American Civil War II Scenario Development Thread

[Rocoteh]

Procifica,

With regard to ACW2 units.

I think it looks very good.

The best aspect: You are breking the old strange tradition
(in CIVIII-scenarios) that Infantry MUST have only 1 Move
point. I had such plans (giving Infantry 2 Move points)
for C3C3.9 but abstained, since the idea lacked support.

BTW: When now working with a larger map I hope you
abstain from adding to much cities, so there will be room
for more field-battles.

Edit: Railroads, I doubt its a good idea with regard to
realism, will also probably slow down AI and create
waiting-time between turns.

Best Regards

Rocoteh

 

[Procifica]

Well, with regard to the railroads Rocoteh, its the only way I can see to get across the map at a decent rate, while preventing Cavalry from having ENORMOUS movement potential. It also somewhat falls in line with your transport capacity numbers. You'll see when I get it set up what I mean. We somewhat tried it for ACW but the map scale was too small.


With regard to field battles, you should see the open expanses of land already in Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, North Carolina, western Virginia, southern New York, and parts of Pennsylvania. Some of the "filler" cities I'm eliminating completely. I haven't done the Midwest or Kentucky yet, but there also will be alot of yearning gaps there too.


I wanted to create a more static battle situation in central Tennessee (realistic) and in eastern/northern Virginia (also realistic). Therefore, the # of cities in these two areas is quite high (representing historical battles in some cases).


I put Infantry at 2 movement points because it is more realistic with regard to how fast Infantry could travel in 1 week, based on the scale of this map. And, Dreadknought's thoughts with Artillery movement made alot of sense. It is a move which will help the AI, since a Human player will only be able to move as fast as his Artillery without the use of Railroads. Again, more realistic.

Naval movement, which I haven't gotten to ships yet, will still be at least tripled, as promised.


I'm still wavering between 1 pop cost and 2 pop cost for Divisions, I'm hoping a better solution can be found.

 

[Procifica]

Oh, Militia was made 1 point of movement, to illustrate how awkward they were with regard to marching manuevers and such. First Bull Run is a good illustration of how bad Militia were.

 

[Procifica]

Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers now in.

Two things though which I'm unhappy about, but I can't do anything about because of the scale of the map:

1) The Tennessee/Cumberland are one River until just past Forts Henry/Donelson.

2) Forts Henry/Donelson are on opposites of the river, instead of inbetween 2 rivers.


The Tennessee stops at Decatur, AL, and the Cumberland stops just northeast of Nashville. These are the navigable portions.

 

[Procifica]

I've now filled in cities for the rest of Tennessee, North Carolina, and modern-day Virginia. Its starting to look like the United States now.

 

[Misfit_travel]

I took a look at the revised unit list. It looks pretty good. I was wondering about the artillery within divisions though. You've made it defensive only, which I think takes a way a fair bit of flexibility from these units.

When we incorporated artillery into division units in the first place you basically got the equivalent of a standard game start art. battalion with each division. You could then decide to use it for bombard to weaken an enemy position, bombard to pillage an improvement square, or attack. That's pretty broad choices but you can only do one at a time. I thought that was pretty good balance.

You've also weakened their artillery stats, particularly for Volunteer and Rifleman divisions.

I think you may have restricted them too much.

My two cents.
Misfit

 

[Procifica]

What I did with the divisional artillery, is I made them 2/3 of the attack value. I'm willing to consider bumping it to 3/4, though it won't make much difference. I'll have to see what the regular artillery units look like first. Doing it this way also penalizes the AI less.

I'm trying to tighten the variance between 1861 units and 1865 units, and Artillery is going to get the same treatment I gave to Infantry in that regard (notice the 7/9 vs. 10/13 US volunteer, and the 14/22 vs. 17/26 Spencer Rifleman, and then compare the ratios between each set of units, you'll see what I mean).


Again, I want to emphasize, that artillery's role in the American Civil War is hugely overstated in ACW, and I'm trying to correct it for ACW2. I gave an explanation for the reasoning in making them defensive bombardment only, which basically is, it illustrates the use of the artillery reserve (present on both sides in most large scale engagements) to provide defensive fire in holding a position.


As Rocoteh pointed out, we don't want to make regular Artillery useless. I think I've worked a compromise by doing it this way, and I get more realism in the process.

Also, with regular Artillery at 1 movement and Divisions at 2 movement, having divisional artillery near regular artillery strength would be unbalancing. Moving artillery at such a speed means there's less time to unlimber them in case of battle, and pieces can't be deployed as intelligently, which limits firepower.


That's the key to my doing ACW initially, and now ACW2, is as much realism as possible.

Artillery across the board is going to be a bit weaker than in ACW, relatively. Actual bombard values might be higher, but defensive values for Infantry are significantly higher too.

 

[Procifica]

Beta Terrain Food Values:

Grassland - 1 food/+2 irrigated
Flood Plains - 2 food/+1 irrigated
Plains - 1 food/+1 irrigated
Forest - 1 food
Hills - 1 food
Swamp - 1 food
Mountains - 0 food
Coast - 2 food
Sea - 1 food
Desert - 0 food/+1 irrigated

Harbor Resource:

Large - + 3 food (could be changed to +4, will only be located in Boston/NYC metro areas)
Medium - + 2 food
Small - + 1 food

Urban Resource:

Large - 10 food (could change to 8)
Medium - 6 food
Small - 4 food

Irrigation will not be allowed on these. These primarily will be in highly concentrated urban areas in New England, NYC Metro, Philadelphia Metro, Baltimore/Washington Metro, Albany Metro, and near select cities to represent suburbs of significant size.

As a side note, Large will only be found in the NYC metro area.


The above values for regular terrain are lower than ACW for Grassland, Plains, and Flood Plains. This should help reduce population growth.

 

[The Last Conformist]

I still think divisional artillery will have very limited impact. Unless you make it bizarrely powerful, you'll be better of using the divs' movement points for attacks.

 

[The Last Conformist]

The suggest unit stats look quite good, IMHO. Some comments:

i) The South's quality advantage is effectively toned down a bit, since the Union/Conf stat differences largely stays at one, but absolute numbers are increased.

ii) The increase of mainline inf movement to two merits an entire discussion of its own, which I'm too tired (slept 2.5h the night to today ...) to start now. But this is a topic we need to come back to, esp re: the different scales in ACW (C3C) and ACW2. You might want to give some kind of boost to cav to compensate for losing retreat, btw.

iii) The defensive bombard values on divisions seem pretty weakish; a Spencer Div only has a 30.5% chance of inflicting a HP loss on an attacking enemy Spencer unit. OTOH, I like the fact that the bombard strengths go up with the attack and defense factors; in the current ACWN3.9, the curve is flat, with the result that defensive bombard from divisions losses relevance over the course of the scen.

(Tangentially, I just realized an annoying thing re: defensive bombardment; with the new artillery scheme, siege guns are going to be the thing for providing defensive bombard for your stacks. Weird, but nothing to do about it this side of scrapping the new artillery system.)

iv) Raw idea: give Irregulars and Guerilla ZOC! Could represent them carrying out small attacks against exposed bits enemy units marching past (picking off outriding scouts or whatever), and also makes the presence of irregular forces operating behind your lines a bit easier to detect. Note, however, I've not been testing how ZOC on Invisible units work in practice.

 

[Procifica]

Cavalry still will be able to detect invisible. I'm thinking they are going to lose ZoC though. Cavalry still will be able to move further, and they probably are going to be upgraded slightly (relatively) in offense/defense. I still see them having their uses. I don't think though I want to boost them up to 4 movement.

The South's quality advantage is toned a bit, but instead their units are cheaper or same cost to build as the North's lower quality units. I think this is a better overall balance, and penalizes the south less (in ACW, better quality, but more expensive).

30.5% chance? That's not that bad really. About where I want it. Remember, Artillery is grossly overstated in importance in ACW.

Siege guns may not be best for defensive bombardment, since they will at most cost 1 HP damage. While Field Artillery has the potential to do 2-4 HP damage. Fortress Guns will be pretty powerful, but immobile.


Irregulars and Guerilla units ZoC? Its a thought. Will need more input on this. On paper it seems like a good addition.


With regard to retreat, its more realistic for Infantry to have it too. It was rare that entire units were destroyed in a battle (large formations such as Divisions).

 

[Procifica]

Progress on city placement: Kentucky is essentially done, as is modern-day West Virginia. Maryland is now done. I'm working on Ohio/rest of Pennsylvania now.

 

[Misfit_travel]

Procifica:

The LANDMARK feature in the C3C Editor would let you selectively edit tile squares to dramatically increase / decrease food production in certain areas (like around New York). That way you can compress cities but still have enough food / resource to make them effective. That might be a more elegant way of dealing with the situation you describe in post #108.

Regards,
Misfit

 

[Procifica]

Post #108 would look better graphically. But its a thought for the C3C version.

 

[Procifica]

I have a question: Is there much interest in a Civ3/PTW version of ACW2? Or is Conquests what everyone wants? Its looking like I'll have Conquests long before this scenario hits Beta.

 

[Procifica]

I've completed Ohio now, most of upstate NY, and most of Pennsylvania. I've also added a couple cities to other areas already done.


For the Conquests version, there definitely will be a Victory Point version.

 

[Procifica]

Cavalry units have been added, and ZoC added to Confederate Irregular/Guerilla units. Costs are in now for Engineer/Slave. A few other changes also made.

 

[Procifica]

Ohio River is now complete, Pennsylvania is now complete. Western Virginia and Kentucky also are finished.

 

[Procifica]

Lake Erie is complete, as is the Erie Canal and Hudson River.

New England is now complete, cities wise.

 

[Rocoteh]

Originally posted by Procifica
I have a question: Is there much interest in a Civ3/PTW version of ACW2? Or is Conquests what everyone wants? Its looking like I'll have Conquests long before this scenario hits Beta.

My impression is that everyone wants Conquests.
One should also consider the gigantic difference
in waiting time between turns when you compare
CIVIII version with Conquests version.

Best Regards

Rocoteh