Roman Empire Strategy Game Demo

[RichardW]

Roman Empire Strategy Game Demo 1.0

Updated version of Demo(PPC & XP) available. More functions, better AI. Commercial version of this Game is now available for purchase thru FastSpring.

This game was built using Basic4ppc with imagelibex.dll and sprite.dll. Thanks to AGraham for providing and upgrading those libraries they made things easy. The demo package comes with device and desktop versions of the executable. (limit of 100 years/turns) Hope you enjoy conquering the Mediterranean world. Pictures and more at my web page:

The Roman Empire

Only tested on IPAQ 2210 and XP. Not sure how it will run and display on other models.

The device setup program is based on allset by David Erez. This is much simpler than creating giant cab files.

 

[ExcludeReality]

Good game!
It displayed fine on my LG ks20.

I'm not very good with Roman history, but I knew about the battle of Cartago.
The first time I played it I was a bit confused.
Maby you should make labels that shows up when you move the mouse over a button, just so it's easier to see what they mean.

 

[Mr_Gee]

Maby you should make labels that shows up when you move the mouse over a button, just so it's easier to see what they mean.

I was thinking the same thing (desktop version)

I'm wondering how you made the AI, if you have any...
or is it just a random number?

 

[RichardW]

Thanks for the feedback.

I was thinking about tooltips but as the device does not support this I opted to go with the ? icon on each toolbar to explain the commands. The game is primarily for the device. It is the flexibility of b4ppc that let me provide a desktop version with virtually no effort or extra coding.

My goal is to make the game with its icons so intuitive that help is not really needed. However a strategy game requires some instructions so gamers can get the most out of it. You need a long term strategy to win this game otherwise everybody will eventually get together and wipe you out. If you don't beat Carthage the game is up as the fall of Carthage lets you quickly acquire North Africa and Spain with all their pop and resources. You must expend some effort to keep down rebellions until their loyalty rates get higher.

There is an AI engine but it is overruled by an historical timeline which attempts to keep nations and tribes to the strategy and roles they pursued way back when. I may put in a switch so this can be turned off to engender a bit more of a challenge.

 

[ExcludeReality]

Check out my strategy game Anarchy Republic.
Not nearly as advanced or historicly accurate (Assuming there ever was an Anarchy Republic ) like yours, but it might be interesting.
Your game is a bit more "global" than mine, though

 

[Mr_Gee]

There is an AI engine but it is overruled by an historical timeline which attempts to keep nations and tribes to the strategy and roles they pursued way back when. I may put in a switch so this can be turned off to engender a bit more of a challenge.

Any chance we (I) can take as look at the AI part, i'm very interested how you've solved that
(I was also making a game, but the IA prevented me from finishing it)

 

[RichardW]

The AI engine in this game is one of the simpler ones I have developed and I'm still tinkering with it. It is based on a number of earlier games I wrote in javascript and these are freely available on my web site. The first was Ancient Empires, followed by Roman Empire(JS) and lastly Byzantium which is probably the best example. Just popped over to the site and looked at the JS code - it is rather cryptic.

The overall theory is that each nation has a set of home provinces it must try and retain. It then has a 2nd set of nice to conquer. During alternate turns(to speed things up) a check is make for each nation of these provinces and if one is held by an enemy the target and path is given to the army and then an effort is made to take it back (in order of importance). There is a movement routine that takes care of moving armies to and fro. In earlier games the units found their own paths to the target. In The Roman Empire because it only has some 30 provinces I opted to go with a path table (and a road to Rome table for rebel armies) which allows armies to take realistic journeys from one prov to another and to retrace that path home again. There are thresholds for nations and armies which prevent them from fighting all the time. They do need to rest and recuperate. Also there is a time table which alters a nation's provinces, leaders, goals, etc. so that they will not keep behaving in the same old way but will follow historical events. Just as important is the economics and recruiting that slowly builds the state / military. These are based on historical data as much as possible. Random numbers are used in a very controlled manner to affect aspects of the economy, Romanization and loyalty so that each game can be slightly different from the preceding.

If you haven't fallen asleep yet and the JS stuff has left you perplexed I can send you the AI routines but the JS is better (has diplomacy, trade, spys)

 

[ExcludeReality]

I had a look at the Byzantium game. Very impressive!

JavaScript is certainly not the right language for games, the only net-based one I know is Flash.

 

[Mr_Gee]

If you haven't fallen asleep yet and the JS stuff has left you perplexed I can send you the AI routines but the JS is better (has diplomacy, trade, spys)

It looks like you really thought this through.
And no you haven't lost me

I love javascript, so i will definitely take a look at your JS files
I'll be in touch again

@ExcludeReality
Why not?
it just depends on what you are trying to do, for a browserbased "guess the number" game JS is perfect, (especially with the b4ppc Web lib)

 

[ExcludeReality]

I learned JavaScript under the impression that it is a small scripting language, used to deal with cookies for example.
You can of course make a game, but it is not the right language.

Flash is much more similar to C++ and Java, and provides better functionality

it just depends on what you are trying to do, for a browserbased "guess the number" game JS is perfect

I agree with you. For a "guess the number" JavaScript is a bit more lucis than it would be to write a pseudo random number code

 

[Bobbes]

Hi Richard,
your game doesn´t run on my Device (MDA Vario IV).

Regards,
Bernd

 

[RichardW]

Thanks for trying. Unfortunately I have no way to remedy this as my devices are all rather old though very servicable. I will have to get one with vga and an updated OS one of these days.