SCENARIO: American Civil War - C3C only

[Misfit_travel]

Originally posted by Klyden
I think you mentioned it, but I wanted to confirm that garrison units can see the irregulars. This will allow the AI to effectively police a later game attack in the North by several of these units, should they be constructed on the eastern part of the map.

The only units that can see irregulars are those with "see invisible" ability. That would be cavalry, scouts, raiders and infiltrators. Garrison units are the dregs of the army. They are immobile units of substandard capability. I don't think giving them an advantage like "see invisible" would represent them fairly historically.

It would also mean that you couldn't sneak up on any major city, since most of them have garrison units assigned to them. There is a certain amount of fun as the human player in launching a sneak attack.

I have yet to see a player build a massive number of irregulars / guerrillas / raiders and use them in the manner you have described. They are too expensive (relative to main line infantry) to build in sizable numbers. That doesn't mean it isn't possible, its just all it takes it one cavalry unit in the area to spoil the sneak attack. Once the AI sees the units, it does respond to them.

BTW, in V3.x of ACW I ran into the Union AI building stacks of Raiders and attacking me in Virginia with them. It was a novel experience for me, because I had lost my cavalry by then and hadn't bothered to build any more. The Union took 4 cities before I could stop them. I think the AI is capable of using these invisible units effectively from time to time, so it might keep a human player on his toes.

Regards
Misfit

 

[Klyden]

I will try to do some research on this if I can find a good source. Admittedly, I was going by knowing that you can get in and out today.

As I am thinking about this, I am thinking there was an explorer that managed to get into the Great Lakes up the St. Lawrence sea way, but I can't remember his name (keep thinking Hudson, but he was up to the north).

*edit*

Understood on the garrisons/see invis and I agree. Was just a question with playability in mind and people taking advantage of it.

 

[dreadknought]

Originally posted by Misfit_travel
Stealing cost escalates pretty quickly now. The first try is something like 400 gold (at the highest probability of being caught). Then it jumps about 200 gold per attempt.

One thing I could do is to make both sides spys at regular ability rather than veteran. That would make attempts riskier and more expensive, but it would effect ALL spy missions.

Misfit

Yes, Lets try the regular spy ability for beta 3 and we can make a judgement from that.

 

[Klyden]

My bad on the linking of the Great Lakes. The seaway was not complete until 1959. Jury disregard..

 

[dreadknought]

Originally posted by Misfit_travel


DISEASE:

I've been experimenting with beta 3 setting and disease. After some testing, I think that a strength setting of 1 for plains, grassland, hill and forest, and 2 for flood plain / marsh gets the job done nicely. Disease appears to predominatly hit the largest cities, but not more than 3-5 cities a turn.

I think that will work quite nicely at limiting city sizes without artificially penalizing a player by losing critical units. (Kudos to dreadknought for the good idea).

BUILDING IRREGULARS OUTSIDE MISSOURI / ARKANSAS

The way we limit where irregulars / guerillas are built is by assigning a resource (in this case Rubber) on the tile square for the cities in Missouri and Arkansas. Then we make Rubber a prerequisite for building an irregular / guerilla unit. Poof, you can only build them were we want.

This breaks down if the player ever manages to connect, via road, any of the cities in Missouri to the rest of his map. The easiest way to do this is by taking St. Louis and not destroying any roads.

Now you have a road link to the resource and any connected city can build the unit type.

Unfortunately, there is no way (that I can think of) to prevent this situation from happening in the game. The good news is it takes a long time for the circumstances to happen, so by that point irregulars aren't a game breaking unit anymore.
Regards
Misfit

That sounds like the best solution on the disease so lets go with that if all agree.

The only other possible solution on the irregular builds is to have a great wonder auto-build them where you wont at a set rate in the cities you wont them, but they will be built till the end if the game at that rate unless the town falls. This might be a good option for the ai as it would cause some pains for the human player to deal with and you could remove the unit from the ai build option.

As to the navel change Im not opposed to the map changes but I not very familiar with civil war navel combat so I will defer from comment on that.

ALSO---should I continue on beta 2 with the 3rd release coming soon?I hadnt heard if what you thought on the tech time-line results and didnt know if it was helpful for me to keep going on it.

 

[eric_A]

Dreadknought:

Any idea what side you want to play?

Beta 3 is coming tommorow, suggest we
wait for it before we lauch the game.

 

[dreadknought]

Originally posted by eric_A
Dreadknought:

Any idea what side you want to play?

Beta 3 is coming tommorow, suggest we
wait for it before we lauch the game.

Ill play the confederate side this time, and that sounds good on waiting for beta 3 , in fact I sent you an e-mail suggesting that very thing......

 

[The Last Conformist]

The AI is actually quite good at using Invisible units. It tends to use them to infiltrate and attack poorly defended cities behing the front, which can be one royal pain. The Raider and other units with high movement are particularly obnoxious.

Re: Irregular builds, it's a major shame that you can set "Resource within city radius" only as a prereq for improvements and wonders, not for units.

Re: our PBEM, I don't have any very high hopes of actually winning - Misfit is no gullible AI - but I'm certainly going to take alot of Yankees with me, if destroyed I must be!

 

[Misfit_travel]

Originally posted by dreadknought


ALSO---should I continue on beta 2 with the 3rd release coming soon?I hadnt heard if what you thought on the tech time-line results and didnt know if it was helpful for me to keep going on it.

The tech tree information helped a great deal. Thankyou. At 6 turns a tech, and with not all techs required for era advancement, it works out to more or less the right time line.

I'd wait until beta 3 at this point for anything more. The changes we made should reduce the amount of gold available while letting the techs still be discovered at the same rate.

Misfit

 

[dreadknought]

Sounds good , I am looking forward to beta 3 with the new changes and art as well, it will be getting much closer to the live version I think.

 

[Misfit_travel]

Originally posted by The Last Conformist

Re: our PBEM, I don't have any very high hopes of actually winning - Misfit is no gullible AI - but I'm certainly going to take alot of Yankees with me, if destroyed I must be!

It will be very hard for the CSA to win head to head. My game against Eric_A is going well, but the Union build advantage could grind me apart.

My tactics against him from the start have been hit and run. I cut every road, kill every unit, rape every city I can reach to try and marginalize the Union infrastructure. I've attacked a number of Union cities, but never tried to hold any of them. I sack the city and move on (hopefully before the Union can catch me, but not always).

I have to kill three Union units for every one I lose just to stay ahead. I've had a tech advantage in that I got to Long Term Volunteers first and upgraded every unit I could. Eric_A is just now discovering Infantry Tactics, so I've had 15+ turns ahead of him in infantry tech. Its let me kill 75% of his starting divisions. Without the big divisions he can't stop my advance, but he grinds it to a crawl by throwing tons of weak units in my path. I can only attack once with most of my units so he can slow me down by making my army kill a puny militia. It buys time and is remarkably successful because the CSA just doesn't have enough units to punch through.

At this point, St. Louis is about to fall, but my all out attack on Washington will fall just short of succeeding. It will be bloody for the Union but Washington won't fall before he can reinforce it.

Without crippling the Union heartland states along the Atlantic Coast, the CSA can't win. I couldn't get to Philadelphia with my major push, so I have to take Washington before I can push again.

Time will tell, but the longer the war goes, the less likely the CSA can win.

I'm quite looking forward to taking on TLC. (Your turn by the way).

Misfit

 

[dreadknought]

Originally posted by Misfit_travel



It will be very hard for the CSA to win head to head. My game against Eric_A is going well, but the Union build advantage could grind me apart.

My tactics against him from the start have been hit and run. I cut every road, kill every unit, rape every city I can reach to try and marginalize the Union infrastructure. I've attacked a number of Union cities, but never tried to hold any of them. I sack the city and move on (hopefully before the Union can catch me, but not always).

I have to kill three Union units for every one I lose just to stay ahead. I've had a tech advantage in that I got to Long Term Volunteers first and upgraded every unit I could. Eric_A is just now discovering Infantry Tactics, so I've had 15+ turns ahead of him in infantry tech. Its let me kill 75% of his starting divisions. Without the big divisions he can't stop my advance, but he grinds it to a crawl by throwing tons of weak units in my path. I can only attack once with most of my units so he can slow me down by making my army kill a puny militia. It buys time and is remarkably successful because the CSA just doesn't have enough units to punch through.

At this point, St. Louis is about to fall, but my all out attack on Washington will fall just short of succeeding. It will be bloody for the Union but Washington won't fall before he can reinforce it.

Without crippling the Union heartland states along the Atlantic Coast, the CSA can't win. I couldn't get to Philadelphia with my major push, so I have to take Washington before I can push again.

Time will tell, but the longer the war goes, the less likely the CSA can win.

I'm quite looking forward to taking on TLC. (Your turn by the way).

Misfit

Sounds like I will have my work cut out for me.

 

[Misfit_travel]

I'm waiting for Thunderfall to move the beta3 build from the Civfanatics FTP site and give me a URL I can embed in this forum.

But in the meantime, here is what's changed / coming:

Bug fixes:
- Infiltrator unit assigned to proper tech advance
- added missing City Improvements
- Manufacturing plant added to Advanced Production Tech
____ + 50% shields (w/pollution), cumulative with Factory
- Pollution Controls added to Pollution Controls Tech
____ removes pollution from Buildings
- Newspaper added to Propaganda Tech
____ 2 happy faces in city, NO maintenance
- added missing Wonder
- Hidden Offshore Accounts
____ free maintenance on all trade buildings
- renamed CSA Corps to "Army of Northern Virginia"
- checked all wonder splash screen (was causing crash when missing)
- added ability to draft militia at game start

Changes:
- removed plague, substituted disease on some terrain types
- edited map to allow naval units to be built in St. Louis, Quincy & Jefferson City
- removed offensive bombard from all division units
- removed spy ability to steal tech
- added diplomat ability to steal tech (but only after Improved Propaganda tech discovered)
- modified number of free units for CSA / Union
- increased unit cost to 2 (from 1)
____ reduces available cash for Union significantly
- minor changes to Division and small other unit costs

Artwork Changes:
- Horse Artillery (that's for you Eric_A)
- Militia
- Garrison

Known limitations:
- CSA now building Small Militia in droves (used to build CSAVolDiv)
- needs more research and possible unit tinkering to build better units.

Regards
Misfit

 

[The Last Conformist]

I don't know if we want to do something about this, but it struck me we've never discussed the fact that Army-type units get an extra movement point in C3C, which makes them faster and more powerful than before. I don't like the the idea of very powerful infantry units that march as fast as cav.

 

[Misfit_travel]

It can't be changed. Its hard coded into C3C. BTW if you make an army of cavalry, you would also get an extra movement point.

I did however restrict armies to foot units only in this scenario.

Misfit

 

[dreadknought]

Originally posted by Misfit_travel
I'm waiting for Thunderfall to move the beta3 build from the Civfanatics FTP site and give me a URL I can embed in this forum.

But in the meantime, here is what's changed / coming:

Bug fixes:
- Infiltrator unit assigned to proper tech advance
- added missing City Improvements
- Manufacturing plant added to Advanced Production Tech
____ + 50% shields (w/pollution), cumulative with Factory
- Pollution Controls added to Pollution Controls Tech
____ removes pollution from Buildings
- Newspaper added to Propaganda Tech
____ 2 happy faces in city, NO maintenance
- added missing Wonder
- Hidden Offshore Accounts
____ free maintenance on all trade buildings
- renamed CSA Corps to "Army of Northern Virginia"
- checked all wonder splash screen (was causing crash when missing)
- added ability to draft militia at game start

Changes:
- removed plague, substituted disease on some terrain types
- edited map to allow naval units to be built in St. Louis, Quincy & Jefferson City
- removed offensive bombard from all division units
- removed spy ability to steal tech
- added diplomat ability to steal tech (but only after Improved Propaganda tech discovered)
- modified number of free units for CSA / Union
- increased unit cost to 2 (from 1)
____ reduces available cash for Union significantly
- minor changes to Division and small other unit costs

Artwork Changes:
- Horse Artillery (that's for you Eric_A)
- Militia
- Garrison

Known limitations:
- CSA now building Small Militia in droves (used to build CSAVolDiv)
- needs more research and possible unit tinkering to build better units.

Regards
Misfit

The changes sound great, am looking forward to playinf some later.

CSA building small militia.....are they coded offensive and if so maybe the ai should be coded defensive on them so they wont build to attack with.

 

[Misfit_travel]

Originally posted by dreadknought


The changes sound great, am looking forward to playinf some later.

CSA building small militia.....are they coded offensive and if so maybe the ai should be coded defensive on them so they wont build to attack with.

I was thinking about that as well. I'm going to start setting up "flavors" in beta 4, as well as setup some generic wonders that we can use of autobuilding unit types. It will take me some time to totally understand how flavors work, but I think between that and some autobuild wonders we can make the AI more challenging.

I also have to catchup on all the documentation for the final release. Right now I have the project plan, and I've been updating the Civilopedia as I go along, but was thinking that for each unit type I want to put a short blurb stating its strategic value. I figure newbie players might get up to speed faster and avoid major mistakes.

I'm also thinking about putting the 1860 tech (which is a free game start tech) into the tech tree, just so people can refer to it and know what actions / abilities they start the game with.

Misfit

 

[The Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Misfit_travel
It can't be changed.

No, but Armies could be removed entirely if we perceive it to be too unbalancing. I do not (yet) have any strong opinion on this point, but I do want that the issue is considered.

 

[dreadknought]

Originally posted by Misfit_travel


I was thinking about that as well. I'm going to start setting up "flavors" in beta 4, as well as setup some generic wonders that we can use of autobuilding unit types. It will take me some time to totally understand how flavors work, but I think between that and some autobuild wonders we can make the AI more challenging.

I also have to catchup on all the documentation for the final release. Right now I have the project plan, and I've been updating the Civilopedia as I go along, but was thinking that for each unit type I want to put a short blurb stating its strategic value. I figure newbie players might get up to speed faster and avoid major mistakes.

I'm also thinking about putting the 1860 tech (which is a free game start tech) into the tech tree, just so people can refer to it and know what actions / abilities they start the game with.

Misfit

Sounds good

I would really like to see all calvarly auto-built to force limited use and not listed as a build option.

Stables- Grand Stables- with the city name are possible great wonder---example-----New Orleans stable builds calvalry for that region 1 every 15 turns and so. Maybe the confederate side should get a bit more on calvarly.


Also I think prime units to be auto-built are volunteers and volunteer divisions and also skirmishers on both sides with the possibility that skirmishers could be droped as a build option.

That way these units would always be present at all times in the conflict with the better rifle units mixed in.

We could do great wonders such as training camp-drill camp-draft-Grand barracks----example.....Nashville drill camp produces a skirmisher every 20 turns.....New York draft produces a draftee every 8 turns and so on.

I can promise you that the battles will be more intense and exciting with a few of these builds, though I like the game now as well.

These great wonders must be already placed in the cities at the start so as they can never be built again and they stop their functions normally when captured though I saw exception to that out of several builds in which case you could rename a produced unit. The cities need to large--difficult to capture areas.

New Orleans-Atlanta -Richmond-Mobile examples for the south

Washington-New york-St. Louis-Boston-Philly- for the north...though the north has more big city choices.

I will be glad to assist with this aspect as I have set this up in several modded games in the past and the ai plays so much better.

Ill be out a while but check back later......dread

 

[dreadknought]

Originally posted by The Last Conformist


No, but Armies could be removed entirely if we perceive it to be too unbalancing. I do not (yet) have any strong opinion on this point, but I do want that the issue is considered.

With the divisions so strong Im not sure armies are needed that much but if we add some auto-builds armies might come into play more then.