AGEOD Forums

I have not seen an impressions thread from the people who playing the game.

I'm assuming that you guys are having so much fun with the game you just don't have time to write your overall opinions???

Well how about some?

Went through the tutorial and played the Palestine Scenario. Like it so far. Will have to play furthere to give better impression.

Fired it up briefly this evening. Immediate reaction: "Wow! This looks really different from the other AgeOD games. Better read the manual."

The game is indeed more complex and, remember, this is a different engine from the other AGEOD games...

I cannot form a good impression yet since I am one who is suffering from game problems (crashes & freezes) so until these are fixed, I cannot comment.

AGEOD makes excellent games and I have had many hours of pleasure from them but with respect, I am disappointed that this does not use the same engine as American Civil War/Napoleon's Campaigns which I thought it would.
I was eagerly looking forward to playing WW1 in such great detail and micro-management!

Seven wrote:I cannot form a good impression yet since I am one who is suffering from game problems (crashes & freezes) so until these are fixed, I cannot comment.

AGEOD makes excellent games and I have had many hours of pleasure from them but with respect, I am disappointed that this does not use the same engine as American Civil War/Napoleon's Campaigns which I thought it would.
I was eagerly looking forward to playing WW1 in such great detail and micro-management!

It is too bad that you are experiencing crashes so have not been able to form impressions on gameplay...saying that, I do not see how you can already judge the game engine as a disappointment when you have not been able to play it yet....

jpwagner wrote:It is too bad that you are experiencing crashes so have not been able to form impressions on gameplay...saying that, I do not see how you can already judge the game engine as a disappointment when you have not been able to play it yet....

Because I assumed that it was the same as American Civil War/Wars in America, and I love that engine and the amount of detail and control the player has. No matter though -I'm sure the issues will be fixed.

They will...remember the game is just 2 hours in the public ...let's wait for more interesting remarks...but we're already working on a patch

Seven,
You have all the right to be disgusted by the freezes and crashes.
But from the first day it was stated very clearly that this was a new engine, different that the one used by the others AGEOD games.
The first paragraph of the game announcement says it so very clearly:

“World War One : La Grande Guerre 14-18” (WW1) is an historical grand strategy game, turn based, using an original engine specially developed for AGEOD by Lucas Cammisa (Calvinus) according to a Philippe Thibaut game design. “WW1” will you allow to play the full conflict, leading the destiny of the seven main fighting nations (France, Great-Britain, Russia, Italy, Imperial Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire).

Besides, everywhere else on the game forums there are tons of mentions and discussions about the new engine...
Sorry, but it is hardly AGEOD's fault if you did not noticed...

Regards

arsan wrote:Seven,
You have all the right to be disgusted by the freezes and crashes.

Sorry, but it is hardly AGEOD's fault if you did not noticed...

Arsen, hello, I did not say I was disgusted! Every new game has its small problems on release, we understand that.
As for the engine - I did say it was no matter, my mistake. I was just explaining to jpwagner.

I have every respect for AGEOD.

Seven.

Well, some impressions here, also. Of course the engine is not the one from AACW etc. In reality, and as I expected, it is probably the same engine, although certainly improved, of Great Invasions (Calvinus's work, also). This for the good and unfortunately, it seems, for the bad, also, as some of the problems that are being mentioned and I also found definitely remind me of Great Invasions.
first, my specs: WinXP SP2, Intel Core 2 Duo E6550, 2 Gig DDR2 Ram, 1Tb disk, ATI HD 2600 XT with 1 gig VRAM. 19' screen, 1440x900. Security to 2, the rest, default options (namely no extra time for AI, etc)
Some thoughts:

1. Yesterday I fired the game. Nice intro video, with good music. After I played a bit (more on that later), last night I loaded again the game and got a black screen. Hit Esc, got to the main menu and quitted. Went to the config, and disbled intro video. Tried again and it loaded fine. Exactly the same problem, IIRC as with GI . Why, I must ask, do you insist in using Divx for the intro... ??
2. Scrolling the game is mighty slow. It got better if we select to load all map at startup, although we must wait several minutes for it to load. Some engine improvement definitely needed here. This is not Crysis after all (thank god)
3. First game, true to my word, Serbia scenario as AH. I managed to get a minor victory ... But I do not know how, really... .
Main problems: Poor interface design (IMHO) and feedback for the player.
- Why it is not possible to access the options via the main menu, before we start playing ?
- On screen buttons (specially those next to minimap) too small;
- It seems to be difficult to know exactly what is happening and what we shall be doing. Deployment phase ? Nothing seems to happen ? Available armies ? how to quickly find them and scroll through them ? Reinforcements ? I got some new armies, and according to screen indications, I should drag and drop them; but they are not "draggable" ?
Battles ? Why the graphic decision in small battles to put those ugly "X" s on the right side of the screen ???; and no clear indication of end turn, and result... in the end, I kept trying to engage again (and the little brains were there, aparently waiting to engage, accoding to the tooltip), but in reality what I had to do was click on the "next battle" button...Siege of Belgrade ? I was not able to deploy any of my corps, and I do not know why ??
4. Unfortunate decision to have in the initial release a buggy GC playing as only one nation. I know that it is on the works, but it was clear in the forums the interest of the players in playing as one nation only...
4. Finally, after my Serbia try, I loaded the GC scenario as the Central powers. Got a CTD during scenario loading... . although in my next try, reloading the game, I was able to start playing... and went to bed


Nevertheless, the (un)fortunate thing for me is that due to "real life" I do not really have time to seriously play this in the next couple of months. Maybe then we can have a better game.

Regards

We are going to work out a wish list of improvements that can be done fast, in order we can improve some of the key remarks...

PhilThib wrote:We are going to work out a wish list of improvements that can be done fast, in order we can improve some of the key remarks...

Your beta testers had none of this difficulties ?

Greets

(side note: More and more I see the wisdom of some developers that are implementing an option to buy cheaper a beta version of the game, maybe with the price increasing with each new beta version until the final one, as Taleworlds has done and maybe Stardock will do. Good for indie developers with few cash to get some upfront, good way to get the game more thouroughly tested, good for dedicated supporters as we all that preordered WW1 are, as we would get to play earlier and in the end pay a little less, etc)

I'm having a really hard time adjusting the vertical layout of the map. I know it was explained in detail why this decision was made, but I guess I still don't get it. Its not a game killer for me, but sometimes while playing I forget this war is in Europe, on the planet Earth...it just doesn't "feel" right for me. IT all feels upside down-ish

Hasardeur wrote:Your beta testers had none of this difficulties ?

Greets

If they didn't, then I suspect what is causing the problem is the difference between Beta version and final version (copy protection interferance?).

Also, I see the game logs (C:/Program Files/AgeOD/World War One/Logs/) generate large HTML files. Does generating HTML format files while game is running not make game slower?

One thought -the unlock patch. Could this have caused this issue?

Seven wrote:If they didn't, then I suspect what is causing the problem is the difference between Beta version and final version (copy protection interferance?).

Also, I see the game logs (C:/Program Files/AgeOD/World War One/Logs/) generate large HTML files. Does generating HTML format files while game is running not make game slower?

One thought -the unlock patch. Could this have caused this issue?

Very clever suggestions, IMHO

Easy way to test would be for the beta testers to uninstall and install exactly what we did - pre-load and unlock patch

Hasardeur wrote:Your beta testers had none of this difficulties ?

Greets

Some of the points of Franciscus are valid, some other come from being new to the game, like "nothing happening" in Redeployment phase - you are supposed to move your armies where you see fit (start-of-the-phase tips do tell you this) Reinforcement phase, "new" armies that cant be dragged - you probably refer to the list of all your armies. Your placable units (if any!) appears on the lower black sub-window.

Of course, if players can't know that, it is a problem. But it is not a bug, or missing function.

Tamas wrote:Some of the points of Franciscus are valid, some other come from being new to the game, like "nothing happening" in Redeployment phase - you are supposed to move your armies where you see fit (start-of-the-phase tips do tell you this) Reinforcement phase, "new" armies that cant be dragged - you probably refer to the list of all your armies. Your placable units (if any!) appears on the lower black sub-window.

Of course, if players can't know that, it is a problem. But it is not a bug, or missing function.

Of cause, some points are missunderstandings or cosmetic ones. Real gamekillers are blackscreens, freezes and CTDs ! If this main issues can be solved, all other points can be solved step by step later.

Greets

Is it just me, or do military phases in the grand campaign take 15-30 minutes to play out one nation? I hope something gets done to speed this up a bit...Right now the wait times are a bit over the fun limit..I have the security at 2 and I turned "AI takes full time" off, and it still just takes forever to process a nation in the military phases.

Do you mean the time taken by the AI ? If so, its seems long, but also remember that the AI plays quite a few number of nations and units in 1914 and so expect a lot of activity (FYI, in the boardgame, one turn took almost 2 days.... :neener ...

Yes, I was playing as Russia in the 4p Grand Campaign, and I still haven't gotten to my military phase yet, and I'm up third. It just takes too long. I'd gotten to Germany (2d) in about 1 hour, but had to shut it down and restart.

The problems lies here...the 4 players multicampaign has been designed (and tested) just to be that: 4 (human) players...in multiplayer mode... single player mode with only one human has not been fully pushed to the limits and might cause freezes and delay...

Play the same in 2 Player campaigns mode, it should work better...and keep us posted

Dragoon! wrote:Yes, I was playing as Russia in the 4p Grand Campaign, and I still haven't gotten to my military phase yet, and I'm up third. It just takes too long. I'd gotten to Germany (2d) in about 1 hour, but had to shut it down and restart.

First of all: play the two players campaign! Not only currently it is much better for single player, but you also cut down the number of AI nations.

Otherwise, my wait time is very short, but I recently bought a high-end PC so I understand I am lucky on that department. Where I do get a longer AI-time, is on crucial turns:
August 1914, September 1914 when it first asseses political options, and during the start of 1915 redeployment, when you are supposed to form a continious frontline with your units, in anticipation of trench warfare.
Also I get a bit longer thinking time when a new country joins and opens up a new front, but that is only a very minor effect.

Anyways, Calvinus mentioned somewhere that he is tweaking the AI code for lower end systems.

Tamas, the game supports multi core processors?

I mean, the several cores 2, 4,... of modern processors, are used?

Oh, I wasn't aware of that-I guess I'll play the 2p then!
I've actually got a relatively high end system, 5g RAM and AMD phenom X4
However, I am on 64 bit Vista..Didn't know if that had anything to do with it.

Nikel wrote:Tamas, the game supports multi core processors?

I mean, the several cores 2, 4,... of modern processors, are used?

I think so, yes. When the game is working all 4 cores of mine are in use. And as I was saying, assuming no full time given for AI, and no extraordinal turn, wait time is short.

BTW, giving the AI full time does result in long waiting times even for me. So careful with that option. And altough it has been my impression that the AI does behave a bit better when given all the time in the world it wants, the difference is not substantial.

OK, thanks for the answer Tamas. And are they used at 100% all the time?

NCP and the other AGEod games (I guess) use only one of the cores, but at 100% all the time, not only during AI work. As WWI uses a different engine I was curious about it

Nikel wrote:are they used at 100% all the time?

No.

Ok, if anyone else is wondering, DON'T play the 4p campaign vs the AI!
the 2p works great, I actually got a turn in. took the AI about 2-4 minutes to process the turn.

It would be nice to just play as one nation, though..

Ok, off to try and figure out naval and air units now, Thanks!