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Lincolns Mullet

Civil War Tester
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  1. The only way true LoS would work is if this game was designed using the Combat Mission engine and every bullet and every piece of canister shrapnel were modeled. Nath's argument to "forbid infantry shots through friendly troops" isn't as simple as it sounds. What if only a small fraction of a friendly brigade is blocking your entire 1800 man brigade from firing? Should they still not fire even if visually it looks like they can?" Games aren't designed simply with ideas, if only it were that easy! Entire design documents are created for how a unit moves, let alone how firing behaves. I drew up a basic example in the attached image. This doesn't even factor in friendly units, trees, elevation, etc. With the blocking building, how many of the 1800 CSA soldiers have line of sight and can fire on the 800 man union brigade? Does 55% of your men fire, while the others don't? Which 55%? There's some men on the far right that have line of sight and their attack would trigger a flanking penalty on the enemy unit. Since only 30 men on that side fired their weapons, how much of a morale hit does the Union brigade take? You'd have to factor the # of guns fired on the Union brigade from the flank and how much that shot effects morale, while also factoring in the effect of the other men firing on the left side of the brigade who are not causing a flanking attack. What if the union brigade is at a much lower elevation? Let's pretend I have artillery directly behind my CSA brigade and they're on a hill firing down at the Union brigade. At what angle would the artillery be able to fire "over" my troops without hitting them with canister fire? If my troops are affected by canister fire, does the game model how much of the shrapnel hits a % of my troops? Or does my brigade take max canister fire damage even if the canister fire is only touching 5% of my entire 1800 man brigade? Visually it would look like it's barely hitting my brigade, but my brigade would take losses as if it were directly fired on them. The amount of calculations required to do this in real time with 100k men all fighting at once would probably cripple a super computer. And similar to what Koro said, the movement/pathfinding in the game is not accurate enough to have satisfactory control over friendly fire situations. More often than not, your troops would either be subjected to heavy friendly fire and/or they'd stand around not shooting because 10 friendly soldiers are blocking the shot of your 1800 man brigade because if the 1800 man brigade fires, those 10 friendly soldiers would die. The gameplay as it stands simplifies all of the above situations in a way to make it playable and enjoyable, in my opinion. Could certain aspects be improved upon? Sure, but I think friendly fire with infantry or artillery is a dead-end topic in regards to UGCW.
  2. I think I felt a snowflake blow past me
  3. I've had a lot success putting arty in those trees. They barely lose any men due to cover and can rack up to 2000 kills. Put them on that hill and enemy arty will pick off a lot of your men/cannon. I used to do that before and it does work, but I usually lost my unit or it was severely depleted. Cool that different tactics work though either way.
  4. I put the arty to the north in those trees. You get great cover, AI units can't attack you except for their arty, and you get great flanking fire on the entire Union army. Focus on their arty first and then target anyone crossing the bridge. Keep a brigade in the woods with your arty to keep any Union cav or troops coming across there. If necessary turn your arty around to canister fire anyone coming that way. I dont like keeping my arty on that hill because union arty pick it apart.
  5. There's room for two. Not so much to ask right? Lol
  6. They could definitely keep up with the ACW theme in their next game and create that dynamic campaign everyone is clamoring for. That would ensure we'd have THE civil war game for the next decade, a replayable masterpiece. Then they can move on to whatever else Hell, I can still play Sid Meier's Gettysburg and enjoy it to the end and that's nearly 20 years old now. Whatever they do though will be just fine and will have my support!
  7. Great feedback and some novel suggestions with the skill tree. Very constructive!
  8. Thanks for all the recommendations! I think I will start with Shelby Foote. Seems like the kind of deep reading I'm looking for right now.
  9. This will likely be in the next patch from what Nick was suggesting. Side battles will have some additional benefit to winning them that will affect the enemy army during the Grand Battle. To what extent this will be is unknown. It could be as simple as reducing overall enemy army morale for that battle or total strength (-10%), etc. or more advanced (additional AI reinforcements to fight on your side, or on the enemy side if you fail to beat a side mission, etc). My only suggestion to this, if it's how it will work, is to ensure the side battles are not predictable affairs. If the side battles are relegated to a "map grind" simply to gain experience, men, and to negatively affect the AI at the grand battle then the purpose of having the side battles loses its novelty. They become something you just "do" because, why not? If there's little to no risk in playing them they why would I ever skip playing a side battle? If there was always a level of unpredictability to the outcome of the side battle, then every playthrough of the campaign will result in you making different/difficult decisions each time. And maybe the variability of the side battle isn't creating a wild swing between being very easy or very hard, but that there's an unknown risk to losing more men than you expect each time you play one. There should always be an inherent risk/reward in these cases because it gives greater meaning and weight to YOUR decision to play the side battle or not. The variability could be that each side battle brings up to an additional 0-15% enemy troop strength over and above what your recon tells you will be on the map. When you start the map, the game rolls and hits at 8%, and that is how much the "base" enemy troop strength is increased. You won't know this until you've already started the battle, so you either try and fight it out or withdraw to save your troops but lose the battle. This way each time I play Battle of Newport News, and it says I'm up against 9k Union troops, it might actually be 9.5k or 10k which on those sized maps can be a significant difference. Also, I agree about the easy difficulty setting and certain people not wanting to choose that no matter what. I know my own pride and belief in my gaming ability will always keep me from playing on "Easy". I refuse. lol. So I think if someone plays on Normal, they themselves consider their ability "normal" and when perception doesn't match reality (they get creamed by the AI) then the initial reaction is that the game is too hard, not that they should try and get better at it (or try easy).
  10. Anyone have any recommended Civil War books? Looking for a thick tome I can spend weeks reading. Lol
  11. Great series CC! Loved Bridge Too Far. Very cool campaign dynamics.
  12. If we want it to be real, then fallback should be the default command to slowly pull back. But it can't work that way with how high casualty rates occur. Fallback as it works now is like an organized retreat. The reverse march command wouldn't be realistic over long distance, but for playability purposes only...it would be useful in UGCW. And if was on a leash (ie, cant reverse march past a certain distance) how would that be handled in-game? Would the brigade ignore the command if it was too far away? Would it revert to normal marching and turn around? Would it be a toggle that provides a circular "distance" ring showing where you can click to engage the reverse march? Any movement order outside that ring is invalid? In SMG it was a very slow fallback precisely because it would seem odd a 500 man regiment is marching backwards at any great rate faster than shuffling. Lol
  13. As in the Union should have it easier in the beginning and not the CSA? Or that its easier to learn the game playing as CSA from the beginning? In terms of learning the game, I agree both initial battles for either side should provide equal ability/challenge to learn how to play. Plenty of unfavorable odds in later battles to beat players down lol
  14. Historically the Union had it harder than the CSA in the beginning. Keep in mind the last half of the war hasn't been implemented yet, where CSA should have increasingly difficult odds.
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