06-04-2003 15:43									#181
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

i meant, a little name [selectable of course], with Legion 1, Legion 2, Phalanx 5 etc.. above each unit, or displayed when you move your mouse over it - perhaps this might connect with characters, if a certain charater is in charge of or part of a given unit - the Duke of Normandy's Regiment or something?

	06-04-2003 23:55									#182
	Got spare money?

I'm using a mac to test this game (finally got OS X which means I am now able to try it out!), on my first turn I am asked to build a city by right clicking on my unit.
When I do that nothing happens, what gives?

	07-04-2003 00:34									#183
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Are you right-clicking on the unit in the Task-force view or on the map?

In Clash you have to right-click on the unit/task-force in the TaskForce-view in order to give special orders. The reason for this is that if you right-click on the unit on the map you are in effect right-clicking on a stack of units/TFs so the game has no way of knowing wich unit/TF you have right-clicked.

	07-04-2003 00:42									#184
	Put an end to popups!

Working now, thanks for the help

Should've read more closely I suppose.

	08-04-2003 01:04									#185
	Increase Your PM Length

As per your email Mark, and after playing the demo 7.2 a number of times, as well as doing quite a bit of reading, I'll be making my initial comments and suggestions on it below.

Simultaneous Turns

The simultaneous turns feature, which I thought I would like, is a nightmare, at least from the military standpoint of the game. I didn't like simultaneous turns in Civ3 either, btw. While playing the Dawn scenario, I sent most of my army to meet the barbarian horde. Unfortunately, due to the simultaneous turns, they simply walked past my army and marched into my territory conquering land as they went. I had to hunt them down while retaking captured land for the next fifteen turns or so. Not very fun; Not very micro-management free, IMO.

From what I gather, ya'll intended for it to be this way, though I may have missed something. I don't care for it much, obviously, and would prefer to have the option to play a turn-based game. Another possible 'quick-fix' solution would be to add zones of control to units, based on their relative strengths, to prevent these types of overruns. The section on Provincial Defense, below, offers a long term solution to the problem.

Building Military

Three things here, mostly nice to have features, but not essential.

Getting military units built is simple enough, but why do they keep getting built in the middle of nowhere? Sure it makes sense that the people that make up the units would come from throughout the province, but doesn’t it also make sense that they would always form a ‘unit’ in the same place? The provincial capitol perhaps? I’m certain this is not intended, and ya’ll simply haven’t gotten around to fixing this yet.

If it is intended that the military units always get built at the same location, it would be a real nice feature to add an automatic goto point for those units built at that location. For instance, if military units are always built in the city of Rome (capitol) for the province of Latium, and I’m currently fighting a war to the west, I could set the ‘goto point’ near the frontline and all units built at Rome would automatically start heading to that point once built. Only at that point would they need new orders. Obviously you would also need the ability to delete this point once the war is over, or change it if the need arises.

Provincial Defense ...still referring to ‘building military’, just wanted to highlight it.

I saw somewhere, either website or forums, don’t recall, that either demo 3 or 4 had units automatically assisting in fights in nearby tiles. This is a good idea to help reduce micro-management, why was it dropped? I’d like to see it return, but in a much more sophisticated fashion, as I’ll detail below. I believe this will be a great feature to help reduce micro-management.

For realism’s sake this may require a certain tech level (love that tech model btw ), and infrastructure within a province before it is available because obviously tribal clans would not have such a sophisticated defense. Basically Provincial Defense provides a pool of units which are not visible on the map (they are visible in the city view, provincial view, or Clash equivalent), but which provide defense to the whole province. Many civ players, including me, would use the procedure of placing a unit on every other tile which borders another civ or empty space, because of barbarians. So using that assumption, the number of units in a pool for a province with 20 tiles bordering other civs, or empty space, would be 11, or half plus one. The number of units that respond to the initial threat would be one or two, on the first turn, half of the remaining units would respond on the second and, on the third, the other half. Obviously this is for a single point of attack, for a double, triple, or more point attack, the numbers would decrease proportionally. Also, I say half show up on the second and third turns, this is for a ‘normal’ sized province, for an extremely overstretched province these numbers should reduce. This essentially automates border defense, allowing the player to only focus on offensive maneuvers, and separates the defensive units from the offensive units in a visible way, since now offensive units can be placed within cities or preferably some sort of ‘fort’ tile improvement. What do ya’ll think about it?

Miscellaneous

A few general comments about the demo:

1. All the scenarios seem to run rather quickly except for Carthage vs. Rome, and Attilla, which I did not try due to the warning it may run slow. The Carthage vs. Rome scenario really bogs down after I have built two dozen or so military units.

2. The demo seems to be nothing but military interaction, thus my comments/suggestions being limited to military or general ideas. I understand that most of the economy is coded, yet there is no interaction with it unless you need to build military or need the occasional science. This is good to reduce micro-management, but bad for player immersion. It makes the game feel like too much of a war game. I understand it’s a bit early to be making such a broad statement, I’m just making it so the final version doesn’t end up so.

3. I also remember there being mention of some of the cultural and government models being coded already, are these simply not ready yet?

Well, that’s all for now. I’ll make any more specific points in the model threads. If any of this info seems worth enough to be in such a thread, let me know, and I’ll cross post it.

	08-04-2003 05:57									#186
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

Hey Cmonkey, welcome to the Clash forum!

quote: Originally posted by Cmonkey The simultaneous turns feature, which I thought I would like, is a nightmare, at least from the military standpoint of the game.

Orders like "Attack Army X" or "Defend Territory Y" are waiting for the Real AI to be implemented. That is Laurent's next project, and he's already gotten somewhat of a start on the implementation. I agree that things are not the best right now in terms of military movement MM. This should be much improved once the real AI and a more detailed order system are in place.

quote: Getting military units built is simple enough, but why do they keep getting built in the middle of nowhere?

They are actually always built in the province capital. The problem comes when the capital gets conquered and the remaining most-populous square gets declared the capital. You can re-set the original capital to its former glory when you recapture it. Use a right-click on the square. I'm pretty sure it says this in the tutorial, but maybe not. . .

quote: If it is intended that the military units always get built at the same location, it would be a real nice feature to add an automatic goto point for those units built at that location.

Agree. Just haven't done it yet.

quote: I saw somewhere, either website or forums, don’t recall, that either demo 3 or 4 had units automatically assisting in fights in nearby tiles. This is a good idea to help reduce micro-management, why was it dropped? I’d like to see it return, but in a much more sophisticated fashion, as I’ll detail below. I believe this will be a great feature to help reduce micro-management.

Yep, we should put it back. In terms of your specific suggestion, I think we can do provincial defense in a much more versatile fashion once the real AI is cookin'.

quote: 2. The demo seems to be nothing but military interaction, thus my comments/suggestions being limited to military or general ideas. I understand that most of the economy is coded, yet there is no interaction with it unless you need to build military or need the occasional science. This is good to reduce micro-management, but bad for player immersion. It makes the game feel like too much of a war game. I understand it’s a bit early to be making such a broad statement, I’m just making it so the final version doesn’t end up so.

The best way to stimulate the economy is by improving tech for farming. You can also invest in any of the economic sectors. Investing in education improves all techs, thus improving the economy indirectly. More will be coming. Do you want to be forced to make decisions every few turns like in Civ? Ugh! I'd much rather set my priorities and let them ride until the situation changes. If it turns out to be not immersive enough when more things like building merchants and regulating trade are in there then we may need to make a change. Just have to see what people say.

quote: 3. I also remember there being mention of some of the cultural and government models being coded already, are these simply not ready yet?

Yep, mostly coded but no big effects yet due to some coding reorganization issues that I don't want to go into here.

quote: Well, that’s all for now. I’ll make any more specific points in the model threads. If any of this info seems worth enough to be in such a thread, let me know, and I’ll cross post it.

Thanks for the suggestions!

-Mark

	08-04-2003 06:36									#187
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

quote: Originally posted by Mark_Everson They are actually always built in the province capital. The problem comes when the capital gets conquered and the remaining most-populous square gets declared the capital. You can re-set the original capital to its former glory when you recapture it. Use a right-click on the square. I'm pretty sure it says this in the tutorial, but maybe not. . .

I see. If it is in the tutorial, I missed it.

quote: Originally posted by Mark_Everson The best way to stimulate the economy is by improving tech for farming. You can also invest in any of the economic sectors. Investing in education improves all techs, thus improving the economy indirectly. More will be coming. Do you want to be forced to make decisions every few turns like in Civ? Ugh! I'd much rather set my priorities and let them ride until the situation changes. If it turns out to be not immersive enough when more things like building merchants and regulating trade are in there then we may need to make a change. Just have to see what people say.

Of course I don't want the economy to run like in Civ. That's way too much micromanagement. I just wanted to stress the point that if the player does not get involved at least occasionally, he might as well watch a movie. Games are supposed to be interactive entertainment, not passive. I don't want to explicitly tell citizens in New York they have to build a hospital now, but I don't want to watch a game unfold on my screen and all I do is hit the end turn button either.

	08-04-2003 12:35									#188
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Originally posted by Mark_Everson You can re-set the original capital to its former glory when you recapture it. Use a right-click on the square. I'm pretty sure it says this in the tutorial, but maybe not. . .

It's in there: Right after you find the wheat you get a message telling you why you should settle new land, this message goes on to describing capitals and how you change them and how you change province names. Maybe I should move this to an other message dedicated to capitals after the settlement of the second province. I'll se if I can find a better place for it.

	22-05-2003 03:29									#189
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

I'm doing the Dawn of Civilization scenario. I got to about 8067 BC and the game seems to have gotten stuck. I'm trying to get my 2-warrior task force to attack the barbarians situated on the wheat resource to the west of my province. I can still give orders and cancel them, but can't end my turn. A note at the bottom said something like "Still processing orders" or such. Any ideas?

	22-05-2003 05:03									#190
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

Hey Boris, thanks for checking it out. You are seeing the program crash. You need to follow the "if the program bombs" directions from the d/l page so we can see the stack trace of what is happening when it crashes. I'll put what is there below. . . Once we see what is wrong, we can at least give you a workaround.

From the d/l page:

If you follow these instructions and the the program "bombs", please try the following:
a. Create a directory called ClashDemo on C:\
b. Copy the ClashD7.jar file from your desktop into the new ClashDemo directory.
c. Extract that batch file in the zip to the new ClashDemo directory.
d. Run the batch file (double-click the file named "Run_D7.bat")

	22-05-2003 07:41									#191
	Full PM-box? Change here!

Ok, too late now, though...I shut off that game. I will try it again and do as you suggest.

It seems to me progress on this game is rather...halted. Is that so?

	22-05-2003 15:56									#192
	Remove this text

8000BC!

that's pushin' it a bit!

what year does it start from?!

	22-05-2003 18:14									#193
	Tired of ads?

I think it started like around 8500 BC. Maybe 9000 BC. I think it's meant to start at the end of the Neolithic period, when mankind was making its very first villages. Jericho was founded c. 9000 BC, so that would make sense.

	23-05-2003 03:03									#194
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

First, my thumbs up on what's obviously been a long road and a lot of hard work

When I first downloaded the game and began the Dawn scenario I was pleasantly surprised by how well though out the whole economic model seemed to be. Cool.

My comments below.

economic model
- Because the city functions have been abstracted away into the Econ tab you don't really do much with the cities per se. Maybe old Civ habits die hard but somehow this doesn't feel intuitive to me. I kept trying to click on them. At the very least this should trigger the provincial econ orders it seems to me.
- Where again does it show my treasury? I kept looking for this all the time. It should probably be added to the other important data at the bottom (the year and population)
- I had trouble deciphering cryptic messages like "Farming has reached level 0.4". Huh? These decimals need to be converted into more meaningful terms.
- The whole population-dispersal methodology seems wierd to me. In the Rome/Carthage scenario for example I noticed by population was falling drastically as Hannibal overran my land. Worried, I began looking at the population counts on my tiles and noticed that a lot of the "empty" tiles out in the middle of nowhere had more population than the tiles with cities.
For example, the Veii tile has 21,000 people in my game while the tile at 8,0 has 104,000
This sort of inbalance feels wrong. By nature the cities should be areas where population density is the greatest.
- As a previous poster mentioned, the whole economic management side of the game seemed to be overshadowed in the end with the military side of affairs. After first being impressed with all the features I was disappointed not to need to use them more. Hopefully this will right itself in time.

Military model
- I liked the simultanous movement. Sure it was frustrating to 'miss' the enemy at times but it added a bit of unpredictability. Such confusion often existed in eras (unlike today) where communication as difficult and intelligence often old.
- I did not like the combat itself. Whoever has the most guys wins ... and wins in a big way from the looks of things. Aside from being patently untrue many times thoughout history, it's also boring. Combat has to have a degree of uncertainty or there's no tension, and no tension means no fun.
- How do I know what units have what particular strengths/weaknesses? I was just building things at random.
- In the Rome/Carthage scenario I retreated to Rome, made a stand and defeated Hannibal, then counterattacked north. I recaptured my northern city and pushed on. Then Carthage had it's greatest victory. I divided my 8 or 9 unit army up into multiple units, then tried to re-form it into 2 separate armys .... and it just disappeared. Gone. Oh well, that put a serious crimp in my invasion plans! (The bug seems related to one of those assign unit to TF commands).
-There seemed to be a lot of interesting things going on behind the scenes when I read the combat log. Am looking forward to it getting fleshed out.
- I couldn't figure out how to use the triermes. They didn't seem to have an attack ability. They did load a unit though. Fair enough, I thought. I headed across the sea and tried to attack Carthage from behind but couldn't figure out how to unload the unit once I got there. Do you have to be in a city to unload?

That's the sum of my comments for now.

Again, my compliments on the game. Looking forward to the next demo.

BTW, you might want to tone down the barbarians in that first scenario. In my game things got pretty ugly!

One last thing: I'm a Sun certified Java programmer and should have some spare time coming up soon. Does this project still accept volunteers? I might be able to help out with some of the smaller fixes & debugging if help is needed.

	23-05-2003 04:23									#195
	Inflate your Upload Space

quote: Originally posted by Boris Godunov It seems to me progress on this game is rather...halted. Is that so?

Hey Boris. Yep, no serious progress for the last two months or so. Hazards of having all volunteers. I can't speak for everyone, but I have just had too much RL stuff going on to do much. I am confident that the rate of progress will pick up again though, as it has many times in the past when things have been stalled for a bit.

quote: Originally posted by Heffalump First, my thumbs up on what's obviously been a long road and a lot of hard work When I first downloaded the game and began the Dawn scenario I was pleasantly surprised by how well though out the whole economic model seemed to be. Cool.

Thanks for the kind words Heffalump and also the detailed criticisms of where things stand now! I don't have time to address your statements tonight, it'll have to wait for the weekend. . .

quote: One last thing: I'm a Sun certified Java programmer and should have some spare time coming up soon. Does this project still accept volunteers? I might be able to help out with some of the smaller fixes & debugging if help is needed.

You bet we accept volunteers!
Let me know when you get some free time and I'll send you the codebase, and we can discuss what you'd like to do to help out.

-Mark

	24-05-2003 00:39									#196
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

quote: has to have a degree of uncertainty or there's no tension, and no tension means no fun.

I wonder whether I should multiply all the figures at the start of the fight by a random number between say 0.5 and 1.5 for each side to make things more random? Currently, random rolls are lost by the statistical effect of there being so many of them. (I'll cross post in military model - please answer there).

	25-05-2003 20:00									#197
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Hi Heffalump:

I will respond to the military and econ-specific issues in the relevant threads. On the TF rearrangement bug. . .

quote: - In the Rome/Carthage scenario I retreated to Rome, made a stand and defeated Hannibal, then counterattacked north. I recaptured my northern city and pushed on. Then Carthage had it's greatest victory. I divided my 8 or 9 unit army up into multiple units, then tried to re-form it into 2 separate armys .... and it just disappeared. Gone. Oh well, that put a serious crimp in my invasion plans! (The bug seems related to one of those assign unit to TF commands).

I haven't seen anything like that in ages. Can you give the steps you used? Obviously there is some flaw in the Units box code. The way I would do what you say is to form the units in the square into one big TF, then pick one unit that you want in the other TF and start a new TF with it. Then transfer other units that you want in the 2nd TF to it one by one. If you can specify what you Want to be able to do, we can probably put someone on it, provided we agree that its something most people will want to do.

quote: - I couldn't figure out how to use the triermes. They didn't seem to have an attack ability. They did load a unit though. Fair enough, I thought. I headed across the sea and tried to attack Carthage from behind but couldn't figure out how to unload the unit once I got there. Do you have to be in a city to unload?

Triremes fight in ocean squares. They contribute insignificantly to land combat.

It looks like a bug has creapt into the unloading menu code. Below is the way it usually works.

To unload:
1. put the ship on a coastal square
2. left-click on either a ship in the carrying TF or the carried TF and select the unload option.
That's it.

It looks like the bug is making those unload options not appear at first. This results in a very short set of options. A work-around is to select the transporting TF with a mouse click. This makes at least the unload option for the ship appear. Selecting the carried TF seems to make the unload option appear for those. I'll put this in the next bug list.

Thanks again for the detailed comments.

	27-05-2003 02:39									#198
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

quote: I haven't seen anything like that in ages. Can you give the steps you used? Obviously there is some flaw in the Units box code. The way I would do what you say is to form the units in the square into one big TF, then pick one unit that you want in the other TF and start a new TF with it. Then transfer other units that you want in the 2nd TF to it one by one. If you can specify what you Want to be able to do, we can probably put someone on it, provided we agree that its something most people will want to do.

I've played around with it a few times and as best I can tell, here's what I think happened:

In the Carthage/Rome scenario
1. Pick Carthage
2. Goto the big stack at 2,4
3. Split the big TF into seperate TFs using the respective command
4. Right click on Hannibal (which is probably the default selected unit) and click Assign Unit to New TF
We're now in a situation where none of the Units are "selected" but the commands to do things like Add Unit to Selected TF are still visible. Use that command on a unit (without "selecting" any units) and you'll see it disappear into space.
Similarly, right click on a unit and do "Merge units into selected TF" and they will all disappear.

It's the type thing you wouldn't notice once you've learned the proper way to break up and organize TFs, like I have now, but it's still a very obnoxious little bug.

	03-06-2003 08:48									#199
	Put an end to popups!

I had a truly horrendous machine crash which fried my 20Gb drive. I lost access to the internet for over a month, and I lost all my Clash files except some very old ones on my laptop (around Feb 2002). I also lost ALL my emails, so I don't even have your email address, Mark.

If you send me the most recent code I will do some debugging.

Cheers

	03-06-2003 16:08									#200
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

sounds nasty, do you have any ideas about how it happened?

	04-06-2003 06:29									#201
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

Hi Gary!

quote: Originally posted by Gary Thomas I had a truly horrendous machine crash which fried my 20Gb drive. I lost access to the internet for over a month, and I lost all my Clash files except some very old ones on my laptop (around Feb 2002).

OUCH

quote: :I also lost ALL my emails, so I don't even have your email address, Mark. If you send me the most recent code I will do some debugging. Cheers

I will put together a merged version and send it soon. I just got a working IDE (Jbuilder BTW) after a several month hiatus (it is a Long story why). If you want it asap, I can send you the main code and the several patches to be put on top, and you'd be up to date. Otherwise I should be able to send you the merged most recent code about 24 hours from now.

Great having you back in the project!

-Mark

	05-06-2003 06:45									#202
	Put an end to popups!

One of the problems is that in moving I managed to lose my Microsoft disks, so couldn't reload until I had got replacement disks, which took quite a while.

Anyway, I am glad to be back.

I think...

Cheers

	13-06-2003 05:54									#203
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

I have Finally updated the bug and feature lists. They are the 2nd and 3rd posts in this thread.

	13-12-2003 23:12									#204
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

loooks cool

Last edited by jo3h on 13-12-2003 at 23:50

	25-01-2004 00:46									#205
	g Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

when's the next update due?

and why is there no obvious link to the COC website from the forum?

(or is it just me?)

	26-01-2004 03:36									#206
	Re: g Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

Hi yellowdaddy:

quote: Originally posted by yellowdaddy when's the next update due?

I don't know, it depends on how much time the coders have. And also on people to design/refine scenarios. Interested in the latter job?

IIRC Laurent's best guess was in a month or two. But I could be mistaken.

quote: and why is there no obvious link to the COC website from the forum? (or is it just me?)

It's just you.

The link is in the topped thread FOR AN OVERVIEW OF THE CLASH PROJECT - READ THIS.

	26-01-2004 20:00									#207
	NEW CITY CONCEPT Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Hi Mark,

I'd love to help, but frankly RL has got on top of me last year in major ways - one of which was the birth of my little boy! (there's no smilie for wiping baby botties?!)

But I am freer now, and could do a bit now and then.

I can do graphics as I mentioned earlier - and like many people i've got plenty of ideas to air.

one I'd like to put to you is about cities...

quote: 25-01-2004 15:23 | profile | mail | pm | search | buddy edit | quote link | report | ip I like the bumpy grid in AlphaCentauri - I don't like "hill squares" and "mountain squares". I wonder, Is it ONLY a choice between Squares, Hexes/Triangles and random polygons? Are there any other kinds of polygons that will fit together to everyone's satisfaction?! Can I put forward a suggestion on Cities? I HATE CITY SQUARES! I'm not too keen on settlers either! i wonder what could be done to replace them - have a scout stick a flag down and instruct citizens to migrate.... lots of little dots for buildings so that Cities can be varying sizes and shapes, and merge into each other or be partially destroyed by natural disasters NO MORE CITY SQUARES!

it's on the thread about Gary's polygons

I'd like to hear your (and others) thoughts on this (above)
and on this (below) (my reply to his reply to the one above)

quote: hi Gary, does that mean that Cities could be varying shapes and sizes, and even become sprawling conurbations of several squares? i'd like to see a graphical example of what you mean... there are some issues i have with it though - like what about climate change, desertification, floods and swampification? will you have a different "field" for putting national borders on... I'd like to be able to set my border by dragging or clicking a mouse over an area I want to lay claim to, and set a border using waypoints, and perhaps agree a border with a neighbour by treaty this way - I don't like the way your borders are determined by city influence - it may be true in ancient "religious capital" states, but once you get into the middle ages you might want to have squiggly borders and lay claims to vast unpopulated areas like the Russians did in Siberia, and Chinese in Turkestan... catch my drift? and then of course there's internal provincial borders!

JAck

	31-01-2004 02:39									#208
	Re: NEW CITY CONCEPT Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

Hi Jack:

Congrats on your son, and also recovering to the point of having a bit of time. Just let us know when you have extra of it, and we'll gladly use it!

I didn't reply to your comments, because I basically agreed with Gary's response. I don't have much time for the forums these days, and try to comment only when I think my contribution is important.

	31-01-2004 05:04									#209
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

I'm quite sold on Gary's map too, from what i've squeezed out of him - i'm looking forward to seeing a screenshot of something (or at least something).

I've just posted a few ideas before they evaporate out of my frazzled head to see if they fit into what's going on

i haven't a clear picture of the state of the whole thing myself - meaning I dunno what kind of stuff people intend to put in the thing in the foreseeable future.

as for helping out - i suppose if you have any specific tasks that need doing, i could look and see if I can be of any assistance.

you mentioned scenario designing - is there a list of scenarios that currently exist? are there any instructions for what you want in a scenario design?

I could also have a crack at some gfx, but there's little point if you don't have any explicit descriptions of what is wanted, either in terms of style or content... (i don't want to slave away and only to have things declined)

Last edited by yellowdaddy on 31-01-2004 at 05:30

	21-02-2004 23:44									#210
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

This thread is now well over the 150 post limit (so is the social model one). And we have two sticky threads on web design. Why? If that deserves a sticky thread so does polygons...

Cheers