Reisman17

Hi all, been playing the game and have been trying out the cannon firing times using the Yacht.. These are the results as listed below. 4 lb approx 24 second reload 4 lb Long approx 26 second reload 6 lb approx 30 second reload 6 lb long approx 32 second reload 12 " Carronade approx 32 second reload Great to see differences in reload speed however this got me thinking about the cannon crew. I was thinking that the crew should have a stamina (or something similar in concept) that gets reduced for the longer you are shooting your cannons. Again 4 lb cannons should cause less stamina to drop due to the lighter cannon balls. This would also have a cool down timer so if you did not fire for so many minutes that the stamina would recover slowly (and quicker out of combat/not being fired upon). This would take into effect what loading those heavy cannonballs repeatedly impact would have on your cannon crewmembers and would make you more likely to try to use both left and right side batteries to reduce the stamina drop. You could then make the effects as follows. 3/4 or more stamina - fires normal speed 1/2 to 3/4 - add 2 seconds to reload speed 1/4 to 1/2 - add 6 seconds to reload speed less than 1/4 - add 10 seconds to reload speed This would add an extra layer to firing cannons and not being able to repeatedly shoot multiple times in a row without a consequence and the bigger the cannon the more likely you are to get tired. You would get more and more tired as you had to load more and more cannons. Just my take. Let me know what you think. Reisman17

Glad to hear fires are coming :-). I did read that they had to reduce the amount of gun power they used however I could imagine that it would be difficult to gauge how much to use unless you had used this extensively before the battle (e.g more experience crewmen) . Maybe less experience/morale crewmen should have a greater chance of making mistakes and causing damage etc...... Just an additional idea I thought of.

Having just found out about this game (and not having a good enough graphics card to play right now - my 7870 died on me). Here is what I am wondering. 1. Fires breaking out on board ships. I am not talking directly about fire ships (although a player ship might turn into a fire ship unintentionally). When being hit by hot shell/shot etc..... there should be a small chance of it starting a fire and if not treated it could get worse and if it would get close to a magazine that it would do some serious damage and possibly sink you. The fire should have a chance to jump ship if you are grappling another ship that is on fire (not recommended). Also if the magazine goes up it should do damage to anyone close by including other grappling ships (dependent on the size of the magzine - e.g first rate ships exploding will do considerably more damage and further away than a sloop for instance). There should also be a slightly smaller chance during ship boarding if you fire that a fire can also start. 2. Also partially connected to the other if you fire a double shot there should be a risk that it may destroy one or more of your cannons. This could also kill some crew and possibly cause a fire to start. This would give a reason to be careful when using double shot and it was not used that much in battles that I have read. 3. Have the ability to select your captain to suit your play style. Here are some examples. 1. Captain with gunnery family experience - could give a small boost to cannon accuracy (due to training) and increase damage (due to making sure the ammo was correctly prepared before the battle) 2. Captain with sailing family experience - could give a small boost to speed and turning (to increase the efficiency of the crew when sailing) 3. Captain with cloth family experience - could give a small boost to speed and sails are stronger (due to experience in knowing how the fabric can be best utilized / getting the best materials) 4. Captain with woodworking family experience - could give a boost to the strength of the hull and give an extra repair kit. These are just a few ideas I came up with with watching this game to please forgive me if these have already been discussed although I did search before posting this and did not find any info. Thanks for what looks like a great game. Really looking forward to this game soon (or at least as soon as I can get a new graphics card).

I have to agree with the VP rushes/ enemy after being defeated falls back, regroups and goes after a rear VP. I still feel they recover way too quickly. A brigade that has just been in battle and has lost should not be able to reform 2-3 seconds later. The men would be heavily demorilised and would be badly disrupted (e.g. men scattered over a large area - this seems to be added in for melee fights now but I would also like to see this with firefights as well). It should take a good amount of time to recover morale and reform the basics of a unit (e.g. get the men to line back up etc....). Not to say I cant stop this behavior but usually it just does not feel right diverting one of your front line units (or reserves if you have them) to stop one enemy brigade. I agree that being able to keep units within a certain distance of a general makes much more sense and seems more realistic. If a brigade does decide to leave to generals area there should be a morale penalty until the unit returns to under the generals influence. A 3 star general should have a much larger area than a 1 star general (to signify the general's able to controls his brigades much better when he is a better/better trained general). The only time I could even consider a seperation of a brigade from the rest of the army would be either cavalry (which should always operate seperately ) or a brigade that would be used to guard a particular point in stopping or at least slowing down the enemy (e.g. river crossings - not hills). If you want a hill you should send your generals troops to it. If you want to know if anything is close the the hill before fully commiting to moving to the hill send the cavalry forward to scout for you. I do understand that people do now want to wait for a defeated brigade to recover however this is what happened in battles. If you waited until your units got beaten you should suffer for that. This is why it is important to be able to order your brigades to retreat before they get broken and this should give you (and the AI mind you) the time to pull your brigades back so your brigade could regroup/ recover morale/reform before reengaging the enemy again. I think each time a brigade gets defeated its total morale that it can recover should be less than what it would start out with and each defeat should drops this lower and lower until the brigade breaks (or surrenders :-)) (e.g. first loss loss 25%, second loss 50% third loss 80%, forth rout - obviously these are just some numbers to throw out and are not final numbers). These should also depend on the quality of the bridge (e.g. rookies may only last two-three losses - veterans may be able to take 5-6 losses before breaking as an example). Well I hope the developers come up with their own great idea to take this into account as I feel this is an important part of any battle. Reisman17

Also to clarify I think being able to dig in/build barricades is rather senseless in this particular game. Both armies ran into one another and neither had time to prepare proper digging in/barricades. Having said that it might be good for future games that may involve different battles just not this one in my opinion. Reisman17

I feel that this mechanic just does not feel right at the moment. If I am able to get my cavalry within charge range on the enemies flanks or rear, when they make contact they should cause an instant rout and cause small casualties. What I see now is the cavalry make contact (maybe kill 1 or 2 enemies) and the artillery falls back and redeploys and starts shooting. In the meantime my cavalry just sits there. This just seems unrealistic. I would also like to see some indication to show charge range by the way :-). Cavalry should never be able to charge straight on - one shot of canister should break the cavalry and cause vast casualties as this would kill men and horses in large numbers and even shell would cause major problems (probably at least cause a fall back) but if cavalry is able to get around the flanks and charge unprotected artillery (e.g. approx 50-100 men vs 250 cavalry charging at you from a unusual direction should be enough for the artillery to call it quits and try to run away and the cavalry should pursue until ordered otherwise). I also think the AI on artillery needs to be tweaked and should target the closest units within range. (e.g. if the cavalry tries to flank the artillery in full view (e.g. not behind hills or far enough away to be spotted) then the artillery should turn and face the threat and try to take them out. This would also give you the choice of keeping the artillery with your front line units or keep them in the rear but give them some protection. I know this was not a big deal historically from what I have read however it would make it more tactical for cavalry and artillery. Hope this makes sense. Let me know what you think. Reisman17

I would really like several however voted for unit formations. Would also like to see Divisional Generals and surrendering units as well and of course multi-player :-) Reisman17

I do not believe in indirect fire at this time of the American Civil War. Ammunition was extremely expensive / used a lot of materials/expense that were hard to come by at this time (e.g solid iron shot balls). It was next to impossible to get any kind of indirect fire accurately. This was not a viable tactic in my opinion until probably World War 1 or later. The closest to this was Howitzers however they were fired into the air above a unit and they again would have to have line of sight (because why would you fire over a hill that you can see nothing and waste valuable ammo that may or most likely not hit any enemies anyway). Now thinking about this the only exception I can think of would be if you are assaulting a fort (not in this game) therefore you know there are enemy troops inside and you could fire Howitzers over the walls in the hope it would kill some men or better demoralize the troops inside and get them to give up/surrender. The regular guns would be firing at the walls trying to breach them. Hope this clarifies my opinion on the matter. Reisman17

I am at least glad to hear that you are giving some love to the artillery. Definately appreciate it. Thank you. Reisman17

Following up on the artillery situation and I think it is related to how you currently select targets as David described above. The only way to tell your artillery to shoot at a target is to click on the enemy. Unfortunately this is also the way to tell the artillery to move so sometimes it will think your changing targets (and correctly so) and other times thinks you want to attack the enemy unit so they move towards the enemy. We really need a separate control for selecting targets for artillery as opposed to moving. Maybe left click once to move and twice to select a target to engage. This obviously would apply to all units not just artillery. The cursor would need to change from an arrow to a cross-hair or something similar to show switching between modes and have it so if I click 3 times by mistake it goes back to movement mode, 4 times it goes to aim mode. I personally think that artillery are very underpowered. Not so much as to how many casualties they caused (which with shot did very little, shell better and cannister the most) the most important part of artillery was crushing the enemy's morale. Artillery was very effective at frightening the units it was attacking (providing it could hit on a regular basis - e.g veteran vs rookies). This is still way off in my opinion. In previous battles I have concentrated 4 batteries of artillery onto one unit of infantry and they marched all the way to a couple of the artillery units (and routed them) before finally breaking. This is not how it should be. The artillery should be more effective at breaking the enemies morale especially the closer the enemy is (e.g. bigger morale loss along with slightly more casualties). At short ranges it should not matter as much if your artillery is rookie or not as the chance of hitting goes up as the enemy get closer. I understand that it is a fine line in making artillery somewhat effective but not too effective. I hope the developers can come up with a solution. The good news is with the latest patch the main line infantry seem to be much more effective a killing artillery so this is a big improvement although they still seem to take a long time to whittle down the artillery crews (In my opinion this takes too long still) but I have been able to completely wipe out enemy artillery units now. Thanks for the hard work and the replies guys. I hope we can get this fixed in the future as I love artillery and the possibilities it gives on the battlefield. Reisman17

I am still noticing strange artillery behaviour where a artillery unit will end up advancing towards the enemies front. I can put a "hold" order but this does not seem to work . I can put them on a hill in the perfect firing position and next thing I know they are moving towards the enemy. I suspect this may have to do with selecting units (e.g if you select a target then the target falls back the artillery tries to follow it). I also suspect this is related to not detecting dangers around the unit. A fews things come to mind in fixing this. 1. Make sure the "hold" order means you hold until given another order or your morale breaks. 2. Make line of sights better for all units. For instance if I select a unit of artillery I want to see only those units that the artillery can see and fire upon. I should not be able to see an enemy if they are behind a hill and I have a unit flaking them that can see them (e.g. infantry), Those enemy and friendy units should all be grayed out when they cannot be seen. If you want to see all the enemy movements then you should have the general selected. All other times it should only show the selected units line of sight and no more (e.g. the cone that extends out should angle of fire). The nice thing about this system is it makes flanking manovoevers much more dangerous if you are not paying attention (e.g. you may miss a flanking manoever just like in real life - the unit may be too preoccupied with whats happening in front to notice flaking movoevers for instance. This would also give a good reason to select your general from time to time instead of only clicking on him to move him to a better location. This gives the general more purpose in my opinon. (just like in areal battle the general is very important). This should apply to all units (artillery, infantry, skirmishers and cavalry). 3. Make clearer when a unit have no target or what target is selected. I think it should be possible when you select a unit (any unit) that it should show what enemy unit it is targeting (e.g. a bullseye over the head of the unit being fired upon). It should also give a warning when it loses it target (e.g. target routs). Maybe something along the lines of that the friendly units flag flashes to signal that there is not current unit being engaged until a new enemy is aquired automatically (via AI) or selected manually. 4. Any infantry or artillery unit that is behind enemy lines should loose morale repeatedly to signify that they have no support and they are 'on their own'. This would also cause a certain amount of desertion (e.g. should loose men) again that would be dependent on how long the unit was behind enemy lines. It should start off very small but get steadily worse and worse. It the unit breaks it should be considers completely lost as most the men would disappear into the countryside to maybe reappear the next day (at greatly reduced strength). This should not apply to cavalry however as their purpose was quite often to raid the enemies lines. This should apply to enemy AI as well as us. 5. How about introducing an ability to bring in reinforcements at different times/ different parts of the map. This was from my old wargaming days (with 15mm figures). Reinforcements have a certain chance to appear at a certain point during the game. This would be dependent on several factors below :- a) You have a small chance that they appear at the beginning of the map (e.g. 5%) and the chance increases with each minute (e.g. 1 minute 10%, 2 minutes 15% etc...as an example only) until its certain they will appear (e.g. 100%) . This would give more suspense as you could not know for sure when the reinforcements will appear. Will you be able to hold out until they arrive or will you take a chance with an early push and hope for the best. I think this would be a great way to make the battle feel different each and every battle. This would apply to the AI's reinforcements as well so you may be able to push the enemy early and get win because their reinforcements did not show up in time (or at least too late to have an impact on the battle/ save the day). If the AI's reinforcements arrive before yours you may have to play a stalling action until your reinforcements arrive (which could be very challenging like some players are requesting ) You have the choice before the battle if you would like to do an flanking attack on the enemy army with your reinforcements. This will usually add additional time to when the reinforcements arrive (e.g -5% for every minute as an example) however for your reinforcements appearing on the enemies flanks may be enough to cause major problems for the enemy if you can hold out that long. It again gives some flexability and makes the battles more interesting. This of course would apply to the AI as well and would be dependent on the play style of the AI. 6. As stated in another post if a unit gets surrounded it should be destroyed / remove from that battle and maybe reappear the next battle at 25% or less strength to show that some of the men were able to escape the trap. This unit should also have extremely low morale unless the general spends some serious time with them (which would not make much sense with their lack of strength as well). Probably would only be good for guard duties at the rear of the lines. 7. Give generals more things to do. For instance the general should have the ability one time during the battle to do a "rally call" and all units within his radius that are routing he is able to rally them and give them half of their morale back. This does not recover men however. I. Another ability might be "fevor" this would allow all the units within his radius to do extra damage (e.g. getting his men worked up into a fever so they can shooter faster etc...). Just a couple of ideas that I could come up there are many more (live movement bonuses etc....). All of these should be able to be used by the AI also. Obviously some kind of symbol/color would need to be used to show which ability is being used at that time. Certain abilties could be given to certain AI / picked by the player at the beginning (e.g. at aggressive AI would probably want the "fevor" whereas the defensive AI might want the "rally call" ability. They player should be able to pick the type of strategy he wants to follow (will the same as the AI example for instance). These abilities are only for a short period of time (e.g 5 minutes) and might make the difference between victory and defeat if done at the right time. Well thats all I can think of for now. I hope you like my ideas. Obviously some will take more work than others but I hope you will consider these. Please let me know what you think . Thank you for the great game. Reisman17

I agree mostly with this thread (except the adding extra brigades part). Terrain VP is an interesting topic. I agree that the original battlefield did not have these objectives over them (pretty obvious to me) however a hill was an important asset in any battle as it gave your troops some much needed advantages including better line of sight (when on top), easier to defend (attackers would have to climb the hill that should slow them down and tire them out all the while being under fire) or attack from (should give a short speed boost to charging down the hill and a slight boost to morale as you would have significant momentum coming down some of these hills). Obviously the higher/steeper the hill the more advantagous the hill would become (e.g. VP point should be higher). This does not also include the ability to hide behind to either surprise an enemy coming over the hill or getting a respite from the battle (e.g. not being shot at by infantry or artillery to recover morale/reorganize). So there are lots of reasons to see hills as an important part of the battle and could be cruical to winning a battle. I have always been an avid wargamer and history buff for many years. The one thing that I dont know if its in game but holding an important hill should give your army a small morale boost and if you loose it you should suffer a small morale loss. This would mean that you would need to be very careful about loosing multiple VP points at the same time that could easily demoralize your army and send them packing. This would add to the game in my opinion. Reisman17

Hey great job on the patches so far. Really like the new map height feature. The only thing I have noticed so far that might need looking at is the artillery (again :-)). With this patch they have seem to act very erratically. What I mean is I can have them set up shooting at an enemy (perfectly within range) when all of a sudden they start moving towards the enemy. This can sometimes move them into range of another enemy unit. It did not seem to do this before the patch. I wonder if they are calculating that they need to move closer to inflict more damage and do not take anything else into consideration. Only my thought of why they would move once locked onto an enemy. I would like to see a deployed option (which we really should have since it was very difficult to move artillery (unless horse artillery) and would take some time to set up or pack up. When artillery is deployed they would not be able to move but should get a small bonus to morale. It should be more dangerous to get hit on the move (morale wise) then being deployed and being able to shoot back. Would be great if you could look into this. By the way counter battery fire (on my side) seems to have very little effect on the enemy. I really hope in the future there will be an option to show how well your attacks are doing (e.g. with your unit selected and clicking on the enemy they are attacking we could show for instance a + for slight damage/morale loss, ++ moderate damage/morale loss and +++ for heavy damage/morale loss (you could also apply this to our own troops as well).This would help in planning attacks and knowing which ones are most effective. Hope this helps you track down these little gremlins and maybe add a new 'feature' or two. I also hope you like these ideas. Other than this it seems to be doing great. Thanks for your hard work. Reisman17

Just to comment on this I have noticed that playing the 'story mode day 1' the map is quite small in my opinion however if you play in the sandbox mode playing day 1 and selecting the only choice the map is suddenly much bigger and it shows a larger portion of Gettysburg (better in my opinion). Just wanted to let you guys know that there is a bigger map option. :-) Reisman17

Thanks for the great patch. My biggest observation is still relating to artillery. Are they better. Yes however still are not doing what I would consider correct outcomes. Here are some of the observations I observed to give you more specific examples. I sent my cavalry to attack a unit of guns. The guns were not facing my cavalry so I was able to get close and charge them. My cavalry made contact with the artillery and with 200 cavalry vs 70-80 artillery units I expected to see heavy casualties for the artillery crews and the unit rout and leave its guns behind. Instead it did not seem to have much effect at all. May have caused the guns to fall back then to set up and start blasting my cavalry . This feels like it just is not right especially being the artillery were caught from behind/flanked so the effect to there morale should be severe and they certainly should not be able to fall back (with their guns) and be able to set up within seconds to start firing on enemies again. Following on from this behavior I also have some strange Infantry vs artillery issues. Again my squad containing approx 2,000 men was attacking a couple of artillery units. I would get close to the guns open fire and might kill a few (3-4) artillery crew members. I would then instruct my infantry to charge the guns (which I had no problem with). I would make contact with the artillery and would kill a few more artillery crew members and might take out 1 out of 3 guns if I was lucky. I ended up having to smash into the artillery unit maybe 3-4 times before wiping out the artillery. Before this there would just keep falling back and trying to set up to fire. It just feels like the casualties are too small (2000 vs 80 should maul the smaller unit badly) and second the morale should break immediately and they should rout. I understand if I was attacking with a unit of skirmishers (approx 200 men) but a full squad of 2000 men should have no problem taking out artillery if they are able to get close enough. Just to clarify that my full squad was not prior engaged in any fighting and was a fresh unit I managed to get behind enemy lines :-). Flanking maneuvers just do not feel right yet. I think a unit that is able to flank or attack the enemy in the rear should cause a much higher morale loss even if the unit is bigger than the other 2 units attacking it. I feel that if you allow a unit to be attacked in the flanks or rear you should pay a heavy penalty and should be a major concern when forming your battle lines. I dont think flank attacks should do a whole lot of casualties however morale should take a major hit and there is a good chance the unit will retreat quickly to get out of this situation. Obviously it the unit has both front and rear units it should take double casualties and should rout pretty quickly towards the edge of the map. I think the names of units should be in different colors to show if the unit is rookie, regular or experienced (elite). Much easier to see instead to the stars up in the corner. One last bug I experienced to do with a Union cavalry that suddenly blanked out (e.g could not select it). It was not routed and still had full strength. It stayed in the one spot for a while then circled around for a little bit all when under fire. Eventually got shot to pieces (from 200 down to 70) then routed. All this time I was try to select the flag but it would not select . First time I have seen this happen in a game. Thats all I can think of right now. Need to play a few more battles to get more of a feel. Thanks for your hard work. The game is coming along great so far. Very impressed.