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Post by dorn on Apr 9, 2019 4:30:18 GMT -6
in the context of a one man dev team; is there anything we can to do help make this happen? Seems a bit unbalanced that I am the only one who has the potential to lose ships in every war (well, my allies can too). Having two of my enemies go at it would be a great boon! It seems unbalanced that player lost ships and other nations except the one player is fighting with not. But the large picture is that any ship and it is especially true for capital ships gets obsolete very quickly. So the ships you loose at one war will not be your first line ships in another, so this loss is not so bad as it seems.
My point of view is that the whole game is not designed for that and implement this would ruin the game more of balance as player will be even in better situation as now. And right now even if AI is quite decent it can not fight player on par and players which know this game well can easily evade any potentially dangerous situation with AI which is bad visibility where there is higher chance of torpedo hits or lucky penetration hits to turrets which can cause ship blow up.
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Post by gurudennis on Apr 11, 2019 20:11:22 GMT -6
It seems unbalanced that player lost ships and other nations except the one player is fighting with not. But the large picture is that any ship and it is especially true for capital ships gets obsolete very quickly. So the ships you loose at one war will not be your first line ships in another, so this loss is not so bad as it seems.
My point of view is that the whole game is not designed for that and implement this would ruin the game more of balance as player will be even in better situation as now. And right now even if AI is quite decent it can not fight player on par and players which know this game well can easily evade any potentially dangerous situation with AI which is bad visibility where there is higher chance of torpedo hits or lucky penetration hits to turrets which can cause ship blow up.
All good points, however I think you're missing the fact that players in certain situations would also delay their war with a given stronger nation (like UK) in anticipation of a possible conflict that might reduce their naval power in the short term. It would add a whole new layer of strategy to the warmongering mechanics that are currently rather lackluster. I would argue that this game needs non-player wars as well as non-player tension intel in order to make this sort of strategic depth possible.
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Post by dorn on Apr 11, 2019 23:45:48 GMT -6
It seems unbalanced that player lost ships and other nations except the one player is fighting with not. But the large picture is that any ship and it is especially true for capital ships gets obsolete very quickly. So the ships you loose at one war will not be your first line ships in another, so this loss is not so bad as it seems.
My point of view is that the whole game is not designed for that and implement this would ruin the game more of balance as player will be even in better situation as now. And right now even if AI is quite decent it can not fight player on par and players which know this game well can easily evade any potentially dangerous situation with AI which is bad visibility where there is higher chance of torpedo hits or lucky penetration hits to turrets which can cause ship blow up.
All good points, however I think you're missing the fact that players in certain situations would also delay their war with a given stronger nation (like UK) in anticipation of a possible conflict that might reduce their naval power in the short term. It would add a whole new layer of strategy to the warmongering mechanics that are currently rather lackluster. I would argue that this game needs non-player wars as well as non-player tension intel in order to make this sort of strategic depth possible. I agree with you that it would be better game but I think that to implement this in interesting level, it is quite demanding on AI. And without good AI it will be not good implementation. We will see on RTW2 as there can allies show up and even more enemies can show up in a battle.
One issue with RTW is that it simulates conflicts which practically starts diminished at start of 20th century. Last conflicts in Europe which was similar to RTW conlicts are Austro-Prussian war and Franco-Prussian war.
So if you AI wars are implemented it needs to be more complex and much more likely total European wars.
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Post by rob06waves2018 on Apr 12, 2019 2:25:13 GMT -6
All good points, however I think you're missing the fact that players in certain situations would also delay their war with a given stronger nation (like UK) in anticipation of a possible conflict that might reduce their naval power in the short term. It would add a whole new layer of strategy to the warmongering mechanics that are currently rather lackluster. I would argue that this game needs non-player wars as well as non-player tension intel in order to make this sort of strategic depth possible. I agree with you that it would be better game but I think that to implement this in interesting level, it is quite demanding on AI. And without good AI it will be not good implementation. We will see on RTW2 as there can allies show up and even more enemies can show up in a battle.
One issue with RTW is that it simulates conflicts which practically starts diminished at start of 20th century. Last conflicts in Europe which was similar to RTW conlicts are Austro-Prussian war and Franco-Prussian war.
So if you AI wars are implemented it needs to be more complex and much more likely total European wars.
I don't believe that such a detailed system should be required. It would be nice and historically accurate but the real benefit to the player would be that ships could be sunk outside of a dangerous player-AI war. This would be enough to be going on with at least. For this reason, I would favour a 'simple' probability system where there is an x% chance of random ships being sunk and a y% chance of the war ending each turn. This could be summarised by a screen every turn and by a "War Result" screen when it finishes.
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Post by akosjaccik on Apr 12, 2019 2:49:10 GMT -6
As for the "total war" aspect I can of course see the historical merit of the suggestion, but it would in my book break the game flow worse than almost any implementation of AI wars could. In these cases sometimes peace would be borderline impossible, nations wiped out, shifting to war economy, all that beautiful things. Historical, yes, but what would be the benefit? The focus would shift to armageddon instead of designing and battling with ships, and while this is perfectly fine for a lot of games, in my book RtW just does not need it. It would take away more than it would add to the gameplay. Completely dislodging governments (and in RtW2 government forms even) and forcing unconditionable surrender, as it is in RtW, is fine enough for me. The player can still win wars, still win big, but the core stays there.
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Post by rob06waves2018 on Apr 12, 2019 3:07:26 GMT -6
As for the "total war" aspect I can of course see the historical merit of the suggestion, but it would in my book break the game flow worse than almost any implementation of AI wars could. In these cases sometimes peace would be borderline impossible, nations wiped out, shifting to war economy, all that beautiful things. Historical, yes, but what would be the benefit? The focus would shift to armageddon instead of designing and battling with ships, and while this is perfectly fine for a lot of games, in my book RtW just does not need it. It would take away more than it would add to the gameplay. Completely dislodging governments (and in RtW2 government forms even) and forcing unconditionable surrender, as it is in RtW, is fine enough for me. The player can still win wars, still win big, but the core stays there. I agree about the total war but I think there are aspects of RTW which prevent total destruction. This comes in the form of peace offerings in events, which should prevent a player from prosecuting a war indefinitely even if they can't win.
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Post by dorn on Apr 12, 2019 4:20:15 GMT -6
I agree with you that it would be better game but I think that to implement this in interesting level, it is quite demanding on AI. And without good AI it will be not good implementation. We will see on RTW2 as there can allies show up and even more enemies can show up in a battle.
One issue with RTW is that it simulates conflicts which practically starts diminished at start of 20th century. Last conflicts in Europe which was similar to RTW conlicts are Austro-Prussian war and Franco-Prussian war.
So if you AI wars are implemented it needs to be more complex and much more likely total European wars.
I don't believe that such a detailed system should be required. It would be nice and historically accurate but the real benefit to the player would be that ships could be sunk outside of a dangerous player-AI war. This would be enough to be going on with at least. For this reason, I would favour a 'simple' probability system where there is an x% chance of random ships being sunk and a y% chance of the war ending each turn. This could be summarised by a screen every turn and by a "War Result" screen when it finishes. Player is much more competent in designing ships and overall strategy than AI. Right know you can choose different nations from strong (overhelming budget) USA/UK to opposite weak budget and other disadvantages Japan/Italy/Russia. In case you have AI wars it means that other nations loose a lot of ship which player will not. In this case USA/UK playthrough will be boring completely as with AI fleets much smaller because of loosing ships in war, player can dominate even much more. On opposite playing as nations like Japan/Italy/Russia gives you situation that you no longer have smaller fleet as AI nations will have smaller fleet.
AI in RTW is reasonable but still limited in several ways. AI design ships based on default designs taken from real history ships, player on opposite design ship which best possible knowledge from the start, very quickly utilazing all or nothing principle even before technology AoN which makes players ship much better. The second point is players design ship with long range strategy as they know how future will look like so they ships usually prefer armour using immunity zone principle. AI cannot see AI ship design with higher belt armour than 13" and this armour is completely unadaquate against players ship late 10s and beginning 20s. Another thing is that player always design best possible, AI sometimes using old designs (eg. kaiser even if having 5 centerline turrets). The last thing is that player design superships in all categories. AI cannot handle it and game principles sometimes try to narrow numerical superiority of one side making superhips quite usefull winnig strategies (eg. large cruisers, large well armoured battleships and especially battlecruisers).
So I agree, it would be good to have AI wars but all things which I wrote above needs to be adressed first or game would not be so much challange. Because AI wars add more complexity but mostly make player position muuch better thus easier. I like that RTW is not going this way because there is a lot of games which did it so you can see at first look that it is nice, complex but if you just look under the hood you will find that AI cannot handle such complexity making game that only challage is yourself.
I will game example - chess. If somebody plays chess he choose opponent around his quality/rating because it is challanging. Player can sometime play with much weaker or stronger opponent for fun but not regurarly as it become boring. And it is the same against chess program. You will not play regurarly against chess program with maximum performace as you get beat quickly and everytime. On opposite you did not put the weakest setting as you will winn everytime and it is not funny either.
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Post by charliezulu on Apr 12, 2019 9:13:44 GMT -6
While you bring up good points, IMO that can be broken down into 2 main relevant things: * The game is bad at designing ships, especially at designing ships which will be useful in ~20 years. * You fear that AI wars will reduce the number of AI ships, giving the player a further advantage. For the first, AI wars help with that by forcibly recycling obsolescent ships out of the AI's fleet. I assume better base templates could also be made, and the new armour mechanics likely mean that the AI'll be better at making ships. For the second, that's already somewhat solved in the current game. If you look at a standard AI vs. AI war brought on by the player making alliances. AI, during wars, get a sizeable budget increase which allows for them to lay down more ships. Simply put, in RtW, being at war means a larger fleet, not a smaller one - a cheese-y tactics know I've exploited is defeating the enemy fleet in a few decisive battles then shifting my fleet to reserve and blockading with cheaper units while prolongjng the war as long as possible so that I could take advantage of the budget to build a bigger fleet. Obviously such extremes are beyond the AI, but it doesn't take away from being at war on the winning side is an advantage at the "normal" rate at which ships are sunk in AI fights. This could easily be turned up as needed. On a different topic, a good example of a non-player war "IRL" would be the Russo-Japanese War from the perspective of the European powers, such as Britain. You could use the existing AI-vs-AI battle mechanics, just turned up a bit so that Tsushima-level events happen occasionally. Both AI nations get the "at war" budget increase, and the player could be given choices on how to respond (intercede, raise budgets - and tensions, or do nothing, for example), and occasionally events that give improvements in areas like ship design from hearing about how the battles are working out.
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Post by thenewteddy on Apr 12, 2019 9:37:37 GMT -6
why does this need to be so terribly complex? Already your ally can sink ships or your enemy. Just use that.
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Post by dorn on Apr 12, 2019 10:07:16 GMT -6
While you bring up good points, IMO that can be broken down into 2 main relevant things: * The game is bad at designing ships, especially at designing ships which will be useful in ~20 years. It is question of view. If you look at it as best ship available than yes. If you look at immitating naval thinking and design at that time, it is good. And after 20 years no ship can be in frontal service and for colonial stations or support invasion the quality of design does not matter. Main fighting is between best ships on both sides as older ships are mainly used on secondary duties, so AI will loose mainly most modern ships which means AI nation loose their most powerful ships. Ït is possible to do, there is 18+ armour mod which has more designs, so it is certainly viable. I was thinking to make some but as RTW2 is announced for long time I think I will try it for RTW2. Increase of budget is not only for AI nation but for player too so there is no advantage for AI. And it depends on fleet size, with very large fleets AI can rebuild losses quite quickly but with small fleet it takes usually decade to do so. There will be always some gamey tactics and it is up to player do not use them. Another one which I consider is only forward turrets for capital ships, which did not happen before british designs after WW1.
This is good solution to help with that and it could work quite well.
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Post by akosjaccik on Apr 12, 2019 11:59:22 GMT -6
On the wake of the debate above (sorry for the pun), thinking about Tsushima it just dawned upon me that regardless of anything above, it could be a fun turn event sending ...hm. What's the english word for that? Inspectors? Attachés? Urgh. All in all, player could send (or not, or etc.) officers to foreign navies (with which the relations are in order), and this could produce a certain fun things. The player's nation could be accused of lending direct help to said ally nation, or the officer could report for example, extreme cruelty on part of the "quasi-enemy" which drives up war fervour in home -> tensions, or "simply" witnessing the events could bring home some technologies in say, fleet tactics or aircraft operation, whatnot.
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Post by chainsawjoe911 on Apr 12, 2019 12:10:06 GMT -6
for the post up here ^, there are many terms for foreign officers living amongst armies during a war. What you choose to call them is up to the other side, but i think youre looking for the term "observer"
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Post by akosjaccik on Apr 12, 2019 12:19:41 GMT -6
for the post up here ^, there are many terms for foreign officers living amongst armies during a war. What you choose to call them is up to the other side, but i think youre looking for the term "observer" Ah, yes, observer, thank you!
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Post by rob06waves2018 on Apr 12, 2019 17:34:09 GMT -6
for the post up here ^, there are many terms for foreign officers living amongst armies during a war. What you choose to call them is up to the other side, but i think youre looking for the term "observer" Ah, yes, observer, thank you! Or you've got "liaison", "officer on secondment", "exchange officer", "military alliance attaché"... We English-speakers can never lack for vocabulary!
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Post by thenewteddy on Apr 13, 2019 11:21:35 GMT -6
I still think that a "war" between two AI nations would be good; even if the "war" lasts a single month, and the only thing we ever see about it is one popup that says something like "Russia and Japan have gone to war over North Korea, Japan has won and occupied the colony. Russian ships B Knyaz Suvorov, B Imperator Aleksandr III, B Borodino and B Oslyabya have been sunk"
thats it.
Don't need anything more complicated.
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