AGEOD Forums

Would there be any interest in the community in me doing a leader overhaul? And maybe some help from the community?

I am thinking of starting from scratch.
Remove the bizarrely ranked Charles Hamilton, have him enter in january 62 as a 1*.
Change Banks into a 2* at game start, with auto promotion in Jan 63 to 3*.
Maybe change Buell into a 2* at entrance, as he was, like Grant, simply a corps commander under Halleck. But this might have negative effects for the Union.
Create a bunch of auto promote events for both sides based on seniority, political connections etc. That way the correct 2* and 3* generals show up. This would be something like Bragg, Heintzelmann, Longstreet, Jackson, Keyes etc
Include Rosecrans at or near game start, at 1*. Never figured out why he enters so late.
Maybe add Lander at game start for the Union at 1*.

Possibly re rate generals ratings.

Also, maybe redo brigade composition, getting rid of 90% of sharpshooter, cavalry and artillery in infantry brigades.
also what do you all think of brigades having regulars (as opposed to conscripts) in them at recruitment? I kind of think it would be better
to have all infantry start at conscript. As it is, as much as possible i don't recruit brigades that have many conscript elements. It is odd, there are brigades with some, all, or no conscript elements and essentially no reason to recruit the ones with conscripts until you empty the force pool of the brigades with no or few conscripts regiments.

Anyone interested? Thoughts, commentary, blatant personal attacks?

Mike

Hope this may be of some interest, I did this a while ago for AACW to identify divisional commanders through the war (* in game) using references in David J. Eicher's "The Longest Night" i've attached the Union list I made which includes where and when they took Divisional command, when they were commisioned etc. Higher ranks and the CSA are done as well but still in scrappy excel sheets.

Since the DB's were posted I've made a start on transferring these generals in. I tried to use a uniform system for seniority it may not be exactly true to life.

S!

lycortas2 wrote:Would there be any interest in the community in me doing a leader overhaul? And maybe some help from the community?

I am thinking of starting from scratch.
Remove the bizarrely ranked Charles Hamilton, have him enter in january 62 as a 1*.
Change Banks into a 2* at game start, with auto promotion in Jan 63 to 3*.
Maybe change Buell into a 2* at entrance, as he was, like Grant, simply a corps commander under Halleck. But this might have negative effects for the Union.
Create a bunch of auto promote events for both sides based on seniority, political connections etc. That way the correct 2* and 3* generals show up. This would be something like Bragg, Heintzelmann, Longstreet, Jackson, Keyes etc
Include Rosecrans at or near game start, at 1*. Never figured out why he enters so late.
Maybe add Lander at game start for the Union at 1*.

Possibly re rate generals ratings.

Also, maybe redo brigade composition, getting rid of 90% of sharpshooter, cavalry and artillery in infantry brigades.
also what do you all think of brigades having regulars (as opposed to conscripts) in them at recruitment? I kind of think it would be better
to have all infantry start at conscript. As it is, as much as possible i don't recruit brigades that have many conscript elements. It is odd, there are brigades with some, all, or no conscript elements and essentially no reason to recruit the ones with conscripts until you empty the force pool of the brigades with no or few conscripts regiments.

Anyone interested? Thoughts, commentary, blatant personal attacks?

Mike

I am sure there is a lot of interest in all of those, tripax is also having same ideas as you.

It sounds great to me. As a part of my unit name mod, I've discovered that a lot of work could be done on brigade names. I'm interested in modding force pools and brigade composition, so I've decided to make things hard on myself. I've started making a fairly detailed database of brigade composition and organizational structure in major battles in the war (I really like research). Even though regiments didn't always join brigades immediately, I'm interested in having brigade composition and state force pools be closer to how brigades looked in battles (while still being fun and hopefully improving game play). After all, in the game we have a strong focus on how troops behave in battle rather than other aspects of troop life (detaching companies to do specific tasks or be a head-quarter guard or whatever isn't a part of the game, for instance).

I really like your idea of having more/most infantry start as conscript. RY mentioned a similar idea to me with the caveat that upgrading be faster - it didn't take many battles to become a veteran, I've read.

As for leaders, I'm in favor of adding more, tinkering with ratings, seniority, etc, as well as auto-promote events. Personally, I love reading the event notifications, even after having read them all. Many promotions happened in the war before significant battles occurred, and would be happy to see more promotions by (political) event in 1861 and even 1862.

If I can help, let me know. My current plan is to focus on the brigade composition/state force pool question (as well as improving the unit names mod). As my research gets into shape, I'd be happy to present it and work with anyone interested on implementing changes.

A lot of mod work was done in the area of leadership for the original AACW. Of course, leadership values and abilities are always debatable but at least you may find ideas from the work done before. You can find many of the old AACW mods here: http://www.brettschulte.net/CWBlog/wargame-mods/aacw-mods/

I personally found the new cautious ability with the reduced activation in enemy territory very intriguing. Certainly sounds like you could up McClellan's activation stats to make him useful as an army commander and still get some real slows when on the offense in enemy territory.

I don't have the CW II database or I would check to see if any of the old mod AACW leadership stats and abilities were transferred into CW II. At first glance, I don't think so but too early for me to say so.

Also Tripax,

I did a lot of the brigade composition work in my mod for the original AACW. PS: I am pretty sure I did the conscript change as well...

It is here:
http://www.brettschulte.net/CWBlog/wargame-mods/aacw-mods/110-mods-aacw/jaggers-pbem-mod-for-110/

Recruiting pools for both the CSA and Union have been redone. Pools are updated annually. Unit types convert from the mixed early war brigades (mixed formations of infantry/artillery/cavalry) to the pure infantry formations typically raised from 1862 onwards. Cavalry brigades and artillery battalions/brigades have been introduced into the recruitment pools for both sides.

Timing for introduction of new formations is important.

But tons of little changes are included in the mods in many areas of which some such as brigade composition, leadership values could probably be easily integrated into CW II if you have the database and CSV splitter.

Very cool job, Jagger. Scrolling through your files, they seem very interesting. The DB for CW2 is in the modding forum (http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?35005-CW2-Excel-Database).

I looked at your units and models DB. Its great work. For anybody interested, the link to the forum discussion about Jagger's mod on his website is depreciated, and should now point here. I am interested in a lot of the changes you made, from forcepool reconfiguration to lowering attrition loss from movement and raising attrition loss after battle, and wonder how much of your mod was included in CW2 (and in AACW patches)? I'm also interested in why changes were or weren't adopted by the official team?

Thanks Tripax, I just downloaded the CW2 database.

If you have questions, I might be able to answer them. It has been so many years ago, I may not recall all the reasoning behind the changes. Although last night, I read through the old modding forum for AACW and there are in depth thread discussions for many of the changes. Also there were several other very good and often extensive mods created during that timeframe. I know some changes were integrated into AACW. I assume many weren't integrated because perhaps they didn't fit into AGEOD vision for the game or simply time constraints. Could be many reasons. But regardless, there are quite a few good ideas, research and discussion in the old modding section.

If you understand the engine, modding and how to use the CSV splitter, you can create a very interesting mod which can improve historical accuracy and change gameplay substantially. It does take time to mod though. I know I burned out on it after a couple years but it was very rewarding until then. And I felt the results produced a better version of my vision of the the Civil War. Now that I have CWII, I am tempted to redo some of the easier and less controversial changes for CWII. In particular, brigade composition should be a fairly easy change with the work already done. May be primarily a cut and paste job with a few events to implement. I may look into it this weekend.

Be careful, if you get hooked on modding, it is hard to stop.

Jagger2013 wrote:In particular, brigade composition should be a fairly easy change with the work already done. May be primarily a cut and paste job with a few events to implement. I may look into it this weekend.

Do look into my unit names mod, I used your blog a quite bit while researching, and was quite impressed by your writing (and am proud of my mod). I included the version of the units and models db files that I used to create the new unit files in the zip for that mod, so if you like the unit names I found, you could consider using those flavor-names instead of the official ones (the db is otherwise identical to the db pocus posted). My current project is to update brigade names and brigade commanders, and doing this lends itself to looking at brigade composition and state force pools.

When I look at your mod, one issue I saw was that since unit pools completely reset each year, it is possible to "over-recruit" from one state compared to what might have been historically plausible.

And one note if you do mod force pools. In CW2, people have complained about how brigades are recruited and have suggested that ordering brigades in the recruit menu more clearly by region and state would help. The order of units in that menu is based on the order of the "ChangeUnitPool" command in the events file(s), and when reset the order can be set to be more useful for the player.

Thanks, I just downloaded your mod. Glad you used the spreadsheets. I will have to get back on your question later tonight or possibly tomorrow.

I'm not that mod savy so for guys like me, it would be great if you guys would combine your efforts in 1 mod.
Anyway, thanks to both for your efforts!

Can the JoneSoft Generic Mod Enabler be used for AGEOD game files?

That would be very nice. I use it for ROF and previously for SHIII

JSGME is a great tool, when AACW came out it didn't work well with mods but that was before the cache files could be deleted, I bet as long as you remember to do that it will work ok.

S!

Eugene Carr wrote:JSGME is a great tool, when AACW came out it didn't work well with mods but that was before the cache files could be deleted, I bet as long as you remember to do that it will work ok.

S!

Well hope people that mod will use it if possible and give instructions for use, that would be a easy way to mod a PBEM game as both players prefer.

Do look into my unit names mod,

Looks good! I integrated into the models database but not the units yet. I did notice a possible error in the union infantry names. It looked like at CT, you had a mixture of states which were not separated out by state as you did further into the database. I don't if it was intentional or not.

When I look at your mod, one issue I saw was that since unit pools completely reset each year, it is possible to "over-recruit" from one state compared to what might have been historically plausible.

IIRC, the number of available brigades was correlated to maximum manpower during the timeframe with a few extra brigades. Also more populous states had more troops available for recruitment. I do remember wanting each and every state with recruitable infantry formations which wasn't true at the time in AACW. I think it is also true with CW 2. And as my mod was intended purely for PBEM play, humans could choose whether to recruit more in one area or not but IIRC, to use max manpower you had to spread out your recruiting because you would run out of brigades in any one area fairly quickly.

I'm not that mod savy so for guys like me, it would be great if you guys would combine your efforts in 1 mod.

Very hard to get multiple modders to agree on anything. Might want to check out the old discussion threads in the AACW modding section. Definitely best for PBEM play to had one really good mod but rarely works out that way.

I loved AACW and played it a lot. So naturally I bought CWII. But I barely played it. I didn't buy the extension and don't plan to.
Because despite all its qualities, the game has pretty much the same database than the first game of 2007.
Except for a few additions in West Virginia and the Far West, it's the same database with the same mistakes and the same oversights : mixed brigades throughout
the war, way too few cavalry brigades, no artillery brigades/batallions, sharpshooters are too many and too cheap, Rodman and Columbiad guns as field artillery but no 3-inch guns etc...
The CWII database has ignore all the mods and improvements made by the players over the years.
It's the one thing I never understood about CWII. I really don't want to sound too harsh with AGEOD but in this case the work was already done. You just had to implement it.

When CWII came out I tried to implement parts of the SVF mod from the infamous Clovis, but without the spreadsheets this was tedious and quite time consuming.
So I gave up. But now I'm tempted to try again...

Jagger2013 wrote:Looks good! I integrated into the models database but not the units yet. I did notice a possible error in the union infantry names. It looked like at CT, you had a mixture of states which were not separated out by state as you did further into the database. I don't if it was intentional or not.

Yeah, the game has it like that for Connecticut infantry in the model file and I didn't change it. New England infantry brigades in the game are only available from Maine and Connecticut, and regiments in the Maine brigades get default names. When forcepools and unit brigades are adjusted to allow for brigade recruitment in Massachusetts or Rhode Island, this should be changed, but it is nice to have Massachusetts regiments in the Connecticut brigades for now. I should have added some Maine infantry regiment names, but forgot.

Jagger2013 wrote:IIRC, the number of available brigades was correlated to maximum manpower during the timeframe with a few extra brigades. Also more populous states had more troops available for recruitment. I do remember wanting each and every state with recruitable infantry formations which wasn't true at the time in AACW. I think it is also true with CW 2. And as my mod was intended purely for PBEM play, humans could choose whether to recruit more in one area or not but IIRC, to use max manpower you had to spread out your recruiting because you would run out of brigades in any one area fairly quickly.

I see. My vote would be against having the number of brigades "zero out" when new pools are added. I think it would be nice to have an idea of exactly what types of brigades were used at which dates, and the force pools could be calibrated to induce similar brigade structures in game. The problem is, I guess, that in real life early brigades could be broken and reformed into new shapes, but that can't happen in game.

Jagger2013 wrote:Very hard to get multiple modders to agree on anything.

Maybe so, but I'm all for teamwork!

Maybe you guys should setup a page where people can donate for your efforts?
And ageod could sponsor with giving you guys with a game of choice and maybe integrate the work you've done

Just to make sure everyone who is interested sees it, my last updates on the forum thread about infantry unit names for my unit names mod might be relevant for a leader overhaul.