Just finished Union Campaign: My thoughts on the Game Overall

[Tontis]

First off: Wow, what a great game with so much potential! 

However, for a start, the game mechanics are mostly fluid. The user interface can be annoying at times when I'm accidently sending units here and there. But mostly, an improvement to the total war series that Darth used to mod (Big fan man of yours and your team!  Keep up the great work!).  The AI is advanced enough for that single player action is both challenging and rewarding.  The campaign is a good start but needs some work to feel special.  Both of these points are fundamental for a lack of mutliplayer play atm.  

Evidence that I actually played the game.  BTW, on Brigadier General Diffilculty. 

Campaigns Overall: Each battle should make an impact long-term

The campaign is clearly just the start (explicitly ending the campaign at Antietam), so there would be much more to come. First off, there is some longevity to actions on the battlefield. Whether its through casualties (which can become expensive to replace) or kills (experience gained), the enemy army opposition changes over time based on battles. I love this! While I think some would say it detracts from a historical timeline, I welcome that because it becomes a reward of its own. Why shouldn't my enemy be weaker when I destroy them? However, the games linear campaign plot is the same as it would be in the civil war. It's funny seeing messages that McClellan failed the Peninsula campaign when I vanquished Lee at 1st and 2nd Bull Run, Gaine's Mill, etc. I hope this is one area where they can make it more dynamic. Perhaps you then have more skirmishes and alternative big battles without the historical battles, but scratch can be itched if you're allowed to save your army template and play a historical battle on its own. Besides, creating an alternative history would make for a great twist to reward the player making an impact on the battlefield even more.  One thing they definitely got right, is the small skirmishes prior to a large battle.  As it stands right now, I can expect nothing to be different if I were to play the campaign again.  Expect to try to beat my previous results in numbers only.

RIP Confederates at Shiloh:

Large Battles: Only historical battles, or is there a fun alternative?

Perhaps this is a symptom of the game being in early alpha, but I would have loved to actually start seeing an alternative history considering I won ever major campaign battle.  Granted, I love having the set up be a couple skirmishes prior to a large battle, and that does affect the enemy's army composition (at least I think it does).  However, would Antietam truly follow if the Union Army won ever engagement (or vice versa in some respects considering the Confederates won more early engagements).  The alternative, therefore, must be large battles that are ahistorical in campaign mode.  Instead of being sad that you wouldn't always play certain battles; perhaps some historical battles would occur earlier if certain results were different.   Also, think about the exciting possibility of the Confederates launching an attack on DC itself if they won Gettysburgh, or perhaps, Philidelphia.  Whatever, the point is that an alternative can be exciting and engaging and gives more reason to play a campaign instead of running through the list of historical battles.

Another thing, what I loved about Shiloh was the battle being broken up into specifc quadrants that had their own skirmishes before the whole thing came together.  It was a tiny bit disorientating when the battle would start a small spot, but once it all came together, wow!  It made you fall in love of more units than just your elite infantry guys.  I found myself rooting for the little 14th Infantry regiment holding the line while other experiened folks fellback.  I digress, it's something that should be replicated in all large battles and was done so with Antietam pretty well as well.  One tangental point, it was kind of confusing which corps I should have brought to which particular area of attack until after I started the battle.  It'd be nice if higher levels of recon told you which opposition reports dependings on each sector.  So then I would know which army compositiion is better for each sector.

Other things I like: supply wagons (although a value would be nice), detailed intro to a battle, having to watch for enemy supply wagons to swing the battle in your favor, and the length of battles.  Love em!

Intermission Screens: Great start, more dynamic campaign backstory and mechanics?  Which stats matter and can it be fixed?

Great points of the game are being able to change army compositions, but I think there is more to be desired here.  There should be some suggestions in game that reflect real-life templates.  On one hand, it makes it important to organize your army correctly. However, there isn't much in terms of suggesting what is a good army composition.  I have read guides and watched videos to figure it out, however, I always felt that this should either be self-evident our taught through the game.  While I am a hardcore strategy gamer, I would caution any game that just strives for this same niche.  It's important to easen the learning curve for noobs and veterans alike because at the end of the day, a game should be both challenging and enjoyable.  

In battles themselves, overall, I think Darth has improved the battle experience when compared to the Total War series.  I know he has had much time developing mods with Total War, so it feels like he unleashed the beast of ideas and creativity with the Ultimate General serious.  I love that.  To some extent, its manageable to have an army and mass move units.  However, it does feel a bit cumbersome with larger armies in big battles.  Perhaps being able to press tab and seeing where your units will end up would help?  Also, there have been multiple times I accidently selected a unit, didn;t realize I had it controlled and had it move across the map.  Then of course, exposing its flank and then getting obliterated.  It's frustrating, and obviously my fault, but I feel that the UI could be improved none-the-less.  Being able to click on a specific unit is a mess sometimes because of the all the tag chaos.  So perhaps a more minimal ul?  Obviously up for debate!

Overall, I'd like to see more in terms of a campaign dynamic for in between battles.  The game does a great job giving you power as a general, and it feels warranted instead of far-fetched.  So perhaps doing something more interesting with politics?  It would be great to make decisions perhaps on where to move my army?  It doesn't have to be something glamorous, but it does need to be a fleshed idea that adds to making an impact in the campaign.  The more dynamic choices, the better.

The buying of weapons to equip brigades was well done, while simplistic.  Although, I'd expect to capture and rescue more rifles and guns after victories than given.

I like that veterans are hard to come by and it made filling out brigades after battle difficult.  And I loved that reconnaissance mattered (less so the more it went up).  Without knowing how many enemies I face, I could not properly fill out my army.  In essence, this was a problem overall however.  Certain skills were way better than others!  For instance, Army Composition, Reconnaissance, and Politics were way stronger than the other stats.  You could get away with 0 in the other stats, but I think that can be fixed by tweaking their values.  If Medicine saved more troops, or if Training saved me more on getting Veterans, they would be worth it.  As it stands, they make a very minimal when compared to being able to equip a proper army for next battle (a mix of politics getting you gold, to then afford army slots getting filled, for an enemy you are aware about through recon).

This was more or less the same experience with unit abilities.  I ended up always picking Discipline (1st stat matters the most considering the most brigades won't ever get more than one star because of rookies stat drop) and that it was more effective.  This can be fixed with more tweaking and stat balancing, and hopefully inflating elite 2nd and 3rd stats because they're limited in use anyway.  Again, I like that 2nd and 3rd stars are rare, but they should be more profound and actually feel like death swamping across the land: more buffs to a point that they don't become OP.  It's a balance, I know.

Lastly, I like having officers, and I love having them rank up.  Although, I wish there were more names available (minor flaw that I'm sure will get fixed).  Add to that, it seemed weird that later in the campaign, I would have a pleathora of 1 star generals in reserve to buy, but everything below that was dried up.  You'd think it'd be the other way around, where generals were rare?  Also, I found myself not knowing whether to move generals around.  Or if having anything other than a colonel to lead a division was necessary or beneficial in anyway. It'd be nice for unit loyalty to be reflected in the stats (so watching your leaders develop up through the divisions or something along those lines). In other words, I like that officers matter, I just wish that they did more so.  Perhaps that's one way to create a more creative campaign dynamic: make your officer character a general overseeing the corps and the have additional stat modifiers!

Overall Thoughts: Great game!

Seriously, big kudos to the development team, beta testers, and anyone else contributing to this game with feedback or videos, etc.  I hope the community that this game creates is going to be fantastic and the game has much success.  Of course, I say this self-interested because I want this game to develop to its full potential!

 

PS: Sorry for the wall of text, I've just been busy playing this game for 30 hours in the past 50.

 

Edited November 28, 2016 by Tontis

[Meagre Heart]

Congratulations on your big win! My Union campaign ended in a minor victory, despite having clear superiority after each battle. Once the full campaign gets released with major battles, maybe there will be ways to tweak how the prelude battles affect the major ones, and even later battles. Should Jackson and the Stonewall brigade be around if you crushed them at Manassas? Wouldn't it be amazing if the previous battles adjusted the AI for future ones? (A badly defeated foe comes back and pursues you aggressively? A dominate foe is happy to let you come to him? Etc.)

I love your feedback. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

[Koro]

Excellent feedback overall imo.

I'll add my thoughts about why the campaign is not dynamic;

The maps are hand drawn, making a dynamic campaign rather difficult to achieve. It is obviously much more difficult to develop as well and would be pretty much a new game having to be developed on top of this one. I don't know if you've played Battlefield 1942, but that campaign also wasn't dynamic in any sense of the word. As a German, if you won every battle, you still ended up in the streets of Berlin and then "winning" the war :). It only really broke immersion for me if I thought too much about it.

The way I see it, is that this game is a huge step up from UGG and if they keep making leaps like this when they make the next games, we're in for a real treat.

 

[Grognard_JC]

39 minutes ago, Koro said:

The way I see it, is that this game is a huge step up from UGG and if they keep making leaps like this when they make the next games, we're in for a real treat.

 

Next soft : Ultimate General : Napoleonic Wars !

[Captiva]

2 hours ago, Grognard_JC said:

Next soft : Ultimate General : Napoleonic Wars !

I would love to see, Ultimate General: 1776....just imagine, Patriots, Brits and Native Americans.

[Redoak65]

Lets help make this one better first...

 

[Grognard_JC]

4 hours ago, Captiva said:

I would love to see, Ultimate General: 1776....just imagine, Patriots, Brits and Native Americans.

America has already got enough attention dude. Give Europe some love. Make Europe Great Again !

[Tontis]

On 11/28/2016 at 2:50 AM, Meagre Heart said:

Congratulations on your big win! My Union campaign ended in a minor victory, despite having clear superiority after each battle. Once the full campaign gets released with major battles, maybe there will be ways to tweak how the prelude battles affect the major ones, and even later battles. Should Jackson and the Stonewall brigade be around if you crushed them at Manassas? Wouldn't it be amazing if the previous battles adjusted the AI for future ones? (A badly defeated foe comes back and pursues you aggressively? A dominate foe is happy to let you come to him? Etc.)

I love your feedback. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

 

I appreciate it.

 

I agree with you.  Every battle should have an impact, otherwise, what's the point?  Perhaps tie that in with motivation, so instead of having Stonewall Jackson running around when every brigade got demolished, they then have the incentive to retreat.

[Tontis]

On 11/28/2016 at 6:12 AM, Koro said:

Excellent feedback overall imo.

I'll add my thoughts about why the campaign is not dynamic;

The maps are hand drawn, making a dynamic campaign rather difficult to achieve. It is obviously much more difficult to develop as well and would be pretty much a new game having to be developed on top of this one. I don't know if you've played Battlefield 1942, but that campaign also wasn't dynamic in any sense of the word. As a German, if you won every battle, you still ended up in the streets of Berlin and then "winning" the war :). It only really broke immersion for me if I thought too much about it.

The way I see it, is that this game is a huge step up from UGG and if they keep making leaps like this when they make the next games, we're in for a real treat.

 

2

There most definitely is a limit to how much they can develop and make the campaign truly dynamic.  But I will say this time and again, it would be a vastly more enjoyable game with replay value if each decision matters in the long-run.  That said, I agree with going through a campaign with a defined line-up wouldn't be the worst thing ever.  But if this game wants to be something more than just a re-skin of previous similar games, it's a must.

[General Hancock]

On 12/17/2016 at 7:23 PM, Tontis said:

There most definitely is a limit to how much they can develop and make the campaign truly dynamic.  But I will say this time and again, it would be a vastly more enjoyable game with replay value if each decision matters in the long-run.  That said, I agree with going through a campaign with a defined line-up wouldn't be the worst thing ever.  But if this game wants to be something more than just a re-skin of previous similar games, it's a must.

You hit the nail on the head for me. If the game did this it would be perfect. I am not into knowing that the next battle is XXX so I will withdraw so I can have more troops, etc. I don't want to know what the next battle is. I just want the orders and the limited information/ intelligence that I have in order to do what I have to do. That would be exciting instead of knowing what will happen. 

[JaM]

Personally, i'd like to see a game one day, where actual pre-battle maneuvering and positioning would be as important as actual battle.. scouting for exact position of enemy forces, trying to outmaneuver them, dividing own army and moving with each Corps taking different route, with possibility to fight some delaying actions, or recon by combat, etc.. 

 

so far, not a single game with battle mode had this, and while Total War series had some sort of pre-battle tactics, it was completely stripped down since Rome 2, so it became completely dull and arcade like.

[CaptainKanundrum]

On 12/17/2016 at 8:23 PM, Tontis said:

There most definitely is a limit to how much they can develop and make the campaign truly dynamic.  But I will say this time and again, it would be a vastly more enjoyable game with replay value if each decision matters in the long-run.  That said, I agree with going through a campaign with a defined line-up wouldn't be the worst thing ever.  But if this game wants to be something more than just a re-skin of previous similar games, it's a must.

I also agree completely. It is this dynamic nature that made UG: Gettysburg so unique, fun, and replayable.

[MikeK]

I take the number of weapons rescued and captured as a normalized number reflecting that many weapons would be in less than prime condition, ranging to almost useless even for parts, and thus count fractionally. In the ACW, not that many are Dropped Once, Never Fired.  

[Speedkermit]

7 hours ago, CaptainKanundrum said:

I also agree completely. It is this dynamic nature that made UG: Gettysburg so unique, fun, and replayable.

I don't think such dynamism is possible in this game, as there are just too many "what ifs" involved in such a large conflict. UG:G alone featured up to 30 different scenarios for a single battle.

[CaptainKanundrum]

5 hours ago, Speedkermit said:

I don't think such dynamism is possible in this game, as there are just too many "what ifs" involved in such a large conflict. UG:G alone featured up to 30 different scenarios for a single battle.

I agree that you can't have a totally dynamic campaign unless you go with something in the style of a Total War game, but I think there are ways that you can cheat it in. The game is currently divided into a number of mini campaigns which culminate into a major battle of the war. Maybe these campaigns provide the dynamic nature. If I win a mini-campaign that was actually lost in real life, perhaps the next mini campaign is different. You still use all of the real campaigns but you let those develop naturally. Maybe Gettysburg happens in 1864, not 1863 because as the Confederates I lost the battle of Chancellorsville.

For made up scenarios you can take inspiration from writers such as Harry Turtledove who has written alternate history novels from the American Civil War.

I hesitated in commenting too much because at the end of the day I do not know what the Dev's goal for this game is. I do not know if it is supposed to be an alternate history game or a strategic recreation of historical events.

[Tontis]

6 hours ago, CaptainKanundrum said:

I agree that you can't have a totally dynamic campaign unless you go with something in the style of a Total War game, but I think there are ways that you can cheat it in. The game is currently divided into a number of mini campaigns which culminate into a major battle of the war. Maybe these campaigns provide the dynamic nature. If I win a mini-campaign that was actually lost in real life, perhaps the next mini campaign is different. You still use all of the real campaigns but you let those develop naturally. Maybe Gettysburg happens in 1864, not 1863 because as the Confederates I lost the battle of Chancellorsville.

For made up scenarios you can take inspiration from writers such as Harry Turtledove who has written alternate history novels from the American Civil War.

I hesitated in commenting too much because at the end of the day I do not know what the Dev's goal for this game is. I do not know if it is supposed to be an alternate history game or a strategic recreation of historical events.

 

 

Well, considering the most recent patch, I'm excited!  It appears that their goal is to make the campaign dynamic and I'm very glad to see the dev team listening to the community.  I feel as though there will be a learning curve to get it right, but it appears they have the right mindset.  Three cheers!

 

http://www.ultimategeneral.com/blog/patch-07-with-battle-of-fredericksburg

 

Quote

New features

• Dynamic connection between battles. Now the outcome of battles affects greatly your future engagements. By defeating the enemy soundly you can reduce his armies, morale, weapons quality and level of training. You can check your next battles in the right top corner of reward window. You will find an icon that informs of the needed requirements to trigger this special new reward.