Brit
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Posts posted by Brit
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I'm getting an error attempting to download this from within the client (as of 11:50am MST):
Updater6:
Error: Update validation test failed.
Try it again, there are often problems if you try to get an update immediately after it is released.
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Notable Changed/Improvements:
- Added a new map: the NorthAfrica (Beta) map. This is not a World War 2 scenario, just a two-player map in North Africa.
- PBEM: Added a "Load Last Game" button to the main-menu interface, under "PBEM" and "Single Player" menus
- Added smoke pumes to cities based on the number of refugees
- Fixed Bug: the meetup times in the internet-chat would sometimes be wrong
- Fixed Bug: Units would sometimes get caught on terrain and couldn't move
- Fixed Bug: Aircraft were not returning home when they should (this bug was introduced in the last update, thanks to changes in the AdHoc order system)
- Fixed a bug with nuclear bombers: they'd sometimes destroy units they fly over
- Fixed Bug: combat sound effects were playing even when sound effects were turned off
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Thanks for the suggestions. Adding them to my list.
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Seems tactical bombers have an odd behaviour now. When they leave town to attack enemies automatically, they remain "stacked" with the target instead of returning home.
I tracked down the bug and fixed it. An update will be out soon.
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Water question: Does the various shading /depth of the water affect passage for ships and subs? Where is it defined? In the manual?
No, the depth of the water doesn't affect the movement of ships and submarines. (Also, the water gets move shallow near buildings, and ships/subs need to be able to get into port.)
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Thank you for another very nice patch.
I noticed you weren't able, at this time, to remove the "know all ai." Do you have any idea about how far into the future that will be?
I'm going to have to add some additional AI behaviors before that will work well. For example, the AI needs to run air-patrols and also be better about moving its ships around, and doing things like closing in on locations where submarines were recently seen.
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A couple of suggestions I've been thinking about: Could you tweak the amount of swamp and mountains that go into random maps? I still think there are too many large masses of mountains, and there is waay too much swamp IMO. I think some swamp around a thin strip of some coastline, and some more isolated patches inland would be plenty. Also it would be nice to get the same terrain and resources sliders like in the map editor when generating the random maps for an actual game.
Okay, I've toned down the swamp a bit. I have to admit that I've noticed quite a bit of swamp on the maps, too.
Another suggestion I have made before and would be nice if it could be done, is to list the types of events in the EoS messenger. That way you would know if a turn has been submitted or a message has been posted.Hm, I thought some of the events showed their event type. I'll take another look.
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I just started messing with the editor and I get most everything but one of the most basic things. How do I "undo" anything?
It's very frustrating to put some land where you don't want it exactly and not be able to put it back to a sea area. Argh!
I'm sure it's something real simple but Argh!
Sorry, there isn't an undo feature. But, yeah, you're right that it would be a useful thing to add to the editor.
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Notable Fixes/Improvements:
- Units will automatically capture resources and cities (with no defenders) if resources or cities are discovered
- Added the "Capitol" city-improvement. Only one capitol per nation. It gives a variety of advantages.
- Added a Large Factory city-improvement. The regular factory can be upgraded into a large factory.
- Changed the position of the city-window: it always appears on the left side of the application (instead of appearing in the center)
- Fixed Bug: VoiceChat data was sometimes taking a long time to reach the target
- PBEM, Fixed Bug: If a player creates a PBEM game while offline, the game warns the player.
- PBEM: Added a tab to the "PBEM Settings" window so players can see all the games on the server and their last update
- Rules Editor: city-improvements can be set to "one per nation" (like the capitol building)
- Rules Editor: Added a feature so that city-improvements can be upgraded (e.g. Factory can be upgraded to "Large Factory")
- Rules Editor: Added a feature so city-improvements can be automatically destroyed when captured (e.g. Capitols get destroyed)
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This is a different PBEM system, no real email involved.
Other games would always save a file out. Which you would then manually attach to an email and send to the other player.
This one just sends your event to the server automatically. Then other player then downloads it automatically from the server when he connects. A very smooth asynchronous play method.
I would suggest a dialog box or like that you could open in game to see more details on the status of the game events (downloaded, pending, and on server). It could help debug any issues and explain some of the "magic" behind how it works.
What ended up being the problem with jeep's game was that there was a bad game-event file. (The game actually writes out a file, but then removes it once everything is processed. This happens behind the scenes, so it's not something that player normally knows about.)
Just for my understanding, is there any disadvantage to always playing using this method verses network connection? I assume there would be some lag for events to get uploaded and downloaded when both players are online, but the ability to easily play whenever you can is a huge plus.Yeah, there is a little lag. I added a button on the PBEM games so that you can have the game instantly check for updates, which helps alleviate the lag a bit. (In other words: If you know you're online at the same time as the other players, you can quickly send events back and forth and use the 'check for updates' button to reduce the lag. Some players have used this to crank through a dozen turns or so in a short amount of time.) You also can't use features like voicechat with other players. And, there's a possibility that you'll miss a trade offer with another player. (For example, if you setup your orders, submit your turn, and shut down the game. Later, another player sends you a trade offer. But, you don't bring up the game again until after the turn was processed.)
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Yes, it seems the AI sees what you have and thats part of the AIs stratagy, park subs out side of your city and attack the city with war ships.
I may be wrong.
I think that's a coincidence.
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Did not work out
the computer parked a sub outside so I set orders to neutral and he moved a BB and almost took out 2 of my BBs while I was upgrading/repairing them. Does the AI also know my rule set? Hope not.
I'm not sure what you'd like to have happen here. It's true that ships are more vulnerable when docked, so I suppose if an enemy ship comes after you when they are docked, then the ships should try to move forward to attack (since it gives better odds). But, in general, you don't want them to move, and you don't want them to move out and attack the enemy if other healthy ships are in the area to intercept the enemy ship, right?
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Any word on searching new areas and finding recources? Some way of calling your attenchen or your unit picking up the recource?
Okay, I made changes to the ad-hoc order system (the ad-hoc system is used to automatically give orders to units - for example, attacking enemy units based on field orders). Units will now automatically capture resources, as long as:
- The resource was just discovered
- The unit has no orders other than movement orders (if you have orders to attack something, it will ignore the newly discovered resource)
- There are no enemies (that you know of) in the immediate area
- The resource is currently owned by no-one or a player that you are at war with
I suspect that there might be some other factors I should put into the system to keep your units from running after newly discovered resources when you don't want them to.
Any idea of having a unit improve the recource number? -
Sorry but I still don't agree. I've never even heard of a war/strategy game where the ai has perfect sight. And the ones I play have decent ais so it can be done. It galls me no end that the ai can see all my units and I don't believe random patrols is the answer.
Hoolaman, I see that you play Shock Force. Does the ai have perfect sight and just sends out random patrols?
I know that Civilization 3 allowed the AI to see areas of the map that they shouldn't see. I've seen the AI turn its transport ships around just as I colonized an island. There was also a trick that players used to use with the AI where they'd intentionally leave an interior city undefended so that the AI would send troops inside the human player's borders to capture the city it couldn't see, then they'd ambush the AI. (I believe they fixed this in one of the patches.)
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Testing a concept here...we'll see what happened the next time I sail them across the water:
I created an "empty" group containing two groups:
1. Group "Invaders" with "no orders" for field orders. No units inside this group. Just contains two groups below.
a. inside is a "Protectors" group of cruisers and DD with aggressive orders (i.e. like them to go kill those planes, subs, and ships if they get near) but stay with the group otherwise
b. the second group inside is the "Transports" group and is passive field orders. No attacking...just get you and your tanks to the shoreline.
...I give movement orders to the "Invaders" group only...and split off "Protecters only when necessary...and rejoin them as needed with "join group" movement command.
So some questions:
1. which level of field orders, group or sub-group, takes precedence?
...now, does it matter what field orders the "Invaders" group inside has? I'm just now playing with this "nested group" config. I'm using "no field orders" on the "meta-group" to keep it safe and fight defensively only.
Said another way: *if* an individual group has field orders...are these overriden by the group that contains it?
2. On a related note: Let's say a Destroyer is within a group with a transport. If I keep the transport "passive" orders and then keep the Destroyer "aggressive" orders...and the Group does NOT have field orders. Does that Destroyer's own field orders override the group level? Or vice versa?
3. Will a sub-group, like "Protectors" above really use their aggressive field orders and then return to the group (i.e. split off and attack incoming subs they see rather than wait for them to come into range of the transports?) Or sit there and just defend (i.e. when it is too late for those transports)
Not much point then in putting shooters in the same group as the transports...other than damage spreading then...
4. By NOT having any units in the same group as the transports...did I just give away a crucial "damage soak" ability...of say...a few DD to help spread the damage around?
I only made the mistake of having "aggressive orders" with a group containing transports....once. Boy did that hurt. So "no field orders" makes sense but I want to organize the convoy in the most effective fashion.
Oops. Sorry, I saw your question earlier and meant to answer it after I took a look at the code. Units inside groups ignore their Field Orders. They depend on the field orders of the unit-group.
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This update was mostly about a bunch of smaller bugs with the game.
Notable Fixes and Improvements:
- Fixed Bug: Units can now attack stacks of (non-grouped) units
- Fixed Bug: There was a problem that would cause units to rotate incorrectly during game replay
- Forts are created by the random map generator
- Players can now pause production using the City-Build window's "pause production" button
- Added a warning if the player is about to submit a turn, and they need more research orders
- Fixed Bug: Units could see units they couldn't normally see if they were within 4 pixels of the other unit
- Fixed Bug: Sometimes random AI players would use the same flag as another player
- Fixed Bug: the note's meetup times were not displaying correctly
- Fixed a variety of bugs with the aircraft, including:
- - Fixed some display issues with aircraft
- - Fixed a bug in the aircraft paths - if it's setup to move to multiple airbases, the path could get messed up and crash the aircraft
- - Fixed Bug: groups of aircraft wouldn't immediately crash when they ran out of orders
- - Changed the interface to prevent the player from giving movement orders to locations it can't reach
- PBEM:
- - Fixed Bug: After a player submitted his turn, other players wouldn't get immediately notified of the turn submission.
- - The event files now contain the name of the game (for easy identification)
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I deleted the old event file as you suggested, and it works great now.
you rock
Thanks. I'm glad it's working again for you.
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Hi Brit,
I did a standard game setup with 1 Rommel and 4-4 Random players (five player game). Two of them ended up "Yamamoto" with the same Rising Sun style red flag...for both the foreign relations and map flags. They played as entirely different empires.
I tracked down this bug and fixed it. It's in the next update.
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Wondering if you'll be removing the ai cheat that allows them to see all units in the game.
Yes, I want to. It'll take some more code to allow the AI to deal with the uncertainty, plus the AI might play a little worse, but I'd like to remove it. Having the AI play without knowing the placement and strength of the enemies adds more strategic possibilities (like more interesting submarine warfare, increases the need to remain unseen before an invasion, etc).
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Yes, I'm player 1 (also the game host). Would it help if I sent the save game files?
Yeah, if you sent me your saved game and all the files in your PBEM directory.
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Reproduced it! Emailed a save game.
The AI stack of five subs is very pretty, and pretty much means that Mr. Yamamoto owns that area.
Total suppositions:
In both cases (I think) it is the return leg where the fighter (a jet fighter in case 2) sees the sub.
Or Perhaps it is when the sub finishes movement that the sub becomes visible.
Ah, you're right. I saw the problem in your game, took a close look code, and discovered that units can see other units that can't normally see if they are within 4 pixels of the other unit. This is fixed in the next update.
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I'm looking at the information on the server. I can see three events on the server for that game, and two players: USA and USSR. Are you playing player 1? I'm not sure why your events are being queued up. I don't see any game events from player 2. Are they having trouble getting their stuff to upload, too? My guess at this point is that there's some sort of password mismatch, but I'll have to investigate some more.
I'm hoping to clear up some other problems with the PBEM system while I'm at it.
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So unless the subs are engaging me you have no chance of killing his subs:eek:
You still have ships that can see submarines.
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This ai sighting thing is confusing. Either the ai can see all other units or they can't.
If they can, then the sighting distances in the ruleset only apply to the human player because the sighting distances for ai players is unlimited.
Brit, can we please get a clarification.
The aircraft units cannot see subs. But, the AI can see all the units (it doesn't rely on the aircraft's view range). So, the view ranges only affect human players.
the computer parked a sub outside so I set orders to neutral and he moved a BB and almost took out 2 of my BBs while I was upgrading/repairing them. 
Version 1.01.14937 Available
in Empires of Steel
Posted
No one has any comments on the new map?