Playability could be enhanced, I think

[Tordenskiold]

Hi, I am just starting to get the hang of this fascinating game. No doubt there is a lot to remember and take care of each round, and that is why I miss a couple of things that I might have missed out reading the manual (only parts of it). I am very thankfull for a response:

1. Is there any easy way to cycle around through unmoved units? Now it is easy to forget on or two things, with serious consequence.

2. The messages tells you about reionforcements almost ready and ready trained. They are always tied to the city on or two rounds, some permanent. I would love if the game would only display ready units and keep the others inside the stucture and only visible by the flag on the pole. Have you found an easy way to actually find the units in all the cities they are produced? As well as not spending time looking into cities where there is only a unit permanently stationed?

3. I can not figure out how long it takes to recruit a unit. No info are given as far as I can see, so you do not know how long time you have to wait till the unit is ready. I ordered an Army HQ a long time ago and have no idea when it will be ready. Did I miss out on something?

Finally, this is one of the most time consuming games I have ever played. Thus I try to decrease the time doing nothing substantial like looking for reinforcements.

Thanks

[Brausepaul]

Hi,

take a look at Ageod's forums and search for a posting by me (Brausepaul). I think your first two questions are related to mine over there.

[Tordenskiold]

Thanks, great! Helped a whole lot. Have you any idea about nr. 3?

[Brausepaul]

No, I'm afraid someone else has to step up for question three. The forums at ageod.com are more vivid, though.

[Gray_Lensman]

ORIGINAL: Tordenskiold

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3. I can not figure out how long it takes to recruit a unit. No info are given as far as I can see, so you do not know how long time you have to wait till the unit is ready. I ordered an Army HQ a long time ago and have no idea when it will be ready. Did I miss out on something?

I'm not sure about some specific combat units, but a HQ unit usually shows up the in the national capitol city the turn after it has been picked in the "Reinforcement" screen. There is an announcement that it is available. It does take a while for it to build up strength depending on whether you have allocated some resources to "Army HQ" in the replacement screen.

What could be happening in your case, is that you probably allocated some replacement points to the Army HQ in the Replacement Screen, which does not actually cause the unit to be built, it only helps build up the strength of those units on the map that are currently understrength (showing some red in the element list).

Army HQ are only made available to be built at certain event driven times in the game (usually January, although 1861 and 1862 do have some mid-year availabilities. There is a Red announcement when these new HQ units are added to the Reinforcement screen and therefore are available to be built in the Reinforcement screen. Do not confuse the Reinforcement screen with the Replacement screen. You buy units on the Reinforcement screen to increase your actual units in the game. You buy replacement points on the Replacement screen to rebuild the strength of units that have either taken damage or have just arrived in a depleted state. (They show some red coloration in the element list).

There were a few scenario problems that were recently solved, that gave the announcement that HQs were available to be built and yet were not showing up in the Reinforcement screen. This has been fixed, but not included as an official update just yet. I think I provided links to temporary fixes in the v1.09 thread on the AGEod site. Scenarios affected were the two-theater 1862 Campaign Scenario, 1863 Campaign Scenario, and the 1864 Campaign Scenario.

Regards

edit> btw, a rule of thumb for the replacement screen is to have approx. 1 replacement point built for 10 of those types of units on the map, though you might bend this to a lower proportion for infantry types of units, since they will take the brunt of the casualties, and at the start of the 1861 April Campaign scenario, when there are lots of event driven reinforcements that arrive depleted.

also, you are confusing playability with learnability. This game has great playability and replayability, it just takes a good deal of effort to learn how to play it, but generally most really great games with this much detail require some investment in time in order to learn how to play them. They wouldn't be great if they were really simple. I'm still learning new things with this game and I've had it since July 2007.