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BigDuke66
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Things still to fixed(after 1.0.6.1)?

Sun Feb 18, 2018 12:38 am

Hi
I think about playing the game again, originally I wanted to wait till the next patch but who knows if and when it happens.
That is why I ask if there are things that need to be fixed before seriously considering to play the Grand Campaign.

Personally I would like to remove the NM loss is units surrendering some unimportant structure at the end of the world as the constant loss of NM will make the Confederates surrender too soon.
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pgr
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Re: Things still to fixed(after 1.0.6.1)?

Sun Feb 18, 2018 10:13 am

I think CWII has been "finished" for some time. I don't really expect a major patch moving forward. For me, nothing is broken, so go ahead and play. (That said there are tweaks that could be made, but once you go down that road, you ask 50 people and you get 100 answers.)

Were you thinking of some problem in particular?

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BigDuke66
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Re: Things still to fixed(after 1.0.6.1)?

Mon Feb 19, 2018 5:26 pm

Really broken is in my eyes nothing, but as this is a mainly military game I find it disappointing that the military evolution of formations is not depicted on the brigade level, and that is a point that really needs to be fixed. We can't form corps or division right away but only later, what is perfect, but why we are stuck the whole game with mixed brigades is beyond my understanding.
Looking at some battles you can already see few Union brigades mixed in early 1862 at Shiloh, and mostly only infantry/artillery mixed brigades for the Confederates with just 2 brigades mixed of infantry/artillery/cavalry. At Corinth the Union was again barely mixed and had no mixed brigades of infantry/artillery/cavalry at all while the first Cavalry division showed up with pure cavalry brigades, the Confederates still had the usual mix of infantry/artillery but also 6 brigades fully mixed but of these all acted as infantry so basically also no fully mixed brigades.
Same in the West in the Peninsula Campaign, The Union just with 2 mixed brigades and these with sharpshooters only, while the Confederates again had mostly mixed infantry/artillery brigades with just a single being a mix of infantry/artillery/cavalry.

That this decline in mixed brigades to brigades of similar type is not depicted is not only a lack in flavor but from a playing perspective these mixed brigades are sooner or latter just troublesome.
We had already a topic, but that was mainly because of artillery in mixed brigades still being 6-pounders in the late war, but the source of the problem is the again the missing brigade composition evolution.

Just imaging I would play a WW2 game and I'm stuck with 1939 formation through the whole war, that would be a no-go for such a game.
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Re: Things still to fixed(after 1.0.6.1)?

Mon Feb 19, 2018 9:19 pm

The game is pretty darn good as is. I have enjoyed playing it for many years.

If Ageod ever decides to work on this game again, either as a patch/expansion or, more likely, a version 3, the one thing I would really like to see is a vastly improved AI for the single players among us.

The AI has improved over the years, but I would like to see one that is truly dynamic, makes concerted efforts at taking, holding, and expanding from key ports [Union naval invasions], and, most especially an AI that somehow figures out that splitting the CSA in two along the Mississippi would be to its benefit.

That's it -- all out AI focus.

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Re: Things still to fixed(after 1.0.6.1)?

Tue Feb 20, 2018 3:32 am

You can get the beta patch !.06.3 here:
http://ftp.ageod.com/pub/CW2/Patch_CW2_v1.06.3.exe

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Re: Things still to fixed(after 1.0.6.1)?

Tue Feb 20, 2018 4:34 am

Interesting post BigDuke66. I have a decent background in the American Civil War, and while I truly appreciate the thoughtfulness of you posts on this forum I strongly reject your analysis of this game. You will not find a more accurate wargame of the ACW than CWII. It potential to recreate historical and alt-historical scenarios is amazing.

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Re: Things still to fixed(after 1.0.6.1)?

Wed Feb 21, 2018 10:52 am

The problem with brigades is that they are scripted, so you would have to overhaul the whole force pool. In a way, the brigades sort of don't matter, because they get mushed together into divisions anyway. I'd be for getting rid of mixed brigades entirely and re-do the pool as "pure" brigades of 2-3 infantry, individual specialist types, cavalry brigades of 1-2, and individual artillery. It would make division building a bit simpler and probably deal with the artillery upgrade issue.

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Re: Things still to fixed(after 1.0.6.1)?

Wed Feb 21, 2018 5:57 pm

I have yet to see an argument, which would have any significant influence on the game at all. All your brigades will land in divisions, after which time how brigades are formulated makes no difference what so ever.

Once we get into the doctrinal changes later in the war, of consolidating artillery and cavalry, THEN we have an issue, and one that cannot be addressed by changing the unit pools, because we will already have a massive number of units already with artillery and cavalry locked into them.

I think it would be possible to construct brigade units with slots for 1 artillery and 1 cavalry, which could be broken out, or if empty, filled with the appropriate element, similar to how we build divisions, only simpler and more restrictive.

You could build such brigades without artillery and cavalry, which you could build in parallel, or not at all, if you wish.

You could easily replace old 6lb artillery with 12lb, or what ever you wish, spread it around in division or build "artillery divisions", and they wouldn't be free-bees per event either. You'd have to buy the replacements.

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BigDuke66
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Re: Things still to fixed(after 1.0.6.1)?

Fri Feb 23, 2018 2:21 am

What a single post can stir up...

@richfed
I my eyes the biggest problem, not only in this but all other AGEOD games, is the priority for AI. AI is never up to a human player and if you ever witnessed the main Rebel army march off to the great lakes while leaving Richmond unprotected you will beg for a human opponent. All the things you would like to see are done by human opponents and to make the AI do it the same way would take ages to program, that just won't pay out.
PBEM mods for many old games from the early days of AGEOD or the recent mod for EAW show what the engine can really do and what depth can be achieved with it if only PBEM would have priority. So if they every decide on CWIII AI is the last thing they should do.


@wrlertola
Is that a public patch, haven't seen anything about a new patch. What does the patch change?


@Durk
Yes it is likely the best Civil War game in it'S branch but that does not say anything about the shortcomings that this game has, and it has not few.


@pgr
Yes, this simple approach might be the best.


@Captain_Orso
Well is there any use for a lot cavalry in an infantry division?
Isn't the engine already made the way that cavalry divisions attached at army level help in pursuits?
Not to forget that all the leaders with special cavalry traits are not of much use if cavalry is mainly locked in mixed brigades.
And of course the fact that the few good leaders should give there combat benefits to the infantry, what is hard if the limit of elements is reached in a division but it is half full of cavalry or light(useless) artillery.
I think these points alone will have an impact on gameplay.
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Re: Things still to fixed(after 1.0.6.1)?

Fri Feb 23, 2018 3:00 am

Hi BigDuke,

It was in the Help Improve CW2 - CW2 beta patch - December 5th, 2016 thread in the first post by Pocus. Don't think they've made it an official patch but it did fix the replacement bug.

Have a good one :hat:
Will

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Re: Things still to fixed(after 1.0.6.1)?

Fri Feb 23, 2018 12:51 pm

BigDuke66 wrote:What a single post can stir up...

@richfed
I my eyes the biggest problem, not only in this but all other AGEOD games, is the priority for AI. AI is never up to a human player and if you ever witnessed the main Rebel army march off to the great lakes while leaving Richmond unprotected you will beg for a human opponent. All the things you would like to see are done by human opponents and to make the AI do it the same way would take ages to program, that just won't pay out.
PBEM mods for many old games from the early days of AGEOD or the recent mod for EAW show what the engine can really do and what depth can be achieved with it if only PBEM would have priority. So if they every decide on CWIII AI is the last thing they should do.


AI can always be improved. Always.

The issue with Athena sending a force up to the great lakes starts with Athena's view of the map. If detection is turned up for Athena she will see things way behind the front lines, which are generally only minimally garrisoned. These are juicy targets for Athena, and per chance she might go after one, often Pittsburgh. Once at Pittsburgh, she sees even further, and the Union player is generally rushing forces to Pittsburgh to relieve it, in which case she might just decide to avoid a major engagement, or after a major engagement, decide it might be more useful to go and disrupt the Union even more by heading for Eire or Cleveland. After all, with a large Union force nipping at her heals, retreating over the Pennsylvania and Ohio planes if much quicker than egressing back down through western Virginia and the Appalachian Mountains. This is one reason why Pocus did so much work on the retreat rules; to disincentivize and restrict her from retreating through uncontrolled areas.

Basically, never giving Athena more than a low bonus fixes this issue, along with the Union beefing up the Pittsburgh garrison as befitting such a strategically important city.

BigDuke66 wrote:@wrlertola
Is that a public patch, haven't seen anything about a new patch. What does the patch change?


@Durk
Yes it is likely the best Civil War game in it'S branch but that does not say anything about the shortcomings that this game has, and it has not few.


@pgr
Yes, this simple approach might be the best.


@Captain_Orso
Well is there any use for a lot cavalry in an infantry division?
Isn't the engine already made the way that cavalry divisions attached at army level help in pursuits?
Not to forget that all the leaders with special cavalry traits are not of much use if cavalry is mainly locked in mixed brigades.
And of course the fact that the few good leaders should give there combat benefits to the infantry, what is hard if the limit of elements is reached in a division but it is half full of cavalry or light(useless) artillery.
I think these points alone will have an impact on gameplay.


Cavalry in a large stack greatly increases its detection value, and protects against pursuit damage. IIRC a minimum of 4 cav is required to be effective. If you could detach the cavalry from your divisions in a corps stack and send them off to do raiding, you would lose these perks, but who am I do tell anybody how to run their armies.

That's why I suggested allowing cavalry and artillery to be detached from brigades, and thus divisions. Besides it allows a player to expedite getting infantry into position, instead of waiting for artillery and cavalry to complete training, although this is actually not historically accurate.

So maybe the solution would be to change the build pools after a certain date. Before date X brigades would have to be built with artillery and cavalry attached, which is historical, and after date X the player would get a set of brigades which have slots for artillery and cavalry, but these slots would have to be filled with artillery and cavalry manually, if the player wished them to be filled.

I also think cavalry should have an upkeep cost. The cavalry went through an enormous number of mounts during the war; especially the Union cavalry. Cavalrymen generally had a very high disregard for the well being of their mounts, and were constantly riding them to the point that they required extensive care to recover. Generally for every cavalry man, there were to be two mounts on hand, although not personally. Cavalry soldiers did not have their own personal mounts necessarily, which probably exacerbated the situation. At any rate, often mounts could not be healed enough to put them back into the field within any reasonable time frame, so they had to be replaced, and this was a major and costly issue for the army.

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Nikel
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Re: Things still to fixed(after 1.0.6.1)?

Wed Feb 28, 2018 11:37 pm

BigDuke66 wrote:Really broken is in my eyes nothing, but as this is a mainly military game I find it disappointing that the military evolution of formations is not depicted on the brigade level, and that is a point that really needs to be fixed. We can't form corps or division right away but only later, what is perfect, but why we are stuck the whole game with mixed brigades is beyond my understanding.


Have you tried the mod created by johandenver2? Many changes, but among them the brigade composition you are commenting.


viewtopic.php?f=340&t=43543




All recruitable brigades are also changed totally. Infantry brigades with attached artillery or cavalry are gone (they still exist through events though) Instead I've added 4 types of infantry and cavalry brigades for each state. Some of the US-states are now also able to recruit cavalry brigades.

These are the combinations I've created
InfBde1 Inf+Inf+Inf+Shp
InfBde2 Inf+Inf+Inf+Inf
InfBde3 In+Inf+Inf+Inf+Shp
InfBde4 Inf+Inf+Inf+Inf+Inf
CavBde1 Cav+Cav+Cav
CavBde2 Cav+Cav+Cav+HsArt
CavBde3 Cav+Cav+Cav+Cav
CavBde4 Cav+Cav+Cav+Cav+HsArt

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Re: Things still to fixed(after 1.0.6.1)?

Thu Mar 01, 2018 12:55 am

I had not seen that mod. Thanks!

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BigDuke66
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Re: Things still to fixed(after 1.0.6.1)?

Thu Mar 01, 2018 8:41 pm

Nice mod but surely nothing that would be even considered for incorporation into an official patch.

Some people here pointed solutions out for the mixed brigade dilemma, but these seem to need extensive work.
Couldn't we just lower the number of mixed brigades, and for the elements that are lost by this just raise the number of none-mixed brigades? I think that is a change that could go into an official patch as it doesn't demand so much work.
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BigDuke66
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Re: Things still to fixed(after 1.0.6.3)?

Fri Mar 23, 2018 4:31 pm

OK , what is still to fix after 1.0.6.3 is this:
viewtopic.php?f=343&t=50338#p385488
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Re: Things still to fixed(after 1.0.6.1)?

Mon Aug 06, 2018 8:13 pm

Just wondering what patch people are actually using for CW2 in here? A previous post in this thread mentions a 1.06.3 beta patch. I just downloaded this patch and noticed that it was not marked as a beta patch and the size was about 34 megabytes. The 1.06.3 official patch that I have downloaded from Matrix Games is 142 MB in size.

If people are using different patches, like the old 1.06.1, 1.06.3 beta or 1.06.3 official it can be a bit confusing to follow what problems actually stills exist in the game when using the latest official patch. I assume Matrix Games is the place to go when downloading patches for Ageod games.

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BigDuke66
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Re: Things still to fixed(after 1.0.6.1)?

Mon Aug 06, 2018 10:05 pm

Good point, the latest official patch at AGEOD is 1.06 here:
viewtopic.php?f=152&t=43333
It has CivilWarII-UpdateComp-v106.exe in it but it's also just 37MB big.

The latest beta patch at AGEOD is 1.06.3 here:
viewtopic.php?f=343&t=50997
just 33MB large.

Wonder what Matrix uploaded that their patch is 139MB big called CivilWarII-UpdateComp-v10603.exe.
AFAIk the AGEOD patches are comprehensive, or not?
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Re: Things still to fixed(after 1.0.6.1)?

Mon Aug 06, 2018 11:57 pm

The thing I want fixed is the battle results screen only displaying the first 9 elements of a division. It should show all of them.

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