Demo 7 Download and Comments

[Mark_Everson]

Clash of Civilizations Demo 7.2 is ready for your download and coments! Your comments are critical in helping the team avoid bad design decisions, and to give us the feedback we need to put out a Great product!

Update for D7.2 Features (Jan. 9 2003)

Demo 7.2 is now out! It adds these features to what was already in demo 7:

Features:
Fortification and Siege Model
Naval Combat
Militia that automatically forms in a square to fight off invaders
Economic Specials (Gold, Cloth, Tin, Salt)
Merchants that automatically trade in these goods and others
Jericho Scenario AI Improvements and "ladder" of difficulty

GUI changes:
More-streamlined movement interface
Economic orders panel comes up alone, econ info available via a button
tweaks to increase clarity on change province capital menu

Bug Fixes:
teleporting units and settlers
intermittent crashes when econ windows left open

For more details and to download the D7.2 zip you should check out my post dedicated to Demo 7.2 Features and other useful information.


Demo 7 Main Features:

1. In-Game Tutorial -- playtester feedback said we needed it to introduce all our novel game concepts painlessly

Warning, the Dawn of History tutorial scenario currently doesn't work right due to some last-minute bugs we didn't catch . You can still learn things by reading the bulletins, but shouldn't follow their instructions for now, or you'll lose about turn 50. To get beyond that, read and follow the advice here.

2. Scenario Generation -- you can create your own detailed scenarios even now! All scenario information is in XML files, and we'll have an editor in the future

3. Technology Model -- only partly implemented, but it's adding depth to the game already

4. Province System -- territory in Clash is organized flexibly by province, provinces expand automatically if good land is available, reducing micromanagement

5. Government/Social Model -- not in demo 7,but the coding is fairly far along. The "Ruler" button in the demo shows a preview of a what's to come!

The Demo has many intuitive aspects, but we also have not yet made it as user-friendly as the final product will be. Please play the "Dawn" tutorial scenario Before you make comments here so that you know how you are supposed to work things. For further information, you can check out the manual, linked to off the download page.

Also, please look over the bug reports and feature requests docs that are posted below this. Otherwise you could spend a lot of time telling us something we already know .

I would like to thank Gary (If it ain't Military or Economics he codes it!) and Laurent (Military Coder) for their work on the Demo. The coding team, and Especially Gary have put in huge amounts of time on the demo, and I'd like to officially thank them here for it! Great Job!

Let us know what you think!

Download Clash Demo 7.2 Here

For now the final d/l link is dead. I have launched some inquiries.

For now anyone can d/l the Demo 7.2.1 zip from:

http://cullivan.com/coc/demo7/ClashD7_2_1.ZIP

Note that this is just the bare zip file. For info on how to install etc, please follow the instructions off the web page (the "Download Clash Demo 7.2 Here" link listed above).

Note: When you unzip the ClashD72.jar file to the MS Windows (TM) desktop, make sure you have "Use folder names" unchecked since otherwise you will end up with the jar file in ...\desktop\Clash Demo\ which will do you no good!

For Mac Users wanting to run the demos, please see the discussion in theRunning Clash on Macintosh thread. The short answer is that for OS X you can run the .jar file directly, for OS 8 and 9 please read over the thread to get an idea of what's involved.

Other OSs should be able to run Clash Demo 7.2. If you can find out how to execute a .jar file with "Java2" on your system, then you have all you need to run the demo. Please help others by telling us how you run Clash if you have an OS that isn't mentioned above.

To influence what goes into the next demo, you need to tell us what you want, like and don't like! Do that in this thread, or in the relevant model thread.

For those who want a blast from the past here is a link to the Demo 6 Thread.

[Edit Nov 2. 2003, provide alternate d/l site for demo zip.]

[Mark_Everson]

This is the Bug List - current as June 7, 2003 (v32)

I have assigned priorities to all bug and small feature requsts they are noted in square brackets at the end of each item. Feel free to question my priorities. If there is enough clamor that something I rate low is of high importance, I'll change it...

Most outstanding bugs are minor and will be addressed within the next few releases. I have eliminated many old bug reports that I personally haven’t seen in a long time. If someone sees a previous bug that I’ve gotten rid of, please let me know. All bugs have a ‘-‘ prefix to distinguish them from the small feature requests, which have a ‘f’ prefix.

An 'X' in front of an item means it has been fixed/addressed. Usually the X items are left for a while in case the same issue comes up (the implementation may not have worked completely).

-55. When there are too many enemy TFs on a square, right-click does not produce a pop-up window with the details. I noticed this when I let the AI grow huge armies (by turn 80). By that time also the power circle of those mega-concentrations vanishes, cause it's too large and it gets buried under tiles further away which are probably refreshed after that. [don’t know if this is still a problem, low priority, D8]

-116 When econ orders frame comes up first the many little text areas appear with no frame around them then the rest appears. Not critical, but any ideas how to fix this? It didn’t happen in D5. [low priority, that interface will hopefully be completely replaced for D8]

X159 (MacHatter on a Mac)Buttons in population transfer dialog are too narrow (text on the "transfer xxxx" button is truncated) [D8]

-160 (MacHatter on a Mac) Path finding problems-units don't use roads, even if it would be quicker
TF at 11,12 goal is 5,8
Road from 7,14-5,11-5,9
Default path (5 turn)
11,12-9,8-5,8
better path(4 turn)
11,12-10,14-7,14-5,11-5,9-5,8

TF at 3,12, goal is 7,14
Road from 4,12-5,12-5,11-7,14 (arrives 2 (first))
Default path (arrives 2 (2 turn 2 markers))
3,12-5,12-6,14-7,14
Better path (2 turn, (1 turn 2 marker))
4,12-5,12-5,11-7,14

(Mark says) not sure if this one is really a movement bug. There is a bug, but it may be in the little red circles that show turn numbers. I duplicated the results posted by Andy, and verified by pgrignon, but they Don't Match actual movement times, which are 5 turns in either case. [med D8]

-163 (Mark) Triremes not on build list in Delenda, neither is the cavalry unit Hannibal has [med D7.3]

X164 (Mark) When population of a square is taken away so that square pop is now 0, square doesn’t change possession when conquered. At least it appears to take special circumstances for it to be conquered, although it can happen eventually. It appears the code to change square possession is ignored if pop = 0, suggest the test become if the square has an administration it can change hands. I looked for the code, but couldn’t find it after about 15 min of looking around, so I quit. [Med D7.3]
Workaround: never remove all population from a square, just leave a few and its ok.

X165 (Mark) I would like the game to come up maximized by default. It comes up slightly smaller than maximized, which means I can’t see all the detail frame. [No good platform-independent fix available, removed request]

-166 (Heffalump/Mark) It looks like a bug has crept into the unloading menu code. Below is the way it usually works.

To unload:
1. put the ship on a coastal square
2. left-click on either a ship in the carrying TF or the carried TF and select the unload option.
That's it.

It looks like the bug is making those unload options not appear at first. This results in a very short set of options. A work-around is to select the transporting TF with a mouse click. This makes at least the unload option for the ship appear. Selecting the carried TF seems to make the unload option appear for those.

-167 (Heffalump) - In the Rome/Carthage scenario I retreated to Rome, made a stand and defeated Hannibal, then counterattacked north. I recaptured my northern city and pushed on. Then Carthage had it's greatest victory. I divided my 8 or 9 unit army up into multiple units, then tried to re-form it into 2 separate armys .... and it just disappeared. Gone. Oh well, that put a serious crimp in my invasion plans! (The bug seems related to one of those assign unit to TF commands).

I've played around with it a few times and as best I can tell, here's what I think happened:

In the Carthage/Rome scenario
1. Pick Carthage
2. Goto the big stack at 2,4
3. Split the big TF into seperate TFs using the respective command
4. Right click on Hannibal (which is probably the default selected unit) and click Assign Unit to New TF
We're now in a situation where none of the Units are "selected" but the commands to do things like Add Unit to Selected TF are still visible. Use that command on a unit (without "selecting" any units) and you'll see it disappear into space.
Similarly, right click on a unit and do "Merge units into selected TF" and they will all disappear.


Command line switches (Must be in command line mode (FE batch file) to use):
-ef = error logging to a file
-noAI = no AI movement
-seed = random numbers use constant seed for reproducible behavior
-800x600 = start in 800 x 600 res mode to simulate 800x600 screen
-allecon = allows access to economic orders/info for non-player civs

Full information on command line switch usage is in the testbed readme file

[Mark_Everson]

This is the Feature List current as of June 7, 2003 (v29)

Feature Requests. Frequently it is a judgment call what’s a bug and what’s a small feature, please just accept what I call it… All feature requests will have the prefix 'f' to make it easy to distinguish if it’s a bug or a feature ;-)

I have assigned priorities to all feature requests - they are noted in square brackets at the end of each item. Feel free to question my priorities. If there is enough clamor that something I rate low is of high importance, I'll change it... All bugs have a ‘-‘ prefix to distinguish them from the small feature requests, which have a ‘f’ prefix.

An 'X' in front of an item means it has been fixed/addressed. Usually the X items are left for a while in case the same issue comes up (the implementation may not have worked completely).

f63 The units are shown jumping from initial to final state, without me seeing their pacing. [actually there is an update by tick, but its fast on some machines] This is crucial for gameplay, so sliding of units (like in civ2) has to be introduced. [IMO sliding speed of units should be selectable by player, with the choice included of no sliding (or very little), low priority]

f69 One thing that is needed is some way to know what units are projected to be created in each square and when. Put this in the details frame or the econ info window. Or rather make a city screen, like in the ole civ2! Integration is the key. [D8+ nice to have, but not essential, wait for new econ gui to do it]

f72 Economic consequences of battle -- The two armies share the square, fighting every turn. But there seem to be no economic consequences to this raging battle. [medium D8 feature, need to discuss implementation]

f74 One thing we could use when there are multiple TFs in a square is whether they have movement orders or not. Perhaps you could just put the same red circles you put on the path. So a circled 2 in a TFs box would indicate that it has moves for two more turns registered. This is not urgent, just thought I'd mention it.
[Click on the details in the popup menu to get this.]
[If I have to click on every TF to see which has orders it is just about a useless capability. I should be able to See from the TF box which ones have orders. This is not urgent, but needs to be handled in some way to avoid player (read ‘Mark’) frustration. [eventually need, medium priority, D8?]

f108 Unit details issue. With two TFs in a square right-clicking always gives details for the one selected to move (white outline on box), not the one you rt.-click on. [Very counter-intuitive, but it is the spec for now. Selected TF is one right-click gives info for.] I (Mark) would like to make it a feature that the one you right-click on is the one you get move orders for. If the click is not identifiable as pertaining to a given TF or unit, only then would I have it apply to the selected (white box) one.

Gary Commented: The reason it works the way it does is that a right click selects a UNIT, not a task force. It has the function of allowing a single unit to be moved to the selected TF. Mark's problem is that he does not appreciate the difference between a right click and a left click (which changes the TF selected).

(Laurent comment) Maybe highlighting the selected unit (instead of TF) would help understand what right click does. This is particularly interesting when you move units from one TF to another. A multiselection could even be useful.

What do others think? [no priority until we get more input]

f118 “hide events” should also hide the detailed description boxes associated with events. Actually closing them would be best so that we don’t end up with hundreds of little event boxes accumulated and hidden from view by the end of the game. [medium priority, D8]

Xf135 Events suggestion from Laurent -- Events should appear in reverse order. Currently most recent is on top. I had an army fight 4 times in one turn (poor they). The display should have shown events: Health
9->1.5, 1.5->0.8,0.8->0.6,0.6->0.4, but it was the other way round. [medium priority, D7.3]

Xf135b (Mark) Related issue, looks really silly to be notified 10 times that identical units are being built. When more than one of a given unit is built in the same province the events should say FE "3 Legions built in [1,1]". To do this all that is needed is to make a pass through the events and count any identically-named ones. Then re-name the first and cull the others. [low D8]

f136 Combat Reports -- At some point there should probably be a breakdown of number of units of each type on each side, but its not urgent. Also unit power, health, etc should probably just be reported as integers. Health 23.4857392 is a bit disconcerting. [mostly fixed, but sometimes a long string of numbers seen]

f138. (Axi) The movement path of the units is drawn on a layer below the units and the power circles, resulting into it being hard to see sometimes. It should be always drawn on top.
Gary Commented: Absolutely not. Please believe me, it would look awful.
Mark supports Axi’s original desire since when moving a TF, That is the focus, not the graphics for other units, cities, etc. What do others think? [medium, D8]

Xf140. (Axi) For players that do not use the same colors as the windows default appearance, the area where you can toggle between traditional and market economy bears the color of the window, while the surrounding area bears the color of the windows default appearance. (I am using a blue-gray tone which makes the thing rather ugly). [ignore, that interface will be history soon anyway]

f142. (Axi) The TF box does not need to have a gray background. In demo 4 it had the flat ground for background. Please bring that back and make it so that the background copies the tile which is currently selected.
Gary Commented: The tile does not have the same shape. Anybody wanting this is cordially invited to provide the images. I won't.
Mark thinks we could at least tile with a nondescript green background as in D4 easily (I still have that tile, and we could just use it). I agree with Gary that trying to put the correct terrain behind would require a lot of artwork effort, and is of very low priority, especially since we have No Artists at this point on the team. [Low, D8]

f144. (Axi) Since we can save window settings now, how about adding the general settings (fog of war, hidden map, TF selection and whatever is added next) into that file?
Gary Commented: They are not intended for that purpose, they are really a debugging aid, not a feature of the game.
Mark says: TF selection should be at player option, and why not the others? I think Axi’s request would be useful during the remaining year or more of debugging we have. [Low, D8]

f145. (Axi) Shouldn't there be "back" buttons in all the launch screens, along with the "exit" ones? [Low, D7+, some back buttons would be difficult to implement due to program load sequence]

Xf146. (Axi) The [econ orders] reorder button seems to be reordering infraclasses by groups. Perhaps the expandable list idea mentioned somewhere above should be implemented, providing us with a much nicer representation of expenses. [ignore, econ interface will be completely replaced soon]

f147. (Axi) I feel that it would be ergonomically better if we could have a merged window for both civ, province and square orders, where we could give orders side by side. Also an option to clear all orders on each level would be swell.
Gary Commented: In my view this is the most critical improvement required after D7. The present system gives a horrendous amount of micromanagement, since the panels must be checked and modified every turn. [High D8 replace the existing econ gui]

X f149 (Richard) There should be some kind of home field advantage. Cities fall over way too easily. Maybe in city battles we should generate free horde units to represent militia. When the city is attacked, the units join the defending TF. Then they return to civilian life when the battle is over. [This has been addressed by Militia in D7.2, walls in D7.2 also help, will revisit if needed].

F151 (Laurent) road-building is pretty fast for me (again, I always put LOTS of kapital in it but even then, 12 squares including 2 hills and a mountain in one turn, it seems a lot).
Mark said: But part of the reason its so fast at 30% road building and above is that 30% is an Enormous amount of resources to put in roads.
What real 'civ' spends more than a few percent of revenues on road-building? There are so many other competing demands...
Laurent said: Yes, but in the game, which is not a simulation, it seems weird. There are so many things the player doesn't see, that roads, which are something he sees (and not in a lost menu but on the map), should have more importance than in real-life.
Anyway, players need feedback on how much money to put in the road-building (so I don't put 30% where 5% is needed), and they can stage it over several turns.
My suggestion, maybe put in an arbitrary delay for road building so it happens over time. This would also prevent flash-building of roads during an invasion. Maybe an automatic 2-turn delay between order and building? [low D7.1]

F152 (Blakis) Why can't I just use the arrow keys to move a unit one tile at a time? This was implemented by Gary, but seems to have become broken, probably fixable with relatively little effort [med D7.3]
Boomer/Aaron fixed this. The only issue was his fix requires use of CTRL+ARROW because the ARROW keys were being eaten in some component before we even see
them. Need to track down problem so CTRL not needed [low d8].

F155 (axi) Roadbuilding could use the same code as pathfinding to show on the map the number of turns in which each road segment will be built, with priority based on the order with which the orders were given. [Low D8?]

F156 (Axi) There should be an option to make visible all friendy TF paths on the map. It would also be nice to have a preview of where each unit should be next turn, if nothing intervenes. This is in anticipation of future major wars. [med D8]

F157 Make it so pathfinding into the black doesn’t give away terrain info [med D8]

f161 (twinge) Another irksome style you use is how the menus work. When you click on a menu that has more than one option associated with it (IE, almost every single menu) they pop up somewhere else on the screen. I find that pretty annoying; If it was done similar to standard windows submenus (where you move the mouse down to the menu target, and the submenus pop out--like the start menU) that would be ideal. Something close would be good too; right now it's quite odd =) Perhaps having that fixed by D8 would be good.[thoughts on this?]

f163 I (Mark) think the new event-driven bulletins work great, thanks for doing it Gary! Some of the bulletins were designed by me to fill "down time" when nothing else was happening. Unfortunately now they can occur when other event-driven bulletins come up. One thing that might be good is to have an event class that says "show on turn 10 or thereafter, but only when no other bulletin is being shown" How hard would that be? If two or more of this type would come up on the same turn, the one with the earliest turn number would be the one shown. Seems to me it would really help in streamlining the tutorial. Also some things I had listed as showing at "event X + 1 turn" seem to show at the same time as event X. [low, D8?] How much does the multiple-bulletins in the dawn tutorial bother people?

F164. Horses is listed as active even before you discover the horses resource, doesn't seem right. [leave pending discussion in tech thread on this topic]

F165 (Richard) I am constantly splitting off armies to retake the squares they walked through as they slipped by my armies. More micromanagement. I want to set up a border patrol, but the only way to do this now is to station an army in every square. That would be hideous micromanagement, especially with my civ expanding.
(Laurent comment) This one is quite serious in Jericho in particular. Automatic taking of a whole province under some conditions would help too (like controlling capital + opponent having no troops in the province). That would force AI to target capital and be a bit easier to intercept. Maybe it doesn't solve the problem. A "border patrol" order could also be implemented so that a TF with this order would move to reclaim territory lost in its protected province, or would move to a square of it sprotected province if there is an enemy in a neighbouring square. Note this is crude AI and is prone to abuse, but it seems feasible and could help reduce MM. Longer term, the TF(command) should be able to split so as to send only that number of units is needed to do the task so it can better react if someone attacks from somewhere else. Priority as far as reclaiming territory would have to be set to either eliminate opponent units first or reclaim territory first. I think the former is better in order to avoid armies running around one another in circles.
[we need something like this eventually, probably needs to wait for the real AI, D9?]

F166 (Richard) I have discovered an abusive strategy. It allows one small army to plunder an entire enemy civ. What I'll do is march one warrior into the outskirts of their civ, claiming the square. Then I have the warrior pick up all the people and move to another square. I then pick up all the people in the second square. Since the first square is empty, they will send about a thousand people to colonize it. I then march my warrior back to the first square and pick up those new colonists, leaving the empty second square which will also be colonized again.

This can continue until their population is too low to colonize anymore. At the end of this process, their entire civilization had about 4000 people and my lone warrior was escorting over 11,000 of their people. They had a big task force on their capital, but those armies just sat back and watch me steal all of their people.

Often, they would colonize a square that my armies were actually standing on. That seems wrong. [we need a fix for these issues, ideas?, medium D8]

F168 (Kull) Task Forces: How do you take units in a single tile and group them into multiple task forces? It would be nice if you could use something like "Shift-click" to highlight multiple units and group only those selected. [D9?]

F169 (PGrignon) After re-playing several time the Dawn Scenario on my small machine (iBook, 128Mb, 800x600) here are some features that would be great to introduce.

Features:
- Ability to choose a different font.
- Hot Keys and shortcuts for switching windows
- Contextual menu on Units in Overall map.
- Using keyboard arrows to scroll/pan.
- Settings for not storing traces ?
- Overall view of all the units/task forces. (maybe organized in a tree view).
Civ:
- Province1
-- U1,
-- TF2 (#Units)
- Prov2
-- TF4
-- TF3
- Is it necessary to get all the econ indicators ? Hide show some of them ?

F170 (Martin) It is unrealistic and quite anoying that you can claim a number of tiles by simply passing through them. This is OK as long as there is no (and in some cases very few) inhabitants, but generally you should have to remain some time in an area populated by a different nationality than the invading army. One solution could be to add an occupy/conquer order. The time used to cary out this order should then be calculated based on the atackers strength and the population. A note here is that liberating accupied tretory should be easier. A nice touch would be to make provinces have a chance of revolting if owner is not native.
Naval units should not be able to conquer land tiles. Land there yes, but hold forein terrain no. And they should be penalized for fighting while docked/beached.
[need to discuss exactly what to do, but these are clear issues]

F171 (Mark) If build location has a name I would like to see it in the Events list rather than just [5,8] or whatever the location is. I would go further and say that if there is a name, there's no need for the coordinates. [low D7.3]

XF172 (Mark) Have an 'About' menu item up top that shows the credits screen just like pushing the button [low D7.3]
F173 (Mark) We should label ports somehow so the player knows where they are, but that's a bit less urgent. Maybe an anchor graphic? [low D8]

---------------- Requests for manual / tutorial topics -----------------------

None at present
---------------- Keep this at bottom due to its large size -----------------------
F158 LARGE number of detailed suggestions by stickdude on the interface. Not high priority but useful to go over, maybe for D8. Some of the nonfunctional things he specifies should probably be taken out before D7.

---
First, I double-click the ClashD6_12.jar file, and I see the ...

"Select the option" screen
1. No splash screen, or opening movie... That's ok. The opening screen looks pretty good, and it works.
2. I know this is picky, but "Select an option" sounds better to me than "the" option.
3. The logo is a button, which seems odd.

I click on "Select a scenario" and up comes the ...

"Select the scenario" screen
1. Should this be resizable, or a fixed size? I vote for fixed, since it's acting like a dialog box.
2. Again, the logo on the left size is a button. Should something happen when I click it (right now nothing does happen)?
3. "Carthago delenda est" is the title of the first scenario. What does that mean?
4. I can delete all the text from the scenario descriptions. Should they be read-only, or better yet, not text boxes at all (see below)?

Here's what I'd expect to see on this screen:
1. All the scenarios are listed, but in a bigger font, and without descriptions. They aren't buttons, either.
2. The logo is still on here somewhere.
3. As the user moves the cursor over the scenario name, the scenario name is highlighted somehow, or a box drawn around it, or something to indicate which scenario you're about to select; and the description is displayed in a different part of the dialog.

4. If the user moves the cursor off the scenario name, the description disappears (basic mouse-over behaviour).
5. If the user clicks on the name of a scenario, that scenario is selected.

Ok, I click "Select" next to the first scenario, and I see the ...

"Select the civilization" screen:
1. Logo = button...
2. While typing this, I forgot which scenario I chose. It would be nice to have the selected scenario and the description displayed here so I can make an informed civilization choice.
3. It would also be nice to have a short description of the differing goals of each civilization in the scenario. Again, this should be a roll-over type effect.
4. If I selected the wrong scenario, there's no way to go back and choose something different. I have to exit and restart.

[Richard Bruns]

This is a log of comments I wrote while playing the Dawn scenario. As far as I can tell, they don't duplicate the existing bug and feature requests.

----
If you pull up a tutorial page with the Bulletins button, it vanishes and I can't get it again.

I keep trying to right-click the unit on the main map to give orders. Can you make the unit menu for the primary task force appear when the unit on the main map is right-clicked? (low priority)

The detail frame has unnecessary scroll bars that scroll to empty gray areas.

The overview map never has any scroll bars, even if the box is too small to display it. This could be a problem on larger maps.

I still get display glitches, but that's probably the fault of my video card.

Nothing seemed to happen after the second unit move. It said to move 2 more NW, but nothing was there and there were no other messages.

Still no scroll bars on the econ windows. This game is obviously not meant for 600x800 resolution.

While playing the demo, I put all my excess income into education. It did seem to produce higher tech levels in farming and biology. I'll have to play again and compare those levels to no investment.

I have to turn my monitor's brightness way up to see into the fog of war.

I still haven't found those horses. Will this mess up the game?

Something is seriously wrong here, probably the first true bug. In order to prepare for the barbarians, I am spending 200% of my civ income for the domestication tech, for a net cash flow of -22. Yet my treasury keeps growing! And as far as I can tell, the Horses tech isn't increasing much at all. It is gaining at about the same rate as the Farming technology, which I am spending nothing on. It's almost as if no money is getting spent.

The barbarians came. My economy is now big enough to crank out 2 warriors per turn. Maintaining a standing army seems kind of pointless when you can raise new ones so fast. Which is of course historically accurate.

Another bug. Northern barbarians are moving directly south. My capital defense army is moving directly north. The armies jump over each other, leaving the barbarians in my capital and my army directly north of them. That's not nice. At least I didn't lose the capital completely; it moved to another square. But I have no way of moving it back.

Every turn, it keeps saying that barbarians are winning a combat in 6,13. I don't see any barbarians there, and I have a massive army in that square. I also still own the place, so they can't really be winning fights.

There is no way to disband armies I don't need and return them to the population. I am stuck with all of them, and their upkeep.

My settlement and main empire grew until they touched, and I noticed that there is still a dividing line between my two provinces. Nice.

AM I supposed to be doing something else? I killed all the invaders long ago, and now I'm just hitting end turn. I'll explore and see if anything happens.

Ok, they came again. But I can never seem to attack them. They always move somewhere else before I can smite their little armies. There should be some command that makes your TF's engage the enemy wherever they are. Now I end up with an army where they were last turn, while they move to pillage some other part of my civ. Its annoying, and its micromanagement. Each turn I have to issue new orders to try to hunt them down.

I am constantly splitting off armies to retake the squares they walked through as they slipped by my armies. More micromnaagement. I want to set up a border patrol, but the only way to do this now is to station an army in every square. That would be hideous micromanagement, especially with my civ expanding.

One unit of barbarians has an attack/defense of 200, and one unit of my guys has an attack/defense of 40. Yet they have exactly the same graphic. That makes no sense. They should at least look different if the power level difference is so large. Perhaps part of the problem is that the dark green power circles are practically invisible when overlaid on the dark green terrain. Next demo, the advisors should warn me that these units are five times as powerful as the barbarian units I fought before.

Using units may require micromanagement, but making them surely doesn't. The econ interface allows me to spawn several dozen new warriors in just a couple turns, simply by setting one number.

!!! Major Bug !!!: I got a message saying "BarbarianArmy built in [5,9]" At first I thought it was the enemy making new forces, but when I looked I saw that it was my unit! It turned out that [5,9] was the capital of my second province. It had all the combat stats of a barbarian unit and was called BarbarianArmy, but it was Natufian! Obviously I have no tech to build something like that; I wasn't even ordering any units to be built at the time.

I got another BarbarianArmy! This one was built in the capital of my first province. It was the turn after the first one showed up. I seem to get them when I completely destroy an invading army in a province.

I finally got chariots, long after my hordes of warriors took out the invasion.

Oh, now I get the message about the huge barbarian units. Apparently it was tied to the chariot unit creation event, not the actual movement of the enemies.

Never mind; there actually is another huge barb army. Better spawn chariots.

I noticed that the attack of chariots is changed by the tech levels, but that no other units are affected this way.

Wow, that's a big power circle. Too bad all my units are located where the barbarians wer last turn, and there was no actual fighting.

Graphical Glitch: The bottom part of large power circles is cut off.
----

The game looks good overall. My only serious complaint is the amount of unit-pushing the game requires. There should be some kind of patrol command that automatically sends out armies to fight invaders as they approach, and then returns the armies to the capital after the fighting is done.

[Richard Bruns]

I played the Rome scenario. It is clear that much more care was put into the Dawn scenario than the Roman one; the former was a much better scenario overall.
----
There seems to be some kind of odd cap on what I can spend on the military. I want to build lots of Legions and I have the treasury to run a defecit, but it won't even let me spend an amount equal to what I am earning per turn. But I can still overspend on something like Education.

Hannibal wiped out a couple of my legions and then turned around and went home. Was he supposed to do that?

Occupying territory is a pain. The units don't want to go where it is harder to walk, so I have to set their paths a square at a time. An order like "Capture enemy territory" would be useful.

I wish it would tell me how much army supplies are required. I have no idea what the army needs.

Why can't I enter non-integer tax rates?

Around turn 100, I found that I could not make any new legions in Iberia or Africa. The window said I'd be making 4 a turn, and the money was being deducted from my income, but nothing came.

The game is getting horribly slow as I keep playing. There has to be some kind of memory leak.

Now I can't make any new units anywhere. The civ simply will not produce legions. All my existing forces are being lost to attrition, and there is nothing to replace them. This is probably a major bug, has anyone else seen it?

[chequita guevara]

Do you have a list of which models have been updated? So I can put them on the website with the blurb.

[Mark_Everson]

This will be very brief due to lack of time... I'll try to hit on the most important things

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Do you have a list of which models have been updated? So I can put them on the website with the blurb.

Other than the tech model, which is new, the military model has been updated so that units attempt to retreat when a battle is going against them. The only updates in the economics model are things tech-related. These include that the farming and production sectors increases in capability with tech, and education is new, which increases the tech growth rate. Please try to get it done tonight or tomorrow during the day, because I am gone on vacation Saturday morning, and won't be able to upload any changes you make.

Originally posted by Richard Bruns
This is a log of comments I wrote while playing the Dawn scenario. As far as I can tell, they don't duplicate the existing bug and feature requests.

Thanks for trying it out, and the detailed comments! Many of your issues will make it into the bugs or feature requests when I next update them.

Nothing seemed to happen after the second unit move. It said to move 2 more NW, but nothing was there and there were no other messages.

That's really bizarre! When the second move is completed, you should be on square [5,10]. That triggers a message indexed by seeing the wheat. I have no idea how things got so screwed up. If you are running without hidden squares you can get that message at the beginning instead, but that doesn't screw up all the messages. Could you please try again?

Something is seriously wrong here, probably the first true bug. In order to prepare for the barbarians, I am spending 200% of my civ income for the domestication tech, for a net cash flow of -22. Yet my treasury keeps growing! And as far as I can tell, the Horses tech isn't increasing much at all. It is gaining at about the same rate as the Farming technology, which I am spending nothing on. It's almost as if no money is getting spent.

I should have explained this better in the tutorial. Essentially, your ability to make different things depends on the amounts produced in various sectors. Military units require lots of manufactured goods (weapons). Other things also need manufactured goods, like army supplies IIRC. No matter how much gold you spend from the treasury, you can't build things that require more stuff in the economy has. The weakness of the econ GUI is that it only knows the cost and feasibility of orders individually. It doesn't yet know, for example, that perhaps army supplies (which takes precedence) may already have use up all the manufactured goods. Generally if your orders are less than 100% of taxes you will get what you ask for. Anything above that, it's a crapshoot. We'll try to refine this with the new econ gui.

Every turn, it keeps saying that barbarians are winning a combat in 6,13. I don't see any barbarians there, and I have a massive army in that square. I also still own the place, so they can't really be winning fights.

Sound like a bug to me... never seen it.

There is no way to disband armies I don't need and return them to the population. I am stuck with all of them, and their upkeep.

I'd like that too! Maybe in D7.1...

I am constantly splitting off armies to retake the squares they walked through as they slipped by my armies. More micromnaagement. I want to set up a border patrol, but the only way to do this now is to station an army in every square. That would be hideous micromanagement, especially with my civ expanding.

I agree in general. We just didn't have a good way to reduce this given the current state of the AI. We will try to fix it fairly soon.

There seems to be some kind of odd cap on what I can spend on the military. I want to build lots of Legions and I have the treasury to run a defecit, but it won't even let me spend an amount equal to what I am earning per turn. But I can still overspend on something like Education.

See the bit above about overspending 100%. The reason that it works okay with education is that education is almost purely services, and the way the economy works, gold from the treasury can turn into services with no problem.

I wish it would tell me how much army supplies are required. I have no idea what the army needs.

It's set automatically to be what your army needs.

Around turn 100, I found that I could not make any new legions in Iberia or Africa. The window said I'd be making 4 a turn, and the money was being deducted from my income, but nothing came.

Now I can't make any new units anywhere. The civ simply will not produce legions. All my existing forces are being lost to attrition, and there is nothing to replace them. This is probably a major bug, has anyone else seen it?

My guess is that army supplies are costing you 100% of your income. If not, let me know and will see what I can do.

Gotta run,

Mark

[edit for clarity, many 'typos' due to the unedited dictation software output]

[LDiCesare]

I second Richard's point about Rome being unable to build Legions. It happens very early to me.
The building of a BarbarianArmy is funny. Maybe there is a BarbarianArmy order promoted when the AI took control of the square? I never got it, anyway.
Knowing the support cost of the armies you want to build would be a good thing. It is hard to figure out now.
Disbanding armies is a must.
I never had any problems catching enemy armies fast. Do you try to intercept them instead of following them? I actually like the fact that you have to plan where your opponent will go. Still, I agree patrol orders or such could be welcome.

[tniem]

I have played the tutorial now twice. The first time just before I reached the barbarians in the NW the second time with a two unit TF, the game got stuck. It said that the previous turn was still running and that the next turn could not be started. I couldn't figure out what was going wrong but that turn never ended so I restarted.

The second time I played after I defeated the enemy and built my first road, the help screens stopped coming up and did not tell me that they would not be coming up. I was left to try and figure out what to do by myself. I learned a great deal but after 200 turns I had lost because I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing following building that road. If you want to cut off help there, it would be fine with me. You should just have a popup that says that this ends the help portion of the scenario - you still need to do x, y, and z in the next 175 turns to beat the scenario.

I am going to try again today to play and see what happens. But I just thought you should know the bugs I have experienced because someone that is just giving this a chance once and will not have patience probably would have given up by now.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi tniem, thanks for trying the demo and giving us info on your status. Wecome to the forums, and thanks for your comments in the feedback section yesterday!

I don't know for sure what the problem is, but I 've got a guess. When you make the 2nd settlement there's a statement in one of the bulletins that you should go to the NE of the original settlement and find the horses square. Much of the rest is keyed to discovery of horses, and the subsequent research into building chariots. IF you missed that statement, then I could see how what you experienced could happen.

Failing anything else, please try exploring the map until you find the horses icon, and move into that square. Hopefully that will set things right.

Perhaps in the future we should have a setting on the bulletins where if they haven't come up by X turn number that they should be shown on turn X just to stop getting in ruts like you did .

Thanks for sticking with it! If you get Really stuck, but are intrigued in general, you can open the .jar file with winzip and extract the file (IIRC) \class\scenarios\dawn1\dawn1.xml. If you look at it with at text editor, you can scroll down to where the messages are, and just read them. I'm not encouraging that, but it is an option. If there are more troubles like yours we can try and have the tutorial text put up on the forum in a presentable fashion.

Cya,

Mark

[Richard Bruns]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
That's really bizarre! When the second move is completed, you should be on square [5,10].

I think I may have moved northeast instead of northwest. I also had trouble finding the horses later in the game. Maybe the popup should have the square coordinate.

It's set automatically to be what your army needs.

Yes, assuming taxes are higher than the required amount. But I like to set the taxes as low as possible if I have no reason to be doing something. That way the civ grows faster. But I don't want to set taxes too low to support the armies, so I have to kind of guess, based on the percentages of the last turn, what the lowest tax rate is that will adequately support the army.

My guess is that army supplies are costing you 100% of your income. If not, let me know and will see what I can do.

Nope, by then I had grown the civ so that supplies were only about 7% of income at tax rate of ten. And after the battles of attrition, I only had about half a dozen legions. I know I should have had more than enough money and production available.

[LDiCesare]

Hi tniem, thanks for trying to cope with the game problems.
The "cannot start new turn" happens when some bug stopped the program. If you run from a command line, you get a "stack trace" (text) in the window from which you ran it. I think this is explained in the D6 manual or the readme (I changed computer and don't have the files to check where it is right now ). If you manage to get such a stack, please post it here, it will help us correct the bug greatly.
Unless someone objects, I will put a message to tell where horses are to be found in the demo so it will be easier. Maybe a few turns after the initial message fired, if horses haven't been discovered yet.

[Mark_Everson]

Hey Richard:

Originally posted by Richard Bruns

It's set automatically to be what your army needs.

Yes, assuming taxes are higher than the required amount. But I like to set the taxes as low as possible if I have no reason to be doing something. That way the civ grows faster. But I don't want to set taxes too low to support the armies, so I have to kind of guess, based on the percentages of the last turn, what the lowest tax rate is that will adequately support the army.

Ah, now I see... Good idea not to throttle the people! But the existing interface tells you how many Army supply points are needed (see #/Turn field). So it seems to me simple math suffices. In any case you can get very close to optimal with just a few guesses. So what am I missing?

My guess is that army supplies are costing you 100% of your income. If not, let me know and will see what I can do.

Nope, by then I had grown the civ so that supplies were only about 7% of income at tax rate of ten. And after the battles of attrition, I only had about half a dozen legions. I know I should have had more than enough money and production available.

Well that sucks! Must be a bug. I'll go looking for it now that I know it's there. But it will be a while since I"m about to leave on vacation for a week.

[Richard Bruns]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
But the existing interface tells you how many Army supply points are needed (see #/Turn field). So it seems to me simple math suffices. In any case you can get very close to optimal with just a few guesses. So what am I missing?

I think the thing that confused me was that the army supply field accepts a percentage like the other fields, but the percentage you enter has no effect.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Richard Bruns
I think the thing that confused me was that the army supply field accepts a percentage like the other fields, but the percentage you enter has no effect.

Hey Richard:

Actually it Does have effect, but only while the next turn is cranked. Then Army Supplies are recalculated using the 100% supply criterion -- so if you put in 0 by hand every turn your army will get no supplies. I expect for the new econ interface we'll figure out a better way to do this, so that you could just set your armies to X% supplies and leave it there.

One interesting possibility is to crudely simulate mobilization and demobilization by changing the level of supplies your units get. To do demobilization you'd set it so that the army only gets say 20% of supplies. Great for economic growth, But of course any units would fight lousy if there were a surprise attack. IF you put in a lag, such that you can only increase the supply setting by 30% per turn or something it would simulate the time lag mobilization requires before forces get up to full fighting trim. I'm not necessarily suggesting this as a long-term thing, but the prospect sounds kind of fun to me. More levers for the player!

[tniem]

Ok, thanks for the responses guys. When I played, I found the horses but it didn't tell me what to do from there. I didn't get a chance to replay the demo today (will hopefully have time this weekend). When I find the horses, what was I supposed to do? Set up a new colony on the horses? Research them in some way? Or should the game have given me a popup when I found the horses?

[tniem]

I replayed the demo tonight and finally defeated it. Thanks for all the help guys! I found out what I did wrong. I never went directly on top of the horse, I thought by simply seeing it with my unit that was all I had to do. So, wow, was I stupid and the game kept going waiting for me to go directly on that map square to trigger the next event. Besides my stupidity the only thing that I could see you changing is that after so many turns of an idiot, such as my self, wandering around you tell them to go directly on the horse in square ???x???. That would be the only quick suggestion.

The other quick question I have before I start looking into the other scenarios you guys have included is about cancelling movement and road commands. Is there a way to do this? I have been trying to figure that out and cannot. But how do I keep my troops from moving after I accidently hit the wrong square for them to move to?

Thanks in advance.

[LDiCesare]

You can cancel unit orders. Select the taskforce in the taskforce frame, use right-mouse-button, and Cancel Orders. I don't think you can cancel roads, however?

[Mark_Everson]

Hi tniem, glad to hear it worked. We'll have to try to be more explicit next time so we don't torture the playtesters!

Gary did put in a way to cancel road orders! If you are in Roads mode (Roads button has been clicked, and current road orders show) a right-click anywhere will cancel all road orders.

Good Luck! I'm off on vacation and will only be able to visit the forurms sporadically...

Cya, Everyone!

Mark

[Richard Bruns]

Jericho:

Why is the farming tech inactive? This would have been the perfect scenario to test this technology.

The bottom part of the map seems cut off. I have a unit in a tile that is halfway visible, and I can't scroll down more.

There seems to be no victory message. I've wiped everyone out and the game is still running.

I have discovered an abusive strategy. It allows one small army to plunder an entire enemy civ. What I'll do is march one warrior into the outskirts of their civ, claiming the square. Then I have the warrior pick up all the people and move to another square. I then pick up all the people in the second square. Since the first square is empty, they will send about a thousand people to colonize it. I then march my warrior back to the first square and pick up those new colonists, leaving the empty second square which will also be colonized again.

This can continue until their population is too low to colonize anymore. At the end of this process, their entire civilization had about 4000 people and my lone warrior was escorting over 11,000 of their people. They had a big task force on their capital, but those armies just sat back and watch me steal all of their people.

Often, they would colonize a square that my armies were actually standing on. That seems wrong.

I eventually took over their civ with a bigger TF, and resettled all their people in the squares I had taken them from. But I could have just as easily hauled all those people back to my civ as slaves, or simply thrown my lone army against their capital TF and watched the majority of their civ's population evaporate.

I know that slave raiding was a historical fact, and we should leave some of it. But this was too easy and too overpowering. This is more evidence that the people of a civ should resist invasion, forming militias and guerilla units. Another possible way to deal with the problem would be to have the people run away from the enemy units and migrate to places where their own civ has armies. At least prevent them from actively migrating onto squares that have enemy armies.

----
The Atilla scenario is horribly slow. It took nearly two minutes for the civ econ orders window to load up. When I did get it up, it took nearly as much time to register the changes. The scenario is basically unplayable. Obviously there are severe scaling problems in the engine. This does not bode well.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Richard Bruns
Why is the farming tech inactive? This would have been the perfect scenario to test this technology.

Hi Richard, we just didn't think of it... most of the focus was on getting the dawn1 tutorial scenario running. It's easy to do, and is a natural to add next time around. If you want to mess with the scenario file, you could do it yourself by copying the tech from dawn1. Thanks for the other bugs and issues, I'll put them on the list when I get back

I have discovered an abusive strategy. It allows one small army to plunder an entire enemy civ.

Good idea, hadn't thought of that exploit. We'll have to discuss how to plug it as design moves forward. If you want, you could put the same points over in the colonization thread for detailed discussion there.

The Atilla scenario is horribly slow. (snip) Obviously there are severe scaling problems in the engine. This does not bode well.

It was slow for me too, although not nearly that bad. The problem is that this isn't a good time for optimization since a lot of things stilll need to be worked out. We need to figure out the best place in which to put our efforts, and in terms of optimizing for speed, I don't think we're where we can make a good decision yet on a lot of factors. I'll work on a faster way to handle the econ orders when I refactor the econ code. We can also keep these issues in mind for the new econ interface so that those issues don't recur. If there are scaling issues, we'll handle them if they become critical. For now, with your computer, I guess just ignore attila...

[manurein]

Hi all !!
Maybe some of you remember me

Just a quick word to let u know that I downloaded demo 7 and could check that it works on my system (an old PII notebook with Win2K), howwever I could not find time to playtest it.

Keep up the good work guys, I left this team for some time now but I'm still very commited to observe your progresses and am waiting impatiently for every new release !!

Best regards - Manu

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Manu! Good to hear from you

I'm looking forward to seeing what you have to say about the demo! Unfortunately the social and government model stuff that is the descendant of your original model isn't ready for prime time yet. It should be there in one of the next two demos though...

Cya,

Mark

[Mark_Everson]

Demo 7.1 is now out! Here is a brief description of what's new and notable. :-)

Features:

1. Ship transport of task forces is now implemented.

There is one ship fleet for each side present in the delenda scenario. You can use them to transport units very rapidly. Here is the procedure for loading be land TF to a naval TF:
a. Select the naval TF that you want to load troops onto
b. Right click on the TF that you want to load, and pick "Load to selected TF"
The loaded land TF will now be greyed out to signify that it is carried on board the naval TF
To Unload, right click on either the carried or carrying TF, and pick "Unload from selected TF"

2. You can now disband units, which is one of the requests we had from Demo 7.

This helps a lot in reducing army supplies support costs for units that are not needed. Usage is described more fully in the Dawn tutorial scenario. You can't disband an entire TF, this command only works on single units which can be within a TF. To disband the unit right click on it, and pick "Disband the unit completely". If you already have people in the square or the unit is disbanded, then part of the unit's manpower will go into the populace. Otherwise the unit's manpower just disappears.

Minor Changes:

1. The Dawn tutorial scenario has been updated in numerous small ways to explain some new features, and further explain the items where we got questions on the Demo 7 version.

2. Moving a TF now works slightly differently. As before, you press the Move button to initiate movement. Now you can select any number of waypoints for the unit movement by clicking on squares. However, at the end of giving each TF its move orders you must click the "End Move" button. For those who have played the game before, we'd like to hear if you think this way is better than the old approach, which didn't require an "end move" button.

Tips:

1. In the Jericho scenario, everyone else hates Jericho. So if the player wants an easy game they should take anyone but Jericho, whereas Jericho is the one to take for a real challenge. It is quite hard to win as Jericho, but it can be done!

2. You shouldn't play Attila unless you have a fast computer or are patient. It can run quite slowly on older computers. We are looking into fixing that.

3. At present you can't win the Delenda scenario. So don't expect a victory message!

4. In the Dawn tutorial scenario you'll frequently need to run five to ten turns after achieving all the objectives before you see the victory message. As before, the Dawn tutorial is the first thing you should play!


The Team really wants to hear what you think about the Demo! Comments and criticisms are solicited. Before you type a lot of detailed comments, you might want to check and see which are already in the bug or feature requests lists near the top of this thread.

Please go to the top of this thread for information on Demo 7 features, and a link to the download.

Temporarily, I'm going to put a link here to the new zip for D7.1. This is Only the zip. To find what you should do with it you still need to read the decription. Just used the links below:

Download Instructions, don't download the zip from there, use the Demo 7.1 Zip.

[Nebula]

I downloaded clash 7 and 7.1 and both run real slow on my computer. For instance when I press the mouse on a square it takes 2 seconds for the cursor to appear. When I try to scroll the map with the minimap it also takes 2 seconds for it to update the screen. This delay happens more when I for instance select a unit an want to move it. It makes the game unplayable.

When I press the right mouse button on units a pop up window appears to the left upper side of the screen.

I havent played it further for the slowdown is really irritating.

I hope this slowdown can be fixed for I want to play this game.

[LDiCesare]

Hi Nebula thanks for trying. What machine do you have, and which jvm (java) do you use? With a bit of luck a better jvm would do the trick. Also, if you tried Attila, it IS slow to the point of being unplayable, but other scens are better.

[Nebula]

I have a AMD 1333 with a geforce 2 mx and 256mb of memory. I have one of the latest Java runtimes installed.

I tried the first and last screnario and these do run at normal speed.

Does the slowdown have to do with the amount of units in the game?

[LDiCesare]

I don't think it is the number of units. I once made so many units I got OutOfMemoryErrors very often and it didn't run too slow. It wasn't in great shape either, but only the new turns took some time. I think it is the economics which take a lot of time. It might have to do with the pahfinding too, but that comes from an old profiling I did, and I can't see who calls that pathfinding. So basically, it is more the number of populated squares than the number of units that causes slowdowns. We know we must investigate that, but since the economics code needs some rewriting (because the architecture of the code is not to the liking of Gary, whose judgement I trust), we hope some of the problems will fix themselves that way. We also know the econ GUI takes some time to show up (particularly on lower end machines), but, again, this is a part of the code that must be rewritten. Unless you tell us it is very beautiful and ergonomic, but, until now, noone did.

[Nebula]

I am playing the 4th screnario and it plays ok. I got beaten at about turn 20 and lost the game. I will need to take my time and learn to play the game for at this point it is just a puzzle.

Keep up the good work.

[Mark_Everson]

Hey Nebula, thanks for checking out the Demo. Your best bet is to play the Dawn tutorial scenario. It doesn't explain everything, but about 80% of what you really need to know is in it. Looking forward to hearing what you think after you've gone through the tutorial...

Cya,

Mark