ptraynor@bbnccv.UUCP (Patrick Traynor) (08/23/85)
We have had a game going here for a couple of months now, and have found a few problems/(needs for improvement): In our game, war has been virtually impossible. When attacking a simple sector (with only 3-4 military in it) with an attacking army of over 100 troops, the odds given are in the 90% range, but casualties are usually over 50 for the attacking army before the few troops in the victim sector are wiped out! (Occasionally, the few defending troops can even withstand the onslaught and the sector isn't lost.) Is anyone else having this problem or is this peculiar to my machine? We had the largest country dissolve recently, leaving about 150 sectors, all efficient and full of people & goods. Although the game roports: Bye-bye 256 people in -3,4 Bye-bye 186 people in -2,4 (etc., etc.,...) when a nearby nation wandered into the abandoned area, the sectors were fully populated and ready to go. It was great fun for a while, but that seems to take away from the fun of seeing your areas grow through hard work. As the diety, I took a survey of the nations and the vote was unanimous...I re-wrote the dissolve routine to wipe the sectors clean, reverting them back to empty wilderness. There was some argument that the 'spoils' should go to the victor, but I don't think that these are really spoils. A nation usually dissolves not because of failure in battle, but more often lack of available free time to play the game, or threats from neglected wives/girlfriends. Also, a routine to send global messages to all nations would be handy. As I remember, there was an 'announce' command in a later version. Has anyone put one together for this version? --pat traynor-- (aka- His excellency, Rufus T. Firefly--Sovereign State of Freedonia) Dumont: "Oh, your excellency!" Marx: "You're not too bad yourself, toots..."
hga@mit-eddie.UUCP (Harold Ancell) (09/07/85)
In article <698@bbnccv.UUCP> ptraynor@bbnccv.UUCP (Patrick Traynor) writes: > >We have had a game going here for a couple of months now, and have found >a few problems/(needs for improvement): > >In our game, war has been virtually impossible. When attacking a simple >sector (with only 3-4 military in it) with an attacking army of over 100 >troops, the odds given are in the 90% range, but casualties are usually >over 50 for the attacking army before the few troops in the victim sector >are wiped out! (Occasionally, the few defending troops can even withstand >the onslaught and the sector isn't lost.) Is anyone else having this >problem or is this peculiar to my machine? If you're using the decompiled version of empire on a recent version of Unix such as 4.2bsd your problem is that the rand() function now returns a value in the range 0 to 2^31-1 instead of something like 0 to 2^16-1 or 2^15-1. You should replace every instance of rand with a function that returns something in the right range. Do something like myrand() { return(random() % 32568); } (The random function is a much better random number generator.) This fixs lots of things, and also makes plague possiable. - Harold