September update!

[Marshall Ellis]

Hello all:

Well guys (And gals) here is a basic report on where we are and where we are going. We're starting up a "major changes" phase in the program. These changes came after some development testing. I believe these these are good ideas that will add to the game so I'm not complaining (Much). I cannot elaborate on many of these changes yet but there will be more information to follow...

Now on to some things I know for sure:

We will not be copying EU.

We will have a turn-based Napoleonic ERA wargame. A few unique features to look for would be:

Movement which will be asyncronous. That is, you will plot your moves, then goto the next player who will not see or know you moves for that turn. He or she will then plot their moves. Move execution will happen after all players have plotted their moves.
Units may collide at that point causing combat in unplanned areas. This was something that we thought would be very difficult to acomplish on a board game but great for the PC. We also think it lends itself to be more accurate of real life behavior.

Combat will optionally allow more tactical control. We've seen some systems in the past that allowed tactical control of strategies but not positional control or your forces. We're allowing a mix of tactical selection as well as positional control of your forces. A simple example of this would be "The Emperor's War".

More about some of the main features to come later...

Now for the bad news. We are not going to release any screenshots yet because the the interface is not really ready. We also do not have a revised release date as of today but will advise as soon as we do.

I would like to say thank you for your patience! It's been a long time and we thought we would be there by now but we were wrong and we apologize for that but we want to do the best game possible. I'll also try to get on the forums more often but I'll probably never get on as often as I need to or as often as you would like.

Thank you

[jnier]

Sounds great Marshall! Keep up the good work and thanks for the update!

[U2]

Hi

I wish we could have this kind of montly update on all the games being made by Matrix. Maybe David could tell all the developers to do this? Its really nice you know. Thanks Marshall!

Dan

[Le Tondu]

The movement and combat sounds fantastic! I agree that the way that you have things planned are more realistic than traditional types of games. Good going on your choice.

No problem on the screenshots. We all want this done right and you have my support.

Thanks for the update Marshall. I can't wait to hear more.

Cordialement,
Rick

[sol_invictus]

Sounds great; take your time and make an excellent game.

[denisonh]

Sounds great Marshall.

Keep throwing us bones!:)

[pasternakski]

Thanks, Marshall. Things seem to be shaping up nicely. I am especially intrigued by - and happy about - the tactical combat control feature. Campaigning along, working with limited intelligence and just a general plan of advance, and - suddenly - a clash erupts between one of the march-route corps and an enemy whose strength and intentions are only vaguely known to me.

What do I do now? Improvise brilliance, of course, for I am Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French. Soldiers! Prepare yourselves for a morning of glory!

Sacre bleu, I'm living it already. Gimme this game!

Maybe I should change my moniker to "pasterNappy."

One last titillating thought (and I am only using that word to see if Net Nanny will asterisk part of it out). Could this game engine have a future in other contexts, say, the French-Indian Wars, the American Revolution, the War of 1812, or - dare I suggest it since the role of diplomacy would be minimal - the War Between the States? Maybe others?

[von Murrin]

What they said.

Other than that, no need to apologize. Take your time and do it right, because we can wait (even though it may not seem so).

[Marshall Ellis]

To all:

Appreciate the understanding and the support! One of the whole ideas behind the engine was to make it good for several games in the same general time frame (American Revolution, American Civil War, etc.). Obviously each war has its own unique features but we're hoping to at least minimize development for the next game(s) ... but this is just our pie-in-sky dream.

Pasternakski: Did that kind of answer your questions about future games?

Thank you

[pasternakski]

Oh, yeah, Marshall, gimme, gimme gimme. I'll buy 'em all (assuming that the first one's good, of course, and it sure sounds like it's going to be).

Go for it!

[Uncle Toby]

A question and a suggestion. Will the turns allow simultaneous input for people playing on a LAN who have no reason to wait for the others to move? The system you describe would allow for this and it would be a much better option for people with LANs.

The suggestion is on the combat. While it’s tempting as a designer to put things like direct control of battlefield forces for ‘feel’ it really adds little to a strategic game unless it’s merely a modifying system to the tactical plan selection. Disposition of forces could be used to alter the ‘riskiness’ of a battle-plan to good effect but should be limited to that function or something similar.

I would urge you to make battle plans which have strategic value only. For example a plan who’s purpose is to delay until reinforcements arrive, a plan who’s purpose is to cause attrition, a plan who’s purpose is to engage and exhaust supply, a plan who’s purpose is to prevent disaster, a plan who’s purpose is to inflict maximum morale damage, et. While it’s tempting to model plans on history it makes a better game if the plans make game-sense. Of course you cam still give them historical names. The other thing I would suggest is to make the battle resolution multi-tiered, that is, first resolve whether the armies were able to successfully execute their plans (this would depend on the general’s characteristics, the army’s characteristics the terrain the enemies plan et.) then resolve the combat. Difficult plan types like surprise attack which offer great risk but great reward could be then easily integrated into the game. An example of this would be French pick surprise flank march (aim disorganize, force withdraw), British pick direct assault (aim, morale damage). The more difficult French maneuver fails vs the easier and more direct English one causing the French to now choose between defending out of position or withdraw, vs the English assault. Combat is then resolved. If you want to make it a bit more complex you could have rounds of combat before and after the plan combat resolution.

I think a system on these lines would have plenty of period color and great depth. Battle plans should be more than a game of rock-paper-scissors.

[Le Tondu]

Originally posted by Uncle Toby
A question and a suggestion. Will the turns allow simultaneous input for people playing on a LAN who have no reason to wait for the others to move?

While I am NOT Marshall Ellis, the one thing that I noticed is that NW should be very good for PBEM AND human vs. human play --just like Combat Mission is. In CM, (the BEST wargame ever, IMO because of it's hybrid system called "we-go"), after both sides input their movement and combat plans for the turn, the tactical AI takes over and moves them. When two units meet combat takes place with LOS, fatigue, etc... being considered.

Marshall, please correct me if I am wrong but NW is the same way.

Cordialement,
Rick

[mariovalleemtl]

For me it's the political system I am very curious to see. Why Prussia declare war and to who? etc... I just hope Napoléon will not have to conquare all Europe to win.

Did anybody played the new GMT's "Napoleonic Wars" ? It a very good 5 players bordgame covering 1805 to 1815.

Vive L'Empereur!

[David Heath]

GMT game is great I playted it right before it was released and it was GREAT... I got a copy the day it came out.

David

[Marshall Ellis]

Uncle Toby:

Yes, you are correct. This type of system was done for a couple of reasons. First, it's make it a little easier to deal with PBEM and IP type games. Second, this type of system is more real to life. Napoloeon never waited his turn to make war!

Interesting. We have made some changes to combat to make some of the strategies more general in nature. Though we're not done with it, I think you will like it based on your message.

Le Tondu:

Yes, movement will be very much like CM. Moves plotted then the PC steps through the moves looking for unit collisions which then spark battles.


Hope that helps!

Thank you

[mariovalleemtl]

I play it to David. Lot of fun but must be 4 or more. I also play test the futur one for OSG on the same topic. It will be MORE details and more big for advance gamer. Read my web page if you nead some music

[Uncle Toby]

I hope you don’t make the battle plans too abstract, I think it’s important they have a direct impact on and interrelation with strategy. If you’ll indulge me in a rather long message I’ll explain why.

Competitive games are about doing something better than your opponent. When you choose what area this contention of ability is going to be in, you choose what the game is really about. Whether it’s Napoleon or fairy tale creatures is only window dressing, though it can make a game more enjoyable to the imagination.. To be a good game with replay value the area of contention should be something which is not guesswork but cannot be fully grasped, which confers advantage the better you are able to do it. This is called depth. (There is also the consideration of how absolutely you want victory to go according to ability and how much randomness you want so that players of somewhat varying abilities can play together without one always winning.) This is harder to do than you might suppose and most games, especially computer game fall down in this area. Simply put it’s generally easy for an experienced player to get as good as it’s possible to be at most computer games. He won’t necessarily make the right move every time because random evens and guesswork is involved but he’ll make the best move given the information he has. When you reach this point the game becomes boring, it’s like playing solitaire.

Multiplayer strategy games have an advantage because at least one area of contention, diplomacy, has depth by nature consisting as it does of bargaining with other people. The only consideration here is to limit the advantages gained by successful diplomacy so the you don’t overwhelm the other areas of the game. When diplomacy overwhelms a strategy game it becomes a popularity contest, or as I like to put it, ‘a bucket of crabs’.

The other areas of contention can be all sorts of things from ‘pattern recognition’ (who can see what’s really happening best) to long range conditional effects (seeing the future consequences of moves, as in chess), bluffing, calculation (though it’s hard to pull this one off satisfactorily), even imagination. Making anything a useful area of contention requires balance and depth with a sense for how it will affect other areas of the game.

For a game of the type you are doing I think long range conditional effects, and bluffing are the most useful areas of contention. It would be nice to work in pattern recognition (it’s my favorite) but it would be difficult, and while there is some calculation almost unavoidably in any strategy game, raising it to the depth necessary would slow the game down too much in this case .

Long range effects are one of the easiest things to effectively make a ground of contention. I won’t presume to teach you how to suck eggs. Bluffing is another matter. If bluffing is to be more than a simple guess, like paper-rock-scissors it must have subtle grounds on which to work. A player should be able to seem to be doing one thing while planning another and for that there must be limited information of a semi-reliable nature as well as consequences and advantages. In poker terms there have to be bets and raises and cards seen and unseen. This is why I’m concerned about the battle system (and also the strategic intelligence system though it hasn’t been mentioned). With a good deep system for bluffing your game would have three legs to stand on instead of just two.

[Uncle Toby]

Given the resounding lack of response to my last post, I’m going to assume lack of comment to mean lack of comprehension of exactly what I’m talking about. Please stop me if the silence actually means boredom.

To be more specific about exactly how bluffing could be added as a useful method of contention in a game like this lets’ assume a game very like ‘Empires in Arms’. In that game there were several mechanisms which could be adapted to our purpose in a computer game, namely the manpower based recruitment, the corps organization, the unit morale and the area movement.

Bluffing requires some real information to be available to the bluffee but that this information be hedged about with uncertainty and probability. The player who uses bluffing best and thus gains the advantage is the one who can best fool his opponent while reading the others moves accurately. Information must thus be semi-reliable The trick is how to usefully and smoothly introduce semi-reliable information into the game.

The corps organization and area movement give an excellent mechanism for doing this. If you make only the corps designation visible, not it’s contents and only in friendly and adjacent areas you make it possible to use ‘sham’ corps to deceive the enemy as to where your true strength lay. To keep this from being a simple shell-game the number of corps should be finite with a minimum number of regiments required. Corps reorganization should only be allowed between resting corps in a connected friendly city so that once a corps is known to be sham it cannot easily be changed. Multiple corps in the same area should be of unknown designation.

A system like this would allow for pretty good bluffing, but it could be further refined for added depth of play.

If manpower is given an incremental penalty against morale as in say, your manpower is ten, you can recruit ten regiments per year at 100% of national morale, another ten at 90% another at 80% et. then your armies, especially in times of extended conflict would have variable morale. Shunting bad regiments into sham corps would further refine the bluff. While a system like this would be cumbersome in a paper wargame a computer could handle all this and more automatically. The ideas I’ve mentioned could be much further developed without hindering game-play at all.

Likewise the original prompt to this post, the tactical combat system could have a great deal of usefulness in bluffing if it were not so much a choice about what happens on the day of battle as what happens when two forces are in the same area. Playing for time, trying to breakthrough, wearing down the enemy strength while avoiding disadvantageous combat would then be important decisions interconnected with game strategy this is why I suggest a multi-tiered resolution since the result of ‘combat’ could frequently be no engagement. Perhaps there could be two choices, a strategy choice and if battle ensues a tactical one.

To recap; a game without an area of skill in which to compete might as well be dice-throwing to see who gets the highest number. Strategy games usually involve calculation (of probabilities and the like) but these generally lack depth and can be easily mastered by an experienced player. Advanced planning is frequently present in strategy games and sometimes has sufficient depth but the more grounds of contention the more different types of players can enjoy and compete in the game. Multiplay nearly always adds great depth consisting as it does of dealing with all the complexities of another personality but it must be restrained or it will unbalance the game. Finally, a sufficiently deep system for bluffing is a good addition to a strategy game, to have value it must avoid the pitfalls of a lack of interdependence with other game elements and the over-simplicity of the ‘shell-game’.

[denisonh]

I agree with you Uncle Toby (Just do not have much to add, too consumed with PBEM UV right now)

I do hope that there is a robust diplomatic piece to the game that replicates the politics of the period. There are restrictions, protocols, and consequences for major political undertakings. Declaring war is not just "hey let's go to war today", as there are a great many factors that can affect your own political stability at home and abroad both in the short and long term. (EU and EU2 do this fairly well). Implementing a system with restrictions and consequences should help limit the "bucket of crabs" problem that Uncle Toby refers to.

Also establishing victory conditions associated with the particular nation should help limit overly ahistorical situations. Nationally related objectives would definitely create a better framework for diplomacy.

[Marshall Ellis]

I agree with what your saying Uncle Toby. Sorry for the late reply but I'm deep in development but you are right. Any time humans are the players, there will be endless possibilities. We must also not over do this (i.e. prevent British and French alliance) which could (and would) doom the game to lasting about 5 minutes and make 5 other players quite upset. I believe this is a large reason why Multiplayer PBEM / IP games are so popular because humans are a little more difficult to predict than some programmer's weight-based AI system. EIA (Empires and Arguments hahaha) has a lot to offer since the military portion is only a piece of the puzzle. I think EIA's popularity comes from the diplomacy (Arguments) part of the game. Anyway ... thanks for the input!

Thank you