New Game?

[CSSS]

Many, many thanks for everyone's kind words!

I will try to post a couple of screenshots at the start of the weekend. Assuming that I can move after Thanksgiving dinner!

YES!!!

[mercenarius]

Well, mostly what I have today is some simple things. I added the option to show an Undo Button in place of the Help Button. Some players may like this. I think most will stick with the default configuration with the Help button.

The Undo is similar to "Hannibal" but will allow for moves within a province to be undone. That's not really very exciting, and I posted something about this a while ago. But being able to undo changes in splitting and joining forces is going to be needed for people using Point and Click. Anyway, here is a sample:

Undo Button #2.jpg (47.56 KiB) Viewed 388 times

I added the Game Summary or ("Victory Conditions") dialog to the Admin Dialog itself. This is shown wth the 'V' hotkey on the strategy map or within the Admin Dialog. This is in part allows the player to get a reminder, if needed, which contending power he or she is playing:

Game Summary for Admin Dialog.jpg (163.33 KiB) Viewed 388 times

That might sound funny, but sometimes when I am testing I can forget which contending power I selected. The "Vexillum Imperatoris" is just a way of telling the player "This is what your banners look like."

I am also in the process of revising slightly the treaties used in the game, and am adding a little helpful text in their dialogs:

Tributum Treaty.jpg (179.98 KiB) Viewed 388 times

Those treaties are reviewed in the Admin dialog.

The "supply units" mentioned in that treaty's dialog are usually added as food stores on the equivalence that 1 supply unit equals 1 food store unit for a minor city. 1 supply unit can feed 12 strength points for one turn. But if there isn't a city or fortress within a province to receive the tribute it can be delivered to an army in the field in the form of supply units.

Admittedly, these samples aren't too exciting. I'll try to have some screenshots next weekend of functions and events from the diplomatic relationships. An example is when a Roman Client State finds that its "Patron" has been defeated or has even been destroyed.

[mercenarius]

OK, I have made progress on the mechanism for treaty proposals. It's still evolving, but there are some things to show.

I also decided that it might be good to be able to review some things from the Strategy Map, so I have updated the "Augustus" Operational Commands Menu. It will now include an item for reviewing recruits on order as well as one for showing "open" diplomatic activity. It might look like this when there are outstanding diplomatic legations or offers:

Augustus Popup Menu.jpg (187.05 KiB) Viewed 333 times

Clicking on the Active Legations button will show a review dialog:

Legations Summary Dialog.jpg (192.14 KiB) Viewed 333 times

I'm going to add a button to allow some kind of quick access to the relevant part of the Admin Interface. I am also going to add some hot links to some of the lines in the summary text. I'll program that this week and try to post some screenshots before (or on) next weekend. Those links and buttons will allow the player to accept or reject any of these proposals. The player will also be able to propose a modification in the terms of the treaty.

[mercenarius]

Well, I decided to work on the reply logic before updating the summary dialog that I showed last week. Here is the basic sequence:

The player uses the "Legatio" button in the "Nationes" Department (not shown here for the sake of brevity) and will see this menu:

Legatio Popup Menu.jpg (182.07 KiB) Viewed 282 times

Using the "Review Diplomatic Offers..." button will bring up an area to allow the player to make a response to any or all of currently "open" legations:

Deliver Diplomatic Response.jpg (289.21 KiB) Viewed 281 times

As you can tell from the first graphic, there is still some refinement to be done here since I still have some placeholder text (the famous Lorem Ipsum) in that popup menu. And that upper icon definitely needs a little more work!

I'll try to post some more screenshots on this topic by next weekend, including a little bit on how new diplomatic offers, or modifications of existing proposals, will function.

I had toyed with the idea of allowing the players to give a basic "yes" response to existing offers without using an Activation, but I decided that this is potentially confusing and harder for me to program. The player will be able to respond to all "open legations" with a single activation, so that's not too onerous, I think.

[mercenarius]

First off, I hope that everyone is having a good holiday season. I wasn't able to get anything posted last week but I do have something for you now.

The previous post showed the first steps in accepting a diplomatic offer from another power. These screenshots will show the basics of initiating your own diplomatic overtures.

The first step is to select a recipient from the active powers:

Prep Legation.png (1.38 MiB) Viewed 188 times

That graphic has been scaled down to fit and I'm sorry that it doesn't look that great.

The second step is to define the particulars. If you are "beginning from scratch" the next step will be to define the particular type of proposal:

Select Proposal.jpg (175.67 KiB) Viewed 188 times

After defining the type you'll need to specify the particulars. Clicking on a particular type of proposal will bring up another menu and allow you to make the final specifications and put the enactment into force. I'll be working on those menus this next week and I'll post some final screenshots on this subject after New Year's. The choices for the players are going to be fairly simple.

Let me conclude by wishing everyone a Happy New Year!

[Orm]

Happy New Year everyone.

Thank you for the updates. They look awesome.

xxxxxxxxxx

On diplomacy:

So far I have considered the political aspect in computer games close to pointless. Versus other players (wargamers) there is not much point unless they are more or less enforced by the program. Their faction are after all run by a wargammer with no skin in the game. And most AIO opponents they are even more pointless since the diplomatic efforts are both badly scripted, and badly programmed.

However, here I have high hopes for the diplomacy part. Part because it looks good. Part because I think it is well thought out what the AIO is supposed to do. But mostly because the AIO in Hannibal was (is) rather good. Just had an excellent experience with Hannibal. My funest game yet.

With that said. I suspect that diplomacy might be the hardest to get right for the AIO, so one solution might be to script it heavily and limit the options. Or scale back on it and make events instead.

Anyway. Look forward to test the result.

Thank you.

[mercenarius]

Thanks for your kind words, Orm!

And I agree that diplomacy is hard to get right. I used to play Medieval Total War (the first one) and the thing with marriage alliances never really worked. The *more* powerful I got, the more likely offers of marriage were to be refused! I suppose because of the rule that "females can inherit under certain circumstances" and so an offer of marriage is taken as a disguised form of aggression? So, I used to have fun with it. Sometimes, I'd handicap myself in the game by not declaring war first. But if someone would refuse an offer of marriage then I'd use that as an "excuse" to declare war on them. Just a little roleplaying, it had nothing to do with gameplay per se.

...so one solution might be to script it heavily and limit the options. Or scale back on it and make events instead.

I think that makes good sense. I certainly want to limit the options, so I have defined four possible levels for the client states and also for tributaries. With that said, here are some screenshots just to show the mechanism of proposing a treaty or another kind of overture. These are taken from the beginning of the 'Marcus Aurelius' scenario. The first is an offer of truce to the Parthian Empire:

Offer of Truce.jpg (210.53 KiB) Viewed 111 times

The second is a demand for tribute from the Roxolani:

Demand for Tribute.jpg (203.94 KiB) Viewed 111 times

Of course, as it happens, neither of these overtures is likely to succeed because of the conditions on the map, but they show the mechanisms involved.

I'll try to wrap this particular topic up next weekend with a couple of final screenshots.

[mercenarius]

I didn't get quite as far this week as I hoped, but I do have a simple screenshot showing the notification you'll see when you send a legation with an offer or a demand:

Legation Sent.png (825.56 KiB) Viewed 42 times

I'll try in a week (or two) to wrap this up with final screenshots showing how the response to diplomatic offers will be shown to the player after they are received.