AGEOD Forums

First, I thought this was a fantastic project. The fog of war as seen through the various AARs was fascinating. I am definitely interested in participating if another campaign is started. (preferably as a field general)

Six active players is the right number. If additional people are interested, assigning advisors/standbys would be a good idea. They could be expected to add additional commentary to the AARs, fill in if there were a need, and provide a core group for the next campaign. That might also help keep the pace at 1 turn/week.

In regards to personal preference for the AARs, I think I enjoyed jimwinsor's the most. Not just the writing; it also had a lot to do with the consistent (and reasonable) size of his screenshots.

I would suggest dropping special rules 1 & 2. IMO limiting movement that way is gamey in itself, and AACW has matured enough that its really not needed.

And I agree, don't put all the grognards on the same team.

From afar, it seemed to me that the roleplay elements were perhaps overstressed, which bogged the game down. You guys managed to get through what, 15 turns or something? You might consider lightening up on the AAR fanciness to speed up play a bit. It must be hard enough just to get 6 players coordinated.

runyan99 wrote:From afar, it seemed to me that the roleplay elements were perhaps overstressed, which bogged the game down. You guys managed to get through what, 15 turns or something? You might consider lightening up on the AAR fanciness to speed up play a bit. It must be hard enough just to get 6 players coordinated.

You'll notice we (I) switched to a much simper format for the AAR. Once I did that, I didn't think it was difficult.

I think what killed the project is when the CSA had two casualties of war. I tried to step in as the CSA President and I think it was moving along again. But we then had a situation where a file was mistakenly forwarded from player A->C, bypassing player B. Thus, the turn was processed without player B giving any orders, and when the deciion was made not to replay the turn, Player B quit as a result. From where I stood, that's when the entire thing collapsed.

In deciding not to replay the turn, those of us in that camp tossed it up to part of the experience. Stuff happens in war. But not all player agreed. So one thing I would HIGHLY recommend is agreement ahead of time on how such situation will be handled. In addition, the teams might want to put safeguards in place to try to minimize the impact if it does happen.

I thought it was going pretty well, and six was the perfect number of people. You have to have the presidents in there, otherwise, you'll run into disputes over generals, since the US western and CS eastern theaters tend to have the better leaders, and without someone to say, "Yes, you really do need to transfer so and so to the other theater" you'll end up with disputes about that.

It was tough for me to list out my needs as far as new units went. I don't tend to make out lists about things like that playing solo, I tend to go more by instinct and that style of purchasing doesn't work well in something like this.

There are some things that would need to be clarified for future games, things like who controls an amphibious force if it is dropped into the southern part of another theater. Personally, once we took New Orleans, I would have preferred to immediately transfer command to my western counterpart as he would be able to better coordinate any moves with it. Though as it turned out, it didn't do much.

It would be interesting to see how a more forcefull and interfereing "president" would do. Rafiki was good, in that he basically just asked us what our plans were and let us do what we could to carry them out. But having a president that would override your orders, much like Lincoln did in the early part of the war would provide an interesting challenge. I'd love to see another campaign get started up, whether I was involved with it again or not. It was kind of interesting to see how both of us eastern commanders were having much the same issues and worries.

Hehe, it was a fairly specific choice of mine to have a mostly "hands-off" approach, and in most cases, my generals executed better than any instructions from me would've helped them do, anyway

OK, time to see how a second campaign will turn out:

http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?t=8333

Come one, come all!

To create communication problems with different commanders for expeditionnary corps and main land armies, or with presidential orders was one, IMHO, one of the interesting point of having a Grand Campaign.