July 27, FAQ Update

[sik1977]

Some decent answers to some useful questions. Slightly sad to hear about no added stats etc., for BI and RTW. Anyhow, glad that they will be adding it in the future.

Still nothing on Diplomacy improments, if any. Hope to hear more about it in the upcoming FAQ update(s). Keep up the good work guys (CA).

[Oaty]

Not that it matters to me personally, but I wonder how historically accurate that is? I think of that kind of hardware as being more the product of an organized army, or city. Were roving bands of mercenaries building war machines on their own, and renting them out? Ballistae R Us?

Siege engineers typically accompanied an army , but they sometimes came from abroad. Think of it this way you have skills and there is an army that is in need of those skills. So are you gonna be jobless or get mere pennies or go for the gold.

[Red Harvest]

Siege engineers typically accompanied an army , but they sometimes came from abroad. Think of it this way you have skills and there is an army that is in need of those skills. So are you gonna be jobless or get mere pennies or go for the gold.

Syracuse had the best siege engineers in the period of RTW. They had developed quite an industry of it. Not sure that they rented out much to "non-Greek's" unless there was already some alliance of sorts, but they did work for various Greek culture groups.

[Red Harvest]

The auto-resolve comments are a BIG disappointment. This really shouldn't be that hard to do, and the explanation given is weak in the extreme. The extra toggle would be confusing? Come on!?! The whole blasted difficulty level system is confusing as it is AND WE LACK DOCUMENTATION. Want to help with player confusion? Provide documentation about what the heck the difficulty levels actually do. We've been able to "reverse engineer" some of the aspects of what difficulty levels do.

I don't think there is much disagreement about the level of tedium produced by the current auto-resolve forcing players to fight many easy battles that should be auto-resolved. This is a fairly large negative for BI in the strategic game. Defending it by saying auto resolve can be used to make the game harder... well, that ignores the naval aspect entirely an area that most of us would probably like to have more level. It also means that one must accept completely inane auto-resolve results, or fight meaningless battles for devastating wins (which would be the anticipated result anyway.) I'm missing the logic here...wouldn't a middle ground make more sense, where the player gets a fair shake as if it was AI vs. AI and doesn't have to waste valuable time doing something boring and stupid? Hint for game designers: Don't intentionally bore your customers to tears!

Conclusion: It doesn't look to me like CA gave themselves enough time to do what was really needed for BI.