@TonkaToys,

Nice work Very interesting map. I see your approach is to redo the entire playing interface. Looks like a lot of work. I hope you get it done before RTW comes out.. I'd like to try it.

Another approach is to try to hack into MTW to develop tools for the multiplayer game.

I am not a full-blown programmer (at least not on PC's, I've done some Mac work), but I think some things can be done to facilitate MP game. In particular we need the following:

1. A hack or modification of the god mode -ian to disable AI for some factions instead of all or no factions

2. A compare savegame tool to extract the moves that a player has done so as to help the referee reapply them.

3. A mechanism to help players resolve the dialog questions of Auto-calc battle vs play personally vs abandon province etc..

4. A mechanism to answer other questions like Accept marriage/alliance/etc...)

5. A mechanism to transfer results of online MP battle between 2 players to the campaign map.

6. A modified version of MTW to disable -ian mode for players to avoid cheating

Most important is #2, because it will allow #5 (if you can modify the savegame, you can do a lot). I think hacking the savegame file is theoretically possible.
As for #1 and #6, maybe one of the programmers can help with that (hopefully it is a simple on-off statement in the code on whether a faction in played by AI).

The toughest one to do is #3.

Here's how it would work:

Referee generates several copies of the same savegame, each with a different faction enabled as the human and sends it to all players.
Players make their moves. Before hitting end-year, they save the game and send to referee.
Referee uses the compare-savegame-tool to come up with list of moves for the faction. Then applies said moves to a master savegame.Then referee disables AI for the factions played by humans and hits End Year.

Now you hit the snag. What would the referee do if a player is given the option to auto-resolve, play personally , withdraw etc.?. Possible solution is for players to indicate ahead of time what they would do (e.g I will withdraw if outnumbered 2:1, but will fight with better odds). Or players are online simultaneously and answer the question as soon as the referee asks it. But then, if one of them decides to play personally you have to force the others to wait You can potentially postpone the battle till all such questions are resolved, but that removes one aspect of the game where the results of one battle will determine whether your army in the next battle has a place to withdraw to or not.

Once battles are decided upon, players play them on their computer against the AI or against each other online (for online battle, an equivalent army is decided for each player since online MP does not allow for depleted units or reinforcements). The results are mailed to the referee who then applies them to the savegame (again using tool #2).


Then repeat process.


I don't think this will be done for MTW, but maybe for RTW the programmers can leave us more hooks (like -ian or other modes) to do a play-by-mail multiplayer .

afrti