This Game Needs PBEM! Please Tell Me It's in It!

It isn't in yet, but I think Frogboy said somewhere that 'PBEM is a distinct possibility' or something like that, so I guess we'll have to wait and see, but can be hopefull.

How is PBEM going to work with tactical combat?

No tactical combat when fighting against another human, but full tactical battles against the AI - that's how it works in AoW, so I think that it will be the same here, if implemented.

Without knowing what PBEM stands for, i'll assume it means "Cowbell."

I agree, EWoM needs cowbell.  And once it has cowbell, it needs more cowbell.

//allways define your acronym at least one for the uninformed.

PBEM (Play by E-Mail)

A style of play in which one player takes a turn, then sends their save file to the next player on the turn list via e-mail.  Sort of like long distance hot-seat.

Not being lucky enough to get SNL (S-a-t-u-r-d-a-y N-i-g-h-t L-i-v-e) in the country where I dwell, I wasn't familiar with the term "cowbell" - Had to Google it (you know "Google"? that search engine...) eh eh - Just kidding I hate it too when people use acronyms I am not familiar with.

This game definitely needs Play By E-Mail mode!

As arunodayt already explained tactical combat vs humans is auto resolved, which is unfortunate but doesn't suck that much considering all the advantages of playing humans in a large scale universe. Also since all fights against the Artificial Intelligence are tactical one has plenty of time to develop his\her army before actually engaging humans. The best games I played with the PBEM "Play By E-Mail" mode are wars in which I didn't even meet the other humans for several weeks, until both me and them had a large scale empire.

I overheard a couple of the programmers talking about adding IPoAC game play.  Not sure how they'll combat the latency issues, though.

Joke, right?

The entire appeal of a multiplayer MoM-type game is the tactical combat against another human being. Auto-resolve pretty much ruins it for me.

I'd rather have the PBEM feature some sort of system to defer all of the battles of the turn until a time when both players are online so that they can play all the battles at once.

IPoAC is no joking matter, my friend.

Well, I read an article a few weeks ago about a South African company that proved that IPoAC was faster there then using the leading ISP. So support for IPoAC might be a major selling point over there

Did you try Age of Wonders Shadow Magic by email? You should (it's still a very modern and rich game, give it a try!) and then compare that to a regular but 'micro' map with actual multiplayer fights. The strategic element in my experience always beats the tactical one! Besides when both players are skilled enough the final result of the battle is pretty much previsible from the moment the armies confront each other, while the complexity of the strategy behind it can make things quite rich and exciting! .  I was skeptical too  before I tried.

I never really got into AoW:SM so I don't know too much about it.

In MoM the auto-resolve for combat simply couldn't take into account the complexity of the tactical battles. There were situations where you had no chance of losing the fight tactically (due to certain abilities like flight, invisibility, magic immunity, missile immunity etc.) and yet the auto-resolver allowed you to lose it anyway. Likewise, there were situations where you had no chance of winning and yet the auto-resolver gave you a win.

In many cases, winning or losing a battle could hinge entirely on a single spell.  Auto-resolving the battle simply cannot take that into account.

Try Dominions 3, the Awakening. Link (there is a demo as well)

For battles, you prechoose a set of commands, (spells, movment, attacks melee, missile etc.) for your troops. This will then play out for you when you get your turn back. This could be used for auto-combat.

So play by email works quite well. Better in my opinion than the auto-result combat of AOW and AOW-SM (both which I have played - AOW-SM still do)

Another potenital issue is you will need to script combat moves for your armies. (if they are attacked in another player's turn or by the independents (AI nations etc.) perhaps if you don't they use the AI's default set.

I'd take Play by Avian Carrier over Play by E-mail any day.   There is such a small market for carrier pigeons these days.   It would be nice to see some growth in that field.

Oh no! That doesn't happen in AOW! As complex as the game is, auto-fight is still quite faithful to the way players would act... I guess they spent a lot of time fine tuning that, it was worth the trouble though, give it a try.

I hope this can be included for gameplay...  Dominions_3 is very fun having battles where orders are given before battles begin.  Very large maps could move more quickly with this option as well instead of waiting for two massive players to each fight 20+ battles amongst 10 other players plus independents.  Providing orders before battle would be a great option. Naturally I still want the tactical combat control as seen from AoW:SM as an option.

Let's play Lords of Midnight!!

Still, there's only so far an AI can go. It's the entire reason why we play against other humans, AIs just aren't up to snuff. There is no way an auto-resolve would make all the same decisions I'd make in a given combat.

I'd play that anytime. The Lords of Midnight map will be the first thing I'll mod in Elemental

Well, player vs player tactical combat is simply not an option in PBEM, AFAIK. You can play other modes if you want tactical battles

I think that PBEM would be a nice addiction that would cost not much fatigue to be implemented by the programmers.

HAHAHA Last year I found in my parent's home my old Commodore 64, and I took a look at my old Lords of Midnights... what a deception! Some things should just stay parked in memory lane! At the time it was great though it really was! I remember as a kid I made the whole map on paper, I was really into that game! But we are going off topic...

AI in "Age of Wonder Shadow Magic" is a good enough challenge to give a player time to build up armies and organize a kingdom before the confrontation against the other players, and since the mechanics of auto fight are complex, but not impossible to foresee, the challenge becomes building the "right" army for whatever threat other players are likely to display. You can't be a fan of MOM and never try AOWSM in multiplayer (PBEM rules).

Anf why not using a HUGE fiel that would be created by player, hum ... by the games played by humans ?

Here's the idea : you need to be connected to the net when you play. Each time you play a battle against the AI or another human, the huge-file will store the result. When you need to autocalculate the game would search in its database a fight that was nearly identical ("Oh! 3 fighter against two flyers? Fighters have bows. Ok"), then calculate the possible outcomes, then throw a dice to know the result and casualties.

It would be like a learning auto-AI.

EDIt: the file would be on a stardock server, and each tim eyou connect to the net it could let you download the lastest version of this auto-AI file.