Round 11: How to play?

[Zworf]

Just to help all players ease into the changes for round 11, here is a list of the most important things to keep in mind. This should help everyone manage to get their economy going.

• Keep any eye on your food stockpile, on the overview page it says how many days you can last on it
• During the winter you produce no food, winters go on for about 90 days, make sure you have at least 90 days of food left
• During the winter armies consume twice the supply while moving and only recover 2 per turn on friendly villages
• When constructing mines or farms, make sure to set your workers to actually go to work or they produce nothing
• Setting a focus for a village can be beneficial
• Workers can be transferred from a village to another, you don't have to build houses everywhere
• Transferring workers has a penalty, when transferring 100 you will only get 50 at the destination, 50% reduction
• On the map you can make your intelligence range visible, this can help you decide where to build intelligence offices and headquarters
• You can trade food now
• There is a new faction policy which increases houses by 10%
• You can set up auto trades, for example: trade 200 iron for 400 coal when total iron is above 10,000

New premium advantages this round:

• Filter trades on resources offered and/or resource requested
• Enable auto assign workers for each village
• Be offered private independent trades

For anyone playing the beta, perhaps you have some advice to share as well?

Edit:
Forgot to mention:
Population can exceed the number of houses in a village, however population without houses does not work or pay taxes.

[smeshko]

[*] During the winter armies consume twice the supply while moving and only recover 2 per turn on friendly villages

May be to balance game - during the summer armies must consume half the supply while moving and recover 4 per turn on friendly villages ?
And I think that will be better if "Transfer soldiers from army" will be changed - at least 2-3 turn armies (or part of them) must be in the field ("Transfer soldiers to army" changes affect after 16 turn, but "Transfer soldiers from army" changes - immediately and without any penalty)

[Zworf]

Well, during the summer the heat could actually slow armies down... so I figured I leave it as is for the summer (something to say for both). Winters have however slowed military campaigns down considerably so that's why that is in now.

Transferring soldiers is not meant as a way to save troops chased by an enemy, your suggestion is a bit hard to implement so perhaps something like: an army has to be on a village for 6 turns before it can start transferring, this would make it quite hard to save your troops in such a way when running from an enemy.

[blenheim]

Hi,

I would leave the transfer from army as it is to give weaker players a chance against strong players. I have a query, why do artillery who are in an army with a majority of cavalry have 25 supply instead of 10? What I'd like to know is the reasoning/rational/idea/military authenticity/historical accuracy behind this rule.

B.

[Zworf]

The idea is the artillery can be moved faster with the help of the cavalry. Without this rule any army with artillery will always be dead slow.

[blenheim]

I am not really convinced about that one. I mean, why create an unrealistic rule - don't try to tell me it is horse artillery! If the artillery is too slow just increase it to, say 15 supply. Anyway, the way I reason it is that, at the scale of game of A of S - grand strategic - it can be presumed that cavalry armies will have their horse batteries with them as an integral part of the number of men in the army. The same goes for foot batteries with the infantry - i.e. The guns are 'presumed' to be there but don't show. With the way artillery operates in the game - the bombarding and 10 supply - the artillery would be siege artillery, which was very slow and cumbersome. As it is, cavalry/artillery armies are dashing all over the place with 25 supply and are being used by players as 'Panzer' divisions and not horse and musket armies.

[DGhor]

I am excited and a bit hesitant with the new changes...lol!

I did enjoy the beta testing but I didn't like some things (which I already added to the beta postings regarding an enemy army staying on a capital city indefinantely)...

I think your breakdown in your original post is perfect and if we follow what you said we should all do well in the game.

If players do not watch their food, yor population will die off and it will take you a long time to recover from it so watch your food levels closely and don't go hog wild on gaining population too soon unless you have the resources to do so.

[smeshko]

Transferring soldiers is not meant as a way to save troops chased by an enemy, your suggestion is a bit hard to implement so perhaps something like: an army has to be on a village for 6 turns before it can start transferring, this would make it quite hard to save your troops in such a way when running from an enemy.

I don`t speak to implement something new - in the game have enough well working things that can be implemented. Some examples :
1. Fortifying - when army digs itself in - started immediately, finish after 8 turns (like transfer from army) but bombardment begin after 3 turns.
2. City walls (Stone Wall,Guard Towers and Tower Cannons) - when army come to city - first turn have 25% bonus, second - 50% and only next turn - 100%.
3. ...

[Zworf]

I'm gonna put some replies together in this post, here goes:

@blenheim
You are correct as to the unrealistic behavior of artillery, the bombardment range has been changed a couple of times, it is not so much about being realistic as it is about being useful in game. It is hard to hold on to realism with limited resources while keeping a game fun. I think artillery in the game is currently useful and offers many strategic options, albeit not being very realistic.

@Dghor
Note that it was possible to block someones capital in previous rounds as well.
I'm still pondering over an option to start over from another inactive capital (keeping upgrades), but this in combination with a new way of adding new sectors to the game. I think it would work better if sectors expanded from the center in all directions as a spiral.

@smeshko
I'll look into how it can be added