SCENARIO: American Civil War Full-Release Version

[The Last Conformist]

Interesting AI behaviour:

The CSA AI is continuing to attack vigorously in the Tullahoma-Nashville-Bowling Green area (it's sending troops thru the "empty" region between Nashville and Knoxville). Meanwhile, it seems to be staging some sort of strategic retreat from North Carolina - by now, I've seen quite a few Confederate Riflemen marching west instead of opposing my incoming troops on this front. This is especially interesting, since my other eastern "army" - currently attacking Salem - has to fight for every tile.

 

[Rocoteh]

Compressed playtest-report: Version 3.10aT. Human versus
CSA. Playtest now at Turn 21. (CIVIII-version)

Naval combat: 3 phases: Turn 1- Turn 5 I avoid naval combat
and try to concentrate my forces. During these turns Union
naval attacks against my coastal cities are intense. The Coastal-
batterys manage to sink 3 Union naval units. Turn 6 - Turn 15
Counterattack. Union naval units lost 8. CSA naval units lost 2.

I become optimistic, to optimistic: Turn 16 -Turn 21 Counterattack
repulsed. I attacked the Union main naval forces at Norfolk and
Dry Tortugas. Very high CSA losses. Turn 1 - Turn 21 Union lost
16 naval + 2 Tranports. (The transports were obviously on
their way to land troops in the South.) In addition Union lost
7 naval units +1 Transport of their River forces. 6 of these
were destroyed in port!
CSA lost Turn 1 - Turn 21 9 naval units. In addition 2 naval
units lost of the River forces.


East: I tried "the fishing tactic" near Manassas. Union forces
took the bait! Turn 3- Turn 4 They lost 3 or their 7 divisions
in the East at the cost of 2 CSA brigades. Turn 5 - Turn 10
fighting in Manassas- Winchester area. Union lost 4
for more divisions +4 Militia brigades at the cost of 3 Militia
brigades. Now I had the playtest-report of Noldodan in mind.
(He captured Washington.) I considered to go for Washington,
but 5 Militia brigades coming in from North, made that I changed
plans. 2 of 3 CSA divisions had been badly damaged and needed
rest.

Turn 11- Turn 21 After that the 3 divisions were up to full
strenght I raided Harpers Ferry and destroyed it.
I also repulsed a new Union attack at Manassas, destroying
4 Militia brigades. I have not yet decided what the next move
in the East will be.


West: Turn 2 - Turn 4. 5 Union divisions advance on
Bowling Green and during intense fighting 1 of them is
destroyed. 3 CSA militia brigades lost. Not good.
Turn 5 - Turn 6 The fighting continues with Union
losing 1 more division and 2 Militia brigades. CSA lost
1 Milita brigade and 2 artillery units.
I always take control of the hill-tile North of Bowling Green.

Then I used "the fishing" tactic near Columbus KY.
1 Cavalry brigade was the bait. Union took it and I
could destroy 1 more Union division.

Turn 8- Turn 11 More "fishing" at Paducah and Bowling Green
results in 2 Union divisions destroyed.
Turn 12 - Turn 15 Union makes frontal assault against
Clarksville losing 2 divisions.
Turn 16 - Turn 21 Counterstrike! In a counteroffensive CSA
takes Paducah and Cairo. When Paducah falls 6 naval units
are destroyed in port.

My divisions in Bowling Green will have a short rest...
At least 15 Union brigades of different types are advancing....

Edit: On Turn 21 I destroyed "The Rhode Island Militia"
at Bowling Green!! A long AI-travel.


Rocoteh

 

[Rocoteh]

Playtest terminated at Turn 29.
At turn 29 Charleston and Winchester was culturally
"converted". I reloaded 5 times with the same result.
I lost 2 divisions in Winchester. I stated 4 months ago
that cultural flipping must be stopped, since its not
relevant in this scenario. In fact that is the reason to
why a majority of my playtests have been done with
PTW. (Where you can turn off cultural flipping.)
With the current PTW-patch I am using ACW will always
crash. Thus I will stop playtesting ACW until: 1 There is
a solution on the CIV-version or 2 There is PTW-patch
that will allow ACW to load.

I have playtested ACW for 6 months now and I still
think its interesting. It still have the "one more turn" effect.
...but as I have said cultural flipping in a scenario on the
Civil War is 100% wrong.

Rocoteh

 

[RobertLee]

WTF?!?! no way!

I can understand when small, former Union cities with just one military unit switch to Union becasue of "cultural effects". But why the hell did Manasas which had a a whole divison of infantry and a whole load of artillery in it swicthed to Union??!!

I could generaly stop cities from doing that by putting a military unit in them but WTF can I do here???!!!

 

[Misfit_travel]

Although I play ACW in PTW, I've never "set" the switch to turn off culture flipping. Is this something that is done automatically during the conversion process from CIV3 ACW.bic to PTW ACW.bix?

I've never seen a single incident of culture flipping in any of the ACW version scenarios I've played.

Misfit

 

[Misfit_travel]

Procifica:

Would you mind changing the date settings on the next version of ACW? I find working with the default calendar and starting the scenario at 4000 B.C. isn't really in the spirit of the Civil War.

Could you change the setting to weeks and game start to 1861? That way the game could start on Week1 of 1861. It would keep things into the mindset of that time period and make it easier for the playtesters to report actions.

(ie, with a weekly turn count it becomes very easy to report exactly when some action occured).

We could do something like make the first 50 turns 2 week increments and then switch to single week (to simulate the slower pace at the start of the campaign) or we could just keep it simple and make every turn 1 week.

Thanks
Misfit

 

[Rocoteh]

Naval production mystery solved!

Those who have read this thread for some time
know that AI refuses to build naval units.

I made an experiment an created an France CIV at the
East edge of the map. No result.
Then The Last Conformist pointed out that war could be
a prerequisite for AI to start naval production.

I tested that today, playing France and attacking CSA the
first turn. AI responded direct with starting to produce
naval units!!!

I give credit to The Last Conformist to have solved this
mystery. Without his idea I would never had continued
with the experiment.


Rocoteh

 

[Rocoteh]

Misfit-travel,

Good idea.
Start date should be week 26 1861.

There is one great problem though: The 76% crash have
returned for the ACW-PTW-version and you can only set
start dates with the PTW-editor.

Rocoteh

 

[Noldodan]

I've seen culture-flips. They really get me POed. But, on the lighter side of things, my playtest still hangs in the balance. It could go either way. The Union has built a stunning 176 Riflemen (I think they're all regulars) and 6 demi-divisions. The war has stalled in the East, as I retreated out of Washington 5 turns or so after my last report. I currently have 2 of my original Divisions, and a Demi-Division and 2 Divisions full of Riflemen. The one Division is completely composed of Elites, giving it 33 HP. I also have a VERY large artillery contingent, consisting of some 16 Napoleons. Dear god, I love artillery... BTW, the only defense against Union swarming tactics is artillery, at least that has worked for me. If you can deal 1 damage to them, then they will go home to heal. In the West things were going rather better until recently. I captured everything in a "box" East of the Misssissippi, North of the Ohio, and West and South of Indianapolis. However, now the Union has shifted a LARGE number of Riflemen West, tying up my artillery in softening-up attacks. I shudder to think how I could deal with Veteran Riflemen. In the war at sea, nothing much is happening. 5 Blockade Runners are bombarding Boston as we speak, after laying waste to every Union city on the Atlantic. I am also 7 turns away from Repeating Rifles, which I hope will give me a technological advantage over the Union for the first time. Also, Advanced Naval tactics is in the research queue, as I hope to get Improved Transports and lauch a coastal assault on New York and Boston.

 

[Rocoteh]

Procifica,

When running defrag today I got a message that I had to run
CHKDSK since 1 or more files had been damaged.

When running CHKDSK at least 2 Index posts connected
with ACW were removed:

Index Post Rail Gun. INI
Index Post RAILGU~1. INI

Maybe you should check it out.

Rocoteh

 

[Rocoteh]

Noldodan,

176 Riflemen, that is tough!

I think the key to stop the Union mass-attack is to build
more divisions. I agree that is a good idea to halt a big
Union offensive with causing the attackers damage with
artillery (since they will retreat after taking damage).

The problem is that damaged units will return and that
if you can not kill enough Union units, the Union will
outproduce you, given time.

I think divisions are the best "killers".
Just before terminating my playtest Union tried to
retake Cairo. (I had 1 single division in Cairo)
AI lost 7 !!! Militia units against my division.
It took some damage but were back to full strenght
after 3 turns.


Rocoteh

 

[Noldodan]

OH, whoops, forgot to mention the second part of the anti-swarm plan. After the stack is weakened enough, I would go in with Divisions and Brigades to take out the Riflemen. I had this really cool system set up where I would funnel the Riflmen into one approach on me, so that they would end up on the Grassland south of Winchester. Then they were easy pickin's for Napoleons and other units out of Manassas.

 

[RobertLee]

If Union produced and used a navy CSA would be very hard to play. And if Union started using artilery when attacking CSA would loose for sure


this culture flipping sucks! It ruined my game. I'll be waiting for it to be somehow fixed befoer I play again...

 

[Rocoteh]

Noldodan,

Sounds good. I really think it was interesting that you
managed to take Washington at Turn 20.
Will see if I can do that in the future.


Good news!

Playtesting can begin again.
I have just found out that loading ACW- PTW-version (from Multiplayer)still
works. I think it was in March this year when we were
struggling with the "76%-crash" I tested to load from
Multiplayer and it did work. It was many weeks ago I loaded
ACW-PTW-version that way, but when I just tested I found
that it still works!


Rocoteh

 

[Rocoteh]

Originally posted by RobertLee
If Union produced and used a navy CSA would be very hard to play. And if Union started using artilery when attacking CSA would loose for sure


this culture flipping sucks! It ruined my game. I'll be waiting for it to be somehow fixed befoer I play again...

I understand you!
If you own PTW you can load ACW (after converting .bic
to .bix) from Multiplayer and get rid of the "cultural conversions".

Rocoteh

 

[The Last Conformist]

Rocotech: Nice to have the no navy mystery solved. Less nice to note that there's no way of fixing it within a rocognizable version of ACW.

(Hm, the addition of Dry Tortugas didn't trigger the CSA to start building ships, but I know from experience that after taking out a neighbour's homeland tha AI will go after any outlaying islands. Possible conclusion: move the US capital to Dry Tortugas and the CSA wil build ships!)

Misfit_travel: For no reason I can immediately think of, culture flips are automatically turned off if you resaves the .bic as a .bix. If you were converting a scenario it's supposed to be in, you'd have to turn it back on manually.

Rocotech: That PTW ACW refuses to run for you seems quite mysterious. I'm running UK PTW with a 1.27f US patch, and the only trouble with ACW 3.01 I've had is that it tends to crash if I try and load an ACW game directly from the game menu - bizarrely, it never crashes if I load it from within an non-ACW game. Have you tried DLing it again? - there's always some risk a file's gone corrupt.

 

[Rocoteh]

The Last Conformist,

Concerning naval production: There is one way. If you
use Multiplayer, you could use France as a "trigger-CIV"
with only a few naval units, under human control.
After triggering naval production it would have no
further function. The risk is of course that AI would send
all its naval units against France instead against the
real opponent.....

Considering "the 76%-crash": Its an old problem that have returned. I have the Europa English Patch.
According to many reports at Apolyton the Patch is
corrupt, although its official....
That could be the reason.


Rocoteh

 

[Rocoteh]

Once again a question.

To those who use the PTW-version of ACW:
Do you have problems with loading the scenario?

I think one should consider to remove the current poll,
since there are only 2-3 votes each month now.

It would be of greater value to know how many ACW-players
who owns PTW, since further development of the scenario
would gain from going over to PTW some months from now.

I thinking about the shorter versions we have discussed
for a long time....


Rocoteh

 

[The Last Conformist]

As mentioned, I play on PTW. No 76% crashes since I fixed that scenario folder trouble.

I've heard nothing good of the European English version of the 1.27f patch. What patch level is there on your actual PTW CD? If 1.14, try the US patch, bizarre as it sounds. If not, you could try the "workaround"; run the US patch anyway, then replace the Civilization3X.exe with the one downloadable from CFC.

Or, if you've got money to spare, just by yourself the US Civ3 CD, the US PTW CD, and run the US patch. I'm willing to predict that'll save you some trouble when Conquests comes around too.

I'd suspect that adding a French "trigger" like that will only cause the AI to send its ships across the Atlantic to wreck French agriculture.

Miniupdate: The AI's moving more forces eastward now, but it still refuses to try and defend the Carolinas properly. Too far from the (new) capital, p'rhaps.

 

[RobertLee]

I don't have PWT. I would get it if I saw it somewhere though..