Posts by ScaredyCat

    I have the recurring problem, that the troops travel the segments of the map from one extreme to the other, when they arrive at the intersection of the provinces and even when they change from one province to another, they return they lose time, deviate from their path, and even they stamp with other armies unexpectedly.

    I have been experiencing this same problem since some time back. I am still experiencing this on a daily basis.

    The lighter green color is to help especially newer players to orient themselves on the map as we often saw less experienced players struggling with spotting their own territory next to allied territories for example. In the low graphics mode the color became too bright though by accident, in that mode we will make it a bit darker again in the next update probably.

    Oh, maybe its due to color blindness.. but if so, i am not sure if changing the shade is sufficient. for example, those with 'protanopia' (see pic below; need to click to expand) may have difficulties differentiating light green (own province) from red (enemy province).



    image.jpeg

    My feelings are mixed about the smaller army labels.

    • On one hand, the smaller labels is more taxing on the eyes (more difficult to see the troops number), which is a downside. I don't think it's a matter of not getting used to it, because I have been playing with the smaller labels on a Frontline map for several days before today's update and still cannot get used to it.
    • On the other hand, I do think that the smaller labels can reduce the confusion when there are many units cluttered together. But units cluttering is not a common occurrence in typical gameplay.

    In sum, I think this change greatly improves gameplay in relatively rare situations at the expense of slightly degrading gameplay in most other situations. Therefore, I agree with the suggestion to allow users to adjust the size of the labels.


    On another note, I also want to suggest that more to be done to promote Frontline pioneer games (I see that others have also suggested this elsewhere on this forum). I suspect that a lot of the bugs were undetected in the frontline games because there are too little players. For examples:

    • I seldom end up getting to use planes on Frontline maps (because I tend to retire on Frontline maps as players go inactive). Maybe that's why the 'invisible planes' issue that accompanies this update didn't get picked up?
    • Frontline maps are usually small maps with little players. Maybe thats why the lag that accompanies the new province administration menu 2-3 weeks ago wasn't detected?

    As for the change in the shade of green, I prefer the older shade of green, but I guess this change is something I can get used to, so it's not a big deal to me. I don't quite get the point of this change though. Personally, I never had any problems differentiating my provinces from those that belong to my ally/neutral/enemy.


    On a more positive note, I think the province administration menu works very well now.

    Yes, he is definitely using some goldmarks. For example, building a harbour 10 minutes after building a factory in the same province can only be achieved with goldmark speed up.

    • 10:01 pm Beirut has a new Factory.
      10:11 pm Beirut has a new Harbour.
    • 10:13 pm Fudukwan has a new Railway.
      10:14 pm Fudukwan has a new Factory.

    As for the battleships, it is harder to tell from just the newspaper, because it could be that these ships were constructed in different provinces. You could tell if you were online at looking at the newspaper during the time window in which the ships were constructed (because the top headline in the newspaper can tell you about where the battleship/railgun is being constructed).


    I guess its too late for you now - there is nothing much you can do to resist him at this point. Most of the tricks and tactics requires at least some mechanical units (planes, artilleries, ships) to be effective. Once you lose most of your mechanical units and have little chance to rebuild them, then there is no coming back. It's hard to achieve anything with pure infantry in late game.


    You can find some of the strategies in this compilation. I learnt a lot from these posts when I first started this game.

    Ok.. i would say this amount of GM usage is uncommon. I have played 100+ maps, and I have encountered heavy goldmark usage like what you have described less than 10 times. On these rare occasions, I mostly ended up losing. But I still find it quite satisfying to make the person spend as much goldmarks as possible. Just note that this is not very prevalent. Moderate level of goldmark usage, yes. But using goldmark to constantly maintain troop and province morale at 100% is rare.


    Also, despite appearances, there is a chance that he may not be keep up his goldmark usage.

    • His use of goldmark is highly inefficient. For example, using goldmarks to keep morale of infantry stacks and province at 100% is very costly.
    • There is a goldmark sale which gives a 1000% (10x) bonus for goldmark purchase. This sale is only available once per account. He might have gotten his goldmark from this one-time sale. If so, when he depletes this batch of goldmarks, he will have to spend more real life money to buy it (at a more expensive price), which he may not.

    He would want you guys to think that he has unlimited goldmark to spend, so you all will give up. But there is a chance that if you guys keep up the fighting, he will run out of goldmarks...


    As a sidenote, I do think the 1000% sale is quite unbalanced as it encourages people to keep recreating new accounts just to take advantage of it.

    A few thoughts..


    First, from the limited information available in your post, I am not convinced that this player is heavily using goldmarks.

    • Remember that this is a 4x speed game. I don't know how long this game had gone on for, but this level of building and units is easily achievable in 1 real life week (28 in-game days) without goldmark use.
    • Whether or not he has bought anything on the stock market is irrelevant and not indicative of goldmark use.
    • Also, this game is very much luck dependent. For example, it could be that two of his neighbours suicide-attacked each other and he manage to swop in to capture the provinces with little unit loss (and maybe even capture some of those provinces with high-level factories intact).
    • To really get greater clarity on whether he used large amount of goldmarks, we need to know how long the game has lasted, and you need to look at the newspaper to examine his development trajectory.

    Second, regardless of how he managed to get the units he got, you guys have a realistic chance of defeating him. Your game is not "ruined".

    • From your post, this guy does not have ANY artilleries. Given the importance of artilleries in this game, this indicates that he may not be very good at this game and that you guys have a decent chance of defeating him.
    • This is a 4x speed game, he needs to sleep/work and there are several of you up against him. Even if the time window is narrow, there would still have a sufficient time window for you to strike him when he is unavailable. Use artilleries to weaken his forces with no losses. Maybe the effects of this isn't too obvious in a single day, but it adds up over a few real life days.
    • If there are multiple players fighting him, you all have a natural advantage due to the morale penalty from war.
    • With good tactics and strategy, you can take out his mechanical units. Tanks can be countered by artilleries, you can split stack against his planes (while you gradually build fighters to counter his airforce). Railguns are relatively weak (mostly just for psychological effect). Battleships are more difficult to counter if he knows what he is doing, but battleship can only attack near the coast and has no effects inland. Read the strategy forum to learn more about the various tactics and tricks.

    Finally, maybe you will still end up losing, but

    • As someone already said, goldmark is part of the game
    • It is only through having these challenging fights that you become better at this game. See this as a learning opportunity to get better.

    I agree with what others have said above.


    To add to that, when implementing new changes, I suggest that greater consideration should be given to the computation demands (CPU, memory, etc) of these changes. I see that a common complain is that large maps (100-500 player maps) already have horrible lag in late game. If new functions improve gameplay but increase the lag substantially, I really don't see it as an improvement at all. I would rather than have less laggy platform with less functions than an extremely laggy platform with a lot of functions.


    Regarding the point about snapping. I read in the other thread that CONTROL key can disable snapping. This is really good to know (first time I heard about it). I tried it out on my computer (MacOS) and it did indeed seem to reduce the snapping radius, but did not totally disable it. I suggest changing it such that it totally disable snapping.

    Maybe I can use a more elaborate example. Assuming the following situation where each of the 5 coalition has 5 players:

    Coalition A with 300 points

    Coalition B with 200 points

    Coalition C with 150 points

    Coalition D with 100 points

    Coalition E with 74 points


    If you have 67 points, you will be in the 4th place. Because your weighted score (67/1000 = 0.0670) is greater than coalition D's weighted score (100/1500 = 0.0667). If you have 66 points, you will be in the 5th place.


    Similarly, if you have 50 points, you will be in the 5th place. If you have 49 points, you will be in the 6th place.


    I am not 100% sure that I did the math correctly. The easiest way to check is to log in to the game on the computer (I cant find it on mobile) and you will see your actual rank in the top left corner.


    EDIT to add the following regarding the 2nd part of your question regarding the top guy leaving the coalition:
    It depends on how many points the top guy has. You have to do the math...

    Arcorian so if I am not in a coalition and I am the only player in a game that is not in a coalition, I will automatically win the solo 1st place prize if the game timer runs out, even if single members of coalitions have way more points than me?

    I ask because I am currently in a 500player game where i'm like 6th place but everyone else in the top 15 is in a coalition and i'm solo, will i get the 1st place gold for solo even though a coalition has way more poitns and members of coalitions have more points? I have an opportunity to join the #3 coalition and that would put them to #2 or #1 but I might get more gold if I end the game solo since everyone else is on a team?

    I think you misunderstood how the victory is determined.

    There is no separate ranking for coalition and solo win. There is only a single ranking. The coalition vs. solo differentiation determines the amount of goldmark reward. For example, the first place reward will NOT be given for BOTH a coalition and a solo player.

    There is, however, a 'modifier' such that each victory point of a solo player has a greater weight than that of a coalition. You can read this post for more information: Game Rewards and Payouts


    In short, if you remain as a solo palyer, you will not get the first place goldmark reward for solo win.

    - Forts protect against bombardment too

    - If 3 cruisers + 10 infantry are stacked together, then your artillery will just attack the whole stack. The damage will be split among the infantry and the cruisers.

    - If they are not stacked together, the default firing mode is to attack the closest unit IF the cruisers are NOT firing at you. If the cruisers are firing at you, then your artillery will attack the cruisers instead.

    - Artilleries has greater range than cruisers. If you control your units well, you can take advantage of the greater range that artilleries have to take out his cruisers + infantry without any unit loss


    Edited to add: I just realized that you said that your troops are on an island. My last point may not apply if the island is extremely small.

    Never played on legacy mode? You poor soul, at least you dont need to feel the pain of not having legacy mode. Good sugestions, but we keep telling them the amount of problems in the new mode they dont care. Its amazing how a few of these were not an issue in legacy.

    Yea.. from reading what many people have said, I think i would probably prefer the legacy mode if I had the choice.

    To answer the part about Radius or splash damage, most distances in S1914 are measured by 'Movement Time" and terrain, real fun is in when you spend resources and think you have an airfield just in fighter range only to learn a day later you are about 5 KM outside of Fighter plane range LOL

    What you just said reminded me of another pain point: it is not possible to judge the flight range of planes without first having a plane. When I am starting to build an airforce but do not have a plane yet, it is hard to tell where I should place my airfields most efficiently. The flight range of fighter is 250km (or whatever it is in terms of movement time), but I cannot tell the flight range on the map with my eyes. I can get a rough sense of the radius of splash damage through experience, but I dont think i will ever be able to do so for flight range. This difficulty judging distance also applies to other situations, though to a lesser extent (e.g., judging railgun range). This difficulty measuring distance is obviously not a good representation of the real world. So having a distance-measuring tool would really help make the gameplay more realistic and enhance the planning/strategic elements of this game.

    Hi,


    I have a list of suggestions below. A few things about me to make sense of my suggestions:

    • I am a relatively new player (~1year; never had the chance to play on legacy mode), but am quite active (100+ games)
    • I mostly play on the computer (so my suggestions are based on the computer interface)

    If any of my suggestions stems from misunderstanding of the game mechanics, it would be good to let me know. Thanks for considering.

    ----

    • Railgun/battleship destroyed message in newspaper
      • Problem: The message that goes along the lines of “A railgun/battleship has been destroyed” in the newspaper is sometimes misleading. Even when two or more railgun/battleship has been destroyed in a single turn, it still displays the same message.
      • Suggested fix: Report the exact number (preferable) or change the message to say “one or more railgun has been destroyed” to be factually correct.
      • Implications: If the number of destroyed railgun/battleship is correctly displayed, one can precisely count the number of railgun/battleship that a player has by sifting through the newspaper. I think this is a cool design feature that somewhat mimics open-source intelligence gathering in the real world. But the misleading message about railgun/battleship destruction introduces noise. This noise is not very realistic (if there is accurate news reporting of the production of battleship/railgun, why isn’t there accurate news reporting of the destruction of these units?). Additionally, this misleading message is also not friendly to new players.
    • Espionage system: terrible lags
      • On big maps or when large number of spies are deployed, the espionage interface would lag terribly when my spies obtained intel about all my target’s provinces information (e.g., what is built, what is under construction). This lags in turn causes/exacerbates several problems I describe next.
      • Suggested fix: Introduce a filter to allow users to not display provinces information in the espionage reports.
    • Espionage system: too tedious
      • When I want to redeploy my defensive spies (based on information in newspaper) and offensive spies (because it’s a good strategy to move spies around to thwart counterspies), I sometimes have to manually recall all my spies. This seems unneccesarily tedious and it becomes particularly terrible when the system is lagging.
      • Suggested fix: Add a “Recall all spies” function. Maybe a master recall that recalls all spies, and a recall function for each of the 4 types (defense, economic, intel, military).
    • Accidental gold usage
      • There were a few occasions where I accidently spent goldmarks on unintended instant offensive espionage attacks due to the lag.
      • Suggested fix: Add a confirmation prompt just like what you have on mobile.
    • Help users know the splash damage area.
      • This game has splash damage, supposedly with a radius of 5km (I think). But it is really difficult to judge what 5km is. I think I have a rough idea after I have played more, but it can be difficult for a new player. I suggest either:
        • (i) add one of those distance measuring tool that google map has (but I think you may have to allow greater levels of Zoom for it to work).
        • or (ii) add a small semi-transparent circle around all units that shows the radius of splash damage, and users can turn this circle on/off (default = off).
    • Allow users to toogle ‘snap-to-grid’
      • I think there is a snap-to-grid type function when selecting where to move troops to. That is, when we try to move troops to a location very near another unit (or province, or navigation points at sea), it will ‘snap’ to the location of the unit. This feature is helpful in most situations, but in a few situations, it makes it difficult to make fine controls of troops movement. Maybe this is related to a similar criticism made by the legacy mode lovers? (I dont know because I never had the chance to use legacy mode). I suggest allowing users to turn this 'snap-to-grid' option off/on (default = on)
    • Allow users to delete chat messages
      • It seems that a major source of in-game lag is the accumulation of chat messages with coalition/other players. I have read that it is possible to make a report to get a game operator to clear the messages, though I have never done this before. But come on, GO are already overwhelmed with more meaningful reports that require human judgment (e.g., cheaters, multis) and they already have a response time of 3+days (in my experience). I suggest adding a feature to allow users to do this themselves.
    • Show if a nation has High command on Nation Profile (not just in the newspaper ranking).
      • When evaluating the profile of my neighbours, one of the things I want to know is if they have high command. But to check that, I have to look up the Newspaper ranking, which is unnecessarily tedious, especially in a 100-player or 500-player game.