Operational Warfare Developer's Blog

Developer's blog for the Operational Art of War series

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Ralph Trickey maintains TOAW III
I set this Blog up for fun, and for my own edication! Nothing is guaranteed, it's for my own use primarily, so even if I say that something may happen with the next release, please understand that it may not. I plan to post random thoughts and other things like that at random times here. I don't have a specific plan for what will be here.
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The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.

© Copyright 2012

Money quote for this release...

We added in a debugging feature that's intended to help some designers fine tune how Elmer plays the first rounds of their scenarios, and to understand how Elmer plays. It's pretty rough, but I think some of the designers may use it. In a single player mode, you can press a key (the | key right now, but I'll change it before release) and it will move all your units the way that Elmer would, does overruns and sets up the attacks, all you have to do is press the 'E' key and the '1' key to end they turn, yes I'm sure. Or you can fine-tune Elmer's decision to meet the strategic demands.

We now allow single player games to be loaded into the editor, edited, and played. I figure between those two features, there is probably 1-2 players that may try playing solo games by allowing Elmer to move each side with some guidance from them. (I've seens one request on this blog from someone that did it in CoW, so hopefully he's listening ;)

I definitely want to expand on this for the next game, and I'm sure I'll get some feedback on it, both 'why are you wasting your time' and 'great idea, but...'.

Obviously, Elmer plays better in some scenarios than others, but...

Here's the quote from one of the TOADs, it wasn't me, but I'm getting the same feeling... 

Elmer does a better job than me in setting up first round battles and leaving a large percentage of my turn for further movement and combat... I'd rather see this feature disabled in PBEM mode

 


Posted by Ralph Trickey on Friday, March 13, 2009 6:46 PM
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Comments

Silvanski United States

Saturday, March 14, 2009 8:01 AM

Silvanski

Elmer as your 'automatic-pilot'  so to speak Wink

JW Norton United States

Saturday, March 14, 2009 11:53 AM

JW Norton

Or, as a co-pilot....

I know my play, at times, is a tad clunkly, but it would be good to see how Elmer plays, to *adjust* my play.

Just like mirroring your Physical training routine to cover the PT test...

RhinoBones Hungary

Thursday, March 26, 2009 9:22 PM

RhinoBones

Hello Ralph
When you have time, I have a question regarding your last post.
In a single player mode, you can press a key (the | key right now, but I'll change it before release) and it will move all your units the way that Elmer would, does overruns and sets up the attacks
There has always been the option under the Play tab to: Play>Computer Player>Side 1,2,Neither  .  .  .  so I’m confused about the intention, or functionality, of this improvement.  
As is, using the current TOAW system, I can test scenarios using the Play>Computer>Side function to quantify combat results and analyze the play of El Elmer against a worthy opponent, i.e. against a Cheyenne or enhanced El Elmer opponent.
I am assuming of course the new El Elmer is equivalent to the TOAW III Computer Player.  If this is not the case, please let us know.
Best Regards, RhinoBones

Ralph Trickey United States

Sunday, March 29, 2009 9:59 PM

Ralph Trickey

The big difference is that you won't see the other side's units when you hit the | key. It goes round by round, so you can hit the | key, see how Elmer moves your unit, adjust the ones that you want to by hand, change the battles if you want, then hit end turn. You can go into the editor to adjust the formation paths. I think it will give you a better feel for how the scenario plays. I also think that some people may play solo games that way. I may try it so that I can try out some of the larger scenarios.

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