Testing of Patch 1.10.5

[ericbabe]

"Attack the Fort" shouldn't be available in PBEM mode as Detailed Combat is not available in PBEM.

It's not necessarily 1VP per city; cities with larger populations are worth more.

[Joram]

I guess I don't see why that isn't resolved in Instant Battle then.  But regardless, there is still an "Attack the Fort" option when you first try to lay siege in PBEM mode. 

[ericbabe]

I'll check on why that option is there -- can't see any problems with the code having given it a quick look.

[LeBlaque]

I have not yet tested this patch, but "Attack the Fort" WAS indeed available pre-patch in PBEM and used repetitively by my opponent and I. Essentially, when you "attacked the fort" on a City it would revert to a QB format and the city defenders would flee, allowing an instantaneous taking of the City without any opportunity to rescue it. I believe the outcome of an "attack the fort" command on an actual fort was that you would be transferred to a QB, the defenders would "flee," a few (if any) losses would be taken to both sides, and the fort defenders would re-occupy the fort. Essentially speaking, "Attack the Fort" was the best command to give in PBEM for a City, and the worst command to give in PBEM for a fort....

Regards,

LeBlaque

[JoePirulo]

Joram,
What you posted a few days ago, was exactly what I noticed with the NW points. BTW, nice pics!! [8D] I can´t attach those things... [:(] I´ve played during this weekend, and most of the cities I´ve conquered give negative NW points to me... so I hope this issue is fixed in the patch...
Max

[LeBlaque]

Is there any significant chance that a save game file can be created in this patch or a future one for TCP/IP play in the middle of detailed battles? With no save game opportunity in multiplayer hexwars and PBEM limited to QB, the game becomes, IMHO, severely handicapped relative to multi-player. I understand this is a minority of your customer-base but it sure would be valuable for us that like to play one-on-one.


Secondly, did the resource graphic bug discussed here get fixed?
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[Joram]

ORIGINAL: JoePirulo

Joram,
What you posted a few days ago, was exactly what I noticed with the NW points. BTW, nice pics!! [8D] I can´t attach those things... [:(] I´ve played during this weekend, and most of the cities I´ve conquered give negative NW points to me... so I hope this issue is fixed in the patch...
Max

Oh, I simply hit Alt-Print Screen (Alt confines the screen capture to the active window) to take the image. Then I open up MS Paint and then edit->paste it into it (or just hit ctrl-v to paste). I then just save it as a jpg and voila, you have your screenshot.

[JoePirulo]

Thanks Joram! I´ll try next time... [:)] One thing I´ve noticed after playing the patch a while is that the camps consume lots of manpower points... maybe too much for me, but that´s only a personal opinion (I don´t have enough knowledge of the populations of the CW era). Any notices of the ETA of the official patch? Thanks,
Max.

[Gil R.]

No word on the gold patch's ETA. It makes sense to test things a bit longer, since the last thing we need is to release the gold patch and then have some problem be discovered that should have been caught previously.

Regarding the camps consuming manpower, what do people think? It's a very significant change, since (assuming one is playing with advanced options toggled on), lower population means both less economic production and fewer potential brigades that can be raised. Is the amount of population consumed by camps too high, too low, or just right?

[jecunningham]

I've finished playing my first scenario with the patch. I played USA against the game's AI as CSA. The Southern hordes issue is definitely fixed. It does feel, and I stress the word feel, like perhaps the camps consume a little too much population. I built enough camps to generate about 8.000 troops per turn for replacements. During the April 1864 turn I believe the North gained 31 pop and lost 22 or 23 of it to camps. The left me with only a few pops that I could use for muster/conscript/buy brigades. Again, I would defer to someone with a little stronger historical knowledge, but it never felt like the North was gradualy pulling ahead of the South in manpower availability. The game ended with both sides at equal militay strength.
 

[Gil R.]

Thanks for the feedback. As those of you who are playing get deep into games or finish them we'd definitely like to get input on this issue.

[Erik Rutins]

Just for quantitative comparison and to give a peek into how the recent increase in camp population use was arrived at, a camp generates 300 + 15 per pop replacements per turn. Let's say it's in a Population 5 city, that means 450 replacements per turn if the city is at max population, or 337 if it's at 0/5 Let's say you get an average of 400 per turn for 26 turns per year, for a total of 10,400 replacements from that camp in that year.

If you played the game a fair amount, you know that camps were quite a bargain in previous versions as far as what you got for what they cost. They previously had a chance to consume 1 population per turn.

We can assume for design purposes that say 50% of the replacements that come from a camp are sick/wounded troops being returned to their units, so not really a draw on the remaining male adult population. So that brings us down to 5,200 per year. Producing, conscripting or mustering a brigade of 2000-3000 men costs you 2 population, so this is equivalent to about 4 population worth of new manpower. The camp now has five 25% chances to consume one population each, which means that in general each camp will consume 1-2 population per year, though it could consume up to 5, but over the course of all your camp rolls you'll generally end up close to the average usage per year. This still works out to a very reasonable bargain as you are usually paying about half of cost of the same amount of manpower if you had produced/conscripted/mustered to generate it.

The additional caveat is that camp replacements are now decreased by 50% if the city's population goes to 0, but as you can see from the above, this just removes the "bargain" without making them cost more than the manpower should

If you look at a camp in a much larger city, say population 20, it becomes an even greater bargain, whereas camps in pop 1/2 cities make a lot less sense.

Regards,

- Erik

[ericbabe]

We'll probably want to release a new patch for public beta testing that fixes a few of the things you'all have found on this thread before we go gold with it. 

[Viking67]

Playing as the Union vs. CSA AI, Kentucky went to the CSA on the second turn of Southern Steel (Balanced). The Union later took Lexington and the Union's "Will" went down. This must be an error.

[Viking67]

It happened again... this time the Union captured Louisville and lost National "Will" for doing so.

[Viking67]

Has this bug already been reported?

[JoePirulo]

Viking,
yes, in the previous page Joram and me posted similar issues, so I think the devs are in knowledge of it.
Max

[cesteman]

How did this slip through the crack I wonder?

[Mus]

ORIGINAL: Gil R.

Regarding the camps consuming manpower, what do people think? It's a very significant change, since (assuming one is playing with advanced options toggled on), lower population means both less economic production and fewer potential brigades that can be raised. Is the amount of population consumed by camps too high, too low, or just right?

Regarding Camps, Im not really ready to say if the drain is too high or low, etc. I will say I dont really understand why camps are given 5 25% chances to reduce population. Sometimes you lose barely any, sometimes 1 camp in a city will leave the city almost completely drained.

Would personally rather see a camp have a 100% chance to take whatever population is considered balanced after a bunch more playtesting. If 1 and a fraction is considered appropriate than make it a 100% chance to consume 1 and a certain percent chance to consume another.

ORIGINAL: cesteman

How did this slip through the crack I wonder?

Sounds like a transposition of a value or some other typo when they fixed whatever wasnt working right with NW losses to begin with.

PS I am pleased with brigade and horse artillery attachments now WAD, and also like the corrected special unit file that makes more lengendary units available.

[JoePirulo]

Adding to Mus proposition (100 % chance of consuming 1 PP and 25% of consuming a second PP), I think that the camp consuming PP routine should be before the gaining of PP in april. Again, it´s a personal opinion. I play the CSA, and most of the cities have low Population. I don´t recruit/muster/conscription often, to conserve PP for camps reinforcements. Cities with 1-3 Population could become depleted in 1862 with only one camp... But if it is intended to be so, it´s Ok then...
Max.