jeep

Yes, in these rules you can only capture sea resources with transports. The idea is to force more effort in taking them.

Jeep v6 rules Just started using this. It really plays like a different game. Let me know what you think. ----------------------------------------------------------- IMPORTANT: When playing with the AI in this rule set, select the "AI units" unit set for the AI players. The AI will not work at all using the standard rule set! This is a heavily modified rule set from the original. Changes were made to improve the tactical options in the game. Summary of changes: Ground combat slowed down to allow for ongoing battles. Artillery units are soft and need to be protected. Infantry are better at defense; tanks are for offense. Air combat modified so that fighters will dominate other air unit. Tac bombers are stronger verses destroyers, transports, and ground units. Maintaining air superiority is tactically important. Sea combat changed to make BBs much stronger in surface combat, but very weak against subs. Cruisers have powerful air defense. New units: ASW planes are for hunting subs and dropping Sea Mines Sea Mines are defensive sea units, immobile Heavy air transports allow limited air movement of armies AWACS for mobile radar New gameplay: ONLY TRANSPORTS may capture sea resources Rationing option for cities when you are low on resource Detailed modifications from original: Ground combat changes Terrain modifications for infantry increased (combat type soft) Paratroopers use 0.8 food, can build airfields in 3 turns Arty / msl / AA use less food Inf / tank / para -------------------------------------------------- HP are 5x original to slow down ground combat Increased production costs Air => ground: Tact bombers to armor attack increased by 100%. Damage by 2. Ground => air: inf/tank/para air attack is almost zero. Don't need this since air does little damage Ship => ground: +100% to inf/armor, ship bombard takes much longer (but this is also desired) Arty / AA remain unchanged: Note, this makes them very weak to ground attack, but this is ok Increased missle damage vrs soft/armor Added GroundSupport combat type for non inf/armor (those with only 2hp) ICBN range increased Tactical Nuke added Naval combat changes Added AWACS aircraft & surfaceship tag to all ships Added ASW aircraft Cruisers & BBs now weaker vrs subs (to offset ASW aircraft advantage) (sub attack *0.66) Cruisers and batteships now have increased ship attack range at class 3 (BB) 4(CR) Also have increased view range This models change to guided missles from cannons Changed ship attack animation for BB/CR Changed air attack animation for CR Tac bombers 4+ have missile attack verses ships at unit circle+10/20 Destroyers weaker vrs air (50%) Sub view ranges for dest/crus are less than current rules Missiles Adjusted the production costs on V2,MRM,cruise missiles All missiles have 1 hp Added ability for cruisers 4/5 to hit missiles Air Tac bombers and Strat bombers air attack reduced by 50% Fighters air attack increased by 33% Added Heavy transport aircraft Transports can carry 1 more unit ONLY Transports can capture sea resources Sea Mines have been added. They must be placed by transport. Still Need: Heli bitmaps

Just uploaded my new rules set. It is jeep v6 rules. AI seems to do fine when using the AI units set. This changes games play a lot.

Actually I was able to create a unit subset called AI units in the same rules. I just disabled the new units in that unitset. When I start the game, I can use the standard unit set and use the "AI unit" set for the AI. Pretty slick, took about 5 minutes If the rules editor had a section for AI scripting to go in, wouldn't that be sweeeet

I never get to the point when nukes are around. In some of my scenarios I have given the AI nukes, but they don't use them very well. I figured it wasn't a big deal since most games don't get there. I find that 1 on 1 vrs the AI you will pretty much always win. It isn't real good about using all it's units to the best of it's ability. When you setup AI teams against you is when it actually gets hard. I'm putting together a rule set mod with a lot of changes. Heavy air transports, sea mines, changes to air combat, and only transports can capture sea resources. I'll have to see how it plays.... I'm thinking it would be real nice to have a check box on each unit in the editor that doesn't allow the AI to use it. I really doubt it will be able to use the sea mines I guess I could use a unit subset for that?

I've been watching some game playbacks, at here are my observations: 1. The AI will "post" ships around it's ocean territory. 2. If a weaker or equal ship group comes within ~2.5 turns movement of these ships, they will set course to attack. 3. It can see your subs, so if they get near destroyers they will be sunk. 4. The AI will repair damaged ships 5. Elite AIs will build a LOT of ships, mostly destroyers & transports. A fair amount of subs, fewer cruisers and BBs. They do not seem to be limited by resources. 6. AI does not escort the transports at all. Overall given the above the AI is quite effective at sea combat. There isn't a great strategy (yet) to really beat it other than raw production. Of course, you can say this is a good thing since if there was the AI would just be a whipping boy Given the way it is, I don't use subs against the AI at all. They don't build too many capital ships anyway, so there isn't a big need for them. You can pick off his transports fairly easily since they don't escort them. However, the AI compensates for this by building tons of them (elite AI must have a build it production bonus). Even if the AI was modified so it couldn't see subs, I still don't think it would change much. They use so many destroyers that (the player) building a bunch of subs just doesn't make sense anyway. Overall it seems to me that when the AI wins, it isn't because of the lack of FOW. They just can outproduce you. Since there isn't a clear tactic to always get the best of each engagement, you lose by attrition (no defense/terrain bonus on the sea, etc...). I think we would get a better improvement to the game by added some more tactical elements to sea battles. This we could probably do with the editor. One idea I saw before was sea mines to protect resources. I have tried increasing the engagement ranges of CR & BB beyond visual to give a benefit to using spotters and such. If we did a non FOW algorithm, it would be something like: 1. Send all units on patrol to find enemies 2. Remember locations of sighted units, with uncertainty circle based on movement 3. Vector attackers toward center of uncertainty circle Looks great, right? Here is the problem. I could easily let the enemy see my weak units, draw them in, and then pounce with the strong ones. Repeat 100x times, game over. Same thing every game. Now to fix that problem we need to add some learning to the AI algorithm, which is a much bigger project. The current AI is quite good at sending the right units to its battles (too good you might complain). Remember the the opposite is a pushover AI. Anyway, the point is that maybe with some more tactical elements to sea combat you can get around the FOWless issue in a satisfying manner.

yes, you can add reinforcements in the editor. I know they are tied to turns, not sure what else they can be tied to.

AI code is really a ton of work for a game like this (no prior knowledge of the game setup or map). I can understand why that would be out of the scope one person working in his spare time (now anyway) could handle. Of course, since pretty much every game written uses AI opponents I wonder how much the code bases have in common with each other. Is there some open source database out there or a research forum on these? Sounds like a good topic for someones Phd

Brit, Sorry to hear about the sales. The upside of this game development is you now have a decent size "fan" base of gamers who are familiar with and enjoyed your work. I for one would very likely buy any other game you developed based on the experience with EOS. Sequels and different spins of the game (leveraging the existing code base) would be a good way to generate more revenue. Each product you do gets you more exposure to a larger audience over time, while your long term customers generally will continue to buy your titles. I think it would be interesting to see how EOS could be spun as a space conquest game. Sure, there a tons of those out there. You would need something unique game play wise. I have a few ideas, but this sounds like a different thread.....

No, they still fight back. They just won't move out to attack.

set your units to "no field orders". Then they won't leave the forts

Anyway, until you run into this situation it might be hard to see. Try it out in your next H on H game to see how effective it can be. Don't ever take the enemy's cities, just all his sea resource. He will soon be crippled unless you can't beat his navy.

I agree the general idea is to do everything in your power to rebalance the economy. These are the tools you have: Food: disband units, wait for starvation to take place Oil: Don't move units, wait for starvation to take place Iron: Not an issue, this is a land resource. Also easy to control all consumption (unit production) For Food/oil, the first one you will definitely use. My concern is when that doesn't work, the second one can take a very long time (during which you are helpless). Of course we can't just make starvation faster because that causes other problems with temporary shortages (dead population is permanent). When you have a shortage on a resource, it effects all your production equally. If your cities normally need 50 food and 50 oil each turn, but you only have 10 of each, then your production will take at least 5X longer everywhere. It will take FOREVER to build a simple destroyer. It is better logically and for gameplay if you can focus that 10 food/oil on a couple cities so they can produce normally while the rest don't produce at all. Production "limping along" everywhere just isn't effective. The fallback plan would be to allow you to abandon cities. You could achieve the same effect this way, it just doesn't make as much logical sense. Hey all, I do appreciate all the feedback. That is why I post stuff here

I was concerned about human on human play. The AI does not deliberately pursue this tactic.

What I am addressing is a specific deadlock situation. Land resources generally can not cover your cities oil/food needs, even if you don't have many (in many games). If you lose your navy and sea resources, you really are stuck right now. Now I agree it is a bad idea to lose the naval conflict, but because of this limitation right now that is the only fight that really matters. Just take out the enemies navy and steal all his sea resource => he will be helpless in generally less than 10 turns. Now losing all those resources really should cause a big impact, but not something that is unrecoverable. I like the idea of being able to allocate your limited oil & food because it makes more sense than adding the ability to abandon cities. But I am sure you need one or the other in the game. The argument about not expanding beyond your resources is valid, but you are missing the point that PRIOR to losing all/most of your sea resources your economy WAS balanced. It goes out of balance because of the enemy invasion, and it can NEVER come back because you can't build a single ship to go take those resources. You just slowly die off....

Here's the scenario. Your empire has been expanding for about 60 turns. You have 4-5 islands with 2 cities each. Then along comes the enemy and they wipe out your navy and take all your sea resources. Within a few turns you are out of oil and food. Production goes to zero, so you can't finish any more ships to take back the resources. It is basically game over for you, even though you still have 5 islands.... Why this is a problem. Oil and food are primarily sea resources. While there are some on land, it is not enough to cover basic city consumption without any units. If you lose those sea resources, you can easily have no way to get them back. What we need. I vote for the ability to allocate resources to cities (for oil & food). When you click on the resource, it already shows how much oil or food each city is using. The new feature would allow you to click the city (in that dialog) to withhold resource from that city. Why this solves the problem This gives you the ability to spend limited resources on a single city so that you can retain some production there to get out of the deadlock condition. It is realistic because this is what countries would do in this situation anyway. Finally, it doesn't add complication because players don't have to do this. If they do not manually withhold from cities it plays just like it does now.

Other than stopping production, does this reduce the oil and food a city consumes? Would be nice if it did, since you can definitely get in a deadlock position if the enemy takes all your sea resources. Your cities will consume all your land resource and still not be able to produce any ships.

Add the ASW plane (helicopter) They are good for guarding a channel or specific area against subs. They also are fun to use from a carrier. They don't seem to tip the balance much though, since jets can put them down quick. Personally I haven't felt that subs were too strong. Destroyers are the most common ship used, and they do a good job taking them out. I think I'll leave the sub ranges where they are at in my set for now. Being able to customize the rules is soooo nice

Thanks for the explanation. Here is a "nice to have" suggestion to make this clear to players. A. If you double click on your unit to bring up the description box, have a box at the bottom that shows combat data for the last turn. It would list all the units it is "in combat" with. For each unit, it would show damage delivered to and received from that unit in the last turn. You could also show the last known remaining hit points of the enemy unit. This would be a nice summary on how effective each unit is in combat. For units that were destroyed that turn, you could pause the playback while they are still on the board and double click them. For stats would be for the full turn regardless of when in the playback you look at them.

Ok, that's what I thought. Combat is basically For each unit: 1. Each tic, unit will randomly attack one unit within range with 1% of it's full strength 2. The unit that is attacked gets a counter attack on the attacker (at 1% strength) This means that a round of exchange between one attacking tank and two defending inf would yield: Tank is attacked 3 times (one counter to his attack, two attacks from inf) inf A is attacked 2 times (one counter to his attack, one attack from tank) inf B is attacked 1 time (one counter to his attack) Over the full round, tank is attacked 300 times and each inf about 150 times each. Is this accurate? A couple of other questions: Does your unit always randomly target a unit within range or does it "prefer" the unit it was explicitly told to target? Also, does the field orders affect this (told to only attack sea targets so it won't shoot at arty in range except as counter attack)? Does "no field orders" prevent a unit from attacking (it will only counter attack)? An observation (if above is accurate) is that transports would actually take less damage if they didn't attack (since they are preventing the counter attack).

I meant I didn't know what to change them to I think the current method is ok as long as you understand how it works. Planes sort of work the second way already, correct? They get one attack at full strength then need to land to reload. One question though: If said AA had about 5% chance to hit the missle, and there were actually 4 missiles fired through his airspace at the same time. Would he have 5% to hit each of them? ie, does he get a shot at all missiles in his airspace each combat tick or does it just choose one each tick (getting around 1% to hit each one)?

I like the idea of making the BMs slower It was a problem when a sneak attack from across the world wiped out your whole army before you could do anything. Also means that long range recon really is needed to see the missiles coming. One other thing I've been toying with is missile defense systems. Right now AA units do have some missile attack values, but since the missiles move so fast they rarely ever get a hit on them. Also with 2hp they never really take them down. So I made all the missiles have 1hp. Haven't figured out how to change the AA attack values though. A single AA shouldn't have much chance to take down expensive ICBMs, but should be somewhat of a concern. If your AA has an attack value of 20 verses a missile defense of 20. Attack range is 180, so assuming the missile travels ~100 through the range at a speed of 2000, does that mean 5% chance of a hit?

Brit, Can we have the option in the editor to have building that give us free research points each turn or boost the overall research effect by some percent? Actually using it will take some play balance, but it would be nice for scenarios.

I'm trying out these values right now V2 : production 30 MRM : production 35 Cruise : production 70 The rest stays the same. Prob should change the V2 to just short range missile. There really isn't any point to having useless units

Yeah, I have lumped pop/ref/prod/buildings into one number for simplicity. Thanks for the feedback. Agree that real V2s aren't useful, but in the game they should be.