Posts by Joe B

    Hey Joe B,

    thanks for taking the time to share your ideas. I've also taken note of these and will relay them to the Game Developers. I can't guarentee every good idea will make it into the game but we try our best to constantly improve.

    Cheers!

    Thank you Slyx! Much appreciated :)

    Having had a little more experience with the game, I agree that as the game goes on, AI-controlled nations offer more of a challenge, especially if they have some infrastructure to build stuff. All the same, I think they are too weak in the early game - little more than one conscript per province makes AI countries a real pushover early.

    No, province morale moves toward the high morale point you have established with your buildings incrementally, it doesn't just leap there in one day. I don't know how big the increments are exactly.

    The listing of resources captured when taking a province is a very welcome feature, thank you!


    There is still plenty more to be fixed in the game though. One bug I recently noticed is that the icon for resources is not appearing for many provinces in the province overview screen. This means you cannot tell whether it is a single or double resource province when checking to see how many resource units you have. Also, the double resource provinces are not listed first anymore when you select to list provinces by type, instead they are randomly scattered.

    Ah yes, that seems to be it :)


    I didn't understand Petruz's post, but yours makes sense and checking the values in my provinces, it appears to be correct. I'm still not sure what the value is supposed to achieve, but at least now I know how it is calculated, thanks :)

    WTF another of my enemies also has level 2 flamethrowers on day 1!


    I think this must be some sort of boost for noobs - I also noticed that they are getting a maximum of 10k resources per province, whereas I only get 7k.

    I just joined a "Europe 1914" scenario, the game is literally an hour old, I checked the newspaper to find that my next door neighbour Austria-Hungary just joined only five minutes before me - and yet he's already on my border with 2 ACs, 2 infantry - and two level 2 flamethrower units???


    How is it even POSSIBLE to have flamethrower units on day 1? They are not even researchable until day 7!


    And how could he possibly march an army of 7 troops to my border when the game is only an hour old and he only joined five minutes before I did?

    Militia is basically an interchangeable word for "conscript" in this game. Conscripts can't be built, they are the troops that just appear after a set period of time, especially in newly conquered provinces.


    And yes, they are a kind of infantry, but not the same as the regular infantry you build in the barracks, which are faster and more powerful.

    Oh, and while we're on the general topic of resource tracking, I just noticed that the number of resources listed as being generated "per day" in the resource drop-down tooltips refers to resources generated per 24-hour day, rather than the 12-hour day that the game is actually being run in. The day listed in these tooltips should correspond to the length of day in the game, not the length of day in the real world, how is the gamer supposed to know that the day listed in the tooltips is different from the game day? It's just confusing and needs to be fixed.


    And come to think of it, this raises another question. Do the "daily" upkeep figures given for your units refer to 12-hour game days or 24-hour real days? This just emphasizes the need for consistency of units. You can't be using 12-hour days in one part of the game and 24-hour days in another, how would anybody be expected to know which is being referred to in any given context?

    One of the big problems I am having with the game is trying to figure out exactly what I can afford to build in terms of units (and, to a much lesser extent, buildings). This is partly because resources are not subtracted from your stockpile until a unit actually begins building. This means that you can put 5 units in a build queue but only the resources for the first are subtracted, the resources for the others are not subtracted until they actually begin building.


    Given that you have multiple building queues operating at one time, and they all use different mixes of resources, it becomes very tiresome and difficult to keep trying to estimate exactly what you can afford to build, especially when it comes to unit upkeep. In fact, to do it properly, you would constantly need to keep a calculator on hand, and this is supposed to be a game, not an exercise in arithmetic.


    So the first thing that I think needs to be done is that resources should be deducted from the resource totals whenever you queue a new unit for construction, not just when it starts building. The game does this, for example, when you place a "sell" order in the market, subtracting the total you want to sell so you don't accidentally use those resources, so why not follow the same principle for unit construction?


    More broadly, however, I don't think even this is adequate, because as I noted earlier, it still wouldn't give you a readout of the daily upkeep of all the units you are constructing. So I think what is probably needed is some sort of "master window" showing all of your current builds, along with the total resources they are going to cost to build and the total upkeep they are going to require. That way, you could manage your military buildup in a far more efficient manner, and not be constantly worrying that perhaps you are building too many units or not enough.


    And finally, while we're on the subject of overview windows, why the heck isn't there a window you can go to which gives you a full breakdown of what your army currently consists of? All there seems to be is the window that opens from your flag at the top of the screen that gives you the total number of troops. One needs a breakdown of the types of troops one has built, in order to figure out what you might need more of. Yes, you can run around the map counting everything, but again, that is a crashing bore and the antithesis of what a gaming experience is supposed to be about.


    So there's a couple of things I would like to see in the game which would provide an immediate improvement in the game experience as well as giving the player a more immersive experience and a stronger sense of control over his empire.

    It seems like the more stuff I build in a province, the worse the "province order" value is. For example, I built two structures in my capital that gave the province +60 morale, but now "province order" has dropped to -23, wiping out more than a third of the morale improvement from building.


    This is very frustrating when one doesn't even know what province order is or what influences it, does anybody have any information about it? Thanks.

    (a) It's faster than Supremacy 1914, so I don't see how that could be an issue.

    (b) Yes, but they have made the manual highly visible, unlike in S1914 where it is virtually invisible and where clearly the majority of noobs never see it, so again, I don't see that as an issue.

    (c) The building options are actually wider than in S1914 I believe, so again, not a problem IMO.

    (d) I really like the new morale system - a lot. The fact that units don't just get killed with one shot, but have to be worn down, gives the game a much more realistic flavour. The retreat and reconstitute was a big surprise for me, and I'm sure for many others, but on reflection I think it's a nice touch that again adds more realism to the game.

    (e) I haven't had much experience there, I don't know what unit recovery is like, but given that even depleted units are still reasonably effective I don't have an issue with it.

    (f) Yes, the almost total wipeout of infrastructure when you capture a new province is a big disappointment. I'm still not sure though, if this is a bug or a feature, but I hope they fix it.

    (g) Unit production seems very fast to me! But perhaps the build queues could be made available to all players, not just High Command users, because if you don't have HC and you're not coming back to this game every hour or two, you ain't gonna build much of an army.

    (h) Yes, I think dreadnoughts are hugely overpowered right now, especially with the lack of effective counters except other naval units. Artillery units have an attack of only 3 against them v the dreadnought's 5 and that is absurd, the dreadnought's attack against arty should be reduced to even things out there (after all, arty v arty only have an attack of one). I would also like to see bombers given a higher attack factor against naval units, they are pretty much useless against them now.


    And oh, the fact that cruisers have no ranged attack is ridiculous, why couldn't they be given the same range as field guns?


    Also, I'm bemused by the fact that submarines, which are supposed to be "stealth" units, can actually be seen like any other units, at least in my experience. How does that make any sense? You might as well just build torpedo boats, they are just as powerful but faster in speed and faster to build.


    BTW, one other minor issue with the naval game - the unit icons all look so similar it's almost impossible to tell them apart, except for the subs. Even the harbour looks like another naval unit. They really need to do more to differentiate the appearance of naval units IMO.

    Just curious because you only seem to get a choice of 3 games to join each time. What I'm finding annoying about this is that you can't pick your game so you often end up playing against a bunch of noobs who just log in, look at the game and say to themselves "no thanks!" and disappear, which leaves you with very few active players to contend with and not much of a challenge.