UGCW Feedback v0.70+

[Stonewall47]

4 hours ago, Hitorishizuka said:

Correct, they won't wheel, so if they can't get even an angled shot from their current facing they do nothing. If you then tell them to attack that will eliminate the hold order.

Ok, I will go back and try to micro better!  

Personally, I would like the hold order to have to be toggled. Example, I move Stonewall Brigade into line and hit the hold command. They stay put. I see a brigade in their firing arc is mauling one of mine. I order Stonewall Brigade to fire on them. they remain in the same place, fire and don't stop until ordered otherwise or the enemy unit falls back. Even when said unit falls back, my brigade remains where it was initially ordered. They only move when I say, or when I undo the hold command. 

[TM21]

Hello there, long time player of several strategy- and wargames, like CW Generals 2, Total War, Crusaders Kings II etc.

The developer of Europa Universalis IV recommended this game in his 2016 GotY-list, so I gave it a try. I am very impressed by the game and I am looking forward to the definitive version!

Now, as it is in Beta, it is only fair to the Devs to share my experiences/questions/suggestions (in no particular order):

1) I, the player, play as a character that is tabbed as the “General-in-Chief”. I set up the Army, appoint commanders, buy weapons etc. But get this in my current campaign as the CSA: I left my character out of a couple of battles, cos I was fiddling with the division structure and stuff and thought another division was better equipped for a particular battle.

Now, my char is still a Brigadier General and Corps commander, but I could recruit Major Generals like Albert Johnston. So I did, cos I thought appointing a MG would improve my army in a way. But it felt off to keep my char as Corps commander and use Johnston as Division commander, cos there is a difference in rank. So I switched them. So, to use a sports analogy: my char is the General Manager (“General-in-Chief”) and Coach (“Corps/Division commander”) but now has someone above him, who (to continue the analogy) is NOT the GM. And he sure as hell isn’t the Owner.

I could of course ignore this and put a BG above a MG, but it doesn’t feel right.

So what I’m trying to say is that being tabbed G-in-C right from the get go is a bit inappropriate. If this position was to be awarded to you during the campaign due to your record AND rank, that would be more satisfying. Maybe some system with a Secretary of War as your boss in the CSA’s case, or the historical G-i-C’s in the Unions case.

2) Night turns: I noticed my troops were moved during the night phase of a battle, without my express consent as player. This cannot pass. Or let the troops stay where they were at the end of the day, or give me the opportunity to move (and only move) my troops during the night to another location (with penalties of course  to morale/exhaustion).

3) Reassigning commanders to the Reserve List: I’ve read this in another thread, this indeed should be implemented to allow for full customization of my Army. Also, I should be able to give my Army a name, like the Army of Northern Virginia or the Army of the Cumberland.

3) Rally: I would like to be able to rally demoralized troops with my Commander. Gamewise, to rally these troops, they have to be inside the radius of the commander.  And yes, this is a CWG2 feature I really miss.

 4) Dig in: another CWG2 feature. Let troops dig in. Especially as the CSA, this would give the player more tactical options.

 5) Supply system is a bit obscure: how can I tell how much supplies I ideally would need to take with me into battle? It would still be my decision to carry less supplies with me (or more), but now I only have a dollar amount and I don’t have the slightest clue how long it will last during a battle.

 6) Unit composition veterans-rookies: correct me if I’m wrong, but AFAIK there is no way to view the V-R splits of a certain brigade. There is the battle experience button, but it doesn’t say for example:

Total force: 1.500 soldier > 375 veterans, 600 battle hardened, 525 rookies.

If you have this info, you could fine tune the recruitment of each brigade.

 7) Mixed arms: now this could be complicated to implement, but sometimes it feels like a chore to fill up depleted brigades. “I need 500 soldiers to get to maximum strength (1500), but I only have 400 guns type X available….” Why not be able to buy different types for those 400 new recruits? I guess it would mess up the calculations of the game, but still…

Anyway, these were my observations after some 10 hours of gameplay. Devs, keep up the good work!

Edited January 2, 2017 by TM21
typo

[Hitorishizuka]

1 hour ago, TM21 said:

3) Rally: I would like to be able to rally demoralized troops with my Commander. Gamewise, to rally these troops, they have to be inside the radius of the commander.  And yes, this is a CWG2 feature I really miss.

For people who didn't play various other games, it would be helpful to be more explicit with what you are asking. You want a button or something to just press to rally that can be used anywhere? Please inform.

1 hour ago, TM21 said:

 4) Dig in: another CWG2 feature. Let troops dig in. Especially as the CSA, this would give the player more tactical options.

This would probably break game balance even further. Defense is already too good for the player and digging in won't prevent the AI from being dumb.

1 hour ago, TM21 said:

 6) Unit composition veterans-rookies: correct me if I’m wrong, but AFAIK there is no way to view the V-R splits of a certain brigade. There is the battle experience button, but it doesn’t say for example:

Total force: 1.500 soldier > 375 veterans, 600 battle hardened, 525 rookies.

If you have this info, you could fine tune the recruitment of each brigade.

That's because there is no such thing as veterans or rookies, it's just the mechanic through which you recruit troops and then stats average out back into a blob. If you recruit rookies, it brings down the stats of the unit, that's it, you don't actually have rookies. That's probably needless simulation down at the soldier level when we really only care about the brigade as a whole.

[TM21]

2 hours ago, Hitorishizuka said:

For people who didn't play various other games, it would be helpful to be more explicit with what you are asking. You want a button or something to just press to rally that can be used anywhere? Please inform.

Hmmm, a button/order that becomes available when a unit is demoralized and is within the radius of the commander.

2 hours ago, Hitorishizuka said:

This would probably break game balance even further. Defense is already too good for the player and digging in won't prevent the AI from being dumb.

But it may prevent the player making dumb/costly mistakes, especially with the CSA, where men are in short supply. 

2 hours ago, Hitorishizuka said:

That's because there is no such thing as veterans or rookies, it's just the mechanic through which you recruit troops and then stats average out back into a blob. If you recruit rookies, it brings down the stats of the unit, that's it, you don't actually have rookies. That's probably needless simulation down at the soldier level when we really only care about the brigade as a whole.

Hmm, okay, so that menu could use a refrasing, because it could be interpreted like I did. 

[Nox165]

being able to group and move units as a group ( ie maintaining formation and moving would be awesome) also no battle phases massive battles, I would love to try freds with ALL the units.

[RoverGrover]

I would like to say that while I am very very pleased with the game, I would like to echo the sentiment about retreating.   Maybe allow our corps commander to be the "fallback point" and have retreating units head for him or at least in his general direction?

I had to restart Antietam as the south once because TWO of my brigades decided that charging across Burnside bridge was their best retreat option. 

 

Edit:  I'd like to note that they were defending in cover at the time.   Should've reported it but I unfortunately didn't think about it at the time

Edited January 2, 2017 by RoverGrover
Thoroughness

[Hitorishizuka]

1 hour ago, TM21 said:

Hmmm, a button/order that becomes available when a unit is demoralized and is within the radius of the commander.

You don't have commissars. XD How/why would that even work? When a unit breaks, it's because they have nothing left in spite of officers being present, officers were necessary to even have them getting shot at to begin with.

1 hour ago, TM21 said:

But it may prevent the player making dumb/costly mistakes, especially with the CSA, where men are in short supply. 

CSA's troops start off a lot better, though. Neither campaign is really that hard and it's pretty forgiving to limp through even with losing a brigade here or there.

[Slaithium]

The game needs hotkeys for all the abilities and a alternative toggle for clickers. That should sum it up. That includes all commands in the game as well.

[TM21]

58 minutes ago, Hitorishizuka said:

You don't have commissars. XD How/why would that even work? When a unit breaks, it's because they have nothing left in spite of officers being present, officers were necessary to even have them getting shot at to begin with.

I'm talking about wavering troops, with a low morale, that got away in some order and now are standing idle some distance from the field. I guess their morale slowly gets back, but with a "Rally"-command by (at least) a BrigGen. their morale would rise much quicker. 

Who needs Commisars when Zhukov or Rokossovski himself comes by to tell you to get your asses moving for the Mother/Fatherland? 

58 minutes ago, Hitorishizuka said:

CSA's troops start off a lot better, though. Neither campaign is really that hard and it's pretty forgiving to limp through even with losing a brigade here or there.

Difficulty is in the eye of the beholder; I sure as hell would like the option to dig in in a semi-open field, to close of a certain route or whatever. 

[Hitorishizuka]

21 minutes ago, TM21 said:

I'm talking about wavering troops, with a low morale, that got away in some order and now are standing idle some distance from the field. I guess their morale slowly gets back, but with a "Rally"-command by (at least) a BrigGen. their morale would rise much quicker. 

Who needs Commisars when Zhukov or Rokossovski himself comes by to tell you to get your asses moving for the Mother/Fatherland? 

That's literally already what they're doing when your commander is in their radius, exhorting them to recover faster. It just doesn't make a ton of sense and is just making things easier to get a rally button on top of their fairly good passive morale buff.

22 minutes ago, TM21 said:

Difficulty is in the eye of the beholder; I sure as hell would like the option to dig in in a semi-open field, to close of a certain route or whatever. 

There is almost always terrain of some kind that can be used to gain an advantage, even if potentially it's negative terrain for the enemy. Digging in just makes it so you don't even have to read the map, which is practically half the point of playing.

[TM21]

27 minutes ago, Hitorishizuka said:

That's literally already what they're doing when your commander is in their radius, exhorting them to recover faster. It just doesn't make a ton of sense and is just making things easier to get a rally button on top of their fairly good passive morale buff.

Imho it gives some additional flavor to the commander. Anyway.

Quote

There is almost always terrain of some kind that can be used to gain an advantage, even if potentially it's negative terrain for the enemy. Digging in just makes it so you don't even have to read the map, which is practically half the point of playing.

We'll disagree on this. Placing a brigade at the exact right spot at the edge of a forest for example can be a finicky thing to do. Digging in would in a way streamline the process of setting up a defensive line. Now I'm not talking about trenches like during the siege of Petersburg, mind you.

I'm overall looking for more orders/flavor for my brigades. But if the Devs keep it like it is, I'd be perfectly content.

Edited January 2, 2017 by TM21
Typo

[Nox165]

Why do we never see the commanding general in historical battles?

[Hitorishizuka]

1 hour ago, TM21 said:

Imho it gives some additional flavor to the commander. Anyway.

Try getting a 3 star general as Corps Commander. ;P

[TM21]

14 hours ago, Hitorishizuka said:

Try getting a 3 star general as Corps Commander. ;P

I think I'll pass. :-) Thanks for your feedback!

[Hitorishizuka]

1 minute ago, TM21 said:

I think I'll pass. :-) Thanks for your feedback!

You're going to pass on the thing that has the general actively make the people around him fight better instead of just buffing morale that is the additional flavor you want? Okay then.

[TM21]

Just now, Hitorishizuka said:

You're going to pass on the thing that has the general actively make the people around him fight better instead of just buffing morale that is the additional flavor you want? Okay then.

ow, I guess I misinterpreted your comment. I focused on the "3 star" part, not on the "general" part... So I thought I should use a colonel as Corps commander. 

Lol.

[HAZBONES]

Ok, just finished my first 24hrs of game play and fought only 1 major engagement, Shiloh! Before you ask, my OCD has gone into overdrive and I kept restarting my campaign trying to get the best possible outcome on each battle. LOL

My OCD aside, you really have created a great product here. Keep up the good work!

Just a few things to compare in UG:CW vs UG:GB:

1) Detachable Skirmishers (love it)

Suggestion: this feature was missing in GB so adding it has really stepped up the pleasure factor. Just work on tweaking the AI and how they react to detached skirmishers. Sometimes it seems to dumbfound the AI when lots of them are active on the field.

Please enable us in the Army Organization to drill down to regiments. I know it would probably be too complicated to mix all those weapon and unit stats of the various regiments but an idea would be to treat the regiments the same as you would the weapons, their independent stats will either enhance or hamper the brigade they are attached to. There are numerous books out there that give excellent battle records of individual regiments and the player can "raise/buy" them as set units same as the weapon systems. Of course let us name the regiments and assign commanders the same as the brigades.

2) No map contour lines?!!! (hate it)

Suggestion: please add the map contour lines again so we can properly place artillery and shield unit movements as the generals did historically! A 2D map is really hard to see where elevation (or depressions) lay.

3) Smart AI (love it), Removed AI behavior options (hate it)

Suggestion: I loved the AI behavior options (e.g. determined, aggressive, passive, etc.) in UG:GB. Now that those are removed in this game, I am really missing it. Any chance we can get those options back again? Really adds to the replay ability and extends the time spent playing your game! What's to hate about that besides a dozen or so more man hours of coding/work? lol

4) The Armory and picking my choice of death deliverance (love it)

Suggestion: GREATLY EXPAND THIS!!!!!!!! There were so many other weapons you could put in there it's ridiculous. Some find that just including the most popular weapons is sufficient but my OCD says "FEED ME MORE"!!!

5) Lackluster naval component (meh)

Suggestion: I know you can't do it all just one Pre Release but maybe in the future add a naval component to the game where you can build warships the same as you would brigades? It would be fun to bring gunboats of my own design to Shiloh or fight naval battles like Monitor vs Merrimack!!! It would even make a battle of Fort Sumter possible. That would be kick ass IMO.

Ok, I am wasting good play time. Back to war I go and I eagerly await the next big patch!

[jimcarrel]

I'm sort of puzzled about the comments I've seen about needing map contour lines. Personally I haven't had a problem seeing the high and low points on the map.

After a bit of moving the view point around I can pretty well see all of that and then later during the battle after having moved men around and seeing the brighter land areas that each unit can see, I can most certainly learn the valleys and high points, I'd have to say that this was what  impressed me almost immediately when I first started. Probably the fact that I haven't seen or played the previous offering is why I don't consider the map contour lines as missing. 

[Hitorishizuka]

I wouldn't mind seeing contour lines come back but it's only super important if artillery get nerfed back to being much stricter on LOS. As it stands now it's not excessively important--cover is usually more important.

[Mr. Mercanto]

On 03/01/2017 at 9:44 AM, TM21 said:

ow, I guess I misinterpreted your comment. I focused on the "3 star" part, not on the "general" part... So I thought I should use a colonel as Corps commander. 

Lol.

Ah! You're mixing up your insignia's! In the United States Army, a Lieutenant-General had three stars, in the Confederate Army, a Colonel had three stars. Hitorishizuka meant a Lt. General, using the Union parlance "3 star general," and, being used to the Confederate forces I presume, you took that to mean Colonel.

[Mr. Mercanto]

2 minutes ago, Hitorishizuka said:

I wouldn't mind seeing contour lines come back but it's only super important if artillery get nerfed back to being much stricter on LOS. As it stands now it's not excessively important--cover is usually more important.

Yeah but those contour lines make me feel all professional and stuff....

[GeneralPITA]

LOS should be strengthened as a factor for artillery. As CSA on hard at Malvern Hill I place my cannons on the union left flank. I parked them in the swamp and aim up and over the steep face across the river, flanking their fortifications. My cannons seemed equally content to fire beyond that prominence without a penalty to accuracy or damage, effectively damaging enemies nearly as far as the victory point with a flanking attack. It's a tactic that should not be fruitful and allowed me to continually route their left flank before having to charge into the fray of McClellans cannons.

[JohnReynolds]

At present, RUN, CHARGE, and HOLD are acknowledged as being received by the units. Why can't that be done for FALLBACK and HALT as well? Also, would it be possible to press <F> and right-click on where you want the unit to fallback to? Sometimes I just want the unit to move back a few meters to be in better cover, not have them rush off in some weird direction 200 meters away. Currently I have to hit <F>, wait until they are in cover, then pound the <space> until I see HALT, and then hit <space> again to release them. Seems unnecessarily difficult for such a simple task. 

[JohnReynolds]

The Union casualties at  the bloody battle of Fredricksburg were about 11 percent and CSA was about 6 percent. Damage and morale seem to be way too high in this game. All assaults and defenses turn into suicide missions. Reducing the damage weapons do and troop morale would allow the units to break at about the same time as they do now but without the unrealistic losses. Of course recruits and weapon supplies would have to be adjusted.

[Legioneod]

Great game so far but I'd like to see a few things added and expanded upon.

1. The ability to name divisions.

2. More minor/medium battles within campaigns. (South Mountain for CSA, Shepherdstown, More of the Seven Days Battles and more Peninsula Campaign Battles (more of the seven days battles). etc.)

3. More customization/ role play elements. I'd like the ability to list what regiments are in my brigades. I'd like to see more varied uniforms and I'd like to see battle flags added.

4. All officers listed in the barracks at the beginning of the game. I'd like to see all the officers that aren't a reward already listed in the barracks menu, that way I can't create some famous brigades at the start of the game. (Harry T Hays, Richard Taylor, etc.)

5. More starting options. Since the enemy scales with you, I'd like to see more starting options that way you can have a larger army at the start.

6. Grand Campaign style mode. Kinda like the normal campaign but much more dynamic.

Also, some battles are in the wrong campaigns. For instance, the Battle of Chantilly should be in the Northern Virginia Campaign but it's in the Maryland Campaign instead.

Edited January 6, 2017 by Legioneod