Two MP's 4 one player?

[Michael T]

Rather than have an AI player is it possible to have some Human players in a PBEM game to control 2 major powers? I mean from the same PC? If so will it cause any possible conflicts assuming that the 2 Major powers would never go to war.
Thanks 4 any help.

[DCWhitworth]

ORIGINAL: krak
Rather than have an AI player is it possible to have some Human players in a PBEM game to control 2 major powers? I mean from the same PC? If so will it cause any possible conflicts assuming that the 2 Major powers would never go to war.
Thanks 4 any help.

From a technical point of view the issue is that a PBEM game always saves the file to the save folder and it can't be redirected. So if you try to play two nations they will both be trying to save the file to the same place.

If you understand this limitation you can play more than one nation by copying the save game into a different folder before you play the second nation. You must be very meticulous doing this and take great care as it is easy to become confused, make a mistake and screw things up.

I've used this technique to play another player's turn in a PBEM (e.g. if they are on holiday). I wrote a procedure up that covers what needs to be done. It illustrates the principle, but of course if you were playing two nations full time you wouldn't bother zipping files etc.

Here is is, hope it helps -

How to Play someone else’s turn

WARNING – Only undertake this if you are sure you understand these instructions. Failure to do this properly could corrupt your saved game.

The problem is you can have only *one* copy of a PBEM game and this resides in the root of your save folder. So you have to swap save files to play someone else’s turn

Absent Player

Before your phase go to your save folder and zip your saved game up and email it to the substitute player who will play your turn. Be sure to include both the .sav file and the .sav.dat file.

When you get back, the substitute player should email you back a zip file containing your revised save files. Unzip these back into your save folder. For safety’s sake it would be wise to back up your old save files first.

Substitute Player

To play someone else’s turn you need to do the following -

Copy your save files to another directory (don’t forget there are two of them).
Copy the absent players files into your save directory, this will overwrite your files.
Load the game and play their turn as desired.
Copy their save file somewhere else.
Zip their save file and send it back to them.
Restore your backed up save file to your save directory overwriting the absent player’s files.

[MarshallEllis]

David:
 
I never really thought about the saved game name being the issue but now can see what you are saying.
I wonder if changing the game name convention to "game_name" + "player".sav would help?
 
 

[DCWhitworth]

Marshall

I think that would be a really helpful move.

[NeverMan]

ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis

David:

I never really thought about the saved game name being the issue but now can see what you are saying.
I wonder if changing the game name convention to "game_name" + "player".sav would help?

LOL. After reading the first thread I was totally going to suggest this. I do think this might help. Also, I read somewhere else that it is an issue using the same email address for two+ nations? I'm not sure why this could be an issue (unless there is some hard code reason).

Being able to play a EiA game with 2+ players and no-AI would be great. You could do some fun stuff with it. Not being able to do this limits the game too much. A game of this magnitude and calibar shouldn't have such limitations.

[MarshallEllis]

I need to investigate what this would do to existing games?
I don't think it would kill anything but I will make no assumptions.
I'll look at this...
 
 

[JanSorensen]

Marshall Ellis,
 
Changing the save game format would also make it alot easier to run test for PBEM games - where someone plays all 7 to check how things work in PBEM. As it is right now thats just not practically possible. So - please do make such a change.

[Jimmer]

I agree that this would be a very good addition. It would also allow testing of issues. For instance, I can play both GB and France (leaving the rest to the AI), so I can check out certain scenarios and issue.
 
For example, I recently wanted to know what would happen to a British corps that crosses the channel to fight in Lille? If I don't have any depots on the continent, it should have to surrender, but I would like to see that happen. Further, if I own, say, Sweden, will it use a depot there as the retreat path, thus allowing me to retreat along the coast? From an asthetic point of view, I hope not, but, by a strict reading of the rules, it should.
 
I'm not asking for an answer to this question; I'm merly pointing out that I would like to test this and see.
 
There are many other scenarios I would like to set up, that require cooperation of two powers. I can't do that now without using two copies of the game (which I won't do, because it would violate the license agreement).

[JanSorensen]

ORIGINAL: Jimmer

I agree that this would be a very good addition. It would also allow testing of issues. For instance, I can play both GB and France (leaving the rest to the AI), so I can check out certain scenarios and issue.

For example, I recently wanted to know what would happen to a British corps that crosses the channel to fight in Lille? If I don't have any depots on the continent, it should have to surrender, but I would like to see that happen. Further, if I own, say, Sweden, will it use a depot there as the retreat path, thus allowing me to retreat along the coast? From an asthetic point of view, I hope not, but, by a strict reading of the rules, it should.

I'm not asking for an answer to this question; I'm merly pointing out that I would like to test this and see.

There are many other scenarios I would like to set up, that require cooperation of two powers. I can't do that now without using two copies of the game (which I won't do, because it would violate the license agreement).

Why would you need to play the game as PBEM for these tests though? Just play hotseat by marking GB and France as human and the rest as AI. That seems to work well enough. Its when you want to test how the PBEM specific stuff works that things get troublesome.

[Jimmer]

Sort of. I have seen times when something works one way in PBEM than it does in other formats. For instance, the bug where one would just lose factors only happened in a PBEM game (in fact, only when the replay button was clicked).

[Michael T]

Thanks for the info. It would be cool if Marshall could put this option in PBEM games. My reason is that it is easy to find 7 players to start a game but it seems much more difficult to find seven that will finish one! We have 5 very solid players so we would like to be able to have say a GB/Pr player and a SP/Tu player rather than AI. We have done this in the EIA boardgame with some house rules that restrict the flexibility of the dual country players and it worked quite well. Please work on this capability Marshall when you get a chance. Cheers.