veji1

So... silly question but following the announcement of age of sail does this mean that there should be no sequel on napoleonic wars in the short term or could there be more games being worked on on parallel ? If someone could give us a hint it would be great !

Yeah, Napoleon is probably the most logical choice, but the model could work well with pike and shot type of battles

SO.... i am still dying to get any tidbit of info on what a possible next game could be. I actually don't even know if there will be another game, let alone on which period it will be. Any info anywhere ? anyone ?

Gee that Percon guy sure reads cranky...

Indeed. Not only there are 3 different types of infantry (well actually 2 and guard units of the 2 types, but let's say 3) but also in battle formations are a lot more flexible : from the pure line to the mixed order to batallon up to divisional columns, the variation is huge. The cav component of the game would be capital, if done well it would set the tone for the combined arms ultimate orgasm that a napoleonic wargame can be : light cavalry for scouting, probing, pursuing and occasional charging. Heavy cavalry for shock assault, dragons with the ability to dismount as well... There is a massive amount of fun to be had.

then it isn't really focus, is it ?

Bah, if we think about it in a cold simple way, a napoleonic game is totally obvious : it's the most money making machine, it's a natural ambition for a game designer to want a make a great game about this holy totem of an era. I mean you nail Waterloo and such properly and your game becomes the Sid Meier's of its time. So I am pretty confident I will get to play an ultimate general Napoleon by next christmas time. Book it !

Like many of you, as a silly impatient customer I just can't wait for an announcement, hoping it will be a Napoleon type game. I have been dreaming of a quality nappy tactical game since the battleground series !

You only charge up a hill when you don't have a choice, be it by lack or space or lack of time : You need to take that position to break the ennemy's back and justify the whole battle and campaign, you try it, because endless flank turning isn't an option anymore lest the opportunity slip away. This is why although frontal assault was never the right option, it kept happening...

Come on, this is a bit of a passive aggressive comment here isn't it ?

Talking a bout a UG - Napoleonic wars, what I would really like to play is the 96-97 italian campaign, with the lean demi-brigades, the key tactical decisions, many exciting battles with lean and nimble armies of 20 000 to 30 000 men, cavalry and preciously limited arty man must make the best use of.

I am sure the devs would be fine providing a patch if some players prepare it I suppose, but I think they now have other plans in mind and other things to do : This game is done, beautifully so, and it's time to work on the next one with all lessons learnt from this one !

Honestly this game is done, it's great, it's fun, i'ts enough to be enjoyed... Rather than painstakingly making marginal improvements to please customers who already bought it, might as well expand on all they have learnt and build the next game !

Melee cavalry just shouldn't exist... All cav should be better in melee in the open but very brittle if encountering resistance imho

What I would like to see in a Napoleonic or 18th century game is the variety of uniform colors while still having sprites that are simple and not memory heavy so that the game can run smoothly on most computers including laptops one uses when travelling for work.Something akin to the sprites used in the Battleground series from John Tiller (but animated of course). We would still have the jolt of colors while keeping simple and effective sprites, not going with full Total War details which should not be the priorities for such a game.

This is also why in 18th century and napoleonic warfare cavalry to cover the flanks was really really vital.... infantry would get massively messed up if caugh in enfilade by fire or charged on its flanks because it needed lots of time to turn. Light cavalry was needed for that job as well as the scouting and this is why generals always sought to anchor their flanks. In a future UG-Napoleon this is the actual part of the game I would most look forward to : the inter-arm interactions. In a Napoleonic game one would really have to play one's cavalry well to win the game, it wouldn't be an afterthought at all, but actually really important to repeal an infantry attack, harass flanks, slow down ennemy movement, etc.

Actually not most battles, but the ones we remember because they were so many of them ! If you look at any singular campaign (Austerlitz, Iean/Auerstedt, Eylau, etc...) we tend to focus on the big singular clausewitzian battle but there were many smaller engagements varying for brigade size to corps size. You would have room for a very similar type of campaigning as in UGCW : 3/4 minor battles and then the big one.

The french cavalry peaked in the war against Prussia in 1806, this is where the cavalry pursuit disintegrated on a strategic scale the prussian army after Iena/Auerstedt. This cavalry was the best it would ever be : it had training and drilling aplenty (in the camp de Boulogne an years prior to 1805), it had battle experience (the 1805 campaign), it had top quality mounts extracted as a peace condition from Austria and basically picked throughout the rhine confederation AND it hadn't suffered many losses yet. The fall and winter 1806/1807 campaign already profoundly damaged that, culminating in the Eylau battle, and froom then on continuous "paper cuts" in Spain and more massive manoeuvering had rendered the cavalry less nimble and effective. The french cavalry starting the Russian campaign is enormous but it is already far from the peak it had reached 6 years prior.

In that sense the ultimate fantasy would be to be able to use UG as a battle mod for a game like Ageod's American Civil War....

The added value of UGCW compared to the Total wars is how perfectly it emulates line warfare. Line warfare appeared progressively in the XVIIth century and lasted until the 1870s basically. So any game in that period would be great. Obviously there are 2 massive and obvious candidates : - UG-Napoleonic Wars (including french revolutionnary wars if wanted) - UG-Wars of Frederick the great (basically the mid XVIIIth century wars of Austrian succession and VII years wars). Those or the 2 next games I would love to see.

Sure, a bit like what Ageod did with it's political point system and varying abilities in their civil war games. It would add some role play element to the game although it would tend to pull it away from the realism / fun strategy balance it has struck right now. As options though it would be nice.

It's a topic about a guy's finished campaigns and his thoughts on the game... anyway it's just a game so sort of a joke in itself I suppose.

Antietam is a joke as CSA ? This is the type of stupid comment from boring optimizers that just makes reading forums a chore sometimes. Like any other battle if you are skilled and want to win at all cost and are ready to use any possible string the game gives you, all battles are jokes, hell the game is just a joke of a puzzle. On the other hand Antietam is one of the most fun battles to play in this game as the CSA if you sort of stick to a conservative/realistic game play. To each his own.

Well adding things to a game is complicated because a game like this is a finely tuned balance between fun/just trying to win real time strategy game and a historical simulation that gives you the feeling of being in actual command during the war. There are few things I would like to see personnally, if possible added into the game, but of course, the overall balance remains key and I am perfectly happy with the game as it is. 2 main things ! 1/ A bit more roleplaying as said with more historical (or randam) leaders that would have traits affecting their battle performance and more importantly behaviour. So you order a brigade to hold but it sees the brigade in front of it rooting an you get a message saying "General Hood has decided to counterattack !" or you want your men to run to a position but you would get a message saying "Corps commander x has decided to go for a more conservative advance in the face of unknown opposition". This would have to be an option of course and would have to be tuned so as to be balanced, ie limited occurrences per battle but with the potential of greatly affecting a well laid plan. 2/ Ability to dig in : particularly later in the war, digging in whenever possible and whenever a suitable position had been found had become a key task of campaigning troops. Games like Robert Lee civil War General had crude but efficient ways of emulating this digging in. Here regarding the map and firing dynamics, it might not be easily doable, but it would also give more tactical flexibility in game to be able to do so. Anyway those are 2 ideas by no means necessary but that would be nice to have.

To be honest I agree with the OP, but to some extent it is normal and a testament to the quality of the game made by the developpers : battles after 1863 are indeed horrible slogs through defense systems where your soldiers die en masse for gains that don't seem worth it... indeed. To make those battles fun they would have had to diverge greatly from the historical feeling of the game. For players, 1861/1863 civil war is fun to play, after that it's just preWW1... It's just the way it is, actually to be honest to me the game pleasure curve plateaus or starts to go slightly downhill after Antietam anyway !