Moo3's Death by a Thousand Cuts

[Jack Frost]

I disagree. The system was far from perfect but it allowed countries with historically strong trade links to punch harder than their weight. Venice would not be a player in the early game without its Centre of Trade, nor would it decline as easily were that CoT not diluted as time goes by. Ironically the system was much smoother as first conceived and released. It was a certain type of player that persuaded Paradox to make many nations far more competitive over trade in patches that led to some of the repetition you refer to.

Interesting comment. I think that points out some of the fundimental difference of opinion here.

The EU trade system is a failure in terms of GAME design. It was a boring, repetitive task. It had two effects (the actual income generated by merchants, and the income generated by the CoT itself), the income from merchants could be quite a lot - but the act of placing them was boring, but even worse the actual cost/benifit of this boring monotonous task was very hard to guage (placement cost vs income generated vs rate of merchant loss was VERY difficult to figure out). The merchant placement task was I will say again, pointless and stupid.

The EU trade system was built to simulate the fact that certain cities were of great value because of the trade generated. Thats all nice and good, but that came at a cost, a trade off: slightly better history simulation at the cost of gameplay.

I would use the HoI tech tree as another example of that. As much as I enjoy reading the description of the technologies and the pictures (which are both great). My problems with it are:

A) its fake added complexity. There are certain Ideal paths one can take through the tech tree to one of a couple end goals. Although it seems very rich, it does almost nothing to add to the games strategy.

B) as a player, I usually take one of two paths up the tech tree. The fact that I need to research the same one hundered techs to get to Advanced Improved Tactical Bomber over and over again in every game... its boring.

C) a great number of those technologies are redundant.

Improved Suspension
Improved Tracks
Improved Engine

(for example) all have the same requirements, so they all become researchable at the same time. None of them have any effect on the game except to make Improved Medium Tank available. Why didn't paradox choose to roll those three techs into a single tech, and just increase the time required to finish researching it? (ps: please dont correct the names of the techs, its an example).


Additional complexity without a real, meaningful enhancement to game play is a mistake.

[Jack Frost]

Here is the thing about chess.

Chess is a game where there are very few options, but every option carries large consequence.

Every move is meaningful, and often the entire game depends on a single move.

Most modern strategy games dilute that. There are many, many moves, very few of which are meaningful.

The failure of game AIs to pose a challenge is often because not nearly enough time and effort is devoted to the task of really making an AI. The strength or weakness of a game AI is a very difficult thing to judge, and when you have a checklist of features which need completion before your product ships something vague like the strength of AI is the last thing you worry about.

It irritates me when I hear people saying "HoI/Civ/Wc3" has deeper strategy or more choices then chess does. Don't mistake complexity for strategy.

[Craig P.]

Originally posted by kalbear
Also, if 99.9% of the time I want to take starlanes, I will be HIGHLY annoyed if I have to hit a pop-up box saying 'yes, I am okay with going here, dumbass'.

Obviously, it'd be a user interface nightmare if it were a popup. Without seeing the game, it seems like a strategically located checkbox would be the ideal way to handle it. Depending on the interface for moving fleets around, though, it might be difficult to select the right location for the checkbox.

[Jack Frost]

Depending on the interface for moving fleets around, though, it might be difficult to select the right location for the checkbox.

lets hope the interface for moving fleets around is ->point, rightclick.

[Craig P.]

Originally posted by kalbear
Also, if 99.9% of the time I want to take starlanes, I will be HIGHLY annoyed if I have to hit a pop-up box saying 'yes, I am okay with going here, dumbass'.

Obviously, it'd be a user interface nightmare if it were a popup. Without seeing the game, it seems like a strategically located checkbox would be the ideal way to handle it. Depending on the interface for moving fleets around, though, it might be difficult to select the right location for the checkbox.

[Craig P.]

Originally posted by kalbear
Also, if 99.9% of the time I want to take starlanes, I will be HIGHLY annoyed if I have to hit a pop-up box saying 'yes, I am okay with going here, dumbass'.

Obviously, it'd be a user interface nightmare if it were a popup. Without seeing the game, it seems like a strategically located checkbox would be the ideal way to handle it. Depending on the interface for moving fleets around, though, it might be difficult to select the right location for the checkbox.

[RolandtheMad]

Perhaps you could hold shift and click to force an offroad journey?

[Harry Seldon]

Ok, poor suggestion with the popup but the point remains there needs to be some way to do this. I don't want to trigger two wars on the way to fight the one I'm already embroiled in.

[Grumbold]

Yeah shift-click, control-click, alt-click, right-click, who cares as long as its easy and achievable.

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by kalbear
I guess I'd have a hard time playing a WW2 sim, as complex as it is, where Germans didn't defend Berlin all that much.

It´s the other way round: It´s Paris and London that tend to be undefended, with Germany controlling the globe most of the time.

Anyways: No one -except the ultra-fanboys at the Paradox forum - denies that HoI has some problems. However: If they improve the ai, and one or two other things, this has the potential to be the most detailed, most accurate WWII sim *EVER*.

Whereas, with all the MoO3 cuts, I simply fail to see the potential.

[kalbear]

Oh, well, okay then. As long as it's only London that's poorly defended, it should be fine. Cause those brits didn't have any vested interest in making sure England was untaken.

One of the things that bothered me a lot about the game's reviews was the repeated note that many of the major powers never, ever got involved in the war. Like, say, America and Japan.

The tech tree fiasco sounds eh, but is not unexpected. The micromanagement around supply chains and convoy ships sounds abysmal. That kind of cuts out my interest in the game right there - if I can't play Japan as a major power without huge headaches, I'm not so caring whether I can make Venezuela a major economic force in Latin/South America hegemony.

I would imagine simulating known events is much easier that simulating speculative events. After all, you know the 'ideal' outcome, right? You have exacting information on industrial capacity, government leanings, world leaders, alliances, technology and what it can accomplish, future events...that's a design doc, right there. And they still managed to ship a product that didn't get it right.

I guess I'll sum it up this way, CT: You are willing to overlook a lot of flaws and actual bugs (troops disappearing, MM garbage, poor AI) in a game you've played because it gives some element of fun.

I'm willing to do the same for a game that I haven't played yet, that has so far received nothing short of fantastic reviews.

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by kalbear
One of the things that bothered me a lot about the game's reviews was the repeated note that many of the major powers never, ever got involved in the war. Like, say, America and Japan.

Havent had that problem except when the human player has seriously deviated from the historical timeline. Of course the further away from history we get the weirder other things are going to become.

The micromanagement around supply chains and convoy ships sounds abysmal. That kind of cuts out my interest in the game right there - if I can't play Japan as a major power without huge headaches, I'm not so caring whether I can make Venezuela a major economic force in Latin/South America hegemony.

There are no headaches unless serious commerce raiding is occurring. If the enemy are smashing your convoys you're goona have to pay some attention to stopping them and repairing your routes. Defend your routes and you never have to touch them.

I would imagine simulating known events is much easier that simulating speculative events. After all, you know the 'ideal' outcome, right? You have exacting information on industrial capacity, government leanings, world leaders, alliances, technology and what it can accomplish, future events...that's a design doc, right there. And they still managed to ship a product that didn't get it right.

I've never seen comprehensive figures for industrial output, military strength, natural resource outputs, size and location of armies and entire military command structure monthly, quarterly or yearly for 1936-1945 for every country of any remote import in the world. Have you? Even if you can pin down all those figures for 1 jan 1936 or 1 sept 1939 how do you come up with an engine to sensibly control their change over time and ensure reasonable outcomes with hiostorical tendencies? I think you're hugely oversimplifying things.

MoO has it easier by having a blank slate. No outcomes are preconceived and each race is assumed to be approximately equal in strength. If the Elerians turn out to be weaker than the Ithkul nobody is screaming that they should have a bigger navy, that their coastline is wrong or that they should be able to invade planet Nob exactly on turn 72 and win.

(But I agree, HoI has issues that need resolving)

[kalbear]

Grumbold, this was from the IGN review which was mostly positive:

There manual barely explains how to create and deploying convoys properly. You simply have to learn by trial and error how to set them up, and then you must nurse them constantly to make sure scattered troops aren't being disbanded (with absolutely no prior warning! Not even an "Excuse me sir, we're starving!" radio transmission) because somehow your supply chain broke down. An appalling lack of visual cues to help you sort out the supply mess problem doesn't help either. For example, I was stunned to discover that an Italian division, located on the nearby Italian island of Sardinia, ran out of supplies and was disbanded, while those on the only slightly closer Italian island of Sicily did not. Why isn't there some kind of warning system in place? Do they seriously expect me to click on every division on the world every couple weeks just to see how they're doing?

I've not played the game, but that sounds like a pain to deal with. Both this, the AV review, and the wargamer review mention the lack of American/Japanese influence in European events over multiple games. I'm glad that you've not had those problems, but they did exist (and possibly still do).

As to industrial information regarding every country? You're right - I don't have access to Venezuelan beaver cheese output in 1938. I do have access to the monthly figures and estimates for Russia and Germany, and can make some highly educated guesses based on actual output as affected by warfare and losses. Point being, a lot of that information is there.

As a programmer, it's a lot easier to solve a problem who's answer is already known. It's easier to paint by numbers than it is to create something from scratch. It's easier to simulate something than it is to make something work anew. The more you know about the protocols regarding that 'something', the easier it is.

Coming up with an engine that solves these problems is not trivial, but it's much easier than coming up with a way to balance gameplay issues from scratch.

Another thing a sim has going for it? In this case, it doesn't have to balance anything all that much. Who cares if Germany can trounce the next two nations' asses - that's how it was, that's how it can be. There's no concept of an equal playing ground in this sort of game - the important part of this type of game is to simulate actual events. Make a combat engine that simulates blitzes, trench warfare, weather conditions and tech to a reasonable fascimile, and you don't have to worry at all about the game balance portion.

That isn't to say that it's simple - it's not. It is, however, an easier set of problems.

And if the Elerians turned out weaker than the Ithkul everyone would scream that the game wasn't balanced. Balance based on various flavors is much harder than correctly setting the power levels on a game that has, effectively, predetermined outcomes.

I guess the difference is in the level design. Moo doesn't have scenario-driven gameplay; each game is basically a clean slate. HoI et al must spend a large portion of the time balancing the scenarios, making sure that they are reasonable based on historical events, etc. That's not a matter of programming acumen - that's a matter of (hopefully) configuring various settings and values in the right way. It's truly a different problem set.

That being said, I'm interested in checking out HoI purely for the historical value of the game. What If? question type games are very interesting to me, and are one of the categories of gameplay that haven't been very well exploited. I do hope that the game is less frustrating than it sounds; the MM involved looks to be monstrous.

Any demos out there for it?

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by kalbear
One of the things that bothered me a lot about the game's reviews was the repeated note that many of the major powers never, ever got involved in the war. Like, say, America and Japan.

This is not quite true. Japan is, if anything, too powerful. The US do get involved in the war, but have a major ai problem (not aggressive enough). But there is a reasonable chance this will get sorted out.

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by kalbear
The micromanagement around supply chains and convoy ships sounds abysmal.

The MM stems from the fact that the game plays at Division level, so you have to manage a lot of units. The convoy ships are the smallest problem in that respect.

In fact, I like the convoys. You actually have to get the resources to your homeland. It´s not like Axis&Allies, where you can use Chinese resources/production for the US and South African resources for Germany without any trouble.

And convoys allow on-map Strategic Warfare; that is good.