Playtester Wanted Please

[davidjwest]

I've resurrected the old game www.iron-empire.com and want a few people to test it.

www.iron-empire.com

Feedback welcome!

[Chris]

It is a geomethrical progress game. The person who starts first will win easily due to bacteria-like multiplication of production capabilities. Such type of game makes sense only if all players start at the same time and if the game isn't too long.

I would make it 14 days long game and put some penalties to cites productivity or upkeep of units (degressive benefit from getting more cities).

[davidjwest]

Thanks, valid comment.

My idea was to give later joining players more units to compensate for their late arrival, but for now I am limiting games to relatively short time limits.

There are also games where the first to capture x number of cities wins, or first to get x score etc.

Thanks again.

[davidjwest]

I would make it 14 days long game and put some penalties to cites productivity or upkeep of units (degressive benefit from getting more cities).

How about a penalty to morale if you have a big army so your units don't fight so well?

Another idea is to give cities a finite population so they can only produce a finite number of units.  I wanted the game to be simple to begin with so I can get it working on a stable basis before adding more complexity.

[Hypemaster]

I would fix this problem like they do in civilization 4. The further the city is from your capital the more upkeep it cost. More cities increase the upkeep. So this makes a bigger empire harder to manage. You can prob also make slider how much you pay your army, like you can have a small but verry high moral army, or big and low moral army. Wich at the end cost the same and has the same strength.
Also make units have upkeep. More units, is more upkeep. So add income and upkeep!
I played your game before, tried it now again and you should add maybe buildings. Like make it you can specialise your city. Like, this city is good for producing army, another good for income. Some other maybe better at making tanks, other better at making boats. Its an online wargame, but it needs buildings imo. Just some ideas. I like where its going, only need better interface and map. But the idea behind it, i like it, its my kind of game i like to play:D

Thats my feedback so far.

[davidjwest]

Many thanks, good to know someone thinks it has potential at least.

Let me have a think about how to best implement your ideas, I like them.

 

[davidjwest]

How about this for an idea - every time you build a unit, it takes an extra turn for another unit to be built - this would be fairly easy for me to code and would prevent the bigger empires getting too big too fast.  Or it would help reduce the issue at least.

Another idea would be to add efficiency, every unit starts with 100% efficiency but it reduces every time they move and this would mean a combat penalty.  Efficiency would be recovered by not moving and regenerates faster when in a city.

Capital cities could produce better quality troops, veterans for example, who fight better.  As everyone has a capital this would also level the playing field a bit.

[Hypemaster]

I like idea that capital produces better units (or maybe faster) and the efficiency idea. Also increasing cost for every next unit is not that good idea, its maybe better to to this at the number of current units. So if you lose some units its get back cheaper, this way if you lose alot of units you can build up faster. And 1 turn more seems drastical. Maybe every 5 units +1 turn (you can tweak it a bit with playtesting).

[davidjwest]

Capitals now produce "Line" experienced units so have a combat bonus.

Also got a counter working to let you know when the next "click" is.

[davidjwest]

Thanks to all those who've tried the game - I've fixed a whole load of bugs:

You can now use IE (for info if you use images for submit buttons, IE doesn't recognise when they been submitted!  You have to check for the values inside the form being passed instead)

It's now possible to capture cities from other players and if you get knocked out of the game it tells you!

Fixed some cosmetic issues with move buttons showing when they shouldn't

Still to do:

There's a bug when you join a new game, sometimes it thinks the map is full when it isn't and so wont allow people to join.  I know what the problem is but I've not had time to fix this yet but I will do in the next few days.1

The combat model needs tweaking still but I've put some code in so I get a copy of all combat reports with extra details so I can make changes to give more realistic results.

Cosmetic issues around flag placement needs sorting out.

I'm going to add a bigger map so you can see more of the map.

New units coming soon including artillery, warships and aircraft