You can get it at the Clash Web Page, just follow the link to Demo 4 at left.
And Please at least Look at the manual and reference!
If you ask a question that makes it clear that you didn't read either, I'm not going to answer it!

What's New:

Well, the big story here is Graphics! The graphics you see are in No Way final... But they are Much Closer to our final target. The TF/Unit Box is just a first primitive stab at functionality and eye candy for working with what's in an individual square. Things aren't really smooth yet with respect to the interface. However, this is an area that needs alot of thought and discussion, and I didn't want to invest too much time on my individual approach to the interface. Johnmcd is still working on a better TF representation for the main map, but for now we're just using the single unit graphic.

The AI has been improved only in that it is harder to lock AI forces into positions with feints. I changed that because LGJ and Glak were beating the crap out of my poor AI because the support routine was dumb. I also reduced the player starting forces and population to the same level as the AI had. Before player started with 80 pop, and AIs with 65 IIRC.

We would most like to hear from you about how all the new things are working. Are we going in the right direction?

Do you like the way the graphics work in general?

Do you think the TF box is okay? (The TFs will eventually look like real formed military units, as opposed to strung out as they are now) Are the supported map scales going to be enough?

Do people like what they are beginning to see of our ideas to Reduce Micromanagement, and Streamline Play? For instance, you can easily set up pickets with sentries so that the sentries will automatically defend a territorial boundary, and then return to position when the fight is over. This allows the player, when they get to a boring stretch, to just press the "10-turn" button, and let things go by quickly! This is just a first hint of what is to come in terms of streamlined play. What you think of it?

How do you like the power rings? And if you don't like them what better implementation can you suggest?

How do you think we should arrange the main interface? (There is a whole thread devoted to this topic, join in!)
What other things does the manual need?

Anyone else, feel free to ask your own Big questions.

Post your comments and questions here, unless there's a more appropriate thread that already exists!

I'll add it to the bit about Task Forces as well to make it clearer.

One thing I would like to see is an easier way of moving around on the map. In Civ2 clicking on the small map caused the main map to recenter. Also, clicking on the main map caused it to recenter on the tile selected. This seems like a good system for Clash.

I like the "extra map" although it appears to be just for show in the demo. If it was fully functional (i.e. you could play on it) it would be a great convenience.

On my system, the demo seems to run a bit slow. I am wondering if that is inherent to Java or merely a temporary condition due to the fact that the code is not yet fully optimized. Or do I need to buy a faster machine?

It is looking good, guys. Keep it up!

Thanks for checking it out! There would be no problem implementing most of the things you suggest, we're just not quite there yet. Others have suggested pre-centering the map. Personally I don't like that, so that's why I didn't put it in first But it can easily be an option.

The "extra map" Is functional. Did you even try? The only thing is that the graphics don't show, because the scale is too small for them. We are thinking about much smaller icons that we Might be able to use, but we aren't there yet. But you can right-click on any square to select it for moving, and the correct task forces will be shown in the TF box.

In response to your question as to whether its Java that runs a bit slowly, that the code isn't optimized, or that your system probably needs upgrading, the answer is Yes.

As for combat I think it would be nicer if any unit that has been in the square for 2+ turns got the defensive bonus, instead of the people who control the square. That way if you are defending a square you've owned for a while you get the bonus same as always. If it was this way then if you take some place they can take it back quickly. It would also make longer seiges less horrible for the attacker since they would only suffer the defensive penalty for the first turn. If the defender can't gain a significant edge over the defender in the first turn (not combat round, I'm talking full turn) then he probably doesn't deserve to win the war.

Well first, all the AI parameters are now set randomly within a range, so nobody usually does anything... it may be that in a few games that you have played they have happened to be that way.

Also, there is nothing unfair about the old economic model. There is no instantaneous development, they must build up conquered territory step-by-step. However, if you conquer territory from a civ it is generally better economically developed than territory conquered from a culture. This takes significant resources and some time. The old economic model is actually very detailed. The problem is that it is a top-down model like in civ, and I just thought that it was too artificial. By the way, is it the guys to the South that you're talking about?

one is that some of the military results odds don't seem reasonable

for example when attacking unoccupied squares with a fairly large power ring there have been times when i have lost two foot soldiers out of seven to just a fairly large but not huge power ring

and my second problem is how do u determine when new military units appear?

my enemies seem to rapidly rebuild and strengthen their armies while my forces remain small and get smaller with almost every attack and even when i sieze most of the land around me my supposedly strengthened economy doesn't churn out more troops (and tweaking my economy doesn't help any, in fact it and research seem to have no effect on the game)...the purple bad guy civ below had a much smaller economic base in one of my games but still seemed to be out producing me in new troops...

one more suggestion
instead of taking a square and getting a defensive bonus on who owns the square make it where you have to assimulate the square into your culture (which always takes time) but like glak said if u are in the square for 2+ turns then u get the defensive bonus...once i didn't defend in depth and the AI took the square that represents rome with an amphibious force and then they had the defensive bonus when i was trying to retake my homeland

Welcome Back korn469! Glad you're back on the net.

First of all you should remember, as it says in the manual, that the defenders get a 50% bonus to their combat power. So you need to remember to account for that. (The MilPower stats shown at the beginning of each combat give the actual power used in the combat) Secondly, just to keep the bookkeeping simple, a single unit takes all the hits until it's dead, and then damage moves on to the next one; so in the more refined combat system, you would have ended up with several mangled but not eliminated units. Third, I guess your commander just had a bad day. It's possible, the way the numbers work now, that even with a large force you can do relatively little damage in any one phase. So if you did lousy in the first phase, and the defender did really well, you could well lose a unit or two when attacking the equivalent of two or three enemy units.

In each phase, the maximum damage each side can inflict on the other is their mil power divided by the number of phases. For right now the number of phases is 3. The actual damage inflicted, is the maximum damage times a uniformly distributed random number from 0 to 100%. This is extremely simplified, and I'm sure will change at some point, but that's the way it is now. So even with an arbitrarily large force if you "roll" close to 0, you won't do much damage. However, I don't think this approach is really unreasonable. A result near zero means that the enemy achieves some sort of tactical surprise in the first battle, leading to one side being rather ineffective. This randomness tends to even out in the long run because there are three individual phases. Hopefully, now that you understand what's happening your combat results will make a little more sense to you.

New military units etc....
Please remember that this was the part of the game you weren't supposed to evaluate There is a lot of old stuff in there that is from when I was just working on the game by myself. I'll describe briefly what I think has happened in the game you paid the most attention to. All this will be changed shortly anyway. Right now all the civs have a setting for essentially guns vs. butter. IIRC the guns percentage going to your economy can vary from something like 40-70%. I expect what happened in the single game, or maybe two that you played, is that your civs setting was very low, and the guys to the south was very high. Perhaps I should have removed this variability for the demo, frankly I just forgot about it. So this is how someone with a smaller economic base can actually outproduce you in troops.

Keep in mind also, that actual economic development is happening. When you seize an underdeveloped square from a culture, it can take a long time for its productivity to raise to the point of what your initial people produce. Tweaking economic settings does in fact have a great effect, you probably were just not doing the right thing. It's no fault of yours that you weren't doing the right thing, since I haven't explained it. However, I think it's rather pointless to discuss something that is going to be history soon. There are better ways to invest our collective time IMO. By the way, research only has effect on economic things in the old model. There are in fact no military affects of technology implemented in the demo. Wait for demo 5.

On the defensive bonus...
Most of the defensive bonus originates in a force that is there being able to dig in and fortify. This has Nothing to do with who controls the province's hearts and minds, it has to do with who is actually there and can prepare defenses. In your example, they could easily have built a series of fortresses while you were regrouping, and have been defending using those. I don't want to take this too far, because all this will obviously be refined when the Real military model in detail gets implemented. This is just a quickie thing that I did in implementation.

Now I agree that what you say is correct for the defenses of the indigenous population, but that is usually small compared to the military force. Your people definitely wouldn't be aiding strongly in the defense of your homeland against you!

Well, I'll try and look into it. I'm not sure I understand everything you say is going on though. First of all, 300 turns is a long time. You should be able to have a pretty big civ by then if you've been expanding while they are just sitting there. Now is it before they exploded their economy is shown as really huge, or afterwords? Have you try using a similar strategy? If you do it again, and the same thing happens, can you send me back some diagnostic information? What you need to do this select a square of the bad guys in question so that it shows as pink in the middle. Then hit the C key. An information box willpop up showing their economic statistics, and some other information. Can you send me the numbers above and below the "Units" label, and also just copy the whole big text box. That will hopefully help me to figure out what is going on.

Axi:

Well, I'm glad it had you thinking about staying up all night! That's very encouraging. Sorry it screwed up on you. There is some old stuff in the models that might have caused your problem, or it may have been some kind of bug. If you should ever try it again, and get to the point where your military power has plateaued, obtain the same kind of diagnostic I asked LGJ for above, and I will see if I can figure out what is going on. And yes, I will try to get to save going for Demo 5...