Matrix Games Forums

I pretty much agree with everything baboune has said. He summed it up very well.

Erik: Why start working on the AI when the game itself is almost unplayable? I guess this just doesn't make much sense to me, sorry.

The game is at the point where you should have more than 1 developer putting some effort into it to AT LEAST get it up to speed so that Marshall CAN work on the AI, features, editor and hopefully, IP play (it is 2008 after all, not 1983). I guess this is easy for me to say since I don't know how your personnel business infastructure works.

Right now: It's VERY easy to lose interest in this game as it currently stands. This can happen through a multitude of things: bugs, crashes, bad and frustrating UI, horrible manual, lack of tutorials, horrible AI, no IP play, etc, etc. Mostly for me though, it's the PBEM. It's just way too slow in this day and age and this "method" probably should be shelved (or at least add IP play with it). Next thing you know we will all be playing some Matrix game through a BBS of some sort.

If you came out with a pure EiA original "classic" game that was fairly bug free at release, I think most here would dump this buggy hybrid and jump on the classic game. JMO. I know I would.

Double ditto...

ORIGINAL: NeverMan

I pretty much agree with everything baboune has said. He summed it up very well.

Erik: Why start working on the AI when the game itself is almost unplayable? I guess this just doesn't make much sense to me, sorry.

The game is at the point where you should have more than 1 developer putting some effort into it to AT LEAST get it up to speed so that Marshall CAN work on the AI, features, editor and hopefully, IP play (it is 2008 after all, not 1983). I guess this is easy for me to say since I don't know how your personnel business infastructure works.

Right now: It's VERY easy to lose interest in this game as it currently stands. This can happen through a multitude of things: bugs, crashes, bad and frustrating UI, horrible manual, lack of tutorials, horrible AI, no IP play, etc, etc. Mostly for me though, it's the PBEM. It's just way too slow in this day and age and this "method" probably should be shelved (or at least add IP play with it). Next thing you know we will all be playing some Matrix game through a BBS of some sort.

You don't own the game, but your losing interest in it. Interesting.

In May you were posting on the opponents wanted site that you were somehow snubbed for a game. tm.asp?m=1649031 How were you planning to play if you don't own the game?

ORIGINAL: BoerWar

ORIGINAL: NeverMan

I pretty much agree with everything baboune has said. He summed it up very well.

Erik: Why start working on the AI when the game itself is almost unplayable? I guess this just doesn't make much sense to me, sorry.

The game is at the point where you should have more than 1 developer putting some effort into it to AT LEAST get it up to speed so that Marshall CAN work on the AI, features, editor and hopefully, IP play (it is 2008 after all, not 1983). I guess this is easy for me to say since I don't know how your personnel business infastructure works.

Right now: It's VERY easy to lose interest in this game as it currently stands. This can happen through a multitude of things: bugs, crashes, bad and frustrating UI, horrible manual, lack of tutorials, horrible AI, no IP play, etc, etc. Mostly for me though, it's the PBEM. It's just way too slow in this day and age and this "method" probably should be shelved (or at least add IP play with it). Next thing you know we will all be playing some Matrix game through a BBS of some sort.

You don't own the game, but your losing interest in it. Interesting.

In May you were posting on the opponents wanted site that you were somehow snubbed for a game. tm.asp?m=1649031 How were you planning to play if you don't own the game?

Don't own the game? It's "interesting" because I never said that.

Reading Comprehension. Go back and look again.

ORIGINAL: NeverMan

ORIGINAL: BoerWar

ORIGINAL: NeverMan

I pretty much agree with everything baboune has said. He summed it up very well.

Erik: Why start working on the AI when the game itself is almost unplayable? I guess this just doesn't make much sense to me, sorry.

The game is at the point where you should have more than 1 developer putting some effort into it to AT LEAST get it up to speed so that Marshall CAN work on the AI, features, editor and hopefully, IP play (it is 2008 after all, not 1983). I guess this is easy for me to say since I don't know how your personnel business infastructure works.

Right now: It's VERY easy to lose interest in this game as it currently stands. This can happen through a multitude of things: bugs, crashes, bad and frustrating UI, horrible manual, lack of tutorials, horrible AI, no IP play, etc, etc. Mostly for me though, it's the PBEM. It's just way too slow in this day and age and this "method" probably should be shelved (or at least add IP play with it). Next thing you know we will all be playing some Matrix game through a BBS of some sort.

You don't own the game, but your losing interest in it. Interesting.

In May you were posting on the opponents wanted site that you were somehow snubbed for a game. tm.asp?m=1649031 How were you planning to play if you don't own the game?

Don't own the game? It's "interesting" because I never said that.

Reading Comprehension. Go back and look again.

Actually, what you said was:

ORIGINAL: NeverMan

ORIGINAL: Soapy Frog

If Neverman bought the game he can say what he likes. And he is pretty much right, the majority wanted (and still want) EiA as close as we can get it. Seems strange to throw your paying customers curveballs.

Sad to say I am quite sure there are many people who bought the game hoping for EiA and have since thrown it in the garbage and will never take a 2nd look at it.

Fortunately, I didn't buy the game, yet. I wanted to buy my friend a copy so he could play with me in PBEM games but he read the forums and told me not to waste my money.

"I didn't buy the game, yet." implies you don't own it. So, insulting other board members is not called for over this.

Now, I CAN see several possibilities as to how you are playing the game without buying it. It could be that you are using the game you bought for your friend. Or, you may have received a free copy for being a beta tester. But, your words, to a reasonable reader, do indeed imply that you don't own it. Or, rather, it's not clear that you own it.

ORIGINAL: Jimmer

ORIGINAL: NeverMan

ORIGINAL: BoerWar




You don't own the game, but your losing interest in it. Interesting.

In May you were posting on the opponents wanted site that you were somehow snubbed for a game. tm.asp?m=1649031 How were you planning to play if you don't own the game?

Don't own the game? It's "interesting" because I never said that.

Reading Comprehension. Go back and look again.

Actually, what you said was:

ORIGINAL: NeverMan

ORIGINAL: Soapy Frog

If Neverman bought the game he can say what he likes. And he is pretty much right, the majority wanted (and still want) EiA as close as we can get it. Seems strange to throw your paying customers curveballs.

Sad to say I am quite sure there are many people who bought the game hoping for EiA and have since thrown it in the garbage and will never take a 2nd look at it.

Fortunately, I didn't buy the game, yet. I wanted to buy my friend a copy so he could play with me in PBEM games but he read the forums and told me not to waste my money.

"I didn't buy the game, yet." implies you don't own it. So, insulting other board members is not called for over this.

Now, I CAN see several possibilities as to how you are playing the game without buying it. It could be that you are using the game you bought for your friend. Or, you may have received a free copy for being a beta tester. But, your words, to a reasonable reader, do indeed imply that you don't own it. Or, rather, it's not clear that you own it.

I'm not insulting anyone. And no, it doesn't imply that, maybe in some world of bad reading comprehension, but in the real world it implies "I didn't BUY the game". Just like it states. Come on now man, aren't you British?

As I naturally assumes neverman wouldn't post here unless he had legitimate access to a copy of EiANW, I believe somebody gave it to him. And no, I'm not british, could you tell ?
 
Now could we return to the subject of this thread plz, gents.
 
/eske

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

I fail to see the misrepresentation.

It's different to say "EiA" and "based on classic game EiA".
But anyway, I bought game just becouse no one else is doing a classic EiA now and I wanted to support a product that is as close as possible.

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
We are supporting the game, plan to keep supporting it and we also understand the number of people hoping for future options to remove the EIH changes. We've been releasing pretty frequent incremental betas and less frequent official updates. Our goal is a 1.03 release focusing on AI improvements within the next month and to continue doing roughly a release per month if possible. I think allowig some of the EIH changes to be optional in the future is a possibility and I think the addition of the editor will also help with that.

Regards,

- Erik

I just hope that feedback might get you to do a classic version of EiA (just original counters, map and rules with errata) with good AI, I'm ready to pay much more extra (like $200?).

Is it possible to get two optionals to the game:
1. OPTIONAL: Original counters and map
2. OPTIONAL: As close original rules as possible (for example naval rules ect.)

ORIGINAL: Soapy Frog

ORIGINAL: Jimmer
Well, I for one, don't find ALL of the EiH rules bad. The map, for example is much better, at least on land. Plus, the idea of having every neutral minor gain factors when DOWed, so they're not pushovers, that's good, too.

I disagree on both these points. I have no problems if extra minors and forces for minors without corps are included as optionals, but to be frank it seriously messes with game balance to introduce a lot of untested changes of this nature, and then make them a mandatory part of the ruleset.

I have a few rambling comments about all this. For one, like Jimmer, I find the EiH stuff interesting. The minor country diplomacy provides another dimension to the game, not much but different. The piracy/anti-piracy is a historical aspect that wouldn't be simulated otherwise with the standard EiA rules, much like U-boats vs ASW strategic warfare in WWII. Not having been an EiA player before, this is all fine with me. I respect others disagreeing, and I support development of options to have either EiA or EiH features or combinations, but I want to ensure we keep these options so I and others can decide for ourselves what style of game we want to play. Work to provide a core EiA game as true as possible to the original, but please keep the EiH options and perhaps consider other variations for a computer game such as true FOW (not seeing enemy units beyond a certain spotting range of 1-2 areas).

My other concern is about play balance. What exactly is/was the gold standard for perfect play balance in EiA?? There was plenty of errata, optional rules, variants and house rules, plus "interpretations" of all those rules which we still see arguments about here today, so without specifying which "game" is referenced it's difficult to say what's being "seriously messed with" in EiANW or not. THIS computer game is different in many ways, plus there are many game bugs that still need to be resolved before play balance in THIS game can be accurately assessed. It's a bit premature to say where exactly the needle falls on the game balance meter.

Assuming the standard EiA game was in fact balanced well and this adaptation with its standard rules can get reasonably close, then the challenge will be on assessing the various options for their effect on play balance. Some options are relatively neutral because they affect all players equally, like winter movement, FOW, etc. Some obviously favor one side or the other, like the Lille crossing. Others may provide various pros/cons which are more difficult to assess, such as enabling minor country diplomacy or piracy/anti-piracy. There may not be any good answers for quite a while. But this in a way makes learning and playing the game interesting, playing different countries and playing with different rules options each time.

The other things that must be assessed for each option are rules effects and AI behavior. The rules should be consistent wherever possible, such as 1 pp for heavy fleets in either version and maybe 1/2 pp for light fleets if used. Where possible maybe the editor could allow various parameters like this to be edited for each scenario, but if not we need consistent rules that make sense with or without options enabled. The AI needs to be programmed to play as well as possible with or without any or all of the options enabled. This will be challenging to accomplish but should be very nice if and when it gets done.

pzgndr -- Balance as per the board game was in fact a bit of a moving target depending on the options used. However, you can compensate a lot for balance by the bidding system. If you take away the Lille crossing arrow (never done in my experience) then naturally the British have an easier time.

However, the more fundamental problem is that the massive changes in this game compared with EiA really mess with fundamental balance. The most glaring, which is due to be fixed soon from what Marshall is saying, is the lack of combined movement and shared political point losses. Minimizing political point losses and maximizing political point gains is the core of the game for the Allies, and a very important strategy to use against France in particular (and Great Britain as well). I have posted the math on this a few times.

Other fundamental changes include the fleet restructuring, which adds many more fleets (at 1 PP each) and removes the ability to evade and retreat one sea area. (Really helps GB prevent invasions, all it has to do is win in the Channel).

The other massively important optional rule that is missing is the 5:1 strength ratio trivial battle rule which has a drastic effect on how the game is played, especially when the optional rule to limit depots to paying for 4 corps maximum is removed.

One of the problems, of course, is that many "optional" rules were always used by the groups I played with, and were de facto mandatory. Only a few rules were really up in the air as to whether you would play with them or not (e.g. whether minors could garrison outside their home countries). So my concept of balance may be different than from someone who never played with these "mandatory options".

Changing the map and adding a zillion more minors (and the complicated influencing rules) is one of the balancing rules that mystifies me. Why not keep the old map and the simple minor rules, at least people knew how to play those. These new minors and the new rules just add complexity without any real benefit. Of course, you can say that about 99% of the HARM rules...

KenClark:
 
Help me out a bit here, what is the 5:1 trivial battle rule?

I realize a lot of folks were disappointed in this release and feel that we foisted a beta off on them. We're not happy about that and we're doing the best we can to earn back your trust. We take responsibility for the state it released in, but we did not feel it was a beta when it was released. When we released it, we thought there would be some issue to address and we knew the interface was a bit challengin, but frankly the vast majority of the issues and the severity of them caught us by surprise.

Now with that said, I've played the game myself and I certainly don't think it's fair to call it unplayable. I also think it has been consistenly improving since the original release but I certainly recognize that we have a long way still to go. The reality is that we have to prioritize because we can't improve everything at the same time. So we focused on the most serious issues first. We are continuing to address bugs while improving the AI now as that has been a key request (for obvious reasons) and we would like to also improve the interface, PBEM play and work on the editor to add more scenarios and play options. The primary goal remains to be as problem-free as possible going forward and I think we've made good progress on that so far.

If we had another developer available to add to the project who we felt could jump in and actually increase the overall productivity rather than just cause chaos and collaboration issues for Marshall, we'd have done that a while ago. As it stands, Marshall is the only developer on this project as he was before release and frankly, that's not unusual for a niche market like ours. The majority of our games are made and supported by a single programmer.

The EIH changes were added pretty early on in development (as in years ago) because at the time when this project started the early consensus was that these were well liked by most EIA players. As the consensus changed over time in development, we changed what we could to meet the requests, but we could not reverse every decision. I also find most of the EIH changes to be improvements rather than problems, but I completely understand the desire some have for a "pure" EIA. The fact is though that any adaptation is going to have some changes and EIANW is a very faithful adaptation of the boardgame plus some of the EIH changes, which game from the same EIA community that had played with them on the tabletop for years.

My comments earlier on this thread are not an attempt to be argumentative, but I seriously consider charges of misrepresentation to be unfounded give the length of development and the openness of discussion as to the design over the years of development. Disputing that one statement does not mean that I dispute the other comments as to what needs further attention or that we're ignoring you. To the contrary, we're aware of the problems and doing the best we can with the resources we have to address them ASAP. This may not be fast enough for some of you, but we're moving as fast as we can and we will not drop support on this. In fact, we are trying to increase the frequency of our updates without creating new issues.

We very much appreciate the support, feedback and criticism from those that are here posting on this forum. We read it all and now that we can see where we went wrong, our goal is to end up with a version of EIANW that will make us all happy.

Regards,

- Erik

ORIGINAL: pzgndr
I have a few rambling comments about all this. For one, like Jimmer, I find the EiH stuff interesting.

I find it interesting as well, however to make it a mandatory part of the ruleset is not wise. Keep it simple. Base game, THEN optionals. Then the various groups can decide how they will play the game. In effect in this case the EiH rules, untested, unfamiliar to most players, and indeed not even up to date with what the creator of EiH himself intended, are being forced on players.

Honestly; to have a working piracy feature in the game before the actual Naval retreat/pursuit rules are even implemented is just backwards. One is a poorly thought out optional rule, the other is actually a core, NON-optional part of the rules!!

Hi Marshall,

see the original EiA errata which added the following optional rule:

12.3.10 : OVERWHELMING NUMBERS: Field or limited field combats where one side has a 5:1 or better ratio in strength factors _must_ be resolved using trivial combat. EXCEPTION: An outnumbered _defender_ may attempt to withdraw before the trivial combat by rolling the commander's strategic rating or less.

The consequences of this can be seen in my posts in the recent thread linked here: tm.asp?m=1829162

Primarily:

There is an optional rule in EiA which says that if a field comabt is at a 5:1 force ratio or greater that the battle is treated as a trivial battle. Trivial battles do not cause any PP changes. This is not a "choice" by the players, which is a separate option, which I agree is not necessary in the PBEM implementation that we currently have.

The 5:1 optional rule allows for what we call "screening corps" which typically have 1-2 factors in them and prevent movement of large stacks, since any corps counter has to stop when entering an area which contains another corps (unless that corps has retreated inside the city as implemented in this game). This strategy is key to avoiding "superstacking" where a country's main army stacks in one gigantic stack and runs around squishing things. What an opponent would do is "screen" the giant stack from being able to move by surrounding it with 1-factor screening corps, preventing its movement. (You can approximate this by playing the initial Austria v. France Austerlitz scenario in the original EiA game which involves no PP exchanges and you will immediately see the value of screening corps in preventing the French army from reaching Vienna in time).

Because of the lack of implementation of the 5:1 trivial battle rule, screening corps are no longer practical (as they would merely reap a PP harvest) and thus you can no longer slow down Napoleon from running his 12-stack of death straight to Vienna or Berlin. The lack of implementation of this rule is a balance-breaker, and certainly is, despite your uninformed coments, an error in design in this game.

The step-by-step implementatin that we played with with this rule went as follows:
1. Battle is picked (important in sequence as corps which fought battles may not reinforce)
2. Chits are picked
3. Forces revealed
4. If trivial, defender gets free chance to withdraw despite chit pick in #3 above, due to rule exception.
5. Battle fought on 5-2/5-2 charts no matter what chits were picked due to trivial battle implementation
**6. No political points are exchanged due to it being a trivial battle.

Hope that helps. Should be pretty easy to implement, and would allow for very different strategic game playing.

Ken

Actually there is a web site hosting all the errata and more:
http://eia.xnetz.com/rules/errata.html

Hi Erik,

I am glad to read those statements from you. I really appreciate Marshall's commitment too. I really hope the game will be improved.

Question: Did you both play the original board game?

ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis

KenClark:

Help me out a bit here, what is the 5:1 trivial battle rule?

Ken answered it. You might want to make sure you peruse that thread, because his is not the only view on the subject.

However, as I said there, I would support it as an optional rule.

The reason I'm replying here is to point out that you have already "sort of" done this. You coded into the game that if the two sides have only one corps each (and possibly other situations), the battle would be resolved completely by the computer. This is, at its heart, the same thing the 5-to-1 rule was trying to address: Keep the low-value battles from taking huge amounts of time. I talked to the designers at AvalonHill about their reasoning for this rule, and they said it was basically for battles that only had one factor on one side. But, they couldn't write it that way, because there was no way to know up-front. So, they wrote it more generally.

In the boardgame version of the rule, there was no valid way to implement it. You had to do all the work of setting up the battle (including chit selection), only to find out that the battle wasn't going to be played with chits after all. The humans who tried it that I played with (in other games -- I was adamantly opposed to the rule being used in games I was in) sometimes found it useful, but for the most part found it unusable.

However, with the computer in charge, it's very easy to do this, since it already knows the sizes of the armies.

However, there is one major thing that the computer version doesn't do that was part of the 5-to-1 rule: Allow reinforcements. This is a design flaw in the EIANW land rules. I don't know how to correct it, but it really needs to be corrected before implementing this rule. Technically, it needs to be fixed before using the CURRENT rules, but that's not practical to change at this point.

If that flaw is corrected, then I think you would be well served using the 5-to-1 rule (optionally, of course) either instead of or in addition to the rule you currently have implemented.

Jimmer, the caveat effect of a trivial combat (5:1) was that there was no political points involved.

ORIGINAL: Soapy Frog

ORIGINAL: pzgndr
I have a few rambling comments about all this. For one, like Jimmer, I find the EiH stuff interesting.

I find it interesting as well, however to make it a mandatory part of the ruleset is not wise. Keep it simple. Base game, THEN optionals. Then the various groups can decide how they will play the game. In effect in this case the EiH rules, untested, unfamiliar to most players, and indeed not even up to date with what the creator of EiH himself intended, are being forced on players.

Honestly; to have a working piracy feature in the game before the actual Naval retreat/pursuit rules are even implemented is just backwards. One is a poorly thought out optional rule, the other is actually a core, NON-optional part of the rules!!

Frog, please stop making sense, you might blow some people's minds. This is what the design should be, period. It should be a "classic EiA" (as advertised, not as sold) with lots of "options".

Someone mentioned the max 4 corps/depot supply: A rule we always played with, would be a nice optional rule.
Trivial Combat (5:1) needs to be added. As optional if necessary.
IP play needs to be added. Actually, it would be great if you could go from IP to PBEM to IP to PBEM, etc, etc... for a single game. I don't see why this is impossible. This is totally doable and would give much needed robustness to the game speed/time.
Has anyone actually used Hotseat yet?

Erik: adding a "fresh" programmer to the job would slow down production at first, sure, but once he got up to speed, the productivity would increase undoubtedly. This is the case for any software project. It also seems to me, if I remember correctly, that there were a lot of EiH Yahoo! Group members on here during those early years, most of which have abandoned EiANW and don't even like the implementation that was released. Is that a fairly accurate statement?

ORIGINAL: Jimmer

The reason I'm replying here is to point out that you have already "sort of" done this. You coded into the game that if the two sides have only one corps each (and possibly other situations), the battle would be resolved completely by the computer. This is, at its heart, the same thing the 5-to-1 rule was trying to address: Keep the low-value battles from taking huge amounts of time. I talked to the designers at AvalonHill about their reasoning for this rule, and they said it was basically for battles that only had one factor on one side. But, they couldn't write it that way, because there was no way to know up-front. So, they wrote it more generally.

Actually, the point of the rule is to allow screening corps without a political point cost.

However, there is one major thing that the computer version doesn't do that was part of the 5-to-1 rule: Allow reinforcements. This is a design flaw in the EIANW land rules. I don't know how to correct it, but it really needs to be corrected before implementing this rule. Technically, it needs to be fixed before using the CURRENT rules, but that's not practical to change at this point.

If that flaw is corrected, then I think you would be well served using the 5-to-1 rule (optionally, of course) either instead of or in addition to the rule you currently have implemented.

You can't reinforce it anyway usually because at 5:1 on the 5-2 chart you get vapourized very quickly (1 round).