December Update

[1LTRambo]

WOW that walk through is great. Thanks for sharing.

I really can't wait for this game to be released[:)]

[StCyr]

Dear Pippin,
I do know that it is a beta. For sure nothing is for sure yet.
But isn´t it possible to answer my questions ? I really would like to know if in the PC version it would be enough just to siege London to stop GB from collection any $. Or if you just changed the chronological order in our walkthrough (np if that is the answer).
To ban GB from any trade would mean only american trade is possible (cause all other trade is considered to be done with GB) - if this is possible in beta, I would like to ask you to ask for a change. And perhapse this point is worth another answer than just "it´s beta".

[ravinhood]

ORIGINAL: pasternakski

ORIGINAL: ktotwf

Who wants realism when they could have fun?

Fan of blow-up dolls, are you?

ROFLMAO...Pasternakski you are hilarious sometimes. You should be a standup comedian. lol

[Windfire]

Pippin - Thanks for the walkthrough. Definately looking forward to playing the game.

[Titi]

Hi,

First of all, thanks for the update
Second, i agree with the comments of StCyr, having reread the rules while reading your link; and will also want to see an answer.

Third, one more point : i just see that french instead of the four original fleets now has ELEVEN fleets. I can't imagine how much britain has. Whatever, what will it to to GB to have TWO fleets removed by the unconditionnal peace condition???

[Kai]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

I offer KUDO's and admiration to this design team for it's determination to get the product right BEFORE selling it to the Public. PLEASE..., no more rush job, half finished and totally screwed up efforts like WITP.

I'm playing WITP now for the first time. I am enjoying it, and I haven't run into any obvious crashes, instability, etc.
I bought the game before I browsed these forums. After browsing these forums, I realized that WITP has got to be the most maligned game in the Matrix library.
I guess I should be expecting something bad to happen any minute now. It's fun so far, however.

[Pippin]

StCyr, if I am in an enemy capital (unbeseiged), then yes I can stop my opponent from collecting any money (russia is another case). He also won't be able to do any economic manipulation either... as well he faces a pp penalty. An advantage to the defender is that the economic phase only comes around once every three months. Which is interesting as we were debatign before about possibly making the economics phase every month. This was suggested because the 3-month issue was to speed up the board game which everything is done with pen & paper. With PCs, this should be relatively quick and simple, (and some people believe a lot more realistic). Anyhow, at the moment the engine is still using the 3 month system as per the original rules, so no one will get upset. I myself sit on the borderline and don't mind either way.

Titi, as for removing two fleets well... Yes Britain has a lot of fleets (more than anyone obviously). So one could argue the pain of losing two fleets is not a major disaster. However the navy is the pride and joy of the British player. He has Sh*t for corps and will get slaughtered in any early corps battle. She is in BIG TROUBLE if other corps come landing onto British soil early too. The Royal navy somewhat balances this by making sure when used properly, it will be very troublesome for an enemy to come knocking on her door.

If Britain finds herself losing quite a few ships in early battles, and end up losing two more naval counters on peace conditions, she can find herself in big trouble. I've seen many cases where the British player is forced to surrender early, and then finds herself get caught up in a downward spiral as other players continue to take advantage of the situation making sure she can never re-heal herself. Lets be honest, ships are not only expensive to maintain, but expensive to build. Also they take a very LONG time to build. Any poor man can plop down a militia division in the blink of an eye, but even light ships take many months and dig deep into the pockets.

[jnier]

ORIGINAL: Kai

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

I offer KUDO's and admiration to this design team for it's determination to get the product right BEFORE selling it to the Public. PLEASE..., no more rush job, half finished and totally screwed up efforts like WITP.

I'm playing WITP now for the first time. I am enjoying it, and I haven't run into any obvious crashes, instability, etc.
I bought the game before I browsed these forums. After browsing these forums, I realized that WITP has got to be the most maligned game in the Matrix library.
I guess I should be expecting something bad to happen any minute now. It's fun so far, however.

WITP is a great game. I am stupefied by how people complain about every little problem in the game, as if they completely ruin the experience. [8|]

It is a great, but imperfect, game. No show stopping bugs. And, for better or worse, that's about as much as you can reasonably expect with any game these days.

[StCyr]

well, is it really that hard to understand why I called this thread "December Update" ? Ok, it was too complex for rambo and ktotwf - but to those of you who would like to discuss WITP or even blow-up dolls: could you start another thread for it ?

Dear Pippin, thanks again fo the walk-through, and for your answer. Now I know that in PC EIA you can stop income by unbesieded occupation of the enemy capital, just as in the board game. But I still miss an answer to any of my three questions [:)]
But well, perhapse it is still "too much beta" [;)]

[1LTRambo]

ORIGINAL: StCyr

well, is it really that hard to understand why I called this thread "December Update" ? Ok, it was too complex for rambo and ktotwf

It was not difficult to understand that you were looking for information. We just expect somebody from MG to title a thread with "Update" because they are providing updated information.[:-] Also, it is fine to respond to others comments. That is how others can find out about other games, like I found out about CoG.

Hat's off to you Pippin for adding some information, we really appreciate it.[&o]

However, it would be nice to continue to receive monthly progress reports from the developers.

[StCyr]

We just expect somebody from MG to title a thread with "Update" because they are providing updated information.

Excuse me, are you "we" ? If "we" is you, and if you did follow the forum the last few month, you might recall that Marshall said in October uptdate that there would be no further regular update. And if you would have a look at the "November Update", you might see that this one was started by me too (indeed in an angry mode I tried to avoid this month). So if you see a thread called "December Update" and next to it "Thread Starter" StCyr, you better should not consider yourself as "we" and expect StCyr to be from MG - cause if I wasn´t from MG in November and I am not from MG in December. [;)]

But of course I agree with you on this:

However, it would be nice to continue to receive monthly progress reports from the developers.

And now lets see how long it takes for some guys to call you "attention whore" now...

[Pippin]

Ok Cyr, I see your other post above the one I was reading. To the part about minors. Yes, currently there are rolls for controling of minors. The reason why Portugal did what it did was because another nation was actualy playing through AI, and thus was in control of Portugal. There was discussion before in the beta area about perhaps making all minors run by AI. IIRC this was experimented with at one time, but ended up causing even worse problems than it seemed to fix. Once again we come to the point where trying to improve what was written down ages ago, just causes more important elements to become broken. I understand where the arguement is coming from, for making minors all AI controlled though...

As for the trade & peace conditions between France and Britain... oh man. Now I have to be carefull what I say or there will be a big arguement debate again... so I really should say nothing. But what the hell I'll get into it a bit. As you probably know, in the EIA original draft, there were optional rules. One of these was for Britain and France never really be able to chose peace conditions between eachother, but force a pre-set decision. There seems to be two groups of EiA players... Those who are used to this optional rule, and those who never used it and don't want or care for it. As for myself I just once again sit on the fence and watch the arguement. To be honest I would rather put more weight on letting france chose what ever the hell conditions she wants. The pre-set peace conditions often can give you silly cases that really do not benefit the winning player in many conditions, and would be a waste of a choice.

The testers are still putting their opinions down on these directions, and there is a que of elements to change. I am not going to say how things will be when this thing goes Gold, as I really don't want to say something that turns out wrong. In any case, currently when forcing Britain to sue for peace I was able to chose what the hell I wanted, as you noticed. But I do not think I may have this freedom in the next few test releases, unless it becomes an option. We shall see...

[StCyr]

Thank you very much or your answer, Pippin. Now I can understand it better.

I would only like to add this: In the board game, the option to stop a nation from trading means to stop the trad of this nation "with GB or with America"(B.6). If you want to harm GB, you would have to choose "C.7 (may only be applied to GB) Half of all money by trade (including american trade) must be given to the victor for the next four econimic phases...".
All trade in this game expect american trade is considered to be done with GB. So, if GB could be forced out of any trade , all other nations could only do the american trade (with one habour).
I guess the game designer wanted a somewhat simple system, so they said "trade only possible with GB". On the other side, it would be even more unrealistic, to stop GB from doing any trade but let all other nations stay on the same trade-income-level...
In my point of view it would be better to keep close to the board game rules.

[Pippin]

Well every time we get into a topic like trade, the Spanish convoy system always pops into my head for some reason. There are a lot of silly things (loopholes?) regarding this feature. However, it is somewhat of a minor element, and only happens once a year so I don't think it's that big of a deal. At least Britain is able to do a raid on the convoy during wartime. Better than nothing...but that case really could do with some tweaking.

[1LTRambo]

No I am not "WE" per say, I just proposed a statement that I knew would be echoed by others, which some did. But that is ok. Dialog is what this forum is all about IMHO. Besides, we agree on something.[;)]

[Roads]

I'm not sure I understood the answers to two of St Cyr's questions....

ORIGINAL: StCyr

Thank you Pippin, this gives a very good impression.

3 Questions pls:...

What horrible timing for Britain too, the month being March, means she wont be able to collect a cent on this up-coming economics phase.

Are you sure about this ? Cause you assult London after the economic phase, so during economic phase London is still under control of GB, by this GB should be able to perform an EP.

and to top it off, I banned him from trading

Huh ? What kind of victory condition is this ? B.6. is "loser should not trade with GB or with America", C.7. (only vs GB) is "half of all money by trade must be given to the vitor for the next four ep". IF GB would be banned from trading, no trade except american trade would be done at all...

I'm curious about this too.

-Under what conditions does a major forfeit all income? Capital beseiged by enemy, capital under uncontested enemy occupation, capital beseiged by owner?
(and yes let's ignore the complications of Russia for now )

-Is it possible under a peace condition to stop GB from conducting any trade? Or does the no trade condition simply apply the BG rules? As St Cyr has pointed out, this means no trade income for anyone in the game. (Except for US trade of course.) Seems pretty extreme.

[Pippin]

If I had my french corps in an enemy capital and I was not beseiged, then that poor bastard would not be able to collect. While doing that walkthrough I decided I would write stuff as it happened, instead of filling in the blanks afterward. Because of this, and to make a long story short, when I moved my one corps into England, I opted to destroy a depot that was there. I brought in my second corps, and for one reason or another (bad roll or decision change), I haulted instead of assaulted the city to wipe it out. Because of this, during march the city of london still had British corps so technicaly he was ok. I will have to change that sentence to prevent any confusion. Had I taken the city like I had planned during that turn, then I would have it uncontested during march, and there would be no hassle.

As for British trade, well that is still an issue depending on which options you want to employ. And I can not guarantee 100% which will or will not be present. On the other hand, I"ve seen Britain stuck with crap trade even without having to surrender. If she has started a war with USA, no american trade is possible. If no one decided to trade with her either, now she is double-hit. She wont be building any ships any time soon in that situation.

[New York Jets]

ORIGINAL: Pippin

I don't really have an update, but some quick and dirty walkthrough I threw together...

Click Me

Who was the poor fool who left London undefended like that?

[New York Jets]

Just keep me i98n mind for a multi player game when this is released, boys. I can't wait, but will for a good game. Take your time to get it right.

[YohanTM2]

Thanks for the mini-AAR Pippin, keeps the hopes alive. I have been a member of the fourm sense October 2002 which is when I first caught wind of EiA being developed by Matrix.

In fact, I "gave" this game to my brother as a gift for Xmas 2003 so he is a bit annoyed I am 2 years behind on his present <g>