Generals.io Bot API: Build bots to play against humans

Already released! You can see the page explaining it here:

http://dev.generals.io/replays

It contains 200,000 games of varying levels, so should hopefully make good training data.

I debated whether to respond to your comment at all. Let me first say that I wish you all the best and hope for your continued success. However, some of what you said feels like you're asserting that "up" is in fact "down". So let me first establish my bona fides with this screenshot that was taken on the 25 of last month:

http://imgur.com/a/uv1C6

so you can believe me when I say that I was a pretty good player that spent a lot of time playing your game.

> This was implemented directly to combat the prevalence of bots on the EU & NA servers (and the annoyance some players were facing when they were just playing AIs all the time), where you're now not allowed to bot on. Players have the option of choosing whether or not they wish to play against bots, but if they wish not to they can still play on the NA and EU servers.

Respectfully, yours is not the first game to have these types of problems. People grief and cheat in every online game where it's possible. Creating bot-only servers will not curtail bot use on non-bot servers. It will instead give people who grief and cheat stronger bots that they can pull down from github or wherever and adapt to play on non-bot servers.

They only thing that will stop people from using bots in bot free zones are technological countermeasures. Captchas being the classic example of such technology.

> If you dislike the new movement settings, you are able to disable them in the options menu.

That fact that you suggest this as a way to address my concerns makes me wonder if you actually play your game outside of testing it to see if a new feature works.

When you changed the way players can move you not only changed how I play the game but how everyone else plays against me. Essentially, with this latest revision you've created a substantially different game. Using the option to limit how I move without it changing how my opponent's move would only serve to put me at a disadvantage. It would not roll back the clock to the make the game be like the old game I liked.

All of the tactical nuance that the game used to have was based on timing and multitasking. High level gameplay steamed from getting inside your opponent's head and trying to force them into mistakes. The key to doing that was to realize that if an opponent is trying one thing they most likely aren't doing something else. If you could get them to focus on the wrong thing you gained the advantage. In my opinion the old game had a great balance between strategy and execution. If you weren't good at both you couldn't win. The new control scheme throws that particular balance out window. It's hard to describe in words because it's a million little differences that add up to a whole but suffice it to say that games now to me feel less like a sword fight and more like people running at each other with pots on their heads.

I don't have the code handy at the moment but I was using ruby with this socket.io gem 'socket.io-client-simple'

I was able to connect, join a game, send chat messages, just couldn't stay connected.

I basically just converted the JS tutorial on the site to ruby style.

Formerly, you could only queue moves in territory you owned. Now, you can queue anywhere.

It takes away a key advantage in obtaining territory.

I think everyone agrees (even if unconsciously) with your feelings. Most players had a defense advantage in movement speed before, but no longer. Reduced security and other implications favor large troops and rush strategies. Which leaves traditional strategies you mentioned less effective. The problem is, war, in the real world almost always has some kind of defensive advantage. So the cohesion of the General narrative was disrupted negatively as this core expectation is broken. My 2 cents even if non-specific, because I think this is the right perspective for highest-level analysis. I don't necessarily feel the new change is bad. But it changes game mechanics to favor play-styles where do not tell a cohesive story.

My example is just anecdotal. I used to play and, in just 300 moves was able to tell a full story. Of how I advanced, beat a certain enemy through an interesting battle. How I went into unknown territory and was surprised by what I found. There really was a cohesive narrative and nice story-telling in the previous version. This is what made the game fun, fundamentally. Mini stories of kingdoms locked in war, with interesting battles.

Now, the stories are not told well. Since I am queuing constantly, I am not even paying attention to where my general is most of the time. I am half-blind charging on my bull hoping I run over a general. And likewise, if I am on the defensive there is nothing to do but hope the huge army does not snake through and hit my general. The sense of a story was largely destroyed.

And that's why I think the game is less fun now, even if it is not so obvious why.