American Civil War II Scenario Development Thread

[trevor]

I was really looking foward to this verison of the ACW. Any more news?

 

[whizkid1950]

I would say the signs are not good at this point. We'll just have to sit tight and hope for the best.

 

[Misfit_travel]

Procifica indicated that he is dealing with some personal matters. This has happened before and he did come back. Keep in mind that a lot of the work being done in ACW C3C here is transferable to Procifica's new project.

I suspect that much of the playtesting and balancing we are doing will help make ACW2 a better scenario.

Feel free to participate in ACW C3C while waiting for Procifica's return.

Regards
Misfit

 

[trevor]

Thanks

 

[Patroklos]

If we are going to increase all scale of the terrain, I was thinking of removing all the attack ailities and replacing them with bombard values and lethal bombards, to show lines of troops shooting at each other. That way you can have divisions mall each other, with one not always having to die.

Or have both, and have conventional attacks be like charges. Of course to charge as infantry you would expose yourself to a volley of defending fire (infantry has a movement of one, and I would expect a bombard range of one for infantry.

 

[The Last Conformist]

That's an interesting idea, Patroklos. I only wonder how the AI would handle it. "Not well" is, I'm afraid, my suspicion, but it would be very nice if one could implement it sensibly.

 

[Misfit_travel]

The "charge" with a volley of defensive fire is already represented in the ACW scenarios. Many unit types of defensive bombard (which is to say a bombard range of zero). Thus if there are two or more units in a stack, the attacker is subject to a single round of defensive bombardment before being able to attack.

Unfortunately for your other idea, the AI has proven to be totally incapable of utilizing artillery properly, so having two units stand off and bombard each other back and forth is likely impossible within the context of CivIII.

I do wish that combat could be limited to a certain number of "rounds". That would let powerful units duke it out, but not always result in one unit having to die.

Regards
Misfit

 

[The Last Conformist]

I think he was refering to the defenders getting to blast the attackers on their own turns before the charge. Of course, this means that with a stack you effectively get two volleys.

Back in PTW, the AI seemed basically unable to handle units which had both offensive bombard and normal combat units - it would use them exclusively for the one or the other (back when ACW divs had offensive bombard, I certainly never saw the AI bombard with one). I don't know whether anyone's tested this for C3C - the bombard routines obviously has changed - but I somehow suspect the problem remains.

 

[Patroklos]

Those frontal attacks were a little bloody after all. Read Attack and Die. And while the current system does take defensive fire into account, combat seems to revolve around the "charge," which were not the normal chain of events by and large.

I just thought this might add a little more tactical manuever and realism. You would really have to monitor the number of squares between positions, terrain movement costs, and enemy movement points to make sure you don't get caught in that "double volley" situation. With all this open terrain you need a reason to use it as a buffer. We could get away from the brute strength and stacks to manuever and position.

I just noticed that Infantry movement is 2, which means field battles this way will take up twice as much room, and you would need alot of scouting. Cav movement should really be 4. And the Arty movement is flawed. It took no more time to move a piece of artillery than the wagon logistics for the infantry. The only difference would be while tranversing rough terrain, and this is already taken care of.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Again, the idea is interesting, but I doubt the implementability.

 

[Patroklos]

An idea for landmark terrain.

I think we should make Divisions and Corps wheeled units. We should then make a landmark forest terrain that wheeled units can't use and place it in areas like "The Wilderness" of VA and the notoriously dense areas of Teneesee and Kentucky. These were extreme tactical and strategic obsticles becasue they did not lend themselves to organized unit actions, so I don't think these units should be able to operate here. You should have to use your smaller single infantry units here. All swamp should be flagged no wheeled. Hard to walk organized through a swamp.

Would provide for some interesting strategic options. The CSA could channel a Union invasion along a certain route, or the Union could suprise attack through an area the CSA thought not possible.

 

[Patroklos]

I would agree with you from an AI standpoint. I guess I will just mod a version for MP. As it is there are alot of MP sacrifices made for the sake of the AI, which is a characteristics off all Civ scenarions given how limited the MP community is.

 

[Misfit_travel]

Originally posted by Patroklos
An idea for landmark terrain.

I think we should make Divisions and Corps wheeled units. We should then make a landmark forest terrain that wheeled units can't use and place it in areas like "The Wilderness" of VA and the notoriously dense areas of Teneesee and Kentucky. These were extreme tactical and strategic obsticles becasue they did not lend themselves to organized unit actions, so I don't think these units should be able to operate here. You should have to use your smaller single infantry units here. All swamp should be flagged no wheeled. Hard to walk organized through a swamp.

Would provide for some interesting strategic options. The CSA could channel a Union invasion along a certain route, or the Union could suprise attack through an area the CSA thought not possible.

This is a very good idea. I might borrow it for ACWC3C. There is a certain amount of abuse going on with massive units (like Divisions / corps) moving through very dense areas of the map. Landmark terrain would be a very useful way of dealing with this.

From a user interface perspective though, you would need to create some kind of visual to distinguish between "wheel passable" terrain and non-wheel passable terrain. Otherwise the player would not be able to understand which terrain he can move in and which he cannot.

Misfit

 

[LouLong]

I think it would be nice if states names were written on the map, a la TAM (Egypt, ....). For those of us who don't know every little American town. + it would make reports, stories easier on the strategic side.

Just my 2 cents !

 

[Misfit_travel]

Originally posted by LouLong
I think it would be nice if states names were written on the map, a la TAM (Egypt, ....). For those of us who don't know every little American town. + it would make reports, stories easier on the strategic side.

Just my 2 cents !

If anybody knows how to do this please speak up! I haven't the faintest idea.

Misfit

 

[Patroklos]

Just make bogus resources/strategic resources/luxury resources that use the text for whatever name as a graphic. I prefer bonus resources as they don't show up in the trade advisor menu if there hapens to be a road over the tile your using. I can't remember if it forces you to give it some sort of shield/food value but I don't think it does.

You can either have the whole word in single tile or jsut have 26, one resource for each letter and place them in a row. it is pretty easy.

I have this in my Seelow Hieghts WWII scenario...

You can see it in the bottom left, where it is white.

This is a better pic, with a lable for a river and a road. I change the text colors to highlight them against terrain.

I actually experimented adding in the states borders visually this way, creating resorces that graphically just darkend a side of a tile. You need a least four of these that darken a differnet side of a tile. Never finished the experiment, but it would be nice to see

 

[Misfit_travel]

Patroklos:

That's very clever. Thankyou for sharing it.

ACW2 is Procifica's scenario, so I can't speak for him, but I will definitely try to work the idea into ACWC3C.

Misfit

 

[The Last Conformist]

For the record, bonus resources need not have any food, shield or commerce bonuses. We utilize them for putting names on the map in TAM.

 

[wellssh]

I just downloaded and played ACWC3C4.2 and it is great--fantastic job! While I have no computer expertise and I am still learning to play CivIII (I just bought it a few weeks ago), I wish to offer you all encouragement for ACW2--the much larger map will be a real bonus--I can hardly wait to see the environment you create.

I thought the post about labeling geography with resources was brilliant, and I hope you can incorporate this.

Out of curiosity, is there an Estimated Time of Arrival for this scenario? I would love to know.

Thanks!

 

[wellssh]

Or, if the scenario builder is away, does anyone have the biq map for the giant USA map. I would love to play with that.