Empire Total War #3

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Op donderdag 7 mei 2009 20:31 schreef Luctor.et.Emergo het volgende:
Volgens mij is het zo dat bij alle Europese naties het zo is dat zodra alle Europese gebieden ingenomen zijn, deze factie verdwijnt

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Op donderdag 7 mei 2009 20:42 schreef Frag_adder het volgende:

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Veel werk dan bij spanje, aangezien deze erg verspreidde europese gebieden heeft

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Op donderdag 7 mei 2009 20:42 schreef Frag_adder het volgende:

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Veel werk dan bij spanje, aangezien deze erg verspreidde europese gebieden heeft

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Dear all,

The new multi-threading support was made more stable today, resulting in proper four core utilisation in large naval battles. This has yielded some great performance boosts. We've also edited the way farm structures are handled for land battle loading, shaving a few seconds off of loading times for battles using these objects.
The graphics team are also working on restructuring the underlying code framework that handles unit variation, resulting in a possible move from 8 varities to up to 64 on ultra settings.

All of these things we hope to feature in the next patch, or the one beyond that making Empire more stable, more rich and more fun.

Kind regards,
Kieran

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For the first part of this update I would like to clarify an issue that seems to be causing confusing and talk a bit about the AI.
Technical v game play patches

Some people seem to have got the impression that we are going to do a cycle of game play patch then technical patch then game play patch etc. So as 1.2 was a game play patch 1.3 won't have any game play improvements in it. This is not true. All patches will include bug fixes and game play/balance improvements. Hot fixes of course are done for specific issues we feel need to be addressed more quickly. So there is no wait for a long time between balance improvements or for bug fixes, patches will include both.

Patch 3/1.3/Patch 4

There has also been confusion about the naming/numbering of patches, which really stems from the disconnect between our internal branch names and the version number you see in game.

1.2, the large that came out on the 29th of April was referred to as Patch 3 on the forums for a while before being called 1.2. Now the next patch has been referred to as Patch 4 in some places leading some people to think we are talking about 1.4. Patch 3 and Patch 4 are simply the internal project branch names for what was patch 1.2 and what will be patch 1.3. Of course this has caused confusion and is merely a result of devs referring to internal branch names instead of using the version numbers that will be used for the patches on public release.

AI

One of the hot topics on the forums lately have been discussions about several battle and campaign AI issues, and people have been asking whether we are going to address them or make any further improvements to the AI. I would like to repeat something I said in the first Daily Update I posted (exactly one month ago in fact). There will be continual work and improvements done to the AI with each patch.

The big topic of discussion in relation to battle AI is a new problem people have spotted where the AI units constantly try to move out of the way of each other resulting in them just walking into the player's line and engaging in melee instead of sensibly standing at range and shooting. This has occurred as a result of a change we made to try and prevent the AI from blobbing its units together presenting a nice easy target for the player. Obviously it has not worked as well as we would like, but rest assured improvements are being made so this problem will not exist in 1.3.

We do not want to put out a hot fix for this as we want to do thorough testing of this issue; both internally and with the beta testers so as to make sure there have been improvements. Battle AI will have a bigger testing focus amongst the beta testers for the next patch.

For the campaign AI, the big issues are AI factions making peace with each other and naval invasions still as whilst they do now occur, they are rare as we said they would be pre-patch. There have been improvements to both of these made for the next patch, and as said earlier the campaign AI is constantly being worked on.
Balancing Changes

The second part of this update is about the balance changes for land battles that will be in the next patch.

I know there were some discussions amongst the multiplayer community who wondered why some changes were made when balance was already decent in the release version of Empire and they felt that only slight changes were perhaps needed.

It is precisely because the balance was decent, and not good or great that balancing changes are continuing to be made, as Empire can and will be better balanced.

So, what is changing?

This patch pretty much covers every aspect of land battles to improve game play and balancing. Summed up, the changes are as following:

- Slight slowdown in unit movement speed.
- Increased differences between unit types.
- Balancing improvements made to morale system to improve battles.
- Big changes to projectiles to provide more diversity between shot types and to make more shot types viable.
- Better survivability for guns and carriages in artillery units.
- Better balancing and costs for units.
- Addition of mob formation for native infantry, skirmishers and some irregulars and light infantry.
So as you can see quite a lot is changing.

Unit Diversification

A big part of the balance changes have been more about trying to give clearer differences between unit types through both stats and other changes.

For an example of a change, light infantry, skirmishers, irregulars, light cavalry and missile cavalry can now spot hidden units at longer distances making them more useful for scouting on the battlefield.
I will be posting threads in the multiplayer forums here, at TWC, CSS and at .org for more detailed discussion of these changes as there are a lot and I don't want to bog this post down with statistics.

Shot Types and Artillery

Currently, some shot types are very useful and some are not very useful at all. Artillery is also very vulnerable and it is too easy to knock out guns. Round shot for foot and horse artillery has been improved to make it more useful, range of shrapnel has been decreased, howitzer range has been decreased. Mortars have also had the accuracy of their more exotic shot types reduced.

All the changes are aimed at making all shots have their use and to encourage the use of different shots within a battle. And to make sure artillery is no longer very easy to take out; their survivability has been increased a lot.

Morale

At the moment it is very difficult to break most units unless they have taken a very large amount of casualties, resulting in some melees lasting too long and decisive rear/flanks charges not having the impact they should. No I'm not saying long melees shouldn't happen, and that combat should be over really quickly, just at the moment it is a bit too long. So some morale factors have been tweaked to improve the flow and feel of combat.

This is just a brief summary of the changes that have been made, as said earlier I will be posting threads in the multiplayer forums here, at TWC, CSS and at .org for more detailed discussion of these changes as there are a lot and I don't want to bog this post down with statistics.

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For today's update, Paul on the campaign team has kindly shared the following information on one of the issues we've just got fixed:

Kind regards,
Kieran

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As many of you will be aware there is currently an issue causing consistent CTDs when selecting certain navies on the campaign map. This is due to a problem with the calculation of the movement extents. Many people are also experiencing substantial pauses when selecing armies and navies on the campaign map. For patch 1.3 substantial parts of the movement extents algorithm have been redesigned and rewritten. This should eliminate the majority of pauses and crashes when selecting armies and navies on the campaign map.

We have started running automated testing on these changes - overnight a script teleported a british brig (joint-highest movement points in the game) to over 270 000 random positions on the campaign map, calculating the movement extents for each point. This was done with all tech researched so the movement extents were as large and as complicated as possible and no crashes were found. Such testing will continue for a while yet - forum reports have focused on first rate ships of the line. Our understanding is that the issue should be slightly worse with brigs than first rates, but we'll be repeating the automated tests with first rates just to be certain.

Just to give a bit of technical information and explain why this issue has taken so long to resolve, Empire as you know uses a completely different movement system to earlier Total War games. Rome and Medieval II used a grid-based campaign system, meaning that every piece occupied exactly one grid square and in one turn could move to one of upto a few hundred other grid squares. Empire is completely free-form. A piece in Empire has on average a couple of hundred trillion (ten to the power of twelve) unique possible destinations it can reach in a turn. As you can imagine, this requires a completely different approach and required us to design and implement a brand new system from scratch with no prior knowledge of where it may be suceptible to failure. We thought we'd addressed all the issues by launch but there's nothing quite like having a few hundred thousand people hammering your systems to highlight the weak spots. So sorry it's taken so long to address but hopefully by patch 1.3 all your fleet selection problems will be solved.

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For todays second update, just a quick note that I have posted a detailed thread about the next patch land battle balance changes in the multiplayer forums here and at TWC, CSS and .org. Head on over to the multiplayer forums to check them out and to provide feedback.

Jack Lusted

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Op dinsdag 12 mei 2009 14:57 schreef Unhuman het volgende:
Lijkt wel voor de hand liggend dat het aan Windows 7 ligt..

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Op woensdag 13 mei 2009 10:52 schreef piekartz87 het volgende:

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oeh interessant zou je kunnen uitleggen wat die mods doen?

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Over the last few days I've been playing the game and tweaking economics values. In essence, I've slightly reduced the administration cost and made the economic game a little bit easier on "normal" and "easy" difficulty levels. Also, I've tweaked the AI's economic bonuses so that they will have a more money to spend on an army.

Also, I've tweaked the effects of technology: Some technologies were reducing the upkeep cost of units a little bit too much.

Additionally the diplomatic effect of the faction leader's qualities has increased a little bit.

Thamis

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Op donderdag 14 mei 2009 10:44 schreef piekartz87 het volgende:
imperial splendour lijkt me niet zo veel aan, ieder zijn ding natuurlijk, maar qua stats laat ik het liever iets "vanilla"

drum'n'fife en blood sound & smoke zou ik nog wel gaan proberen Ik vind dat het spel de veldslaggeluiden veel te zacht heeft staan. ik wil musketten horen

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Op donderdag 14 mei 2009 12:15 schreef piekartz87 het volgende:

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een paar computer upgrades ?

mobo , cpu en videokaart.
waarschijnlijk ook een andere voeding.

succes met sparen

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Op donderdag 14 mei 2009 15:31 schreef drumstickNL het volgende:

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't is het allemaal net niet dus heb niet zo heel veel upgrades nodig. Kan de demo wel spelen namelijk.

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We've tweaked the economic situation of minor nations so that you won't see Westphalia parking four 20-stacks in its region anymore. Essentially, minor nations are getting less base income to reflect their actual power.

The problem before was that they got the same base income as other factions, but due to their small size they ran out of buildings to construct and spent all their money on army recruitment. Now they won't be able to do this to ridiculous extents anymore (even though at higher difficulty levels you'll still find them fielding sizeable, but not so ridiculous) armies.

I've just finished a play-through and I have to say the improvement is definitely there.

Jan

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Just a short note today on some fixes that have gone in recently for the next patch.

- Various fixes for incorrect audio and for sound problems in general.
- Fix for rotate right and left hot keys not working.
- Fix for battle autoresolving if player exists battle after clicking continue battle.
- Improvements to AI use of fleets and naval invasions.

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Hello everyone. For todays update I just want to clarify some things and talk again about some fixes that will be in the next patch.

I have noticed in many forum threads that some people have not picked up on some of the fixes and improvements we have mentioned in previous Daily Updates. This really relates to the following 3 points:

- Fix for majority of pauses/crashes on selecting fleets/ports in late part of campaign.
- Fix for battle AI ending up in melee too often.
- Improvements to how the AI uses naval invasions and wages wars.

I am bringing these fixes up as people may have missed them in the longer previous Daily Updates they were in.

And I would also like to say that the battle AI and campaign AI issues listed above are not the only work we have done on those for the next patch. We are making and will continue to make improvements in all areas of both. We also have a lot of other fixes that will be in the next patch.

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Op vrijdag 15 mei 2009 18:39 schreef piekartz87 het volgende:
goed nieuws dat ze zo bezig zijn met fixen

ik wacht nog tot mijn officiële versie binnenkomt. zal aankomende week wel zo zijn.
ja ik heb het dus illegaal gespeeld
maar dat doe ik altijd om een nieuwe game te proberen.

voor de patches/ multiplayer (lan) en de battle replays (die onder het kopje multiplayer staat waar je alleen bij kan met steam) ben je het origineel ook nodig dus

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Op zaterdag 16 mei 2009 20:13 schreef DiviFilius het volgende:
Bij mijn spel is de AI allesbehalve passief. Speel met Pruissen en ben aangevallen door zowat iedereen om me heen ( Frankrijk, Polen, Zweden, Oostenrijk, Nederland en zelfs Courtland ) op een moment in het spel. Tot nu toe het leukste potje wat ik gespeeld heb.

-edit- En met aangevallen bedoel ik ook daadwerkelijk legers in m'n landen en steden van mij die veroverd werden. Ik heb zelfs 2 of 3 'naval invasions' gezien, hoewel die nog redelijk nutteloos waren ( Frankrijk die een naval invasion uitvoert op Brussel etc. )

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Op vrijdag 15 mei 2009 18:39 schreef piekartz87 het volgende:
goed nieuws dat ze zo bezig zijn met fixen

ik wacht nog tot mijn officiële versie binnenkomt. zal aankomende week wel zo zijn.
ja ik heb het dus illegaal gespeeld
maar dat doe ik altijd om een nieuwe game te proberen.

voor de patches/ multiplayer (lan) en de battle replays (die onder het kopje multiplayer staat waar je alleen bij kan met steam) ben je het origineel ook nodig dus

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Ik vind het persoonlijk irritant dat vooral kleine landjes nooit vrede met je willen sluiten. Ook landen waar je nooit tegen vecht, alleen door alliances oorlog mee hebt, en je dan al vrede gesloten hebt met de anderen, zelfs die willen dan geen vrede sluiten.

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Op zaterdag 16 mei 2009 23:24 schreef DiviFilius het volgende:

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Dat is inderdaad enorm vervelend. Vooral met Bavaria en Courtland heb ik regelmatig dat probleem. Ze grenzen dan niet eens aan je, je hebt al 25 jaar niet met ze gevochten en je geeft er geld bij en nog willen ze geen vrede. Terwijl grotere landen inderdaad geneigd zijn 'te snel' vrede te tekenen terwijl daar geen reden toe is, nogal opmerkelijk.

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Op zondag 17 mei 2009 12:25 schreef Unhuman het volgende:
Ik vraag me af hoeveel ze de AI nog kunnen verbeteren. Het zou echt vet zijn als er eindelijk eens gevochten gaat worden in Amerika en India door Europese naties. Dat mis ik nu enorm. Vooral als je met Nederland of Engeland speelt waar je eigenlijk geen last hebt van andere landen in Europa.

En ja, soms is de AI wel agressief, maar dat is vaak ook gewoon vervelend op very hard. Ik ben bijvoorbeeld met Oostenrijk bezig, heb enorm goede relaties met de Ottoman Empire en met Polen, en toch verklaren ze mij zomaar de oorlog. Ook Venetië stond helemaal in het groen, ook zij verklaren mij zomaar te oorlog.

Ik kreeg zelfs als Oostenrijk een oorlogsverklaring van New Spain Nu ben ik bijna met alle omliggende landen in oorlog. Pruisen is het enige land wat mij elke beurt wilt aanvallen. Er is maar een klein stukje land waar ze mijn land door kunnen binnendringen, dus daar heb ik mijn leger neergezet. En nu sturen ze ELKE beurt 4-5 legers van 2 units op mij af, één voor één.

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Op maandag 18 mei 2009 00:24 schreef piekartz87 het volgende:

herkenbaar,, als ze 1 of 2 groepen sturen is het gewoon te saai om op de map in realtime te gaan spelen

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Op maandag 18 mei 2009 16:22 schreef piekartz87 het volgende:

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als het hopeloos is dan speel ik het juist wel, redden wat er te redden valt

maar dat is een tik van rome total war waar je met 2 tot 4 groepen cavalerie nog aardig wat infanterie aankon