Several Matters ( 4 bugs ??)

[Joseignacio]

Hello, here are some bugs (?) I found playing with the new version, 1.10a:

-One of my units of germans does not receive reinforcements (don't know the others because they were untouched or eliminated). There wereat least 6 all the time. Just in case, I built them a depot and nothing. Then send them to another in a major city and nothing.

-You can not make a route that starts and ends in the same place or the whole route and previous waypoints are deleted like the arriving point being the same to the starting one told the machine there is no movement. Even if I hold "shift" when doing it. Land and sea.

-There are several messages with the information "NULL" at the end of the display of events after the AI turn.

- General Benedict Arnold is supposed to defect the USA army and join the English but he doesn't.

Also a couple of suggestions:

It would be good to mark more clearly when a leader dies, because it's not easy between so many lines of info, mos of which is not usually useful (but has to be checked because it is sometimes) you can easily miss it. Maybe red coloured the line of this event, like others? I realised I lost my commander in chief turns later...

If/when possible, it would be great if the commands issued to the troops like "assault", "attack", "defense", "evade" could be set for each province, it would allow more subtle strategies. The same goes for "ambush", and at sea ...

I would be good too an option to destroy supply charts because sometimes having them is bad for the combat, letting the enemy take them means giving points, and making unnnecesary depots can help the enemy.

If you really want to balance the game, maybe the best would be that in December not the 70 to 90 per cent of the american soldiers went home (except supply charts and cannon servers, who are better paid ??? ) including the Continental Army members. I know almost nothing about the American Independence War, but I simply don't think that even the garrisons of strategic cities vanished in December (almost all), letting the enemy (who knew it perfectly well) wait outside and take them in January. I think a smaller percentage would be better, and maybe this would be richer in the more "professional" units, the Continentals.

[Pocus]

1. Send me the save please (and give me the location where the unit is stationned)

2. right, this is one of the limitation of the plotting algorithm. To be done.

3. the Spanish version is not up to date, but Friendsware is updating it. Expect something before 2 weeks.

4. It used to works like a charm. It defects in Fev 1780. If not, then send me a save with backups dating from march 1780 to december 80 at most.

As for your suggestions. Two we agree on, but they are still not done because of lack of time (and AACW now get the priority): more emphasis on leader death and possibility to remove a unit.

For the postures, I don't get it. As of now you can set it for each army, which is more precise that doing it at the region level.

The militias don't disband 90% of the time, unless you are really unlucky. They have a disband percentage between 25 and 50%. And the trick is to have a charismatic leader in the stack. Think Valley forge...

[Joseignacio]

Excuse me for my English, it looks better than it really is, hence the cofusions:

4 Arnold defects at that time. The problem is that it doesn't join the English, and the question is: Should he? If he should, then yes, there is a bug and I need to send the savegame. But maybe he leaves the war and goes to Jamaica for a calm retirement...

"For the postures, I don't get it. As of now you can set it for each army, which is more precise that doing it at the region level.
"

I mean postures for each army in every province (if desired by player, default being like up till now). Like if you have leader with 2 or three indian warbands, you may want to "pass hidden" in the next province, with a ten infantry units army, but defende in the next in a enemy fort province garrisoned by some colonists, and finally be on attack stance with an ambsh in the last one where there will be (you hope) a militi unit that comes as a reinforcement. Now it would be impossible, being all this movements (if made in the same turn) in the atack stance (destroyed by the big army) or evade (needs another turn to ambush the militia, ...). this would allow a fine tunning of the actions, more concrete commands inside the turn.

I did not count my militias, but I would say I lost about 80% 90%. Ok, maybe if I finally count them one by one and look all the garrisons scattered, I really lost only 50% (i cannot believe I loste less, although who knows, if you say so..). Many turns I lose (if I remember well) over 20 maybe over 25 or 30 in december.

Of course, I know the Charisma ability, but I think along the game we have like 3 charismatic leaders (maybe some other reaches later but vrry few more). If I remember well, Washington is one, which means one is used for the Continental Army. I try to have them in good positions but of course I cannot send one to every strategic or objective city garrison, and anyway, they just increase a 20 or 25% the possibilities of holding them, so i means I should keep about 4 units to have the chance that at least 1 or 2 will not go...

In this circumstances, it's totally impossible to defend anything else than Boston, Augusta, and the southern objective cities, with these leaders, not to speak of holding cities like Candem, Norfolk, Charlotte, Alexandria, ..., or keep aditional garrison to the detachments protecting Savannah? Philadelphia, New York, ...

And every unprotected city means a british unit, that happens to be close by, takes my city, or I see helplesly how a british army approaches Philadelphia, that was correctly garrisoned and now offers the fixed half company of regulars and a butiny of objective city + cannons + supply (sometimes kept inside).

After your coments (in case you could need any more info) I will try to send the saves and info you asked for or may ask.

[unbbmas]

'You can not make a route that starts and ends in the same place or the whole route and previous waypoints are deleted like the arriving point being the same to the starting one told the machine there is no movement. Even if I hold "shift" when doing it. Land and sea'
Yes this is a problem .I put the finish route of the army on one alongside
and then delete one.

[Pocus]

About Arnold: yes he should switch side, not just disappears. If you have a saved game with appropriate backups (so I can restore a previous turn if needed) then send it please.

stance by region: this is not something that can be easily done. We are thinking of adding more controls and subttleties, but not before the release of our next game. Like for example if your force must retreat as soon as engaged, delay the enemy, fight to death, etc. We just can't do everything (and the things are done by descending order of priority as you guess), and there is also the overall complexity impact on the game and the AI to be considered when adding a feature.

about militias: your points are valids. We have to discuss the matter with the beta, balancing what you say with historicity too. Some new rules can be added true.

About the route ending at the same place as the start route: I will check if the code can be upgraded on this part (it can, the real question is: in how much time...).

Thanks for your feedback.

[Pocus]

update: We are considering a slight change in the Disband Militia rule.

[vonkraus]

'You can not make a route that starts and ends in the same place or the whole route and previous waypoints are deleted like the arriving point being the same to the starting one told the machine there is no movement. Even if I hold "shift" when doing it. Land and sea'
Yes this is a problem .I put the finish route of the army on one alongside
and then delete one.

This works as long as the region your stack starts in is not the most difficult terrain to move through of the surrounding regions. For example, say you want Pontiac and his stack to search and destroy in the vicinity of Oswego but to end the turn back in Oswego. Set march orders like this Oswego to Oneida to Oriskany to Oneida to Gannagaro then press delete once and Voilà!, a search and destroy route that starts and ends in Oswego!

[Generalisimo]

...and there is also the overall complexity impact on the game and the AI to be considered when adding a feature.
...

Yes, please, NEVER forget the AI.
It has no sense to add a feature ONLY for the player because the AI will never learn how to use it.

[Korrigan]

As for your suggestions. Two we agree on, but they are still not done because of lack of time (and AACW now get the priority): more emphasis on leader death

Yeah, that would be nice to be able to torture these damned rebels...

[orca]

And I thought I was already torturing those damn rebels in BoA.

[Pocus]

@Jose Ignacio and others:

1.10d has now a new feature to prevent the return from home of militia in their home state (under some, anti-abuse, conditions). Hope it will helps you appreciate further the game.

[Joseignacio]

Hello again. As you can guess I didn't send the savegame (about that guy who switched sides) because it was too late already.

Thanks, I think it will improve the gameplay a lot.