AGEOD Forums

I'd like to post some experiences from my recent game which might help improving the game.

Calvinus, you implemented those arrows on the upper left corner to switch countries. This is very nice although the arrows could be a little bigger. Could you provide similar switching of countries for other screens as well? One thing would be recruiting, for example. Maybe small flags like with the war plan choice or the arrows like in the main screen. That would be a nice improvement, because you know, when you think about troops, you want to think about troops for all countries.

Next thing I noticed is merging troops. Finally I found the trick how to do this. The problem is that when grabbing some corps or army the military glove clenches a fist, but I have the feeling that the merging target is calculated as if the finger was still pointing. When I want to merge troops, I drop them a bit to the right and a bit to the bottom of the base of the troop model - that works perfectly. However, when I started playing this game, it was almost impossible to merge troops and that doesn't enhance fun at playing the game, I can tell you.

I'll find more stuff, and other people are welcome to add ideas and comments as well, of course.

Thank you

For your second point, in the upcoming Gold edition there is a stack-reorganization window, which saves you from the pain of drag-and-drop stack management, and can also be used to swiftly assign stacks to different armies (if possible by size limits)

Jorrig wrote:Calvinus, you implemented those arrows on the upper left corner to switch countries. This is very nice although the arrows could be a little bigger. Could you provide similar switching of countries for other screens as well? One thing would be recruiting, for example. Maybe small flags like with the war plan choice or the arrows like in the main screen. That would be a nice improvement, because you know, when you think about troops, you want to think about troops for all countries.

We discussed (in the Beta forum) about small flags, but there's absolutely no place for them. So I introduced the arrows. I'm using the largest buttons now. Send a PM to Philippe and propose him to ask our graphist to work out bigger buttons.

The graphist is away for one week, so I can't ask him anything till the 26th, but this could be done easily I think

Another thing I noticed when I played this game: Suddenly my French parliament shifted one box to the left. I don't know where this came from or what caused this. Would it be possible to alert the player whenever this happens? After all, parliament support is very important.

Jorrig wrote:Another thing I noticed when I played this game: Suddenly my French parliament shifted one box to the left. I don't know where this came from or what caused this. Would it be possible to alert the player whenever this happens? After all, parliament support is very important.

This is normally notified by event window. Perhaps you missed that event, or you customized the messages notifications in such a way this kind of events are notified on the Game Log only.

Tested the stack management feature yesterday (it was there all the time, I just did not see it). This is great! Excellent improvement, makes that reorganizing a LOT easier. Now give me the NW report and I'll be happy - maybe. ;-)
How is the AI performing in your game, by the way? In mine I am still a bit disappointed. Does the AI get better over time?
What I noticed in pure AI battles: The AI does not seem to realize when a battle is hopeless. It just keeps attacking and attacking although the enemy does not suffer any harm, is superior in numbers and the own troops are being destroyed. As a human I break up these battles as fast as possible to minimize losses, but the AI does not seem to realize this. I witnessed a battle between Russia and Romania with Romania having 6 corps destroyed (plus several others out of action) and Russia not losing a single one. And I've seen Russia sacrifying even the last corps in an attack on an Austrian army even though the latter had the bonus of being superior in numbers all battle long. I set the aggressiveness to maximum, but this should only influence the decision of initiating battles and gaining territory, not about putting corps to the front during battle. The first is a question of strategy, the latter one of common sense in the game.

Jorrig wrote:How is the AI performing in your game, by the way? In mine I am still a bit disappointed. Does the AI get better over time?
What I noticed in pure AI battles: The AI does not seem to realize when a battle is hopeless. It just keeps attacking and attacking although the enemy does not suffer any harm, is superior in numbers and the own troops are being destroyed. As a human I break up these battles as fast as possible to minimize losses, but the AI does not seem to realize this. I witnessed a battle between Russia and Romania with Romania having 6 corps destroyed (plus several others out of action) and Russia not losing a single one. And I've seen Russia sacrifying even the last corps in an attack on an Austrian army even though the latter had the bonus of being superior in numbers all battle long. I set the aggressiveness to maximum, but this should only influence the decision of initiating battles and gaining territory, not about putting corps to the front during battle. The first is a question of strategy, the latter one of common sense in the game.

You are the first who reports such impression. All other beta-testers told exactly the opposite impression. Perhaps you experienced only a few cases where the AI had set the max strategic importance for the battle location. In 99% of situations, I experienced instead a much wiser AI attitude.
In fact, now the Battle AI is developed exactly to understand if the balance of losses make it hopeles.

Jorriq, do you have the Gold beta from AGEOD? (if yes, why are we talking here? )

I could not disagree more regarding the current battle AI. It is very good at evaluating just how important a battle is. It has probing attacks which it abandons if meeting with resistance, and there are attacks it considers main ones which it maintains furiously, and some in between, and these fit into the "bigger picture" very nicely.

One thing you may forget is the obstinency (sp?) of generals. You can't break off a battle if it is going for less round than the general's obstinency.

If your feedback is so different, I'll go back to the game and observe it more closely. I have the impression I saw several of those battles, but I may be mistaken.
One thing is true, I did see the AI break up some hopeless battles (the Ottomans against the British in Palestine, for example). I guess I am also a bit disappointed that the Germans don't challenge me more in my actual game, but that might also be coincidence.

Jorrig, we are talking about two very different game versions. I am a betatester of the Gold version, you see.

I think I have the same one (if they provided me with the correct link). I definitely have the new map (north is up), so it should be beta as well.

Jorrig wrote:I think I have the same one (if they provided me with the correct link). I definitely have the new map (north is up), so it should be beta as well.

I am not familiar with what deal you have with Phillipe (added to beta team, preview copy, whatever). In whatever case however, you are probably way behind in version, so that is one reason I suggest you inquiry at the private beta forum.

The other reason is that I dont think it is right to confuse the public by discussing pre-release version issues here...

Seems that for some unknown reason Jorrig's access to Beta forum was de-activated. Now it should be ok. Thread closed