This game is an expensive coaster

Elmo · #1 May 25th, 2001, 02:46 PM

Kagetora is none other than BillB who has been beating up Richard about SE4 over at cdmag. Nice to see you took Bob's advice and moved your criticism over here. Your Posts are always a fun read.

Elmo

Taqwus · #2 May 25th, 2001, 04:10 PM

quote:
Originally posted by jowe01:
Tell me, in the weaker strategy games you know, would the AIs not often win if you gave them three or four times the normal production ? I am looking to be challenged by the AI's campaigns, not to be squeezed by sheer weight of numbers.
[/b]

Ever play an RTS scenario? Most of them operate with the "sheer weight of numbers" approach, giving AIs complete bases, significant forces and often most of the map at the beginning of a level. Others, such as Civilization-type games, rely primarily on cheating at all levels from production bonuses to a "penalize the tech leader" cost model to making AIs handle diplomacy with people in a far more one-sided model (getting angrier faster, making idiotic demands and then declaring war if you fail to bribe them every few turns). _Shogun:TW_ is another game that needs to blatantly discriminate against human players to pose much of a challenge to an experienced player, through such details as deficit spending, production and combat bonuses, and not-exactly-simultaneous moves.

Also compare and contrast complexity, customizability and detail with, say, traditional counter wargames ala TOAW:COW. The differences are obvious... and the computational cost and theoretical difficulty are incomparable.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

LeTharg · #3 May 25th, 2001, 04:12 PM

I agree with jowe01. I think there is room for criticism especially the AI. I don't play solo because it is no fun. The Rage may be difficult at a 5X bonus but that doesn't seem fun to me. An idiot with a big enough club may be dangerous but he's still an idiot. And 5X is a huge club.

Don't get me wrong, I've gotten tremendous value from this game playing PBEM games. I'm amazed at what MM hasw accompished with so little in resources. I think there is a cooperative way we can improve the AI so I'm pushing a previous post on this issue to the front.

Kagetora · #4 May 25th, 2001, 06:08 PM

Kagetora is none other than BillB who has been beating up Richard about SE4 over at cdmag. Nice to see you took Bob's advice and moved your criticism over here. Your Posts are always a fun read.
Elmo<<<<<

Well I tell you what. I am not BillB although I do know who he is. He informed me that Richard in a misplaced and just wrong attempt to for whatever reason pretend he and I are the same person released my real name on the other board. This is in my opinion private information they recieved by my purchasing their game. I take great offense that it has been released particularly in so cold and callous a manner and for so base a purpose.

Kagetora · #5 May 25th, 2001, 06:19 PM

Richard has totally crossed the line. Not only has he rationalized that this game was never really intended to have TCP/IP which anybody that has been here for any length of time knows to be false but he is now lying and acting like it was a couple months after the demo before it was even brought up. I was reading these Boards prior to the demo even being released and I am quite certain implications were made here that this game would eventually have TCP/IP capability long before the demo. This was my primary reason for purchasing the game in the first place. I knew from the demo the AI was terrible. I loved the design and figured it would be fun to play against other humans. However, this is still impossible in any reasonable manner.

danjel · #6 May 25th, 2001, 06:22 PM

SEIV is a PBEM game. TCP/IP support is unnecessary.

Kagetora · #7 May 25th, 2001, 06:24 PM

So in some respects I must share Kagetora's complains: SE4 was an unfinished product when it was released. It has improved since then but is still lacking features which were originally promised. Worse, there is not yet a sufficient challenge if you do not give the AI outrageous unfair advantages.<<<<

I couldn't agree more. The reason I haven't bothered with the mods is because all they do is give the AI outrageous advantages in an effort to get some value from this product. I can't see how it can even be called a computer game at all with no AI or any way to reasonably play with others or at least in the manner most customers or even other game companies would consider reasonable. Richard on another board is now pretending that the demo Version of this game was as finished as it should have been for sale. I must be blind, because I can't believe anybody on this board didn't know this game was incomplete when they bought it and expected it to be completed later?