Multi-player campaign???

[Wright29]

I know many have brought up the idea of multi-player that goes beyond 1v1. 3v3 at Antietam with a person controlling one third of each respective army would be awesome. But I think a great feature would be a 1v1 (or possibly even more) campaign where each side manages their respective side of the war like the single player. Losses inflicted on the enemy in-battle would actually be impactful and special units/ generals would be feared by real people rather than just being some name that you came up with. Most importantly, it would teach people to be extremely cautious with their armies the way that real generals had to be! 

Of course, the minor battles would require new intros and there would need to be lots of balance adjustments. But it would allow this game to be a more communal experience like Dota, LOL, or Starcraft. Imagine getting a video game group going where once a week you get together with your friends to fight a couple of battles against each other that actually affect your future interactions together. This might be too large of a step forward for this game, but it's something I hope we see from Game Labs in its future games. 

[GeneralPITA]

Multiplayer campaign would be difficult to balance. You'd have to reward the loser with troops after each battle or it'll become lopsided and the campaign will end quickly. 

Not to mention, I'd hate to micromanage 100 brigades at Antietam in real time vs a human opponent. That would be a mess.

 

[Legioneod]

The main reason I want a multiplayer campaign is because of the lack of a dynamic single player. I want my actions to have a real effect on the enemy and I want to be able to make my own history and plan my campaigns.

[Wright29]

GeneralPITA, the balancing would be tough without a doubt. The confederates would have to get a pretty big buff compared to the current single-game benefits to both sides for winning. The first four major battles- 1st Bull Run, Shiloh, Gaines' Mill, and Malvern Hill are pretty tilted in favor of the Union. Better generals can only get you so far when you're outnumbered two to one! Nonetheless, I think it's worth it given that it would solve three major problems- Lack of real effects between battles, overaggressive AI (a real Union player wouldn't find 60,000 casualties at Antietam acceptable), and auto-scaling. 

[Commander_Rahl]

5 hours ago, GeneralPITA said:

Multiplayer campaign would be difficult to balance. You'd have to reward the loser with troops after each battle or it'll become lopsided and the campaign will end quickly. 

Not to mention, I'd hate to micromanage 100 brigades at Antietam in real time vs a human opponent. That would be a mess.

 

Just to answer these two points.

The Game already awards troops for the loser in Campaign mode.   It's just less troops, and they get a major Reputation hit.   I could see a similar mechanic being done in multiplayer.   Winner gets more to add to their potential pool, loser gets some, but less.   Not always necessarily enough to fully replace all their forces if they take a bad enough loss.   

For a larger engagement, I could potentially see different commanders working together.   So in your Antietam example.   Instead of you managing 100 Brigades, maybe it's you, and 5 of your friends on voice chat, working together, each managing a core of 20.   Or to take that further.   Have a mass engagement, with 20 players on each side, and suddenly each player is only managing a division, and working together over voice chat with the rest of the army, in order to work in sync.   I could see something like this working really well.

Or maybe you go more historical for multiplayer.   With brigades and regiments as they truly were historically for strength, veterancy, equipment, etc.   Each commander could potentially command a Core, or a Division, and you could play it out with historical numbers, to see what happens.   That could be a whole lot of fun.

So much potential!   I love it.   This game has huge potential to develop a very strong multiplayer community.   But that involves focus and commitment from both the community, and the Development team.  Sounds like a lot of fun to me though.

A good multiplayer community bypasses the problem of needing better AI.   Who needs a computer, when a real person could be driving instead

 

 

[Bill the Bold]

I think the problem with a dynamic multiplayer campaign is that the first guy to lose a battle or two is just going to quit.  Doubly so for an historic campaign, where its conceivable that you'd be going into a major battle that your side traditionally loses with less forces than it historically fought the battle with (and against tougher opponents) because you lost the last two skirmishes.  Nobody likes being a punching bag.

Probably ahistoric equal strength meeting engagements where you have a VP, I have a VP and one neutral VP in the center would be the way to go.  I'd like to see an option to play the historic battles too.  

 

[Wright29]

Bill, I see your point about not like being a punching bag. But I think this is a unique game where the role of attacked and defender are flipped quite often. A confederate player who gets beaten badly at Malvern Hill would look foward to having great defensive positions for 2nd Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. Likewise, a Union player that is beaten at Fredericksburg, Stones River, and Chancellorsville would take solace in their superior economy and would prep for the big battle at Gettysburg. 

And I think multi-player historical battles are probably the easiest thing to implement. After all, they've already created the scenarios for both of the sides and made the historical armies. Getting a real-time multi-player experience is something they already had in UGG, so I would hope that it's in the works. 

[sonnypemberton]

24 minutes ago, Wright29 said:

Bill, I see your point about not like being a punching bag. But I think this is a unique game where the role of attacked and defender are flipped quite often. A confederate player who gets beaten badly at Malvern Hill would look foward to having great defensive positions for 2nd Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. Likewise, a Union player that is beaten at Fredericksburg, Stones River, and Chancellorsville would take solace in their superior economy and would prep for the big battle at Gettysburg. 

And I think multi-player historical battles are probably the easiest thing to implement. After all, they've already created the scenarios for both of the sides and made the historical armies. Getting a real-time multi-player experience is something they already had in UGG, so I would hope that it's in the works. 

I have been thinking a lot about this too. I think that it is pretty balanced for both sides, with chances to lose a few and win a few even with a wide variety of player skill levels.

I think that if the minor skirmishes from BOTH sides were included, that would be 4 - 6 chances before each battle to gain some men, money, etc. even though it would have some give and take, surely a player from one side wouldn't just sweep the board unless they were in a whole different league of skill.

If loss penalties were cut in half and win rewards stayed the same, say you had 4 skirmishes before a battle. 2 win 2 loss would still put both sides at net gain for rep, men and money from every battle, and each side would still get 2 skill points. I think this would still make a viable campaign.

 

[Bill the Bold]

I certainly think it would be a lot of fun if you had a friend of similar skill level that was committed to keep playing but my feeling is that most random players will give up once they start to feel a quality/quantity mismatch.  Somebody has to win and somebody has to lose and the winner gets more compensation for his victory so there will be a snowball effect.  Say the very first battle in our campaign we both have 10,000 men and in that battle we both lose 5,000 men but you won so you get more reward.  In camp if I can only replace 1000 men and you can replace 2000 men then you have an advantage going into the next battle.  If you win this next battle and we both lose half our men again (cause i'm such a tenacious opponent grrr) but you can replace 2000 and I can only replace 1000 it really starts to put me behind the eight ball.  Even if my side is "supposed" to win the next battle its starting to look pretty bad.  Or say you mess up in one of those battles and I take half your arty and you know you can't replace it, you might be tempted to pack it in.

I think once a player feels like he doesn't have a reasonable chance to win anymore he'll go watch tv 

[Wright29]

I would think that that would be in line with the real war, though right? The Union would have an edge economy-wise, so that even when the Confederates get some early victories up to Chancellorsville they would still be able to spend quite a bit. 

[RoverGrover]

30 minutes ago, Wright29 said:

I would think that that would be in line with the real war, though right? The Union would have an edge economy-wise, so that even when the Confederates get some early victories up to Chancellorsville they would still be able to spend quite a bit. 

And if the confederates take some early losses?  

[Bill the Bold]

7 hours ago, RoverGrover said:

And if the confederates take some early losses?  

 That's really the problem, how do you reward the winner and still keep the losing player viable.  I'd love to see it if they could get the balancing right but its so tricky.  

[Wright29]

Without a doubt, being the Confederates would be harder if the campaign balance was just converted directly to multi-player as is. If 1st Bull Run and Shiloh were just a little bit easier for the Confederates, I feel it would be relatively in line with history  where the Confederates can get some big wins early in the econ battles where they can defend with good results. 

I still think that it's not so much about whether you win or lose the battle- it's about how many casualties you inflict compared to how many you take and how that ratio compares to the reinforcements you both get. They'd have to change the values for victory vs defeat, so that the Union has an edge, but not a gamebreaking edge where only a couple early victories is an automatic GG for the Confederate player. Maybe tilt more of the minor battles toward the Confederates? 

[Bill the Bold]

I think that multiplayer campaigns would be awesome but short and short is not a bad thing.  For me the main appeal of an MP campaign is how it would change tactical game play.  Playing a historic battle I don't care if I take 80% casualties as long as I win in the end but in campaign mode that same battle you have to consider the next battle.  In an MP game you have to consider every nasty tactical surprises that you just know is coming from a human opponent as well as any surprises in his army build (lots of melee cav or an insane amount of arty).  To my mind this takes tactical game play to the next level.  

As for how long the campaign would actually last would depend on the relative skill of the two players and how the balancing between rewards for winning and losing worked.   I think eventually there would be a decisive battle in every campaign where both players realize the loser has pretty much had it.  Depending on balancing and who is the better general maybe that battle is Shilo, maybe that battle is Fredricksburg, maybe its a skirmish in between and I don't think that's a bad thing.  I wouldn't want to see a campaign be artificially dragged out to the real last battle of the civil war with little tricks like cherrypicking battles or giving a losing player extra rewards just to keep him alive.  The real action is going into a battle (whichever battle it happens to be) knowing that your campaign is on the line.   If you whip me in five battles so be it, GG for you buddy.

Maybe we could choose to start our campaigns in early, mid or late periods of the war so we wouldn't be fighting the same 5 battles over and over again.

[Dravian]

Multiplayer campaigns are kinda a difficult thing to make fun and fair. However...I'd love something like a co op, where you can have someone take command of a corp for you, or a few regiments. One of the main things I love about the more recent Total War games, is when I play a co op campaign with my friends, and in a battle, one of us commands the light troops (usually cavalry), so the other can focus on holding the line, and applying pressure without the light troops being destroyed. I would love to see something of the sort, especially with the whole factor of two people running 50 regiments each instead of having one doing 100 or so lol. Might be fun.