Congratulations and some wishes

[franciscus]

Hello.

First time poster, let me present myself: a long time strategy player, lately also part of the team that developed the AJE (Alea Jacta Est, Birth of Rome, Hannibal) series of Ageod games. I am not well aquainted with naval warfare at all, didn't know about SAI, but after reading the wargamer interview about RTW and searching for something different, decided to buy RTW some weeks ago.

It is a GREAT game ! The spartan UI "hides" an incredibly addictive gameplay, combining overall strategy, ship-designing/building and a very good tactical engine for the battles. I just finished a game as Austria-Hungary, Admiral-level, with a respectful prestige score of 40, having won three wars, against France, Italy and Russia, aquiring in the process for the Hapsburg double-crown Rhodes, Corsica, Tunisia and Libya . Had a great time !

I just wanted to make a couple of wishes:

- first and foremost one related to my only complaint: although I guess this is the best game depicting the feeling of early 20th century naval race between the major powers, it is frustrating that the "world" revolves only around the player. It is somewhat frustrating to reach 1925 and see that Britain, Germany, USA and Japan lost...zero ships - because I did not go to war with them...
IMHO, the game would reach perfection-level if the AI-controlled nations fought "virtual" wars amongst themselves, and even better, although 1 to 1 alliances already exist for the player, that wars were fought between greater alliances. This would, I guess, require some hard work tweaking the main game engine and AI and checking the game balance is not broken, but would not affect the tactical-level aspect of the game: battles would still just be fought between the player's nation and another nation's fleet (I think that even during WW1 most engagements were between single nation's fleets).

- it would be fine if the game engine could come up with a "picture" of each of our ships, but I guess it may be impossible...

Nevertheless, even as it is now, this is a superb game ! Congratulations ! And thanks for a great support, that's much appreciated !

Franciscus

[meteor2]

Totally agree with this.
A wish of mine would be: Please do a little rework on gun sounds.
It should no be the sound of a hand gun, but of a heavy caliber.
I hope, the game will be a great sucess!

[Rasputitsa]

The more I play the better it gets, the possibilities are enormous, thanks very much for making a great game even better.

[fredsanford]

As part of the alliance thing, perhaps provide events that assign allied ships to the player command, BUT there's a higher prestige penalty if you 'squander' your ally's ships in battle (to prevent gamey risk taking with allied ships). So that way a smaller power could have an event like being offered command of all allied ships in a certain area, and get the change to operate with larger fleets. Maybe a greater chance of the 'misunderstood signal' thing with mixed nationality fleets, though...