World Domination General Discussion

[hiphop4eva]

Another big feature is that theocratic nations will be able to produce suicide bombers from the barracks. These are cheap and expendable, and can be very effective if dropped into the enemy base by a helicopter or LAV.

Image

A squad of suicide bombers

Dafaq lel time to rek everybody with these.

 

[Wasabee]

Great update for your map. I love the new models you added.
The Cthulhu event reminds me of Pacific Rim hahaha
I didn't like enemies massing their drones/fighters/stealth bombers but air battles are really great to watch.


What models are currently in line now?

 

[Fingolfin]

The next models up are the Chinook helicopter, the Zubr hovercraft and the T-90 MBT. I'm also making a model for the alien mothership, so that i can add the invasion event (it will be awesome).

For the next version, there will be a game mode menu, where you can choose stuff such as starting alliances (free for all, cold war mode, or 4 teams), starting base (normal, quickstart, or nomad), and victory conditions (annihilation, territorial victory, sudden death, or phantom).

- The nomad mode means that you start with only a colonist helicopter, which you can spawn into a capitol anywhere on the map (kinda like in most builder maps).

- The quickstart mode means that you start with a powerplant, an extra worker, and four nearby cities captured.

- Annihilation is the normal victory mode as it has been up until now - you lose if you lose all your cities, the last player wins.

- In the Territorial Victory mode, victory locations are spread across the map. Capturing and holding more than six of these for over five minutes grants you the victory. In cold war mode, your team has to hold at least 75% of all locations.

- In Phantom mode, one or more players are randomly selected as phantoms. The phantoms gain 2x resources, and their objective is to defeat all other players. The other players objective is to defeat the phantoms, but they don't know who they are and have to figure this out themselves.

As for air battles, i have combined the Stinger Soldier and the Anti-Tank soldier into a single unit, which can attack both land and air. This means that your AA soldiers will no longer run mindlessly ahead of your army, which feels much better. Their damage has been rebalanced somewhat to accomodate for this.

Overall, there are tons of updates coming for the next version, hopefully i will be able to release it before the weekend.

 

[Daffa]

Oh yeah, gotta get nomad and reck from Australia (if AI still newbie like old days ) using Indonesia
Or maybe I go to Antarctica and built a base there (don't remember if there's even Antarctica.

 

[Wasabee]

There is antarctica but there are only iron fields there.

Great new game modes for a wider variety of objectives.
Combining the anti-air and anti-tank to a single unit is much better. It's kind of boring when some of them do nothing in a battle when no tanks or aircrafts present.

 

[Pinzu]

What will you do about the 85% unrest rate when countries take to nuclear warfare? ^^

 

[Fingolfin]

Well Pinzu, you could just select Militarian government and not worry about the nuclear unrest penalty....

@Daffa_The_Mage: if you are lucky, the AI will use transports next version.

 

[kakuzu]

Hope this project is going well .

 

[Fingolfin]

Version 1.4c of World Domination features a brand new game mode menu, allowing players to vote between four different victory modes, three alliance modes, and three starting bases! This allows for a wide variety of match setups, and overall makes it feel like an entirely new game. The new victory modes include:

• Anihilation: A player is defeated when he no longer controls any cities. The last player/team wins.
• Territorial Victory: Victory Locations are distributed across the map. The player who controls at least six locations for five minutes wins the game. In Cold War mode, a team needs to hold at least 70% of all victory locations, and in the "4 Teams" mode, a team needs to hold at least 40% of all locations.
• Sudden Death: You lose if someone else holds your capitol for over 5 minutes. Last player/team standing wins.
• Phantom: One or more players are randomly selected as Phantoms. Phantoms gains significantly increased resources, and the other players have to defeat them in order to win. The Phantoms win when all other players are defeated.

The Phantom mode is inspired by the great mod for Supreme Commander. It is a mafia-like mod where no one knows who the phantoms are except themselves, and the phantoms need to use their wits to trick other players into believing they are innocent. During the Phantom mode, alliances are unlocked, although starting alliances are still as specified by the Alliance Mode. The three Alliance Modes are:

• Free for All: Everyone starts off as hostile to eachother.
• Cold War: East vs West scenario. Diplomacy is locked.
• 4 Teams: Players are divided into small teams, with 2-3 players each. Diplomacy is locked.

And finally, the three Base Modes:

• Normal: Players start out with only their capitol, like it is now.
• Quick Start: Players start out with a power plant and 4 cities captured, in addition to their capitol.
• Nomad: Players start out with only a nomad unit, which is amphibious and can be turned into a capitol which the players themselves get to name.

The AI also features support for both the Nomad mode and the Territorial Victory mode. Capitols built in the Nomad mode will be given random names - but it is now possible to rename it, aswell as your nation, using the new "-capitol" and "-name" commands.

Image

The new voting menu

Another big feature is the introduction of a new event, the Alien Invasion. This is triggered between 2-5 minutes after a player has shot down an UFO, and consists of an alien mothership which will fly around and wreack havoc in your base. The Mothership is not very hard to beat, but unlike the Cthulhu event, it can be triggered multiple times, albeit with a 10 minute cooldown. Apart from its twin laser batteries, it is armed with a very powerful ion cannon similar to the one on laser satellites, which will decimate any structures or units underneath it. It has decent health, but very strong shields which will regenerate quickly if you don't keep the fire up.

Image

The Mothership

Images

Ion cannon firing

Image

The motherships shields flashing as they absorb damage

Last but not least, the Stinger Soldier and the Anti-Tank Soldier have been combined into one unit - the Missile Trooper. This finally solves the issue of your stingers darting ahead of your army and getting themselves killed. It also makes the Anti-Tank squad much more flexible and desireable in general. Here is the complete changelog:

• New game mode menu, where you can select between different victory conditions, size of starting base, and starting alliances.
• The Anti-Tank soldier and the Stinger Soldier have been combined into the Missile Trooper, which can attack both tanks and airplanes. To compensate, its air damage is reduced by roughly 50%.
• Your unrest, aswell as your number of captured victory locations (in territorial victory mode) will now be displayed in the gold and lumber indicators.
• Added a unique minimap icon for the victory location.
• Killing UFOs will now trigger an alien invasion event.
• Anti-Tank squads now also spawn with a medic, rather than an extra ranger.
• You can now change the name of both your nation and your capitol through the commands "-name" and "-capitol".
• Slightly lowered the cost of Main Battle Tanks.
• Made some terrain changes to make the map more strategic.

 

[Pinzu]

What about the possibility to make trade agreements between neutral countries giving income and growth bonus and also more reason to actually embargo someone. A poor country that establish a free trade agreement with a rich country gets a much larger growth bonus then a rich country trading with a poor country. Also the bonus granted for every contract decreases depending on how many trade partners you already have.

I think there is an issue with the air system as of right now. Its too slow and the fighting is not working properly only UFO:s are actually smooth to use. Apart from air-to-air battles taking forever or the ships getting lost and shot down there is a target priority issue. If a ship is left and it so happens to attack a city, the only thing nearby, a worker can be trained and build a turret without the target priority changing to the unit (like it normally does).

My experience with the game is not that extensive yet, but the recent games i basically push with anti-air towers which is a bit stupid but I don't know what to do against air.

 

[Fingolfin]

I did alter the unit priorities for this version so that turrets have higher priority than other structures. I think this should cause units to attack turrets first. Linked space centers and armed missile bases also have very high priority. As for air combat, as mentioned, the Anti-Tank squads now consist of a medic and four dual-purpose units, which are very effective against both land and air vehicles.

I'm not sure if i agree on airplanes being unsmooth to use, i think they are fun and most people seem happy with them. The only thing that sometimes bother me is when they get stuck in a spin somewhere on the way to their objective, but this is a minor tradeoff. 1v1 air battles might be a bit slow, but airplanes are high-value targets, and you can't have them die too quickly. Is there anything in particular you'd want me to change?

 

[kakuzu]

Wow, looks awesome !

 

[Wasabee]

Air battles looks satisfying to me.

Hoping to see the zenith of a nation's Navy. Sea battles are slow but the good things is there is nuclear-powered turbine research.

I was wondering if researches can be cancelled. All I can do is change the research upgrade to another one.

 

[Fingolfin]

Yes, there is a cancel button for research, it is in the bottom left of the command card! Glad someone agrees with me on the airplanes.

 

[Wasabee]

Oh.

--

 

[Pinzu]

Yes, there is a cancel button for research, it is in the bottom left of the command card! Glad someone agrees with me on the airplanes.

I don't think the airplanes look bad, just don't think they are that friendly to use, but I have no concrete advice other then perhaps reduce the area which they move around in and make them hit more often or damage more? Haven't taken a closer look to the balance of things, its probably good but it really shots every 10 seconds because it has to spin around, which makes the cost effectiveness go down. But thats just a feeling from my end and not a fact.

What did you think about the free-trade treaties?

Btw, hosted version 1.4.c, hope someone joins.

 

[Wasabee]

Airplanes works best in groups and it's fairly easy to mass them.

 

[Fingolfin]

Apparently, the FFA mode in the last version was bugged, as alliances were locked even though they weren't supposed to be. We still had fun, but i can't believe that this slipped past me without noticing. In any case, i am releasing a hotfix version now, v1.4d, in which i am adressing this aswell as some other stuff while i was at it:

• It is now possible to declare peace/war in Free for All mode.
• Laser Satellites have had their damage slightly buffed.
• Added a custom movement system for the mothership, to prevent it from suffering from the pathing lag that appears when too many units are present on the map.
• Bullets now do less damage to heavy armor.
• Heavy Tanks and Main Battle Tanks now use armor piercing rounds against vehicles, and explosive rounds against infantry. This makes them much less useless against infantry.
• Slightly nerfed the damage of the missile trooper.
• Reduced the cost of submarines. They are now the cheapest naval unit, to compensate for the fact that they cannot attack land.
• Apparently the Cthulhu event still wasn't enabled for multiplayer, so i enabled it.
• The MLRS no longer deals friendly fire.

 

[Pinzu]

I desynced, if it was a action from my part it was a cancellation of a turret, wasn't doing much when it happened apart from being raped by zombies (again).

Shouldn't the puppet diplomacy be a two way street, you can demand surrender and also offer surrender?

Dont forget the hotkey on Napalm bombs.

I think the Zombie-virus tech need to be abit futher down the as its impact can be truly devastating.

 

[Fingolfin]

Hey Pinzu, my warcraft crashed (i'm guessing at the same time), so there was probably something in the map that went to hell. One potential thing i found is related to the damage calculation of missiles which might lead to a division-by-zero situaiton, which could screw things up seriously. Overall, the formula was flawed and would essentially make missiles deal less damage if they are closer to the target. In any case, it will be fixed in the next version. I also added the napalm hotkey (there was a hotkey, N, there was just no tooltip stating it).

I agree that it should be possible to both send and receive all kinds of requests (requesting trade agreements would be nice too), but i'm not sure how to integrate it. One possible solution could be to add an extra dialog asking you if you want to offer or request, but then i need to fix the tooltips of all abilities so that it is understandable for everyone that it works both ways.

 

[Pinzu]

I agree that it should be possible to both send and receive all kinds of requests (requesting trade agreements would be nice too), but i'm not sure how to integrate it. One possible solution could be to add an extra dialog asking you if you want to offer or request, but then i need to fix the tooltips of all abilities so that it is understandable for everyone that it works both ways.

Thats would work, just like ban/unban. I'll take a more detailed look at what you actually can do diplomacy wise and return on the subject.

The game mode menu is not understandable as of right now, at least not for me.

Maybe a text listing the options and what I have voted for,

1. Vote to decide Game Mode (if you want u can add brief description of the options)

Your vote:
1: Blank
2: Blank
3: Blank
4: Blank

Once you have voted the first round the text is cleared and updated.

2. Vote to decide start location

Your vote:
1: FFA
2: Blank
3: Blank
4: Blank

 

[Fingolfin]

Hmm, i wanted to avoid having multiple dialogs, so that players wouldn't feel like they were overwhelmed by choices at the start of the game. Some people do seem to have a problem understanding it at first though, but once you've played a game or two, it should hopefully be pretty straightforward. I will give this some thinking - obviously more text would make it easier for beginners to understand, but the space you have in the dialog window is limited.

 

[SNIper of DARKness]

I hope we gonna have "Just Point us at 'em"

 

[Fingolfin]

LOL yeah, well at least that's better than "WHAT AN MORNING!!"

 

[Pinzu]

Issues:
- People sometimes use the UN ceasefire resolution to neutral people in the begining. 1) that should perhaps be a option when selecting a faction. 2) This messes up the game in the sense that people must either leave the UN to declare war on said player or vote for everyone to declare war on that player. My suggestion is to either put a time cap on the resolution with a message when it expires.
- When you cancel a turret it reads: Error Wrong Target (or something)
- You can still not cancel certain things when you are out of funds. Do you pause the unit?
- I desynced when i spammed to invest in a city that was already at max wealth, might not been the cause but maybe. Otherwise it might be something thats always running, like the airplanes. It could also be something with being out of funds and still training a lot of stuff. The last one I feel is more and more likely. Is it really worth having this production hold system, I mean it doesn't really change the game and it might cause problems.
- Whats the point in not being able to give other factions capitals, I can understand why you can't give your own as that would cause you to lose in some modes but other peoples?
- Remeber to not make the invasions always spawn in the same central place.
- if you place your vote after the timer expired you receive the game mode selection twice.
- The council name is abit weird "the UN" perhaps replace it with "United Nations"?
- I'm not sure i like the concept of a "untouchable" satellite laser.

Suggestions:
- Spies should have the ability to sabotage production and resource harvesting.
- Offer Defense Guarantee, if someone declares war on that player you will automatically declare war on them, however if the faction that you have a defence guarantee with declares war on another faction I don't think the guarantee should be valid. (Defense guarantees is the reason for both ww1 and ww2).
- Disband ability for workers and infantry. 20% of production costs multiplied with the hp% in returned resources.
- Kamikaze ability for theocratic planes, as a research option.
- if spies somehow could gather information about a players tech or current resource state, it would be great.
- I still wish to see nuclear submarines.
- Militarian goverment could have the power to crack down on the riots by basically ruining the city economicaly.
- if nuclear weapons are banned I think it should be announced if a faction is breaking the ban. Otherwise you end up with a situation which you cant control that is: a player just leaves the UN declares war and nukes your city and the purpose of the ban is lost completely. Its to encourage diplomatic decisions nut be a bonus feature.
- Spies can causes cities to revolt. Reduces the wealth of that city and spawns rebels, also the city gains a mercenery unit that you can purchase, not for yourself but for the insurrection, the rebels attack nearby cities. Another option is for it to increase the unrest of the nation, so the more spies you have targeting enemy cities the worse it gets.
- I think the command "-oil" etc should be replaced with a ability on either a city or a worker that pings nearby resources or perhaps only ping the ones nearest the capital.

 

[Fingolfin]

Thank you for your suggestions! I will upload version 1.4e within the coming two days with a few updates.

*I've change the name of the UN to "United Nations".
*Fixed the bug which caused desync when investing wealth to a capped city.
*I will add it so that you can yield other players capitols. Perhaps you will even have a small dialog appear, asking you if you want to return the capitol (if the player is an ally).
*Removed the "invalid target" debug message, as it wasn't really caused by a bug.
*Yes, i am pausing stalled units, since that is currently the only way to stop a units production. I will see if i can't find a workaround (not sure if maybe freezing breath allows you to cancel production?)
*Increased the radius in which the Mothership can appear. It will still be around the maps central area, although as always, the target player is picked at random.
*The mode menu now properly disappears once the timer has expired.
*I will add it so that spies can gather some kind of intelligence about other players. This will not be in the next version, though.
*I'm not sure you've noticed, but when nuclear weapons are banned in the council, you aren't able to neither build nor launch nukes. It's not possible to break the ban as long as you are in the council.
*The defence guarantee sounds interesting, i'm just curious as to what you'd personally benefit from it.
*I am quite positive that the stalling isn't causing desyncs. There's no logical reason to why it would.
*The option for trident submarines to produce nukes might come later on.
*I don't really see the problem with the satellite. The tech you need in order to get it is insanely expensive, and it can practically only destroy a single structure once every minute. Crafty players can always find ways of taking it out, such as sending a spy with a C4 to demolish the space center. At this point in the game, most players also have nukes or massed airplanes, so a suicide raid on the base should be able to take it out.
*I will add a timer to make council ceasefires expire after a few minutes, so that you can declare war on those players again.
*I currently have no comments on your other suggestions, but i will consider them.

 

[Pinzu]

*I will add it so that you can yield other players capitols. Perhaps you will even have a small dialog appear, asking you if you want to return the capitol (if the player is an ally).

Great idea, this should also happen when you surrender to that player in my opinion.

*Yes, i am pausing stalled units, since that is currently the only way to stop a units production. I will see if i can't find a workaround (not sure if maybe freezing breath allows you to cancel production?)

Freezing breath stalls production, you should definitely use that instead, create a dummy unit that attacks the building while its paused and just remove the unit to unpause.

*I'm not sure you've noticed, but when nuclear weapons are banned in the council, you aren't able to neither build nor launch nukes. It's not possible to break the ban as long as you are in the council.

I'm not sure the ban/unban is working properly, will have to take a closer look. Also you should see if you can incooperate some sort of cooldown mechanic on certain UN treaties, for example last game African Union thought it was funny to spam name change petitions...

*The defence guarantee sounds interesting, i'm just curious as to what you'd personally benefit from it.

It has dual purpose firstly as a roleplaying tool, but secondly as a precursor for war. In one game i was offering a player to secure his border for in return that i got to build a base there or something like that. Then the neighboring player declared war on him and I had to declare war myself. The benefit is that you get to declare war on someone without being the bad guy. ^^

_____

As I was staying up far too late i got an idea for you. How about airplanes can dock to airfields, not by actually entering tnem, but when they are above they get stopped and rest, this way you don't have to see a swarm in your base and it also reduces the amount of active iterations. It would work by issuing a move order on the airport and thus it would pause above it, once landed all u have to do to start is to give it a new order.

Follow up ideas: Airfield should only heal when a plane is landed. A landed plane takes extra damage.

More feedback:
- The council is lacking a abstain option, meaning your vote wont be counted.
- There was a bug with repaying loan that caused the dialog buttons to be doubled <accept> <cancel> <accept> <cancel>, it happend when i couldn't afford to repay the loan.
- First AU desynced and soon after that it was my turn, I had just finished researching safe reactors and was moving a stealth bomber around, no idea what caused it.
- I don't know if its intentional might be because it makes sense. But you can still research nuclear weapons even though its banned.
- Perhaps the radar tower should give vision over a larger area, like 2x or 3x the normal range so it also serves the purpose of watch tower.

Brainstorming:
- Ive not used much of the subs but one of them should definitely be dedicated as a anti-missile shield, this would reward a player that uses micro instead of mass turrets by saving resources or that you can train them and station them around your boarders. Another idea is to have a anti-ballistic missile turret with longer range, so basically a missle-silo that only shots down missiles.
- The possibility of creating "false-flag" operations, the spy can spawn a squad of any given faction, they will be owned by said faction but not have any vision and be controlled by the spy.

 

[Pinzu]

- Interest is still given even though you are at war with each other or when a player leaves, it should be paused and if you defeat your lender the loan should be nulled.
- I think the Monsters should be stronger every time they enter the world.
- How about moving Latin Alliance to Central America and USA to New York (further north) its very easy to choke of central america as USA and just expand north afterwards and South America then becomes two weak and isolated factions. With limited growth options. This scenario is of course not set in stone, but I think the start positions isn't improving the situation.
- Lets say the zombie-Apocalypse scenario happens (X-zombies are in existence) then lets say they all die the world in saved. I think you should be able to re-research the virus so to make the vaccine ineffective. A easier way to represent this would be to have levels of vaccine and zombie-virus so if the zombie virus is higher ranking then the vaccine, the vaccine doesn't work or its effectiveness is greatly reduced.
- You should buff theocratic government and probably nerf Communism and the nuke spam from militarist government.

What about combining the black areas of the map and creating space? So your satellites would actually hover around up there and you could take them out?

- Anti-ballistic satellite (Global ballistic defense.)
- Intelligence-satellite or GPS-satellite (spawns a unit on the world map that is linked to the satellite)
- EMP or Laser - sattelite (temporarily disables buildings)
- Military Space Planes
- You could also have some sort of tower structure that hovers around or some sort of dock ship working as a base for the space planes and providing some defenses.
- A telescope building would give you vision of half the space, depending on what part of the world its placed in. So in the morning USA would see the west and during night the east or skip this and just reveal the entire area.
- The council would have the option to ban space militarization.

You would enter space through a space-launch building, you could aim wherever you want in space and the unit would start to launch, however it would launch slowly and be extremely vulnerable to attacks.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/space-war3.htm

 

[Wasabee]

Space War?

 

[Fingolfin]

- Interest is still given even though you are at war with each other or when a player leaves, it should be paused and if you defeat your lender the loan should be nulled.
- I think the Monsters should be stronger every time they enter the world.
- How about moving Latin Alliance to Central America and USA to New York (further north) its very easy to choke of central america as USA and just expand north afterwards and South America then becomes two weak and isolated factions. With limited growth options. This scenario is of course not set in stone, but I think the start positions isn't improving the situation.
- Lets say the zombie-Apocalypse scenario happens (X-zombies are in existence) then lets say they all die the world in saved. I think you should be able to re-research the virus so to make the vaccine ineffective. A easier way to represent this would be to have levels of vaccine and zombie-virus so if the zombie virus is higher ranking then the vaccine, the vaccine doesn't work or its effectiveness is greatly reduced.
- You should buff theocratic government and probably nerf Communism and the nuke spam from militarist government.

What about combining the black areas of the map and creating space? So your satellites would actually hover around up there and you could take them out?

- Anti-ballistic satellite (Global ballistic defense.)
- Intelligence-satellite or GPS-satellite (spawns a unit on the world map that is linked to the satellite)
- EMP or Laser - sattelite (temporarily disables buildings)
- Military Space Planes
- You could also have some sort of tower structure that hovers around or some sort of dock ship working as a base for the space planes and providing some defenses.
- A telescope building would give you vision of half the space, depending on what part of the world its placed in. So in the morning USA would see the west and during night the east or skip this and just reveal the entire area.
- The council would have the option to ban space militarization.

You would enter space through a space-launch building, you could aim wherever you want in space and the unit would start to launch, however it would launch slowly and be extremely vulnerable to attacks.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/space-war3.htm

You always have such great feedback, Pinzu. The space part might be added later (as in - once everything else is finished), but i will fix the loans and interest stuff for the next version. Moving the capitol of Latin Alliance is also a pretty good idea, as USA currently has the most room to expand.

 

[Pinzu]

- Reminder there is no Abstention vote for the council as well as a wait vote, which makes people just fire off treaties with out any actual discussion. My suggestion is to allow the voting to last for 30 seconds (timer window) and reveal the results in the following category: Yes No Abstaining (those who didn't vote in time and those who chose to abstain).

- I think you should add a ability to the diplomacy tab to reveal the diplomatic relations of a selected player. Who he is allied, neutral and at war; its realistic and fair play.

- There are a bunch of diplomatic and other requests (truce for example) that doesn't have a wait option.

- Detected a bug when borrowing money again, I loaned 2k from Indonesia but when i failed to pay it said the loan was from USSR.

- I also think there is something wrong with how banning stuff and then leaving and rejoining UN, could you perhaps take a look at the logic?

- Is it possible you could merge UN war/peace resolutions to a single message: USA, EU... are now at peace with Africa. (instead of lines with the same message for each faction). Think I did something like this for a old diplomacy system I never completed.

- Something that happened to me when playing as Arabia was that the UN voted to declare war on me, it was because i didn't surrender all of Africa, I was fighting but had stopped my advance, in a sense it surprised me, tbh it was not that fun to be attacked by 4 players after that. But then again a understandable choice. My complaint is that such powerful resolutions as peace and war should have a wait period before the voting begins. Perhaps all resolutions should have a short wait.

- Another idea based on the previous situation is that there there could be a possibility to create UN observers which would give some diplomatic power to the attacked but also the attacker and not just how good they argue or whine. It could work by a player targeting a unit which shall be converted to a UN observer. This unit will temporarily lose its attack potential and become invulnerable for the next X minutes. All member-states receive vision over this unit.

- Also I still think that invul satellite is really bad game design. Its too easy to utterly destroy a player if you have more of those then your enemy you can hop around and destroy powerplants, and as long as your defences are well enough you don't even have to do anything else. It's just not a game style you'd want to promote. If you must keep it as is, remove the invulnerability when its attacking and perhaps make it immune to the anti-air turrets, buff hp or something like that. You very rarely can get to the heart of a players base with a invisible unit. The UN must approve the creation of the observer. On the other hand I could see why these are useful.

- Another interesting concept is that of proxy wars: The easiest implementation is to have the possibility to give part of your income to a ally.

- There should be a way to write off debt to players you borrowed money to, for balance sake it could cost 10% of the debt or something like that.

- Another faction that is in a bad position is Indonesia, he is situated between three players: China, India and Australia, the easiest solution for this is to just move orange to Japan, and let Indonesia be the battleground between Australia Japan and (India, China)

- Also I think there should be a river crossing in Egypt so that the African player has a little bit harder securing it from Arabia.

 

[Leo Akastenix]

Bugs!!!!!

The alien mothership got destroyed, yes.. and then out of niwhere an inverneravle and unselectable mothership spawns and attackes me!!!

 

[Fingolfin]

- Reminder there is no Abstention vote for the council as well as a wait vote, which makes people just fire off treaties with out any actual discussion. My suggestion is to allow the voting to last for 30 seconds (timer window) and reveal the results in the following category: Yes No Abstaining (those who didn't vote in time and those who chose to abstain).

- I think you should add a ability to the diplomacy tab to reveal the diplomatic relations of a selected player. Who he is allied, neutral and at war; its realistic and fair play.

- There are a bunch of diplomatic and other requests (truce for example) that doesn't have a wait option.

- Detected a bug when borrowing money again, I loaned 2k from Indonesia but when i failed to pay it said the loan was from USSR.

- I also think there is something wrong with how banning stuff and then leaving and rejoining UN, could you perhaps take a look at the logic?

- Is it possible you could merge UN war/peace resolutions to a single message: USA, EU... are now at peace with Africa. (instead of lines with the same message for each faction). Think I did something like this for a old diplomacy system I never completed.

- Something that happened to me when playing as Arabia was that the UN voted to declare war on me, it was because i didn't surrender all of Africa, I was fighting but had stopped my advance, in a sense it surprised me, tbh it was not that fun to be attacked by 4 players after that. But then again a understandable choice. My complaint is that such powerful resolutions as peace and war should have a wait period before the voting begins. Perhaps all resolutions should have a short wait.

- Another idea based on the previous situation is that there there could be a possibility to create UN observers which would give some diplomatic power to the attacked but also the attacker and not just how good they argue or whine. It could work by a player targeting a unit which shall be converted to a UN observer. This unit will temporarily lose its attack potential and become invulnerable for the next X minutes. All member-states receive vision over this unit.

- Also I still think that invul satellite is really bad game design. Its too easy to utterly destroy a player if you have more of those then your enemy you can hop around and destroy powerplants, and as long as your defences are well enough you don't even have to do anything else. It's just not a game style you'd want to promote. If you must keep it as is, remove the invulnerability when its attacking and perhaps make it immune to the anti-air turrets, buff hp or something like that. You very rarely can get to the heart of a players base with a invisible unit. The UN must approve the creation of the observer. On the other hand I could see why these are useful.

- Another interesting concept is that of proxy wars: The easiest implementation is to have the possibility to give part of your income to a ally.

- There should be a way to write off debt to players you borrowed money to, for balance sake it could cost 10% of the debt or something like that.

- Another faction that is in a bad position is Indonesia, he is situated between three players: China, India and Australia, the easiest solution for this is to just move orange to Japan, and let Indonesia be the battleground between Australia Japan and (India, China)

- Also I think there should be a river crossing in Egypt so that the African player has a little bit harder securing it from Arabia.

- I only added the wait options for request which you cannot accept, such as leasing a tech you already own. The reason behind this is that otherwise, players would be able to find out what tech other players have by checking out what techs they can receive lease requests for. I can add it for the other requests too, if you think this is worthwhile - but i'd have to make some kind of system to put them at the back of the requests list, so that you don't get the same request popping up the next time you press esc.

- I could add an option to "absolve debt", with which you can write off other players debts. The thing is, if players can send money "for free" to other players, there would be no use in even having the loan system. To prevent players from feeding each other too much, i could add a temporary unrest penalty, since you are essentially giving away taxpayer money for free. I will also investigate the bug you mentioned.

- Moving Indonesia to Japan wouldn't really help his situation. Japan has even less space, and is extremely close to China. There is absolutely no room at all to expand or even build structures. There must be some other way of solving this.

- There is a river crossing in egypt, but it is slightly south of the one at the suez canal. You can still cross the nile though without taking the route around its source.

- One thing i could consider is making Laser Satellites vulnerable to Anti-Ballistic Lasers. This would give players a small chance of defending themselves, while still requiring special effort to do so. The third alternative would be the option of building "satellite busters" at the missile base - basically, a missile which specifically targets satellites. Let me know which option you like the best.

- I will see what i can do about the war/peace messages.

- Once again, i'm afraid i can't comment on all your suggestions, but know that i am taking them all into consideration.

Bugs!!!!!

The alien mothership got destroyed, yes.. and then out of niwhere an inverneravle and unselectable mothership spawns and attackes me!!!

Wha... but... how?? Are you sure it wasn't just an orbital laser satellite?? There is just no way in which a mothership could become invulnerable/unselectable...
EDIT: I take that back. It could be theoretically possible, if the death sequence somehow does not initiate. It could be related to whatever is causing timers to not fire. I even think i found exactly what causes it - when a request expires, i accidentally release the timer twice, placing it twice in the timer stack. This means that two systems can use the same timer, which obviously causes conflicts.

 

[Pinzu]

- Once again, i'm afraid i can't comment on all your suggestions, but know that i am taking them all into consideration.
.

Good enough for me. Found bug-note I forgot to mention, when I was gonna declare war on someone it read "Already at war with everyone" however this was clearly false as I had allies and was at peace with some including the one I wanted to attack. I left the UN and everything worked fine. This might be a a case of the ceasefire agreement glitching out, but it can't be only that.

The river crossing you mention in Egypt is the one eastward, I mean a river crossing westward. Currently if you're Arabia 2-3 cities have to be secured in central-east Africa before you can claim North Africa, its not a huge deal though.

A unrest penalty depending on how big the debt is seems like a good solution.

I like the idea of satellite busters however I don't think everything has to be a turret, but it's fine either way. Are there any mobile anti-ballistic units except the airplanes?

 

[Daffa]

Actually, Indonesia by far is most challenging since the player needs to cooperate with one of the 3 hitters to actually stand a chance. In other hand, they're still the most sneaky faction due to their environment.

Giving temporal invulnerability early game could save them from triple chain assault. I played once and allied with Australia, guess what? Yes, the others are toasted.

 

[kakuzu]

What about the biologycal bombs , any country can use it with the same effect ? I mean the disseases used

 

[Pinzu]

What about the biologycal bombs , any country can use it with the same effect ? I mean the disseases used

Dont understand what you are trying to say, could you elaborate?

 

[Fingolfin]

Good enough for me. Found bug-note I forgot to mention, when I was gonna declare war on someone it read "Already at war with everyone" however this was clearly false as I had allies and was at peace with some including the one I wanted to attack. I left the UN and everything worked fine. This might be a a case of the ceasefire agreement glitching out, but it can't be only that.

The river crossing you mention in Egypt is the one eastward, I mean a river crossing westward. Currently if you're Arabia 2-3 cities have to be secured in central-east Africa before you can claim North Africa, its not a huge deal though.

A unrest penalty depending on how big the debt is seems like a good solution.

I like the idea of satellite busters however I don't think everything has to be a turret, but it's fine either way. Are there any mobile anti-ballistic units except the airplanes?

Yeah, if your council has a ceasefire option on someone, that player will not show up in the list of players to declare war on. Next version, i will make it so that they can be seen in the list, but their names will be greyed out, and clicking on them will give you a dialog explaining why that player can't be selected. Also, ceasefires will have a 5 minute timeout, after which they expire. I just added the option to absolve debts - it will be in the next version. I also added a dialog which appears when capturing the capitol of an ally (occupied by an enemy), which asks you if you want to return it to him.

As far as chemical weapons go, i will add the gas bombs soon. I'd really like more suggestions on what biological tech i could add, since this research tab is rather empty (especially since i removed the "combat stimulators" upgrade).

 

[Pinzu]

- There was a bug where chathulu cinematic never ended, he spawned near the red creep spot.

- I still would like to see the Economy Menu made to the default multiboard, so its always open unless another multiboard is open (that hero is currently selected) or at least a command to activate this.

- I also hope you will take the time to make a different model for the ballistic missile turret, so its easier to spot the defense of a player.

- You should be able to cut the power off any production facility not just the turrets.

- The far command is either too far away or the fog too dense also the speed which the camera pan time is too slow, you could probably cut it in half.

- This is not really a issue but most people recognize that you enter "-name Sparta" and not "-name" "Sparta" as two separate commands, i'd be happy if you saved me the time it took to explain that to people.

- If u take a fighter plane above a hostile building (city) it wont attack unless you order it. Also if u attack a city and capture it they will continue attacking it.

- I find it more preferable if everyone would start off neutral so people don't just attack each other without thinking first.

- I find that a ships land attack is slightly too slow, but you maybe want it like that?

- I think you should change the voting dialog to start off blank.
<Team Settings>
<Start Settings>
<Victory Settings>
Then when u click the above its starts to toggle between the options which should be for example: FFA, 4 teams, Cold War and <team settings>

this way a vote not cast doesn't impact the outcome and you also gain information on what the dialog button is all about. Therefor you reduce the likelihood of playing the same mode over and over again for no reason other then people didn't know how to or what they were voting on.

 

[kakuzu]

I mean that all countries will have the same biological bombs , i mean the effects made by bombs should be different for every country by their technology , for exemple USA and Russia should have the deadliest biologycal bombs because they have the highest technology .

 

[Pinzu]

- I don't think the player name should be hidden "Russia (tag0): Don't kill me!" it also helps the host to control the games if rules are set up. Also I think the argument for hiding the names are weak, but try me.

- The interest-rate should increase if you fail to pay up.

- 1* Spies should have a assassination skill that works on friendly targets too or you should be able to attack-target spies even if they are allied.
- 2* Perhaps cities should have the ability yo "throw out" neutral units within range (AoE spell, sending them back to the capital or closest city that belongs to owning player). A message could be displayed "Russia has thrown out 23 foreign units from its territory. Should not work on allies or enemies of course.

- I think Europe at war has something called none-aggression pact which I haven't used it myself since I'm a noob in that game, but I think its a good feature to be able to offer another player the unavailability to declare war for X minutes between each other. Historically these pacts were used to ask permission to attack another nation.

- Add a puppet menu in the diplomacy tab.
The reasoning for this is that having a puppet state is most often a loss to you, you spent resources killing the person, and he does basically nothing for the rest of the game. So some additional bonuses are required in my opinion to make this more attractive and might make for more interesting game play.

Firstly you shall be able to tax gold, iron and oil to strengthen your income, however this comes with the disadvantage of losing favor to that country. If enough disfavor is created, unrest in your nation spreads and the puppet might gain the option to revolt. Being asked to pay when you are low or out of that resource should be the biggest revolt-creator. When revolting some bonus should be given to boost the puppets strength.

When a revolt happens the player gets a dialog option to start the uprising.

Secondly is to add the bans of unit-training everything from tanks to nukes. This should also decrease your relations with the puppet.

Chathulu cinematic bug has happend twice now.

 

[Fingolfin]

- I don't think the player name should be hidden "Russia (tag0): Don't kill me!" it also helps the host to control the games if rules are set up. Also I think the argument for hiding the names are weak, but try me.

- The interest-rate should increase if you fail to pay up.

- 1* Spies should have a assassination skill that works on friendly targets too or you should be able to attack-target spies even if they are allied.
- 2* Perhaps cities should have the ability yo "throw out" neutral units within range (AoE spell, sending them back to the capital or closest city that belongs to owning player). A message could be displayed "Russia has thrown out 23 foreign units from its territory. Should not work on allies or enemies of course.

- I think Europe at war has something called none-aggression pact which I haven't used it myself since I'm a noob in that game, but I think its a good feature to be able to offer another player the unavailability to declare war for X minutes between each other. Historically these pacts were used to ask permission to attack another nation.

- Add a puppet menu in the diplomacy tab.
The reasoning for this is that having a puppet state is most often a loss to you, you spent resources killing the person, and he does basically nothing for the rest of the game. So some additional bonuses are required in my opinion to make this more attractive and might make for more interesting game play.

Firstly you shall be able to tax gold, iron and oil to strengthen your income, however this comes with the disadvantage of losing favor to that country. If enough disfavor is created, unrest in your nation spreads and the puppet might gain the option to revolt. Being asked to pay when you are low or out of that resource should be the biggest revolt-creator. When revolting some bonus should be given to boost the puppets strength.

When a revolt happens the player gets a dialog option to start the uprising.

Secondly is to add the bans of unit-training everything from tanks to nukes. This should also decrease your relations with the puppet.

Chathulu cinematic bug has happend twice now.

- The Cthulhu cinematic bug is caused by poor management of the timer recycling. I am pretty sure that this will be fixed by next version.

- The reason player names are hidden is that the names will otherwise become too long. If a string is longer than the width of a multiboard item, the string will not be displayed at all, which is a problem. One thing i could do though is add a "Name display mode" button, which toggles between nation name and player name in all menus.

- Increasing the interest rate would cause debts to snowball exponentially. Right now, failing to pay your interest will add the interest to your debt. I don't want to enforce limits on how long you're allowed to loan money, since this is really up to the players.

- I can easily see how the feature for deporting units from your territory could be exploited to teleport your units back to your capitol, especially during the Sudden Death mode.

- A different model for the ballistic laser is in the works.

- I will increase the speed of the camera change. Also keep in mind that you can specify the exact camera distance you want using commands such as "-cam 2000", "-cam 3200", etc.

- In the early versions, players used to start off as neutral, but i felt like there was too little tension in the game. Players were simply too cowardly to declare war on each other until they had maxed out all their techs.

- I am updating the airplane system to fix the issues you mentioned.

 

[Wasabee]

I totally support players start off as hostiles since it's dull when you have nothing to do but a race about who can max their usages of resources, units and techs.

I'll check your new updates. Keep up the good work.

 

[Pinzu]

Any feedback on my suggestion to give a greater incentive to make a player surrender to you and for you to want it?

Maybe it isn't a bad thing that a nation can debt-sprial out of control and collapse, after all it happens frequently. Does the unrest increase if you fail to pay interest or are at 0 income for a long time? Perhaps there could be such a thing as negative currency balance, so when you get to 0 instead of pausing you start racking up debt to a limit of course, then after that limit is reached your production gets stalled and your interest rate is increased to match your bad credit rating.

Regarding deportation, you mean a ally teleports you home? Well another idea is to just remove the friendly fire block. I mean friendly fire ins't really a issue except on sudden death and even that it is debatable if its necessary. Perhaps just limit attack on allied structures and leave unit targeting in the map.

Communism feels slightly too strong especially when you go all out war on someone and increase taxes and make like 8-12 barracks.

 

[Fingolfin]

Any feedback on my suggestion to give a greater incentive to make a player surrender to you and for you to want it?

Maybe it isn't a bad thing that a nation can debt-sprial out of control and collapse, after all it happens frequently. Does the unrest increase if you fail to pay interest or are at 0 income for a long time? Perhaps there could be such a thing as negative currency balance, so when you get to 0 instead of pausing you start racking up debt to a limit of course, then after that limit is reached your production gets stalled and your interest rate is increased to match your bad credit rating.

Regarding deportation, you mean a ally teleports you home? Well another idea is to just remove the friendly fire block. I mean friendly fire ins't really a issue except on sudden death and even that it is debatable if its necessary. Perhaps just limit attack on allied structures and leave unit targeting in the map.

Communism feels slightly too strong especially when you go all out war on someone and increase taxes and make like 8-12 barracks.

- I'm not really sure if you need more incentive... right now, people don't seem to have any problem surrendering (other than pride). You can already control the diplomacy of your puppet, since it is linked to yours. But yeah, it would be cool to have the option of setting the tax rate on your puppet, it allows you to be nice to him if you want.

- Right now, debts give you an unrest penalty depending on the size of your debt. I believe it is about 0.1% of your debt size, so a debt of 6000 currency gives you an unrest penalty of 6 (which on a scale of 0-100 is quite much, when added to the rest). Of course, if the reprecussions of taking loans are too great, people won't take them.

- I am increasing the unrest penalty of communism by 5% for next version. I am also considering adding bonuses to growth, so that maybe Free Market governments will have +1% growth, and communism will have -1%. This might be a bit harsh though, since the growth is very important for your economy to scale.

By the way: here is the WIP changelog. Right now i'm just going to test these features, and then i'l release the next version. If you're missing something minor, you can tell me about it - but big features will need some more testing, and i want to get this version out ASAP. Also, someone requested me to share the sounds i used for the map, so i made him a paste. You can all download it here if you want to use them for your own map.

 

[Pinzu]

- I'm not really sure if you need more incentive... right now, people don't seem to have any problem surrendering (other than pride). You can already control the diplomacy of your puppet, since it is linked to yours. But yeah, it would be cool to have the option of setting the tax rate on your puppet, it allows you to be nice to him if you want.

Mostly it is more favorable for you to eliminate a player and take his oil/iron then keeping him alive doing nothing, but I suppose one could liberate and kill him again if he doesn't prove useful.

So ideas to encourage a player to accept surrender.
- Every trade transaction is cheaper with your puppet or a bonus on the oil exported for the same ratio, stuff like that.

As for the current change-log:
- Battle ship attacks is a bit slow imo.
- There is a bug with repaying the loan menu, and someone claimed they couldn't repay or that it got bugged (might be the bugged menu). I fear that this contains a few bugs that you have to straighten out.
- You can't invest wealth in your capital if its below 950-1000.
- Still didn't read that the economy tabs will be "fixed" and only replaced while another menu is activity being selected.
- Empty slots are still added to the Diplomacy multiboard and menu.
- Add a neutral all factions to the menu. Since people are currently using UN for this. I've heard your opinion on mass neutral and its understandable, however people clearly have that policy in game and making these players use a "ceasefire agreement" to accomplish this is not that great.
- Improve the message spam that occurs after diplomatic actions. One such example is when ceasefire agreement is accepted, you don't have to see when a player votes in favor, rather you could merge all messages:
- I am still missing the option to demand surrender.
"The resolution to ceasefire with Russia was passed with a 80% majority.
Yes: Russia, China, Australia and India. No: USA. Abstention: None."

- I don't think changing a alliance to neutral is working right now, you can't neutral a ally on your own terms it must be accepted. Which is weird.!
- I have yet to see a abstention option to the UN vote. I might not want to pick a side when Russia demands Arab territory to be ceded.
- When two of your allies go to war with each other, you must either chose side or stay neutral. If you decide to neutral, both your alliances are ended if you chose a side the other player will treat you as neutral. One reason to implement this is to discourage 2v1 after the fact that you are engaged and dead. So this way you would know how that particular player stand immediately. Also you can't scout for your "real" ally. This should also be applied when offering a alliance in my opinion.

- realistically speaking a trade embargo would also effect the wealth of a nation, so perhaps also having it reduce currency income slightly would be okey.
- Personally I would remove the anti-ally attack that currently is in the game. (Perhaps replace it with a kill count and after you reached a limit, you will automatically become enemies, different targets increase the negative reputation with a different amount). The reasoning behind this is to be able to deny scouting of pesky infantry or spies of another player.
- Sell/buy Building to/from player. Mostly for oil and iron facilities.

 

[Fingolfin]

Version 1.4f has been released. You can find the full update here.

Changelog:

• The voting dialog is now split into three, to make it easier for new players to understand.
• Added the option to absolve the debts of players who have loaned from you. However, giving away taxpayer money for free like this will upset your population.
• Debts are now removed if the player you've loaned from is defeated or leaves the game.
• Fixed a bug which caused the wrong player to be displayed as the one loaning money to you.
• Players whom your council has issued a war/ceasefire order on will now be displayed in the player list when you want to declare war/peace with someone, but their names will be greyed out, and clicking them will display the reason why that player can't be selected.
• Council ceasefires and war orders will now expire after 5 minutes, to prevent abuse.
• When recapturing the capitol of one of your allies, you will now be asked if you wish to return it to him.
• Fixed a possible cause of desync related to research.
• Increased the interval at which the sunken city will be spawned. It now has a 20% chance of spawning every 3 minutes. This means that on average, the city spawns 15 minutes into the game.
• The airplane system has now been refined and should work better overall.
• Fixed an issue with improper timer recycling which would cause numerous different bugs related to timers, such as the cinematic mode not ending, the mothership not crashing, disasters not expiring, etc.
• It is now possible to select the exchange rate for your lease agreements. This means you can finally be a smart businessman, selling the zombie vaccine expensively to your desperate allies during a zombie outbreak.
• Freshly trained units now use the "attack move" order when moving to their rally point, rather than just "move".
• It is now possible to properly disband your alliances by using the "request peace" option on them (thanks Pinzu).
• Increased the attack speed of destroyers and trident submarines.

 

[Pinzu]

- The repay menu is still bugged or is making no sense and I still recieved the message that I owed myself interest or that I couldn't repay my loan to myself (red). Can't recall which it was.
- You still can't invest in capitals. World events can take the wealth of a capital down below the cap so you should be able to invest in it. Maybe their wealth cap should be higher then normal cities?
- You can't cede foreign capitals. Didn't test the ally return of capital.
- I would eliminate far less players if I could demand their surrender.
- The politics menu need tooltips, school budget increases tech speed, changes in taxes increases unrest, subsidies (welfare) decrease unrest.
- You can no longer loan from multiple factions.
- Fog of war should be removed upon victory conditions.
______

I think you should put more iron in Antartica so its actually worth owning.
______

Something that might help this game is a -swap command that allows a active player take over a leaver, i mean if US leaves and Indonesia has 1 city, you might want to keep the game going so to speak.

It should work by putting it up for a vote if it is to be implemented.

 

[Wasabee]

I played as Russia and chose Cold War and after a few seconds EU began attacking me but I can't produce any units because I ran out of money. I can't even cancel the units I'm training even in the things I'm researching. I tried exporting and loaning to my allied countries but they keep rejecting it. So I just watched my base die.


May I suggest in the modes you could add some information since not everyone knows about each modes.

 

[Pinzu]

May I suggest in the modes you could add some information since not everyone knows about each modes.

Cold War could be renamed to East vs West.

Personally I find the puppet-state mechanic to be too shallow. It's mostly a mercy option that makes the victor just give up land and resources for his efforts and for what? The loser has a major grudge on you, never helps you and just wants his liberation. And you can't quite liberate him because while you were fighting he was building up, you might even have accepted a surrender while his nation was still very much intact so you ignore his request, and he keeps nagging you and nagging you. Nobody is happy about it.

Some suggestions:

- Have a designated Government City, if you capture it that faction have disorganization (or lose the option to use policy, diplomacy and research menus) penalty and must either establish a new government elsewhere or surrender. (Its basically a unit you can only train one of)
- The master can decide tax on his puppet and also restrict tech and units at will.
- The master can even take possession over cities or resources. These things you take possession over are still remembered as belonging to the puppet so if he revolts they immediately are given back.
- The above actions cause discontentment in the puppet state much like unrest. However it starts already with high unrest and grows very slowly.
- You should also be able to help your puppet by giving things or "leasing him a city". Lifting bans and restriction decreases the resentment but not as much as you caused by the restriction in the first place.

Now the question comes, how should a revolution work? In my opinion it should be a option that is available to the player after say 15 min (given good relations) or if the master is treating the puppet very harshly. I would also add that a revolt caused by negative reputation should give the puppet some bonuses when breaking free. Either in form of resource bonuses or temporarily increased tech-speed or something like that.