Fog of War?!

[Croops]

I have to be losing my mind here. I've been playing Emperor for a little while, and I can't for the life of me figure out where the fog of war option is. Right now, everything is visible all the time once it's been uncovered. I've looked in the options over and over, and I can't see any such option! At first I thought maybe it was the difficulties, but I'm playing on normal, so I doubt that's it. It's driving me nuts (either that or I already am nuts, if it's right under my nose). Can someone help please?

[anklbter8]

fog of war is in the setup of a single skirmish game or in a custom game online. i dont believe it is an option for campaign game play.

[Timenn]

What actually happens with fog of war on?

I have the idea that you explore the map as usual. But that you forget pieces if haven't been there for a while. Those pieces will get darker, but not shroud. You can still see the terrain and buildings but not the units.

Right?

[GhostHunter]

Um, well what you were saying but it grows dark and you cant see the past land if recolection serves me right. In SC for example, you could still see the land but I don't think so in Emperor.

[Croops]

::) Ok, well thanks for the info, although I'm speechless. It's really beyond belief. How could Westwood not include fog of war for campaign (or for anything in RTS anymore in this day and age)! Plus I'm pretty pissed that it was part of the advertised feature set of the product, and almost no reviews or comments mentioned this convenient little fact. And to top it off, if it's already in the game for multiplay, that makes it even more unfathomable. Just unbelievable. Anyway this game has been one intense disappointment after another...it's a good thing I picked it up in a bargain bin for only a few dollars. WW just keeps making the same game, over and over and over and over and over. No gameplay innovations, some of the worst AI in the industry, no real strategy. And now no fog of war. Just pretty graphics and expensive cutscenes. Heck, WW hasn't gotten full price from me since the original C&C (and it doesn't look like they ever will again, by their track record). They just don't get it. :P

[ceballo]

I must agree with shock of having FOW disabled as a default. I have found very few people that play happily with FOW on, it's too bad. FOW adds an additional layer of complexity to the game.

As for having no real strategy, I must strongly disagree. There are many stock strategies that get used by most players, but the more advanced players have found ways of using every unit of the game during any stage of the game. That combined with unit veterency makes this game much more strategic than every RTS that I can think of (which granted is not that many).

Anyway just thought I'd put in part of my 2 cents.

[rigel6669]

No gameplay innovations, some of the worst AI in the industry, no real strategy.

Before giving comments like that, play the game online and try out all houses and subhouses ???

[DjCiD]

FOW forces you to continue to scout thru the game, I guess more ppl are just to egar to build that mass of mino army and FOW makes the game too complex for them... :-

Turn FOW on and its a quick way to clear out a room ;)

[Chris Longpre]

:)

Well, first off.. FOW will fade out, leaving only the terrain visible .. units are removed. I believe buildings are left too, although they are not updated .. so when you resend a scout or unit to that area, they may be gone, etc.

Secondly, FOW on was the original default setting, but became universally hated by all focus groups & testers, etc. It is a hardcore-gamer feature, and tended to confuse & frustrate the more general RTS players. Hence, it was changed to default off. (there may or may not be a way to turn it on for campaign games in the .INI files, etc. Dig around..)

Personally, I love the option, but if you host a MP game with FOW on, I think you'll begin to see how hard it is to find players willing to play with it. As an Ordos player, it rocks. EITS rain death down from above form the edge of the fog .. he he.. a lot of fun.

As for the AI complaints, I have noticed the same complaints in all the recent RTS games. Lets be honest. It is very very difficult to get AI to behave 'intelligently' in all situations, and for that intelligence to appear intelligent to all users. Many complaints of abherent AI behavior or merely a different perspective on what the AI is doing. i.e. Should a unit on guard, stay at his post until he enemy is in range? Even if he takes fire? Or should he desert his post? If he deserts his post, then a feight attack will draw out your defenders for the main assualt to spank you nicely. :) And we can also toss in CPU load to the considerations when AI is written. Better AI takes more CPU speed. And Emperor had very aggressive min-spec at the time too. (BTW, Findpath falls into this category too).

Anyways, sorry for the long post. :) just had a few thoughts on the topic before I head off to bed. Night all...

--Chris

[TFSKILLER]

Cool, I played Chris Longpre in the WW vs The World tournament on Emperor :)

[Croops]

I don't know what it is with developers and excuses, but they seem to go hand in hand. That's all anyone ever hears, is excuses and justifications. Until of course someone else creates the so-called uncreatable, then the next year the market is suddenly flooded with copycat product and it's on to the next set of excuses, until someone else with vision expands the envelope again.

First of all, the perception of WW's AI being pathetic is not all subjective. It might be a good point that some AI is subjective, yes, but WW is so far away from that stage that there's no point going there. The kind of thing that everyone talks about when it comes to the poor AI is fundamental stuff that needs to reduce the insane amount of micromanagement required in all WW "strategy" games, even now in 2003(!). Examples just off the top of my head:

- when a group is standing guard, and something approaches, if one engages, have them all engage. Don't just have them stand there like idiots while the enemy picks off the group one by one by the edges.

- units should have some common sense based on their abilities. You can have a group of snipers lying in wait, with a column of enemy infantry and a tank approaching. Say the tank just happens to be the first thing that comes within the snipers' view detection, then they'll all just fire on it like morons, not only wasting the valuable first shot each, but fixating on the tank while the rest of the infantry walks right up and minces them. The same occurs with any units, making every battle an idiotic exercise in micromanagement. A player should be able to have a mixed group, and be able to send them into an enemy's mixed group confident that they'll display some common sense in selecting their own best targets, based on their abilities. This is something that should have been addressed years ago.

- Units should display some tactical ability again based on their strengths. Laser tanks have extreme mobility as an advantage...well unless you micromanage them during the battle, they won't use it. They'll just stand still like idiots and fire. What they should do is bob and weave on their own...just basic, basic tactical common sense. Same applied for any unit...each should have some rudimentary intelligence based on its abilities. Snipers for example should focus on separate targets each, to an extent, not all just fire together on the first infantry that appears. And so on. What would make this even better is to have it linked with unit veterancy, with their tactical skill and intelligence increasing with veteran level. Ooh that would rock.

- Pathfinding as a group is still frustratingly stupid. Units getting stuck and basically blowing a whole plan (and often a game) to hell, units dancing with each other while the rest of the group is engaged, etc. etc.

- Another example of basic tactical intelligence: stealth. As it is, stealth strategies in the game are almost nonexistent...WW games are just games of brute force. Click as fast as you can, build as fast as you can, and send your screenfuls of units against your opponent's screenfuls, until one is left standing. Stealth isn't used because the stupid AI doesn't make it worth it. Your whole plan and your whole game are almost invariably destroyed by one stupid unit. The Atreides tank that succeeds in being snuck into the enemy base loaded with engineers, only to fire its peashooter at a passing mino just when you turn your attention away for a minute and steps away from deploying. The Ix infiltrator group that you've somehow, with hairpulling micromanagement, gotten behind enemy lines and into their base, only to have one of them just go wandering off because it's one pixel off and decides to take a tour of the base with its pathfinding. And so on...the examples are legion.

Anyway I just realized this message is already too long and can be infinitely longer. Suffice it to say that the AI is a joke, and everyone knows it, excuses notwithstanding. The only question is if WW will actually listen and try to improve it, or they'll just go on cranking out the same game with new costumes every year or two. So far it's been a consistent and disappointing choice #2.

And on a final note, let's cut the shit about CPU cycles. That might have washed 10 years ago (which is about when Dune 2 was released), but not anymore. Let's see...Moore's Law would put those 10 years as having, what...roughly 100 times(!!) the CPU power? Let me type that again: 100!. That's 100 of the computers you had at your disposal for Dune 2, now powering a single computer. So what have you done with it? Practically all of it has been spent on graphics. The AI is only marginally better than Dune 2...it's only the graphics that are real eye-openers compared to that era, and the ironic thing is that with the advent of such high-powered 3D cards, you ironically have more CPU to spend on other things now, not less. So please. The only question of resources you need to worry about is getting someone with enough clue on the team to be able to understand how to be able to use that power, instead of just safely doing the same things over and over. Someone who understands AI and can start taking it to the next level - a level we should have been seeing at least 5 years ago if not more. But will WW do this? Doubtful. What do they spend their oh-so-crunched development time doing? Take a look at most of the screens for Emperor and really look. Pretty arrows, zooming maps, scrolling glyphs...in short, a lot of pretty graphical bullshit. That's what WW focuses on...the meaningless and pretty. So again, please cut the shit about min-specs. Not only are customers frankly in a position to not give a shit, but it's an empty excuse when the misplaced effort is so blatant.

Anyway this has been long enough, but it could use saying (although WW has heard this plenty enough over the years and it's fallen on deaf ears to begin with). As to the Fog of War being a "hardcore gamer" option, that is so idiotic that I can't even be bothered to argue it. Suffice to say that WW games had little enough "strategy" in their Real-time strategy to begin with; clueless design decisions like removing FOW just makes them even more laughable. Whatever newbie hordes prefer for online play, there's no excuse for removing the option altogether (from campaign play), and it's misrepresentation, since it's listed as a feature. :P

[atrd3m0n]

ugh

[Edric O]

You have FoW in multiplayer, for God's sake! ::)

And if you're REALLY itching to have a FoW game against the computer, there's always the skirmish option.

But let's face it: the most important part of any game these days is the multiplayer. And you have a FoW option for it.

[Navaros]

I don't know what it is with developers and excuses, but they seem to go hand in hand. That's all anyone ever hears, is excuses and justifications. Until of course someone else creates the so-called uncreatable, then the next year the market is suddenly flooded with copycat product and it's on to the next set of excuses, until someone else with vision expands the envelope again.

First of all, the perception of WW's AI being pathetic is not all subjective. It might be a good point that some AI is subjective, yes, but WW is so far away from that stage that there's no point going there. The kind of thing that everyone talks about when it comes to the poor AI is fundamental stuff that needs to reduce the insane amount of micromanagement required in all WW "strategy" games, even now in 2003(!). Examples just off the top of my head:

- when a group is standing guard, and something approaches, if one engages, have them all engage. Don't just have them stand there like idiots while the enemy picks off the group one by one by the edges.

- units should have some common sense based on their abilities. You can have a group of snipers lying in wait, with a column of enemy infantry and a tank approaching. Say the tank just happens to be the first thing that comes within the snipers' view detection, then they'll all just fire on it like morons, not only wasting the valuable first shot each, but fixating on the tank while the rest of the infantry walks right up and minces them. The same occurs with any units, making every battle an idiotic exercise in micromanagement. A player should be able to have a mixed group, and be able to send them into an enemy's mixed group confident that they'll display some common sense in selecting their own best targets, based on their abilities. This is something that should have been addressed years ago.

- Units should display some tactical ability again based on their strengths. Laser tanks have extreme mobility as an advantage...well unless you micromanage them during the battle, they won't use it. They'll just stand still like idiots and fire. What they should do is bob and weave on their own...just basic, basic tactical common sense. Same applied for any unit...each should have some rudimentary intelligence based on its abilities. Snipers for example should focus on separate targets each, to an extent, not all just fire together on the first infantry that appears. And so on. What would make this even better is to have it linked with unit veterancy, with their tactical skill and intelligence increasing with veteran level. Ooh that would rock.

- Pathfinding as a group is still frustratingly stupid. Units getting stuck and basically blowing a whole plan (and often a game) to hell, units dancing with each other while the rest of the group is engaged, etc. etc.

- Another example of basic tactical intelligence: stealth. As it is, stealth strategies in the game are almost nonexistent...WW games are just games of brute force. Click as fast as you can, build as fast as you can, and send your screenfuls of units against your opponent's screenfuls, until one is left standing. Stealth isn't used because the stupid AI doesn't make it worth it. Your whole plan and your whole game are almost invariably destroyed by one stupid unit. The Atreides tank that succeeds in being snuck into the enemy base loaded with engineers, only to fire its peashooter at a passing mino just when you turn your attention away for a minute and steps away from deploying. The Ix infiltrator group that you've somehow, with hairpulling micromanagement, gotten behind enemy lines and into their base, only to have one of them just go wandering off because it's one pixel off and decides to take a tour of the base with its pathfinding. And so on...the examples are legion.

Anyway I just realized this message is already too long and can be infinitely longer. Suffice it to say that the AI is a joke, and everyone knows it, excuses notwithstanding. The only question is if WW will actually listen and try to improve it, or they'll just go on cranking out the same game with new costumes every year or two. So far it's been a consistent and disappointing choice #2.

I totally agree with everything you have said here. Many people confuse "Struggling with AI bugs" to be "Micromanagement". Struggling with programming bugs is *not* the same as "Micromanagement" and adds nothing to the gameplay other than immense frustration.

[Elite47]

you must really be horrible at emp, and really arrogant to make comments like that.

you saying that WW should made lasers bounce back and forth and control themselves?! LOL! Thats called watching, not playing. If the lasers did the work for you what would be the point of 'playing' the game. The reason the game is called a strategy game is because it requires strategy if you didnt already know! Micromanaging is part of that strategy and if you can't do it i suggest u play a game more suited for you where the game does the playing for you. Or, since WW is horrible at making games IM SURE YOU COUDL MAKE A BETTER ONE YOURSELF RIGHT? Put those programming skills to use buddy and quit running your mouth. Maybe you dont like things about emperor, fine, but they do not suck!

EDIT ---> AND NEITHER DO THE DESIGNERS WHO CREATED EB4D

[Navaros]

Secondly, FOW on was the original default setting, but became universally hated by all focus groups & testers, etc. It is a hardcore-gamer feature, and tended to confuse & frustrate the more general RTS players. Hence, it was changed to default off. (there may or may not be a way to turn it on for campaign games in the .INI files, etc. Dig around..)

As for the AI complaints, I have noticed the same complaints in all the recent RTS games. Lets be honest. It is very very difficult to get AI to behave 'intelligently' in all situations, and for that intelligence to appear intelligent to all users. Many complaints of abherent AI behavior or merely a different perspective on what the AI is doing. i.e. Should a unit on guard, stay at his post until he enemy is in range? Even if he takes fire? Or should he desert his post? If he deserts his post, then a feight attack will draw out your defenders for the main assualt to spank you nicely. :) And we can also toss in CPU load to the considerations when AI is written. Better AI takes more CPU speed. And Emperor had very aggressive min-spec at the time too. (BTW, Findpath falls into this category too).

Anyways, sorry for the long post. :) just had a few thoughts on the topic before I head off to bed. Night all...

--Chris

about the "focus groups" point: Emperor gameplay suffers due to such 2-dimensional thinking on the part of Westwood. it is not so much that the average-joe-RTS-player hates FOW in and of itself. rather he hates the fact that in Emperor there is no reasonable way to get rid of FOW. at the start of the game you can get rid of FOW. then, all of the time and effort you had spent getting rid of FOW at the start of the game is rendered useless due to the inevitable death of every scout unit you have placed. in mid-late game, it is nearly impossible to get rid of FOW because scouts or warriors will always get revealed and die since the enemy units are always going to be in motion if your opponent has any idea how to play, which results in the guranteed death of any units you try to place to get rid of FOW a second time. it's the lack of a reasonable way to get rid of FOW in mid-late game that causes the hate of FOW. the problem is not with FOW itself, but rather with the poorly-designed Scout unit. if you could place a Scout unit and have him stay invisible permanenetly and be invulnerable once has has been placed, then most of the focus groups would have said to keep FOW on and there would not be such a universal hate for FOW in Westwood games like Emperor. or even have the Scout unit deploy certain things in the ground that permanetely take FOW off a certain part of the map if he can deploy the things successfully. there are many ways FOW could have been implemented well in Emperor, but currently it doesn't work for gameplay and causes much frustration due to the general uselessness of the Scout unit.

about the AI point: you are correct to some degree with what you say here. however, there is no good reason why the ways in which units move could not have been corrected. moving in formation in Emperor is always a bad idea since your units will not attack while formation-moving. if there was an option to do that, this would be much less of an issue. as it now stands, to move a lot of units of differing speeds across a big map, you are forced to waste time watching the units move all the way across the map because otherwise the weak units get to the enemy way ahead of the tough ones, proceed to get slaughtered, and then it's open season on the tough units that remain with no meat shields to protect them. it could be said: "so micro all your units while you're moving them!" however, i as would all good RTS players, prefer to be using the time my units are moving to engage the enemy to do other things that will benefit my army and/or detriment the enemy. for me to have to waste 5 minutes babysitting my main army due to pathfinding and AI bugs does not make for good gameplay.

to gzakiller: you are taking my words out of context. i know that excellent micro is a required skill for good RTS players. i was not referring to having to micro lasertanks etc. because lasertanks are designed to be microed, otherwise they suck. i completely agree that this sort of microing is fundamental to gameplay - as it should be.

i was referring to things like mentioned above, or here's another one. ordering a group of Fremen to sneak to the enemy and instead of the Fremen taking a reasonable path, they branch off into all sorts of crazy paths that have no logical reasoning whatsoever and end up walking right into the enemy units and dying. even when there is a completely safe path that is *shorter* and that none of the Fremen would have been touched on if they had taken that path. now you could say to me: "then micro your Fremen!". however, my units were already engaged in a heated battle with the enemy and it was more important for me to micro my units that were already engaged rather than spend 1 minute of gameplay-time babysitting my Fremen as they left my base and moved all the way across the map. so I have two choices: lose all my Fremen because of buggy pathfinding that should have been corrected before Emperor went Retail, or keep all my Fremen by babysitting them across the map, during which time my main army will be obliterated by the enemy units that are currently engaging it.

this is just one example of many that i can provide as to how micro and buggy pathfinding are two totally seperate and distinct things. micro i don't mind, but from a professional developer like Westwood, pathfinding and AI bugs are morally inexscuable for an RTS game.

[Chris Longpre]

Well, I'm sure that both Arohk & Croops are intelligent & reasonable people. Their well thought out arguments are a testament to that carefullness. However, I would guess that you have no game development experience whatsoever. True?

I am not tryint to turn this into a flame war. But after making dozens of games myself over the past 20 years, let me assure you that for every example you have provided, I could provide counter-examples of why programming the AI or findpath to behave the way you describe is equally wrong. And then, we would end up with a 'well, it should just do what I mean' (DWIM process) or 'Do what I really meant to do'. These are not excuses, and it is unfair to think the programmers & designers were without skill or knowledge. These are difficult problems, and for the reasons I mentioned in my first post in this thread, solving them on a min-spec machine is very very difficult.

As for Arohk's desire for attacking while moving, there is a command key combo for that. There is also a command key combo to move units at best speed, together. I'm sure someone on the boards here could quote them for you .. Its been too long for me to remember them myself.

As for Croops interpretation of Moore's law, it is obvious you are not a programmer. Which is not a bad thing in of itself, but just that you misunderstood the impact. Moore's law specifically dealt with the number of transistors inside a processor, and not processing power per se. Additionally, it is not truly a law, but a theory that generally predicts some kinds of processor evolution. It has little to do with why games are not lightning fast in the face of today's god-like speeds. (i.e. 1993's 16MHz vs. today's 3000MHz.)

Now, if I could use a new processor today, vs the 10-year old processor, and run under a 16-bit DOS OS, pushing 16-color 2D graphics to a very low-res graphics raster, orig. Sound Blaster sythisized audio (no samples) .. well, hell yeah, games would be smoking fast! AND, we'd have plenty of cycles left over for some incredible findpath, AI code, etc. :)

In the end, developers are faced with thousands of tough design decisions. Some are based upon what is going to make the most number of gamers happy (i.e. sales), be 'playable' speed-wise on the most number of machines (i.e. market size), and cool features that gamers want & love (i.e. marketablilty = sales). Be happy though. There are still thousands of decisions which are made purely because we are gamers too and love games. (and still other decisions made for game balance, fairness in multiplayer vs. singleplayer, etc.)

All in all, the top games out there are quite good. And we all benefit. And if you really think you have the ideas to fix the age-old problems of 'stupid AI' or 'dumb pathfinding', then please PLEASE send a game company your resume and get to it! We would all like to see it get better.

Lastly, this thread post-my initial comment is why developers typically do not post on msgboards publicly. It is not that we don't care, or do not wish to have the theoretical discussions that could lead to some great insights. We would just end up spending too much time responding to errant messages like the ones from Croobs. We will never win the argument with you, Croobs. To you, we will always be 'idiots', and you will always be the genius. So why bother arguing in the first place. (A-ha, for those following along still, I've resisted the temptation to respond for so long, I just had to try it .. and now regret it.. back to lurk mode I guess.)

Have fun all, peace out.

--Chris

[Nyarlathotep]

Arohk, in the example of the fremen you give, you could have done much better. I truely suck at this game, but if I order my units to go somewhere, they actually do not drift of to all kinds of places, but nicly do as I request them to do. IMHO, you're doing something wrong if you can't handle a fremen group that way.

Croops, your rant has absolutely no base what so ever. It's very easy to start a rant about something you can't comprehend. If you'd read more, you'd solve a lot of your "problems" you are posting (the manual is a good place to start with). Your biggest rant seems to be about micro management. Have you ever considered the fact that people might actually like that aspect of the game ? At least I do, otherwise it's just a "watch game" and not a playable game. My advice is, if you'd prefer a watch game, try playing a sports manager game. You actually just give orders and the AI will carry out exactly what you order them to do. Btw, if you start talking technical, please at least do some research and come up with something worthwild posting to. What you posted is absolutly crap, sheess ::)

[Mad Rhetoric]

- units should have some common sense based on their abilities. You can have a group of snipers lying in wait, with a column of enemy infantry and a tank approaching. Say the tank just happens to be the first thing that comes within the snipers' view detection, then they'll all just fire on it like morons, not only wasting the valuable first shot each, but fixating on the tank while the rest of the infantry walks right up and minces them. The same occurs with any units, making every battle an idiotic exercise in micromanagement. A player should be able to have a mixed group, and be able to send them into an enemy's mixed group confident that they'll display some common sense in selecting their own best targets, based on their abilities. This is something that should have been addressed years ago.

Do you know how hard that is,Croops?Implanting human thinking into a computer?Perhaps YOU would like to make a game where the AI thinks just like a human?It'll start another Butlerian Jihad,for God's sake!And do you know what the Butlerian Jihad is?Its when hundreds of humans die and a skclichs and blood and glcks!!(Sorry,high on sugar,just ate some REALLY sugary cereal.MUAHAHAHAHAHJAHAHHA!!)

[Navaros]

As for Arohk's desire for attacking while moving, there is a command key combo for that. There is also a command key combo to move units at best speed, together. I'm sure someone on the boards here could quote them for you .. Its been too long for me to remember them myself.

--Chris

what i said was, there needs to be a command to attack while *formation-moving*. there is none. a command for attack-moving, a command for formation-moving, but *no* command to attack-formation-move. the attack-move function has very limited use because unless all of your units are close to the same speed, the fast and weak ones will move ahead of the slower ones and get slaughtered by the full force of the enemy long before your heavy units can back them up.

let's use Atreides as an example. your Minos need bikes/Fremen as meat shields and to provide the correct balance of firepower vs. an Ordos enemy. Take bikes and Fremen out of the equation, and the Atreides is dead. I am sure we can all agree on that. (Or replace bikes/Fremen with Sards or whatever else you'd use intead, the same principle applies). If the Ordos is at the other side of the map and I want to attack him, I am forced to:

1. Formation-move: watching my army move - meanwhile i can do nothing else or there is a very good chance i'll lose them all to the enemy - until they walk to the other side of the map where the enemy is waiting. They must be watched 100% of the time they are moving, and stopped as needed, or the enemy will slaughter them easily. This would be just fine if I didn't like to multi-task; and launch multi-pronged attacks at different spots on the map at the same time, and continue building and fortifying my base (in case he has Ix etc.) as my army moves. Of course, a good RTS player knows that spending 5-minutes of gametime watching your army move across a map while you do nothing else is just plain bad Strat. Yet Emperor gives you no choice. Only option 2...

2. Attack-move: All my bikes/Fremen/Sards/Infantry or whatever else I am backing up my Minos with will get to the full-force of the enemy long before my Minos do, which results in their surefire death, and the subsequent death of whatever I have left. For this reason, attack-move is largely useless if the map is even semi-big and you don't have all-fast units as an Ordos might ie: Dust Scouts/Lasertanks. As you can see, this option is often much worse than the first.

Now, if there was an attack-formation-move, think of all the issues that would be resolved and what a great improvement that would be to Emperor gameplay. I am sure it could have been programmed into the game in a matter of minutes with just a slight modification of the current commands. Note, this command would not have to replace either of the above 2 commands, rather it could be a third stand-alone option.

As for other bugs that make Emperor gameplay a lot worse than it should be, how about Fremen Warriors firing at vehicles? For some units, I can understand why an issue like this would be subjective. With Fremen Warriors, there is no player in his right mind who would ever have any reason whatsoever to want them to fire at vehicles. Yet they still do, and all it does is get your Fremen Warriors killed and waste the money you spent building them.

I agree that the developers of Emperor were smart people, as is noted by the amazing balance which is present amongst all the Houses/Sub-Houses. Though it appears that as with most games, Emperor was just rushed out the door before it was complete and not enough time was invested in correcting the known issues. Such as Refinery Waypoints, which still do not work even though they are a promised feature in the Patches. The absence of this is even *worse* than the no formation-attack-move. If harvesters only ever went where you wanted them to, Emperor would be a vastly more strategic and enjoyable game. This was even Westwood's intention, but they didn't re-patch after their promised feature failed to function.

It's always good to hear from someone who used to work at Westwood, so I do hope you post here more often, Chris.

to Nyar: units have very buggy overall pathfinding, but it's more evident on some maps than others. The Fremen example I used was in Quickmatch on Canyon Channel. I had the lower right base, and when I sent my Fremen out the righthand side of my base to the rock outcropping to the Northeast of my start position, they actually went all the way around the opposite way of the spot I had clicked on and moved right in front of where a huge section of the enemy was clustered. It is hard to explain this in words, but I do know what I am talking about and that in that situation as with many others, my units took the most illogical and absurd path imaginable. I was already heavily engaged with Ix Projections on that outcropping, which were projecting the enemy Minos and beating them down, so there was no way to move my Fremen manually since I needed constantly to be concentrating on the battle at hand in order to Win.

My Fremen died due to the path they took, and to add irony to injury, the only reason I lost that outcropping was because all my Projectors just stopped projecting for no logical reason at all. Another bug that causes losses. There is no way I could have lost that game if I had been able to continue with my Projections, though at least if my Fremen hadn't have died I would have had a fighting chance even with the Ix bug that made me lose.

[rigel6669]

I suggest that you read the emperor manual first before you start complaining about the command keys.

If you can do better in programming, show us and release a new emperor game.

[number6]

I am no expert in this game that's for sure, but I thought the IX projectors are supposed to stop working once the enemy has discovered that projections are just that (a phantom image). What is more odd to me about the projections is that they can actually do damage before the enemy realizes it is fighting an image? I never did use projectors much because of their limited usefulness to me. I prefer big powerful units like minos (see my avatar) supported by Guild tanks (I think that's what they are called). The point I guess I am trying to make is that you seem to be attacking features of the game that were designed for a specific purpose when you complain about the Projectors stopped working. That is a built in weakness of that unit. It makes sense if you buy into the whole SciFi storyline to begin with. Your complaint about the pathfinding is also kind of pointless. Show me any RTS game that does this right 100% of the time. That's why RTS games have concepts of grouping like units and hotkeys for groups. You see your troops doing something stupid and you stop them with hotkeys and new destinations to compensate for algorithmic inadequacies. Emperor is not perfect, but it is probably the best 3D RTS around in my opinion (Yes,even better than Warcraft III). If you don't find the game fun that may be because you don't like RTS games in general. The game was easily worth the $50 I payed for it when it came out. Another thing you are missing out on when you buy a product way after it was released is that you missed the online community that used to play online back then. It was also new and there was no other 3D RTS's that looked as good as Emperor back then. Now you have Warcraft III to compare it to (I still think Emperor looks better).