Preliminary Report on 1.08.04

[Dancing Bear]

Hi all

I played around a little with 1.08.04 this weekend in solo mode and can report no issues with the upgrade. The upgrade from 1.07.02 went smoothly, and I filed a PBEM land phase with combat with any troubles. From what I can tell after an hour or so's play is that it looks good.

The changes to the main screen are also a good improvement.

[Marshall Ellis]

Great to hear DB!
I'm really hoping that this will alleviate much of my game fixing time!

[Dancing Bear]

If you put in a way for the host to manipulate saved manpower, and fix about half a dozen of the minor bugs posted on Mantis, I think you game fixing days will be over.

[bongina]

I dunno. That French 1st corps issue remains to be fixed!

[Dancing Bear]

This is likely a 1.06.03 issue related to having too many intermediate upgrades to have to load to reach 1.08. This game would be better is 1.08 (or 1.09) was the only download required.

[Dancing Bear]

Just an update on 1.08.04. We have just finished a sim dip phase in which Turjey surrendered to Russia and Austria. All worked exactly as it should. Similarly access agreements between France, Spain and Turkey also went through exactly as they should. So far, this is working very well for us.

[Marshall Ellis]

Thanks for the update DB! This is looking VERY good on our end as well!

[Dancing Bear]

Just another note. We got through a sim dip phase in another game in 36 hours, which has got to be some sort of a record. The two groups I am in are pretty impressed with it. This is looking like a great feature. Maybe we can work out what went wrong with a sim eco phase, sometime.

[DCWhitworth]

There are two significant holes in simul diplomacy -

1. As host you can't skip a player's phase. So if a player does not submit their turn you are stuck. Thus far I'm finding that simul diplomacy is not speeding the game up because skips no longer seem to be possible and as host you have to put in more effort chasing people.

2. Monthly backups are no longer produced. This could potentially be a show stopper if a host is unaware of this. So you now need to carefully take a backup copy on a regular basis rather than have one neatly pop up.

On the whole I've found it increases my workload as host - not a welcome change.

[pzgndr]

These two issues should be addressed for v1.09 and/or better documented in the manual.  I think Marshall has already committed to looking at the skip feature?  Restoring the monthly backup shouldn't be too hard.  It's important that this sim dip feature works smoothly and does not replace one burden with a new one!

[Marshall Ellis]

Would simul diplomacy save time given the skip added and backups fixed?

[Dancing Bear]

I certinaly think so. Sim is about 7 times faster than the previous meethod if no one skips, but even if 3 players skip, it is still 4 times faster. Sim and skipping have different benefits from one another, with only a limited overlap. Skipping is only so-so good for speed, but very good for allowing players to take it easy. Sim is very good for speed, but you still need to file your turn. Both is the best of both worlds.

[bongina]

Well, we now have an issue with not everyone's diplomacy turn executing.

[bresh]

ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis

Would simul diplomacy save time given the skip added and backups fixed?

I dont think simul diplomacy saves much time, since players can no longer choose to skip the phase, or ask host to.
Also the unexpected bug that not-all players diplomacy is resolved+ no monthly backup.
It creates more problems than it solves.

Regards
Bresh

[Dancing Bear]

Bresh, I think Marshall is asking would sim dip save time if skipping was re-introduced.

I certainly think sim dip would still be a big improvement over skipping alone.

Another aspect that it really helps with is the time zone trap. With sequential play, if you have one player in a different time zone (say Europe when most players are in North America), then the game always stops until the Earth rotates enough to bring Europe into daylight. By then it is too late for the next player in the sequence to go. With a sim phase, this is not really a big issue, as you don't have to wait for players in different time zones to get home from work, etc..

[Marshall Ellis]

Correct!