jeep
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Posts posted by jeep
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While I'm on the subject, here is how strategics bombing lines up
Unit Cost Prod dam Building dam Unit dam
Bomb1 100 13 20 low
Bomb2 100 13 20
Bomb3 100 13 20
Bomb4 100 13 20
UAV1 80 13 20
UAV2 70 13 20 low
The only difference tech makes is range and defense.
In general, a bomber pays for itself in maybe 4-5 bombing runs if it is not shot down. This sounds about right.
A lot of the damage is to production and buildings. One bomber does 8 production damage per turn, and 50% takes out a building. This means using too many bombers on a single city doesn't help you much. Also sounds like the right thing to do. Two bombers on a city and it won't get anything built...
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Does anyone use missiles extensively? I never have since they are a separate tech branch that I don't focus on.
Wanted to try these out more but I think the economics might be a bit off.
damage (city) (unit) cost
V2 missile 46 20 60
Medium range missile ~60 20 65
Cruise 72 90 80
Drone 82 90 80
SRBM 400+ * 500
ICBM 450+ * 800
The nukes are fine since they will generally do > damage to the city than they cost, plus wipe out any units completely.
The drone/cruise is probably ok since they are most useful at taking out ships. They are very flexible and can quickly take out transports etc. Hard to defend against.
The V2/MRM need adjustment. They just aren't effective since they are shorter range, take a long time to research, and don't do much damage. Probably just need to reduce the production cost only them.
Anyone else have any thoughts?
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Sorry to keep bringing this up, but there is a huge trend now toward tablets (Ipad, android, etc). I think EOS would sell really well on these. Why, well...
Most mainsteam PC games these days are big budget 3D action games. Turn based games in general don't get much press or attention. On the tablets & phones though, people buy a lot of simple games, board game ports, card games, puzzle games, etc. EOS would really stand out in that crowd.
A simplified version selling for like $4.99 would sell a lot of copies. Plus it gives you more potential people who might be interested in buying the full version on the PC.
People buying tablets now tend to buy a lot of apps, usually anything that has high review scores. I'm sure the EOS community can help you out in that regards.
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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.
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.
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Just out of curiosity, what advantages does an AI have over humans in a game like EOS?
I understand in games like chess etc it can run many more scenarios to predict outcomes than a human could. But that kind of thing doesn't really apply here.
I do agree a good compromise solution would be something like excluding "invisible" units like subs from the AI's planning. AI would only respond to them while they are sighted. This avoids the larger problem while still giving you the function you wanted.
You will still need to guard those transports, but you should be doing that anyway
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I agree this would be nice to have, but I have to say that I've never seen a wargame AI that really does this. Humans deal with uncertainty with creative, changing solutions. The AI would need to do so with a fixed formula. Once you understand the formula, you can trick the AI nearly every time.
To be blunt, humans ALWAYS have an advantage over the AI in a game like this. It isn't really fair to expect EOS to have the most advanced AI in the world (though it would be cool).
Given that the AI always can see everything (units & map) for planning purposes (visual range still applies to attacks of course), subs and paras still are useful for the human player. Para are fast to deploy, and subs are great for sinking the BBs. You just have to get used to the idea you can't sneak around the AI.
AI improvements, at least right now, are better spent on better land and sea tactics. I definitely see improvements in the last update. Once the elite AIs get to the level that they can stand a good chance of beating human players in a only slightly stacked fight, then we can worry about its omniscience.
Making an AI that can be tricked is usually something you DON'T want to do. Once it is easy to exploit, you won't be having much fun....
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I deleted the old event file as you suggested, and it works great now.
you rock
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Just sent them over to the bugreport email. Thanks!
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Yes, I'm player 1 (also the game host). Would it help if I sent the save game files?
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I was able to get the first turn from the other player and process, but now we are stuck. On my side it doesn't seem to be uploading the turn data or orders. The little blue box says 17 events, 0 sent.
I don't normally have an issue with internet connection. The game updates work fine. This seems like a connection problem though...
I can see the event.out files in the PBEM directory. Doesn't seem to want to send them though. Is there a way to do this manually?
When I exit the game, it pops up a warning box that says there are still event to be uploaded, I need to be connected to the internet to do so. I am connected, but its not working...
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I have seen tac bombers spot and engage subs. In the rules their sub view distance is 0, so I guess they only spot them when directly over them.
Btw, I do have a asw plane in my rule set that is made to spot and engage subs. I hope you don't change the rules to prevent this
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Omega43 is the name it generated
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Trying to run my first PBEM game.
I've started the game (hosting myself) and sent the player key to the other player. He said he was able to join and submitted his turn.
In my game, I can load the game and submit my own turn. However, I can't seem to load his turn (don't receive his event). The little box at the top shows 1 event and 0 sent. The 1 event I assume is my submission, which doesn't seem to be uploaded to the server (maybe because I am host)?
Any ideas on how to debug why I don't get the other players update (so that I can process the turn)?
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.....
I still believe where you have a stack of battleships, destroyers and transports, the 'fighting' ships should have to be destroyed before you can get at the transports; in real life escorts are there to shield more vulnerable ships. The same with stacks of artillery, tanks and infantry or stacks of bombers and fighters. You have to physically put your tanks between your artillery and the enemy to protect them. The AI isnt good at that and so perhaps the combat model should be tweaked to allow this. Any improvements would be good.
I for one would actually like to vote against making a modification to the combat model like this. Here is why...
I can understand why it would be realistic to have a battle group automatically screen sensitive units from attack. If this was implemented, players could build big combined arms land and sea battle groups and send them off for more or less indiscriminately to conquer enemy territory. They wouldn't need to worry about their BBs getting hit by subs (destroyers in group), air attacking transports (shielded by carriers/cruisers), or small raider groups slipping past the heavies to hit the transports. On land, with this mod you couldn't land paratroopers behind the enemy to take out his launchers and arty. You would also make less use of terrain since the best strategy would be to group everyone together. Of course, there are sometimes nukes to worry about, but you can always group in some AA for that
Having to manually screen your units is actually the only real tactical aspect of this game, and I think it would make the game less interesting without it. Of course the AI needs to get better at this, and coding that is significantly harder than just grouping everything. But it would be a better end result.
BTW, in my rulesets I usually increase the range on land arty attacks to allow for more leeway in tactically screening them with inf/armor. Since land units do effectively block each others movement, this works quite well. No real issues on the ocean since the transports should be quite a ways behind your battle group anyway (which means you need to worry about the raider ships and subs!). If you group the transports together with battlegroup, you still do get some effective screening since any weaker attackers will die quickly an d not inflict full damage on them.
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Just noticed that you can setup your game so that all the AIs are on the same team (against you)
Little bit more challenging this way...... Try the 7 on 1 game against all elites with production bonuses.
BTW, there is a bug on loading the flags when you do this. Doesn't crash, but gives you some warning dialogs.
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Nice, I'll get a couple more copies for my brothers. Need some fodder to play my scenarios
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I have seen the AI build tac bombers and use them. It is really rare though, and they don't seem to get beyond level 1/2 on any of their aircraft.
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Could you share some of the details on the way the resources work now?
BTW, thanks for the AWACS
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Anyone want to try out my WW3 scenario by PBEM? The AI doesn't play this very well....
With all the Nukes, it should be pretty much decided in < 20 turns I think
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You made it look so easy in the video (M3 tank)
But no, without the tools I'm in the same boat as StellarRat.
If you have a chance, how about a helicopter and AWACS plane unit image.
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On second thought, it would probably be best to solve the food problem just by giving cities the option to "produce food" directly. Give it a 3 production = 1 food.
10 pop city would produce NET 1.33 food (3.33 - 2) while consuming 2 oil. Slightly better than neutral.
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So here are some thoughts:
1. If you have an overabundance of any resource, you can convert this to gold.
2. If you are low on any resource (except production), you can use gold to buy it (at 3/1 rate)
However, if you are not low on resources, what good does a surplus do?
Gold => research
A great thing, but after +20 or so doesn't do much. This is fine.
But that's it, so I think we need
Gold => production
This gives you a second way to put those resources to work. Could be applied as a global trade (affects all cities equally), or pumped into a single city. I suggest it follows a non-linear curve like research.
The production boost would be calculated each turn, so you get more benefit spending less gold each turn than all at once.
The max production boost (each turn) would be like 40%. Something like 100+ gold = 40%
50 gold = 30%
25 gold = 20%
13 gold = 10%
6 gold = 6%
As for realism, well extra capital does produce results!
Besides, this is relatively small. Throwing 13 gold at a 10pop city gives you 1 production. Not very efficient, but can help...
Now lets look at shortages:
Oil
This one seems logical. If you are low, your factories stop first. Way low and you can't move most of your army. But inf can still move, so you can still capture land oil to get out of a bind. If you have no ships & no land oil & no money, you are out of luck. Pretty rare though...
=> Would be nice to have a selection to turn OFF production in cities to save oil reserves (just select no unit / no money). City only uses oil when PRODUCING
Iron
No iron, can't build stuff that needs it. Good the way it is. Maybe should add a ore refinery to give the option to boost it.
Food
This is the big one. Run low on food and really bad things happen (5% attrition to pop on all cities each turn). Right now, setting a 10 pop city to money production would give you 5 gold = 1.66 food. The city eats 2 food itself. Now if you have a factory, you would be even. Maybe we should tweak city food consumption to 0.15*pop, that way they can be made a little better than self sufficient when needed.
=> of course this requires that cities don't use OIL when producing money either, otherwise you are still in the hole (I figure if you are running out of food, you probably sold all your oil to buy food already).
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Thanks,
So here is a summary of how it works now:
Oil
Used for cities (.2 * pop)
Used for movement of most units (not inf, nuke navy)
Shortage: First cities don't produce, then units don't move
Boosted by: Oil refinery, Nuke power
Conversion: 1 Oil = 1 Gold
Food
Used for cities (.2 * pop)
Used by most units
Shortage: City population decreases
Boosted by: Fert factory, tech
Conversion: 1 Food = 1 Gold
Iron
Used to build units & buildings (iron cost)
Upgrades (iron cost delta only)
Repairs (% of iron cost)
Shortage: Stall production
Boosted by: None
Conversion: 1 Iron = 1 Gold
Production yeah, it's like a resource
Used to build new units & buildings
Boosted by: Factories, etc
Conversion: 2 Production = 1 Gold
Gold
Used for upgrades (production cost delta or 5)
Used for research
Boosted by: None
Conversion: 3 Gold = 1 Oil/food/iron
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Brit,
A couple of Qs on resources
What is the conversion factor for production => money? (set cities to produce money)
Is it correct that unit repairs require only IRON, and a 50% damaged unit would take 50% of the iron cost to repair?
When you are short of oil, how does the game decide on which units cannot move or which cities have production halted?
When short of food, is the only effect city population reduction (any effect to units)?
Iron shortage just stalls production/repairs, correct?
Economics of strategic bombing
in Empires of Steel
Posted
yep, just looking for feedback in general. I will update my jeep v5 rules once I am happy