AGEOD Forums

AGEod's American Civil War let you recruit units (or build in case of ships) of various types. Each has a cost in money, conscripts and heavy war materials (aka War Supplies), but as you can expect the cost vary enormously between the units types. These 'assets' (money, conscripts, War Supplies) are stocked at the national level, and are produced either via historical options that you can trigger yourself (taxes, drafting) or are produced continuously (war supplies in the fabrics and magazines you possess in cities).

Most units have a force pool, either for a given state, of a given Department (several states together). So you can recruit (if you have the assets) with some liberty many units, but you just can't do very ahistorical things, like having Florida fielding 40 brigades, or having an army only made of horse-drawn artillery and cavalry brigades escorted by an hord of gatling guns!

The screen below should let you understand the underlying principles of the system. We hope you will enjoy the look of them too!









Disclaimer: some little things are yet to be finished, like a better choice of colors for the NATO symbols and States, size of the minimap should be expanded by +50% and the exact name of the unit will be reviewed.

So the building block is actually the Brigade, not the Rgt ? Can you know which are the Rgts in your Brigade ?

What do the numbers mean, for example for the 3 missouri Bgdes : 124, 78, 61 ? and the symbols beside the soldiers with the numbers 10 and then 0 and 0 ?

And we need a screen of the cavalry units as well..

Thanks !!!

veji1 wrote:So the building block is actually the Brigade, not the Rgt ? Can you know which are the Rgts in your Brigade ?

What do the numbers mean, for example for the 3 missouri Bgdes : 124, 78, 61 ? and the symbols beside the soldiers with the numbers 10 and then 0 and 0 ?

And we need a screen of the cavalry units as well..

Thanks !!!

I assumed that the 124, 78 and 61 were the relative strengths of the units. The 10, 0 and 0 are the number of units available, the units deployed and the units requested to be deployed.

Looks great!

The order of the battle, in elements (meaning regiments for infantry, batteries for artillery, individual ships for fleet squadron) can be seen when you buy a unit (which is made of these elements), see the list of NATO symbol at the bottom of the screen.

When you get the unit on map, the elements will also be seen, but can't be manipulated directly. You manipulate units, eg the 7th Brigade (Virginia), made of 4-7 elements of various sorts.

If you have a divisional HQ around (which is also a unit and has to be bought) you can combine up to 18 elements with the HQ, and get a division.

The thing to understand is that you play with units, brigades and divisions mostly (but a unit can be made of a single regiment, so the unit is then also a regiment, like an independent Zouave regiment, you follow me?). There is a big tutorial on that, rest assured.

Take a look at the screens below:



Hoke's Brigade is a unit (selected as there is a the metal frame around it) and is made of 4 elements (see theses elements in the bottom right panel).

Now I have a HQ unit in the stack, so I can merge all the units into a single one: a formed division. After the operation I will have only a single unit to play with, but a darn potent one. I can always split it back into its components units.

See:


When you pass the mouse over Early's Division, you get a tooltip telling you what are the brigades into it, and you also the see the combined units (as a pop-up only). Now if you look to the right, you see the complete (and impressive) order of battle of the unit, with Jubal Early at its head.

A division is a very potent force, as you have added bonuses compared to having the units split. On the other hand you act as a single force and are a less versatile if you want to do several operations in a single turn.

It can appears daunting, as there is much info displayed (and you have many regiments), but it plays really smoothly on the contrary. A corps is made of 4-5 units most of the time: 2 divisions and some assets (supply or independent artilleries), so you are not overloaded with units, even if you have a bunch of troops under your command. And you just manipulate these units, the sub-elements are here to provide historical accuracy and background, and also serves so that the combat engine run realistic result, with many subtleties running underground. For example your division is perhaps only a single counter when you manipulate it, but the battle engine will use the artillery batteries in it to support the regiments, and the cavalry will also have the role of shielding you from losses if you retreat, etc. Even better if you have a sharpshooter company in the division, all the regiments of the said division will benefits from the special ability he has (increased initiative).

Great news... that's a lot of improvement over the BoA system.

Are you going to build into the game the intrinsic differences between Confederate and Union divisions -- notably the fact that the former tended to be much larger than the latter, at least in the East?

B.C. Milligan

This looks fabulous!

For now, CSA brigades are larger compared to Union ones, but both divisions can accept 18 elements. Perhaps we can think of reducing to 15-16 what the Unions divisions can accept. Or not... I think it would be artificial and if the games data are right, it shoulds happens 'naturally', the Confederate having less men and being less able to replace losses.

In the screenshots you list units from AK. I think you mean for this to be Arkansas, but it is not: Alaska is AK, Arkansas is AR.


That said, I love what I am seeing about this game. The 'look and feel' is very good.

Director wrote:In the screenshots you list units from AK. I think you mean for this to be Arkansas, but it is not: Alaska is AK, Arkansas is AR.

Aarghh... leure: It took me one full day to correct the Iowa problem...and now Arkansas...

Could someone approve of the list below please, in order the same problem does not arise every now and them


NY : New York
CT : Connecticut
PA : Pennsylvania
NJ : New Jersey
DE : Delaware
MD : Maryland
VA : Virginia
NC : North Carolina
SC : South Carolina
GA : Georgia
FL : Florida
OH : Ohio
MI : Michigan
IN : Indiana
KY : Kentucky
TN : Tennessee
AL : Alabama
MS : Mississipi
LA : Louisiana
TX : Texas
A[color="DarkRed"]R[/color] : Arkansas
WI : Wisconsin
IL : Illinois
MO : Missouri
IA : Iowa
KS : Kansas
IT : Indian Territory (not a state, but the shortname IT is used in the game)
WV : West Virginia

Thanks

http://www.usps.com/ncsc/lookups/usps_abbreviations.html#states

Everything seems to be ok...

Hi Phil Thib,

What about

VT: Vermont
ME: Maine
MA: Massachussetts
NH: New Hampshire
CA: California

Historically many units were from these states also.

ME & MA units are recruitable, they arrive in the CT OMB (talk about acronyms ).
CA has some militias.

VT/NH: not added yet as regular infantry, but we still have some slots left in militia, we can add them too (would arrive thru the CT OMB too)

More exactly those units from New England are present in almost all initial setups, when and where we found them historically (in the various regiments historical flavor names).

Recruiting specific units from those states is not handled directly: you just recruit from "New England" which is an OMB (off-map box) in the game...

I have had few ideas for units and divisions but you guys always leave me speechless

Still thinking about porting the VG Vietnam boardgame to this engine. How much of the recruitment model will be exposed to modders?

Director wrote:In the screenshots you list units from AK. I think you mean for this to be Arkansas, but it is not: Alaska is AK, Arkansas is AR.


That said, I love what I am seeing about this game. The 'look and feel' is very good.

Alaskans would have to come with rules for Russian intervention...

In the above example of Early's Division - Is there any way to see which of the 17 elements are in a particular brigade? If I want to detach a brigade from the division will I be able to tell which elements are part of that brigade before I make the detachment? Thanks.

This is the first time I have seen the screenshots and they look so good, I just can't wait for this game.

Any idea how many scenarios there will be?

Elmo, Pocus gave you an example just below one of the screenshot. In this, there is Hoke brigade containing 31 VA, 21 NC, 9 La and staunton artillery. In the game click on Gordon or Haye and you will have their composition. Pocus on each brigade picture, there is brown rectangulars on the left. Is this a quick manner to see how many regiments are included ? In the case of Hoke and another leader a rectangular is slightly lower, is this a manner to see if artillery is available ?

Florent wrote:Elmo, Pocus gave you an example just below one of the screenshot. In this, there is Hoke brigade containing 31 VA, 21 NC, 9 La and staunton artillery. In the game click on Gordon or Haye and you will have their composition...

Thanks. I see the composition of Hoke's brigade in the screenshot before his and other brigades were combined into Early's division. What I am asking is whether there is still a way to see the composition of one of those brigades after they are all combined into a division.

Nathaniel wrote:This is the first time I have seen the screenshots and they look so good, I just can't wait for this game.

Any idea how many scenarios there will be?

I think there are around 15 or so scenarios so far from full campaigns to yearly and theatre specific.

Chris

Hobbes wrote:I think there are around 15 or so scenarios so far from full campaigns to yearly and theatre specific.

Chris

That is good news , particularly that there are some smaller theatre specific campaigns for those of us who can't cope apy: with a full campaign.

@Carrington: the recruitment model is defined in excel files which are then converted into game file. Everything is moddable if you have the will to do so.

Ak > AR: yes corrected.

@Florent: the small rectangles to the left are supposed to be ribbons, they just indicates how many elements are in a given units (unit = div or brigade). There is a little gap every 3 ribbons to ease reading.

@Elmo: No. When you have combined a unit into another (a brigade into a division), you can detach back the brigade, but she will receives x elements, depending of the ratio expected between the brigade and the division. But you can't choose to detach the 14th NY and not the 15th NY.

OK, thanks Pocus.

The screenshots are great!! I skipped on BoA because I heard there is no reccruitment/management in the game but it seems this one got it all! Looking forward for it

The artwork in BOA was wonderful. I cannot believe how good this looks -- actually looks like a high-class wood box of toy soldiers. Fantastic.

What do the vertical purple & green bars on each unit represent?

Strength and cohesion I think