Demo 5 Comments and Bug Reports

[Dale]

Edits in BOLD!

Downloaded and am playing the Carthage scen as the Romans. First game report. Have now had a go at every scen.

PC: Win NT4 SP6a, Toshiba Satellite 4090XCDT laptop. At work of course. 64MG RAM, had no crashes or out of memory.

Initial thoughts:
- Looks great, windows and info easily in eyesight.
- Mini map?
- Buttons are big enough.

Econ:
- What the? I gotta look into what I'm supposed to do with econ. I got no idea. Worked it out. BTW, the text in the econ boxes doesn't fit. Is that just me?

Military:
- I love the idea of individual units and armies.
- How do I group some units into an army? Worked it out.
- Movement rate. I couldn't discern whether a unit would make the square I clicked in that turn. Maybe a different colour for the route line when it's more than one turn?

Combat:
- WOAH! Too much info for a dumb player like me in the info box! At one stage (had every unit on the map in battle) I had to scroll through pages and pages of info for just one turn.
- AI needs to be smarter. Though it is on the website that it's a basic AI so I'll let ya off for that one.

Overall:
- Really good!
- After turn 5, I'd click in square [4, 0] but it wouldn't get the white box around it. And yes, the info box showed my units and town in square [4, 0]. I've noticed in all the scens that occaisionally a square will decide it doesn't want to be selected, even if you cycle through the units. Different every turn.
- It was taking so long to refresh when I minimized and maximized. I tried to see how long it would take. Went for a smoke, got a coffee, went to the toilet, and it had only put back one button. Too slow, so I closed it and started again. I was doing well too. *sigh*

Will come back with more when I find it.

Added on later......:

After playing for a while now, I gotta say this is looking really good. I know some of what I found was my fault for just "scanning" the doco. But I've worked it out now. Thanks Mark and the rest of the team.

[Mark_Everson]

Thanks for the feedback Dale

Originally posted by Dale
Econ:
- What the? I gotta look into what I'm supposed to do with econ. I got no idea. Worked it out. BTW, the text in the econ boxes doesn't fit. Is that just me?

Yep, its just you . That is a bug, but I'm not too worried since that whole interface will eventually be redone in a more sexy and practical way. No doubt with a background skin of a supermodel on a Mediteranean coast somewhere.

- Movement rate. I couldn't discern whether a unit would make the square I clicked in that turn. Maybe a different colour for the route line when it's more than one turn?

Something like a new color for each turns' move is in the spec, just haven't implemented it yet.

- WOAH! Too much info for a dumb player like me in the info box! At one stage (had every unit on the map in battle) I had to scroll through pages and pages of info for just one turn.

Gary has proposed a much simpler info spec that should be out with D5.1.

After playing for a while now, I gotta say this is looking really good. I know some of what I found was my fault for just "scanning" the doco. But I've worked it out now. Thanks Mark and the rest of the team.

Thanks, you're much better than that lousy Axi guy, who can only criticize, and especially my beautiful econ model.

Cya,

Mark

PS I've edited the on-line econ page of the D5 manual to add some of the explainations and outright dodges I gave axi.

[axi]

Some further comments...

A. Economy:
I played some more and I finally found out what went wrong with me and the economy model. I filled the blancs with the numbers I wanted, but it didn't occur to me that I had to press return, to confirm the input. So, as far as the game was concerned, I was issuing no orders. Doh!

Btw, I hope I don't have to confirm my orders every turn, do I? The reappearance of "Don't Use" in the tax rates field, worries me. And why is the tax rates column made equal to the %spend one?

Now that this was resolved, the econ model makes sense. I like the way I can control everything from one screen. Since my empire is so small, I erased all square orders and did everything from the civ orders screen. I played with the ROI in the production infraclasses and I saw the correlation. Is there a built-in decay rate for infraclasses? (I saw negative growth rates for classes with 0 investment) Or is it just labor allocated to other sectors that is reducing output?

What is really lacking is a last row in the orders window, to provide the sums of all columns.

One strange thing I noticed is that entering a number in the ROI field and pushing return will diminish the number by one (doing it again will continue diminishing), but for certain numbers this won't happen (f.e. 5 won't change, but 4 can be diminished down to 0). What's up with that?

Is the AI messing with the enemy economy? What are it's criteria?

B. Military:
I witnessed the "military exception" bug twice. Awful one, as it crashes the game.

What is the matter with square control? How come the Romans come into Carthage with vastly inferior armies and posess the city? Does city posession depend on whose units arrived in the city last? Shouldn't a square be totally vacated from it's former owner before it can change hands?

Is the unit's health replenished each turn? My big TF seems unable to eliminate their light cavalry units, although it has beat them to pulp several times.

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.

[Mark_Everson]

Re: Some further comments...

Hi Axi, thanks again for the detailed feedback!

Originally posted by axi
A. Economy:
I played some more and I finally found out what went wrong with me and the economy model. I filled the blancs with the numbers I wanted, but it didn't occur to me that I had to press return, to confirm the input. So, as far as the game was concerned, I was issuing no orders. Doh!

I'll try to fix that.

Btw, I hope I don't have to confirm my orders every turn, do I? The reappearance of "Don't Use" in the tax rates field, worries me. And why is the tax rates column made equal to the %spend one?

Orders are permanent until you cancel them. Tax rates for individual infrastructure classes aren't implemented yet, that's why it says "Don't Use". The tax rates column changing to match your input is just an early diagnostic that I never removed .

Now that this was resolved, the econ model makes sense. I like the way I can control everything from one screen.

Hooray, that was the Right answer

Since my empire is so small, I erased all square orders and did everything from the civ orders screen. I played with the ROI in the production infraclasses and I saw the correlation. Is there a built-in decay rate for infraclasses? (I saw negative growth rates for classes with 0 investment) Or is it just labor allocated to other sectors that is reducing output?

You win the prize, infrastructure automatically decays at a slow rate. So you can in fact get negative growth. Workers being removed from the sector due to population loss can also get negative growth. But frequently infrastructure with 0 investment will still grow due to an addition of extra workers. The extra workers go to where the wages are highest, similar to what happens in a real market economy.

What is really lacking is a last row in the orders window, to provide the sums of all columns.

I'll think about this. Although if you are sticking with the civ econ orders window, it tells you up top how much all your orders are costing.

One strange thing I noticed is that entering a number in the ROI field and pushing return will diminish the number by one (doing it again will continue diminishing), but for certain numbers this won't happen (f.e. 5 won't change, but 4 can be diminished down to 0). What's up with that?

That is odd, I think it probably comes from a rounding error and then truncation to the nearest integer. But I'm not sure.

Is the AI messing with the enemy economy? What are it's criteria?

No, the AI does nothing with the economy so far. That's one reason you are allowed to control them through the econ orders screen if you want.

B. Military:
I witnessed the "military exception" bug twice. Awful one, as it crashes the game.

Yes, we should get rid of this one, or at least make it not fatal.

What is the matter with square control? How come the Romans come into Carthage with vastly inferior armies and posess the city? Does city posession depend on whose units arrived in the city last? Shouldn't a square be totally vacated from it's former owner before it can change hands?

I had noticed some of that in playtesting, but wasn't sure. I'd added this, and a lot of your other comments, to the bugs/new features list.

Is the unit's health replenished each turn? My big TF seems unable to eliminate their light cavalry units, although it has beat them to pulp several times.

For now, elements in each unit our either dead or alive, and there is no healing. Your cavalry units just survived through dumb luck I think.

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.

I think that's probably a demo 7 feature. There are a lot of other more-important things to do in the short-term. But I agree with you long-term that this must be done.

I think you owe me an entry on the Clash team page .

[heardie]

Okay, I got it woeking now. Will play later tonight.

[axi]

I think you owe me an entry on the Clash team page

I had once vowed that I won't get my name on the Clash Team page, untill demo5 is released. I have been inactive in the project for months now. However, since Mark requests it, I will keep my promise.

I'll try to fix that.

I don't think it needs fixing. But you definitely need to warn the players in the manual, about the way field entry works. Some people may be as dumb as I was.

That is odd, I think it probably comes from a rounding error and then truncation to the nearest integer. But I'm not sure.

If that were a rounding problem, then it would happen only once, wouldn't it?

For now, elements in each unit our either dead or alive, and there is no healing. Your cavalry units just survived through dumb luck I think.

Perhaps if I posted some of the content of the report window, then we might resolve this?

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by axi
I had once vowed that I won't get my name on the Clash Team page, untill demo5 is released. I have been inactive in the project for months now. However, since Mark requests it, I will keep my promise.

I was just giving you **** on this issue, paying you back kiddingly for what you said in the past. If you don't feel like being a team member anymore, then I absolve you of the need for you to put up your info. However if you do come to feel yourself a team member again, I'd like to put you back to work .

If that were a rounding problem, then it would happen only once, wouldn't it?

No, each time you hit enter it converts the text in the field to a number. (It assumes you have entered something new) If, due to problems in the conversion, it represents 6 as 5.99999969, then truncation would change it to 5.

Perhaps if I posted some of the content of the report window, then we might resolve this?

Sure, please do.

[Fiera]

Hi, my most sincere congratulations to Mark, Gary and Laurent!

I've installed the demo and everything works fine. Besides, I'm pretty impressed with what you guys have done!

Also, I am honoured to see my graphics in the demo and your acknowledgment above (thanks Mark). Of course, looking forward to get involved in the project as soon as you all wish.

I must say that I've been monitoring the forum once in a while all this time, but didn't post anything as I saw no new graphical requests- I hope I didn't miss anything!

[Gary Thomas]

Great to hear from you Fiera - we need you desperately. More for tiles at the moment. Will make some more comments in the Tiles thread.

Thanks everybody, for all the nice comments. Because I am so flat out on a reorganization of the code for D5.1, I didn't have time to read all the comments properly, so I didn't notice any criticisms.

I will attack the bugs after the reorganization (that is, after D5.1).

Cheers

[LDiCesare]

Hi axi,
Maybe your opponent is lucky enough to flee each fight. If you look at the information window, it should state its health. It may flee unharmed if vastly outnumbered (roughly 50% chance when attacked). If the health is 0 and the unit still appears, then the damn zombie units are still after me! (Hopefully, I will get rid from them by design in the next code version.)

[Simon Loverix]

I have a very slow and unstable connection, and I'm not able to dowload all the requisite parts for the demo at home and at school I don't have the disc space. Is it possible to make a compiled version available of, say, 1 MB or something like that?

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Simon:

Well the demo itself is only 1.2MB, so I assume you mean the JRE download is the problem. I looked at the JRE self-extracting exe package, and one component of it is still 4MB, so breaking it up wouldn't help much. I also checked the site to see if they had a download option for 1MB chunks, but I couldn't find one. None of my ideas panned out.

Unless you can get a big email attachment (5MB) better than a download, I don't have any good ideas left...

Can't you take something off the school computer temporarily? 6MB is not very much space at all. You could put stuff on 4 floppies and free up that much space!

[Richard Bruns]

Well, I've started a few games and suffered two crashes. In each case, the display just gets blanked out, but if I move the cursor over where the exit button is supposed to be, it appears and I can exit the game normally.

I was paying attention to the second crash, so I can report the details. After spending the first few turns plowing a lot of money into kapital, I had switched all funds to phalanx production as the carthaginians approached my cities. I had built up a massive task force from my starting armies, and it was in the process of pounding the individual carthaginian calvary into bits. ( It seems to me that the game AI should automatically combine two armies into a TF if they happen to be fighting in the same square. They would die a lot less quickly. )

After I hit the end turn button, the game stalled. It said "Starting turn 6" but nothing else. Whenever I clicked "End Turn" agian, the info box said it was still calculating. But the game woudn't respond to anything else.

So it could have been bug 41 or bug 47. Either way, it is annoying and it effectively crashes the game. A few more comments:

I always have to manually resize the map to make it big enough to get rid of the scroll bar. The side windows can take up much less room and still function okay. But the resizing never gets saved.

The ROI system seems to works well, and I like it. But the display window is fairly ugly with a lot of wasted space. Also, for some reason, the farming sector insisted on shrinking despite the fact that I was pumping cash into it. And is there any way to set an "Apply" button to make it so we don't have to hit enter each time? An "Ignore" button would be good too, and should be easy since it does that already unless you hit enter.

I find it odd that the carthaginian cavalry can be sitting on my city, despite a vast army entrenched there. The two armies share the square, fighting evcery turn. But there seem to be no economic consequences to this raging battle. Is this supposed to happen?

Also, does lowering the tax rate do anything good for the civilization? Is there any economic advantage to soaking your people less?

The game seems designed for a 1024x768 screen setting. On 800x600 the information frame is too small to be read, and there isn't enough room to play the game well. And on 640x480 the game is practically unplayable. Is there any way to fix the game for those not fortunate enough to have good monitors?

I know that I may be focusing on little things, but I think that it's the little things like this that are most likely to sap the fun out of the game.

[LDiCesare]

Hi Rich.
About the crash: This happens when an exception occurs in the pathfinding or econ. (Military exceptions are usually worse )
Grouping armies in TF doesn't make them stronger as all units in the square are always grouped together into a temporary task force during the battle. Actually this will change since battles will be fought at element level.
I also play 800x600, and can manage by resizing all windows quite often (except the econ orders window which is always too big for me, I'd need a scrollbar).

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Richard, thanks for the detailed report. A lot of your issues are things we want to do, but just haven't gotten around to yet. I'll add lots of your comments to the bug/features list. And several things, like grouping TFs is already planned for D5.1 coming in maybe 2 weeks.

If you run using the batch file (alternate instructions for running) it will give, in the dos window, a detailed stack trace that will help debug. If you want, you could post that. But the code has already undergone serious revision since the D5 version, so its best to just wait for D5.1.

I know that I may be focusing on little things, but I think that it's the little things like this that are most likely to sap the fun out of the game.

Don't apologize, that's your Job as playtester! We will try to do what we can to fix all these issues. Its just the problem that we can't fix everything at once.

The ROI system seems to works well, and I like it. *snip* Also, for some reason, the farming sector insisted on shrinking despite the fact that I was pumping cash into it.

There is a simulation of a real working market economy under the hood! What is happening to you is the same thing that happens to real governments when they invest in things the people don't want. Specifically there is a bit more food in the economy at start than what the people really want (they would prefer Services or Production more). So food prices fall, and wages in the farm sector fall. Workers look to other sectors of the economy so they can make more money. Also the people's own money is Not invested in farm kapital, since they would rather invest it in other sector for the stuff they want. Kapital (in this case farm tools) also decay in usefulness. Adding all this together, it is quite possible for the govt to invest in farm kapital, and still have farm output fall due to fewer workers in the sector. If you check the economy.txt file I'm sure you'll find this is what is happening. If you instead pump money into "prod kapital" or gold mining you will see a positive response to your efforts, at least for a bit. But once again eventually the people will be satisfied with the level of say gold, and want other things.

I find it odd that the carthaginian cavalry can be sitting on my city, despite a vast army entrenched there. The two armies share the square, fighting evcery turn. But there seem to be no economic consequences to this raging battle. Is this supposed to happen?

Think of the carthaginians as hiding in the hills, trying Not to come out and attack. Econ concequences of war just aren't in there yet. Coming soon to a monitor near you!

[QUOTE]Also, does lowering the tax rate do anything good for the civilization? Is there any economic advantage to soaking your people less?[QUOTE]

Yes, they have more money to invest in the things they want, building a stronger economy. But you aren't seeing the full effect yet, since they only invest 5% of non-food surplus in kapital for right now.