New Feature

[wfsimpson]

I had an idea for some new features. How about an army destinatioin option. With this armies produced at a city would automatically go to another city. This way armies produced inland would automatically go to a port. Also what about letting a ship actually enter a port. It would add some new attack and defense ideas?

[Sean OConnor]

I've thought about adding a troop destination feature, maybe in the next version. I'm not keen on ships entering ports though as I reckoned it would be easy to forget they were there and you'd "lose" them.

[Enneffcee]

I like the idea of an artillery type unit to be able to hit cities or armies from a distance.

I would really appreciate a single "sleep all" key (uppercase "s") rather than hitting sleep for each unit.

I also like the was Slay knows that it is beaten and offers to surrender. It is a pain hunting down the final few peices.

[Sean OConnor]

I like the idea of an artillery type unit to be able to hit cities or armies from a distance.

The problem with this is how to do the actual attack. With all the other pieces you just move onto a square which has an enemy piece on to do the attack. How would a long range attack work?

I would really appreciate a single "sleep all" key (uppercase "s") rather than hitting sleep for each unit.

So all of your units would go to sleep? Your turn would end then!

I also like the was Slay knows that it is beaten and offers to surrender. It is a pain hunting down the final few peices.

That's a good idea and I know exactly what you mean about hunting down the very last enemy piece. Maybe you whould win when you've captured all the cities?

[Enneffcee]

Sorry wasn't clear at all there....I meant for the contents of a city to "sleep all"

[Enneffcee]

I see what you mean about the artillery unit. Perhaps it's move wouldn't end having attacked. If it could move 4 spaces for example it could move 2 forward, hit, and automatically retreat to it's original position.

[Enneffcee]

Would it be possible to distinguish between enemy pieces?

If you are engaged against many battleships for example and you have crippled one of them you can't tell which it is next time and the wounded piece escapes while your (now wounded) piece attacks a completely healthy unit and gets destroyed.

I was thinking if you hovered over the piece it might have a sequence number or even better a more detailed indication of its health.

[sid6.7]

sean

with an arttilery unit the person would hit (F)ire or (R)ange
instead of moving.....crosshiars come up and you
click on the unit you want to hit....BOOM

[Fuzzy Wonky]

If you are engaged against many battleships for example and you have crippled one of them you can't tell which it is next time and the wounded piece escapes while your (now wounded) piece attacks a completely healthy unit and gets destroyed.

...so true...
A very interesting suggestion IMO (I can't figure out what the practical implications of such feature may be, though)

[EthanB]

I want to second that tracking down the last units hiding on barren islands is a pain. Eliminating an enemy from the board when their last city has fallen works, but I'd go further and have enemies surrender when there are only two contestants, and one has overwhelming power (e.g. more than 10x the cities).

[simonh]

Would it be possible to distinguish between enemy pieces?

I don't think a unique identifier is necessary, but a health indicator on the pieces would help. Perhaps a health bar along the bottom of the unit's icon? If you're concerned that would make the game too easy because players could micro-manage the attacks necessary to destroy a piece, and would expose too much of the game's underlying mechanics, an alternative would be a 'damaged' badge when a unit goes below 50% health. Another option would be a traffic light system, similar to the colour codes on the player unit health indicator. Green for 67%+ health, Amber for 33%-66% and red for under 33%.

I'm concerned about adding too many features to the game, but some of the features make it much more playable that the original Empire. For example not having to worry about air units running out of fuel and crashing. It's a great little game and it would be a shame to lose it's core simplicity. You know what users are like though, we always want more especially when it's more of something we love.

I would like to echo one request in another thread. The enemy player turns go so fast you might as well not animate them. In big games it makes it difficult to figure out what has happened. I once had a city nuked and never even noticed for several turns - at least I assume it was nuked, and I'm not sure how many turns I didn't notice for. I suspect this is because when you originally developed the game, machines were slow enough that enemy turns rendered at a sensible pace, but now with faster systems they just zip by? In which case implementing slow-down logic might involve more than just tweaking a timer, but it would be appreciated.

Simon Hibbs
iOS Verison User.

[Mr_Man]

I really wish Sean checked the forum more often. Regarding more new features for unit health, it'd be a good idea to show unit health on selection. Here's a basic mock-up:

Default:


With HP markup:

Health color change would be between 100%/66%/33%, accordingly.

The reason for HP display only on unit selection is because if HP is shown on all units at the same time the information might become too distracting when viewed at 100% zoom.

[Sean OConnor]

Sorry I don't reply much here!

I like the idea of the health bar so I'll add that to the to-do list for the next version.

[Willieswoopes]

The old strat con game allowed ships into port cities to repair. This made staring cities important. No a big deal though.

Another thought was adding movement arrows to the graphic of the piece where the battle damage shows. That way you don't have the tap interference with nearby pieces or cities. Just a different thought.

Bill Swope

[Sean OConnor]

If you move a ship next to one of your cities it does get repaired. Planes also get repaired inside cities.

I made it so that armies don't get repaired otherwise if you land some armies on an enemy island and attack the armies there but fail, then by the time you launch the next wave of attackers the defenders would be back up to full strength.