My Attempt at Comprehensive Suggestions!

[NickZ3535]

Hello team,

 

Just signed up for an account on the forums, but I have been following this project for a year now. So happy it's finally playable, and really looking forward to the final version! After playing this release for about 4 hours, here are my first thoughts!

 

Positives

 

• Map and unit models, in my opinion, are beautiful. I live very close to Gettysburg, and this is one of the best maps I've seen. It takes me back to my childhood wandering the battlefield and looking for bullets
• AI is very competent. I have not played all of the AI "styles" yet, but the ones I have played seem to respond well.
• I love fire mechanics, most of morale system, and the option to manually select artillery shot.
• The descriptions of the battles that are complete are nice, both informative in a historical sense, and the "what if" scenarios are also documented well.
• Units are easy to move in a straight line.
• I like the unit information in the top left corner.

Suggestions for Improvement

(I am going to write more for these, not because they are huge issues, but so that I am clear about what I'm talking about)

 

• This was mentioned before in the forum, but I find it very difficult to judge terrain elevation. For example, it is very hard to tell where the "high" part of Cemetary Hill is, and when you've reached the bottom. This made it very difficult to place artillery and units. Some areas have very visible elevation, but some do not. I remember in Sid Meier's Gettysburg that was an option for "exaggerated elevation", which basically made the hills and ridges more visible. Is this an option? Or a terrain grid?
• I found artillery targeting to be constantly problematic. I would select an artillery unit, and the game then shows which enemy units are "visible" on the map. When I click them to fire, the artillery would often not fire, instead moving forward. This moved them in front of my infantry and into harm's way. I would then have to move them back behind my lines. In the end it was hard to determine if the enemy units were visible to the artillery or not. Line of sight was also a little odd. For instance, I had artillery units placed on all areas of Cemetary Hill, but none of them were able to target the area between Seminary Ridge and Cemetary Ridge (Pickett's Charge area). Historically, all of the artillery on this hill really blasted that area on the third day of battle, and I am wondering why it was not possible here.
• Also on topic of artillery - there were a few times when I charged artillery units with my infantry. I charged one small unit with 4 guns with about 1500 infantry. There was a melee, but artillery unit only lost 5 men! They retreated about 50 yards, then began firing on my infantry again. I think in reality my infantry would have easily "taken the guns" and sent the artillerymen running. Instead, I had to keep chasing them across the battlefield.
• My final big gripe is unit placement. This takes a few forms.
  • 1. Unit rotation - When rotating units, I think it would be helpful if the "rotation rectangle" that appears would have an arrow on it showing which direction is forward. Often I would rotate the rectangle only for the unit to "about face" and face backwards.
  • 2. Is there a planned function to "stretch" and "constrict" brigade battle lines? I remember in the Total War series you can used the - and + signs to change length of units, allowing you to make much nicer lines and use units to "plug" small holes in lines. Currently in this game, it is difficult to do this because the brigades are either too long or too short, and end up overflowing into one another. While I LOVE the "curved" movement routes for units, I do wish we had the TW system of dragging across the ground to allow us to determine how wide/narrow to make the brigade.
  • 3. Often when conducting a defensive front, I would arrange my infantry and artillery in a defensive line. After firing, they "follow" enemy units, leaving my battle line. Or sometimes they constantly shift position. Sometimes using the "hold" command would not help this. The same thing often happens when units must fire at an angle at enemy forces. Instead of just firing their rifles at an angle, the game forces the entire brigade to rotate. This often threw off my entire battle line.

I am now going to replay the campaign as the CSA. Will post more thoughts as I come up with them. But for now, the game is looking great!

 

 

[Zaduman]

I totally agree with you, 

[Tormidal]

Hello team,

 

Just signed up for an account on the forums, but I have been following this project for a year now. So happy it's finally playable, and really looking forward to the final version! After playing this release for about 4 hours, here are my first thoughts!

 

Positives

 

• Map and unit models, in my opinion, are beautiful. I live very close to Gettysburg, and this is one of the best maps I've seen. It takes me back to my childhood wandering the battlefield and looking for bullets
• AI is very competent. I have not played all of the AI "styles" yet, but the ones I have played seem to respond well.
• I love fire mechanics, most of morale system, and the option to manually select artillery shot.
• The descriptions of the battles that are complete are nice, both informative in a historical sense, and the "what if" scenarios are also documented well.
• Units are easy to move in a straight line.
• I like the unit information in the top left corner.

Suggestions for Improvement

(I am going to write more for these, not because they are huge issues, but so that I am clear about what I'm talking about)

 

• This was mentioned before in the forum, but I find it very difficult to judge terrain elevation. For example, it is very hard to tell where the "high" part of Cemetary Hill is, and when you've reached the bottom. This made it very difficult to place artillery and units. Some areas have very visible elevation, but some do not. I remember in Sid Meier's Gettysburg that was an option for "exaggerated elevation", which basically made the hills and ridges more visible. Is this an option? Or a terrain grid?
• I found artillery targeting to be constantly problematic. I would select an artillery unit, and the game then shows which enemy units are "visible" on the map. When I click them to fire, the artillery would often not fire, instead moving forward. This moved them in front of my infantry and into harm's way. I would then have to move them back behind my lines. In the end it was hard to determine if the enemy units were visible to the artillery or not. Line of sight was also a little odd. For instance, I had artillery units placed on all areas of Cemetary Hill, but none of them were able to target the area between Seminary Ridge and Cemetary Ridge (Pickett's Charge area). Historically, all of the artillery on this hill really blasted that area on the third day of battle, and I am wondering why it was not possible here.
• Also on topic of artillery - there were a few times when I charged artillery units with my infantry. I charged one small unit with 4 guns with about 1500 infantry. There was a melee, but artillery unit only lost 5 men! They retreated about 50 yards, then began firing on my infantry again. I think in reality my infantry would have easily "taken the guns" and sent the artillerymen running. Instead, I had to keep chasing them across the battlefield.
• My final big gripe is unit placement. This takes a few forms.
  • 1. Unit rotation - When rotating units, I think it would be helpful if the "rotation rectangle" that appears would have an arrow on it showing which direction is forward. Often I would rotate the rectangle only for the unit to "about face" and face backwards.
  • 2. Is there a planned function to "stretch" and "constrict" brigade battle lines? I remember in the Total War series you can used the - and + signs to change length of units, allowing you to make much nicer lines and use units to "plug" small holes in lines. Currently in this game, it is difficult to do this because the brigades are either too long or too short, and end up overflowing into one another. While I LOVE the "curved" movement routes for units, I do wish we had the TW system of dragging across the ground to allow us to determine how wide/narrow to make the brigade.
  • 3. Often when conducting a defensive front, I would arrange my infantry and artillery in a defensive line. After firing, they "follow" enemy units, leaving my battle line. Or sometimes they constantly shift position. Sometimes using the "hold" command would not help this. The same thing often happens when units must fire at an angle at enemy forces. Instead of just firing their rifles at an angle, the game forces the entire brigade to rotate. This often threw off my entire battle line.

I am now going to replay the campaign as the CSA. Will post more thoughts as I come up with them. But for now, the game is looking great!

 

I dont mean any of the following as negative criticism, just suggestion on how some things, and more can be accomplished.

 

Artillery targeting is a huge issue. The batteries just dont know how to handle being told to attack something. This needs to be fixed ASAP.

 

Artillery morale is also messed up, like Nick said, they shouldn't be able to fall back after five deaths and fire again, after being swarmed by a full brigade.

 

 

As for unit rotation, the suggested arrow would be vastly helpful in determining which way to face. I also dont like the way you have to change the rotation(Moving along the x-axis?). It should be more like Total War's, where while you're changing the rotation, it changes the rotation according to what angle the cursor is at from the starting spot.(With the current brigade position being the origin.)

 

In response to point 2, as this game is also being designed for tablet compatibility, depths and length are going to be difficult to carry over. For now, its better left alone, as all units fire either way(I could be mistaken, but it shows that they all fire), unless an allied brigade is in the way. A good way to fix this for now is simply to have the shift+click kind of thing, that most RTS' have, like Starcraft.(Where you can have them perform a set of move orders. So you tell them in a few clicks to move to point A, then B, then rotate by X degrees. Then they do that without further involvement. To further this, using Total War's space function, where you can see where units will be moving to, can help set up battle lines and etc.)

 

As for point three, I've personally never had an issue with units chasing unless I had clicked on a brigade and ordered them to attack, without hitting hold or otherwise telling them to stay put. Im also confused on how the game determines when and how far to rotate. As far as I can tell, they start rotating before the enemy brigade even moves out of the firing arc.

[Causeless]

For tablets, couldn't the player use 2 fingers to both rotate and stretch/constrict lines?

[admin]

For tablets, couldn't the player use 2 fingers to both rotate and stretch/constrict lines?

yes this functionality will be added for tablets

[RogueLeader]

My suggestion for you Darth and Game Labs would be not to be in a hurry to change things up.  I put 20 hours into your game so far and I can tell you your speed at first I thought was fast but after 5 hours I was okay now 20 hours in it is right on the money for me.  Losses seem right you have to know how to flank to inflict heavy losses alot of people dont understand this idea.  Retreating seems right on I would run like hell too if my whole unit took off.  Alot of these complaints and gripes are because people have not spent enough time with your game and dont understand it fully yet.  I am sure you realize this just hoping to back up your thinking.

 

My only problem would be figuring out elevation as well as others, maybe a colored line at the highest point on hills so I know where to position my arty and units best.  The old Avalon Hill board games had colored hexes that showed the highest elevation on a particular area.  There is always room for improvement and added features but to be quite honest you guys have nailed this game it is really great.

 

You may have to write an article on the proper way to fight a war for a few of your fans or do a lets play video and show them some of your tactics to give them some ideas.

[kondor999]

The game was made available just 2 days ago and you've already played for 20 hours?  Are you...OK?

 

 

My suggestion for you Darth and Game Labs would be not to be in a hurry to change things up.  I put 20 hours into your game so far and I can tell you your speed at first I thought was fast but after 5 hours I was okay now 20 hours in it is right on the money for me.  Losses seem right you have to know how to flank to inflict heavy losses alot of people dont understand this idea.  Retreating seems right on I would run like hell too if my whole unit took off.  Alot of these complaints and gripes are because people have not spent enough time with your game and dont understand it fully yet.  I am sure you realize this just hoping to back up your thinking.

 

My only problem would be figuring out elevation as well as others, maybe a colored line at the highest point on hills so I know where to position my arty and units best.  The old Avalon Hill board games had colored hexes that showed the highest elevation on a particular area.  There is always room for improvement and added features but to be quite honest you guys have nailed this game it is really great.

 

You may have to write an article on the proper way to fight a war for a few of your fans or do a lets play video and show them some of your tactics to give them some ideas.

[RogueLeader]

Since I left Rome 2 last October I have been going a little nuts for my strategy fix.  Although my wife has been very happy over these months since I dont play Rome 2 she has not been pleased the last two days.  On the other hand I could not be happier.  So yeah Im alright now LOL.

[fdsdh1]

I agree, the unit movement is brilliant, much better than left and right click