Ildarion

Some people posted ideas for features alongside their favorite era in One idea in particular drew my interest and immagination: A strategic map. However I would like for the strategic map to stay true to the General part of the series name. So no control over towns, no control over politics etc. What then remains for the strategic map? -A view of how your fellow generals are doing in their respective theaters, which would deal with the idea i had playing UG:CW, that i was the only general actually fighting the enemy. -Room for an expanded politics system, where you can use influence to requisition officers and maybe even brigades or divisions from your fellow generals. (On a side note: if you would add something like this it may even be used at a later date for some co-op/versus campaign multiplayer) -Espionage for use to determine where your enemy is opperating in your theatre/campaign area. These functions on their own however might not provide enough reason to add it ass a feature. But there is another thing we could add in order to fill a gap in UG:CW: namely a theatre map. This map would for example show the state(s) (in UG:CW) you are fighting in. On this map you, as a general control either your corps and/or your divisions. (maybe in a way similar to skirmishers) This map has fog of war, so you would need to scout (with cavalry divisions, for example) in order to find your enemy. The map is also where your objectives for your current theatre are located. These could be towns or bridges or railway junctions or a particular important area of terrain. These could be pre determined or dynamically generated and given as orders from higher up. Or they could be chosen by the player, based on the intel they have gathered. or a mix of these. (game gives several objectives and player chooses any number of them) In UG:CW i always wondered why the battle i was playing came about even though the historical introductory text explained that a little. I still wondered, "what if the army behaved differently". With a theatre map, the player can somewhat determine when and where a battle occurs, and thus know for him/herself why that battle is taking place. The big link between the strategic and theatremap however is logistics. On the strategic map this would show towns, locations etc, where your army's uniforms, weapons and uniforms are beign produced. The player can see how many are produced within a certain time and to where they are allocated. This would expand the influence/political part of the strategic map so that the player can alter the allocations of a particular type of weapons so that he recieves more of them. In the Theatre map the player can determine where he places his supply depot(s) and current Headquarters. The player can also decide from where his supplies enter the theatre. Using espionage and scouting the Player should be able to determine where the enemies supplies are and be able to raid them. If the player is not carefull though, his own supply lines might be raided aswell. Now we have 2 features which add, in my opinion, a ton of gameplay opportunities, and interact whith each other to create some interesting mechanics. There are some fairly significant drawbacks though: most notably mapmaking for the theatres, AI work (a Player strategic AI, An enemy strategic AI, Theatre AI just to start with) But i think this is a good point on which to start discussing my idea, what do you guys think, and what kind of features/mechanics would you like to see?