Tides of Conquest campaign tool - new version with Bronze Age scenarios and icons out April 21 2023

[Nijis]

That's easily enough fixed. I'll make the target zone bigger. Thanks for the feedback!

[Nijis]

Okay - there should now be a version 0.12. Provinces and links should be more easily clicked on.

Also, there's a rudimentary AI. It should work up until a non-player realm's home province is conquered. One could at this point play a single-player campaign by fighting all battles at your chosen difficulty level, but this is mostly intended so that players can see how orders work and how a game is likely to develop.

Next project: More comprehensive instructions.

Btw, forum moderators, do let me know if I should move this to a thread in the tournament or mod section.

[rbodleyscott]

Btw, forum moderators, do let me know if I should move this to a thread in the tournament or mod section.

Let's leave it here for now, so that as many people as possible can see it.

[Nijis]

So I'm almost ready to put up version 0.2, which will include the following...

1) Several different game modes that should make it a little easier for players to figure out what's going on
2) An extension of the map to Asia, so you can fight campaigns in China with jomni's Silk Road mod.
3) Improved AI and a whole bunch of bugfixes
4) Migrations, civil wars, and dynastic crises, which I think covers every major feature needed to run campaigns up through late antiquity.

I also have an instruction manual that should make this a little easier.

If this works okay I can try running a campaign shortly.

I've put up an example of the singleplayer game on the AAR forum. I'm taking Carthage in the Second Punic War, trying to find the weak underbelly to Rome's sphere of influence.

http://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtop ... 93&t=85381

[Nijis]

I've now added version 0.20. The download link as at the beginning of the document. If you've tried out an earlier version, you'd need to uninstall the earlier version before installing 0.20.

A link for the manual is now up as well. I need to do an illustrated version of it, but the file is rather large. I will try to post one shortly. In the meantime though the AAR should illustrate roughly how things work.

[kongxinga]

I am a simple man, so I see Nijis and mod and I insta like. Can't wait to try this out. Kudos for the expansion to far East, the map reminds me of Empires of Faith in a good way.

[Nijis]

Thanks! I realize that the quick-start instructions in the manual are for an earlier stage of the game.

The key difference: Now you choose your realm by left-clicking a province and then right-clicking the "Switch to...." in the upper right corner. Then you're ready to give orders.

The manual has been updated.

Next up: I want to work a bit on supranational entities (like China, or the concept of the universal Roman Empire that endured over time and became Christendom) and civil wars. I also want to balance crises a bit and give players some options to manage them. I also want to have army lists evolve over time, and also do a 400 CE scenario. If I can get this to work, I'll try to illustrate these ideas with a Liu Bang AAR and a Stilicho AAR.

[Nijis]

Cheers, all

I'm going to try and run a multiplayer campaign starting in 500 AD as soon as Age of Belisarius comes out. I'll put out a new version of the app tomorrow, but if you have trouble setting it up you can also just email me orders.

Here's the recruiting thread. Hope to see you there!
viewtopic.php?f=494&t=85832&p=727751#p727751

[melm]

Magnificent! This is what I am longing for since the release.

[melm]

Magnificent! This is what I am longing for since the release.

[Nijis]

Thank you! Would you like to take on one of the factions in the MP campaign? Once I can find players for the first 10 empires, hopefully in a few days, we should be able to get started!

[Nijis]

Version 0.3 is up with some Age of Belisarius starting points

http://www.mediafire.com/file/it73wgori ... 3.rar/file

Here's the updated manual
http://www.mediafire.com/file/6cse2dd7j ... 8.rtf/file

As always, if you have an older version installed, you need to manually uninstall it via your control panel (or just type "Uninstall" into a search bar, and it will come up.)

This adds:
In-game Help pages
A revised orders interface that hopefully makes things clearer
An overhauled version of the Singleplayer campaigns
Scenarios for 500 CE
Army lists that update throughout the game (a Hellenistic power that conquers India will get Indo-Greek)
New realms created during play get historical dynasty names
Languages and religions are introduced
Civil wars are overhauled
Crises and realm instability are tweaked


Still to be added:
Social institutions to differentiate between realms
Theologies and holy wars for the Age of Faith

[Ironclad]

Do we enter the battle screen losses outcome or those from the final losses screen? I know the latter are meant to be for campaigns but wasn't sure about TOC.

[Nijis]

I was thinking rout levels.

I know that this can encourage some gamey behavior (ie, delaying the final blow to an enemy to give time for your men to rally) but I wanted the game to be able to tell the victor of the battle from the loss levels alone, sparing the player a keystroke, and I could think of a few scenarios where one player might suffer more losses but less of a rout level (ie, Spartacus' army with the losses concentrated in the mob units.)

If I've overlooked any issues with that, it's easy to change in the instructions...

[Kabill]

I was thinking rout levels.

I know that this can encourage some gamey behavior (ie, delaying the final blow to an enemy to give time for your men to rally) but I wanted the game to be able to tell the victor of the battle from the loss levels alone, sparing the player a keystroke, and I could think of a few scenarios where one player might suffer more losses but less of a rout level (ie, Spartacus' army with the losses concentrated in the mob units.)

If I've overlooked any issues with that, it's easy to change in the instructions...

Does the tool apply outcomes based on the rout difference, or the absolute % routed per army?

If it does the former, then I think you're better off using rout % as you've described, because the final % difference in killed/wounded/deserted tends to be quite similar regardless of the outcome of the battle (it's usually around 30-40% difference), so I don't think it will pick up much variation (unless you rescale it, I guess)

If it's the latter, either would probably work: actual casualties is probably more realistic (if you're using this to measure resupply/retraining costs); but rout % is a better indicator of the winning score. So it depends on what it's being used for and what you want to emphasise.

[Nijis]

The way the system works now: if two armies fight, the loser of the battle (whoever suffers the most rout) demobilizes. The winner applies a result to the province (depending on the order: looting, conquest, removing enemy influence) if losses are 35% or less.

If there's no enemy army and you're just fighting a garrison, then an army applies the result for any victory, no matter how high the losses.

It's not the most realistic result but there is a heavy level of abstraction - ie, the battle represents an entire campaign - and more importantly it reduces the amount of info a player needs to enter manually.

If at some point the exe can read the result of an FoG battle remotely, it's probably worth fine-tuning this a bit.

[Kabill]

If I understand correctly, then:
- If two armies are fighting, the attacking army has to win convincingly to achieve it's aims
- If an army is fighting a garrison, the attacking army simply has to win to achieve it's aims

That seems neat enough to me - it's simple and creates a nice risk/reward mechanic for using armies defensively.

I don't consider the abstraction a problem - I only thought it was more complex because you have to enter in both side's rout score, rather than just the difference, and therefore assumed it was doing something with the individual values. Although I guess it is, because when two armies fight you need to win with 35% rout or less, not strictly a difference of 25% or more.

In which case, to return to the original issue, I think how you have things set up is fine and sensible.

[Nijis]

That's correct - glad it works!

I also have the player enter in both scores because you pay a bit for replacements (again, this represents losses minus recruits over a whole campaign) or, if your army demobilizes, the value of the survivors is refunded. So an army costs 50 resources, every two percentage of rout = 1 resource deducted.

In the singleplayer game, losses also reduce vitality, which shortens the commander's total active career/lifespan, however you want to see it. This represents the cumulative effect of wounds or just the commander's luck running out, Pyrrhus- or Richard Lionheart-style.

I figured in singleplayer, too many outright defeats can be frustrating. But I still wanted there to be an incentive to try and fight the battle as efficiently as possible.

[Ironclad]

Would it involve many changes to allow a higher difficulty level to be used? Presumably without adjustment a higher difficulty level would allow a player the get armies on the cheap.

[melm]

When can we see "painting the map" function?