Demo 2 makes me sad

[Dale]

[Velociryx]

ARGH!

Oh man, sorry to see that message!

We'll start digging in and seeing what could have caused it!

-=Vel=-

[Dale]

I'm talking to solver on Skype, so don't worry he's on the case (and basically we've worked out why it happens too).

[Velociryx]

Yep, talking to him now as well, and catching up on all the latest!

-=Vel=-

[Dale]

I'm in now.

[Velociryx]

Outstanding! Let us know what you think, and kudos to Solver for such an excellent rapid response!

-=Vel=-

[El_Cid]

well this is a 'Demo 2' thread......and i'm kind of sad(well not really, but a little maybe) also after my quick game last night.

No crashes etc - so on XP it is fine in terms of stability as it used to be. Ok here are just a few things that occured as i played, some will have come up before, or be closely related to other things discussed previously:

1. Call to Arms - cost: 100 influence, targets one of your provinces. will give you '100 infantry and honour' - is that 100 honour or just 'and(some) honour?'

2. Still the issue(and i'm sure you are aware of it) of the mouse pointer hiding some of the 'pop-up' info when you mouse over some provinces.

3. Map scrolling via mouse still too 'fiddlesome/sticky/stuttery' - maybe increase the area where mouse movement activates the scroll to try to stop elements of 'hunting for the right spot'(experiment with this 'area' and see what works more comfortably). I know the cursor keys also scoll(and use them mostly) the map, but many new people to the game will assume the mouse will do it and want to use it.

4. In the merge army screen, if more than one unit is in one provence, info is given for one army on the left(called army 15 etc) and then the other army shown in the central box as '300 infantry' with a 'tick box' next to it. clicking on the 'tick box' then gives info of that army on the right(called army 21 etc).
Why not show all armies in the central box from the start? As it can make it unclear which army is which in terms of the info displayed to the left and right?

As the player clicks(highlights) the 'tick box' have the relevent info also highlight(to the left and right) so you know exactly which army is what? something like that.

5. 'Economic hole' - playing as Fury, joined my armies in parthaway and cerilon together, built a few more batches of 100 infantry - attacked on mass into Vandamere, lost units but eventualy took it. The large amount of unhappiness upon taking Vandamere(and after promising them 'i'd be good' option) caused a -523 tax income loss per turn. All my armies were disbanded over a number of turns. I clicked through 15 turns and the unhappiness never changes, so i can not escape the 'economic hole' unless maybe Vandamere rebels and goes back into it's own ownership? then i can start again

meanwhile the AI have all expanded seemingly with no trouble(in comparison to mine) and have about 3 extra provinces each and their armies.

I'll give it another go and try something different next time - but in general that is quite an unforgiving trap to fall into so early on!

thats all for now

[BigRich]

Hey El_Cid,

Great to see someone else trying out the game and pitching in with their comments! Vel and Solver are the guys to give a definitive answer to your questions but I'll do the best I can for now.

1. Call to Arms. Only gives you some Honour, not 100. I'd agree that the description needs to be clarified a bit though, as I was wondering the same thing when I first used Call to Arms myself.

2 and 3. The next game build will be based on a new engine which might help get around these problems.

4. As far as I know army management is one of the next things on the 'to be improved' list. Not sure what Vel and Solver have in mind for this, although your suggestions look like a good start!

5. Ouch If you still have the autosaves available, I'd be curious to have a look at them if that's OK and try and work out whether that was bad luck or a bug. Because you're right, that is a pretty unforgiving start.

- Rich

[Solver]

1. Very good point. Yeah, Call to Arms will only give 1 honour - under normal circumstances. I see how the description can be unclear.

2 and 3. As Rich says, we're switching to a different engine so we can create a better interface. The old engine wasn't even supposed to show tooltip help popups, so an ugly workaround was used. I think you'll find the next build better in terms of little interface things like that.

4. Good suggestions there. We'll be looking to improve army management for sure, including giving you better control of merging and splitting your forces.

5. Sounds like you suffered the downsides of a siege gone wrong. If the siege lasted too long (due to you not having sufficient forces in the first place), loyalty there could have gone way down, causing a significant deficit. Let's see what Vel thinks here but I'm pretty sure he enjoys these hard sieges Personally, I aim to have some gold available for immediate festivals, as well as influence for binding chants, as soon as I conquer someone.

Thanks for your insights, keep them coming

[Velociryx]

Hiya Cid, and it looks like I came late to this particular party!

Glad to have you playing, and as always, INVALUABLE insights!

I think the description for Call to Arms is in the XML file, and that's something I can go in and adjust, so I'll do that as soon as I publish this reply!

Mouse Pointer and Map Scrolling - Yep, both are under heavy experimentation with the new engine, so we'll see if we can make it smoother and all-around better in that department!

Army Management - Definitely something that's under review for some revisions and overhauling!

Re: the siege, yes yes! If you have a save game, I too, would love to see it to better understand what happened.

From the sounds of it though, I'd say that the siege went on for a much longer time than average (province loyalty drops each turn of the siege).

Solver's right, I DO love me some tough sieges, but I think that before a province puts you into a death spiral, we should probably build in some kind of mechanism to have it break free, and/or simply allow a player to willingly cede control of a province (so you can simply choose to "cut it off" as it were).

But yes, I *totally* recommend a "pay it forward" approach to acquiring new provinces (that is to say, have resources on hand to begin dealing with the unhappiness right then, and if a siege looks like it's going to wreck a province, I'd actually consider just abandoning it and returning later with more and better resources).

Good stuff, and let us know how the next game goes!

-=Vel=-

[El_Cid]

well i went back and played the old demo1(plus update thing) and enacted the exact same scenario - didn't fall into the negative money trap and even though they were still quite annoyed 10-12 turns later i was making money overall.

hmmm - maybe look at some kind of 'check system', to catch rogue unhappy states so they cant bring your empire down so much as just maybe not be worth holding onto? having them effect your empire as much as i experienced just feels a little too tough(i think the seige lasted over 8 turns or so? i was building troops from the two provinces and resuplying until i 'won').

I didnt save but will replay again and do the same to see if i can reproduce the effect.

Oh - i like the new event windows one of them nearly gave me enough(red stuff) to cast a spell to make that very unhappy province more happy.....but not quite(i needed 20 more red stuff).

And i like the music was that there before? i didnt get any in my replaying of demo1 so i'm guessing it's new!

[Velociryx]

Good news all 'round then, and yes, if you can recreate the "death spiral" scenario, shoot me a save! I know the mechanism you're referring to, but it'd be interesting to watch it in action!

The more I think about it, the more in favor I am of some kind of "Abdicate" option with regards to specific provinces. It should probably carry a loyalty hit (say, -15% in all provinces you still control) as the people begin to question your abilities, but this would be better than watching near-powerlessly as a single rogue province sucks the life out of your kingdom.

Oh, and glad you like the music! JMarks composed one piece and I bought the rights to the other two after sampling...oh gods...THOUSANDS of possible candidates. It was an agonizing choice!

-=Vel=-

[BigRich]

Ahh that might explain the length of siege. Unless you have more sieging troops in the province than siege markers (check the province info to find out) then you won't get anywhere. It sounds like you could have been in a vicious cycle of bringing in reinforcements, knocking a siege marker or two down, losing troops, dropping below the siege marker number, losing more troops, bringing in reinforcements etc.

If I lose a lot of troops in the initial assault on a province, I sometimes retreat on the next turn, reinforce and then go back in to siege with a bigger army. I don't think I've ever had a second battle before re-sieging, it appears that once you kill off the defenders in a province that they don't respawn. Whether this is a feature or a bug I'm not sure

Vandamere is also quite a big province in terms of population, so dealing with unhappiness through festivals is expensive and slow, as you get relatively little loyalty for each festival you throw. There are other ways as you found out but you'll need to get some infrastructure built before they help

I do like the idea of being able to bail out of a province if it's locking you into that downward spiral though! Thinking back, that's what happened to me in my AAR game and its not fun. Granted, in that game I was probably going to be clobbered flat anyway but it would have been nice to muster something more effective than harsh language for a last show of defiance!

[Velociryx]

And just wait till we start making it harder to control loyalty!






-=Vel=-

[Solver]

Much harder

[El_Cid]

well as Demo2 doesnt really make me that sad, i'll start a demo2 comments thread later(maybe tomorrow). I think possibly my concern is based on player feedback - like(as i'm brand new to your game etc) giving the player information that more easily lets them know what they can expect out of an action.

Things are super early in this production, but some thought in clearing general 'opaqueness' - giving some player feedback etc so they can better make decisions etc.

it could be simple 'tool tip' pop ups, or something like in CivIV's combat model where you can get the comparative odds before comiting to battle etc - there are a number of ways you can give information like this.

I think games say like EU walk a very fine line(and in EU's case probaly too fine in places) in providing good strategic choices and losing the players understanding of exactly what it is they are attempting to do and the possible outcome.

Anyway i'll have another bash at the fury later and post the results forthwith....in a more 'positively' named thread.....well unless it happens again

[Velociryx]

That's a good point re: opaqueness. Sometimes, I lose sight of the fact that what seems obvious (to me) is very much NOT obvious to someone who is coming in new to the game, and so, these comments on new releases are HUGELY important, cos they put us back in touch with things like you brought up just now, so that's good stuff indeed!

And you make an excellent point re: EU. One of the games we've drawn on for inspiration, and I'd agree, in places, they are VERY...hard to figure.

-=Vel=-

[Solver]

I've played EU very briefly. I found it very black-boxish and hard to understand, can't figure out why stuff is happening, can't figure out the actual effects of stuff that is happening... I'm not saying CB is easy to understand but I have a hard time seeing how EU can be described as intuitive.

[El_Cid]

..yeah exactly, as CB gets more complex(as you add features and systems) you want to avoid some of the pitfalls a game like EU has imho.

[Ari]

[post deleted, moved to 'demo 2 feedback']

Shoot, this is probably more appropriate in the other thread. Sorry about that.