Clash Demo 8 Download and Comments

[demipomme]

Clash is still alive!

Checking the Clash website periodically I thought that the project was dead as the website hasn't been updated since 2003. On the off chance I took a look at the forum and what do I find, a new demo!

It's looking really good and plays more smoothly now. I particularly like the feature of gaining control of a whole province once the capital is taken. However I would suggest that when capturing enemy territory, squares revert to original owner unless occupied for several turns. This would make tracking down lone enemy units that are stealing your square easier. I also think that a square should only be able to be part of a province if connected by an adjacent square.

To my knowledge, most of the world's land was occupied with nomadic, semi-nomadic and small settled tribes before the advent of civilisation. To model this is the game would require every square to be occupied, with each tribe owning between 1 and 5 squares. These are then assimilated into the growing civilisations by war and/or diplomacy.

What I dislike about the Jericho scenario (and all civilisation style games) is that I have to send units across vast swathes of uninhabited land to fight my enemies. This is unrealistic in two manners, firstly it didn't (to my knowledge) happen and secondly it wouldn't: most wars are fought over territory and if a civilisation has enough territory to expand into, why would it fight?

Even if squares are unoccupied, a civilisation can claim ownership to it. Take Antarctica for example.

I'm not too keen on the colonisation function as it seems to me a little too powerful. However it has an important role in moving ethnicities into new areas, so that loyal ethnicities secure control of area. There are many examples of this throughout the colonial period. However most people moved voluntarily rather than being moved by the military.

I did notice a couple of bugs. Firstly, the Tutorial and Jericho scenarios kept crashing saying "Still running last turn, cannot start a new one". This doesn't annoy me too much, as a windows user I'm used to things crashing, but being able to save would be nice (perhaps next demo?). Secondly, I failed the Tutorial because I wasn't attacked by the Northern Barbarians. This seems a little unfair to me as I had little control over their invasion plans.

Please don't take these negative comments too seriously, because the game is already the best civilisation style game out there. Cheers.

P.S. If you need someone to update the website, I know a little bit of html and would be glad to help.

[LDiCesare]

When you lose a province, it vanishes from the map even though it still exists. My cartographers didn't forget about it, it should still show up, just in the dimmed fog of war.

Okay, this is now coded: You'll keep seeing the provinces that you know. Note I don't do a civ3-like thing where you know when a city half the world away switches hands. You keep knowing the same info until you send a unit or get knowledge of the map to refresh your info.

[LDiCesare]

Hi Fosse,

Some panels in the UI open up to be too small. The social panel in Dawn opened so tiny that I didn't even know the pie charts were there until I expanded it again while playing around. Also, what are those pies?

Social panel opened too small? I must check that again. At a time, it didn't even show...
(edit) The panel should have a default size of 500x300. If that's what you get and it's too small for you, I can increase the default size. If that's not that size, then we should check the settings file in the jar to see if it's smaller for some reason.(/edit)
The pies show the relative proportion of social classes, ethnicitiies and religions in you empire.
Social classes can help with the ruler panel: If you have 90% power held by the military and a social class aristocracy that makes only 10% of the population, you're likely to get riots if you go the way the military wants you to because they represent a minority of the population. Ethnic and religious pies show ethnicity and religion breakdown, which lets you know whether you should lower the ethnic/religious discrimination policies. Also, ethnic will tell you that you have to beware about a new ethnic group. If they are a small minority, they may riot very locally and you may have to handle them by hand rather than using the button (which TRIES to find the best solution).

Pull down menus don't open under their button. This is EXTREMELY annoying.

You saw that too... I am afraid this needs some serious overhaul of the ui infrastructure in order to fix that stuff si I didn't do it. I'm still annoyed and would probably like them to at least always open in the same place. Or something...

In Dawn the southern barbarians took 2 of the 3 province tiles, but the capital was still mine. I got a report that I had lost control of the province. Is this supposed to happen this way?

No. Only if the capital is tajen you lose the province, but one thing may happen: Barbs move into your square and take it and, in the same turn, you move into the same square and take it back. So you'd get a message. If you never moved your army from the capital, then it's a bug.

In Dawn a little grey box often appears on the Full map. it moves around as I click things.

Don't know this one.

When you lose a province, it vanishes from the map even though it still exists. My cartographers didn't forget about it, it should still show up, just in the dimmed fog of war.

I'm (tangentially) working on this, so that will be fixed.

Before Rome locked up I found myself not always knowing what had happened between turns.

If little icons appeared in squares where battles had happened (and maybe a different icon where they are still happening), this would help out.
Also, since enemy units "pop" from one place to the next, it would be nice if we could see their previous movement path from the last few turns.

Icons for battles should be doable. The units don't really pop, they pop 10 times (one per tick) but that's actually often too fast and they do not glide, so it shows badly. Having smoothed movement would be an option, but since the move happens in one tick, it would be hard to show. Coordinates (polygons) would make things easier... I don't know about showing a previous path.

In the Ancient mideast. When i capture native land it becomes my province, but called Native Land. I currently have two long strings of this province on my north and south. Does the program consider them to be the same province? If not, could they just be called Native land (1) or (2) until I get around to naming them?

Yes, that's the same province. You can right click on a square to affect a square to a different (even new) province. Though square per square, that's tedious. This scenario has a huge, single, Native Land province, which not what we'd like in the long run.

Also, I'm on turn 4 and each turn takes around 20 seconds to process, and grinds the system to a halt while it's at it.

Well, will that make it better that it used to be worse? My computer is a laptop with 1.8GHz, 256Mb, XP. I think the problem lies a lot in the econ, but there may still be ai glitches as I didn't replay that scenario after the latest ai changes. I'll check it to see if there's one big thing that can be corrected fast (may very well be the case since you mention turn 4, which may be when some units are built).

[Fosse]

I've just gotten around to downloading Demo 8 to my laptop at work.

It's a 1.4 GHz, 256MB running Windows XP.

I've been fiddling with it over the past hour or two, and have played Dawn fast and loose to my defeat, Carthage as Rome until the program froze up about a dozen turns into it, and about five turns of the Ancient Middle East.

The following are my quickest first impressions. It's been ages since I played the last demo version, and I've been checking the forums once a week or so, so I feel like I have a decent idea of what's going on.

Long decimals are mostly gone, but I still see them sometimes. They really make things seem weird. Like I'm running a computer program instead of leading people. Also, in Carthage with giant militaries there should really be comas in the battle reports. Seeing an attack of 4,596,202 is better than 4596202, especially in a box full of numbers.

I don't know if the ruler stuff is working in all the scenarios, but looking at it I'm not sure exactly what "Empire Preferences" are. Is that the effective decision made by the other blocs before the ruler stuff comes into it?

Some panels in the UI open up to be too small. The social panel in Dawn opened so tiny that I didn't even know the pie charts were there until I expanded it again while playing around. Also, what are those pies?

Pull down menus don't open under their button. This is EXTREMELY annoying.

In Dawn the southern barbarians took 2 of the 3 province tiles, but the capital was still mine. I got a report that I had lost control of the province. Is this supposed to happen this way?

In Dawn a little grey box often appears on the Full map. it moves around as I click things.

When you lose a province, it vanishes from the map even though it still exists. My cartographers didn't forget about it, it should still show up, just in the dimmed fog of war.

Before Rome locked up I found myself not always knowing what had happened between turns.

If little icons appeared in squares where battles had happened (and maybe a different icon where they are still happening), this would help out.
Also, since enemy units "pop" from one place to the next, it would be nice if we could see their previous movement path from the last few turns.

So in a turn with many battles on many tiles, I would see the paths the enemy took to get there, and there would be little shields showing where things went down. This saves from having to check every tile in a crowded area when the map gets extremely full.


In the Ancient mideast. When i capture native land it becomes my province, but called Native Land. I currently have two long strings of this province on my north and south. Does the program consider them to be the same province? If not, could they just be called Native land (1) or (2) until I get around to naming them?

Also, I'm on turn 4 and each turn takes around 20 seconds to process, and grinds the system to a halt while it's at it.


Great work guys, I'm looking forward to the other scenarios when I'm not at work and afraid of being caught. :b

[alms66]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
BTW I was looking for input from Others on the importance of those features. ;-)

I understand wanting input for the transitions (well, not really, but let's say I do ), but the larger tiles needs no discussion whatsoever, it simply needs to be done. The height of a tile image should be 3/4 of the width, not 1/2. That's where the term "3/4 view" comes from!

[Rasputin]

oh ok, glad you have thought about it .

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by alms66
I'd rate these of relatively high importance.
(snip)
though I think we can live with the blockiness for another demo or two.

IMO it should wait maybe a few demos as you say. BTW I was looking for input from Others on the importance of those features. ;-)


Hey Rasputin. Hexes are harder to draw, and we account for the movement asymmetry between directions since movement costs 1.4x as much along diagonals. The long term plan is to go to a continuous coordinate system.

[Rasputin]

have you guys considered using hexes instead of squares? usually makes for easier movement .

[alms66]

F184 (Alms) Graphics Terrain Transitions.
[no clue as to importance, others?]

F187 I’d (Alms) like Larger Tile Support:
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthre...459#post3483459

I'd rate these of relatively high importance. The larger tile support is essential to drawing proper mountains, hills, trees and other 'elevated' tiles while the transitions would improve the look of the tiles by making them less blocky, and in general, make the game a little more sexy. Its also a generally accepted fact that sexier things get more attention.
Seriously though, the larger tile thing is a very easy fix and transitions, while the hardest of the three big graphics requests by me, is very important to making the map look as good as possible, though I think we can live with the blockiness for another demo or two.

F185 a. (Mark) Should have an indicator on the map that shows where provincial and civ capitals are. Maybe a star in the civ color, or a flag or something. Also put in a target flag in the AI so that provincial capitals can be targeted specifically. [medium, D8.1]
b. (Alms) And/or we could add a “Next Capitol” button to the interface, which centers the view on the next capitol in the list. [low D8.5]

Maybe we should add the capitol's name to the map as well? In a similar manner to Civ. We could also add population like in Civ.

[Rasputin]

said i like the sound of this game, but at present appears too many windows need to be kept open , which for a game in which you state you want limited micromanagment it has a lot of managment requirements. far more than any of the "civ" games.

[alms66]

Originally posted by Rasputin
I didnt even realise all the comments here were from within the group. I just followed the links from Marks name and thought mmmm this game sounds interesting.

Most of them are, some aren't. I think I've taken the lead in the highest number of comments.

Originally posted by Rasputin
I loaded it at work and myself and another work pal played a few turns but found it tedious to get into (yes i know it a demo) the many buttons across the top filled my screen and having to click END Turn repetively was time wasting as was the fact of having the UNIT Window to move the Unit.

Ah, playing games at work...you gotta love that.
Being able to use keyboard shortcuts would be a great thing to add. I also think bringing back the 2Turns, 5Turns, 10Turns, etc. button, but allowing the player to set an arbitrary number of turns would ease those long stretches where there's not much to do but hit End Turn. (It would be a great aid to testing for sure)
I also dislike that unit window and would like a seperate 'Army Manager' screen for splitting/merging TFs. Orders to units could then be given from the toolbar and/or from the right-click menu on the main map, which is my preferred choice. There's a comment of mine somewhere in the feature request list about getting rid of the Units window.

[Rasputin]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
Thanks for the comments Rasputin. Feedback like that from outside the group is valuable in helping us to determine what is most important to do next.

So Alms, be honest did you bring him in just to say that?

Cya,

Mark

I didnt even realise all the comments here were from within the group. I just followed the links from Marks name and thought mmmm this game sounds interesting.

I loaded it at work and myself and another work pal played a few turns but found it tedious to get into (yes i know it a demo) the many buttons across the top filled my screen and having to click END Turn repetively was time wasting as was the fact of having the UNIT Window to move the Unit.

Good job guys, hope you get some easier interface over time.

I will pop in from time to time to check.

[alms66]

I'll never tell.

1. perturn event
If we don't have one already (and I didn't see one), we could add a perturn event which forces some action to occur every turn, rather than on a single turn.

2. Raid Order
See:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=3533877#post3533877

3. Outposts/Vision Radius
See:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=3538227#post3538227

4. Settlers/Explorers
See:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=3540995#post3540995

5. Changing Terrain Images
See:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=3538707#post3538707

6. Next Field TF & Next Home TF
Add these two buttons:
Next Field TF: Selects next TF not on owned land
Next Home TF: Selects next TF on owned land
And let's bump these up in priority, eh?

*Watch this post for future edits.

[Mark_Everson]

Thanks for the comments Rasputin. Feedback like that from outside the group is valuable in helping us to determine what is most important to do next.

So Alms, be honest did you bring him in just to say that?

Cya,

Mark

[alms66]

Originally posted by Rasputin
Cant we just right click on the unit on the main map to perform the actions then move it with the moouse. rather than using the separate units window.

Ease of play increases the fun and that is really missing at present IMHO.

That's what I keep saying!