Empire in Arms 1.03.13 Public Beta Avalible!!

Empires in Arms is the computer version of Australian Design Group classic board game. Empires in Arms is a seven player game of grand strategy set during the Napoleonic period of 1805-1815. The unit scale is corps level with full diplomatic options

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Greg Wilcox
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Empire in Arms 1.03.13 Public Beta Avalible!!

Post by Greg Wilcox »

Hi everyone,

We've the Beta version of the 1.03.13 Comprehensive Update available via our Members Club. While we do final testing we figured we'd offer you a change to get it early as well. This is still a beta, but it's stable and solid as far as we can tell. See the change list list below for details.

You can download this as a Registered Download as long as you have registered your Empire in Arms serial number in our Members Club (click on the MEMBERS link in the top nav bar).

Change List:
Standard Fixes
Fixed: Loan leader still bugged
Fixed: Granted access to an ally is not removed when alliance is broken
Fixed: Capturing a city doesn't cause the fleets in port to evacuate
Fixed: Alliance code not working consistently when alliances were successful
Fixed: Lille Sea Crossing enabled, but is selected as disabled.
Fixed: May not be able to cede provinces in PBEM games.
Fixed: Some freestates are not getting income.
Fixed: Sieges are being relieved EVEN when relieving force does not win the field combat!
Fixed: Game hangs during AI reinforcement phase
Fixed: bug when attacking a fleet in a blockade box
Fixed: Regression bug -- can't declare war on some minors, despite being in range
Fixed: France phase reinforcement looking for battle file
Fixed: Siege possible after foraging with unused movement.
Fixed: Game crashes when AI attacks in field combat.
Fixed: Problem with blockading neutral ports containing enemy fleets
Fixed: Second attacker of a controlled / at war minor stealing the conquest.
Fixed: Bristol not allowing the movement of ships into / out of port
Fixed: Unplaced land factors during reinf are _not_ lost.
Fixed: After foraging with zero movement remaining, cannot besiege city
Fixed: Can't move corps or forage
Fixed: AI British manpower calculations incorrect
Fixed: Armenian provincial capital is set to Alexandretta making it switch control when it should not
Fixed: Some battle wait states are blocking the game from moving forward in the diplomacy phase
Fixed: Some blockade resolutions were causing human players to become AI thus kicking them out of the game.
Fixed: Loaning units function will not allow leaders to be loaned
Fixed: besieged port supply still not working right
Fixed: Civil disorder can lockup game when MP in civil disorder must surrender to multiple MPs
Fixed: Successful withdraws from an area with a defending depot
Fixed: When doing unit to unit transfer in PBEM, the results of the destination unit are not carried over in the turn file.
Fixed: When first loading a game and selecting Ally rural units the unit display will fill with French corps
Fixed: Erroneous messages "None controlled by" are happening in text log during PBEM games
Fixed: Need to change pp gain/loss
Fixed: depot at Lisbon is not in a valid supply chain
Fixed: Unable to detach garrison from corps inside city with enemy corps outside
Fixed: Game allowing depots with factors to transfer factors to itself
Fixed: Game hangs during AI placement of units
Fixed: Game hang after surrender with blockaded fleet
Fixed: Landing from a fleet in the blockade box

AI Fixes and Enhancements
Fixed: Prussia MIL production is very wrong
Fixed: AI relies on foraging far too much
Fixed: AI spending money on militia
Fixed: AI Austria reluctant to ally with Prussia
Fixed: AI doesn't purchase cavalry at all
Fixed: AI sometimes not landing troops after selecting an amphibious invasion
Fixed: AI doesn't declare war at all
Fixed: Presence of one unit in hostile minor can prevent other units from moving in, thinking the first unit is another neutral MP.
Fixed: AI spending too much on cav, needs better build strategy
Fixed: AI is trying to manipulate minors that they are DOWing
Fixed: Need to change AI diplomacy to be more aggressive and more intelligent in DOWs.

Enhancements
Host editor to adjust PPs etc for PBEM game
Able to see map from combat screen
Added new alliances and broken alliances as headline news events
Added starving messages for garrisons
Greg Wilcox
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ndrose
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RE: Empire in Arms 1.03.13 Public Beta Avalible!!

Post by ndrose »

Where is this? I seem to be having trouble finding my way around since the site redesign. I can get into the members area, and go to registered downloads and see a page that includes 1.02g and 1.02k, but no 1.03. Am I in the wrong place?
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Greg Wilcox
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RE: Empire in Arms 1.03.13 Public Beta Avalible!!

Post by Greg Wilcox »

Once you log in you should see in the box on the right side My Games if you click on that it will take you to your game list where you can click on private downloads for the game and you should see it there.

-Greg
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ndrose
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RE: Empire in Arms 1.03.13 Public Beta Avalible!!

Post by ndrose »

Got it, thanks!
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Marshall Ellis
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RE: Empire in Arms 1.03.13 Public Beta Avalible!!

Post by Marshall Ellis »

Hey PBEM guys:
 
FYI: Make sure that you all use the same version or some of you will not get the benefits of the fixes. There are some data changes that will NOT break a PBEM game but certainly help out.
 
 
Thank you

Marshall Ellis
Outflank Strategy War Games


ndrose
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RE: Empire in Arms 1.03.13 Public Beta Avalible!!

Post by ndrose »

First impression: HUGE improvement in the AI. No more running out of control and out of supply, no single corps flinging themselves against vastly superior forces. Sensible alliances are formed, armies are kept together (and small forces pounced on opportunistically). It seems to have purpose and organization.

A few mistakes I have noticed so far (orders of magnitude less serious than those it was making before):

Prussia is now a little *too* aggressive in going after minors. A couple of times I've seen it declare against 4 or 5 minors at once. All were technically reachable, but some were pretty far off, with other minors it was declaring on in the way. In these case, it would take some of the minors, and allow juicy free states like Bavaria (which it probably shouldn't be going after at all) to fall into France's lap.

Britain handles its navy better, but it doesn't think about interdicting any crossings except the Channel. In particular, I invaded British-held Sweden by land. It could have, and should have, trapped me on the Danish islands, but it didn't.

Britain also hasn't figured out how to use its army, which is different from everybody else's. In the past, I've always used the Lille crossing when playing France to help Britain. (This shouldn't help Britain, but otherwise the AI would build its army in Gibraltar or someplace.) In 1.02, Britain would build its army in London, but if I left a corps in Lille, it wouldn't try to cross. If I moved away from Lille, it would cross, but only one corps at a time.

In 1.03, it's thinking better, and trying to get into the fray, but the result isn't better. Now it's sending whatever it has across to Lille as soon as it has it. Since it can't build much at a time, it gets destroyed by the single French corps every three months.

Instead, it should do one of the following things (ideally, somewhat unpredictably as to which):

1) lend or send the army to join whoever's fighting France wherever they're fighting.

2) make coastal raids to sink fleets, occupy capitals, seize minors, and generally annoy the French.

or, if it must make a cross-Channel frontal assault,

3) build up a sizeable force and wait until Paris is lightly guarded.
alaric318
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RE: Empire in Arms 1.03.13 Public Beta Avalible!!

Post by alaric318 »

greetings, maybe about the lille crosing, but can be said about all warfare, a way to code it is that the AI determine odds or predictable odds before going to battle, so, you can have the AI only attack on 2-1 or 3-1 etc, may be a solution, but if napoleon form his grand armee army stack you will face that AI never will attack this stack, cannot teach the AI to make an attrition war, as in the leipzig campaign is the change of warfare make from the allies that at last defeat the french and napoleon,

best regards,

murat30.
There is no plan of battle that survives the contact with the enemy.
ndrose
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RE: Empire in Arms 1.03.13 Public Beta Avalible!!

Post by ndrose »

From what I've seen, the AI is generally going after favorable odds battles with some discrimination. The British situation is different because it hasn't figured out its special situation. It's protected by the fleet in the Channel, so the French corps a couple spaces from London isn't a threat, and it can afford to sit and wait until it has a bigger force available.

In the past, you could leave a string of depots totally unguarded and it wouldn't pounce on them to break your supply. No more, from what I've seen. Also, you can't send one corps out ahead to build the supply line and expect it to be left alone or at most attacked by one enemy corps. Now you have to think much more realistically, which is great.

But another instance where the AI is behaving intelligently, but missing a subtlety (in general, its mistakes are now human-like mistakes, which gives you an idea how much better it is):

Napoleon's army is in Venice, at war with Austria. I send Davout with two corps to besiege Trieste, and a large Austrian army under Mack jumps on them. Good thinking by the AI--except for the part about Napoleon being able to reinforce from next door!

Next turn, same thing--the whole army is now in Trieste, except a Naples corps left behind guarding the depot. Mack jumps on it--and Napoleon reinforces from Trieste. Ouch. But still--you can see this kind of thing is light years ahead of where the AI was in 1.02; it's going after little guys with big stacks, even if it hasn't yet grasped all the possibilities.
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delatbabel
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RE: Empire in Arms 1.03.13 Public Beta Avalible!!

Post by delatbabel »

Just a general warning from the test team on this release: Although a few (sometimes massively) critical bugs have been fixed, most of the testing that Jan, I and others have focussed on has been in AI mode. We have actually done very limited testing in PBEM mode.

Having said that, very little of the PBEM mode code has been touched, so there *shouldn't* be anything new that has broken, just saying that we haven't extensively tested in PBEM mode so be careful and keep your save games aside in case it screws something up. Remember that this is a BETA.
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RE: Empire in Arms 1.03.13 Public Beta Avalible!!

Post by JanSorensen »

The AI has improved some - but still needs alot of work if its to become reasonable or even good. In particular Turkey and Russia seem fairly inactive. Its much better than before though :)
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Marshall Ellis
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RE: Empire in Arms 1.03.13 Public Beta Avalible!!

Post by Marshall Ellis »

I must second Del's and Jan's comments on the AI. We got this out without some AI improvements that I originally targeted for 1.03 but I did this since we did have a few crash fixes and I want you to get those ASAP. This also should fix up those pesky awaiting battle messages (Which does stop a game). We will resume our AI improvements over the next few versions.
 
 
 
Thank you

Marshall Ellis
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RayKinStL
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RE: Empire in Arms 1.03.13 Public Beta Avalible!!

Post by RayKinStL »

Marshall,
 
Some stuff I'd like to see...
 
Combat resolution when I enter an area but forget to "move into the city".  Isn't there a way the game can recognize if I have forces in an area where another country has a garrison, and let me decide if I want to assault.  This becomes such a tedious task when you are France moving huge stacks around and have to enter the area, then click back on the stack and enter the city.
 
In line with cleaning up the interface, is there a way, or can you make a way, such that holding the control button would allow you to select multiple corps (or fleets), and move them together (much in the same way you select multiple files in Windows)?  Also, can you make it so that the little screen that shows all the corps in an area automatically lines them up in order?  Plus, it often doesn't take advantage of the fact that the window can display corps "two high" and forces you to scroll left when the lower portion is empty.
 
These are jsut little things, but I think they would go a long way to cleaning up the interface.  The control-key multi-select feature would be HUGE and make the game so much easier to play, IMO.
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Marshall Ellis
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RE: Empire in Arms 1.03.13 Public Beta Avalible!!

Post by Marshall Ellis »

ORIGINAL: RayKinStL

Marshall,

Some stuff I'd like to see...

Combat resolution when I enter an area but forget to "move into the city".  Isn't there a way the game can recognize if I have forces in an area where another country has a garrison, and let me decide if I want to assault.  This becomes such a tedious task when you are France moving huge stacks around and have to enter the area, then click back on the stack and enter the city.

In line with cleaning up the interface, is there a way, or can you make a way, such that holding the control button would allow you to select multiple corps (or fleets), and move them together (much in the same way you select multiple files in Windows)?  Also, can you make it so that the little screen that shows all the corps in an area automatically lines them up in order?  Plus, it often doesn't take advantage of the fact that the window can display corps "two high" and forces you to scroll left when the lower portion is empty.

These are jsut little things, but I think they would go a long way to cleaning up the interface.  The control-key multi-select feature would be HUGE and make the game so much easier to play, IMO.

1. Yea, it could be done. That's not a bad idea. Why don't you log that as a feature request?

2. This is certainly possible but stack movement is explicitly not allowed in land movement (I suspect because of foraging chance effects). This dicsussion has been had before to an end of "no" we should not do this.

Thank you

Marshall Ellis
Outflank Strategy War Games


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RE: Empire in Arms 1.03.13 Public Beta Avalible!!

Post by delatbabel »

ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis
2. This is certainly possible but stack movement is explicitly not allowed in land movement (I suspect because of foraging chance effects). This dicsussion has been had before to an end of "no" we should not do this.

I concur. Stack movement is not and should not be allowed in the land movement phase. Doing so breaks a range of game issues including:

* Foraging.
* Capture and conversion/destruction of enemy depots (only the first corps moving gets the advantage).
* Appearance of insurrection corps.
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Del
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RE: Empire in Arms 1.03.13 Public Beta Avalible!!

Post by NeverMan »

No, stack land movement should not be allowed, BUT it would be nice if stack "outside city" to "inside city" would be allowed. That is, if you click on an area and hit "move into city" then all the corps in that area will move into the city. The current method would also still stand (clicking on individual corps and doing the same thing).

This is just a time saver. There are a TON of little things like this in the game that make the game more annoying to play than it should be.
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RE: Empire in Arms 1.03.13 Public Beta Avalible!!

Post by RayKinStL »

I still am not understanding the aversion to stack mvoement.  No one is saying you HAVE to use it.  But when I am marching a stack of 11 corps from Paris to Berlin, only to turn to Vienna after Prussia's surrender, the constant flipping and moving each stack becomes tedious and annoying.  No one say you HAVE to sue stakc movement.  In the naval phase you are not forced to use stack movement.  You could still move individual corps to deal with things such as foraging and depot destruction/conversion.  The point is to give the player options, so that when I am France or Prussia, or whoever, and I have a large stack to mvoe 3-4 spaces, I can do so quickly and painlessly if there is no other menutia involved in said movement. 
 
Move stack inside/outside city would also solve the problem I bring up, I jsut want some solution to forgetting to siege one city (if I move into multiple areas) and the game skipping the Land Combat phase.
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RE: Empire in Arms 1.03.13 Public Beta Avalible!!

Post by NeverMan »

ORIGINAL: RayKinStL

I still am not understanding the aversion to stack mvoement.  No one is saying you HAVE to use it.  But when I am marching a stack of 11 corps from Paris to Berlin, only to turn to Vienna after Prussia's surrender, the constant flipping and moving each stack becomes tedious and annoying.  No one say you HAVE to sue stakc movement.  In the naval phase you are not forced to use stack movement.  You could still move individual corps to deal with things such as foraging and depot destruction/conversion.  The point is to give the player options, so that when I am France or Prussia, or whoever, and I have a large stack to mvoe 3-4 spaces, I can do so quickly and painlessly if there is no other menutia involved in said movement. 

Move stack inside/outside city would also solve the problem I bring up, I jsut want some solution to forgetting to siege one city (if I move into multiple areas) and the game skipping the Land Combat phase.

Stack movement can not be used because of the way foraging works. There are forage penalties for a corps moving into and foraging in an area where other corps are already sitting and or moved to that turn.

There is no foraging for naval units hence allowing stack movement.
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RE: Empire in Arms 1.03.13 Public Beta Avalible!!

Post by RayKinStL »

ORIGINAL: NeverMan

ORIGINAL: RayKinStL

I still am not understanding the aversion to stack mvoement.  No one is saying you HAVE to use it.  But when I am marching a stack of 11 corps from Paris to Berlin, only to turn to Vienna after Prussia's surrender, the constant flipping and moving each stack becomes tedious and annoying.  No one say you HAVE to sue stakc movement.  In the naval phase you are not forced to use stack movement.  You could still move individual corps to deal with things such as foraging and depot destruction/conversion.  The point is to give the player options, so that when I am France or Prussia, or whoever, and I have a large stack to mvoe 3-4 spaces, I can do so quickly and painlessly if there is no other menutia involved in said movement. 

Move stack inside/outside city would also solve the problem I bring up, I jsut want some solution to forgetting to siege one city (if I move into multiple areas) and the game skipping the Land Combat phase.

Stack movement can not be used because of the way foraging works. There are forage penalties for a corps moving into and foraging in an area where other corps are already sitting and or moved to that turn.

There is no foraging for naval units hence allowing stack movement.

I understand that, but I still do not understand the problem. The game could certainly calculate all this if the player chose to move multiple corps through a land area. In other words, say I have the I II and III french corps. If I move all 3 together to Lille, or if I move I then II then III, what is the overall difference? The game will still calculate which corps moved through which areas. Movement points are still used up in the same way. How could moving one corps, as opposed to 3 or 8 or whatever number change the way the game calculates things, assuming the game is programmed to calculate a multicorp movement as individual stacks? In other words, the stack movement would be nothing more than window dressing. On the back end, the game could still move the corps individually, to maintain all existing rules, but on the interface, the player would see the ease of selecting multiple corps and moving them where ever they desired. Just because you are seeing multiple corps moved together, for the sake of time and convenience, doesn't mean the game has to CALCULATE the movement as a stack move.
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Edfactor
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RE: Empire in Arms 1.03.13 Public Beta Avalible!!

Post by Edfactor »

Actually a stack movement option would be very nice.
You would move and forage with a couple corps first if you like - then pick up the rest of the stack and move them all - and it doesn't even matter if your paying for supply as then there would be no forage rolls anyway.
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Jimmer
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RE: Empire in Arms 1.03.13 Public Beta Avalible!!

Post by Jimmer »

You can forage the first corps at an advantage (unless the enemy already has 2 or more corps present).
 
I don't think that's the real problem, though. The real problem is most likely that the presence of a corps is noted in the database for the land area (or city). So, there's no construct that has "Nappy's Grande Armee" (the 6 corps with Nappy), for instance. It would have to be coded.
 
However, it should be possible. But, despite that, there's another problem: One almost never moves an entire stack of corps. So, the feature would only very rarely get used.
 
Now, IF there were a pop-up for stack movement (for land OR naval) that let you pick and choose the corps you want to move, that would solve this problem. But, coding that might not be trivial.
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