Brit

Ok. I'll have to sit down and write-up the differences betweeen the AI levels. Yes, you're right that Elite gets a research advantage. Veteran gets a small research advantage, and novice actually gets a research penalty.

The preferences window has an option to turn-off the in-game music. It's definitely on my list for things to do. Thanks!

My vision for EOS was to create a game that was simple and understandable enough to draw in new players, without a frustrating level of complexity when you first sit down. I think games can lose a lot of players with that. Part of the solution is not only in the rules, but also in helping the players with a good interface. I see that as the base, default version of the game. I'm interested in lots of different variations in EOS, as well. Part of that is just curiosity on my part (gee, wouldn't it be cool if...). If some of those variations are more complex, that's great. The added complexity will appeal to more die-hard wargamers, and keep long-time players interested in the game. Once people have learned the basic version of the game, if they want more complexity, that's cool - plus the learning curve won't be so bad because they'll already know how to play the basic version.

Nice images.

Each turn is actually split up into 100 different "tics". So, when combat occurs, it occurs on each tic. This means that two units who start combat on turn 1.10 will have 0.90 turns to process combat until turn 2 starts. Damage is 9x as likely to happen between those units as between units who come into combat range on turn 1.9. Aircraft are different. They come in, do one full turn of attack and receive one full turn of counterattack simultaneously. Aircraft are setup so that they have to land (to be re-armed) before they can attack again.

Yup, hope to have a new version out for the weekend.

No, not this month. It also takes us a little while in the run up to a release. This means that when we decide to set a release date, it will be at least some weeks into the future.

Thanks. By the way, you can play it in multiplayer as well. I'm still kicking around some ideas for other game options. We'll see where things go in the future. There are a few complications to PBEM - like the trade system. If someone sends you a trade-offer, I guess you'd need to log-in and accept it, decline it, or send a counteroffer. It seems like a back and forth negotiation could get complicated.

There should be a "God's Eye View" option. I'll check to see if everything's working.

I should probably include the "no resources" ruleset mod in the game-setup window. Right now, rulesets allow players to define all the rules for a game, but there's no easy system for tweaking an existing set of rules. A ruleset mod would allow players to tweak an existing set of rules without actually creating a whole new ruleset of their own. I've gotten some other suggestions for ruleset mods - mostly stuff so that the rules correspond to some scenario setup (like changing movement rates, aircraft ranges, etc). Rulesets mods, by the way, are not currently available.

I'll take a look at it.

Unfortunately, there's no way to do that.

Yes, the only victory condition is when one player (or one team) controls all the owned cities on the map. (It's okay if there are still neutral cities on the map.) Typically, if you control most of the map, the AI will offer to concede the game. As far as alternate victory conditions go, I'll take that as a suggestion for future development, but it's not something that will be available on game release (unless there's a huge demand for it).

I tried check on this one. It looks to me like the dreadnought doesn't need a shipyard (that's a bug: it should), but the battleship and carrier need a shipyard. Is that what you were seeing?

Thanks for the feedback. I have to admit that I'm a little worried about increasing the complexity of the game too much. I don't want too much of a learning curve for new players.

I'll have to get back to you on the combat numbers, maybe figure out how to make the dynamics of combat more obvious inside the game. (I could explain it here, but it seems lots of people are having trouble understanding it. I don't want to require people to read the forums to understand the basic game dynamics.) Also, attrition is not the entirety of combat. Attrition is sort of a "bang for your buck" calculation (how much damage can I do to the other guy, and how much money did I spend on building my unit).

Thanks for the feedback. I'm always interested in what snags people have while playing, and what can be done to make things more intuitive.

Ah - you're right. The technology hint was a late change in the game. Not everything was updated correctly.

I just noticed that the information on this is not very clear. If you look at the unit description (in the city-build window or double-click a unit), if you scroll down to "Attack" and "vs City" it will give you a number like "0.5 / 0.1" for Artillery (Class 1). A successful attack (which happens on average 0.5 times within one turn will kill 0.1 population). I should make this more clear, because even I was confused when I first glanced at the numbers since there's no clear description. Artillery, strategic bombers, missiles, nukes can all kill population. Infantry, Tanks, ships do not kill population. I had intended on having slow population growth in cities, but right now, there is no population growth. True. Cities cannot drop below 1 population, though. Weird. I just looked, and you're right. Destroyers, Submarines, and Cruisers are all supposed to see submarines (at a reduced range from how far they can see other units). The Official 1940 ruleset has submarine-detection ranges for those units, but the 1900-2030 ruleset doesn't. I wonder if there was a bug saving the submarine view-range in the rules editor. I didn't intend to have a view range of 0. Yes, you can create technologies, those technologies can be set to allow production of certain units, and you can 'wire' the technology tree together in any way you want. I split the technologies into 'basic technology' (which appears in multiple places in the tech tree - like "Electronics") and applied technologies (which turn-on the ability to build certain units and city improvements, and only appear once in the tech tree). Yes, you can drop completely new units into the game with totally different stats. You could, for example, create a whole new ruleset that setup rules for the ancient middle east (technologies and units appropriate to the period) or medieval europe. Right now, there's no convenient way to add new unit images/animations/sounds, though - which is a limiting factor. Also, I guess I'd need to allow for customized resources (oil isn't going to be very useful in ancient times). I haven't opened that part of the game yet, but I'd like unit images/animations/sounds to be uploadable just like maps and scenarios. Right now, you can't add units and share them with people. (Technically, you could look at the system I use for storing units currently. It's not that difficult to see how I organize the unit images/animations.) Ideally, someone could create unit images/animations and a new ruleset. Then, upload the images and the ruleset. Anyone downloading the ruleset (which has dependencies on those unit images) and the images would auto-download with the rules. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Units (e.g. a submarine) have a set amount of "container space". Each unit has a size. You can put units (e.g. missiles, commandos) into the container (submarine) until it is full. In this example, you might set a commando unit to use-up 1 space, and your missile to use-up 1 space. If your submarine has 3 space, then the player can put any mixture of commandos or missiles (i.e. 3 commandos, 3 missiles, or some combination). Yes. Yes. Yes. No. The blackhawk would have to be able to land on the other unit.

Hey. I think I'll run some tests and see how often unit X kills unit Y. Also, as far as grouping: I tried to avoid having groups that are extra powerful. I tried to set it up so that the power of a unit increases geometrically with more units, rather than exponentially. When the power scales exponentially, it skews the game-strategy towards "build, build, build, one large battle, and one nation comes out the loser". (Case in point: I remember years ago playing Total Annihilation with a friend. His method of play was to create massive numbers of aircraft and destroy enemy players with airpower alone. Things like that can become a problem when the power of a group increases exponentially with more units.) If you keep the value of grouping lower, then it promotes more skirmish play. Realtime strategy games tend to have systems where the power of a group increases exponentially with more units, and strategy games tend to have geometric power increases as more units are added to a group. I can talk more about this if you're interested in the game effects of grouping.

Ok. I'll look into it.

Hmm, strange. My only guess right now is that it's related to the color depth of your graphics card. Right click your desktop background, go to "Properties". This should give you a "Display Properties" window. Go over to the "Settings" tab. Are you running at 16-bit, 24-bit, or 32-bit color quality? My guess is that you might be running at 16-bit or less. If so, let me know, and I'll fix the code so other people can run at 16-bit and it will look okay.

I'll look into it. I can't think of anything that was done that would increase the game's instability. There's always the possibility that these lockups happened to be clustered after the update happened. Either way, it's something that needs fixing. Does it give you those errors when the autosave happens too? You may need to right-click and and set the game to "Run as administrator". Or shut off UAC (User Access Control) under Vista. You are running under Vista, right? I think only people with Vista have reported save-game problems.

Thanks for the feedback. At this point, I think I'll sit down and start tweaking the rules. I'm not sure what you can do, other than give feedback about how you see the balance.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll be looking into these issues.