Demo 7 Download and Comments

[yellowdaddy]

i meant, a little name [selectable of course], with Legion 1, Legion 2, Phalanx 5 etc.. above each unit, or displayed when you move your mouse over it - perhaps this might connect with characters, if a certain charater is in charge of or part of a given unit - the Duke of Normandy's Regiment or something?

[Henrik]

I'm using a mac to test this game (finally got OS X which means I am now able to try it out!), on my first turn I am asked to build a city by right clicking on my unit.
When I do that nothing happens, what gives?

[Martin the Dane]

Are you right-clicking on the unit in the Task-force view or on the map?

In Clash you have to right-click on the unit/task-force in the TaskForce-view in order to give special orders. The reason for this is that if you right-click on the unit on the map you are in effect right-clicking on a stack of units/TFs so the game has no way of knowing wich unit/TF you have right-clicked.

[Henrik]

Working now, thanks for the help

Should've read more closely I suppose.

[Cmonkey]

As per your email Mark, and after playing the demo 7.2 a number of times, as well as doing quite a bit of reading, I'll be making my initial comments and suggestions on it below.

Simultaneous Turns

The simultaneous turns feature, which I thought I would like, is a nightmare, at least from the military standpoint of the game. I didn't like simultaneous turns in Civ3 either, btw. While playing the Dawn scenario, I sent most of my army to meet the barbarian horde. Unfortunately, due to the simultaneous turns, they simply walked past my army and marched into my territory conquering land as they went. I had to hunt them down while retaking captured land for the next fifteen turns or so. Not very fun; Not very micro-management free, IMO.

From what I gather, ya'll intended for it to be this way, though I may have missed something. I don't care for it much, obviously, and would prefer to have the option to play a turn-based game. Another possible 'quick-fix' solution would be to add zones of control to units, based on their relative strengths, to prevent these types of overruns. The section on Provincial Defense, below, offers a long term solution to the problem.

Building Military

Three things here, mostly nice to have features, but not essential.

Getting military units built is simple enough, but why do they keep getting built in the middle of nowhere? Sure it makes sense that the people that make up the units would come from throughout the province, but doesn’t it also make sense that they would always form a ‘unit’ in the same place? The provincial capitol perhaps? I’m certain this is not intended, and ya’ll simply haven’t gotten around to fixing this yet.

If it is intended that the military units always get built at the same location, it would be a real nice feature to add an automatic goto point for those units built at that location. For instance, if military units are always built in the city of Rome (capitol) for the province of Latium, and I’m currently fighting a war to the west, I could set the ‘goto point’ near the frontline and all units built at Rome would automatically start heading to that point once built. Only at that point would they need new orders. Obviously you would also need the ability to delete this point once the war is over, or change it if the need arises.

Provincial Defense ...still referring to ‘building military’, just wanted to highlight it.

I saw somewhere, either website or forums, don’t recall, that either demo 3 or 4 had units automatically assisting in fights in nearby tiles. This is a good idea to help reduce micro-management, why was it dropped? I’d like to see it return, but in a much more sophisticated fashion, as I’ll detail below. I believe this will be a great feature to help reduce micro-management.

For realism’s sake this may require a certain tech level (love that tech model btw ), and infrastructure within a province before it is available because obviously tribal clans would not have such a sophisticated defense. Basically Provincial Defense provides a pool of units which are not visible on the map (they are visible in the city view, provincial view, or Clash equivalent), but which provide defense to the whole province. Many civ players, including me, would use the procedure of placing a unit on every other tile which borders another civ or empty space, because of barbarians. So using that assumption, the number of units in a pool for a province with 20 tiles bordering other civs, or empty space, would be 11, or half plus one. The number of units that respond to the initial threat would be one or two, on the first turn, half of the remaining units would respond on the second and, on the third, the other half. Obviously this is for a single point of attack, for a double, triple, or more point attack, the numbers would decrease proportionally. Also, I say half show up on the second and third turns, this is for a ‘normal’ sized province, for an extremely overstretched province these numbers should reduce. This essentially automates border defense, allowing the player to only focus on offensive maneuvers, and separates the defensive units from the offensive units in a visible way, since now offensive units can be placed within cities or preferably some sort of ‘fort’ tile improvement. What do ya’ll think about it?

Miscellaneous

A few general comments about the demo:

1. All the scenarios seem to run rather quickly except for Carthage vs. Rome, and Attilla, which I did not try due to the warning it may run slow. The Carthage vs. Rome scenario really bogs down after I have built two dozen or so military units.

2. The demo seems to be nothing but military interaction, thus my comments/suggestions being limited to military or general ideas. I understand that most of the economy is coded, yet there is no interaction with it unless you need to build military or need the occasional science. This is good to reduce micro-management, but bad for player immersion. It makes the game feel like too much of a war game. I understand it’s a bit early to be making such a broad statement, I’m just making it so the final version doesn’t end up so.

3. I also remember there being mention of some of the cultural and government models being coded already, are these simply not ready yet?

Well, that’s all for now. I’ll make any more specific points in the model threads. If any of this info seems worth enough to be in such a thread, let me know, and I’ll cross post it.

[Mark_Everson]

Hey Cmonkey, welcome to the Clash forum!

Originally posted by Cmonkey
The simultaneous turns feature, which I thought I would like, is a nightmare, at least from the military standpoint of the game.

Orders like "Attack Army X" or "Defend Territory Y" are waiting for the Real AI to be implemented. That is Laurent's next project, and he's already gotten somewhat of a start on the implementation. I agree that things are not the best right now in terms of military movement MM. This should be much improved once the real AI and a more detailed order system are in place.

Getting military units built is simple enough, but why do they keep getting built in the middle of nowhere?

They are actually always built in the province capital. The problem comes when the capital gets conquered and the remaining most-populous square gets declared the capital. You can re-set the original capital to its former glory when you recapture it. Use a right-click on the square. I'm pretty sure it says this in the tutorial, but maybe not. . .

If it is intended that the military units always get built at the same location, it would be a real nice feature to add an automatic goto point for those units built at that location.

Agree. Just haven't done it yet.

I saw somewhere, either website or forums, don’t recall, that either demo 3 or 4 had units automatically assisting in fights in nearby tiles. This is a good idea to help reduce micro-management, why was it dropped? I’d like to see it return, but in a much more sophisticated fashion, as I’ll detail below. I believe this will be a great feature to help reduce micro-management.

Yep, we should put it back. In terms of your specific suggestion, I think we can do provincial defense in a much more versatile fashion once the real AI is cookin'.

2. The demo seems to be nothing but military interaction, thus my comments/suggestions being limited to military or general ideas. I understand that most of the economy is coded, yet there is no interaction with it unless you need to build military or need the occasional science. This is good to reduce micro-management, but bad for player immersion. It makes the game feel like too much of a war game. I understand it’s a bit early to be making such a broad statement, I’m just making it so the final version doesn’t end up so.

The best way to stimulate the economy is by improving tech for farming. You can also invest in any of the economic sectors. Investing in education improves all techs, thus improving the economy indirectly. More will be coming. Do you want to be forced to make decisions every few turns like in Civ? Ugh! I'd much rather set my priorities and let them ride until the situation changes. If it turns out to be not immersive enough when more things like building merchants and regulating trade are in there then we may need to make a change. Just have to see what people say.

3. I also remember there being mention of some of the cultural and government models being coded already, are these simply not ready yet?

Yep, mostly coded but no big effects yet due to some coding reorganization issues that I don't want to go into here.

Well, that’s all for now. I’ll make any more specific points in the model threads. If any of this info seems worth enough to be in such a thread, let me know, and I’ll cross post it.

Thanks for the suggestions!

-Mark

[Cmonkey]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
They are actually always built in the province capital. The problem comes when the capital gets conquered and the remaining most-populous square gets declared the capital. You can re-set the original capital to its former glory when you recapture it. Use a right-click on the square. I'm pretty sure it says this in the tutorial, but maybe not. . .

I see. If it is in the tutorial, I missed it.

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
The best way to stimulate the economy is by improving tech for farming. You can also invest in any of the economic sectors. Investing in education improves all techs, thus improving the economy indirectly. More will be coming. Do you want to be forced to make decisions every few turns like in Civ? Ugh! I'd much rather set my priorities and let them ride until the situation changes. If it turns out to be not immersive enough when more things like building merchants and regulating trade are in there then we may need to make a change. Just have to see what people say.

Of course I don't want the economy to run like in Civ. That's way too much micromanagement. I just wanted to stress the point that if the player does not get involved at least occasionally, he might as well watch a movie. Games are supposed to be interactive entertainment, not passive. I don't want to explicitly tell citizens in New York they have to build a hospital now, but I don't want to watch a game unfold on my screen and all I do is hit the end turn button either.

[Martin the Dane]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
You can re-set the original capital to its former glory when you recapture it. Use a right-click on the square. I'm pretty sure it says this in the tutorial, but maybe not. . .

It's in there: Right after you find the wheat you get a message telling you why you should settle new land, this message goes on to describing capitals and how you change them and how you change province names. Maybe I should move this to an other message dedicated to capitals after the settlement of the second province. I'll se if I can find a better place for it.

[Boris Godunov]

I'm doing the Dawn of Civilization scenario. I got to about 8067 BC and the game seems to have gotten stuck. I'm trying to get my 2-warrior task force to attack the barbarians situated on the wheat resource to the west of my province. I can still give orders and cancel them, but can't end my turn. A note at the bottom said something like "Still processing orders" or such. Any ideas?

[Mark_Everson]

Hey Boris, thanks for checking it out. You are seeing the program crash. You need to follow the "if the program bombs" directions from the d/l page so we can see the stack trace of what is happening when it crashes. I'll put what is there below. . . Once we see what is wrong, we can at least give you a workaround.

From the d/l page:

If you follow these instructions and the the program "bombs", please try the following:
a. Create a directory called ClashDemo on C:\
b. Copy the ClashD7.jar file from your desktop into the new ClashDemo directory.
c. Extract that batch file in the zip to the new ClashDemo directory.
d. Run the batch file (double-click the file named "Run_D7.bat")

[Boris Godunov]

Ok, too late now, though...I shut off that game. I will try it again and do as you suggest.

It seems to me progress on this game is rather...halted. Is that so?

[yellowdaddy]

8000BC!

that's pushin' it a bit!

what year does it start from?!

[Boris Godunov]

I think it started like around 8500 BC. Maybe 9000 BC. I think it's meant to start at the end of the Neolithic period, when mankind was making its very first villages. Jericho was founded c. 9000 BC, so that would make sense.

[Heffalump]

First, my thumbs up on what's obviously been a long road and a lot of hard work

When I first downloaded the game and began the Dawn scenario I was pleasantly surprised by how well though out the whole economic model seemed to be. Cool.

My comments below.

economic model
- Because the city functions have been abstracted away into the Econ tab you don't really do much with the cities per se. Maybe old Civ habits die hard but somehow this doesn't feel intuitive to me. I kept trying to click on them. At the very least this should trigger the provincial econ orders it seems to me.
- Where again does it show my treasury? I kept looking for this all the time. It should probably be added to the other important data at the bottom (the year and population)
- I had trouble deciphering cryptic messages like "Farming has reached level 0.4". Huh? These decimals need to be converted into more meaningful terms.
- The whole population-dispersal methodology seems wierd to me. In the Rome/Carthage scenario for example I noticed by population was falling drastically as Hannibal overran my land. Worried, I began looking at the population counts on my tiles and noticed that a lot of the "empty" tiles out in the middle of nowhere had more population than the tiles with cities.
For example, the Veii tile has 21,000 people in my game while the tile at 8,0 has 104,000
This sort of inbalance feels wrong. By nature the cities should be areas where population density is the greatest.
- As a previous poster mentioned, the whole economic management side of the game seemed to be overshadowed in the end with the military side of affairs. After first being impressed with all the features I was disappointed not to need to use them more. Hopefully this will right itself in time.

Military model
- I liked the simultanous movement. Sure it was frustrating to 'miss' the enemy at times but it added a bit of unpredictability. Such confusion often existed in eras (unlike today) where communication as difficult and intelligence often old.
- I did not like the combat itself. Whoever has the most guys wins ... and wins in a big way from the looks of things. Aside from being patently untrue many times thoughout history, it's also boring. Combat has to have a degree of uncertainty or there's no tension, and no tension means no fun.
- How do I know what units have what particular strengths/weaknesses? I was just building things at random.
- 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).
-There seemed to be a lot of interesting things going on behind the scenes when I read the combat log. Am looking forward to it getting fleshed out.
- I couldn't figure out how to use the triermes. They didn't seem to have an attack ability. They did load a unit though. Fair enough, I thought. I headed across the sea and tried to attack Carthage from behind but couldn't figure out how to unload the unit once I got there. Do you have to be in a city to unload?

That's the sum of my comments for now.

Again, my compliments on the game. Looking forward to the next demo.

BTW, you might want to tone down the barbarians in that first scenario. In my game things got pretty ugly!

One last thing: I'm a Sun certified Java programmer and should have some spare time coming up soon. Does this project still accept volunteers? I might be able to help out with some of the smaller fixes & debugging if help is needed.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
It seems to me progress on this game is rather...halted. Is that so?

Hey Boris. Yep, no serious progress for the last two months or so. Hazards of having all volunteers. I can't speak for everyone, but I have just had too much RL stuff going on to do much. I am confident that the rate of progress will pick up again though, as it has many times in the past when things have been stalled for a bit.

Originally posted by Heffalump
First, my thumbs up on what's obviously been a long road and a lot of hard work

When I first downloaded the game and began the Dawn scenario I was pleasantly surprised by how well though out the whole economic model seemed to be. Cool.

Thanks for the kind words Heffalump and also the detailed criticisms of where things stand now! I don't have time to address your statements tonight, it'll have to wait for the weekend. . .

One last thing: I'm a Sun certified Java programmer and should have some spare time coming up soon. Does this project still accept volunteers? I might be able to help out with some of the smaller fixes & debugging if help is needed.

You bet we accept volunteers!
Let me know when you get some free time and I'll send you the codebase, and we can discuss what you'd like to do to help out.

-Mark