?? How to know others' army sizes?

rasqual · 08-15-2005, 07:44 AM

In some sense, the number of armies one had used to indicate overall strength. No longer true, since army size is now variable. As of right now (unless I've missed something in the boards), there's no way of knowing an occupier's strength, or the strength of the armies someone isn't occupying a city with.

This is akin to having no intelligence whatsoever about an enemy.

How about putting the info in the placemark for the city, which will encourage actually using Google Earth to play the game? I know for myself, of late, I've found that I do most of my actual thinking in the web interface you've set up. Although you've done a fine job with that, there's a risk with that. Ideally, it should be possible to do everything from inside Earth itself, but that means you'll need to get pretty sophisticated with your use of balloons and cookies.

Also, would you mind using a more definitive icon for the city centers? I think resources a person is hunting for might best be not glaringly obvious -- the gray default would be fine. But the ones that are just marking what everyone knows "is there" anyway, well, it'd be handy to be able to spot 'em quickly to click on. The gray default is a pain.

Contrive one of your own!

Mickey · 08-15-2005, 12:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rasqual

In some sense, the number of armies one had used to indicate overall strength. No longer true, since army size is now variable. As of right now (unless I've missed something in the boards), there's no way of knowing an occupier's strength, or the strength of the armies someone isn't occupying a city with.

This is akin to having no intelligence whatsoever about an enemy.

One of the next features I'll be adding is the ability to spy on an enemy. Something like "view all details about the armies in this city for 10 GEOs". You get to see a one-time snapshot of their army sizes and that's it.

Quote:

Also, would you mind using a more definitive icon for the city centers? I think resources a person is hunting for might best be not glaringly obvious -- the gray default would be fine. But the ones that are just marking what everyone knows "is there" anyway, well, it'd be handy to be able to spot 'em quickly to click on. The gray default is a pain.

Contrive one of your own!

I'll see what I can do. To be honest, though, I'm really not a graphics guy. If you want to come up with a little icon (transparent .gif, probably) that you think would work better, go for it!

Mickey

araT · 08-15-2005, 12:54 PM

.png would be best, they ouput smoother transparency

I'm not graphicly inclined either, but I have done a little helping friends skin Trillian, and from experience.. .gif borders come out rather (for lack of better words) eww.

I like the idea of spying

T.

rasqual · 08-15-2005, 07:22 PM

How about paying for extra security on your spying? Every 10 Geos buys you another doubling of security. That is, you might get discovered by whoever you're spying on -- they might come to know that you know. Or not. That's the question.

So you pay 10 Geos to spy on someone, and that gives you a 50% chance of being discovered ("The dirty rat knows my troop strenghts!"). Pay another 10, you get 75% assurance of secrecy. Pay another 10 (30 total), that gives you 87.5% assurance. And so forth. You can NEVER be completely secure, and the cost of keeping things secret goes higher the more airtight you want it to be.

And BTW, this chance of being discovered is based on the occupying party spending Geos to do a security sweep. You have to pay to find out whether you're being spied on. That 50% chance of discovery only applies if the army you're spying on indeed does such sweeps. If they don't, you go undetected for sure.

Each time you conduct a security sweep on one of your cities, there's a chance (see above) you'll detect something. You can run the sweep multiple times, and this will increase your odds of discovering the spies (the probabilities are "per event" for security sweeps).

Furthermore, the odds are per spy. If 4 people spy on your city and you run a sweep, the discovery odds are independent for each spy. You might catch one, none, all, two -- whatever.

Now, as to the confidence level of what you discover when you spy. I'd like to see that vary as well. You don't necessarily find out everything when you spy. "He has at least 5 armies, and 4 of these have fewer than 200 troops each." Some kind of variable certainty, variable quantifying. Not only lack of detail and precision, but lack of certainty about what IS known. "It's 80% probable that only one of his armies has a troop strength greater than 300 infantry."

And say, so far your numbers are flat for armies. Nukes are "outside" of Army strength. How about subsuming it all under various weapons and billets, so an "army" can have nukes, infantry, mechanized divisions, AAA batteries, and so forth. Subs. Carriers. Air forces. Bombs. And defenses against these. This is a huge chore for you, which would take time. But consider architecting for the kind of interactivity this would both require for coding, and promote among players.

The more complex you architect this, BTW, the more sane it will be for aliances to form among other reasons for the purpose of specialization ('cause the world will be too complex for one person to master the varying requirements of play alone). If the number of armies you can raise depends on resources mined and such, you'll need someone who's darned good at that, while you go off on a military campaign. The "government" will need to cooperate and balance the cost of resource acquisition with the cost of military action, as well as working the prospect of diplomacy to consolidate power and access further resources (you NEED that oil to move your armies!).

And yes, I'll continue to drive you nuts with such implied insistence that you commit your life to this project. LOL

France · 08-15-2005, 11:30 PM

I am globaly agree with those rules of spiying. Just one point: if you have to pay to know if you are spied, you have two possibilities:
- you pay for cyclic (is it a correct english word?) check, so you pay regulary. So the city cost you a regulary price (the burning cash coefficient)
- you pay for a "passive" detection, that cost you each time you have an information: you open a pre-paid acount.

I think the first option will be a good idea if you developp tools for some "automatic governance", with regular entrance of money: you win money because you have a city, and you use this money to defend it.

Another point: if you spie, you may have anti-spiing capabilities, specialy the possibility to make some wrong report. It will cost you something, of course, but you may have the capability to create wrong data sheet. And let the imagination of each player to make smal or big lies ;-)

rasqual · 08-16-2005, 12:11 AM

Right, France, good comments. And you've really sruck on the question -- how much of the game do you want to automate?

Perhaps automation could be one of the benefits you PAY for in Geos. You want to automatically counter spies? It'll cost you. Otherwise, you'll be spending more time on the PC doing it manually.

This is real world, too. Time is money. Yes, you can do X, Y, and Z -- at a price.

08-15-2005, 07:44 AM	#1
rasqual Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 459	?? How to know others' army sizes? In some sense, the number of armies one had used to indicate overall strength. No longer true, since army size is now variable. As of right now (unless I've missed something in the boards), there's no way of knowing an occupier's strength, or the strength of the armies someone isn't occupying a city with. This is akin to having no intelligence whatsoever about an enemy. How about putting the info in the placemark for the city, which will encourage actually using Google Earth to play the game? I know for myself, of late, I've found that I do most of my actual thinking in the web interface you've set up. Although you've done a fine job with that, there's a risk with that. Ideally, it should be possible to do everything from inside Earth itself, but that means you'll need to get pretty sophisticated with your use of balloons and cookies. Also, would you mind using a more definitive icon for the city centers? I think resources a person is hunting for might best be not glaringly obvious -- the gray default would be fine. But the ones that are just marking what everyone knows "is there" anyway, well, it'd be handy to be able to spot 'em quickly to click on. The gray default is a pain. Contrive one of your own!

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08-15-2005, 12:54 PM	#3
araT Licensed to Ban Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: Sydney, Oz Posts: 1,244	.png would be best, they ouput smoother transparency I'm not graphicly inclined either, but I have done a little helping friends skin Trillian, and from experience.. .gif borders come out rather (for lack of better words) eww. I like the idea of spying T.

08-15-2005, 07:22 PM	#4
rasqual Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 459	How about paying for extra security on your spying? Every 10 Geos buys you another doubling of security. That is, you might get discovered by whoever you're spying on -- they might come to know that you know. Or not. That's the question. So you pay 10 Geos to spy on someone, and that gives you a 50% chance of being discovered ("The dirty rat knows my troop strenghts!"). Pay another 10, you get 75% assurance of secrecy. Pay another 10 (30 total), that gives you 87.5% assurance. And so forth. You can NEVER be completely secure, and the cost of keeping things secret goes higher the more airtight you want it to be. And BTW, this chance of being discovered is based on the occupying party spending Geos to do a security sweep. You have to pay to find out whether you're being spied on. That 50% chance of discovery only applies if the army you're spying on indeed does such sweeps. If they don't, you go undetected for sure. Each time you conduct a security sweep on one of your cities, there's a chance (see above) you'll detect something. You can run the sweep multiple times, and this will increase your odds of discovering the spies (the probabilities are "per event" for security sweeps). Furthermore, the odds are per spy. If 4 people spy on your city and you run a sweep, the discovery odds are independent for each spy. You might catch one, none, all, two -- whatever. Now, as to the confidence level of what you discover when you spy. I'd like to see that vary as well. You don't necessarily find out everything when you spy. "He has at least 5 armies, and 4 of these have fewer than 200 troops each." Some kind of variable certainty, variable quantifying. Not only lack of detail and precision, but lack of certainty about what IS known. "It's 80% probable that only one of his armies has a troop strength greater than 300 infantry." And say, so far your numbers are flat for armies. Nukes are "outside" of Army strength. How about subsuming it all under various weapons and billets, so an "army" can have nukes, infantry, mechanized divisions, AAA batteries, and so forth. Subs. Carriers. Air forces. Bombs. And defenses against these. This is a huge chore for you, which would take time. But consider architecting for the kind of interactivity this would both require for coding, and promote among players. The more complex you architect this, BTW, the more sane it will be for aliances to form among other reasons for the purpose of specialization ('cause the world will be too complex for one person to master the varying requirements of play alone). If the number of armies you can raise depends on resources mined and such, you'll need someone who's darned good at that, while you go off on a military campaign. The "government" will need to cooperate and balance the cost of resource acquisition with the cost of military action, as well as working the prospect of diplomacy to consolidate power and access further resources (you NEED that oil to move your armies!). And yes, I'll continue to drive you nuts with such implied insistence that you commit your life to this project. LOL

08-15-2005, 11:30 PM	#5
France Junior Member Join Date: Aug 2005 Posts: 4	I am globaly agree with those rules of spiying. Just one point: if you have to pay to know if you are spied, you have two possibilities: - you pay for cyclic (is it a correct english word?) check, so you pay regulary. So the city cost you a regulary price (the burning cash coefficient) - you pay for a "passive" detection, that cost you each time you have an information: you open a pre-paid acount. I think the first option will be a good idea if you developp tools for some "automatic governance", with regular entrance of money: you win money because you have a city, and you use this money to defend it. Another point: if you spie, you may have anti-spiing capabilities, specialy the possibility to make some wrong report. It will cost you something, of course, but you may have the capability to create wrong data sheet. And let the imagination of each player to make smal or big lies ;-)

08-16-2005, 12:11 AM	#6
rasqual Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 459	Right, France, good comments. And you've really sruck on the question -- how much of the game do you want to automate? Perhaps automation could be one of the benefits you PAY for in Geos. You want to automatically counter spies? It'll cost you. Otherwise, you'll be spending more time on the PC doing it manually. This is real world, too. Time is money. Yes, you can do X, Y, and Z -- at a price.