Oh boy alot of questions

[DimmurWyrd]

Originally posted by Jam3:
in number 4 what i meant was that the individual commander types you can recruit have specific schoolt abilities. Like a Shaman has Nature 1. I just meant that when your reseraching its important to keep in mind that you have a shaman in play and that you want to research for him (as well as your other commanders) as well as your pretender.

Or am I just totally off on this?

Number 3 is still a little frustrating I mean two armies don't just pass in the night. If X is moving into 0's province and 0 is moving into X's province on the same turn then there should be some chance that they meet and fight. Also scouts, spies, etc should be able to give you some idea of the movement of the enemy force, some how, some way within the turn/movement model of the game.

well the problem is one of not being able to code with tachyons or something yet because the results of a move order occur the same round they are given so that for a scout to tell you a turn before the game would have to know what a person will do NEXT turn tell you THIS turn then you can counter it would be fun but not realistic... I guess they could make movement take 2 turns but that would drastically slow the game down for PBEM play.

[Taqwus]

There are ways interception could be implemented with the current movement system. Suppose you have a spy in a province currently occupied by enemy forces, and you have an army ready to intercept. If the spy had a 'Track army' command, whereupon it would *attempt* to track the largest portion of forces that move, and you could give the friendly army an 'intercept' command that with some probability would be able to intercept (base it on, say, overall strategic move of the interceptors versus the interceptees, the experience of the spy, stealthiness of troops, the number of parts into which the interceptees split)...
It'd affect balance, as not all nations get spies or very mobile troops, and figuring out a sane formula would not be easy.

[aldin]

Originally posted by Taqwus:
There are ways interception could be implemented with the current movement system. Suppose you have a spy in a province currently occupied by enemy forces, and you have an army ready to intercept. If the spy had a 'Track army' command, whereupon it would *attempt* to track the largest portion of forces that move, and you could give the friendly army an 'intercept' command that with some probability would be able to intercept (base it on, say, overall strategic move of the interceptors versus the interceptees, the experience of the spy, stealthiness of troops, the number of parts into which the interceptees split)...
It'd affect balance, as not all nations get spies or very mobile troops, and figuring out a sane formula would not be easy.

Not to start the "realism" debate again, but there is no way this is a reasonable function. Even with modern information technology it is tremendously difficult to "intercept" a small force with another small force. There ARE interception chances built into the game based on speed (I think) and force size (I'm sure), so part of this is addressed anyway.

Play the guessing game. It's not very tough against the AI. You eventually find you can guess where AI armies are going 90% of the time (richness and defense level being the big triggers). Against humans, they have to play the same game you do.

~Aldin

[HJ]

For 2. and 3., try cranking up the indie strength to 8 or so. This will slow you down, and create a different game, but it will also create a buffer between you and the AIs so you have more time to get the things you want. Many times I just want to try out some things high on the requirement lists, such as high level spells and items, but the current game setup just doesn't allow for that, unless you hamper the advance altogether, since there is no way you can secure your borders and make peace. The high indie strength will also positively affect the porousness of borders that you're talking about in 3., creating indie armies strong enough to fend off smaller raiding armies and hence giving you the opportunity to make chokepoints and normalize situation. Otherwise, playing with indies at 3 or so is just too chaotic if you want a slow-paced relaxing SP game, as everything is simply too open and forces you to bog yourself into conflicts on all sides usually.

[Jam3]

It seems like its always an independant developer that goes and makes a great game like this and then completly deviates from the norm on core design in some way.

Chess, checkers, tic tac toe, etc etc etc all have the guess where I am going to move next style of game play BUT order is serialized!! (to account for iterative order with more than two players you can either create random order or an order of precedence for every nation) If they would have simply gotten rid of "simultaneuos" turns or made it serial, then alot of the movement would have made more sense. Heck I bet they could have even made it an option to have simultaneous or serial moves.

I wouldn't want to get into a realism debate about all this either after all its a strategic game and realism is best left to more tactically oriented games.

Why do i think serial would have been better? Because "corralling AI" so that we both move into the same province on the same turn is not my idea of strategy. Gimme chess type strategy any day, u move i respond, i move, u respond....

[Jam3]

HJ thats a good idea ill try it thanks!

[HJ]

Originally posted by Jam3:
HJ thats a good idea ill try it thanks!

Unfortunatelly, it's only a workaround, but it's worth trying out to see whether you like it better. I usually do.

Cheers,