AACW Advanced Mathematics 101

[Evren]

Hi Everyone,

I'm particularly new to this game, just got it this month, but loving it like i have it for years. I'm a no newbie to strategy games, been playing for years,
and despite the fact that i'm not so interested in American Civil War (or no other anglo-saxon civil wars , this is the best game i've ever played since now (but i'm sure it's gonna change so often from now on if the Ageod Team goes on like that). Congratulations, well done, all the respect etc..I could go on making compliments to the developers and the forum people, but this post would be so long then. Just know that you earned another respectful disciple.

I would like to write a post like "newbie questions, or how do you..?", but i see everything is already asked and answered, and i still want to say something in the forum, i decided to share my opinion on the game.

The problem is (if you can call it a problem), or the only thing that makes me think like "wouldn't it be better if..", is the unit and leader ratings. For instance, everyone at the beginning of the war, or throughout the war new that Lee was a great commander, but i'm sure no one (even himself!) knew that his ratings were 6-6-4, so as a corps commander, he would give his 11 offensive fire rating infantry a 30% bonus or stonewall jackson would move his army 15% faster.

I know these ratings are all necessary and used in the complex calculations during the game, i'm not sure any of the strategic planning were made or executed using numbers like that. The only numbers they could use were the number of men and horses and artillery etc.., even those were not that accurate.

The best thing in the game for me is that you don't have control over everything, so it makes you feel desperate, like a real human being. The thing with other games is you can calculate better or move your mouse faster (or save & load ), that's where AACW excells. But still, there are numbers

So, in short after a long post, what i'm asking is, wouldn't it be better (or no, not better maybe, but more difficult and exciting) not to know the numbers, but try and see what's gonna be the result of the next battle when attacking with McClelan and his militia on entrenched troops or Grant with his battle-hardened infantry on militia stacks.

Regards,

Evren

[Coffee Sergeant]

No, I hate hidden numbers. Good players will just dig for the information anyway.

[Rafiki]

Hi Evren, welcome to the forums!

No, I hate hidden numbers. Good players will just dig for the information anyway.

Indeed. The numbers have to be stored somehow, and if the game didn't display them, someone would dig them up and make a webpage or something displaying them. OTOH, if one plays with random generals, I can see where this could make sense.

There is a fair bit of discussion before there is something AGEOD can start evaluating for implementation and inclusion in the game. E.g. how well should the stats be hidden? (Revealed after some battles? Not at all?) Should abilities be displayed in any way? Etc.

[Philippe]

I think this idea has a lot of merit. I hate looking at seas of numbers, especially in pre-21rst century contexts. And when given a chance, I tend to ignore them, but it would be nice if personalities and skills were presented in more 19th century terms.

But just to keep everyone happy, maybe the non-numerical ratings could be confined to an iron-man setting which replaces many different numbers with verbal characterizations? So you wouldn't have to have a fog-of-war obscuring the displayed numbers if you didn't want to.

So instead of a scale of 0 to 9 you could have a rating of poor, average, or good.

(Or maybe terrible, poor, average, good, exceptional, though that has so many categories it starts to approach using numbers).

This methodology could be applied to anything in the game that is non-quantitative in nature.

And if you really want to torture your brain, try to come up with the adjectives that would have been used in the mid-19th century. Then imagine a game about the English Civil War in the 17th century and try to figure out which adjectives they would use instead...

Note to Ageod: if you want a great subject that lends itself to your style of treatment, take a look at a board game by David Isby called 'The King's War' that used to be sold on the Clash of Arms website. It was always hard to play in physical form, but something like that would work nicely in your computer format. And to include a full treatment of the wars in Ireland and Scotland and English intervention on the continent (and vice versa) would be heaven.

[Spharv2]

Welcome to the forums.

It was a request that I made in beta, but I believe there was actually a coding or some other tech type issue as to why it couldn't be done if I remember right. Still something I'd like to see though for randomized generals. Then you'd only be able to judge who was good by using them, none of this silly shuffling of poor generals to rear area commands before they're even used. Besides, you can't capture anything like the true feel of the problems both sides faced without depicting the complete unknowns that came when these leaders took the field in their first true large scale actions.

Another thing I'd like to see in a future update (AACW II maybe) would be for all generals to be promotable to any rank. As it is now, a good number of generals are forever stuck at 1 or 2 star rank because they have no ratings for higher levels. I would like to see them be promotable with a randomization factor for any promotion above their historical level.

[Brausepaul]

Well, a game has to give information to the player which is available in real live. Lincoln could have asked other people about their opinion on McLellan or any other general. Generally, he had sources of information the player wouldn't have without numbers. But may be there is a way for future games not to show numbers but categories instead (like a "good" which can be any rating between 6 and 9 or something).

[Hobbes]

Welcome Evren, it is a point much discussed in the past, especially in the beta forums but if you search for "hidden" you should find some posts. One of Pocus last comments which I found :-

"Hidding stats is very difficult, as it needs to have all events reworked to not be silly: many people know that the unknown general arriving at location X is Price, Grant, etc.

Or what will you do with the indirect clues given by the abilities? I have an unknown cavalryman but I see he moves troops very fast and such... my guess, given the time frame, he is Forrest.

Just 2 examples why we don't have done that."

But then reading your post again you are suggesting that we know the name of the general and his stats are randomized but we don't see them. Maybe that is a new angle.

Cheers, Chris

[Evren]

Thanks everyone for the replies,

My intention was not considering the developers to do such thing to improve the game. I believe that this is all their work and demanding such things would be just cruel since it gives a load of work ( i can guess how difficult programming, especially reprogramming is). It is just saying an artist that it would be just better if he/she included something in the painting, my will is not that.

The other thing is, as mentioned above in one of the replies, the "good!" gamers will always try and find the necessary numbers. I believe it is up to the player to check them or not, cause i'd prefer playing without knowing the numbers.

You can take the following line as a consideration; the leaders can gain their skills as they fight, like they get others as they gain rank, and the other thing that can be done is to say a 21 defensive fire rating as "good", or call Forrest "a very good cavalryman" etc.. I don't know if it is hard to give those verbal values instead of the numerical ones is so hard, it would be just an option in the preferences menu. But still, this consideration is not something like "i want to see this in the game". It is just a humble opinion for such a great game.

[Adlertag]

You can take the following line as a consideration; the leaders can gain their skills as they fight, like they get others as they gain rank, and the other thing that can be done is to say a 21 defensive fire rating as "good", or call Forrest "a very good cavalryman" etc.. I don't know if it is hard to give those verbal values instead of the numerical ones is so hard, it would be just an option in the preferences menu. But still, this consideration is not something like "i want to see this in the game". It is just a humble opinion for such a great game.

Hi, Evren,

Some humble thoughts...

1. If leaders gain their skills as they fight,don't you fear some historical leaders will then maybe gain skills in the game not related to their real aptitudes, which will lead to unhistorical "use" of them ?

2. "Verbal" values vs "numerical" ones : I don't see in fact the difference, it's just a matter of scale and also because we put more subjectives facts on a "verbal" value than a numerical one. In this case, we could also have a leader rating scale such : A, B, C, D, E... or Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue or anything else, instead ratings such as 1,2,3,4,5 or Poor,average,good,very good,genius for example.
No scales are better than others but numerical scale is just more convenient.

3 As computer understands only numbers, even a "verbal" scale will be translated to a numerical one, to say it short, but it's true, players won't see the "trick" when playing.

[Evren]

Adlertag,

1- You never know if the leaders are good or bad as a higher commander or the president until they fight i assume. Sure some skills can be unhistorical as they fight, maybe one will become really good in amphibious assaults but even himself wouldn't know that before trying it. Some generals were cavalry, infantry or artillery commanders as core skills, since they were creating the concepts of the battlefield of the modern age, but i'm not sure what would happen if you ordered a guy like stonewall to make cavalry raids into enemy territory. Maybe he'd be good, maybe not. And there is the luck factor in the battlefield. Some generals were there right on time to win the entire battle, even if they didn't mean to, and they become good generals (or called so).

2 & 3- You are right there. There is no meaning in dividing the skill levels and calling them bad-good-genious etc.. But i wasn't only talking about general skills. Infantry can have 25 defensive fire value, so it is 1 to 25. And there are more than 1 value for a single unit (like hide value, cohesion,etc.. and also offensive and defensive ratings for generals). The computer will need all those numbers for the calculation, but the only thing you would know about the army when you were ordering them something to do is if you can trust your general (if he is capable of doing it) or the men are in good shape or not, not the offensive rating of your general or the one to one hundred something combat value that you would never know about.

[Philippe]

What you know about your generals, if you're Lincoln or Jefferson, is probably based on their pre-war reputations, plus whatever you observe about them over time, especially in social situations (how firm someone's handshake is doesn't tell you much about how well they lead armies, but it might fool you into thinking you know something about them that you really don't).

So maybe a more immersive and realistic way of handling all of this would be to mask all of the numbers entirely, and show, instead of a three-word characterization based on how good or bad they really are, a small range of adjectives that would reflect their pre-war reputations within the army. And in most cases these adjectives would either be irrelevant to what you really wanted to know, or completely misleading.

In it's most extreme form this could lead to looking up Grant and discovering on closer examination that he was slovenly and had a drinking problem, or perhaps that McClellan was a snappy dresser and good at paperwork -- which a pre-war army would care about, but, of course, tells you nothing about whether he can fight or not. But it's also the kind of information that leaders of the period would have at their disposal.

As it stands we have far too much precise and accurate information about everyone and everything. It may make the game easier to play, but comparing sets of numbers is anachronistic and counter-immersive to how things were done and thought about in the 19th century. To get a feel for what I'm talking about, I would strongly recommend paying close attention to the interactions and decision-making process described in Gore Vidal's Lincoln.

[Adlertag]

As it stands we have far too much precise and accurate information about everyone and everything. It may make the game easier to play, but comparing sets of numbers is anachronistic and counter-immersive to how things were done and thought about in the 19th century. To get a feel for what I'm talking about, I would strongly recommend paying close attention to the interactions and decision-making process described in Gore Vidal's Lincoln.

Understandable, but if we go farther into your propositions, we could also argue that, as high leader of a faction, we currently have a too wide scope of the map, even with FOW set. It is the same anachronism as knowing leaders stats by a specific number.
Could a game avoid all anachronisms and still be a game ?

[tagwyn]

Nice to have your interest and participation in our very good forum. I, like you, have no interest in wars regarding the Ottoman Empire, Persia, Hungary, etc. Even though I know they were very important to the status of modern life, somehow, I am not interested. The ACW was an event I grew up with being a Southerner and having ancestors who actually fought and died in the war, and , knowing that if the South had managed to win the war, it would have been an international disaster of the first magnitude. The social issues arising from the outcome of this war are critical to an understanding of the USA. Best wishes for many victories. T apy:

[Rafiki]

Lots of good points being made

One thing I'd hate to see is if I'd need to keep track of every single little thing myself in order to be able to put the right guy in the right place, e.g. keep track of every siege to find out who are artillerists or keep track of command penalties to see who are good and who are bad administrators. This would increase the bookeeping aspect IMO, even if the numbers themselves might be shoved under the surface. To me, that would reduce my enjoyment of the game.

[Philippe]

You can't avoid all anachronisms, but you can limit the damage.

The modern game-players' obsession with quantification isn't really necessary, doesn't add anything, and doesn't need to be imposed on the simulation. I don't really need to know precisely how much better Grant is than McClellan even if that kind of information is available to me in the game. It isn't available in reality, because McClellan on a good day might actually be a better general than Grant on a bad day (especially if he happened to be sleeping off a bout of binge-drinking and Sherman wasn't around to sober him up).

And if something isn't really needed, damages the 19th century feel, and lessens the immersion, why use it?

I don't really like being reminded that I'm playing a computer game any more than I have to be. But I also know that there are gamers out there who start feeling all warm and fuzzy inside when they know they're playing with a computer, and that helps them overlook the fact that (oh horrors!) there might be some reflection of actual history in what they're doing.

Some people are uncomfortable venturing into unfamiliar territory, which is why I originally suggested that verbal characterizations of skills or reputations be controlled with an optional game setting: if you want to be a computer nerd and have unrealistic access to geeky numbers, go ahead and don't check that particular FOW option. If you want to be an effete literary snob with your head in the clouds and confuse the heck out of yourself in the name of 19th century realism, activate the toggle. I am not proposing that anyone be forced to live in anyone else's world. My grandmother may have been an intolerant Victorian, but I believe in freedom of self-expression, even when I don't agree with it.

This reminds me a bit of the old debates among wargamers back in the late seventies about zones of control. It gradually began to dawn on people that they were simply an ante-diluvian gaming convention that wasn't always appropriate in every situation (despite the fact that the old Avalon Hill games always used them). But zones of control stuck around for a very long time (and are still around in the Tiller games) because people were used to seeing them and designers often just assumed that they were needed without really thinking things through.

[Adlertag]

Some people are uncomfortable venturing into unfamiliar territory, which is why I originally suggested that verbal characterizations of skills or reputations be controlled with an optional game setting: if you want to be a computer nerd and have unrealistic access to geeky numbers, go ahead and don't check that particular FOW option. If you want to be an effete literary snob with your head in the clouds and confuse the heck out of yourself in the name of 19th century realism, activate the toggle. I am not proposing that anyone be forced to live in anyone else's world.

I agree, a good option to satisfy us all, but by now, the first solution (numerical scales) is the only one probably because it was easier to implement and use.

Then, as another option, consider playing leaders of the game at the real altitude they are, ie altitude of their eyes instead flying over the battlefield thus having, as player, an artificial advantage those real leaders never had.
How can you limit the damage in this case ?

[Evren]

Nice to have your interest and participation in our very good forum. I, like you, have no interest in wars regarding the Ottoman Empire, Persia, Hungary, etc. Even though I know they were very important to the status of modern life, somehow, I am not interested. The ACW was an event I grew up with being a Southerner and having ancestors who actually fought and died in the war, and , knowing that if the South had managed to win the war, it would have been an international disaster of the first magnitude. The social issues arising from the outcome of this war are critical to an understanding of the USA. Best wishes for many victories. T apy:

Well Mr. Tagwyn, it is not like that i'm totally ignorant to what happened there, since i'm a human being of this world and i am interested in everything that kills so many people, no matter where or when and i do think that i know much more than your highly intellectual new generation about this war because of that reason (well there is another reason also, my wife is from Alabama, so that makes me an in-law-southerner too ).

Well, the one good thing about this game is you don't fight the battles, you order your commanders to do it and they organize the things. Yes, they didn't have the chance to look at the battlefield from high altitude, but they had maps (accurate or not, they didn't have to see Nashville from Bowling Green in order to move there, they knew where it was). And the map scale is not so detailed, there are general regions in the game where you can put like a hundred thousand men in a single region. You just order them to get there and your commanders or the soldiers decide where to go and what to do there. And for the fog of war and the position of the enemy armies, the map is just a symbol for all the information gathered, accurate or not.

For Mr. Phillippe, i agree with most of the things you said. The reason why this game is played by people mostly above 30 is not because they are only interested in playing another computer game, but because they like the reality level and the simulation level of the game. So far what i realized is that the forum community are not a bunch of silly gamers, but intellectuals who are interested in the game. So making the game more difficult or changing the numerical date wouldn't effect the fun factor.

[jeff b]

I like the idea of hiding the actual commander ratings from the player. Give the general a reputation - starting with their pre-war rep, and moving up/down based on results. So Little mac and Halleck would start with good reps, but not necessarily have good performance. The more you fight with the general the more of his real ratings you begin to know. Combine this with random ratings and we would begin to have to operate under the same limitations that Lincoln did.

Think of it as "Fog of War".

[Adlertag]

Well, the one good thing about this game is you don't fight the battles, you order your commanders to do it and they organize the things. Yes, they didn't have the chance to look at the battlefield from high altitude, but they had maps (accurate or not, they didn't have to see Nashville from Bowling Green in order to move there, they knew where it was). And the map scale is not so detailed, there are general regions in the game where you can put like a hundred thousand men in a single region. You just order them to get there and your commanders or the soldiers decide where to go and what to do there. And for the fog of war and the position of the enemy armies, the map is just a symbol for all the information gathered, accurate or not.

I understand that but it still remains the paradox that we have currently a very high detailed level of battle report with all these symbols and numerical facts, aptitudes used on both sides, % of ammo used, number of KIA and so on...
If you are searching a more immersive and real feeling, why would you keep such abstracts and quantitatives informations also ?

[Coffee Sergeant]

I realize that the game presents alot of 'information overload' - but unfortunately I think it is because of the design of the game. Frequently, you manage things on a very small scale. I don't think the interface as it is, is really that bad. New players might be a bit overwhelmed, but you learn to consult that information only when needed. I just don't think it takes up that much screen real estate.

If you hide information from players, I just see more potential for confusion, in an already complex game- e.g. Why can't I move my entire army by rail? Not enough rail capacity? How much do I need to expand it by in order to move them? Why did my army run out of supply? They didn't carry enough with them in the first place? How do you know that, the game doesn't tell me?

I think what you would want would be a vastly redesigned game, where you have 'small numbers' that could be translated to a x% chance of something happening. For example, maybe you have 5 categories for supply and ammo situations like 'Empty, Low, Depleted, Supplied, Full' , and you have a x% chance for moving in either direction depending on circumstances (distance from depot, transport situation from the depot to the).

Actually I would like a bit more information. Since events are prescripted anyways, I would like an in-game mechanic to know that they are going to happen. Especially as the Union, in the build screen I would like to know if some unit is going to appear next turn to make the sharpshooters I plan on building redundant.

[willgamer]

I understand that but it still remains the paradox that we have currently a very high detailed level of battle report with all these symbols and numerical facts, aptitudes used on both sides, % of ammo used, number of KIA and so on...
If you are searching a more immersive and real feeling, why would you keep such abstracts and quantitatives informations also ?

Ummmm... because it is the information that a staff would provide you, thus increasing the immersion factor.

Jeff B; I like the idea of hiding the actual commander ratings from the player. Give the general a reputation - starting with their pre-war rep, and moving up/down based on results. So Little mac and Halleck would start with good reps, but not necessarily have good performance. The more you fight with the general the more of his real ratings you begin to know. Combine this with random ratings and we would begin to have to operate under the same limitations that Lincoln did.

Think of it as "Fog of War".

I agree. How about a rating system like: U=unknown; U+=unknown, but good rep; U-=unknown, but bad rep; then performance based A, B, C, D, F (like school).

Rafiki; One thing I'd hate to see is if I'd need to keep track of every single little thing myself in order to be able to put the right guy in the right place, e.g. keep track of every siege to find out who are artillerists or keep track of command penalties to see who are good and who are bad administrators. This would increase the bookeeping aspect IMO, even if the numbers themselves might be shoved under the surface. To me, that would reduce my enjoyment of the game.

Me too. More User Playability would be very welcome. In this case, more ledger info and filtering, like a filter to show only generals with/without a certain trait.

For me, improvements to playability should be the highest priority. Better filtering, "done moving" toggle, rally points for new troops, etc. will help me to keep playing now that the new game adrenalin rush is over.

[Coregonas]

I believe adding a single extra STAT to every unit (leaders & combat units)

- TRIED / UNTRIED -

could help a lot giving us an extra Random & Fog of War.

for example:

All combat units could start with 0 EXP and UNTRIED.

Once the 1st shot is seen a somewhat Random die should give them from a) a BIG bonus (30 Exp points?) (heroic 1st battle - for instance stonewall brigade in the first Manasas) to b) none, and marking as TRIED.

This bonus should be also according to the performance / ratio of battle... Most of the troops could gain an important extra bonus (5-10 EXP points) so the TRIED-VETERANS from at least 1 battle could be really better than the untried, and very important, known to the players.

All leaders should get some Stats lower in the begining, and upgrading them even more after TRIED...

[D_K]

not sure if it was mentioned, didnt have time to read all the posts, but why not just play with general abilites randomized if you want a change? i think it is only discovered what they have when they go into battle...isnt it? or did i not read that somewhere??? anyhoo....just a thought

[Philippe]

Randomized values have limitations, the main one being that they produce relative quality values that are ahistorical. I want to have my cake and eat it too. I don't want to know that Grant is good when he's sober, but I want him to be every bit as good as he actually is when I finally get to use him.

[Adlertag]

Ummmm... because it is the information that a staff would provide you, thus increasing the immersion factor.

Wow! Congratulations to have such an efficient staff ; able to give you every enemy aptitudes involved during the battle, enemy accurate percentage of units supplied, % of ammo level on both sides, number of routed units on both sides and so on...

So immersion notion is currently an elastic one, I see, because every player has his own definition and of course, delimits his own border...

[Philippe]

Don't go there. I'll start writing posts about how there should be almost no numbers displayed anywhere in AACW, and at least half of the time those numbers should be wrong (especially if McClellan's in charge of the Army of the Potomac and he's relying on Pinkerton's estimates of the size of Confederate forces). One of the things I really loved about the old V for Victory series was that under certain circumstances things could break down to the point that the information you received about your own troops wasn't even accurate.

So far we're only talking about the ratings of Generals. If you expand the scope of the discussion most of the other numbers that get displayed will have to be hidden or adjusted by an (undisclosed) innaccuracy factor. Union generals really should be made to believe that they're outnumbered. It can make you pretty skittish about ordering an attack when the screen is telling you that you're outnumbered two-to-one.

[Coffee Sergeant]

Union generals really should be made to believe that they're outnumbered. It can make you pretty skittish about ordering an attack when the screen is telling you that you're outnumbered two-to-one.

This is already present in the game, though sometimes it works the other way (the force is really larger than it tells you). If it always worked one way then you'd know the size of the force was always less than what your scouts were telling you.

[willgamer]

Wow! Congratulations to have such an efficient staff ; able to give you every enemy aptitudes involved during the battle, enemy accurate percentage of units supplied, % of ammo level on both sides, number of routed units on both sides and so on...

So immersion notion is currently an elastic one, I see, because every player has his own definition and of course, delimits his own border...

Actually I was responding to your original post, not presciently the one in your response.

Let's return to it:

I understand that but it still remains the paradox that we have currently a very high detailed level of battle report with all these symbols and numerical facts, aptitudes used on both sides, % of ammo used, number of KIA and so on...

"numerical facts"- yes, KIA by unit in fact.

"aptitudes"- absolutely, both by battle intensity and captured soldiers.

"% of ammo used"- yup.

I hope we even get more staff info, such as tables of orgaization and equipment.

[Adlertag]

Don't go there. I'll start writing posts about how there should be almost no numbers displayed anywhere in AACW, and at least half of the time those numbers should be wrong (especially if McClellan's in charge of the Army of the Potomac and he's relying on Pinkerton's estimates of the size of Confederate forces).One of the things I really loved about the old V for Victory series was that under certain circumstances things could break down to the point that the information you received about your own troops wasn't even accurate.

So far we're only talking about the ratings of Generals. If you expand the scope of the discussion most of the other numbers that get displayed will have to be hidden or adjusted by an (undisclosed) innaccuracy factor. Union generals really should be made to believe that they're outnumbered. It can make you pretty skittish about ordering an attack when the screen is telling you that you're outnumbered two-to-one.

Sorry, Philippe, but I suppose you aren't the only one to have the right to decide what to post in these forums...

Maybe, I was not so clear; I just wanted to go ahead with your propositions : you are talking about rating of Generals, good, but why not applying also a correction about FOW details and the currently so accurate battle report ?
Why shall we consider tweaking a specific point and not others, related to...immersion ?

[Philippe]

Sorry, mistook your meaning.

I'm actually quite serious when I say that the fog of war effect should be applied across the board, even to things that we are used to thinking of as well known.

So if you really meant it when you said FOW should be applied more thoroughly to battles, I couldn't agree more.

There's even a bit of uncertaintly in your own numbers in a battle: you've probably got a good handle on your paper strength, but people get sick, wander off, miss roll call. So when the smoke clears and the shooting's done you'll start getting reports from subordinate units about what their total effectives are. But those numbers will keep changing as more people reappear at their proper units (they might have gotten swept up in someone else's unit for a time, on their way back from carrying a wounded comrade to the aid station in the rear -- a favorite ploy for ducking out of a battle in a socially acceptable manner). And it probably takes a couple of weeks for the killed/wounded/missing number to stabilize. When two armies crash together there is an enormous shock, a lot of units get disorganized, people get scrambled around on the periphery. And the chief of staff develops an epic headache as he tries to figure out just how many men he has left who are capable of marching, and how much ammunition he has left. This disordering effect can be quite severe, and in Napoleonic times was one of the reasons that armies rarely fought battles two days in a row (Wagram and Leipzig were huge anomalies). Tolstoy's description of why there wasn't a second round of the battle of Borodino between the actual event and the French marching into Moscow is spot on.

I used to be concerned that it was too easy to fight back-to-back battles until I remembered that the time-frame was two weeks, enough to pull yourself back together and start all over again.