Clash Demo 8 Download and Comments

[LDiCesare]

For Cohorts and legions, you're right, we did that in order to show that units can upgrade and become obsolete, but it'd be more accurate to have Legion and Marian Legion for instance...

Citizen armies: Conscription level could be an option in the policies. Note that militias will pop up and help defend (or liberate) squares in some circumstances (when the citizens think they can make a difference).

Turn increments: We can reduce them for the Punic war. The problem for reducing turns when at war is that you'd have to reduce turns of the player when two ai's in another part of the world are at war. Or at least run more turns in the background, which would slow down the game inexplicably for the player when things happen in another part of the world.

If I was an actual commander I would know which direction an enemy army is heading and so could move to intercept them.

I am not so sure. Medieval armies spent lots of time running around each other in circles, trying to meet in order to do battle, losing lots of time and wasting lots of lands doing so. I also think it adds to the strategy to try and guess what the opponent will do.

[breffie]

Ok, I've tried the demo and the dawn-scenario. At first it seemed quite impossible to understand how to do things. But after a while I got it. I did like the idea of using military units to escort settlers. It makes sense in a way. And I did like the ease of building roads. But I didn't like that roads should be managed one way and built another. What I mean is that I didn't like that I had to both construct them on the map and allocating taxes for them in several different economy windows. That may be realistic but it doesn't make it more fun. Instead of allocating taxes for every road you want to build just give it a price, unless you have money to pay for it you cannot build it. And that an ancient society of a few thousand farmers would build miles and miles of roads in the span of 5 years simply isn't plausible. Make it take alot more time aswell.

The game-interface didn't recognice that I had already discovered the wheat and the horses. The game told me to go look for it while I had already done so. So in future demos I suggest you get some kind of way to keep track of what the player does so the game doesn't tell you to do things after they are done. I also suggest that the horses and weat and whatever should stay there until the land is claimed by someone (and therefore these things can be discovered by other civs aswell).

What I did find most annoying was the province-economy window. It's just too messy. Not so much early in game when you cannot build that much anyway, but later on with hundreds of possible things to choose it would just be a dread to open that window. And having to open it through the menu makes it feel more of a work and less of a game. Everything should be easily accessed through the keybord. And one more thing about allocating resources for different things. Don't make the province (or economy window) too complex. Just keep to what you want, need and can build at the moment. Just keep to how much you want to stockpile, spend on infrastructure, military, foodproduction, industry and research. And if further micromanagement is wanted you can simply access that through sub-windows that you open from within the provincial screen. The amount of recources allocated to a certain area determines how fast a new units/constructions/technologies or whatever is reached, but it doesn't determine what you choose too build. For instance, if you have allocated 30% of your tax-money on the military, it will when no units are being built instead contribute on military research, military upkeep (ofcourse) and increasing the training of your soldiers.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by breffie
Ok, I've tried the demo and the dawn-scenario. At first it seemed quite impossible to understand how to do things.

Thanks for the good suggestions breffie. The tutorial is meant to only intro how to do things one step at a time. If you wait until it brings a topic up it should have been pretty complete, at least at the level of the demo. Were you trying to do everything without guidance from the start?

...I didn't like that roads should be managed one way and built another. What I mean is that I didn't like that I had to both construct them on the map and allocating taxes for them in several different economy windows. That may be realistic but it doesn't make it more fun. Instead of allocating taxes for every road you want to build just give it a price, unless you have money to pay for it you cannot build it.

Once the AI is a bit better it can automatically add budget for roads when they're ordered. I don't like your approach b/c then you wouldn't be able to "fire and forget" on roads unless you built up a huge cash surplus first.

What I did find most annoying was the province-economy window. It's just too messy.

That was never meant to be the final game interface for econ. If you look back maybe 6 months there's a thread covering what the econ interface should look like. Some of your suggestions are already in there. Unfortunately the coder who was working on that left the project and it has just sat there since.

[breffie]

Hi Mark. Yes, I have to admit that I first started to try to do things on my own without advice until I learned I really had to look at the advice to undertsand anything. And then when I had already failed everything I did it all over again, and this time I appearantly did everything faster than the advisor had figured so it constantly told me to do things I've already done. I can appreciate the point of this in this demo. But in the final tutorial demo I think the game itself should keep track on what you have done and have left to do.

About roads. How about this: When I plan a road on the map the economy is adjusting to how much roads I'm planning. So there's no need to check every economy window for that. I can simply lay them out and the economy will adjust. Actually I would prefer that for improvements and units aswell. So If I'm both laying roads and building an army I could do that easily from the map and the economy windows, although accessible for further micromanagement, wouldn't have to be visisted at all unless I wanted to. The economy would simply divide 90% of it's income equal on the things it was ordered to produce automatically. (automatically leaving something to stockpiling is someting I think is necessary). Each road square would automatically burden the closest province (or richest when the distance is equal). And when the road was laid the economy would adjust itself automatically so that no longer are the provinces wasting money on roads not to be built or armies not to be trained or improvements already made. Ofcourse you could still change things in the economy window if needed. (like using more than your income or adjusting the percentages spent on each project).

It's not a matter of AI, just a simple exercise in arithmetics. If I'm stupid enough to order my economy to build everything possible at once I will ofcourse get the consequence that nothing will be completed for ages and I'll probably get overrun by invaders long before anything is accomplished.

[binTravkin]

Any chance the Demo files could still be found on the server?
The links listed here appear not to work.

Thanks!