Question about the game going on past 1865

[pandora6969]

Was reading a post by Rober E lee, hehe which not to many people were happy with his post, but I was wondering can I play the game past 1865, I tried to post in the thread GREAT GAME RUINED, but it would't let me, so I just wanted to ask if the game does go past 1865, how do I set it up to go so? Thank you for the info, to whom ever replys.

[Missouri_Rebel]

I think there is a total victory option at the start screen, although I might be wrong. Check and see if there is. If not I will look into it for you.

also, you might want to post this in the regular part of the fof forum

mo reb

[Gil R.]

There is a "Total Victory" option on the option screen that lets you play without the rule that starts awarding victory points to the CSA each turn beginning in 1865 (which is intended to reflect the notion that the South would have started to gain international legitimacy as a sovereign country the longer it remained unconquered). You have to select this option during set-up, though -- you can't decide that you like a game you're playing and want to extend it.

[Missouri_Rebel]

Much better answer than I provided. Note that Gil said the victory condition rule is not in effect with this option.

mo reb

[Gil R.]

I should add that this option was put in the game after a small but vocal group got upset about the lack of a total victory option, which explains why the manual doesn't mention it. People should definitely read the patch documentation, which has crucial info about how the game has evolved.

[ericbabe]

Actually I think total victory just doubles the required number of victory points, which should extend the game a few more years, but I don't think it extends the game indefinitely.  Most people who wanted longer games seem to be satisfied with this option.  If, after playing a few games, you still think this isn't enough I could see making this aspect moddable (it may already be, I can't remember offhand).

I don't want to be officially responsible for trying to balance out games that last 20 years.  In a very long game at some point the economic and unit rules are going to breakdown since there aren't long-term counter-balancing rules to keep certain things in check, then people will complain about the historicity of the game at that point.

This happened to us with Crown of Glory.  The longest campaign scenario we designed and tested was the 10 year scenario from 1805-1815.  After the game shipped there was a request from many players that we add a longer campaign from 1792-1820.  We did this simply by increasing the time limit on the 1792 starting conditions.  However there many play balance and historical balance problems with the longer campaign that were not problems in our shorter 10 year campaign.  In the 28 year campaign, for instance, players could support much larger armies than we'd seen with the testing of the 10 year campaign, and certain nations, such as Turkey, could become much more powerful than we'd ever been able to do in the 10 year campaign.  Also some rules that were only minor parts of the 10 year campaign (such as the economic waste rule) came to dominate play in the larger campaign in ways we had not seen during testing.

People would then cite all of these problems with the 28 year scenario as reasons not to play COG.  So I'm not enthusiastic about allowing people to play out the Civil War indefinitely for this reason, and if we did allow it I would want it to be in some very unofficial way, such as through a game mod.

[Joram]

That's a very interesting insight Eric, thanks!