Oh no, I can confirm this bug. It only happens if one plays with less than the maximum number of parties in a scenario. Will be fixed as soon as possible. Thanks a lot for reporting!
Thank you very much for your constructive comments. Some of them (more intuitive unit symbols, better artillery usage by A.I.) were addressed in today's update release!
I have such a spectate mode for myself for development purposes, but I am reluctant to make it public. First, one can easily cheat this way oneself. Second, due to incomplete knowledge the AI appears more deliberate/sinister as it actually is. Actually it combines only a handful of local rules with a very coarse strategic planning layer. This simplicity would become much more obvious if one could watch its behavior in total, so I fear it could do more harm than good for the overall game experience...
Let me take your example to explain the probability calculations. The settlement (factor x2) is defended by an infantry (defense value 4), resulting in a total defense value of 8. The attacking infantry (value 3) is supported by two artillery units (2 times +3), yielding a total attack value of 9. Taken together, in 9 of 17 (=8+9) cases, the attacker should win, whereas in 8 of 17 cases the defender should be successful. The defending city may get additional support by adjacent infantry or near artillery units of the same party, even if they are currently invisible to the attacker. So in this example the attacker should have a small advantage of 9 vs. 8, but only if really no additional opponent units interfere. While the random algorithm is really unbiased towards any party, seemingly unfair overall results are not so improbable...
The debriefing statistics provides a few insights into your relative good or bad luck: If the length of the battles one bar exceeds the length of the odds bar, you were favored by luck in this match, otherwise the opposite holds true. The absolute odds score corresponds to your tactical skill. If it is greater than 0.5, then you had a tendency to fight in favorable situations, irrespective of the actual outcomes.
Of course prototypes with additional unit types exist, but the main challenge is to make the AI opponents smart enough to adequately use them. Both the tactical and strategical choices grow exponentially with each additional type. At least ships (both transport and gunships) are certainly on the roadmap. Air units are less probable.
Thank you for your kind words! We still have clear plans to develop this game further, but our schedule has been severely delayed due to another unfinished project... at least we were able to fix a few minor bugs today and release new game packages, for the first time also on Linux.
0.6 odds are clearly beyond random and average, particularly after 61 battles. So I would clearly attribute your victory to your good tactical decisions.
I would consider outcome not improbable. Let's say you have a settlement surrounded by 4 infantries and the settlement is defended by a single infantry. If now one of your infantries attack, the odds on your side are attack 3 + 3*1 support = 6 against 4 defense *2 terrain = 8 . So your success probability is only 43%! If different unit types or counts are involved, the individual numbers need to be adjusted, but generally infantries within settlements make formidable strong points. Unless you manage to provide some artilleries to support your assault from behind...
By replay feature you mean that you can watch all your and your opponent's moves after a game is over? Indeed this would be sometimes great and rewarding!
We actually have such a feature in a rough/unpolished state for debugging purposes. I will put this on the backlog and as soon as our upcoming title is released (actually soon!), we will take a closer look...
Wow, thank you very much, I am really happy you enjoyed it!! Regarding borders, they actually already exist, but only as invisible helper structures for the AI so far. So it would be fairly easy to try out how they look on the map. I have created a respective backlog item!
The pre-release play-testers also often debated whether a particular victory or defeat was just because of good/bad luck. Due to that the game debriefing statistics provides the two key figures "battles won" and "odds". If the length of the bar below battles won exceeds the length of the bar below odds, then luck was on your side. If your average odds value exceeds 0.5, then you decided wisely when and where to fight, independent of the eventual outcome...
Thanks a lot for your encouraging feedback and your monetary support!
The payment processing and provisioning of the download files is done by itch.io, we have no direct influence here at all. Thank you for sharing that things went wrong, if this happens again, we will approach itch.io to take a look.
Glad to read that you finally got the stand-alone version :)
Maybe I will make the unit symbols configurable. The availability of certain unit types definitely depends on the scenario. There will be scenarios where naval units are mandatory, optional, or completely absent.
Thanks a lot to both of you for your encouraging feedback! Indeed I have currently taken a break from Pelagium and I am currently exploring a different game genre. But development will certainly continue once the current (comparatively small) game is published and I will certainly listen to your suggestions.
