Demo 7.2 Download

Demo 7.2 has several new features in the military and economic areas, and also some GUI tweaks and bug fixes.

Features:

GUI changes:

Bug Fixes:

1. Fortification and Siege Model
The demo has a first implementation of a fairly-detailed model of fortifications and sieges. One of Clash's goals is to have more-realistic outcomes in warfare and other areas. Walls give the defender a decided advantage, but can be overcome either by siege weapons or a significant manpower advantage of the attacker (numerical advantage needed increases with wall strength). Play the new SiegeWars scenario to see it in action! You can now build your own fortifications using the "Wall" button on the toolbar, and pay for the build similar to how you do for building roads. You can read more about walls and combat involving them in the Fortifications and Sieges thread.

2. Naval Combat
We've now got a naval combat model that allows for fleet battles. One fleet from each side is near the "toe" of Italy in the delenda scenario if you want to fight a quick naval combat. This will get a lot more exciting when the AI knows how to use naval power, hopefully in demo 8! For now, ships that are caught in port fight as low-value land units, and are usually destroyed unless their side has land superiority.

3. Militia that automatically forms in a square to fight off invaders
Your whole city of people won't just sit there like spineless wimps to be taken over by a few old arthritic soldiers anymore! If the relatively poor combat potential of a local militia could turn the tide of battle, the people will join in! At least, if they like you better than the other guys. If militia units were active in a combat, you'll be notified of it in the detailed combat report.

4. Economic Specials (Gold, Cloth, Tin, Salt)
Specials are scarce "strategic" resources that are found locally (gold, tin, salt), or specialty finished goods that can best be produced where the primary resources are (cloth). The people in your economy automatically use these locally as needed, and merchants can also redistribute these goods to wherever is most willing to pay for them! For now we only have special commodities in the delenda scenario. You can read more about special commodities and are future plans for them on the Economy page. Actually, both specials and merchants were already in Demo 6, but hadn't made it back into Demo 7 until now.

5. Merchants that automatically trade in these goods and others
In accord with Clash's low-micromanagement philosophy, merchants automatically search the world for good trade deals. These can be involve any type of good, but frequently at least one leg of the trade involves a special commodity. That is because specials have a value that varies depending on whether they are locally available or not. The specials I have in so far, and the basic good they convert to are: Gold -> Services ; Tin -> Resources ; Cloth -> Manufactured Goods ; Salt -> Food

6. More-streamlined movement interface
We got several requests for improving the movement interface so that it involved fewer clicks, and provided a way to cancel the last move segment. When you are in move mode you can now exit by either hitting End Move, as before, or double-clicking on the last selected square for the move. This works even for single-square moves, just double-click the square you want to move to after entering move mode. If you make a mistake while entering moves, a right-click will delete the last movement segment. There is also a movement option we're testing that doesn't use the move button at all. If you want to enter a simple order to move to a square, you can select a TF in the Units Box and then double-click on the square where you want the TF to go. This should show a movement path as normal. If it doesn't (there are still some bugs in this approach) just enter the move normally.

7. Jericho Scenario AI Improvements and "ladder" of difficulty
In response to several comments on the Jericho AI, we have made a few simple changes. (Major changes will have to wait until the real AI gets going.) The results are that Jericho as Jericho is now even tougher to win. We'll see who's first to win it! There is also now a clear ladder of difficulty with the civs at the bottom of the choice screen being very easy to win with, and with the challenge increasing noticeably from the middle of the list on up. We have also made technological progress more achievable in the scenario, although it is still fairly slow.

Finally, we added a credits screen so that all the people who have contributed to the demo can be recognized.

Tips:
Play the Dawn Tutorial Scenario First if you're new to Demo 7. It has a wealth of info about the GUI and game mechanics. Questions about issues that are clearly explained in the tutorial will be met with: PTFT! (like RTFM).

1. You shouldn't play Attila unless you have a fast computer or are patient. It can run quite slowly on older computers. We are looking into fixing that.

2. At present you can't get the win notification in the Delenda or Jericho scenarios. So don't expect a victory message!

3. In the Dawn tutorial scenario you'll frequently need to run five to ten turns after achieving all the objectives before you see the victory message. As before, the Dawn tutorial is the first thing you should play!

The Team really wants to hear what you think about the Demo! Comments and criticisms are solicited.

What's in Demo 7?

The main improvements in Demo 7 include:

• In-Game Tutorial—playtester feedback said we needed it to introduce all our novel game concepts painlessly.
• Scenario Generation—you can create your own detailed scenarios even now! All scenario information is in XML files, and we'll have an editor in the future.
• Technology Model—only partly implemented, but it's adding depth to the game already.
• Province System—territory in Clash is organized flexibly by province, provinces expand automatically if good land is available, reducing micromanagement.
• Government/Social Model—not in Demo 7, but the coding is fairly far along. The "Ruler" button in the demo shows a preview of a what's to come!

This version of the game is a demo of design concepts. It is not even close to the completed version, but its a bit of fun already! The design of the game is likely to evolve in later versions. We are continuously testing out ideas to see if they work, or if we should replace them with something else! If you have any comments on Clash of Civilizations, then please post a message on the Clash Forum at Apolyton.

These instructions are for Windows machines. However, the demo can in principle be run on a wide variety of OSs because Java is cross-platform. (You can try running the .jar file and see what happens. Failing that try to find out what users of your OS do to run a "Java 2" program. If you have success with a particular OS please tell us what to do to run it, and we'll include it in the instructions. For Mac OSX just put the jar on the desktop and run it.) The download instructions are listed below. Use Step #1, then go to (you guessed it!) #2. (manual only available thru link above for now).

1. (Skip if you already did this for Demo 5 or 6) 
Go to  http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/jre/download-windows.html, and Download the JRE version that best describes your usage (either US English only, or international). It is called the "JRE file" below.  Its a large (~6MB) self-extracting exe.

2.  Install the JRE file to the default directory.

3.  Reboot if required

4.  Follow Download Step #2.
 

1. Click on the hyperlink below (Download Demo 7.2 Now!).

2. Unzip the contents (you don't need to do anything with the .bat file for now).

3. IMPORTANT: Clash MUST be in the Windows Desktop folder for now.  Please extract ClashD7.jar there.

4. To start the game, double-click the file and give it about 10 seconds to load. If you have problems, let us know. 

ATTENTION:If you follow these instructions and the the program "bombs", please try the following:
   a. Create a directory called ClashDemo on C:\
   b. Copy the ClashD7.jar file from your desktop into the new ClashDemo directory.
   c. Extract that batch file in the zip to the new ClashDemo directory.
   d. Run the batch file (double-click the file named "Run_D7.bat")
   e. If it works, great. If not, please send Mark Everson the error message from the DOS window.