Removing HQs

[Pocus]

After some debating in the beta forum, we have decided to remove the HQs from the game.

It does not means that the Command Chain as you know it is altered in any way. Forming Armies, Corps, divisions will still be a big part of the game. The sole difference is that you will only need a leader, and the possibility to still form the container (you will still be limited by a given number of armies and divisions, nation-wide). Let me emphasize on that: except that you won't have to move in the same region the HQ + the leader, nothing will change, all others constraints remains (number of armies at a given time, political and seniority ratings, how armies interacts with corps, etc.)

The effects are many:

a) slightly simplified game, without reducing historicity.

b) a much more enhanced AI on this aspect (and this is a big plus for me at least)

c) Less hassle in moving across the map HQs to the right location, and more historicity has moving one region per day with train is anyway too slow for them.

d) Many little things that don't works well when units are combined/detached will go away naturally.

All in all, after many pondering, first between Philippe and I, then between betas, then reading various posts in the forum, we think it will leads to a more streamlined game, without reducing the interest.

But... we will let you speak here, we don't want to make a change if the majority is against it. You know our opinion, but you are free to decide in the end.

The change will need some weeks to be completed, if the vote is passed anyway... Also, we will proceed step by step, with armies first then divisions.

[denisonh]

Has any thought been given to what it takes to stand up an "Army"?

An Army was more than just a General and some combat units.

It had to have the abaility to manage all the logisitical and operation requirements for a number of combat formations.

I would submit that if one does not "buy" an HQ, make it a requirement to have at least two supply wagons to represent the manpower and functional support necessary to conduct business. It took a siginificant investment to field a seperate Army and this would represent that investment.

A requirement of one wagon to form the Division for similiar reasons.

[Queeg]

I agree with denisonh. I do find the need to relocate HQs to be a pain, and I definitely want a system that the AI can use effectively. But I think there ought to be some cost, over and above the mere presence of a leader, to form an HQ.

[Pocus]

about a price: this is not ruled out, and don't contradict the choice of removing the HQs... The best thing would be a cost in some non physical asset, because if you want to pay a price in wagons, you fall in the same trap, ie you need to synchronize 2 kind of units (a general and another type) into the same location, and you are back to the same problem (although supply wagons are more common than army HQ).

So a price in money, supply, or VP can be done, why not.

[tc237]

Step-by-step is the best approach here.

Might want to think about releasing a "beta-patch" with the HQ's eliminated. Maybe Division HQ's first?
This will give us a chance to test it and provide feedback, without angering those who don't want a change.

[caranorn]

While I'd agree to have some restrictions to forming Armies I don't think this is necessary for Divisions. In the Civil war many Staffs were formed ad hoc, from a commander's previous command, from the previous commander's staff or just drawing on the various commands within the new formation etc.. Specialists are already included in other support units (supply wagons, engineers etc.) and were not always present in any case. Considering how restrictions remain (essentially a Force Pool of Divisions and Armies) I don't think removal of said HQ's will be a problem and will indeed greatly benefit the AI's behaviour.

[hkbhsi]

I agree with the removal of HQs because, as of now, the AI is not able to organize its force. I also believe that while divisions should be free, Armies should cost a price to reflect the fact that they are a much more structured organization in need of more than just a few leaders.
I would also like to suggest to put a minimun number of units needed to form divisions only to avoid the exploit of forming very small ones just to eliminate the command penalties for indipendent stacks. Cheers and KUTGW.

[veji1]

Thing is, I guess removing the HQs is acceptable but :
- to build a Divission you would need to draw war supplies + Ammo + basic supplies ( say 2 war supplies + 25 of each of the other )
- to build an Army you would need to draw money + war supplies ( say 50 money and 20 war supplies)

And I think this leads to another valid question : If you get rid of HQs and replace it with a cost, the why would corps be free ? I guess they should be slightly more expensive then divs...

I'll give it a try along those lines...

[hattrick]

Hi-

I believe Ageod is making a mistake in changing the game, I believe the issues with the HQ's (AI and dividing them) can and should be fixed. I think its too early in the games life to be making drastic changes like this, give it some time.

[veji1]

Oh by the way, forming a division, or corp, or Army should take time : ie grey out the general and the troops for a turn...

[Adlertag]

So in fact if HQ are no longer required, divisional leaders 1* will again be required to form up a division ... so get out the famous leaderless division from now on.
Unless I'm missing something...

[caranorn]

I'd second Veji1's suggestion to lock newly formed formation, though I'd limit it to Corps and Armies, 1 turn "lock" for Corps, 2 turn "lock" for Armies.

[pasternakski]

I am a little hesitant to vote yet, because I am not sure from what I have read so far how the finished product would work.

I am glad that command structure would remain intact, and I assume command points, penalties, and bonuses would not be altered.

That's all good, if true, but how does it work? I have to imagine that forming a division or an army will be pretty much like forming a corps is now. I assume that this will be done in the unit display on the map screen, so how is any "cost" going to be handled? How will you know when an army or division is "available" for building and where? When you create the beast, is it going to be available for use immediately, or will there be some delay (automatic "locking" or whatever)? I am thinking we will lose the depth and flavor of HQ replacement troops and the necessity of planning and providing for them. Also, say you have a real hot dog general you want to put at the head of a new army, then shove off on a big campaign. How will the political consequences of seniority be handled? What will be the rules for breakup/recombination, and what steps will be taken to correct the problems we are currently having with this dynamic?

I have argued on another thread that the current structure for handling divisions ought to be retained pretty much as is, but needs, as others have pointed out more ably than I, to be fixed. I also like the way specialized support units are currently handled. I continue to believe that formation of a real "army" (not one of those couple of dozen poor substitutes that were formed during the real war, but bore no more than a passing resemblance to the massive structure of great importance such organizations as the Union Army of the Potomac and the CSA Army of Northern Virginia became). On the other hand, I have never quite understood why the structural inconsistency between army/division HQs and corps HQs was created.

Some simplification and consistency is called for, yes, particularly if it helps in the effort to improve the AI, but I would not want to see the baby thrown out with the bathwater.

I dunno. I guess I feel that I just do not yet have enough information to make an intelligent vote. Of course, I feel the same way about the U.S. presidential election, but that's still a year and a half away. The HQ polling place is open now...

[pasternakski]

Oh by the way, forming a division, or corp, or Army should take time : ie grey out the general and the troops for a turn...

Good idea. The only problem I see is that this provides a major disincentive to army/corps/division formation, as it disables you from using commjanders and troops for a period of time when you could be fighting merrily along without the command structure.

If the idea is to encoutrage the players to form their organizations in rear areas first, then move them to where they will go into action after they become operational, haven't we argued in favor of more-or-less keeping what we already have?

Also, we have no information yet about how availability of HQs for formation is going to be handled. There's a lot to be thought through here before a decision is made about what the final shape of the animal will be.

Personally, I am still skeptical of forming command structures, particularly armies, "on the run and off the cuff." I think the game will lose a lot of historicity if it moves too far in this direction.

[jimwinsor]

So in fact if HQ are no longer required, divisional leaders 1* will again be required to form up a division ... so get out the famous leaderless division from now on.
Unless I'm missing something...

Possibly but not neccessarily. You could still get the + symbol to compact up to 18 elements into a div, even if one of them was not a leader.

Making a leader a requirement would make leaders more valuable. OTOH, what would happen if a div commander dies under this system? Does the div just fall apart, all of it's component brigades untidily spilling out?

This is a very intriguing change, I must say! Can't wait to see the details...

[veji1]

That's my fear as well.. In this game like in all the games, things tend to go "fast and furious" compared to real life ACW... in late 1861 on sees campaigning à la 1862 or 63... without HQs to slow the process down I am afraid this will be worsened..

[Maj. Frogbottom]

I voted yes, but I think only Divisional HQs should be done this way. Maybe for Army HQs there could be put in place a selection of formation points instead of just DC. Perhaps St. Louis, Indianapolis, DC, New York, or something similar. Of course I'm no programmer and have no idea how difficult this might be to do.

[Flashman007]

I like the idea of simplification and most importantly I TRUST the developers when they say it will improve the game. They, not us, have made a trememdous product and I would rather leave the modifications to them rather than the 20-50 players who may chime in on this subject.

Pocus' description could have been a little more in depth but I see no harm as long as the number of Armies is still limited. Everyone seems to be getting caught up on cost, but right now there is no cost for a corps and no one has complained. For the scale of this game, getting caught up in the cost of staff and supplies for each organizational unit seems a bit silly to me. No offense to anyone else but the cost of wagons or other such unit is merely an argument for the status quo.

I like the idea of getting rid of leaderless divisions and on the flip side, if Forrest gathers up 4 cavalry brigades and he is in command it damn well should be a division regardless of whether he has a bunch of knuckleheaded staff officers. This is going to give more meaning to all the low level generals IMO and result in more divisions - sounds good. If we are concerned about the number of divisions you could arbitrarily set a limt for each side for each year which is the way armies are allocated.

If you retain a limit on Armies nothing has changed, the ability to maintain armies- staff wise and logisticly- probably was constrained historically and throwing more money at it wasnt going to change it.

I am not an expert on this game nor on the Civil War, but the more I think about it the more I like it. Soldiers of the North and South- have faith in them that brought you here.

Having rambled on a bit I will say I am open to comments regarding the potential downside in practical terms regarding gameplay. I'm sure this will be a long thread.

[Queeg]

about a price: this is not ruled out, and don't contradict the choice of removing the HQs... The best thing would be a cost in some non physical asset, because if you want to pay a price in wagons, you fall in the same trap, ie you need to synchronize 2 kind of units (a general and another type) into the same location, and you are back to the same problem (although supply wagons are more common than army HQ).

So a price in money, supply, or VP can be done, why not.

Agreed. Adding another "moving" part won't solve the problem.

Perhaps HQs could have the same price they do now, but you just pay it when you attach it to a commander. In other words, select the general, create the HQ (paying the cost) and then the general gets the red bar showing that his HQ is forming. I like the fact that HQs have a cost and take some time to organize - it adds a layer of planning. I just don't want to have to move them to find my generals. Being able to build them on the spot, but with the same costs and organizational delay, would be ideal, I think.

[pasternakski]

I like the idea of simplification and most importantly I TRUST the developers when they say it will improve the game. They, not us, have made a trememdous product and I would rather leave the modifications to them rather than the 20-50 players who may chime in on this subject.

Well, we groundpounders do have at least a little value. I mean, the powers that be thought the M-79 "Blooper" grenade launcher was a great weapon to add to the TO&E of a squad of Marines, until they tried using them in the jungle...

In any event, I am not much of a "simplification" fan. I mean, if I wanted simple, I would have stuck with the old Milton Bradley game where you lined up your guys and, if your line was longer than the other guys when they got nose-to-nose, you won by hopping the last guy in your line over the other guy's line and wiped him out.

Of course, even this game was kinda complex. If you had an artillery piece at the back end of your line when you won, you didn't have to hop it over the enemy line...

[Flashman007]

Pasternakski,

Don't take my meaning wrong. Tons of valuble inpute is generated in these forums and there may be some valuble input that would cause the developer to scrap or modify the idea - BUT- I would just not rather have it up for a vote. I would like the developer to take all this input and make the final call.

Like you yourself said there is still a lot we don't know about how this will work.

(P.S. I was reading another thread and like you I started on Tactics 2 with my brothers. D-day was one of my favorites, but my only temper tantrum came when the Africa Korps was eliminated outside of Tobruk on a roll of 6. I learned my lesson as my brother said: "I'm outta here- you clean it up " leure: )

[runyan99]

I think abstracting the HQs is probably fine, so long as the player cannot abuse the system by forming divisions turn by turn where they are needed.

[denisonh]

I have to somewhat echo some of the sentiment expressed here, in that I have serious concerns on changing the way the Army HQs are handled.

As for the division HQs, I am neutral on it. I do beleive that if the "buying the HQ" is eliminated, that leaderless divisions also go in the same direction.

The funny thing about what "players want" is that it often parallels what histroical generals wanted, but due to logistical and political considerations could not have.

"Immediate gratification" of standing up an Army when and where you want it, where it is desireable, hardly reflects to the effort to stand up a new organization that is robust to handle administration, operations and logisitics for a potentialy large organizations. (I work on the US Army Staff and not even in today's world cannot we effectively do it that fast) While most of the work is far from galmorous and often abstracted, it was critical to the ability of the assigned formations to operate: food, ammunition, pay, equipment and personnel replacements, etc... are a major undertaking. Building an organization to handle that took time and the converging of people and resources.

It definitely took more than a whim and a LT General.

I submit that any change needs to be tersted and evaluated with respect to overall game play before implementation. I tend to beleive that combined with the norming of the weather patterns, it will speed up operations.

The effect will be to give the player the flexibility he wants without cost, and in turn create an unhistroically faster pace than is IMHO not necessarily desireable.

[Spruce]

I would to answer based on my gaming experience with Forge of Freedom.

In forge of freedom - the "constraint" on manpower is reflected in the command chain - a division is limited somewhere in manpower, same goes for corps and army. But this would still be possible by removing the HQ units AACW. So here is no issue.

The main reason in Fof is to reflect the benefit of leader abilities in larger scaled bodies command chain (army commander, corp cormmander, division commander). This is also true for ACCW - however there should be a fair cost - otherwise the South would quickly have Lee's Army, Jackson's Army, Forrest's Army etc. So creating container units should cost something - for example I think divisions should be cheap - corps should cost a reasonable amount of resources - and an army should be rather expensive !

The only real problem is what to do with the army leader avatar (at least I didn't understand Pocus description on the matter) - an army has a HQ location - and can be destroyed or shaken or whatever - and I like the fact that the corps are spread out and work in conjunction with the army HQ. In Forge of Freedom this is not true - the whole command is in one region and this is one of the major advantages of ACCW - please don't throw that away !

leure:

So I say no - A HQ is a seperate entity and should be less abstracted - compared to FOF.

[DEL]

As a player, I like HQ's the way they are. However, I can understand what a pain in the you know what it must be to get the A.I. to use HQ's properly. What you really need is a 3rd option in the poll, a wait until we have more of an idea how Armies, Corps and Divisions would be handled option. That would easily have my vote!

[PDF]

In the previous discussion I was against removing HQs... or at least all of them.
There was the painfulness of HQ management - mostly Div HQ, and the AI problem. To me another issue was that Army and Divs needed HQ but not Corps : in the end I was ok about removal of Div HQ, keeping Army HQ *but* creating Corps HQ !
Yet I had no real clue about how to make the AI manage them ...

Now I still really can't understand why the Army HQ should disappear. After all you only have a handful of these to manage...
OTOH I think that we'll lose some of the game "strategicness" by removing that feature, that was a rather good depiction of the command structure and constraints. Now we'll be able to form/unform/reform divisions either without limits, or be forced to add "gamey"/unrealistic limits such as gold/VP cost or whatever. That's not really an improvement.

[gbs]

I think what is being proposed would be a mistake. The only irritating thing about forming Divisions for me is that they all first appear in Richmond which for the most part is OK but then they have to be moved to the west by train in order to make Divisions in that theater. I think that an option should be presented to the player, when requesting new Divisions, as to where they should appear. Say three options Richmond, Montgomery, and Memphis.(One can tell I play the CSA.) Army HQs are a non issue to me because the entire game could be played and you might not even form three Armys. Big deal. I vote no.

[DEL]

Personally, I don't find the micromanagement of HQ's to be that much of a burden. I tend to buy multiple HQ's at the same time. Then the effort to move them to where they are needed isn't that bad.

I have a question for Pocus and Philthib: What is the main reason for removing HQ's? If it is primarily the issue of micromanagement, then I would prefer they remain in game. If the issue is primarily that of getting the A.I to use HQ's properly, then, well, I would still like them to remain in the game. I'm sure you guys would be able to tweak athena for the better!

[gbs]

More thoughts. I don't think that a Division / Army should be able to be formed out in the middle of nowhere no matter what the cost. They should at least have to be formed and in a metropolitan area that would have the infrastructure etc.. to support such an undertaking. Also I like the fact that almost a full month is required to put togeather the staff and organization neede to support the Division commander. Just another 2 cents worth.

[McNaughton]

I personally think it is a mistake to remove divisional and army HQs.

The problems experienced can be mitigated or eliminated. The AI does use divisional commands, it just doesn't build enough of them. Same with Army HQs. I have tested them, and they appear to be used, and generally fairly effectively (no matter what, the AI won't be as effective as a player).

If Divisions are formed like Corps units, then the day of the brigade is over, as 2 merged brigades are better than 2 separate brigades (re: command points). There will be dozens and dozens of divisions out there.

If Divisional HQs are eliminated, then you will be much more liberal in regards to risking your divisions. At present, I know that one slipup could cost me a division or two, meaning a long time to rebuild and reconstitute. Losing a divisional HQ is much more devestating than losing the entire division's troop comlement. Without HQs, I won't care nearly as much, as just one month later I can build enough troops to replace my losses, and form another complete division right then and there.

I really like Divisional HQs, and Army HQs. It provides realistic limitations.

Better solutions:

1) Get the AI to build more divisional HQs
2) Have regional builds (similar to ships) for Division and Army HQs

With both of these in place, virtually all of the problems (with players and the AI) will be eliminated (i.e., not using divisions, or having transportation woes).

Divisions are the most powerful unit in the game, and should be very complex in their creation and something that players should not feel is easy to risk on the battlefield.

There are too many possibilities with HQs, and I have been very impressed with what the AI does with HQs, given the opportunity to use them.