Tormidal

The team needs to fix current issues before moving onto new features.... e.g. the issue of telling elevations....issues with manually targeting with artillery brigades....and more.

Yes, its true. They gave the game as a whole good praise overall, but even they mentioned the difficulty in telling altitude and hills. Congratulations, Game Labs! (This is a good thing, whether you like Kotaku or not.)

That's the problem with all AI in games. AI in general is just too predictable. Every strategy game has this issue, with there is not enough variety in units and tactics. For example, the AI in starcraft will always send a small attack way around five minutes in. The AI in total war will always just sit there if they're defending, in their pretty lines. The AI in Rainbow Six Vegas will always run towards gunfire. Once you understand how the AI thinks(As it rarely changes its thinking), it becomes easier and easier to predict. It is the same in UGG. Don't get me wrong. Its not the fault of the coders. But its hard to code a good, unpreditable AI. The only game I've played where this isn't the case, is Planetary Annihilation. Maybe its the wide range of options the players and AI can choose from, in terms of units and strategies, but the AI never seems to play the same way.(Supposedly, it analyzes every match it plays with a human(s), and saves that analysis, to come up with better strategies for future games.)

OP has very good points on the state of the UI and the terrain. My suggestion is tooltips. Hover the curser(if on PC/MAC) over a brigade to see things like cover/moral/condition in a small box, and I would actually suggest taking a page from Dawn of War's book, and have a small icon or status indicator when hovering the cursor over a spot of terrain to see what kind of cover bonus it gives.(Its the same mechanic in Company of Heroes.)

It may be an issue on the game then. We'll have to wait and see what they do. When I get home and have time, ill try streaming.

If I could give you karma...I certainly would.

GeForce experience will only let you stream the games directly if the game is in true full screen modes. Why it may not work with UGG, that's weird. You may want to try putting it in windowed and recording the desktop using GeForce Experience. Otherwise, OBS should work just fine.

I'm pretty sure this is a bug. I feel like the cannons use the Musket's firing arc when you directly target an enemy brigade. This has been like that for both the public release, and the beta releases. Darth, please look into it.

This actually brings up a good point. Will it always just be deaths that get counted, or will injuries where men have to be taken away be counted as well? What about desertions?

It's not really a bug.

From what I could tell, its been like that for a while. :/

Personally, Id like to see some sort of arrows to indicate the front of the brigade when changing the rotation of them.

I wouldn't mind an Ultimate General: Waterloo.

I dont mean any of the following as negative criticism, just suggestion on how some things, and more can be accomplished. Artillery targeting is a huge issue. The batteries just dont know how to handle being told to attack something. This needs to be fixed ASAP. Artillery morale is also messed up, like Nick said, they shouldn't be able to fall back after five deaths and fire again, after being swarmed by a full brigade. As for unit rotation, the suggested arrow would be vastly helpful in determining which way to face. I also dont like the way you have to change the rotation(Moving along the x-axis?). It should be more like Total War's, where while you're changing the rotation, it changes the rotation according to what angle the cursor is at from the starting spot.(With the current brigade position being the origin.) In response to point 2, as this game is also being designed for tablet compatibility, depths and length are going to be difficult to carry over. For now, its better left alone, as all units fire either way(I could be mistaken, but it shows that they all fire), unless an allied brigade is in the way. A good way to fix this for now is simply to have the shift+click kind of thing, that most RTS' have, like Starcraft.(Where you can have them perform a set of move orders. So you tell them in a few clicks to move to point A, then B, then rotate by X degrees. Then they do that without further involvement. To further this, using Total War's space function, where you can see where units will be moving to, can help set up battle lines and etc.) As for point three, I've personally never had an issue with units chasing unless I had clicked on a brigade and ordered them to attack, without hitting hold or otherwise telling them to stay put. Im also confused on how the game determines when and how far to rotate. As far as I can tell, they start rotating before the enemy brigade even moves out of the firing arc.

3rd option is best overall for the general populace, but an ironman-esque choice should be available when starting a new save/campaign. This way, the people that want the "no going back" experience can get it, and the people that are a little less confidence have the ability to go back and try again.

I agree that ammo isn't needed. Its just bad all around, I think. Since Union has the advantage in ranged combat, the Union player is always going to try and keep some distance between them and the Confederate divisions. Meaning they're more like to run out of ammo first. When they run out of ammo, their only option left is to run around until time runs out, or charge. Either way, the confederates win. Its also going to introduce a new level of micro-management that is just unecessary. Nobody wants to keep scrolling around the battlefield to make sure all the brigades are well stocked on ammo. It distracts too much from enjoying the game itself.

I completely agree. Id like to add really minor things like specialized uniform textures for different brigades, flags being held by brigades, etc.

Id just love to jump in and change formulas and attributes. Being able to add in custom units and new mechanics would be awesome as well. Id still like to see expanded graphics options regarding the level of visual representation of units.

How far will mods be supported by the game? And when can we expect to see multiplayer being implemented?

Hey again Darth, I've updated my build considerably, in case you want someone to test out on a high-end build. Old specs: Windows 8.1 64-bit pro Asus Sabertooth 990fx r2.0 16 GB memory Three way SLI GTX 770s(4GB version) AMD FX 8350(4 GHz) 160 GB SSD with 40 GBs free 1 TB HDD with 500 GBs free New Specs: Windows 8.1 64-bit pro Asus Sabertooth 990fx r2.0 32 GB memory (1600 MHz) Two-Way SLI GTX Titan Blacks AMD FX 8350(4 GHz) 160 GB SSD with 10 GBs free 1 TB SSD with 900 GBs free. 1 TB HDD with 300 GBs free

Kindle Fire HDx is a pretty high end tablet running,what is essentially, android. Shouldn't be too hard to port.

It sounds like it will. If it does,will It be for android and iOS only or will there be support for the Kindle Fire HDx?

So its a safe assumption to say that increasing size wont be a vanilla-included option? Will it be able to be modded?

In the full game, will there be a way to change how many units are used to represent a regiment. As shown in the some of the pictures, when a corps or regiment says 1000+, only a few hundred are visually represented. A slider for this, for the higher-end machines would be great. An overall unit number slider would be awesome too, for people who want to have huge, epic battles.