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Ultimate General - Grand Strategy Civil War game in the future?


wingatereb

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Hello all,

 

Just bought the game having noticed it in the Matrix games discussion forums.

 

Really enjoying it, only put an hour or so in and immediately I am thinking that this would be an excellent tactical battle element of a Grand Strategy Game on the Civil War.

 

I hope this is the Developers hope as well - Imagine having recruited the units you lead in to battle, watching them gain experience in battle, the despair of seeing those units shot up due to your tactical blunders etc..

 

Is this a possibility in the future ? or is the idea just to focus on the tactical element?

 

Thanks

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  • 2 weeks later...

What would be great is if the design team focused on the mechanics of the ACW for the tactics and strategy. Then open up a map editor to get the community to contribute the maps.

The fundamentals of the ACW still need work in UGG and the design team is too small to "do it all".

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The editor would allow the community to do wonders but I think after a first phase of ironing out bugs and glitches, the best thing to do is to implement big things that are currently missing but that are definitely needed.

 

What amazes me is how a small team could build such a beautiful map, such a polished 1.0, such a fun game wtih a shallow learning curve.

Easy to enjoy, hard to master... and when you do it's even more fun.

 

This is an accomplishment that has very few precedents for small Dev Houses such as this one.

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Hello, i think that a good option is to implement the ageod campaign system. I explain myself: in the ageod acw blue and gray , you have a very good and historical strategic campaign, but it lacks of battles at all. This game could be the key to have a really good strategical- tactical game asset, really better than total war actually is.

I remember that in ageod game when it come to a battle ask you some tactics that your army will adopt in the field, but all the battles are after autoresolved by the cpu, so i think that , rather then a tactical choice you could go in the tactical field and play the battle with this system and engine, maybe hard to work out, i simply dont now cause i'm not an expert.

Thanks for your good work.

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They could do so much more with this beyond a turn based system. Even the campaign map of a grand strategy game like discussed here could be realtime. See my other thread about it, but I think it would be amazing to have a large map covering Virginia/Maryland where the armies, broken down into corps, are ordered about and battles happen whenever and wherever they meet. That way you truly are like the commander of one of the armies - you might leave a corps behind to guard a crossing while trying to outflank the enemy (like Hooker did prior to Chancellorsville), attempt to launch an invasion of the North to destroy the Army of the Potomac, or do what Grant did and keep advancing even after bloody and inconclusive battles.

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Personally, I'd hate to see a RTS only campaign game - just about as much as I hate turn-based campaign games.  

 

RTS click fest implementations of strategy games just don't do justice to the rigors (or thought) of planning a military campaign.

 

Turn based strategy games contort the flow of a military campaign.

 

 

If you look at military campaigns they have specific phases in a cycle that includes planning, maneuver, contact, course corrections, & battles.  

 

 

If you want to make Strategy Game of the Year here are a couple of design thoughts for a Campaign Game Engine:

 

Planning

Horse & musket era campaigns were usually planned over the winter months with training, logistics (particularly transport) and supplies collocated to support campaign plans.  When the weather appeared favorable the campaigns were put into action executing the plan.

 

During the ACW both sides had gained intelligence about the locations/logistics of their opponents based on the movement of trains, men, & equipment, newspapers, spies, etc...

 

The map(s) could be very manageable by "theater of operations" with maps covering areas about 200 square miles (the ACW Eastern Theater was only about 170 miles by 150 miles for the duration of the war) (the Western Theater was fought in a series of campaigns focused on specific geographic locations so the entire ACW could be captured in 6 to 8 "theater of operations" maps at this scale.

 

Maneuver

Campaign Elements would be player defined down to the brigade level - to align with the structure of the current UGG Engine.  The player would organize their forces into Campaign Elements (Corps, Divisions, and Brigades) and assign commanders to each Campaign Element (AGEOD did a reasonable level of abstraction for this structure, that needed some improvements, but was was reasonably efficient).

 

Each Campaign Element would then be assigned tasks to accomplish (drag & drop).

 

Once the weather was deemed acceptable by either player their Campaign Plan would move to the RTS Campaign Engine.  

Campaign Plans could not be altered by either player until either a player cancels their Campaign Plan, contact is made, or the destination of a Campaign Element reaches it's assigned objective; when the Campaign Element could be given a new objective.

 

Contact

Once contact with the enemy was achieved then forces within the "Zone of Response" could be course corrected to adjust to the new intelligence.

"Zone of Response" would represent the delay required in changing orders for troops that were days or weeks away from enemy contact.

 

Course Corrections

At some point during active campaign seasons a significant number of Campaign Plans are abandoned completely or significantly altered.  Changes can be forced by weather (The Mud March), lack of intestinal fortitude on the part of a commander (McClellan), or contact with the enemy (Hooker at Chancellorsville).  

 

Course Corrections are usually accomplished on the fly in realtime.  Implementing Course Corrections requires time, communication, and coordination - all of which can go awry in the implementation (Slocum at Gettysburg - delayed moving to the sound of the guns to ensure the responsibility for a battle lost would not fall on his shoulders - he was the ranking General in the AoP Meade was appointed General in Chief of the AoP (Slocum had outranked Meade until Meade's elevation to command of the AoP - the friction between Slocum and Meade explains why Slocum and his Corps were eventually moved to Sherman's Command in the West where Sherman outranked Slocum and chain of command conflicts evaporated).  

 

Battles

It takes two to Tango.  It usually requires the consent of two armies to give battle.  In order to have a fast paced game that would not require devoting your life to the game (or playing lopsided battles of Corps vs. brigade conflicts) I'd suggest that Battles be resolved in two modes.  

 

Battle abstraction would be used to resolve conflicts where one player elects to withdraw.  The result of withdrawal could vary from units surrendering (Harper's Ferry Garrison - Antietam Campaign) to escaping unscathed (Jackson's Valley Campaign multiple examples) and all points between.  The advantage of battle abstraction is obvious - time.  

 

But the opportunity for players to choose the level of granularity they wish to play is also important.  

Some folks out there may want to play Division vs. Brigade and if they are both willing to opt into a microbattle why not?

 

When both sides consent to a battle the game would move to the UGG engine to resolve the battle.

 

I'd highly recommend a map editor that the UGG dev team would open to the community with specific assignments for enthusiasts to research the more obvious battle locations in each Theater of Operations (e.g., Mannassas, Fredericksburg, etc...)

 

It is extraordinarily unusual for battles to occur as a complete strategic surprise (e.g., Ulm, possibly Shiloh, France 1940, & Pearl Harbor?).   It is difficult to accomplish tactical surprise(probably Shiloh, Jackson's Valley Campaign, and  Jackson's maneuver at Chancellorsville are examples in the ACW).  When a player selects to avoid battle there should be a possibility that the battle will occur without the player's consent.  My thought would be the chances to avoid battle would significantly decline once two opposing Corps-level Campaign Elements came in contact and impossible to avoid battle if multiple Corps-level Campaign Elements were operating within a "Zone of Response".

 

 

Final Thoughts...

Once the work was done on the Campaign Engine and the integration was complete with the UGG engine the design could be rapidly adapted to many epochs of history (or fantasy).  

 

This design would revolutionize gaming combining the intellect of planning with the challenge of mastering the management of troops on the field.  

 

I'm looking for a game that is quick to learn, fast to play, that can be scaled easily to military operations, and give me a sense that I'm the ultimate general of a large scale campaign with relevant battles.  I think this vision of next-generation history games would achieve the next logical step in this progression.

 

 

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When Jefferson and Varina Davis were going South just prior to the ACW Varina was asked by a Northern friend where they should address her mail.  She quipped curtly, "Why to the White House my dear".  I'd like to play a game with the flexibility to implement Varina's arrogance.

 

That's as much as I have time for today - more thoughts later.

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Without a doubt strategy, grand or otherwise, is the way to go.  Most of Napoleon's greatest victories were not down to brilliant battlefield tactics, but to his being able to bring the right amount of troops to the right place at the right time.  Strategy would enrich the game enormously.

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