Request of Expansion or CW3

[GreyRanger]

I have been playing CW2 and mostly really enjoying it. I played ACW and believe this is a much improved game on many fronts. I have 2 suggestions/requests so far. I would gladly pay for an expansion that worked either or both of these features into the game.

1. Hidden general attributes: One of the great challenges of the civil war was that the national commands did not know what the "attributes" of the leaders. It would be neat if it was possible to have either a way to randomize general attributes and have them masked from the player. Then as you use them have the attributes revealed. This process could create a more realistic and FUN than the current system where you have magical prior insight into each leader's abilities.

2. If there is anything that can be done to make the management of recruitment of brigades and the assemblage of divisions it would make the game more FUN for many players. I spend a lot more time trying to figure out where I am in recruiting divisions and getting the brigades together to form divisions. It would be more fun for me to focus more on prosecuting the war rather than micromanaging the assemblage of divisions. At a minimum there should be an auto division button that will automatically put together a standard division (10 Inf, 2 Cav, 1 SS, & 4 Art) if you have the elements in the relevant county.

Anything that could streamline micromanagement would be grand.

[Durk]

I understand what you are saying as these would be two nice changes for me, also. So let me agree and then disagree.

1. The random leader attributes already exists (see game options tab two), which for me, makes alternate leader abilities work for game variation. Hidden abilities would not matter if all qualities were the same from game to game. So what you suggest would be nifty with random and hidden qualities.

2. I too hate being an administrative planner rather than a 'player.' CW2 does not have that many administrative requirements if you simplify. This is what I do:
I have three primary assembly cities - Washington, Cincinnati and Cairo. New units go to these cities to be assembled into divisions. I do also use Baltimore and Jefferson City for forces tasked to ocean assaults and defense of Missouri.
I buy infantry units from the right most side of the production options. So I buy the Connecticut and New York mega brigades for the east. I buy the Pennsylvania brigades for deployment in Cincinnati and the Ohio units for Cairo. These units have infantry and artillery and some cavalry. So with the money left over I buy fleets and army support units.
This is not a simple as your proposal, which I actually love, but it is a method to reduce the admin overhead.

I do a similar thing with the South selecting three main assembly points, with some units in New Orleans and Jefferson City.

[W.Barksdale]

Don't recruit in individual units. Recruit in divisions, however you want them set up. Stay organised.

Once you've ordered them change their tab name to xxx division so you know exactly what unit you want them assigned to. This saves tons of time and ensures that you have full strength divisions ready for action rather than tons of weak half filled divisions. This is a common mistake from inexperienced players.

Durk's method is also feasible but a little more ad hoc.

[GreyRanger]

As far as randomization and hidden leader attributes with historical leaders that is actually do able, what you have to randomize is entry. In that case what you see is you have a three star general, but you don't know which one he is until you use him a bit. So that 3-star could be AS Johnston, JE Johnston, RE Lee, etc. It would still make "finding" the excellent generals fun. I played a CW board game back in the day that had that mechanic and it was quite a fun sub game. As Lincoln discovering you had given the Army of the Potomac to McClellan was . . .

I try to stay organized and recruit in divisions, but it is quite a task to keep up with, issues like varied production delays and the arrival of excellent scripted units you need to build into divisions constantly throws things off. I keep extensive side notes on paper as I play to approximate effective recruiting, but that seems silly. I am playing on a computer, the best tool we have for organizing data. It seems that the interface could easily provide me graphic data on what units I have that are outside divisions in the three or four major regions and what units are in production. Then keeping up with build needs is at least easier. Additionally, the current interface to selecting brigades to build could use some significant polishing. Scrolling through the ribbon to find a brigade with the right regiments is a task that should be much easier for the player. I appreciate that once you play for a while it gets easier, but for a computer interface it could use a lot of work.

Quick follow up question: how do you edit unit names, that could be handy (haven't figured that out yet)?

[Gray Fox]

http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?39520-Renaming-armies&highlight=renaming+units+cw2

According to that thread, you can't.

[Captain_Orso]

I think what GreyRanger means by 'hiding attributes' includes Strategic/Offensive/Defensive values; nothing else would really make much since or difference.

The problem with simply hiding the values of a leader--other than rank and seniority--is that if they are only hidden, there are many ways to 'know' or at lease guess who the general is.

If you use the current 'Random Generals' you get a bunch of schizophrenic leaders:

0-6-0: Has no idea what hi is doing and is terrified to move. Occasionally feeds his troops with massive amounts of cocaine to psych them up for one massive attack. If attacked his troops are more than likely on, or just recovering from a month-long-open-air Bob Marley festival; their most aggressive stance is, 'wow man, don't bogart that joins so much'.

6-0-0: Extremely manic, but extremely incompetent. Due to a lack of modern psychopharmaca, the War Department and every newspaper in the country demand his immediate removal and/or execution, in and order you wish.

0-0-6: Gathers 'Minecraft Creepers' as recruits. Refuses to move. Don't go near them *ssssssss....BOOOOM!!*

These the the most extreme examples I've seen, but there are so many possible variations which simply make no sense.

If the possible variations of a leader's values could be limited to sensible ones, that would be one step in the right direction. Still:

- The South survives greatly by having very good leaders--especially compared to Union leaders--during the first 2 years of the war. With random leaders, all balance is out the window.

- The Union has many more leaders than the South. To have to 'test' them all to discover their true values would turn the game into a bunch of dumb minimal attacks while trying to find the diamond-in-the-rough.

- All events putting special leaders into the game would have to be rewritten so that all leaders arrive in one year arrive on the same date in the same place so the player can't know who each one is; this is excluding most of the 'Pool' generals.

- There needs to be some sort of balance. If you're not going to give the South a 6-4-4 Lee, you need to give them some equivalent--which is not 2x 3-2-2 leaders.

The issue is very complex. Just finding a viable solution would take such a massive amount of work. During brainstorming we've already tried to find a solution, but even the most general and vaguest suggestions couldn't' be agree upon.

[Captain_Orso]

As far as randomization and hidden leader attributes with historical leaders that is actually do able, what you have to randomize is entry. In that case what you see is you have a three star general, but you don't know which one he is until you use him a bit. So that 3-star could be AS Johnston, JE Johnston, RE Lee, etc. It would still make "finding" the excellent generals fun. I played a CW board game back in the day that had that mechanic and it was quite a fun sub game. As Lincoln discovering you had given the Army of the Potomac to McClellan was . . .

In a real board-game, the rules tell you to do A, B, C... If you want to change that, you simple do A, B, Z which requires practically no effort.

To do that with a computer game, you have to rewrite it, and generally--and especially AGEod games--computer games do not allow to just take a bunch of units you would usually get between dates x and y and randomly distribute them.

I try to stay organized and recruit in divisions, but it is quite a task to keep up with, issues like varied production delays and the arrival of excellent scripted units you need to build into divisions constantly throws things off. I keep extensive side notes on paper as I play to approximate effective recruiting, but that seems silly. I am playing on a computer, the best tool we have for organizing data. It seems that the interface could easily provide me graphic data on what units I have that are outside divisions in the three or four major regions and what units are in production. Then keeping up with build needs is at least easier. Additionally, the current interface to selecting brigades to build could use some significant polishing. Scrolling through the ribbon to find a brigade with the right regiments is a task that should be much easier for the player. I appreciate that once you play for a while it gets easier, but for a computer interface it could use a lot of work.

Organizational tools would be awesome, I agree. I use a spreadsheet to plan divisions, and I used to use pen and paper. It's a PITA, but I got so tired of going through all the just built units and trying to organize them into divisions, and then discovering that I'd forget to start building that one unit, or accidentally building the wrong type.

I have lots of ideas on what an organizational tool should look like, but none will ever be made, so there's no point in going on and on about it.

Quick follow up question: how do you edit unit names, that could be handy (haven't figured that out yet)?

You can only change stack names.

[W.Barksdale]

Quick follow up question: how do you edit unit names, that could be handy (haven't figured that out yet)?

To edit the tab name of the unit Alt-Click it's tab.

[John S. Mosby]

And if you have any issue with Alt-Click make sure the unit is in a separate stack. I know this may apply when renaming an army.

[W.Barksdale]

I try to stay organized and recruit in divisions, but it is quite a task to keep up with, issues like varied production delays and the arrival of excellent scripted units you need to build into divisions constantly throws things off. I keep extensive side notes on paper as I play to approximate effective recruiting, but that seems silly. I am playing on a computer, the best tool we have for organizing data. It seems that the interface could easily provide me graphic data on what units I have that are outside divisions in the three or four major regions and what units are in production. Then keeping up with build needs is at least easier. Additionally, the current interface to selecting brigades to build could use some significant polishing. Scrolling through the ribbon to find a brigade with the right regiments is a task that should be much easier for the player. I appreciate that once you play for a while it gets easier, but for a computer interface it could use a lot of work.

I can sympathise. While I agree the interface could be better, if you want to play you need to play with what is provided. There is the F2 screen where it lists the units under production but you can only see 35 entries so it leaves a lot to be desired.

Do not get thrown off by the scale of the game or the arrival of the elite brigades. Use the same recruit by division build strategy once an elite brigade has spawned. Remember production times and travel times to the mustering point, as things like sharpshooters and artillery will take longer to build and units recruited away from the muster point need time to rail there.

[Captain_Orso]

Again, you cannot change the name of a unit nor an sub-unit/element! You can only change the name of a stack and only if the stack is not an army stack.

To change the name of a stack:
- select the stack by clicking on it on the map/ or click any stack in the region where the stack is and then clicking on the tab to the stack who's name you want to change
-<Alt><LClick> on the tab of the stack above the Stack Panel -- (a pop-up will appear)
-in the pop-up, change the name of the stack to the desired name
-in the pop-up, click the check-mark to confirm / or 'X' to cancel

[W.Barksdale]

Again, you cannot change the name of a unit nor an sub-unit/element! You can only change the name of a stack and only if the stack is not an army stack.

No one is saying that you can change the name of a unit.

[John S. Mosby]

Actually I mistakenly stated unit when I meant a stack. I stand corrected. I can change the name of an army stack if it is empty.

[GreyRanger]

Thank you for the information about how to change a stack name, I will give it a go.

As far as balancing hidden leader attributes I grant that it would require some work, but I don't see how it is unsolvable or is worse than the current situation in which I have perfect insight into each leader as he spawns. Putting parameters on randomization is not an unsolvable problem such as creating seeds that assure the CSA gets on average better leaders early.

As far as providing improved organizational tools, I appreciate that may not be possible with the current iteration of the game, but I raise it as a hope for CW3 or raise the issue that if it were offered in an expansion/add-on I would gladly pay for it.

[Jerzul]

Additionally, the current interface to selecting brigades to build could use some significant polishing. Scrolling through the ribbon to find a brigade with the right regiments is a task that should be much easier for the player. I appreciate that once you play for a while it gets easier, but for a computer interface it could use a lot of work.

I could not agree more. Honestly, I kind of liked AACW's unit building interface more. At least then I could see, at a glance, what could be built where, and it was easy to scope out the "mega brigades" and to build your divisions. The only downside was the random spawning of units in the states selected, which, especially for the south, could be disastrous.

I wish they could combine the two, so I can see what to build on an easy interface, then once I've selected the new units to build, I could place them all on the map.


Quick question (not to derail the thread) - Does it matter where you build a new unit in the highlighted areas? For instance, does a unit build faster in an industrial center then in some small, out of the way town? For example, if I try and build artillery, will it go faster in Philadelphia than in York, PA? Thanks!

[GreyRanger]

I did just a tiny bit of testing for Union units in highly industrial versus more rural areas and saw no difference, but now that I think about it I may have missed an issue: rounding to 15 days. Functionally there is no difference between completing on day 16 and day 30 (any completion within a 15 day band looks the same), so I might need to test with units that require longer production delays to see it show up in the game.

[Gray Fox]

FYI, it may be the case that a unit forming up during its build time is still a unit on the map and is therefore subject to attrition. It would need GS and be subject to any epidemics. This might affect the time it takes to get it to full strength. As such, I tend to create Rich regions with the Telegraph RGD as training areas. Rich areas mitigate attrition by 50%. Also, if you entrench at least a two-element Supply Wagon in the Rich region and keep it supplied, then you can simply add the units you are building to the wagon's stack. This would further reduce any attrition by 30%. If this stack has an HQ unit, even one that is itself forming up, then the entire stack will accrue experience points from the HQ while being built.