how many turns per week on average?

[cato13]

guess this is a question to all the people that are involved in pbem games currently. im thinkin of gettin this game but the slow process of pbem is putin me off a bit. i just cant get my head around commitin myself to a pbem that might take a YEAR to complete.

are there any players that play 7+ turns a week? a game played at that speed would take around 3 months which for me is a bit more enjoyable. also, is this the kinda game where 6 or 7 players are really required or is it just as enjoyable with lets say 3 or 4?

[gwheelock]

Ummm... actually most of the f2f games that I was in took most of a year  for a full campain game...
for a pbem you better figure on 3-5 years (a LOT depends on how fast players respond - one slow poke
can really bog the game down; otoh if everyone would commit to watching their incoming email at specific
times; it can go almost as fast as f2f)
 

[Grognot]

Seven experienced, diplomatically interesting players would probably be optimal in theory -- IF you ignore the time.

If you have just two or three human players, that'll change the nature of the game significantly -- AIs play much less coherently, and the diplomatic interactions with an AI are necessarily quite limited.  It might be amusing to play a Spanish / Turkish or Spanish / Prussian game against all max-difficulty AIs (*), 'tho, and the game can be faster with two or three players.


(*) AI difficulty level does not directly change behavior; it gives more money, manpower, and free VP to AIs.  It does not give them more starting troops -- although that's doable, with some hex editing; make them smarter; or deliberately let them violate any rules aside from those $/MP/VP (AFAICT).

[borner]

7+ turns per week? that would be very hard unless you get 7 players that can all be around the computer at the same time.
 
Still, I am in one that is turning around a phase every 2-3 days, so that is about a turn per week or so. Even face to face, the groups I have been in managed a quarter per session at most. still faster than this, but finding 7 players to show up every Firday night or Sunday was hard. Here, while it is slower, there are plenty of players around.
 
I would strongly recommend games with 7 players, as the AI is not all that great at this point.

[fvianello]

If you're lucky and with motivated players, you can get 1 turn per week; I'm in 3 PBEM games and I haven't seen anything faster than that.

BTW, forget about the year - it's going to take a lot more than that

[La Provence]

Our PBEM game (Les Aigles) :
5 weeks for 3 months (Jan- March !).
So it represents = 1805 year in 20 weeks OR the complete game in.......220 weeks (4 years and 3 months !) [:(]

[cato13]

Still cant get my head around games lastin that long, what about when patches are released? are they always save compatible?

im havin a look at napoleons campaigns which does allow tcp play. another bonus is that its 1vs1 and the campaigns are much shorter which would allow for much quicker pbem games

[AresMars]

Tonedog,
 
This is not a short or fast game. If you want shorter games or more immediate action, EIANW is most likely not the game for you.
 
Speed is not an element of this game. Enjoyment is!  It was developed WAY before the internet and computer games really hit their stride...
 
This game is really a game of diplomacy between 7 players that has elements of Land and Naval Combat and Economics.  It takes time and lots of it.
 
This is nothing like StarCraft! [;)]
 
We often took a whole year real time playing _one_ game; 7 guys, meeting once a week and playing for 8 to 12 hours straight on a sunday.
 
War (sometimes - well, all too often) slows the game to a crawl....Peace (sometimes - not often enough) speeds the game along at a very rapid pace.
 
As the current EIANW only supports PBEM, that adds some additional mechanics time to the mix, for e-mail exchanges, time-zone differences and more.
 
If you ever play, you will _love_ the game....if you lack patience or the time required (and it DOES require both), pass it by for now and we'll try to hook you in again in the future.....
 
Keep visiting and Good Luck!
 
 
 

[cato13]

not really a starcraft fan whatever that is. im more of a light wargamer id say, 1st matrix game i bought was uncommon valour a few years back, also a big fan of the paradox game ie EU and HOI. i understand that patience is required for these types of game, im not expectin to finish a game if EIA in a couple of weeks but certainly a game that would take over 6 months or longer to conclude isnt for me thats for sure.

i just happen to think that matrix may be passin up a lot of would be customers that would like to play over a network connection. i still think a decent game could be had in EIA with 3 or 4 players playin maybe one session a week with tcp/ip. obviously it aint gonna happen cos of the way the turns work in EIA.

just an opinion

[NeverMan]

ORIGINAL: tonedog

not really a starcraft fan whatever that is. im more of a light wargamer id say, 1st matrix game i bought was uncommon valour a few years back, also a big fan of the paradox game ie EU and HOI. i understand that patience is required for these types of game, im not expectin to finish a game if EIA in a couple of weeks but certainly a game that would take over 6 months or longer to conclude isnt for me thats for sure.

i just happen to think that matrix may be passin up a lot of would be customers that would like to play over a network connection. i still think a decent game could be had in EIA with 3 or 4 players playin maybe one session a week with tcp/ip. obviously it aint gonna happen cos of the way the turns work in EIA.

just an opinion

This game, meaning EiA (even the board game), is not intended for "light wargamers" (assuming that means you prefer scenarios to grand campaigns, that sort of thing).

Like most said, F2F can take a year or more for a complete GC (1805-1815). It's just that type of game.

Maybe it's not the PBEM that is your problem, maybe it's the game itself. Even if this game had TCP/IP play (optimally as fast as F2F, not any faster) it still doesn't sound like your kind of game.

That said, I think that they are looking into adding scenarios to this game. Maybe you can then purchase it, grow to love it with a passion most EiAers have, and then really enjoy the GC for what it is: EXCITING!!

[ecn1]

my fastest pbem group of 7 gets together 2 nights a week for 3-4 hrs and do turns, plus in between when we can , we are averaging 1.75 to 2 turns per week....and thats the quickest of the 6 pbem groups I am in...

[dauphan129]

Dauphan EIA Baby!

Yeah we were doing 1.75 to 2 months a week like ecn1 said. Then a battle stopped us last night in June 1805. We are havingt to do rebids. A Land battle was left open and GB could not move their ships due to it being GB's battle.

Make sure you close your battle files! In addition to monthly backups (which we had just started too late unfortunately) I as host, am going to start doing a backup before chit picked land combats so if the battle gets left open again they will just have to redo it. You can tell if a battle was left open because when you load the phasing players land_combat.pbm you will have a yellow square around the area they were fighting in even if your not involved.

At that pace (1.75 - 2 months a week) we are looking at a 1 year game (50 - 55 weeks).