This is the compiled results of the PZ2 Player's Survey. (for the "rating:" it was on a linear 1-10 scale with 10=best) 1) How did you enjoy the game overall? rating: 10 Good on both counts. one of the better games of my memory Game was quite fun. Would have been more so had I not been overran... 1A) fun rating: 8 rating: 10 Much fun. rating: 8. 1B) playability rating: 10 rating: 8 2) Game Setup This game had great parameters. 2A) Double Civs - did you like the double civs start yup I usually like this as games starts off faster. It confused me, too many people. It made me feel like I had to lower the world population, this eventually led to War. Nations were destroyed. Sheep were violated. People burned down all my gingerbread houses. Much fun was had by all. Oh wait, that's a good thing. rating: 8. Double civs was great. In fact, anything that makes the first few updates go by quicker is good. Yes, I very much liked the double civs. Was nice to get things rolling a bit more quickly than usual. It's fine - if it's there, I'll use it. rating: 10 Double civ start made it easy to focus on expansion and tech simultaneously. I don't understand how some cats misuse their sectors and sometimes wonder what the hell they're doing over there. 2B) Resources - did you like the flat resources Perfect. rating: 10. Resources...while gold was tight, it worked very well. it was okay, but the only dust in the mountains thing meant there was one and only one way to play it which I'm sure almost everyone caught onto quickly. I think forcing someone to make a trade off with respect to dust/bars and everything else is a good game feature. It definitely made life easier; didn't really have to plan my nation layouts according to where resources were but rather how I wanted them positioned. Divided on if this is a good thing or not (it did help reduce some micromanagement). I liked the resource allocation (with go_renew) rating: 10 Certainly makes it easier to plan out your sectors and build highways. 2C) Resources - how was the qty of iron/dust/oil rating: 8 Was good. Including the reduced quantities on the expansion islands. Particularly liked the dust setup; again, I didn't have to work on stripping every sector of dust and then moving on. Made it much easier from a management point of view. Also made mountains very valuable targets to go out and acquire. I suppose they were ok. It's a different strategy, and it threw me a little in the beginning. I figured it out after I'd already been setting up that there was no gold anywhere except the mountains. i'm sure everyone else had more iron and cm's they could spend, eventually. Since it was obvious you did your best to eliminate production as a factor, reducing the game to strategy, diplomacy and tactics. I stretched my gun and shell use to the limit every update and still had a surplus of materials. 2D) Map layout - world size rating: 9 Good size - made for some most excellent naval fleets. Very good all around. Your scenario was perfect for combat. The islands were not too big, and not too small, not too close, and not too far away. Even tho I'm partial to land games, the map layout was perfect! 2E) Map layout - types / varieties of start continents Good. rating: 10 I liked the weird island design This was kind of a cool feature. I think Strawberry islands were an advantage, but you did give us all choices. Imo, only a fool would have chosen chocolate or vanilla islands. chocolate countries are scum 2F) Map layout - player placements I felt pretty lucky being surrounded by fodder. Not sure if others felt they were in a similarly advantageous position. rating: 9 the distribution was highly predictable to a veteran player, which means the newbies get screwed (as usual). 2G) Map layout - expansion islands, more / less About right. island size was good. Expansion islands were a little sparse "ok" 2H) Map layout - expansion islands, too close / too far a bit too close Would have liked it if the expansion islands were a bit farther apart. (My being unlucky and not finding the one inbetween [an enemy country] and I spelled my doom.) It would have been nice if they were just a bit farther from main islands... I thought they were a good distance, though it would have been nice to realistically bridge to more of them (I only bridged on some captured islands to expedite the transfer of troops to advancing fronts). Expansion islands were too far away. it seems to me that if one country has islands visible and/or within single bridging distance then every country should have them (or no country should have them) 2I) Map layout - usage of plains (~) as protective beaches Plains are NOT protective beaches. They are, in fact, a military hinderance as they are near impossible to protect. We were able to crush one [enemy] island solely because of the availability of plains - both to use as remote VTOL airbases and the taking of the entire line of plains pre-update to use as a wedge to attack directly into the heart of the islands. People assuming these were protective were in deep trouble. generates both a prefered expansion and a prefered assault direction. unfair to expansion or invasion in an off axis direction rating: 8 Plains did play a factor. rating: 10. 2J) Map layout - continents starting with a 100% stocked fortress Non-factor. The fortress was interesting. rating: 8 not relevant The only thing I didn't like was you giving forts and guns and shells to everyone from the outset, but that turned out to not make much of a difference. The fodderous sheep do need help imo. 2K) Map layout - fairness in starting positions relative to expansion / fodder I felt very lucky; I built a major fleet and used it to sail from one neighbor to the next, invading all along the way. The non-fodder I did identify I made peace with to allow me to continue rolling fodder. seemed good. though i wonder how you seeded things since you said you weren't going to play favorites {DEITY NOTE: I will provide details on how I designed the world} Obviously, my being next to [a powerful enemy] was unfortunate for me. Just had bad luck with #7 being sunk. Besides that, it was ok. ;- 2L) Tech - tech was log 2.25, too fast / slow Tech worked fine. a bit too fast Tech growth was perfect. tech log seemed just about right to me it was okay; i was continually able to pull money from tech to make more goodies. didn't pull enough obviously. 2M) Tech - would having starting tech of (25/50/75/etc) been better/worse starting 0 tech is ok worse Tech was pretty much the normal; not much advantage to pushing tech once a certain tech level was reached. I was able to out-build the tech leaders to compensate for any advantage they had. Higher starting tech would have been worse, low tech wars are quite a lot of fun. 2N) Units - liked / disliked the mobility mods Loved the mobility mods. rating: 10 Limited land unit mobility is a good concept. I used to always feel sorry for the fodder and thought it was a shame how engs, mars, and lars could make entire countries disappear in between updates. Land units with "regular" mobility were way too powerful. I like the lower mobilty mods, requires more strategy thought out. I liked the reduced mobilities The limited unit mob created some new challenges. 2O) Units - did the reduced mob effect your invasions or defenses Can't comment much on units as I never used them in an offensive sense... Concentrated both more on planes. never really became a factor in the game units played very little role in my invasions, despite my massive unit buildups. Invasions were principally a combination of massive fleets combined with airpower (bombers and transports). Usually with the sole purpose of gaining a 100% fort on the enemies island, securing it and then blowing everything to crap. Didn't notice Reduced mob did slow down invasions a little. 2P) Market/Trade - did you use the Market/Trade Not seriously Never used market/trade once. It was a non-factor, since [an ally] was able to dump guns/shells into one of my harbors, and I had a 100% road network through all of my mainlands and expansion islands. Market/trade didn't really use (should have instead of loans) Didn't use market or trade, since I didn't need to, but I like them. never used it. probably too few countries for it to become a factor. ([a country that used the Trade extensively] probably thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread) I made absolutely no use of market and/or trade. It was possible to be entirely self-sufficient and there was so little world-money that noone could afford to purchase things in quantity enough to make a market. Effectively worthless for me. Never like the market 2Q) Market/Trade - what did you think of the 24H/12H times to complete the sale didn't notice I think market/trade sucks anyhow. 3) Micromanagement 3A) too much or too little Micromanagement was better than in most games. Perfect Actually found it to be about right. This was the least amount of micro- management I had to deal with as there was no food and even distrib of commods, basically I just had to decide how I wanted to lay out my nations and that was about it. Micromanagement was nothing more than maximizing civs and uws and building stuff. rating: 9 The only huge amount of micromanagement I had to do was distributing 200 ssms throughout my sectors, so I could use each sector's mobility to move them into the sectors to fire.. including into and thru a plains sector of [the enemy]. Even with the huge road network that was painful and took waaaay too long. Then.. I had to write a script to fire the 1st 60. Ugh. I like the necessity of food and other "micromanagement", but can't complain about anything that makes the game more challenging. Meaning eliminating food and microm makes it easier for the fodder, making the game more challenging. there is no such thing as "too much" or "too little" micromanagement; there is only "do everything you can" 3B) did you like nofood neutral about nofood rating: 10 without making food production much more difficult; it is not really relevant in terms of playing the game. I hate food. Bless you for enabled NOFOOD. Food sucks, it adds way too much micromanagement. I'd say include the food next time, but then again I do hate getting radar reports of fishing trawler activity every update. Actually loved it! It's pretty much ceased being a tool you could use against your enemy (starve em) and been replaced by shelling everything to oblivion. Was nice not to have to setup massive fishing fleet. No food is nice. I don't care either way... 3C) approx how much time per update were you spending on country management Umm... way too much. But much of my management was focused on shifting resources towards islands that formed a front. I didn't have to do a lot, except during attacks. I'd say maybe an hour an update, a lot less in the beginning. 30-45 minutes not too much time, pretty good Not much time at all managing my country each update. I was small, and most everything was automated. 3D) did rollover avail help or hurt Didn't notice the rollover avail. Rollover helped a bit. Wasn't a big factor really though. I think it introduces a few more 'tricks' for micromanagment, but in the way that it can let newbies recover from a mistake it is probably on the whole a good thing. I think it should suffer significantly more damage from shelling/bombing/att/ass/etc. and should probably decay quickly if no civs are available to replenish it. Pretty much useless. And makes things very confusing, to be honest. Random CM factories would end up with extra avail, which could be leveraged... and then lost once production was maximized again. And it had no effect on building as sectors that needed avail were typically at the max every update anyway. The only place it proved slightly useful was plains... for building bridges. rollover was helpful It being my first games with rollover, I don't think I made enough use of it in the beginning, but I think it can help. Rollover avail was cool, and I don't see how it could hurt. Extra avail is always good to me. 4) Update Schedule 4A) too fast / too slow rating: 10 It was about right - the Wednesday and Saturday breaks were definitely needed though. I was spending 5-8 hours a night planning, attacking, building, etc. The breaks were critical to being able to keep it going. ok if the timing were a bit different fine One less update per week would have been good. Mon, Tue, Thur, Fri is my ideal update schedule. Update schedule was just right. In the beginning I thought it was too slow, but that was just because I haven't played for a while and forgot how time consuming the game becomes. There was a time when there were 4 updates/day! schedule - good 4B) convenient / inconvenient time of day It was great to a regularly scheduled update time. I have a hard time believing that a 10 pm Eastern time update would pose a big problem for anyone. It's {very early} morning in Europe and early evening on the west coast. The only problem for me was the update time. Perfect - 7pm PST. Update time was fantastic for me. I'm biased, but as the father of a two year old living in the east {North America}, 9:30 or 10 PM is optimum for me. wish it was like 7 hrs earlier. Until last week, I was only on during the Mon + Fri (sometimes) updates. No internet connection at home + 2nd job. Extremely inconvenient. Reading back I just scrapped all planes in an airfield instead of the ones below tech x, including the ones I just built, just because I was too groggy to pay attention, is not my kind of fun. 4C) do you prefer fixed or rolling updates Fixed. Rolling updates are a headache of massive proportions. At least with fixed you can schedule and plan (before the game) if you can make the updates. With rolling you will ALWAYS be screwed up at some point and it's just not really fun. Depends on the time of the update. I wouldn't mind having updates in the middle of the day during work, but 4 AM updates just completely wreck your social life. I prefer fixed updates, but with something like a +/- 1/2 hr window of random update time, so scripts aren't so devastating. I'm old though, I suppose the new generation of empire players are very script oriented. Shifting updates would have been better. I prefer fixed updates if they are at a time I like :-) I personally like the 30/42/54 schemes. Rolling is preferred, would not participate if at 5pm EDT or in sleep times. I might prefer rolling instead of fixed. 5) The Game 5A) what "flavor" did you chose and how did it work out Vanilla. Yum. Easy micromanagement, easy defense, easy initial setup. Strawberry, which gave an advantage of defendable bridges in the middle of your island and the 2 extra producing sectors of course. I think I was a Strawberry. It worked out fine - bridges "smoothed" out the landmass into a normal shape and the inconvenient plains were totally out of the way. I was vanilla. I feel like I came out of the gate very well. strawberry, worked pretty well. 5B) did you get your economy off to a good start Almost perfectly. I make at least one grave mistake each game startup. After that, I pay more attention. Definitely. Immediately moved civs and uws into mountains to maximize the bar production throughout the game. economy went well My economy was off and rolling very quickly. "Yes" 5C) how did you do on initial expansion Fantasic. I focused on ships and expansion rather than technology. I captured every expansion island surrounding me and several of neighbors that didn't move quickly enough. This set me up for success. Rocked, even without making most of the updates. Probably because of a lot of fodder around me. too slow on initial expansion My expansion was very poor. I missed a couple of close ones due to bad luck, but also did not have a lot of frigates out there... 3 harbours, sending out ships to all 6 directions. 5D) did you focus on tech, expansion, both, neither, or other both, slowed down tech later. I think I was among the tech leaders in the early going. Definitely expansion. By grabbing these early islands, I was nicely positioned to see who was fodder or not. An early sac cap garnered me extra funds which immediately went into other ships with which to invade said nation. They fell over pretty quickly. [I was] too focused on tech a bit more on tech 5E) diplomacy Diplomacy was really kept to a minimum. Had two NA agreements with neighbors, one a 1 update and the other a 2 update. Later on, I expanded my relationship with one of these neighbors to collaborate against [enemy #1] and [enemy #2] who were perceived a bigger mutual threat than me alone. I think keeping my mouth-shut and being very civil and concillatory in telegrams helped push [that neighbor] to help me. Was interesting. Established a good relationship with [a neighbor] early. I had already been planning on hitting either [victim #1] or [victim #2]. It's what kept me alive... I did very well. [two early allied countries] were the only countries I was not fairly friendly with. Even if I had been with them, I think I would have been rolled by the others along with them. So, no real gain would have been had. The other thing that did help was [an ally]'s inexperience in dealing with [an enemy]. He felt he did need to have help if he were to take him on - and with my anonymity, he wasn't sure who I was except someone competent. 5F) any missed opportunities or lucky finds I had an extremly hard time hitting on [a victim], being unable to reach him with planes from airfields, because the #7 island only had 1 usable sector and I thought it better to keep it a radar. I think I should've taken on [a different neighbor] early in the game. Being [near the top of] the power list with just 1 main island was a strange experience though. nah. The main missed opportunity for me was not rolling [neighbor #1] or [neighbor #2] as soon as I found them. I have an annoying habit of waiting until I have an insurmountable size force before I attack. Quite often, someone else beats me to the punch with a smaller invasion force that still gets the job done. Just the early fodder and numerous sac caps I had. Each sac cap contributed to my treasury and my navy which then visited the next neighbor. It was like dominos after that. That and [an enemy player] stepping away from the game. I don't believe it would have mattered in the end, but it allowed us to roll his nation in amazingly fast fashion. I didn't meet anyone until they were attacking me. 6) Please rate the Deity on: Deity did a fine job. Couple of hiccups early on with the router issue, but it wouldn't be an empire game without a hiccup or two. all deities are scum. fine for as far as I got. 6A) fair rating: 10 I hope so. :-) Haven't experienced anything negative anyway. 6B) attentive no complaints here. rating: 10 The diety was quite fair and attentive. Incredibly attentive. I was shocked and how quickly you were able to respond to system or game issues. It was a real pleasure knowing that, despite any problem, it would be fixed or at least noted very quickly. You did an excellent job. 6C) informative of game status/issues Great rating: 10 6D) did you check out "info sheep" after I read this. Not until now. :-P Info sheep was amusing. 7) Additional Comments Not too much else to comment on. I thought this game was one of the more playable games I've had, largely because of the reduced micromanagement. Were it not for some of these changes, I don't know that I could have been as successful as I was with a large nation. I simply couldn't have kept up. Thought it unusual that [enemy #1] had almost no subs or ASW. [ally] and I used this to our extreme advantage, both in intelligence, mining, assaulting and torpedoing. His defenses were pretty much limited to forts. [enemy #2) had absolutely no defenses which explains why he fell so amazingly quickly. [victim #1] probably had the best defenses, but also benefited from a point in game time where there were no aircraft (bombers) with which to destroy his inland forts. Learned a lot again, even found bugs that we were able to fix in the new server release. I've had a lot of fun. I think it's the first game I actually didn't miss an update in, despite the horrendous timing. :-P Thanks for running it! Not much else to say. As soon as [enemy] went hostile to me, I should have moved my bank and main harbor to the opposite side of him, and built up to attack. Once I didn't do that, it was just a matter of time before he got me. Thanks for an awesome game. Great game, and if anyone didn't have fun, it's their own fault. Good game! Thank you. The forces that [my ally] and I were bringing to bear were enormous. They were as follows... [the ally]: 2 CALs, 4 BBs, 2 HCs, 12 DDs, 7 INFs, 3 HATs, and 4 LINFs to this party. All ships and units are fully loaded. BBs, HCs and DDs were just upgraded. [the survey submitter]: 2 CALs, 2 BBs, 2 HCs, 2 AACs, 14 DDs, 18 LCs, 10 PTs, 11 SBs; 12 LARs, 8 MARs, 8 LINFs, 4 ARTs and some leftover CAVs. These two fleets were attacking from opposite side of the island. Each then proceeded to the next island, attacking from opposite sides (and growing as they went). No contest. If I could make a suggestion, it would be cool if PZIII was land based and included food for the sheep (so one can starve the rebellious ones). I love it when all the fodder is up close and personal like, and the sheep are actually forced to graze. It was good to see fort_fire again. It enabled a number of players to last longer. {Deity note here: The following is an "Additional Comment" from one of the players, which seems to sum up the turning/deciding points of the game very well. I'm leaving it un-de-identitied to preserve clarity} There were a couple of key points to the game, I'm not sure if everyone understood just how important they were. 1. Rook's bailing and Ricin figuring it out. obviously critical. Ricin was able to roll the subby. Game over. 2. Dorsai's stand against beep. Not so obvious but important. beep seemed to be rolling along til he hit Dorsai. Then he was frozen for quite a long time. Long enough that by the time Ricin was about to hit Rook, Shake and I were about the size of the Rook-beep alliance. 3. Shake's rolling n/a with beep + Rook. I wanted to attack beep instead of nuke_em. nuke_em was annoying but really not much of a threat and beep was MUCH closer for me. That was good diplomacy on their part, it not only kept Shake from being a threat, it also kept me from really being a problem. Of course, we probably would have gotten our butts kicked but it would have been oh so much fun. 4. Btus.. man, I think we all had btu problems. 5. I think the only artillary unit I faced was a lone "artillary" on beeps island. No one else built hvy artillary, or artillary at all. I swear I think beep had 1/2 of his units on that island, but they were all lt inf or lt armor. One or 2 hvy artillary by beep or nuke_em would have really hurt. Units are so damn tough vs shelling and missiles, you have to just pin bomb them. Two sectors, each with 25 guns and shells, and 1 hvy artillary could have ruined me. Maybe I'm missing something here. {Deity commentary: At PZ2 endgame, HATs were the most popular land unit in the game. Out of a total of 450 units, There are 82 HATs, 81 LINFs, 68 INFs, 67 LARs, 32 MARs, 26 CAVs, 26 ARTs, and a bunch of "others". So where were all the HATs...}