AGEOD Forums

Omnius wrote:Runyan99,
Johnston reacted to the sound of the telegraph in railing to Manasas long before the sound of the guns went boom. We can replicate this historical fact by ordering Johnston to rail over to Manasas on the first turn of the demo,

Johnston was reacting to a known Union movement. You cannot do that. You don't know the union is moving until the end of the turn, 15 days later. So, you are guessing that the Union will move on Manassas. Either that or Johnston does not move, and Beauregard fights by himself.

If the Union does not attack Manassas, and a human player may not, then a preemtive move uncovers Winchester, and you lose that place next turn.

The player thus has a handicap far in excess of what the historical commanders faced. That has to be compensated for with a generous MTSG rule.

There is such a thing as OODA loops.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_Loop

In AACW the OODA loops are 15 days long. That is so long, that it means the attacking side always has a great advantage in this area. The first mover can fight a battle or move a great distance before the defending side, usually the CSA in this game, even knows that a movement is taking place. That is a problem that the real generals generally did not have to deal with.

This puts the CSA side at a great disadvantage in this game, unless compensated for with special rules, like MTSG. Units sitting around immobile for 15 days while the enemy marches does not do a very good job of simulating how real generals would have reacted to a developing situation in real life.

You can cut the OODA loops down by making shorter turns, but this comes at the cost of a much longer game, with less action from turn to turn.

Omnius, just on the bit about never buying games until they are completely patched. In the case of Ageod that would mean missing out on 2 years of bugless or nearly bugless playing. AACW still isn't fully patched (though the next patch will probably be the last one), but it's been stable to play for the past two years. WiA will I expect continue to be patched for a while, yet it's been perfectly playable for quite some time. Ageod has a policy of patching far beyond any other company I've yet encountered, not just to correct bugs and errors, but also to improve on game play, add new features. With any other company we'd probably be at BoA-VI and AACW-III by now, having paid a full price nine times while in fact we have done so only thrice...

So if you like the WiA and or AACW demos I'd recommend buying either of those games now and not wait...

Omnius:

Your request to filter units off the map is already a feature of the game.

ctrl+F1 = filter fixed units
ctrl+F2 = filter enemy units
ctrl+F3 = filter your land units
ctrl+F4 = filter all units

I would like supply to be tweaked. For example, currently a lot of guesswork/detectivework goes into determining where supply goes, and if a unit is/will be supplied. I would like to see something where we (the player) could more easily tell where supply is going (or where it can/will go). That way we would know where/how a unit would likely be in supply (or where there will probably be no supply).

I would like to see the railroad/riverine pool split by area (to better reflect the limitations of the time).

I would like Ironclads to be ironclads (tougher).

runyan99 wrote:Yeah, that is my point. MTSG does and must model movements that happen before a battle starts.

I'd accept that position entirely were it not for the fact that once the battle is over commands that MTSG return to their previous positions or revert to their original moves. The game mechanic abstraction should not include returning Corps/Armies to their starting lines....IMHO

soundoff wrote:I'd accept that position entirely were it not for the fact that once the battle is over commands that MTSG return to their previous positions or revert to their original moves. The game mechanic abstraction should not include returning Corps/Armies to their starting lines....IMHO

Well, that would create a VERY OBVIOUS exploit right now... if you are the attacker you just need to create a feint attack in one region, make all the adjancent armies of the defender go MTSG to that "useless region" and then attack with the bulk of your army on another region (the important one that you wanted to take) one day later...
That's why they return "magically" to their original province.

+1 to everything Runyan has posted!
I think people take the "Marching to the sound of the guns" too literally
Maybe AGEOD should have called it ICS ("Inter Corps Support") or something like that and players woudl have less problems understanding what it's meant to represent.
The thing to take into account here is that a turn is 15 days!!! Thats a whole lot of time, so the game sistem has to allow some kind of automatic reaction to enemy movements or results woudl be absurdly gamey.

Omnius.
Half the improvements you ask for (like the second row of buttons like in WIA ones) were added to AACW for free patches ago, but are not on the demo which is outdated.
That's the kind of support AGEOD offers: a 10% of bug fixing and 90% of free new features, historical tweaks and gameplay enhancements
If you want to wait for AACW2 to be done and then "fully patched" before buying we won't see you around until 2015 or so
Get AACW (and WIA). I bet you will not regret it

Cheers

Omnius wrote:Generalisimo,
Could you please elucidate on what ROP and VGN are? Haven't seen what these titles represent.

You have their own subforums in here:
Vainglory of Nations
Rule a Great Power during the Victorian Era! (1850-1920).
Rise of Prussia
The armies of Frederick the Great await you! (1755-1763)


Others have already answered your questions about the demo and patches...

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I don't think the current turn/regions size is off. It works good IMHO.
But definitely if a future AACW2 would have x2 number of regions turns should be weekly or less or armies woudl zoom around
But then we woudl be approaching the level of "monster game" of a WITP

Generalisimo wrote:Well, that would create a VERY OBVIOUS exploit right now... if you are the attacker you just need to create a feint attack in one region, make all the adjancent armies of the defender go MTSG to that "useless region" and then attack with the bulk of your army on another region (the important one that you wanted to take) one day later...
That's why they return "magically" to their original province.

The attacker would have to be a master tactician to co-ordinate that little exploit as envisaged...... possible but hard to implement

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Omnius wrote:Runyan99,
I disagree that MTSG should model movements before a battle starts, that's the decision we players should be making. The Rebs thought ahead that the Yanks would attack Manasas and thus ordered Johnston to move first by rail to get to the battle before it started. That is not MTSG but Moving Before the Sound of Guns. Johnston never could have marched his troops to Manasas from Winchester if he had waited until the guns started, he also would not have had the trains there waiting for him to be picked up for a quick rail move even if he could have heard them. You're asking the AI to cover your behind if you don't think first where you should concentrate your army before a battle starts and that's not the province of the AI but for us to decide.

I see Runyon's point though. You are only allowed to make strategic and tactical decisions twice a month. You can't maneuver your armies exactly as they were moved during the Civil War which was on a daily basis, if not less so. The game engine should compensate for these problems to a certain degree.

What's WITP?

enf91 wrote:What's WITP?

War In The Pacific (another game)

soloswolf wrote:War In The Pacific (another game)

For what i've heard it's more like a way of life than a game

My wishes for an ACW 2 if its ever made is

1. A bigger map
2. A better naval system
3. Weekly Turns
4. Historic OOB's for scenario starts
5. A what if scenario involving European Intervention after the 'Trent' affair.

arsan wrote:For what i've heard it's more like a way of life than a game

I've never even played it. The first I ever heard of it actually was here. But yeah, it sounds like a lot more than I wish to deal with.

WITP was one of the biggest let downs in computer game history for me. It was unplayable from the start because of bugs and crashes and a few patches didn't really help. It was the last game I have bought on the day of release. The only play-testing done I think was one AI-v-AI overnight with no one watching and the Allies must have won and they said great- "it's ready to sell."

Big Ideas wrote:WITP was one of the biggest let downs in computer game history for me. It was unplayable from the start because of bugs and crashes and a few patches didn't really help. It was the last game I have bought on the day of release. The only play-testing done I think was one AI-v-AI overnight with no one watching and the Allies must have won and they said great- "it's ready to sell."

Apparently the AI has been greatly improved with the release of the AE from what I've been reading in the Matrix forums from peoples first games. This is a game I really want to buy but I've always been scared of the amount of time it would take to play and the price.

arsan wrote:

<snip>


I think people take the "Marching to the sound of the guns" too literally
Maybe AGEOD should have called it ICS ("Inter Corps Support") or something like that and players woudl have less problems understanding what it's meant to represent.
The thing to take into account here is that a turn is 15 days!!! Thats a whole lot of time, so the game sistem has to allow some kind of automatic reaction to enemy movements or results woudl be absurdly gamey.

Thats not quite how MTSG actually works. Providing a Corp (or Army) is of the same organisation then it has the chance of MTSG if its in an adjacent region to where the battle is taking place on the day that battle occurs. This means that MTSG can and does happen when two opposing forces just happen to meet as a result of both forces moving.......nothing at all to do with allowing some kind of automatic reaction to enemy movements..... which implies one side remaining static.

Oh and allied to MTSG I hope if there ever is an AACW2 that battle reports include ALL participants of a battle not as now all the forces in the region at the start of a battle but those who actually participate including reinforcements by whatever means

Gray_Lensman wrote:Though the concept sounds great and would historically coincide with the USA side of the Civil War. Making it easy for the CSA to actually build new RRs whenever and wherever they chose, would seriously affect the CSA historical performance and greatly fictionalize the game design. As AGEod well knows, if they wish to attract the dedicated Civil War historical buffs to their product both during the design process and for gameplay longevity, they have to first and foremost emphasize historical accuracy as the default way to play the game, providing for what-ifs in an optional format.

I would favor a way to make this an optional capability, but have the initial game design default to have a way to allow for the appearance of those RRs actually built during the civil war to be gradually overlaid over the map during game play (probably by specific timed events).

one idea on the railroads would be to make the railroads that were built during the war become emplaced through events. I am not sure if the game engine would allow this, but it be pretty cool.

I'm with having the base game be more historical, with lots of options to make it less so for game play reasons. Being able to build additional railroads is a good example.

Perhaps even starting the game a decade back in time and allowing you to play until say 1879-1880. Bring the politics in more. Perhaps industrialize the South a bit more before 1861, etc... Probably too much to ask for, but just a thought.

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Gray_Lensman wrote:Isn't that what I stated? I think this will be quite doable in the next itineration since AGEod was convinced to make RR placement a feature overlay function instead of drawing the RRs directly onto the map graphics. The drawing of the RRs directly onto the map seriously inhibited the ability to build RRs in any way in AACW1, and it took personally took me 18+ months to correct all the graphic misplacements.

woops i did not read the last two lines of your post that said that lol.

I was thinking abut the division cap the other day and this kind of popped in my head as a potential idea for AACW II. I'm fine with the division cap, if I wanted to increase it, I'll ask someone to help me mod it. The one thing I would like to see is to be able to eliminate command penalties for a leader placed in charge of a garrison (within reason). I was thinking of it along the lines of division creation (select a button then combine units), but it may be easier just to click a button, pay an appropriate cost for creating the garrison "HQ", and increase the command points for that leader. Obviously, someone smarter than me would need to make sure there was a way to prevent someone from gaming the system to use those garrison commands as field units.

Anyway, just wanted to put this up here before I forget.

BB

soundoff wrote:Thats not quite how MTSG actually works. Providing a Corp (or Army) is of the same organisation then it has the chance of MTSG if its in an adjacent region to where the battle is taking place on the day that battle occurs. This means that MTSG can and does happen when two opposing forces just happen to meet as a result of both forces moving.......nothing at all to do with allowing some kind of automatic reaction to enemy movements..... which implies one side remaining static.

No, i did not implied anything regarding static forces. MTSG can happen with forces static or in movemnet, of course, it does not matter.

The thing tried to represent with MTSG system is (IMHO of course) that organized forces under a single command (ie: the corps of an army) even if deployed in different regions should be given the chance to coordinate their efforts (in attack or defence). That's the point of all the army/corps system.
As the player/AI can only give inputs each 15 days, the MTSG gives to organized forces an automatic chance of reaction to unexpected events that happen in between turns.

Cheers!

As you are talking about WitP...

A very interesting conflict, as usual I would like to play on the bad/loser side, so the japanese empire

To me WitP is unplayable too. From what I have read WitP-AE is even more complex! The resolution is still the old one and the graphics though improved, are not the strong point

So, any plan for a playable and better looking AGEod's Pacific War or APW in the long term? PhilThib?