James Cornelius

The rigid nature of the battles can be frustrating, even when you know how it works. In my current BG Confederate campaign I managed to size both VPs at Nashville Pike on Stones River on the first day - yet we went to a second day where I had to retake that position at great loss of life (I have only the assault on Washington left in the campaign so that Stones River debacle is currently my costliest victory at 27000 casualties - to 31000 for the Union - we will see if it is still my bloodiest after I have taken Wsahington!).

I've got three. Longstreet, because while he has recently been re-evaluated by historians, he was for long the most underappreciated Confederate general and I think very arguably superior to Jackson in most every way. Less aggressive, perhaps. But while Jackson was a good general in the Napoleonic sense, Longstreet was a gifted tactician who would have been superior to the generals of the First World War. And, of course, he was right at Gettysburg no matter what the Lost Cause proponents say. John Reynolds, partly as a "what if". Probably the most gifted of all the Army of the Potomac's corps commanders. One wonders what might have happened had he accepted command rather than Meade, or even failing that if he had not been killed at Gettysburg what contributions he would have made later in the war. Not a single officer in the US Army had a bad thing to say about him. The last one is probably not common, but that would be Joe Hooker. With the exception of Chancellorsville, Hooker actually had a very good record and reading Sears' books it is clear that during 1862 Hooker was the best division, and then corps, commander in the Army of the Potomac. Yes, he was scheming and egotistical but that just makes him more human and interesting to me. Finally, modern research (and medical knowledge) seems pretty convinced that at Chancellorsville the cannon shot that hit the post Hooker was leaning against gave him a concussion. He was thus seriously impaired, and when he finally did relinquish command of the army it was to the less than impressive Darius Couch rather than to Reynolds or Meade (who, though junior to Couch, could probably have gotten away with Hooker giving them command without much complaint). Finally, Hooker was completely justified when he complained about Howard being given command of the Army of the Tennessee over him because Howard was responsible for the defeat at Chancellorsville.

I am in the closing campaign of a confederate BG campaign now. I went in (roughly) the following order: I took the choices in the beginning to give points in logistics, medicine, and politics. From there I put points mostly in politics with army organization where needed to get to have three corps with four divisions of five brigades (2000 man max infantry brigades). After that, I went mostly medicine except for getting enough recon to see the balance of power in each battle (4 points). I find medicine is a better choice before economics or training because it decreases the amount of money you have to spend - the 20% replenishment isn't just veteran troops, but also the weapons they carry. From there, I went back and forth between economics and training, but in a 3-2 spread in favor of economics. Here and there I would add to logistics as well, since the later battles are very draining on your ammunition as you hold trenches against the Federals. Now that I am in the final phase of the campaign, I think I will be putting the last couple points to either AO to get a 4th corps or to logistics. Of course, I should say that I followed the same points spread in my MG Union campaign as well, to good effect, though there it was even more important to get enough AO points as soon as possible (without having four divisions/five brigades at Gaines Mill I don't think I could have won).

I am in the final campaign of the CSA on BG right now for the first time (I have beaten the US campaign on MG, but that was tricky too in some places - though I take pride in never losing a battle once I got past the first two, which I found to be the most difficult due to the lack of troops). On that topic, I found some battles which I anticipated to be difficult rather easy, and others which I assumed would be a cinch were bloody nightmares. I have not lost a battle yet, though Stones River was exceedingly costly (27000 lost against 31000 Federals) and I just barely won Cold Harbor (casualties were 18k on my side vs 39k Union, but I lost the left flank in the final phase and had to rush the Union held VP - which they foolishly left unguarded to throw four or five divisions at the one I had holding Shady Grove/Left Flank). I am dreading the assault on Washington. Despite my losses at Cold Harbor, I was able to replenish back to three corps of 4 divisions (2000 man brigades, usually four of them with one artillery battery per division with the exception of one cavalry division) so I anticipate being able to field a good 80,000+ men to take DC. Perhaps I will make a 4th corps to increase my artillery footprint according to your suggestion.

A little late to this, and while I think the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars are a better candidate than the American Revolution, what I would most like to see are some changes/updates to UG:CW. Failing that, hopefully the following can be included in the next installment. Officers that matter. Right now, as long as you have the appropriately ranked officer, it doesn't matter who they are. You can expend reputation for historical officers, and you occasionally get some key officers as rewards but there is no point to this beyond a certain level of immersion. I suggest a trait system where fictional officers have a set of randomized skills and characteristics. Historical officers have historically accurate traits. So, for example, an officer like McClellan has benefits to organization and morale, but a malus to attack and speed. Thus it would give added benefit to the historically gifted generals and a reason to expend reputation to acquire commanders like Sherman, Hancock, Reynolds, Longstreet, Jackson, etc. From the fictional side, you would have to therefore balance between officers who might have useful benefits but combined with problematic traits as well (such as McClellan once again). Also, it would accurately simulate a model that AGEOD's Civil War for example handled well: the fact that early in the war your senior officers are not particularly skilled, but are the only ones available until your more talented officers gain sufficient rank to be given command of larger formations. So, a larger pool of historical officers would also be a nice touch coupled with this. Division commanders visible. I am not talking about cluttering the map with more headquarters units, but there needs to be some way to tell who your division commanders are and where they are during a battle. Ideally they should also have some benefit to their subordinate brigades that are nearby as well. The current system has no advantage to keeping divisioned brigades together except in the case that you might need to combine them. Vulnerable corps commanders. It is not realistic that a corps HQ unit can be annihilated in a battle and yet the corps commander magically reappears after the battle. They should be every bit as vulnerable as any other officer and there is ample historical evidence to justify it. If you don't want your best corps commander (or your own personal avatar) killed off, then keep them away from the front line - and of course lose out on their positive effects for your forces. Such is the price of dynamic front line leadership. More customization options. The ability to rename commanders on the fly, the ability to create custom maps and campaigns, etc would do a tremendous amount to add replayability and add many missions and campaigns which would contribute to the game and take some creative burden off the development team for "new content". Even without the ability to custom make maps (since I know they are hand-drawn) but just the ability to custom name generals in a campaign or custom battle would be an improvement. Also, finally give players the ability to change the portrait of their starting general and their starting trait(s). An organic campaign. This is the big one, and definitely the hardest to apply. Don't get me wrong, I love this game and the ability to play through the battles and do better than the historical commanders. But each battle is a set-piece, and despite the changes during development that have made the player's performance matter in the long term, you still have minimal control over the progression of the campaign - just affecting the numbers of each side involved. In a perfect system, there would be a campaign map - a large view of the theater(s) where corps (and maybe detached divisions?) are moved as on the normal battle map (with speed adjusted accordingly) and battles take place organically based on the positions of the opposing armies. Thus, maneuver and strategy would play a realistic purpose: if you command the Army of the Potomac and you don't want to assault the heights of Fredericksburg, then try to cross the Rappahannock and hope you don't get caught up in the Wilderness (for example). The challenge of course is the sheer amount of maps, but this could be approximated somewhat. By having a number of maps to certain areas, you could be "defaulted" into the closest relevant one (following my previous example, if you attempt to cross north of Fredericksburg you default to the Chancellorsville map). Even by removing the scripted battle sequences, this could be made to work as casualties and whether you as the player or the AI chooses to "withdraw" first would affect who is considered the victory. So, suppose you are forced into battle on unfavorable ground that you know will be costly. If you retreat without offering battle, it will be considered a defeat or setback which will affect your reputation and reward but will save your army. If you have been victorious or successful thus far, you can afford this drop in reputation. If you attack in an unfavorable situation because you are "forced" to, then the defeat might be weighted accordingly representing that you tried (a tiered system of victories and defeats would be introduced - major and minor of each to better approximate consequences of your actions) but if it is a costly enough defeat you will suffer a reputation drop much more severely. Thus, as was historical, your tenure in command of a field army is even more tied than in the existing system to the reputation system because you will be able to expend reputation by refusing to give battle on unfavorable terms if you are popular enough. National morale and war-weariness. This one would only be useful in an organic campaign. Otherwise, how would the game end? By winning or losing battles - especially key ones, you affect the overall morale of your country. Losing your capitol would have such an effect that unless your national morale was extremely high it would immediately result in losing the war. Specifically for UG:CW this would work especially well, as it could be balanced based on nation. For example, the Union might automatically lose if you lose Washington, but each individual battle has less overall effect, where for the Confederacy losing Richmond is catastrophic, but might not automatically result in loss of the war if you have won battlefield victories. Thus, if there were an organic campaign, this is how you would "win" - by reducing the will of the enemy to fight which would be calculated based on battles lost, casualties sustained (and ability to replenish them) and losing key cities such as the capitols. Thanks for reading!

Or Jesse Reno at Fox's Gap, Joseph Mansfield at Antietam, or John Sedgwick at Spotsylvania...

I still say that if your corps staff gets wiped out than the corps commander should be killed also - even if it's "your" avatar. Enough corps commanders were killed in the war to warrant it.

I think that's a great idea. Considering the current build of the game wants the same level of time commitment as if you are alone on a ship for six months in the middle of the ocean, it should at least have opportunities to make it worth while.

I would think it is quite safe to assume that, yes.

Ah well then that is perhaps what I am misunderstanding. I thought it was one per port, but I take it to mean that every person in the port battle taking the port becomes a lord protector?

How exactly does it work? Who becomes the Lord Protector of a port when it is captured now? Is it the clan leader? And where is the maintenance of the port fee deducted from? Is it from said Lord Protector or just a cut of the total tax brought in by the port transactions? The existing information is rather vague. Thank you all.

Oh I know how they are normally supposed to work. I asked this because this was my first time taking a neutral port since the very beginning (early '16) when we didn't have all these fancy features.

Hello, We had a port battle in Misteriosa which was neutral. The opposing force was 6 Constitutions, and there were 8 of us in a mix of Constitutions and Wasas. After sinking all enemy ships, our total points were 228. The tool tip at the beginning of the battle says "Capture all circles OR destroy enemy forces". We did not destroy the forts, but as they were neutral they were not firing on us. However, after sinking all enemy ships the battle did not end. We had to take the circles, which was a much more difficult task because of wind direction, in order to get the points to win the battle. I can understand this being the case in a true enemy port where the forts are hostile, but is this really necessary in a neutral port since the forts don't play a role? Is this WAD, or is it another issue?

Only problem with that is you limit yourself to 1906 onwards. But I like Age of Steel. Reminds me of "Castles of Steel" which was the name of Robert K. Massie's excellent book about WWI naval combat.

Looks promising. There has never been a good combat game for this time period. Maybe Storm Eagle's "JUTLAND" came close, but it was not exactly an easy to play game and they are notoriously bad with any support. Considering the mechanics of Naval Action are one of its best features, I have high hopes for this. Will historical ships also be available, or just design your own? What constraints, besides the obvious, will be involved in construction? What sort of simulation will be involved (if any) for the advancement of technologies?

While that is true about everything post 1906, that does not mean that the pre-dreadnought steel era has no place in the game. It all depends on how the game were to be set up. If it's straight PVP then sure, someone in a pre-dreadnought is at a disadvantage to someone in a WWI or WWII ship. But if it's a more match-making type setup, then what's the problem? I for one think it would be fun to be using some of the ships that historically saw little if any combat, the Russo-Japanese and Spanish-American wars notwithstanding.

I would love to see the Boyne-class 2nd rate HMS PRINCE OF WALES (1794).

Pretty minor, but it would seem that one of the ropes on the starboard bow of the Constitution ends in mid-air after the recent patch. It's only visible when firing the bow chasers.

What about a career tracker of sort, where you can get info on yourself and other players where it says total battles fought, number of enemies sunk per ship, what the most common ship sailed is, and information like that? In the era, captains became famous and such information was available. It would be a nice immersion feature.

Could you be a little more specific on "not safe"? They are being wiped or they are just possible to be captured by a foreign power? Will smuggling still work?

I feel the same way. My 4x great grandfather was in the 15th Massachusetts which was #10 out of sustained casualties out of all federal regiments in the war. They were decimated at Ball's Bluff, Antietam (part of Gorman's Brigade, Sedgewick's Division, II Corps) and Gettysburg (Harrow's Brigade, Gibbon's Division, II Corps). I'm proud to be a member of Sons of Union Veterans because of his service. I salute all other descendants of those who fought in blue or gray for helping to keep the memory of these men alive.

Pretty self-explanatory. If grouped up in either a regular group or a battle group, show the total combined BR of your fleet. Useful for all kinds of things.

These are all excellent points and deserve to be read by everyone, especially the admin/devs.

@admin I think you may be drawing the wrong conclusions, at least from comments like mine. I don't begrudge the age of sail concept or travel times or realism. But there is a point when you get rapidly diminishing returns. For example, the changes that made it harder to maintain a presence in more than one area such as towing ships, sending ships to port, and so on. Yes, it is more realistic this way, but it is a major inconvenience to most players who want the ability to do some crafting and some PVP but find it's generally not advisable (or even possible, based on resource locations) to do so in the same area. Consider the notes, permits, etc. As has been mentioned numerous times in countless locations, port battles cater to the well connected and large clans. My clan is about a dozen (at most) active players. We stuck together because we like each other, we're all pretty good, and we don't like being associated with some of the more, to be blunt, asshole attracting big clans. However, due to this, we are essentially excluded from the higher tier ships. To get a ship of the line, you need Victory Marks. To get Victory Marks, you need a ship of the line...see the problem? Even if you actually allowed converting all marks to each other (the last I checked even though an exchange rate of combat marks to victory marks was given, you could not make the exchange). That would still be a difficult task - the conversion rates are like USD to Venezuelan bolivars, but at least it would be doable. Even better would be to give back damage rewards from battles. Right now if you lose a ship in even a valiant defeat you get nothing. If my Surprise decimates a 1st rate but is ultimately sunk, I'm out a Surprise. For a truly accurate admiralty reward system, you would take account for things like that. You said that there were exploits; I don't think that's a good enough reason to abandon an otherwise good system. I'm reminded of a Thomas Jefferson quote: "Better 10 guilty men go free than one innocent man be punished". I'm sure you get my point. For a while you did the daily PVP events with the circle near Shroud Cay or the other free port (which name escapes me at the moment). These certainly weren't perfect, and were a hotspot of various poor sportsmanship behavior, but it was on the right track. It was fun, and there were rewards for going out there and getting involved and you were almost guaranteed some PVP without having to hunt across half the map. But you decided to abandon it. This is the sort of thing that keeps people around, for better or worse. You need to have MORE things like that, not fewer. The biggest problem in my view is that you have a creative vision, and that's your right to do. But in applying it, by design or chance you end up catering to a smaller and smaller group of people, or you get folks to buy into the premise but they give up on it for other reasons. I don't think your lack of a decent UI is solely to blame by any stretch of the imagination. It certainly doesn't help, but I think the UI was more to blame 18 months ago than it is now. Now, you have players who have contributed to the community and made guides and videos, etc which help new players. I have never been one to bash you or the other developers even when I thought you made some very short sighted or questionable decisions. But as developers I think you have a certain responsibility to see the forest for the trees in a way that many of your hardcore players do not always, and that means recognizing that what is good for the goose is NOT always good for the gander and that features, mechanics, and other systems should be designed to be of benefit to the largest group. As I once told another member on the forum regarding the "good old boys" network for port battles, I paid the same for this game as everyone else and we all have an equal right to enjoy it. I think all of us keep coming around because we enjoy it and we want to see your game succeed because it is the ONLY game of its type and it truly is quite an accomplishment that everyone on the development team should be proud of. But that doesn't mean you should not be willing to admit to making a mistake when one happens, or seek out honest feedback from the players, or accept that sometimes the original creative vision might need to be changed to something else. That doesn't mean anyone failed, but it's a fact of life. The fact that so many of us here - including myself - are taking the time to talk about this issue shows we care about the game and want to keep playing it. Like I said before, I want to keep playing too, but lately it's just been made so hard to do. Thank you.

These are EXACTLY why. I already have a job - I don't need another playing Naval Action. There have been some good improvements in several patches, but in several others when a tweak was necessary instead it would be "LET'S CHANGE EVERYTHING!". Each time it has catered to the most vocal on these forums. I guess that's understandable in a way, but it would have been better managed to bear in mind that for every zealot on the forums calling for ultra realism there were five or more who don't have the time, patience, etc to devote to that sort of thing. Like when the ships went to 1 durability. Okay, I can get behind that and I think it's a good change...but along with that the ships were made MUCH more difficult to produce and acquire and the cannons now cost more than a ship. That isn't even realistic - it just caters to the folks that said "lolz this game is too easy". I'm one of the people who have pretty much stopped playing and it's too bad because at various phases of the game I really enjoyed it. I have around 1000 hours in, and it would no doubt be more but I have essentially given it up since the 10.0 patch. And, I was also one of the people who prior to certain measures being taken warned against them as being overly serving to the hardcore base and not to casual players - you know, the ones that actually populate any game. If anyone is interested I'm sure you can find them by checking out my profile history. At this point, as much as I at times want to get back into it I find myself so disgusted at how inconvenient it is to turn a small profit or get cannons for anything larger than a small 5th rate if I don't want to sail across the Caribbean. It's too bad.