European Participaton/Activation

[Joram]

Thank you for the response Gil. If I may restate what you are telling me is that you plan to have a finished product but may add future functionality in response to customer feedback?

[Gil R.]

ORIGINAL: Joram

Thank you for the response Gil. If I may restate what you are telling me is that you plan to have a finished product but may add future functionality in response to customer feedback?

Yes. Plus, we might add a few things that we ourselves would like to see, but that weren't top priorities because they fell into the "nice but non-essential" category. But the game is essentially complete: we could stop adding stuff today and have a game that would not strike anyone as unfinished.

In response to your comment about games often being released with too many bugs, I'm pleased to report that "Forge of Freedom" is running very well. (We have been testing the Man vs. AI game for weeks, and for the past two weeks have been putting PBEM through its paces, and are just beginning testing on networked play.) Right now we know of no problem that is causing crashes for any of our 20+ testers, and there are no major bugs that have been reported without being quickly fixed. Obviously, unreported glitches can turn up when you have thousands of people playing a game rather than dozens, but we're confident that this will not be one of those games that is released with unresolved critical problems that make them unplayable until a patch is released.

[PDiFolco]

ORIGINAL: jimwinsor

The "Trent Affair" is kind of a dumb event to attach conditional options to for the Union, however.  Reason being, that by its very nature it was a no brainer.

Here's how the event went down:  Two CSA diplomats try to sail to Europe on a British packet.  The purpose of their mission?  To seek European recognition and even intervention on their side in the Civil War.  Most particularly, British recognition and intervention.

A US naval officer, acting far outside the scope of his instructions, violates international law, boards the British packet, takes the diplomats prisoner.

Britain, quite naturally, protests.  Threatens war if the pair are are not released, and incident disavowed.

US has two "choices":
A) Keep diplomats: Chance of war with Britain: 100%
B) Release diplomats: The CSA diplomats are free, and can go about their mission, to cause a war with Britain. Chance of that happening: MUCH LESS than 100%

Gee, what option should the USA choose...hmmm...[&:] [8|]

Shelby Foote made an accurate comment about the whole incident, saying that the CSA prisoners, from their jail cell, "were accomplishing more towards the fulfillment of their diplomatic mission than they would be doing if they had continued on their way to Europe."

Like I said, the historic Trent Affair boils down to such a no-brainer for the USA, that in the final analysis...there is really no point in even bothering to try to model "the choice" the USA faced in a game IMO.

Thanks for this details. But modelling the Trent affair as such wasn't my point : I was just wanting to know if this kind of "random events" (here, something occuring that increase chance of British intervention) was possible in the game.
And it was just an example ...[;)]

[Hard Sarge]

That said, at some point we have to stop and release the game. (Why should the development team and play-testers have all the fun?)
 
you call this fun ?
 
being chased around all day by people with little hammers telling you to get back to work ????
 
boy, if I wouldn't get hit by a hammer or another fish, I would tell you......
 
 
[:-]

[Andy Mac]

<gets out the hammer to chase Hard Sarge back to work on ED to BTR>