for the update and please just keep us informed as you move forward. Waiting is always much easier when you know what is going on and how much longer it will be.

Conceptually, I wouldn't have minded having HQs have an on/off toggle for "active". Each active HQ would cost some number of MPPs to represent the cost of maintaining high levels of supply and those active HQs would add readiness to associated units within range. Inactive HQs would not cost MPP but would also not give a bonus. Active status stays the same from turn to turn unless changed by the player and is represented by a green/red indicator on the HQ unit. In the way, players might have to make some decisions about how much to invest in keeping units at full readiness. Activate that HQ in France? Do you think D-Day is near? Or are you better off waiting and using those MPPs to try and get one more inf unit build? Active fighting on multiple fronts? That'll cost you!

I think Blashy's options makes sense. Let's ask the bigger question though, is there any reason why the game needs to restrict itself to 5 major players? With it intended as as highly configurable engine, that seems like a pretty fundmental limitation. Why 5? Why not 8 or 10, for example? Is there any magic behind that number (such as has it now been baked into the UI in a host of summary screens that would not be simple to modify)?

Could you not create the same effect by creating China in a multi-player game and then making it a seperate human player who just happens to be the same person as the US player? That human player then just has 2 "turns" each turn, one for his US forces and another for his China forces.

This post got me thinking John. To date, every game in this genre has had a very simple economic model. Each country has some type of resources. If you capture the country, you get them. If you don't, then you get nothing. They really do not model the situation you describe above where conquering a country might lead to at least a temporary decrease in the economy. In the diplomatic models of many games, countries have an affinity. Wouldn't it be interesting if, as part of the base economic model, neutral minors contribute some of their economic potential to combatants based on that affinity? Then, diplomacy can have another purpose entirely - economic. The allies might never expect to bring Spain to their side, but if they can bring Spain closer to them diplomatically then Spain might cut back some of its trade with Germany and not turn a blind eye to certain smuggling activites and therefore weaken Germany's economy slightly. If Germany can convince Spain to get even closer, then the economic benefit might grow. This will also be effective in providing a disincentive for majors to invade friendly minors. If you are already getting a reasonable amount of economic support from a nation through healthy trade, the gain from conquest is greatly lowered. On the other hand, conquering a nation that is close to your enemy both reduces the trade benefit they get and gives you control of those resources. That by itself is interesting in my mind. Now let's add in that every country has a set of resistance values. Once conquered, the resources contributed to the conquered are decreased according to their resistance value - representing sabotage, work slowdowns and all the rest. This models your second point and makes it possible for the conquest of Spain to actually result in a reduction in net economic benefit. I would have two values for resistance, an initial resistance impact factor (a % of resources that are lost each turn beginning with the first), and a resistance decrease factor (the amount that the impact factor decreases each turn to represent the gradual reduction of the penalty). Garrisoning a nation with troops would reduce both the current impact and the rate at which the base value decreases. That provides a real incentive to station troops to address partisan activity and feels a lot more natural than simply requiring some random number of garrisons just because. Anyway, the idea is only half baked, but on the surface it seems to me to have some real possibilities.

Maybe he's smarter than all of you are giving him credit for and he already has half the varsity cheerleading squad agreeing to play a multi-player game of strip SC2 as soon as it comes out. OK, I'll admit it's not likely.

According to HC ( LINK ), demo will be available "before release". Release is planned for late March or Early April. That is the best info available at the moment. BTW, I assume you mean you need the game to fill your summer and not just the demo.

Let us assume that someone creates a full world map. Is it then safe to further assume that the editor will allow a new power (Japan) to be added and that this new power can either be controlled by the Axis player or that it could be controlled by a separate human player in a multi-player game?

Actually it was intended as a humorous aside and I didn't think anyone would take it as a serious remark. You might have noticed the little smiley face? But to answer your specific question CoS was designed and programmed by Martin Scholz.

Through his work, he is immortal.

You could divide a day (or any other unit of time) anyway you wanted. If we wanted to divide a day into 100 units instead of 24 units, that is easy enough and it doesn't really mater how many degrees of rotation that is. The reason time will not change is because everyone is accustomed to it, it works, and it would be incredibly expensive to change it. People would need to completely change their conceptual reference. But more important than that, all clocks would need to be replaced, all signs with times on them would need to be redone, and darn near every computer program and operating system would need to be updated. The cost of the computer change alone would be monumental. But when you add it all up, it would likely never happen even if there was a good justification yet there is nothing wrong with the current system.

Nice report. Thanks. My only comment would be that for a WWII game, I prefer SC1 or even COS to GGWAW or HOI2. Personally, I found WAW to be a major disappointment. The tech tree in particular just ruined that game by incenting behaviors that were downright silly. I've actually turned to Crown of Glory as I wait for SC2 and while it has its flaws as well, I have found it to be an enjoyable game.

Ummm... I'm not quite sure how to respond to all the vitriol that erupted from my silly little joking comment. I know we are talking about WAR games here, but I always assumed we could do so with a degree of sensibility and civility instead of sinking into a verbal melee of vulgarity. I obviously was wrong. Don't worry; I'll definitely steer clear of your personal out-of-control completely off-topic anger-spewing profanity filled thread. Enjoy.

Could someone point me to the SC2 forum please? I seem to have somehow ended up in the bad audition portion of poetry idol by mistake. Does anyone know where the game discussions are?

Replace the word "biased" with "informed" and I think you will be closer to the mark. How can actually having played the game be a bad thing when evaluating the effectiveness of a design decision? /shrug

How can a list of favorite germans not include Claudia Schiffer and Heidi Klum? They may not be as bright as Von Braun (whom I met by the way) or as noble as Rommel but let's face it, they look a whole lot better in their knickers than anyone else on the list.

Yep, you just want to have a fairly high level of confidence in the date before you open any presales or else you open yourself up to a lot of administrative headaches when people change their mind and blame it on "you said...".

The reason for going to squares has nothing to do with making things pretty or with what casual gamers prefer - it was done to address a gameplay issue from SC1. The game grinds to a halt when a few strong pieces can block an entire front. With squares, with corner to corner moves permitted as they will be, it allows three units to concentrate fire on a given piece instead of just two as is permitted on a front line with hexes. This should allow greater concentration of fire and breakthroughs that might not be possible on a hex based map. The intent of the squares is to better model the mobile warfare and breakthroughs that were the hallmark of WWII. I prefer hexes also. They "look" better to an old board gamer like me. But I understand the issue the squares are intended to fix and I am willing to give it a try.

DOSBox works well. For those not wanting to load a new program, I also created a bootable DOS boot disk with the game on it. You can download a Nero image of that disk from the COS Yahoo group. LINK (though you'll need to join the group - free and only requires a Yahoo ID)

While those of us who own the game think $25 is a bargain, I think the OP is not alone in asking the question of whether it makes any sense to buy the game with a sequel around the corner. A smart marketer might see an opportunity in this. Sales for SC likely aren't great right now. Why not do a marketing campaign where people prepurchase SC2 and get SC as a special "gift" to hold them over until the new game is ready? Seems like a rather interesting option for bringing sales forward and accelerating some cash flow that likely wouldn't hurt as they work to finish SC2.

And here is the full detail of a small section of the original map.

It is a very nice game map (and we obviously were stomping all over their bandwidth with repeated downloads of this 19 Meg file because it isn't loading now). As was stated, there are some relatively minor inaccuracies though I didn't see anything that would materially impact a game. The thing that makes this map feel especially awkward to me is that it has been shifted slightly so that up is no longer north but rather North by Northwest (true north is somewhere between the top center and the top right corner). Obviously this was done to maximize ther playable space, but in my mind it just looks off kilter. For those who never saw the original, here is a much compressed and shrunk (to preserve my own bandwidth, to give it a shot of fitting on a page in this forum, and to hopefully avoid any potential copyright issues) version just to give you an idea of the map we are referring to in this thread.