
Generals.io – Capture enemy generals to defeat them - progval
http://generals.io/
======
rayalez
Brilliant game! I'm _really_ enjoying it. I usually don't play computer games,
so I didn't expect to spend several hours on this. Tons of fun, thank you for
making it!

Such a beautiful blend of tactics and strategy. Elegant, simple, and extremely
engaging. Makes me think, and keeps me on the edge of my seat.

One suggestion - I think it would be really cool to be able to talk to other
players using microphone. Chat doesn't work so well, you can't get too
distracted on it, the game is pretty fast paced once you get the hang of it.
But it would be really awesome to have a conversation while playing.

Thoughts on strategy so far:

\- Sending out small groups of "scouts" at the beginning of the game, finding
and capturing others, before they've managed to gain any resources worked
really well for me.

\- It comes down to finding the opponent's "king", and hiding your own. Once
you know his position, defeating him isn't that difficult. Therefore, there's
a lot of value in exploring as much territory as possible in the fewest amount
of moves.

\- And that really reminds me of Go game. You want to find balance between
protecting your territory, and exploring. Start by exploring as fast as
possible, then - gather resources and build an army. Once you have a sizable
army - venture into enemy's territory, and explore as fast as possible, trying
to find his king.

------
vzhou842
Creator of generals.io here - thanks for everyone's feedback and responses! If
you're interested in remaining active with the community you can follow our
subreddit at
[https://reddit.com/r/generalsio](https://reddit.com/r/generalsio)

The game servers are a bit overloaded right now so the game is running kind of
slow, but the congestion should improve soon - thanks for your patience.

~~~
rayalez
Thank you very much for making this game!

If it's not a secret - can you share with us the tech stack behind it?

~~~
random3
I assume they are now too busy fixing the performance issues :D

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robertcorey
Thoughts on strategy:

When the game first starts you want to make a straight line with room to grow
on one side. Then when you get your first resupply you can expand your
territory very quickly. Quickly generating surface area is really important
because it gives you more vision and it helps disguise the location of your
HQ.

if you have vision you can pay attention to the leaderboard and go for a
timing attack when someones army count drops.

In general attacking is kind of bad because the inability to chain commands on
offense is a huge disadvantage.

I'd love to play more but this aggravates the shit out of my RSI lol.

~~~
shmageggy
Best strat I've seen so far: have the least amount of lag.

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georgyo
That is pretty cool, it's similar concept to an AI game I play called
Halite[1], though I like the idea of having a king piece instead of just
taking over the entire board.

[1][https://halite.io](https://halite.io)

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harperlee
Hi! I just spent a couple of hours to this. Great game, very fun.

A feedback point: while playing, the absence of any kind of animation of
fights make me wonder whether there are bugs when playing that lose points, or
if someone attacked me without me losing. Something like a blip, with/without
noise, when a fight happened might be great. Another one: the stronger the
position, the stronger my hue would be great to quickly find big positions on
big territories.

~~~
vzhou842
great suggestions, thanks

(if you didn't see my comment i'm the creator of generals.io)

~~~
tokenizerrr
Please reveal the map when the game ends, specifically when the final player
forfeits.

~~~
harperlee
You can see the whole game when it ends, in the replay (e.g.
[http://generals.io/replays/HkfABJ9Xl](http://generals.io/replays/HkfABJ9Xl)).

But it would be great to see the game evolve without fog, once you are killed.

~~~
tokenizerrr
I mean when you are one of the last two players and win (or lose) the game
(and thus the game ends), it should immediately reveal the entire map.

~~~
Jailbird
That could enable collusion between remaining players and defeated players,
possibly defeated on purpose.

~~~
tokenizerrr
I mean when the game ends, the last two players. After one of them loses, the
game is over.

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Matheus28
It's remarkable similar to a game that was created before it, kingz.io, see
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Kingzio/comments/5dm2cv/my_thoughts...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Kingzio/comments/5dm2cv/my_thoughts_on_generalsio_as_the_developer_of/)

~~~
potato1876
Could you please work on Diep.io? I've been waiting so long for an update.

And also (if you dont know what discord is, discord is a website where people
can chat live), Join the Diep.io discord made from the moderators of the
Diep.io subreddit:
[https://discordapp.com/invite/YDSF2wD#discordbutton](https://discordapp.com/invite/YDSF2wD#discordbutton)

And please be active on Reddit again.

Do not let Diep.io die.

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mninm
I love the minimalist approach. It would be nice if there was a sound effect
when a player is defeated. Not as an aesthetic thing but as a way to keep
track of the match without having to constantly check the scoreboard.

Also, the screen you show when a match ends seems like a good place to stick
another ad.

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sliken
This reminds me of xbattle or europa. Only thing missing is when you set a
direction, it just works one. It's be less of a click fest if you could just
click on any of the 4 directions any it would continue to feed armies. That
way you have supply lines and battle fronts, limited more by strategy than
speed of clicking.

~~~
paulddraper
Sequencing those is non trivial keeping with one move per turn.

~~~
zo1
That was a game changer for me. Sadly it exposed a major bug. Queue up enough
commands it seems and the game gets stuck. Happened 2 separate times now for
me.

~~~
paulddraper
It's happened to me, but I don't think it has to do with the number.

The biggest problem, I think (not sure) is that queuing is client side so
latency matters.

------
gipp
This was really fun! Couple notes:

* In the tutorial, if you capture the city before the message about capturing it comes up (which is the most intuitive thing to do), the message just disappears instantly and you don't learn what cities actually do.

* I didn't realize you could queue up WASD moves until like halfway through my first game, and it's pretty essential to good play. Would be nice to put in the tutorial.

~~~
vzhou842
did you not see the part about WASD moves in the tutorial? It actually is in
the tutorial, but maybe the fact that you captured the city early skipped the
WASD part

~~~
gipp
I saw that you can _use_ WASD, but it doesn't say anything about queuing them.

~~~
popey456963
Agree with this completely ^

Didn't see it in the tutorial either. Here I was thinking there was no
advantage to WASD and just spam clicking everywhere :P

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honksillet
If someone quits, their remaining spaces should not go grey. I have had
several games ruined because of this. People will quit when they realize they
don't have a chance. Then, instead of usurping their entire kingdom when you
capture their King, you have to go around a defeat each of their abandoned
properties and all the units. No good.

------
callesgg
Super fun.

The starting position makes the game unbalanced at times. Starting close to a
border in a corner is a major advantage. Had one enemy whose base was located
inside a area that was only accessible trough a narrow valley. Super easy to
defend.

~~~
danmaz74
But also difficult to expand from...

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lbebber
Loved it.

I have a suggestion: What about making it easier to see where your troops are
concentrated? Like making the tiles with more troops darker, with a
stronger/heatmap colored border, or something.

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herbst
[self plug] I've created a website for these kind of games some time ago:
[https://iogames.co/](https://iogames.co/)

~~~
reustle
Your advertisement banner is way too close to the play game button. You're
going to look like you get fraudulent clicks with all the people clicking your
ads accidentally.

~~~
herbst
shit you are right (damn adblocker lets me miss those things). Will fix asap.
Thanks

~~~
reustle
More feedback. there is no "remove frame" button on your page banner. dont
force me to stay inside your website. edit, it looks like you overlay ads on
the games website? scummy

~~~
herbst
I just realized that as well, when i added those ads they stayed in the
topline where they should. I am just trying to get them back up there, thats
really shitty.

Also added the remove frame button, that really should be there.

Obviously i tried to maximize ad income, but i did not had that (overlay, to
close to button) in mind.

Edit:// Fuck that ad, added social buttons again.

------
loktarogar
Could be a fun game, but i'm stuck waiting 10-20 seconds for my pieces to
move, and in the time it takes one of my army pieces to move, some other guy
traverses the entirety of my empire with their army and kills me.

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vorotato
Played a game, my opponent's color was so similar to mine I didn't even know I
was being attacked. :| Green and slightly darker green.

~~~
zschuessler
You _might_ be color blind. I noticed the same problem and I am tritanomaly
color blind. You can see if you are here:

[http://www.color-blindness.com/coblis-color-blindness-
simula...](http://www.color-blindness.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/)

For me, clicking the tritanomaly button doesn't really show a difference, but
my friends say it's a drastic difference.

I've lived most of my adult life not knowing. I previously thought there were
just a lot of designers that picked poor color palettes. Humorously, I thought
_they_ were color blind!

~~~
chuymax
I had the same problem (I'm not color blind). First game, I was light green.
When dark green player started attacking me, I thought my army squares where
on steroids (or something similar). It wasn't clear it was a different player
killing my army.

------
Ethan_Mick
Very fun! The tutorial could be a little more verbose; I played through it and
still only had a vague idea as to how the mechanics work.

Decided to play a 1 vs 1 anyways. I started out behind as I warmed up to the
mechanics, but had a lucky streak into enemy territory and found the opponent
general faster than he found mine. Even though my opponent had a larger army
by double, my smaller army was able to move faster, and I captured his general
when his army was one tile away from mine. Intense!

I want as little downtime as possible in my movement, so being able to use the
keyboard to not only move my army after I have selected it, but then keep them
selected so I can command them to move again would be great. Use the mouse to
jump to a new tile to select it, and then use the keyboard to move it.

Bonus feature! Allow me to give a number to an army (control group), so I can
quickly jump between my armies and move them with the keyboard!

Keep it up!

~~~
bminor13
You can use the keyboard to move your army - moves get queued up as long as
they're along friendly territory. Moving into enemy/neutral territory is more
time consuming than along friendly, so part of the strategy involves
conquering territory strategically to maximize mobility.

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greenshackle2
So far 25% of players I've encountered have had genitalia-related names.

This is the internet, I don't know what I expected.

~~~
popey456963
Really? Guess I must have joined after the Hacker News crowd joined, my names
have all been surprisingly normal (for the internet...)

"Bruno", "Mvlo", "m", "Galactus", "jflorey", "Tobias", "Chef", "Bruno",
"Popey", "Mvlo", "m", "Galactus", "jflorey", "Tobias", "Chef"

~~~
chronolitus
Seems like you pasted that list twice!

------
afterburner
It's a lot better when you realize you can chain commands through your own
territory. Some quick fun!

It's nice that an early army advantage doesn't necessarily translate into
victory. Capturing generals changes things, and fighting the wrong war can
cripple you.

~~~
tgb
I'm still not really sure what chaining commands means. Can someone be more
specific? I think it's a little hard for me to tell what's going on since the
game seems sporadic, probably due to the server load.

~~~
stale2002
Sure, when you do orders, they execute in the order that you click them.

So if you very quickly press, square 1 to square 2 to square 3 to square 4,
the army starting in square 1 will go to 2, then 3, then 4, picking up all
extra units along the way.

~~~
tgb
I get it now, thanks. When you press WASD you give a command _and_ the
selection moves to cell in that direction. So if you jam WWWW.. then you
command a bunch of troops to move up at once, all in a line and all occurring
in rapid succession.

~~~
stale2002
oh shoot, that is way better than what I was doing!

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DanBC
So, I loved this game during the first few hours when people didn't know how
to play it and I won most games.

But, it turns out, I suck at this game against people who know how to play. I
can usually come 3rd, but can't seem to do better.

I think I need to be a bit more aggressive in capturing other players, and a
bit better at expanding my territory.

But, even though I'm not very good, I really really enjoy this game.

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jsonau
I'm definitely willing to pay $1 for a dedicated lag-less "channel"

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grapevines
When somebody quits, their non-city troops should be abandoned. Otherwise
there is too much volatility in the game: say I am about to capture somebody's
king and they quit instead: now I don't get their land and troops, rather I
have to fight against them. Enough of these types of swings, and the game is
swung towards the lucky ones in a volatile way.

~~~
gipp
Yeah, I think leavers should retain their capital and still be capturable.
Plenty of people leave right before they lose; the game seems to give you a
few grace turns but it's often not enough.

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nepeckman
Fun game! Tutorial interface was a little lacking, it felt like the
information went by too quickly. The army selection process is a little
difficult. Sometimes I'm just trying to highlight the army, and I accidentally
split my army. It also took me a while to realize that while moving an army
through your territory, you can chain moves without reselecting, but you have
to reselect after every conqueror move. I like that mechanic, just didn't
realize how it worked at first. Overall, love the mechanics of the game, just
needs a little better tutorial and cleaning up the selection commands (would
prefer a different key to split the army, like pressing "h" for example). As a
last note, I accidentally turned my wifi off in the frenzy of selecting, but
the game was fortunately able to reconnect, so thank you for that! Hope this
feedback is helpful, good luck with your game :)

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gabemart
There's a huge amount of lag just now, but I've been playing intermittently
over the last few weeks, and typically there is no noticeable lag.

So new players, please do check back when the devs have had a chance to add
capacity.

I am not affiliated, I just think it's a fun game.

------
isuckatcoding
"Updates incoming...

We're pushing out new changes to generals.io! Check back in a few minutes."

~~~
vzhou842
all good now! was down for a few minutes for updates.

~~~
isuckatcoding
I suggest having some sound or desktop notification (like some google apps do)
when you're back up.

------
madsushi
Very neat. Similar to the iOS game series Galcon, which ate up many hours of
my time.

------
harperlee
I love this game. I lost the whole afternoon to it, even with the huge lag
that I'm suffering.

One great thing about it is that is very balanced. In my last match
([http://generals.io/replays/HkfABJ9Xl](http://generals.io/replays/HkfABJ9Xl),
I'm bob, lower right corner), there was a player that had a very easy path to
victory. But another player and I made an alliance, and the result changed
completely! So very, very fun to play.

------
deweller
Fun game. Still has some bugs to work out.

I lost all control about 66% through my game. None of my movements worked with
the mouse or the keyboard. I could only watch as others conquered my
territory.

~~~
Normal_gaussian
May be that you set too many moves and so were going incredibly slowly. Press
Q to clear moves and focus on short and effective routes.

~~~
Vendan
no, there's a bug in the game, I've encountered it too. Clearing the move
queue clears all the orders, but they won't follow even a single move order.
The arrow appears and then nothing happens.

~~~
fosk
same here

------
camerondodds00
Hey, so when I click on the play button on the front screen of the game, the
button shows that i'm hovering over it, and moves down when i click on it, but
it doesn't show the next screen. any Ideas?

------
smlacy
Played this a bit, and the dynamic is good, there's an excellent mechanic
here.

In fact, it's very similar to and old X11 game named "XBattle" I used to play.
ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/x11/x.org/R5contrib/xbattle-4.0.README

XBattle has many, many parameters you can tune (growth rate of "armies", decay
rates, as well as persistent movement on production, etc.) All of these can be
combined in different ways to get some really great game variants.

~~~
sliken
I liked xbattle even better because while it has a very similar mechanic is
also rewards strategy.

So for xbattle if 100 armies fight the enemies 25 armies the losses are mostly
on the 25 army side. Additionally if you attack an enemy from 3 sides
simultaneously that's an additional advantage.

With generals.io it's always just even losses on both side, so it's basically
about production and finding the queen. Not so much about defense, or more
complicated strategies.

------
joshu
Anyone remember xbattle?

~~~
jeremyleach
Yes, used to play it for hours! This is similar in gameplay.

~~~
sliken
Much more strategic, and less of a click fest.

Biggest differences are orders don't decay, so you only have to click to
change them. Also the weaker size of a battle has more losses. Oh and being
attacked from more than one side gives an additional advantage to the
attacker.

------
hackathonguy
This is a nice game. Here are some strategy tips:

* Expand as fast as you can! That first resupply is crucial.

* This game rewards early aggression, especially if you've manage to get a big initial resupply.

* Flank! Large armies and particularly cities can be serious threats, but taking them isn't a victory requirement. Maneuver and look for your enemy's capital.

* Ignore AI cities until you're well established.

* Plan command chains so that you can move forces from several cities simultaneously.

~~~
popey456963
"* Ignore AI cities until you're well established."

Couldn't disagree more. Wait till your second resupply and then take a city.
You get double creation everyone else gets in exchange for about 55-60 units.
Although, I completely agree with how awesome this game is!

~~~
gipp
55-60 units which could, in principle, have been used for 60 tiles instead for
even higher production than that. basically favor _easy_ expansion over
castles. Start taking them once you're out of open territory or once you hit
good chokepoints

------
baby
I love it. I created a private game with me and my friends and I can't stop
playing now :) this is brilliant.

(I wish there would be a less-laggy version.)

------
robertcorey
are you meant to be able to chain commands on your own territory and not into
neutral or enemy spaces? if you don't know about move chaining your at a huge
disadvantage.

heres a victory by me
[http://generals.io/replays/ByGnY2tXl](http://generals.io/replays/ByGnY2tXl)

~~~
zschuessler
Wow, purple almost snuck a victory on your king! A few more armies and he
would've won. The second attempt was his only way out but you had too many
armies at that point.

I find that games can easily tilt in your favor if you seek out the king
square and sneak a capture.

~~~
robertcorey
yeah he was a better player than me imo.

------
dyeje
Really fun game! It would be better if the response was a little snappier, but
overall I think you did a great job.

------
jedberg
Very proud of my first win, about five games in. ;)

[http://generals.io/replays/ryYQqycme](http://generals.io/replays/ryYQqycme)

My wife was standing over my shoulder asking why I wasn't doing chores, so she
motivated me. Also she gave me strategy advice.

------
mathattack
It took a while for me to get the hang of the strategy to win (selectively
aggressive) but massively addicting. Then after a few days it seems like
ruthless assault of the Bots. Perfection incorporated. Much less fun.

To the author - keep up the valiant effort!

------
taherchhabra
Gameplay is good. navigation was difficult. will be great if can play using
only keyboard up and down arrows

------
cdevs
Wow, that was awesome. Wanted something like that for a while, very easy to
pick up, anyone can learn but strategy is interesting to try new things out.
Besides all that is plays so well with a mobile browser? Annnddd no long sign
up process ?What is this witch craft

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sullyj3
Fantastic game! It'd be awesome if you could spectate after you were killed.

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rsp1984
I don't get it. What do the numbers mean? Why do some increase every second
and some stay constant? What do the symbols (crown, buildings) mean?

It looks pretty cool but I don't have the time to figure out the rules by
trial and error.

~~~
losvedir
It's pretty fun but definitely the trial and error rules are kind of annoying.

The numbers are the "population" of the square. If you click a square you can
then press WASD to move its population to the adjacent square. If you clicked
the square once then you move all but one person, whereas if you clicked it
twice before WASD then it displays "50%" and moves half the population.

If the adjacent square has numbers of its own (of a different color) then
you're "attacking" that square, and if you have more people than it, then you
take it over (but lose people in the process).

Ordinary squares increase population slowly, while "city" squares increase
population quickly. So it's to your advantage to try to capture cities since
you grow population very fast. But it's also good to spread out and capture
lots of undefended ordinary squares, since each of those squares will also
contribute to your population (albeit slowly).

The "king" square represents a player. If it's captured that player loses. It
also increases population quickly.

~~~
babuskov
> So it's to your advantage to try to capture cities since you grow population
> very fast.

Not really. I lost first two games with that logic. The third game I won
without conquering any bases in the early game.

When the game starts all players are low on units. It's much better to use
that small army you have to capture enemy capital (and get all their squares)
or wait for an enemy to capture a city and then take it over.

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3minus1
This is a lot of fun. I'm currently in the top 100. It's all about quick
knockout punches. It's interesting how people will very often leave you alone
if you don't attack them.

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sangnoir
I got disconnected twice, and both times I was in the lead. I'm not sure if
I'm getting 'booted' by cheaters or if the server is frazzling out - are the
connections peer-to-peer or server only?

------
flipp3r
Played the game a bit, on my 4th game a guy game steaming through with his
full army going through exactly the only route he could take, blindly, to my
slightly lower army general.. Hmm, really makes you think.

~~~
jcizzle
If you optimize moving troops to the front line through one path, you leave a
path of lower troop tiles right into the heart of your production, which is
usually close to your general. They aren't cheating, they're just better than
you.

------
dvcc
Awesome game, my basic strategy revolved around capturing as much as possible,
as fast as possible regardless of troop counts. Then just trying to confuse
them by going on as many fronts as possible.

------
michaf
Super fun game! I only figured out the importance of using WASD (i.e.
chaining) in my 3rd game. Maybe you can make it more clear in the tutorial why
it's a good idea to use them.

------
qwertyuiop924
Very cool, and thankfully not just "another io game". I am also appreciate of
the fact that you seem to care about perf - other such games frequently crash
my browser.

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wtfishackernews
Great game, but it seems to be a clone of [http://kingz.io/](http://kingz.io/)
, so check that out too :)

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Grue3
Bullshit, some players seem to know where your capital is, collect all their
forces and go straight there. It's impossible to fight them fairly.

~~~
sliken
I can see why you would think that, but I see no indication that it's true.
Keep in mind that a good player will remember where they first contact you. So
if you take over another player they still know approximately where your queen
is. Many players act like the queen is their center, often sending armies from
there, and attacking in a direction from their queen. A fair number of times
my first attack into enemy territory finds the queen. You do have a 3 square
wide view, and guesstimating center of mass isn't that hard.

Next time you suspect it watch the replay and pretend you are the winner. I do
wish the replay would allow you to be any team and still have the fog of war.

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natmaster
Why does it not register my clicks most of the time? And when it does it's
delayed by a whole second. Makes me do things I didn't intend.

------
robbiewxyz
Uh oh, kiss of death. Owner said he's working on upgrading his servers to
fight the lagginess. Really great game, though, perfectly simple.

------
mezod
just wasted my last couple hours with this, so, good job. My proper feedback
would be: solve the lag issues, especially on 8vs8 is almost unplayable. Also
I think that when someone wins a fight, the resulting army shouldnt be the
difference. Just won a 4800 vs 4600 fight vs someone who had double my
territory and I couldn't do shit with the resulting 200 of my won fight :(

------
hinnomaki
Not to crap on the thread, but what are some PC games that are similar in
their simplicity but may be somewhat more robust? Old or new.

~~~
afterburner
Galcon

~~~
hinnomaki
Thanks

~~~
sliken
Xbattle (X11 game), or Europa (similar, written in Java, not hosted anywhere I
know). I think I still have the source.

------
iddan
Great game! Try to enhance the keyboard control

------
client4
Bug: If you attack a grey base but don't take it over, on the next doubling
round the grey base starts to increment.

~~~
twunde
I don't think that's a bug. I think it's designed to increase the difficulty

------
Darphe
Great game! I wish there was a way to zoom in/out to see more of the map once
you control a large area, though.

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vtlynch
I think it says a lot about you and your political leanings if you think this
game is mostly strategy

------
grogenaut
Cant' figure out the controls, felt like one out 5 times what I wanted to do
was what happened.

------
paulddraper
Do some players get more turns than others?

I have like 30 moves queued, but the other guys gets 10 in the time I get 2.

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erk__
There needs to be a way to resign I've just had a game where I lost but he
just surrounded my base.

~~~
moolcool
Just refresh the tab

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cmrdporcupine
I'm having periodic problems where everyone else is moving but my moves are
doing nothing.

------
paulddraper
> We're pushing out new changes to generals.io! Check back in a few minutes.

A few minutes later....

~~~
baby
I played all morning and now it's down, just wait a bit ;)

~~~
paulddraper
This is quite a while. I bet they've disable creating new games and are
waiting for existing games to finish before deploying.

~~~
Matetricks
They're probably updating the servers so that the games won't be as laggy.
Shouldn't be long!

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chenzhekl
The map is kind of unbalanced. I have much more resources than the opponent.

------
imafish
Great game! Controls were a bit laggy at times, but really enjoyed the game.

------
DanBC
I LOVE THIS!!

Just played yellow, got down to light green and dark green. (I won.)

~~~
zokier
I just played with dark green and got chomped by yellow :)

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cynicaldevil
Really addictive game! Definitely a great game to kill time!

------
vignesh_m
Congrats, pretty cool game.

Any simple strategies you guys came up with?

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stigi
This game's fun but I have to go cold turkey now

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hardlianotion
I won my first game. So I think it's great.

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ZeroClickOk
Feature Request: Android Version (offline too) :)

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hinnomaki
Works great on Android phone with Chrome browser.

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sb8244
I'm really enjoying this one!

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nc
This is so much fun, great work!

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meddlepal
Damn... that's addictive.

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ts330
enjoyed that, and i don't usually play any games what so ever.

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davidlakata
Really great game!

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CodeCube
That was fun :)

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popol12
I love it :D

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msangi
Nice game!

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crispytx
I don't get it - was expecting something like Command & Conquer.

