New Game?

[mercenarius]

Thanks for your kind words, Orm!

I don't have that much to show this week, but I have created the "Detailed Instructions" menu which would be referenced from the "Replacements" enactment itself. As a reminder, this is what that particular enactment menu would look like:

Replacements Enactment Menu.jpg (224.36 KiB) Viewed 120 times

This is similar as what was posted on Dec. 22, but the above version is for "land troops" rather than naval forces.

If you decide to modify the instructions by clicking on "Detailed Instructions" you will get a menu similar to this one:

Detailed Directions Menu.jpg (178.05 KiB) Viewed 120 times

This does show the scarcity of usable manpower. Of course, manpower can be drawn from a wider area than an Operational Theater. It just costs more money to get the recruits where they are needed.

I'll try to post some additional screenshots by next weekend. I see now that the new Theater Report Dialog is going to need some additional information in it. Right now, there is nothing about manpower for recruiting.

[mercenarius]

OK, I have added some detail to the Theater Report dialogs. I also made them available from the control maps used in the first department of the Administrative Interface. To help the players realize this, I also added underlining/link highlighting as well as an ellipsis after the area's name. Here is an example with Gallia selected in the "Imperium" department:

Theater Control Map.png (1.04 MiB) Viewed 76 times

Of course, clicking on the underlined button will bring up the report dialog:

Theater Report Dialog.png (641.37 KiB) Viewed 76 times

This shows manpower, although the percent of volunteers is probably too high. It might be closer to zero at this point in history. I'll need to revisit that in the near future.

[mercenarius]

The things that I worked on this last week for the most part don't lend themselves to screen shots. I noticed some problems with the order of battle for the Palmyrene forces in the 270 A.D. scenario and I reworked the default unit sizes for some of the types (Eastern Horse Archers and Eastern Levy Infantry).

I did decide to add some new icons for city reports. This is pure chrome, of course. But it is something to post. I added different icons for the "Near Eastern" style of architecture when viewing report dialogs. These icons are similar to what I did in "Hannibal" and don't match the icons used on the map all that much. I did have fun doing them which is really the point.

So, for example, a Major City's report dialog already looked like this:

Greco-Roman Major City Report.png (762.43 KiB) Viewed 21 times

The "Near Eastern" style of architecture will now look like this:

Near Eastern Major City Report.png (763.18 KiB) Viewed 21 times

As I said, pure Chrome, therefore anyone muttering "BFD" is actually right.

I also decided to add some one-off (meaning: bespoke) icons for certain important cities. The first is Jerusalem when it is a Capital City. That will only be seen in the first scenario, but, again, I did it mostly for fun. It looks like this:

Jerusalem Report Icon.jpg (22.9 KiB) Viewed 21 times

I will probably try to add one for Alexandria and maybe a few other cities which begin a scenario as Capital Cities. Unlike in "Hannibal," a Capital City is just a really large city. I just didn't want to use terminology like "Huge City" or the like. Most "other" strategy games do something like that and it's a more precise use of language, admittedly.

I'll try to post before next weekend something new which reflects progress in actual game programming.