Questions from a game reviewer

[JaguarUSF]

I got the review version (gold master) for reviewers this morning from Paradox, and I have a couple of questions. I sent this as an e-mail as well, but I figured more than one method of delivery is always good. These may be covered in a patch that is planned to be released when the game actually goes out in a couple of weeks, but here goes...
1. Campaigns. The manual describes "Each campaign is designed to provide a structured path to your ultimate victory." However, I select, say, Guatemala in the Shattered World map and I never get a "structured path" or any objectives whatsoever. It does behave like the Sandbox mode as noted here "Note: If, within a campaign, you should choose to chase your own path rather than follow your set objectives, your mission sequence will be broken and the game will shift to “sandbox” mode, leaving you to take on the whole world alone." I never did get a mission sequence or anything like that in any of the campaigns I have tried so far (Thailand, Florida, New Mexico, Paris, Guatemala, Greece, Israel). The manual also states "There is a limited number of campaigns available, so you can’t start just anywhere." I'm not sure what that means; do only specific countries have missions within the campaign? If so, why are all nations available at the start? Also, if you pick a U.S. state to start with, the description reads a unification vote is going to take place in 10 months, but the victory conditions are set to "complete." In addition, some of the descriptions are cut off mid-sentence.
2. Trade Partners. I have several trades for goods in exchange for money, but they never show up in the "trade partners" dialogue under that specific country or in the "trade" dialogue in the state department tab. In a semi-related issue, the AI doesn't seem to like to trade goods for a different kind of good, even if they need the one you are giving and have the one you want; they always ask for like 100 million dollars (usually more) extra.
3. Game speed. The "fastest" setting lets you complete a year in about 2 hours. Is this as designed? That's not too terrible, but I'd like to speed things up even more when I've got my economy up and running and I'm just sitting around waiting for wars to start. It doesn't seem to be processor-dependent, either: it moves at the same speed whether I am using my dual core desktop or my crappy centrino laptop.

Other than those three things, I am good to go and I'm enjoying the game as a whole.

[JaguarUSF]

A couple of other things:
The "Last Day Trades" window is always blank. It wasn't in the preview beta.
The Italy Votes scenario only lasts 1 month by default, even though the description says 4.
The AI never seems to make any diplomatic proposals other than resources and alliances in the "Melting Point" campaign.
And another question: how can you make other nations really mad at you so that you can declare war on them? Heh heh I am so sneaky.

[George Geczy]

Hi... Glad to hear you're enjoying it... I haven't seen your email yet (might take a while to get through 'channels'), but I'm more than happy to give some info right here...

- Regarding the Campaigns: The actual definitions of 'Campaign' and 'Scenario' did change during development, and I think the manual still reflects some of our indecision on this. Some of the original concept was to have a 'Campaign' play in the full world map as a series of objectives (for example, unify the US, then take over the world). However, this ended up turning into Scenarios instead - for example, the "America Votes" scenario has the goal of unifying the states under one government. Once you win that, you are given the option to play on, ie to take over the world (if that is your desire). The idea that a campaign could be designed as "do this, then do this, and then do this" just didn't seem to work. So we ended up creating three versions of the "Sandbox", and in effect those are the campaigns - except giving the player the ability to determine victory conditions. While the default condition is 'take over the world, unlimited time', the lobby options allow you to change victory conditions and game length as desired - you can even choose a 'world unificiation vote' as a victory condition.

We will be releasing more scenarios for free download in the future, and with more complex victory conditions, but the division of "Scenarios = fixed goals, Campaigns = open sandbox" is the final design.

- Trade Partners: Information on ongoing trades is provided in the first panel of the popup diplomacy screen ('Existing Agreements'), and it should also show up in the fourth tab of the state department if you have your partner country selected (ie, if you're providing Alaska food each month, pick Alaska in the state department list and you should see the info there under 'providing to'). I can see the confusion here, if you pick yourself in the state department list, the 4th panel is always empty ("what are you providing to yourself?") I suppose a better solution would have been to show different information there when you pick yourself (such as a list of who you're providing stuff to); I've made note of that for future.

- Game speed - yes, about 20 seconds per day is the standard fixed top speed on systems that meet the recommended hardware specs. During battles that is actually uber-fast, though in periods of peacetime development and build-up players may want it faster. This is something we will examine for future updates after release; a mode of 'as fast as the hardware can go' is problematic for multiplayer, but may be a good option for single-player games that look to run for extended game lengths.


Thanks for the questions, feel free to ask if you have any more.

Of course, the fact that you have an early review copy is making many of the forum members here drool.... you can pretty much hear the drooling

-- George.

[George Geczy]

Posted more questions before I even finished answering the last ones

- Last day trades list - that panel disappeared in the Gold Master version for some reason, but it will be back with our first update.

- Italy Votes scenario - apparently the scenario file designer and the story writer had a disagreement on the length of the scenario The default will be returned to four months in the first update (note that it is possible to change the scenario game length to 6 months or more in startup lobby options).

- AI trades: While the AI does use a variety of offers, resource trades are the most popular, and in cases where there is a lot of love or hate going around, alliances are very common too. Money trades or other treaties are less common in most situations, but do happen.

Regarding getting the AI to hate you, I think there are many threads from SR2010 on that topic We've made changes to how inter-relationships and world standings work in SR2020, but there still is no easy way to gain casus belli against others 'for free'. Though the startup lobby includes options for changing diplomatic difficulty and also world opinion effects, to make it easier to be a rogue nation...

-- George.

[JaguarUSF]

Thanks for the info!

Campaigns: That's what I figured. I like that "world unification vote" option.
Trade: I kind of forget who I am trading with, so having a list of the goods going out or coming in of your country in the state/trade/providing to and receiving from would be helpful (even with a flag of the country you are trading with). I guess I am trade happy
Speed: Yep. I think having a "ludicrous speed" for single player games would be a good idea.
Drooling: I wondered what that sound was!
Last Day Trades: Sounds good, won't mention it in my review since it'll be gone.
Italy Votes: What I thought and I did notice that option (which is present in any of the scenarios)
AI trades: I figured I didn't play long enough to get more detailed trades. For now, I've just been experimenting with other countries (go Botswana!).
AI hate: Religion seems to be a good route...and the different difficulty settings are cool.

As I figured, most of the "issues" I had were working as designed or just old information in the manual or impatience on my part. The game is great so far and it's looking to be a high-end score.

One last (I promise!) question: how do you hire and fire cabinet members? I think there were buttons to do it in the beta. I suspect it may be a day-one patch item

Again, thanks for the feedback and the game is awesome.

[Lightbringer]

DROOL DROOL DROOL !1!1!1!

[UsF]

Thanks for the info!

Campaigns: That's what I figured. I like that "world unification vote" option.
Trade: I kind of forget who I am trading with, so having a list of the goods going out or coming in of your country in the state/trade/providing to and receiving from would be helpful (even with a flag of the country you are trading with). I guess I am trade happy

Each line or flag should be clickable and take you directly to the country screen where you can modify or cancel said agreement.

Speed: Yep. I think having a "ludicrous speed" for single player games would be a good idea.

Me too. Singleplayerspeed should be really high. Lag is not an issue here and players should decide for themself if their machine can take the speed. Maybe an option to enable really high speed in the options with a warning on stability if that is an issue.

Drooling: I wondered what that sound was!

*drool* *drool* *drip* *wheeze* give me back my water! I am dying here!

One last (I promise!) question: how do you hire and fire cabinet members? I think there were buttons to do it in the beta. I suspect it may be a day-one patch item

Beta? BETA! *drool* *wheeze* *dies*

[Balthagor]

Beta? BETA! *drool* *wheeze* *dies*

As George mentioned above, it was specifically a "Press Preview copy, not a beta, but glad you're liking what you're hearing...

[George Geczy]

One last (I promise!) question: how do you hire and fire cabinet members?

Oh, we love questions, ask as many as you want

For the Cabinet, the members are chosen based on the country you're playing and political leaning, but unlike SR2010 there's actually little 'competency' difference between individual cabinet members per department; so if you got "George Armstrong" or "John Simpson" for your Finance Minister in California, you'll find they pretty much work the same way. In 2010 we had ministers of greater and lesser knowledge and competence, but it didn't seem fair that a player that didn't watch for this might get caught with an incompetent minister messing things up for him. The 'five stats per minister' we had in 2010 were just over-the-top and didn't have any useful gameplay value.

We will likely bring back the ability to change ministers so that we can focus on political differences (for example, a left-leaning leader might still want a right-leaning finance minister); not sure if we'll add this for 'day-one', but it could appear in a future update.

And yes, I'll be looking into 'max speed' options.

-- George.

[JaguarUSF]

Sounds great! Thanks for all of your quick responses.
Now, if I could only figure out how to lead Poland to victory in a European unification vote.

[tkobo]

Am i dreaming ?

Did a game reviewer just take the time to ask for explanations /clarifications on things that he/she/it didnt understand BEFORE writing a review ?

Whats he/she /it up to ? Are they actually trying to set a reasonable standard for gaming "journalists" ?

Im in shock

Well done though,even if it stopped my heart for a few seconds

[JaguarUSF]

Getting back to the game speed, which I feel is a semi-critical improvement so that novice players that have a lot of the AI advisors running things don't get bored to tears. I don't think you have to even do "maximum computer speed." I believe, after much (about 5 minutes of) thought, that 1 real second = 1 game day is a good balance. Therefore...
1 game year takes only 6 minutes, instead of 2 hours.
10 game years (the longest timed game) takes 1 hour, instead of 20.

Yeah, we're gonna need you to do this by Sunday....that would be greeeeat. (Office Space reference)

Did a game reviewer just take the time to ask for explanations /clarifications on things that he/she/it didnt understand BEFORE writing a review ?

Heh. I suspect that a lot of communication between reviewer and developer goes on "behind the scenes" through e-mail (at least in my case) to get clarifications and such. But sometimes you wonder...
My "Plan B" was to put up a huge Kane & Lynch advertisement on my site and then give the game a bad rating and then get fired...I mean resign.

[George Geczy]

1 game year takes only 6 minutes, instead of 2 hours.

I'm not really sure that's exactly how SR2020 is intended... though we did have a cheat in SR2010 called 'endday' or somesuch that skipped all unit actions and only processed the economy/production model, resulting in just about the time you are considering.

The problem is that this only works during full peace time - if even two AI regions are at war, their battles either have to be played out in full (they could be aided by other regions, be battling anywhere on the map, etc), or else a 'approximate results' mode would have to be run.

And even during peacetime, units can move around, recon can be done, spies can spy on things, etc, which still requires every map entity to 'think' throughout the day. Only by turning all this 'thinking' off (running economic/diplomatic/production only) can a 'superspeed' mode be engaged.

For the player not interested in the military side I suppose this would be an interesting option to provide, though it does change the texture of the game. Still, it's worth looking in to for the future. For the short term, I think we'll stick with our own Plan A (an option for running the game engine flat-out in Single Player).

Did a game reviewer just take the time to ask for explanations /clarifications on things that he/she/it didnt understand BEFORE writing a review ?

We've actually been lucky in that most publications and sites have given SR2010 and SR2020 to reviewers that actually care about real 'strategy' games, and that has been reflected in the high quality of the reviews written about us.

[SoB]

is this review going to be onlin and if so what sit



and DROOL DROOL DROOL KILL SPAMERS DROOL GIVE SR2020 DROOL

[el_slapper]

from 2010 memories, 20 seconds for a day is faaaaar too much when not at war, or even in a small war. When yuo're Surinam invading Brazil(busy elsewhere), you really don't need 20 seconds per day.

of course, 1 second per day would be a dream. Though with everything that has to be done, 4 seconds a day(24 minutes a year) would be a good speed. 20 seconds a day in peace time : let's see the grass grow.