Posts by _Pontus_

I meant spies as we have in CoW. The spies we have here do not reveal any real spy-info like communications, all troop positions etc. You know, the Mata Hari kind of spy. Not a stealth reconnaissance unit. But then again, this is a different game. Trying to adjust, but still miss my spies.

I believe Elite Ai is the case here now as standard and killing Elite AI counts for ranking.

Quote from ProfessorComs

I like how it has terrain stats

CoW has terrain influences on the units too

j10211647 : Thanks for making me look again; indeed it is there; I found it. The UI is just sooo long that I never saw the small square where they hid the info

Btw, I will keep adding things I miss to the top post.

Pls add whatever you feel is missing

1. Building requirements for units in the research pane

2. When looking at players stats, I can't find anywhere how many maps someone played. This is rather important to be able to assess whether a player is a threat or not. Like i.e. the ranking in s1914 & CoW doesn't mean much, because lots of players attained a high rank w/o ever having played a map well enough to win, but played a ton of bad maps.

-> The number of maps joined and victories are in the player stats, just not that very conveniently placed. At a 1st look I would want to see who I am up against or who wants to join forces

=> most important info = k/d, maps joined & maps won/lost.

3. Spies... there are no spies!

4. Maybe I am missing it, but I just don't see what the empty (non-resource) provinces produce. They are populated and they produce conscripts; but do they have a tax output etc?

-> Answered below: no tax output

5. Where is displayed whether an army has fortress protection? Or is fortress protection for the whole province now?

I must say for now the game appeals to me. Not without doubts or criticism, though.

Despite some new stuff, the game mostly feels like a colorful, but still undressed S1914 or CoW; but maybe that is the intention? It feels like less of challenge and more

I miss many options, which were allowing for more personal influence, like switching on/off facilities to save on resource consumption, trading units (I desperately want to get rid om HTs in the Flanders map; I hate those slow units).

On the Great War map, there are geographical mistakes which annoy (like Maastricht being Belgian) and the huge waterways, separating land and moral influence by neighbors are somewhat overdone.

1st time I play that map, so let's see if the negative feelings about this go away.

fair points. i only play on phone when I am not around a computer and those are rare occasions

Is there a maximum Expansion Penalty, or does it just keep going up?

I am at 60 now

we are 3 again... no that it matters, because AI plays better.

I also understand from playing the 2nd time this map, that is basically a different set-up, where conquest is discouraged and only the points matter.

So, I take back the above. When I play a 3rd one, applying new insights, I will see how that goes.

I have a lot of complaints - especially about the BAD CHANGES crippling diplomacy, player interaction, the market etc - but...

... my compliments on adding a completely new type of map with a completely different set of priorities!

Quote from Lord Dragos

i dont think it would really impact the speed of those who just want to dump cash. Tap... vs tap tap (or in your case. Tap tap vs tap tap tap tap.... isnt really that major of a time difference

You are wrong.

I was up against a big spender (who only joined thatgame to take revenge, because I beat him earlier) and was only minutes from taking his 2nd last factory site and 20 minutes from taking his last provinces.

I owned everything from North Africa (southern end of the map) to Scandinavia (northern end of the map), except some Middle eastern parts and Russia, owned by my ally. The USA had a player, who remained rather neutral.

My enemy owned onl 2 factories and 2 more provinces in Spain.

You think I won?

Nope.

I lost :)))

But he spend many, many millions of gold to stop me.

Had he had to click confirm everytime he produced a missile (100's of 'm), he could not have produced a 3rd, maybe not a 1/4th even, alongside 10's of Tacs + fighters, HT's etc. andsoforth.

Not forgetting that he sabotaged away all airfields up to deep in France, Italy and North Africa, to stop my bombings. Mind you, airfields level 3 in fully maxed out cities....

His super fast production saved him and he would not have made it with only a 1/4th of what he so rapidly produced.

Do I mind? No! I made the game very, very, very expensive for him :))) That is a kind of victory too.

Ofc, I would rather have won, which I would have if he had gotten on 20 minutes later.

So, yes, pls introduce that button. Not for the LD's of this game, but to slow down the enemy hahahaha.

Had a blacked out map that was only resolved by fully restarting the computer.

Computer has good graphic card and plenty of RAM and a fast SSD.

Server side or my side problem?

Mr.Dutch: what Cycle said

Especially beginners (as I am) at this game will, for instance, wrongly invest scarce resources in unit development, only to find out that they can't produce them yet.

That is a major bummer for a newbie, who is not really here to test this new thingy of Bytro, but is here to find out if he is going to like this game.

Me and 1 left now on my team.

3 on the other.

The previous Flanders 1917 game, I was sitting right in front of Ypre. I took it and held it against wave after wave of the enemies.

Those 50 points plus the no-mans land points and then what, won the game.

Now I am far far away. Had to subdue Belgian North Group.

Done so, but get severely penalized for expansion.

We have a 100 points thanks to AI and me.

What are my options?

- Ypre: a no-go. Going for Ypre w/o teammates' support, is suicide, as I know from last time. I only held Ypre because my supply lines were short.

- Diksmuide: only 30 points and another severe additional expansion penalty to cover, because it is not next door and can't leave production sites of the enemy behind my lines.

The only option to play right now = farming resources, build PO's to counter penalties, farm more, upgrade PO's and repeat...

Farmville?

Exactly what Cycle said in his above 2 posts....

I broke through the front of a human player (some fly-by 12yrs old, who ofc never came back after opening his first game and went inactive on day 2 or 3).

Still I have to destroy his production capacity (located also at the back...so I have to get to all his provinces) to avoid an endless war on many fronts.

Expansion penalty is still severe (and this is a fairly new game, so if this is the update...).

I can't construct Propaganda Offices everywhere, because I lack the resources and there is no trade in the market for what I need, so I canhardly influence moral and conquered provinces don't give much extra.

I have only 1 Supplies province and there are no offers for Supplies whatsoever.

Thus my supplies production has to go into increasing production of supplies; now constructing level 4.

But this goes at the expense of everything else: no armored troops, limited other constructions.

Conclusion:

I will have to slowly roll op Northern Belgium Group, defend the border and ... farm resources. Just waiting for my crop to ripen and harvest, so I can construct something; which I often can't bc I need to produce troops too.

Then I will have to somehow muster the army to break Southern Belgium and get some more points from that one (also inactive human).

The rest of the team (except 1) is doing nothing or went inactive (>50% of my team; 80% of enemy team))

I thought, however, that this was a strategy game?

Missing is a BONUS for expansion in the Flandres map...

Now you get punished.

I am curious what is the reasoning behind that?

Luckily the Elite AI is more of an pro-active opponent, which is a very good adition to all games, but it does not resolve the problem of the high inactivity of players.

The character of the game is such that it will simply not appeal to too young players and/or players looking for a fast game.

BUT...these are fly-by players anyway.

The crux of the solution will be in ATTRACTING the right players and that is an issue of COMMUNICATING the true nature of the game in the right way through the right channels.

ONLY THAT will attract new players that will stay.

But even than, there will always be people just giving it a try, because any good explanation of the nature of the game will be more than 3 lines .... and thus constitutes 'a wall of text' these days ... which will be too much to read for those mostly useful players.

The solve that problem, more maps should require a higher rank to enter.

For one, this gives an extra reason to players to achieve a certain rank.

Besides that, it will clean the higher maps of those useless twats, who only destroy the game.

Still, the only real way to attract more real and lasting players (who will thus spend on the game) is better communication & marketing, targeting the right group of players who like this purer form of strategy game.

However, it seems the company favors the road (to Nowhere) of removing features, rather than adding them, and aiming (hoping or ... praying rather) that the fly-by ADHD youth will like the game more after it was dumbed down.

But even if that would work (which it won't), they don't really have money to spend... and are always bored with a game after 3 months.

As I mentioned in another forum, it is rather ironic that the publisher of the BEST strategy game around BY FAR, is choosing such a bad ... strategy!

If it were my game, I would rather aim to attract the right players. There are still so many out there that never heard of this game or were unable to distinguish its qualities from the rather simplistic game description that is now mostly attracting dimwits.

Playing Falnders map 2nd time; with fixed and unbreakable coalition.

What makes it boring the 2nd time around is that there are no solutions for a multitude of problems.

- Economy and personal influence:

Having 1 province of a certain resource (Supplies), I am forced to upgrade the Infra to level 5 if I want to be able to construct and produce the right things. That is just silly. Basically I do a bit of fighting on the border and then sit and wait - like a farming game instead of strategy game - until I have enough Supplies again.

Market trade offers no solution, because even at a Buy-offer at 30 for Supplies, nothing is sold to me. (Maybe AI sits on all the Supplies provinces?)

This is not a challenge, because there is no solution, no workaround, no-nothing. Simply nada I can do about it, except play Supplies farmer, waiting for my harvest.

In the 1st game it was the same with Tools.

- No unittrading possible? Why?

One argument in CoW and S1914 for this was to prevent super-stacking. Not Relevant here. (....and it was not a significant occurence in s1914 or CoW, thus irrelevant anywhere)

Another was treason, but that is not possible here, in this unbreakable coalition. (....and it was not a significant occurence in s1914 or CoW, thus irrelevant anywhere)

If I at least had the option to focus on Infantry-class development and could trade units for Artillery etc. which require Supplies, but ... alas; unit trade is not possible.

Please note I don't play Farmville, because I think that is boring... 'nuf said.

- Troop position markers and troop 'flags':

Game looks great, except for the blocked view on exact positions of troops in crowded battles, i.e. 100 smaller human and AI armies attacking a position like Ypre, making it impossible to position anything close to the battle in an exact position.

Suggestions:

- make the units and there 'flags' become transparent when you zoom in, so position markers shine through

- make position marker shine through always

When doing so, keep in mind 33% of the world population has some form of color blindness (just thinking of the tiny dot which is supposed to be there in CoW, but for me it is just not; too tiny? wrong color?)

- Limited player interaction!

An MMO is basically a player-interaction based game. If it weren't, what would be the difference with playing vs AI off-line like in the old days?

This game offers very limited player interaction options for trade and diplomacy, which makes it ... boring.

- Coalition consists of AI and humans.

More than 50% of the human players of my (not even fully human) team is inactive already on day 4 and the enemy team is 80% inactive.

(This is actually the only challenge, because AI is smarter than all the 12 year olds that are lured into the game and won't like it anyway)

This leads to the conclusion that Bytro is marketing the game tp the wrong public.

So ... make a choice please!:

A. Keep making excellent strategy games for a smarter public and target those players with your marketing (text, visuals etc) and blow off the 12yrs old players.

B. Stop making excellent strategy games, dumb your games down, lose your active players and target the 12yrs old players (and go under in the marketing battle against bigger budgets of better marketeers of 1000's of dumb but flashier games out there for the dumber players)

- Inactivity:

Really ... inactivity has been the biggest problem of S1914, Cow and now is for S1. Solutions for the large number of inactives are i.e.:

- change your marketing to blow off those that don't like the slower pace and required thinking and learning, WHILE attracting the players that do like this kind of game.

- make rank-requirements to enter certain maps higher. Only players that are active attain higher ranks (mostly). When entering a map or creating a map, the ranking requirement thus more or less would guarantee that one avoids having 99 noobs in a 100 player map of which 89 are inactive within the 1st 2-3 days.

- add features, instead of removing them, so people have more to do than just farm resources...

- and a ton of other things...

Conclusion so far:

S1 is not really an improvement in view of the existing problems in S1914 and CoW. Now do what you have to do to make Supremacy great again.

Nevertheless, a few things are very likeable, i.e. it looks are great and the pro-active AI is so much better

It would not a bad thing if the unit description would say what the complete requirements are, like in COW.

For instance, now you see:

- in the research pane that Artillery level 2 requires Artillery level 1. That is correct for for the research, but no other info.

- in the unit production pane you Artillery level 2 requires 'a factory'. That is ofc also correct.

However, I would not be surprised if that 'a factory' actually is supposed to be a certain level, which doubtlessly is not level 2, as required for Artillery level 1...

It should not be much trouble to add such information...

Quote from Lem

in the 1st project Bitro was the construction of a field hospital and in it the troops were treated faster. You can also add this to this game

that is a very nice suggestion!

I have a terrible time distinguishing where a unit stands exactly.

I am in a game where 2 players have multiple armies in and around Ypre.

It is simply impossible to see where my artillery or Panzerzug are standing.