General Strategic Changes in 3rd Cycle

[Acererak]

Thanks Rick.

Suggestion to put on the drawing board for 3rd cycle if you agree:

Seems to me that recon of groups can be enhanced as to the level of the agent. We currently have all kinds of rules as to when a masked/invisible group can be seen by agents, ravens, eagles, traits etc.. I would suggest we add to the highest levels 7+ agent for example on recon of a single area that the brigade composition of an opposing force be exposed in the recon report. The layout and information could be the same as a group vs group battle. Right now there is literally no way of figuring out the composition of an opposing force and the only incremental intel you get is how many total brigades there are. Clearly an agent team of that level would be able to tell if an opposing force consists of humans, or includes various other companions etc..

Also, still having a hard time understanding attrition. How far will attrition go until a brigade is destroyed- is it related to defense rating? Seems to be very very high in 3rd cycle as opposed to 2nd?

[Lord Diamond]

Thanks Rick.

Suggestion to put on the drawing board for 3rd cycle if you agree:

Seems to me that recon of groups can be enhanced as to the level of the agent. We currently have all kinds of rules as to when a masked/invisible group can be seen by agents, ravens, eagles, traits etc.. I would suggest we add to the highest levels 7+ agent for example on recon of a single area that the brigade composition of an opposing force be exposed in the recon report. The layout and information could be the same as a group vs group battle. Right now there is literally no way of figuring out the composition of an opposing force and the only incremental intel you get is how many total brigades there are. Clearly an agent team of that level would be able to tell if an opposing force consists of humans, or includes various other companions etc..

Also, still having a hard time understanding attrition. How far will attrition go until a brigade is destroyed- is it related to defense rating? Seems to be very very high in 3rd cycle as opposed to 2nd?

I like that. Maybe an L8 tells you that there were 'several brigades of orcs' while an L13 could go so far as to break it down by brigade and give you an idea of attrition.

I would also like some way to target specific brigades. For instance, give me a chance to poison the food in the Red Dragon camp specifically while leaving the Great Bats alone.

While I am fantasizing, how cool would it be to have tactics that allowed you to position your troops to put particular pressure on specific enemy brigades. "Ignoring the Goblins on the flanks, and taking extra missile damage, the Sacred Order heavy cavalry charged the Necromancer brigades on the right flank".

[Ry Vor]

Thanks Rick.

Suggestion to put on the drawing board for 3rd cycle if you agree:

Seems to me that recon of groups can be enhanced as to the level of the agent. We currently have all kinds of rules as to when a masked/invisible group can be seen by agents, ravens, eagles, traits etc.. I would suggest we add to the highest levels 7+ agent for example on recon of a single area that the brigade composition of an opposing force be exposed in the recon report. The layout and information could be the same as a group vs group battle. Right now there is literally no way of figuring out the composition of an opposing force and the only incremental intel you get is how many total brigades there are. Clearly an agent team of that level would be able to tell if an opposing force consists of humans, or includes various other companions etc..

Also, still having a hard time understanding attrition. How far will attrition go until a brigade is destroyed- is it related to defense rating? Seems to be very very high in 3rd cycle as opposed to 2nd?

I'm basically on the same page.  We had more complete intel in FoR.  One thing Mike and I have done is (like FoR) try to get agent actions and abilities more standardized at the levels of (starting) 1, 4, 7, 10.  We did that in FoR where we also had different agent icons for those level distinctions (and for Captains, Generals, etc).

We moved a brigade to eliminated at 70% attrition instead of 60% as in 2nd Cycle.  Players will become more attached to certain brigades now with the great expansion in brigade types and experience levels.  So your Hill Giants or Red Dragons get a little more time to recover than before, especially with a few new regenerative orders/abilities/traits/spells that are in 3rd Cycle.

[Ry Vor]

Thanks Rick.

Suggestion to put on the drawing board for 3rd cycle if you agree:

Seems to me that recon of groups can be enhanced as to the level of the agent. We currently have all kinds of rules as to when a masked/invisible group can be seen by agents, ravens, eagles, traits etc.. I would suggest we add to the highest levels 7+ agent for example on recon of a single area that the brigade composition of an opposing force be exposed in the recon report. The layout and information could be the same as a group vs group battle. Right now there is literally no way of figuring out the composition of an opposing force and the only incremental intel you get is how many total brigades there are. Clearly an agent team of that level would be able to tell if an opposing force consists of humans, or includes various other companions etc..

Also, still having a hard time understanding attrition. How far will attrition go until a brigade is destroyed- is it related to defense rating? Seems to be very very high in 3rd cycle as opposed to 2nd?

I like that. Maybe an L8 tells you that there were 'several brigades of orcs' while an L13 could go so far as to break it down by brigade and give you an idea of attrition.

I would also like some way to target specific brigades. For instance, give me a chance to poison the food in the Red Dragon camp specifically while leaving the Great Bats alone.

While I am fantasizing, how cool would it be to have tactics that allowed you to position your troops to put particular pressure on specific enemy brigades. "Ignoring the Goblins on the flanks, and taking extra missile damage, the Sacred Order heavy cavalry charged the Necromancer brigades on the right flank".

We might not get all of that done in the next release, but I really want to redo both the whole Sabotage routine and revise Fanatics (as apart from agents).  Also considering a few new traits and units.  Perhaps "Vengeful" as a trait where either an enemy declaration or an assassination provides agent/fanatic bonuses to the affronted, and have been considering Scythed Chariots which would be a Companion to plains oriented kingdoms that are useless outside of plains or desert, but might be dominant in some cases in those terrains in pretty much all phases except PC storm. 

Anyway, The Choosing still in its infancy.  Next is Duel (soon) and then the Tutorial and Solo games.

[Lord Diamond]

All cool. Just brainstorming here.

I do look forward to differentiating between fanatics and agents and, maybe, other covert character types.

One thing I really miss about FoR is being able to have agents attached to the groups. That, and havinga. King with military rank.

[VballMichael]

All this talk about Fall of Rome. I was playing Alamaze back then, but have no memory of that FoR game, though it sounds cool.

Can someone remind me why it cannot come back?

[Lord Diamond]

All this talk about Fall of Rome. I was playing Alamaze back then, but have no memory of that FoR game, though it sounds cool.

Can someone remind me why it cannot come back?

Java did an update and the developer wasn't able (just didn't?) update Fall of Rome as well. Genome seemed to go AWOL there towards the end.

I think it's still salvageable. Hell, you can play a game of Centurian if you have an old computer with an old version of Java. 

It was a cool game. As a Game Admin, I was able to create all sorts of cool custom games. It took seconds!

[Ry Vor]

The FoR website is still up, links to this forum.  www.fallofromegame.com.   You can see the rules, kingdoms, map, GUI screenshots.

Fall of Rome was the first, and still maybe only, PBEM style game with full GUI and all operations automated, including signup, billing, service level changes.

It was groundbreaking in other ways to, as it was among the first sites to implement subscription billing.  While it seems that even online purchase was been around forever, Amazon didn't debut until a couple months after Fall of Rome in 2004, so we had to invent how to do online subscription billing, or at least, we didn't have access to any existing program.

Everything was going along flawlessly when yes, java did an update that wrecked the transfer orders and required a new security certificate of some sort, and I believe required users to update to their new version.  The developer gave it a shot but didn't succeed and with the game down, he moved on.  I went back to the corporate world until we started working on Alamaze Resurgent.

I'm not sure why it is an unfixable couple problems.  Mike gave it a shot too and it wrecked his environment so he's not eager for another attempt.

It's too bad because the GUI and some of the game concepts are intended for Kingdoms of Arcania.  In fact, Fall of Rome was a scaled down version of KoA.

[unclemike]

Yep, I gave it a shot but failed due to the latest version of Java not being backward compatible with its previous version so it ended up ruining my development environment for Alamaze (was interfering with 3rd Cycle). Also, it wasn't easy to change anything because there's no programmer documentation on how anything works and even their account and password information wasn't clear (something like a dozen or so notes on them but none of them worked to log into the system so it was an old document).

Despite those problems, I tried to bypass the security certificate situation by changing a few settings on the server but Fall of Rome operates on 3 servers and the only one that I was able to successfully change was the one that runs Alamaze (which isn't enough to fully address the issue). So I reset things back to where they were and moved on.

But all is not lost! I mentioned a while ago that we could simulate a Fall of Rome type of game by having special theme-based scenarios for 3rd Cycle. So you can use the same kingdoms, brigade types, and other game mechanics like no magic or high council actions which is the norm for a Fall of Rome game. But that and other theme based scenarios are on hold right now.

Personally, I think Fall of Rome's map is a bit dated. It may have been decent back in the day but I think the future of what is planned for Alamaze is much better. Check out some of the possible screenshots that could be done for the new Alamaze interactive map. It's more advanced, has a 3D look, and provides greater graphics than the cartoon-like Fall of Rome map: http://www.kingdomsofarcania.net/forum/s...8#pid36078

[Jumpingfist]

The maps do look cool UM. I like that you still get just enough view of the hexes as well.