Hide activation status.

[Ol' Choctaw]

Yes indeed but that wouldn't make it less fun
As I said, i'm not sure if that happened historically.

The leaders used are all historic figures. Making random new generals from units either requires knowing every Colonel that lead every regiment or spawning a made up figure, all with random traits.

The first is just too much work and the second would make a lot of people howl.

Not only that, but most, including the devs, don’t have a lot of interest in adding new complexity of the game.

[MarkCSA]

Regarding the leaderless stacks not receiving this penalty.

Why not impose it on them as well, but give the stack a strategic rating of 0, thus making it much more likely that the local Colonel or whatever will stay put and not move?

This would even encourage sending out your lesser gods of Generals (giving them something to do) to pick up stragglers and lead them to the fun.

[Ol' Choctaw]

That assumes that Colonels are lazier than Generals and don’t execute orders.

A 0 rating means they are never active. Kind of extreme in my view.

Even the Union doesn’t have enough generals for that piece of work.

[veji1]

Regarding the leaderless stacks not receiving this penalty.

Why not impose it on them as well, but give the stack a strategic rating of 0, thus making it much more likely that the local Colonel or whatever will stay put and not move?

This would even encourage sending out your lesser gods of Generals (giving them something to do) to pick up stragglers and lead them to the fun.

Agreed. To me leaderless stacks should be massively penalised as soon as they are bigger than one "self-commanded" unit, at least in terms of movement, as soon as they are composed of 2 or more combat units. ie a lone cavalry regiment or raider unit, or infantry brigade can function alone without penalties, ie the comander is at his competence level. But 3 cavalry regiments together or 2 infantry brigades + an arty unit should be better of commanded by a crappy 1-1-0 than without leader.

[veji1]

That assumes that Colonels are lazier than Generals and don’t execute orders.

A 0 rating means they are never active. Kind of extreme in my view.

Even the Union doesn’t have enough generals for that piece of work.

Would only apply to stacks with more than 2 units. A unit by itself (be it a massive 7 elements brigade or a lone cavalry regiment) should never be penalised because it was made to function with its organic command structure. It's just that to me, leaders should be more or less mandatory for military operations as soon as you start pooling forces together.

[Ol' Choctaw]

Without unlimited numbers of leaders I think this is over the top.

Leaderless units already suffer penalties. They had leaders. Colonels sometimes commanded divisions. Some brigadier generals commanded corps sized elements. A couple even had armies. This only adds complexity to a game with a very steep learning curve.

More complexity only scares off more people.

It also assumes every office under the rank of general was an incompetent boob. Are you going to put a leader with every militia and every partisan? Have every unit with no leader inactive?

Sounds much more like mod material to me.

[veji1]

it isn't a priority to me, it's just that I think players should be compelled to use leaders as much as possible, even very bad ones. But hey I get your point and I agree it isn't an important issue.

[Ace]

Hidden activation setting is a blast
I almost feel like Lincoln himself

[ATTACH]26424[/ATTACH]

In this screenshot only the 1st Corps was activated and carried the battle. The rest were there to provide assistance, but did not participate much. Excellent setting, a real gamechanging experience

[Pocus]

Happy to oblige

If you guys want to propose alternate sentences formed the same way, that would increase the immersion. Right now we only have:

¤ issued conflicting orders and ¤ reverted to a defensive stance.

[minipol]

Very very nice !!
It really sounds like a game changer.
Another possible sentence:

x couldn't execute the orders as the x wasn't organized
or
x couldn't get x organized to execute the orders get received

[veji1]

Awesome. Are you guys testing it in Beta right now ? what are your first experiences, for example initiatives you took that would not have taken had you known, or actually didn't because now you are a lot more prudent, etc ? Thanks Pocus for the work.

[Ace]

I play differently. I always used to do hammer and anvil dance with inactive corps holding the line, while active where doing the flanking. I am not sure how to optimize it now, you have to be much much more careful. You never know when your forces are going to arrive at the battle piecemeal because planned movements are calculated as if everyone is active. And when the turn begins, in the replay you see inactive corps failing to keep up the tempo regardless of the synchronize movement order because well, they where inactive, or in other words they are so incompetent they lost their way and are lagging behind the main force. So realistic for 19th century warfare. And on the Union side, there is always someone late for battle. I do resort to assigning leaderless stacks to do small missions, like taking a town guarded by a lone militia. I find it unlikely even for McClellan to refuse to attack those 400 militas behind city walls. I am contemplating about putting all to McClellan stack and take the 35% combat penalty. They may fight like disorganized brawl, but they will at least fight together

[Z74]

It's a great idea but I would like to point out that inactive leaders should still be allowed to select all postures.
When compared to leaderless forces who have penalty, a leader who is inactive has penalties too but he can't assault a town whereas a force without a leader can.

A major drawback of the activation feature is this fact that it's sometimes better a force with penalty who can assault a town with a little garrison while it wouldn't be possible with a leader... when inactive... even with penalties (the max is 35% but I am saying both forces having the same penalty, the leaderless can take that town and the one with the leader can't).

I would think better of making leaderless forces have a higher maximum penalty of 50% whereas forces with leaders should have 35%. When inactive, the force with leader can have a huge penalty but should still be allowed to go offensive (and lose badly).

When faced with a town with a garrison of 1000, even Mc Lellan would take it with his 30.000. Please, think of it since you're there on the activation rule. If an unknown colonel can... so could Little Mac.

[veji1]

So Ace, how is Betatesting the feature going ? more observations, behavioural changes ?

[Ace]

Be patient. You'll find out soon enough. I would definitely make it PBEM mandatory. It's a new feature and I do not know if the AI is optimized for it. Human knows his stack can be deactivated following turn, I do not think AI is aware of it, she plays like all their stacks are active. I am not sure about that observation however. The game has undergone some more good changes as well, Pocus has not mentioned all of them.

[veji1]

Patience ? never !

[Ace]

You can try it with 1.02 if you have the mental discipline. Just force yourself not to think: Mac is inactive this turn, I will stay put, into thinking, Mac is probably inactive, will I take my chances or not. Just turn a blind eye on those brown envelops like they are not there.

[veji1]

You can try it with 1.02 if you have the mental discipline. Just force yourself not to think: Mac is inactive this turn, I will stay put, into thinking, Mac is probably inactive, will I take my chances or not. Just turn a blind eye on those brown envelops like they are not there.

Sure, but the whole point is that my sick sick mind finds a way of seeing those enveloppes anyway...