Brit

That's a bug. It's supposed to zoom towards the mouse position, but there was an error in how I was calculating that. It'll be fixed in the next version.

Yeah, I noticed that one just after I pushed out the update. Oops. It's not supposed to work that way. It'll be fixed in the next version.

You need to run the game with full administrator rights under Vista. That includes right-clicking and setting the game to "Run as administrator". Or shut off UAC (User Access Control) under Vista.

Answering that takes a lot of work. The AI build system takes a whole bunch of factors into account. If the map is largely unowned, it tends to produce units that are good for capturing unowned cities and resources. If most of the map is mostly captured, he'll start leaning towards the production of combat units. If the AI is on a large uncaptured landmass, then it will tend towards ground units. If it's an island-hopping map, then he'll produce the ships, transports, and ground units needed for that scenario. It also takes into account the types of units its enemies are using and leans towards producing units to counter those units. Each AI player also has a "personality" that skews build choices towards certain categories. For example, the AI might like one or more of these categories: submarines, small ships, large ships, city improvements, ground units, artillery, etc. How much the AI likes each of those categories is, itself, a variable ranging from 0.0 to 1.0 (it's not a simple "I like submarines" setting, but it's a whole range between "I don't like submarines" to "I love submarines"). Of course, the AI is smart enough to evaluate the value of units as well. So, if you created a rules-system where submarines are weak and a total waste of money, the AI will tend not to produce submarines even if his personality is "I love submarines". (A few people have complained that the AI isn't using aircraft. I need to check on the exact reason why the AI isn't building and using aircraft, but one possibility is that the AI decided that aircraft aren't valuable enough in combat, so it's not building them. In other words: maybe I'm being outsmarted by the AI.)

You have to research tactical bombers, then strategic bombers, and "Transport Airplane" should appear. It's a little bit into the game before you get access to them.

Yes, the AI is a background task, but it still takes a while to compute its turn. There are some problems with the AI, particularly late in the game. The larger the map, the more cities/resources there are, the more units you have, and the more units it has, the more time the AI takes to compute it's turn. I believe this is due to the fact that the AI is spending too much time thinking "what if I try to capture that city with Unit X? What if I try to capture the same city with Unit Y at location Z?" You can see that the possible combinations get large.

Yes, you can load old games.

There's a new version (0.97.8084) of the demo available. To get the update, click on "Check for Updates". It will lead you to a page listing all the fixes/changes. Click the "Download" button on that page, and it will download and install the new version. Here's the list of additions and changes: - The game map can be zoomed-in - MouseWheel will zoom-in/zoom-out - Added a "delete last order" button - Added customizable Hotkeys (see the Preferences window for a complete list) - Added City List - Added Upgrade status to user interface (tooltip + upgrade-bar) . - Most upgrades take 1 turn, but a few upgrades take longer. It's nice to know if you're 1 turn or 3 turns from upgrade completion. . - Some players were confused by the fact that dreadnaughts took 4 turns to upgrade, and thought 'upgrade' wasn't working. - Fixed a number of crashes that happen after the game has ended - Fixed a bug that caused units to be renamed to their unit-type - Added a "Highlight Circle" that highlights the area around a unit when selected in the left-panel . - Can be turned-off in the preferences window - Fixed a bug that caused spy planes and transport aircraft to behave aggressively - Added a "reverse mouse panning" option to the preferences window

I'll check on that. Larger ships should require a shipyard, too. If they don't then that's a bug in the rules.

Yes, the "Check for Updates" button will grab the update.

The new update will have a zoom-in function that makes everything bigger. I started working on a variation so that keeps all map-items small, but enlarges the geography. It's a little more complicated, so that variant is not included in the next update.

That's a good idea.

I guess that's true. I have to admit that I think in some of those large Empire maps, it takes too long to get units across the map. And with the technology system in EOS, you'd probably need to upgrade your units on the way to the target, since, in the time-span that it takes to move across the map, you'd probably discover upgrades to your units.

By patrols, you mean that they repeat their orders? There is a 'repeat orders' button (it's between the 'Upgrade' and 'Clear Orders' buttons).

Yeah, sorry. I'll post a notification on the forums when a new update is available.

Hm, I noticed on another thread that your game still isn't working. What operating system are you using? WinXP, Vista, or something else? What Service Patch? How much memory do you have?

I've now added the city list to the game. It behaves like you suggested (clicking the city jumps to map centered on the city; clicking production opens the city-build window). Here's what it looks like:

Unfortunately, the AI doesn't make decisions about joining teams. The AI won't join your team, and won't join teams with each other.

Have you managed to ever get past the main-menu? Or did it work for a few days and now it always freezes on you?

Wow. Nice mockup, by the way.

Since if seems to be a popular item, I just added hotkeys to the game. I'm not much of a hotkey gamer, myself, so I'll ask you: what suggestions do you have for hotkeys? The hotkeys I've added are: Repeat Orders [R] Sentry Upgrade Clear Orders [C] Remove Last Order [X] Voicechat [shift] Message Window [M] Begin New Instant Message [Return] City View [V] City List [A] Research / Technology [T] Submit Turn [Q] Some of the suggestions I've seen on the forums: Adding the hot key ability to toggle/step to all of your cities. (Boris Balaban) Any others you'd like to see? And, yes, the hotkeys will be customizable.

There really aren't squares on the map. I'm not sure how to do that conversion. Cities do take-up an area, but that area has been increased or decreased with no real effect on the game size. Maybe the best comparison would be to see how long it takes an average ground/sea unit to move from one corner of the map to the other corner of the map (assuming a straight land/sea path exists). The largest map size in EOS is 4000x3200, which is a distance of 5122 pixels. A mid-technology tank moves about 90-100 pixels per turn (twice as fast on roads), and a mid-technology destroyer moves about 100-120 pixels per turn. So, a destroyer would take about 45 turns to move across the whole area.

Yes. AI is a tricky thing to get right.

It crashed when you tried to load an autosave.game? Do you still have the file?