Thursday, July 25, 2013

My next hex strategy game, coming soon

The next game ("Wargames of 1939") is nearing its completion! It is based on the engine of Populus Romanus, but has many additions and game-specific tweaks.

I posted an extensive set of screenshots to the game's own blog at ww2strategy.com ... take a look there if you like WW2 era wargames! I'm hoping to release the game some time in late August but don't take that as a definite promise. :-)



7 comments:

  1. Hello! I greatly enjoyed your two roman games, and have a suggestion that may enhance them or improve your next game.

    When playing against the computer a win can either be "good" with most of the player's warriors left and the computer routed, or "bad" with only three warriors left and the computer almost winning. It would be nice to have a rating that allowed how "good" a victory was to be assessed.

    Such a rating should:
    a) Reward preservation of own pieces
    b) Reward speedy conquering of enemy camps, towns and villages
    c) Be resilient to "cheating" such as leaving one enemy piece in play whilst money accrues in the player's conquered towns.

    I think the rating method below is one way to meet all three goals:

    The "running_score" is initialised to a large value, which may vary depending on difficulty, e.g. 500 for easy, 1000 for normal, 2000 for hard.

    On each turn:
    The running_score is decremented by the yearly earnings of EVERY town / camp etc. on the board (enemy or not)

    The running score is decremented by an extra 1 point for each ENEMY town, camp etc.

    When victors is achieved, the final_score is the sum of

    running_score +

    1 for each coin held in camp, village etc owned by the player +

    Monetary value of each of the players pieces left alive.

    This system ensures that conservation of money/pieces is reqarded equally, but lengthening the game by sitting for years in an almost won state is not rewarded.

    It might be necessary to try a games on each level at each difficulty to initialise the running_score correctly (it would be messy if it easily finished negative on some levels), but I think it would be worthwhile as you could then:

    Store the best score achieved by the player on each level.
    Calculate the total best score over all levels
    Have a world ranking on the internet that lists all players worldwide by total score (e.g. see the traffic wonder website http://www.trafficwonderapp.com/leaderboard/

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    Replies
    1. One mod to the above, allies' earnings should probably not get deducted from your score because you don't need to take their towns

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  2. Looking good though at this point i'd rather see something like Alpha Centauri. Anyway, just want you to remind you that the Swastika is forbidden in Germany and your game could have a problem there. The option chosen is usually the german flag of that time (without said cross).

    Cheers

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  3. My initial checkup on the permission to use the swastika to depict nazis in the context of games in certain countries (Germany and a few others) revealed that apparently it is ok when used for artistic, educational or scientific purposes. Apparently games are classified as art in Germany, so I guess the case should be pretty clear*! Would hate to use some watered-down flag for the nazis, it would be a bit like making a game about Soviet Union, without the sickle and hammer. :-)
    (However, considering to have a setting "accurate flags" which defaults to off.)

    *) references:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafgesetzbuch_%C2%A7_86a
    http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoSwastikas

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    Replies
    1. I understand you. However, i am sure that paradox, slitherine and matrix haven't used it. Maybe you should ask someone. Cheers.

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  4. Phenomenal news! I hope for additional complexity and harder gameplay (as an option). Also, AI "camping" at choke points in defensive (offensive for the player) scenarios would be a welcome addition.

    Anyway, I'm a definitive buyer.

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  5. Yes, in the current games, even on hard the ai is too likely to move into a position of danger where the humans troops can destroy his unit. a Also the troops have a tendecy to dash to the front as quickly as possible rather than arriving en-mass, for instance all the war chariots arrive first, get minced, snd the the swordsmen arrive. Units do retreat when one damage from death, but even do this when they should first help a neighbouring guy win by surrounding soneone and retreat later.

    ReplyDelete