CoCoNet 1.2.0 realeased (2015-03-30)

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CoCoNet 1.2.0 realeased (2015-03-30)

Postby Kroah » 30 Mar 2015, 02:20

Hi all,

CoCoNet 1.2.0 is released !

After several long game sessions, i've finally put together a new version of CoCoNet.
It would need more testing, but i know some people wandering on the forum can help me on this task! :)

This release adds 2 new features:
- A new custom map based on the Amiga game Kingdom of Englands (with new sprites and a new filling method).
- A new custom AI named Kroah which tries to enhance many aspects of the vanilla AI (better army/navy scaling, defense/taskforce balance, war declaration, reinforcements, etc.).
PS: The new AI cheats as much as the vanilla one: cheating is handled by the core engine, not by the AI. But the new behaviors make it stronger. I won't recommend you to play at a level higher than 4 for you first game.

Along this, some bugs have been fixed (and many small features are still on the todo list).

Next step is to check/fix compatibility of all users custom maps (and fixing some area borders glitches i see on some maps).
If you have a newer version of your custom maps, then please post it here in this thread so i can check/fix your up-to-date map.

All comments and feedbacks are welcome. If you find some bugs, post here the needed information with the Logs folder.
Thank you and have fun!

Changelog:
- New: Custom map based on the Amiga game Kingdom of Englands.
- New: Custom AI named Kroah which tries to enhance many aspects of the vanilla AI.
- New: A new transparent filling method when conquering areas.
- Fixed: Private messages are now correctly spelled.
- Fixed: Crash when giving up after the end of turn.
- Fixed: Purple navy buttons are now correctly disabled when moving to an inner area.
- Fixed: Cancelling an army move order when all navy are already moved does not trigger anymore the popup message "No more navy to move".
- Fixed: Many more small bugs.

http://bringerp.free.fr/RE/Files/CoCoNet-1.2.0.7z

Image
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Re: CoCoNet 1.2.0 realeased (2015-03-30)

Postby dizt3mp3r » 30 Mar 2015, 04:30

Very good indeed, trying it now.
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Re: CoCoNet 1.2.0 realeased (2015-03-30)

Postby dizt3mp3r » 09 Apr 2015, 19:28

So far, no bugs found. A few crashes but I know what has caused those, I've been mucking around with various versions of .NET framework. Just restoring back to standard version and will re-test and raise any issues that arise.

First of all testing the maps.

Standard
Mediterreanean Year One
Nieuw Standaard
Kingdoms of Englands
USA enhanced
Struggle for Elora

The new Kingdoms of Englands map you provided is interesting but straightforward and winnable. I did find it difficult to differentiate between the colours of some of the AI factions. Perhaps a hover-over tooltip on the area could pop-up and display the owning enemy faction name?

On all these maps the game has been very enjoyable but very, very much harder to win. I have been playing the Nieuw Standard map from Christine and against the new AI it can be almost impossible to win except by good gameplay and sheer determination. Have just played as the Ottomans on Christine's map and found the Brits a tough nut to crack sending 7 million Turkish troops in to defeat an army of a mere 350,000 and losing a couple of million in the process...

_______At/Def__At/Def_Army/Navy
________Army____Navy___Costs
England___1/1_____1/1____6/2
Germany__1/2_____1/2____4/4
France____3/2_____3/3____3/5
USA______3/2_____2/2____4/5
Japan ____2/3_____2/2____3/5
Russia____4/3_____3/4____2/5
Ottomans_4/3_____3/3____3/6
Spain ____2/2_____2/1____4/5
Italy _____2/3_____2/2____4/4
Austria___2/2_____3/3____3/6

I played my first losing game of Coconet to your new AI. I struggled at a lowly level five on the Mediterreanean Year One map by Mael15 as the Spartans and was overwhelmed by Scythian hordes. A defeat has ever happened before and the AI played well. I have learnt to never bring my fleets back to the home port which is regularly attacked, despite not having a fleet there the last turn. The AI uses his fleets more intelligently and appears to probe for weakspots and attack them more regularly.

When your strength surpasses a certain limit all the players turn on the other player very efficiently and can reduce an AI player to dust in a short period of time. Found it quite hard to keep expanding when the all the AIs turn on you, the only way seemed to reduce down to a lower number of territories and then build big defences ready for the next time the AI turns...

My map, USA enhanced does not load. It generates errors then crashes out. I was aware that there were errors in the map but the new version of Coconet is more particular about all map factors being correct.

Really enjoying the new version. The AI is vastly improved and a good and hard battle results from level 5. Goodness knows what will happen at level 6 and beyond. Well done Kroah. It is is stable and plays very well. It also seems to be lighter on resources, in particular CPU usage appears to be lower.
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Re: CoCoNet 1.2.0 realeased (2015-03-30)

Postby Ayoross » 20 Apr 2015, 08:00

This new version works quite well, but if you just watch AI playing long enough, the game eventually hangs. I hope you will eliminate remaining bugs.
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Re: CoCoNet 1.2.0 realeased (2015-03-30)

Postby Kroah » 20 Apr 2015, 21:28

dizt3mp3r, thank you very much for your feedback.
You can send me the last version of your map if you want, i could check what prevent it to load.

Ayoross wrote:This new version works quite well, but if you just watch AI playing long enough, the game eventually hangs. I hope you will eliminate remaining bugs.

Hello Ayoross, i usually stop testing the game with AI after around 500 turns, but i never encountered any crash.

The only bug i encountered is caused by the screensaver while using DirectX: the 3D memory surfaces are released and CoCoNet crashes after leaving the screensaver because it tries to read the unallocated memory.

Can you post the Log folder after a crash so i can check what happened ?
You can even send me the last auto save game in the "Saves" folder.

Without any more information, i really can't fix anything, as i told you, we haven't encountered any bugs beside the sreensaver.
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Re: CoCoNet 1.2.0 realeased (2015-03-30)

Postby Ayoross » 21 Apr 2015, 00:05

Anyway it's wonderfull to be able to play again this game.

I'll help as much as I can but I just found the game stuck around year 1939 with an in-game popup telling something like "no navy to move". No crash log, no save game as far as I know.
It was the morning, so maybe the standby mode, I use no screensaver, the display is turned off after 30 minutes. I just remember England was near the victory (as often) :)

BTW I always thought one feature was missing to this game: the upkeep. It would be far more realistic with upkeep costs so that you can't have 10-millions mens army all around the world ^^

I'm also testing the Nieuw standaard map, it looks great ! USA are more balanced, UK seems very strong, Europe is a mess, I love :D
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Re: CoCoNet 1.2.0 realeased (2015-03-30)

Postby dizt3mp3r » 02 May 2015, 01:09

Bug Report: When attacking a neutral or other country, the force move option does not seem to work.

Moving an army into a neutral country when the other player has attacked and won it, has not resulted in war with that country. It is as if the force move did not occur. If it had occurred then surely the winning player would have suffered an attack from your force and you would both now be at war.
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Re: CoCoNet 1.2.0 realeased (2015-03-30)

Postby Kroah » 02 May 2015, 21:54

dizt3mp3r wrote:Bug Report: When attacking a neutral or other country, the force move option does not seem to work.

Moving an army into a neutral country when the other player has attacked and won it, has not resulted in war with that country. It is as if the force move did not occur. If it had occurred then surely the winning player would have suffered an attack from your force and you would both now be at war.

Hello,

As you said, if the first player conquers the neutral country, then the second player would attack the conquered country if the "force order" option is checked when the order is given.

I can't reproduce the bug:
- I launch a standard game with 2 human players: France & Germany
- Both majors order to attack the Belgium with 300 men with the force order option checked.
- France conquers the neutral country first
- Then the Germany attacks the Belgium owned by the France and conquers it
- Wartable shows Germany has declared war to France

Maybe in your case the first player has attacked the neutral country but did not successfully conquered it, then the second player conquered the still neutral country ?

Having a savegame of your game would help to understand what happens (bug or not).

Thank you for your time.
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Re: CoCoNet 1.2.0 realeased (2015-03-30)

Postby dizt3mp3r » 02 May 2015, 22:02

I have noticed it a few times now, next time it occurs I will save the game.

By the way, your forum is occasionally dropping errors too:

General Error
SQL ERROR [ mysql4 ]

Lost connection to MySQL server at 'reading authorization packet', system error: 0 [2013]
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Re: CoCoNet 1.2.0 realeased (2015-03-30)

Postby dizt3mp3r » 13 May 2015, 14:07

I have also noticed an occasional restart error when opening autosave.scn

Image
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Re: CoCoNet 1.2.0 realeased (2015-03-30)

Postby dizt3mp3r » 05 Jun 2015, 19:28

So, Kroah,

Should we consider this new version a beta release?

The AI at level 5 is VERY hard to beat, especially Great Britain. Owning more than half the world as Japan and facing a smaller Britain I expected to be able to hold my own and win the game but not the case... Pouring 4,000,000 strong armies against 250,000 Brits seems to result in ridiculous losses to the Japs. Despite owning 2/3rds of the globe my Japanese armies were continuously and inexorably defeated resulting in a LOSS!

I think Great Britain needs a 'nerf' in the new AI.
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Re: CoCoNet 1.2.0 realeased (2015-03-30)

Postby Kroah » 22 Jun 2015, 19:23

dizt3mp3r wrote:Should we consider this new version a beta release?

Why do you think so ?
If you mean because there's some odd bugs, i really can't do anything without a log file or being able to reproduce it.
I have played v1.2.0 many hours on several weeks with worldwide people, and we did not had a single crash/bug.
I agree there are some bugs left, but as is, i can't do much without more information.
As a last resort, if the last release is too much unstable, the previous version is still available.

dizt3mp3r wrote:The AI at level 5 is VERY hard to beat, especially Great Britain. Owning more than half the world as Japan and facing a smaller Britain I expected to be able to hold my own and win the game but not the case... Pouring 4,000,000 strong armies against 250,000 Brits seems to result in ridiculous losses to the Japs. Despite owning 2/3rds of the globe my Japanese armies were continuously and inexorably defeated resulting in a LOSS!

The new AI tries to optimize his troops, may reinforce some of his countries and try to keep a good balance between his army and navy. He earns as much as the vanilla AI (only the logic changes).
The fact he doesn't throw away his strength highlights some (obvious) unbalances between majors.
If we nerf the England, people using the vanilla AI will see it as underpowered.
If we let it as is, people using the new AI will find it overpowered.

I don't think there's a solution... or maybe lower the level ?
FYI, we did win vs the new AI (level 5) because we played cooperatively, i don't think we would have won otherwise.
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Re: CoCoNet 1.2.0 realeased (2015-03-30)

Postby Christine » 24 Jul 2015, 16:40

dizt3mp3r wrote:On all these maps the game has been very enjoyable but very, very much harder to win. I have been playing the Nieuw Standard map from Christine and against the new AI it can be almost impossible to win except by good gameplay and sheer determination. Have just played as the Ottomans on Christine's map and found the Brits a tough nut to crack sending 7 million Turkish troops in to defeat an army of a mere 350,000 and losing a couple of million in the process...

Interessting, I noticed this bug in the original game too. I was playing England and was defending Arabia with only 120.000 troops against an army of >10.000.000 russian soldiers. I beat'em many times.
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Re: CoCoNet 1.2.0 realeased (2015-03-30)

Postby Ayoross » 24 Jul 2015, 19:18

This is likely not a bug, but a consequence of the engine battle calculation. I don't know in details how it works, but an army strength 1 is almost unbeatable by army strength 3 or 4.
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Re: CoCoNet 1.2.0 realeased (2015-03-30)

Postby Kroah » 26 Jul 2015, 13:59

Ayoross wrote:This is likely not a bug, but a consequence of the engine battle calculation. I don't know in details how it works, but an army strength 1 is almost unbeatable by army strength 3 or 4.

You are entirely right.

In fact, the army retreating factor is exponential: 2^n with n the army strength
So:
with n=1, the retreating factor is 2, this means (i simplify), the army will retreat when half of his troops are lost: loss = troops / (2^1)
with n=3, the retreating factor is 8, loss = troops / (2^3), the army will retreat when 1/8 of his troops are lost.
You will understand why you need so much troops for Russia...

To keep the game enjoyable, i think using an army strength of 2 or 3 is OK.
With the last release of CoCoNet, i have slightly updated the combat rules to lower the "exponential" factor using Lanchester's laws.
You can have a read there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanchester%27s_laws
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