Wish List

[Gil R.]

Just throwing out ideas here...

Perhaps the solution might be that when garrisoned units are called out to battle the game automatically takes 500 men from the unit(s) and creates a new temporary garrison unit that stays behind. Or if making it temporary is difficult, just make it a new garrison unit. Players who want to restore those men to their original unit(s) can just disband it. Of course, not everyone will think to do that, know to do that, or remember to do that, so it might cause a problem. Like I said, just throwing out ideas...

[pzpat]

     I wasn't thinking of anything like splitting brigades, but if you really want to get complicated . . .
     As the game stands now when a besieging army is attacked it both meets the rescuing army in the field with all its units and maintains the siege at the same time.  A neat trick which could be changed by the following:
     When a rescuing army enters the province, the besieging player (or AI) could determine which brigades he will pull away from the siege to go into battle.  If he pulls all his brigades away then the siege is deemed halted, and unsuccessful for that turn, even if the garrison brigades are also called into the field.  If the besieging player loses the battle and is thrown out of the province, then any brigades that had been designated to maintain the siege would be deemed to be attacked from the rear (so to speak) and immediately surrender.  If the besieging player wins the battle, then the besieged/rescuing forces get kicked out of the province, including the garrison units that chose to leave the city or fort, and the besieging player's units could enter the city/fort unopposed in the next turn if it had been left undefended.  That is, the presence of a rescuing army could cause the second siege phase of a turn not to happen.
     And of course there could be some sort of calculation of how effective besieging units would be in keeping garrison units from reaching the army in the field, etc.
     If the present garrison bug can be fixed I don't think we need the added complexity, but it was fun to think about.

[Ironclad]

Reining back battle reinforcements

It was a welcome and realistic change to allow detailed battle reinforcements moving by rail to arrive in fresh condition but it doesn't seem realistic to have no limit on the reinforcement numbers involved. For example it’s perfectly feasible to rail in a CSA army of 60,000 from Fredericksburg to the Shenandoah without any regard to the rail limits that apply otherwise to the CSA.

As well as going beyond the historical limits, it treats each side the same, despite the decided advantage possessed by the USA during the real war. Admittedly the USA does benefit from being able to rail in any superior numbers.

To remedy this it would seem reasonable to limit the rail battle reinforcement capacity of each side per turn to a level equal to their normal railroad capacity (ie they get it as an addition to their normal rail movement). Beyond this level battle reinforcements would come by road and arrive fatigued. The doubling effect of the centralised railways upgrade doesn't seem relevant so should be excluded from the battle rail calculation for each side. Given the game mechanisms this limit would probably have to be used on a first come first served basis and if more than one battle required reinforcements, the earlier battles in a turn would have the priority.

A second issue is that reinforcement always happens when ordered, although this is implemented on a staggered basis. I can’t recall any occasion when an ordered in reinforcement doesn’t arrive, except when a battle ends very swiftly.

It would be better to have a greater degree of uncertainty so that a player can’t always rely on extra numbers arriving. This would make more complicated other earlier decisions concerning scouting/terrain choices (if available) and even the question of how many troops are assigned to an area in first place (e.g. maybe deploying a corps rather than a division).

To deal with this, we could introduce a random probability of battle reinforcement arrival influenced by some other factors such as the initiative level of the reinforcement general or generals, signal corps attributes, if defending and if a telegraph equipped province and perhaps additions for a city/ state capital provinces. Retaining automatic arrival for the defender in his national capital province. The outcome would determine the arrival or not of the reinforcing force also perhaps part or delayed arrival.

Edit: Another thought: The extent of notification of non-arrival or delay could be linked to espionage levels or other relevant factors eg winner of scouting check.

[jkBluesman]

The initiative of the reinforcing commander could be used to modify the chance of arrival as well.

[apbarog]

I would like to see the ratings of enemy generals killed/captured in the combat report. When playing with randomized stats, I'd like to know if I just killed the equivalent of Lee, or find out it was just "a McClellan".

[Gil R.]

ORIGINAL: apbarog

I would like to see the ratings of enemy generals killed/captured in the combat report. When playing with randomized stats, I'd like to know if I just killed the equivalent of Lee, or find out it was just "a McClellan".

That's a nice suggestion. Thanks

[Falconius]

I'd like to see a kind of Generals' POW camp, a permanent list of Generals you captured.
 
In my current game as Dixie, I was fortunate enough to capture U.S. Grant when his unit surrendered (I had him outnumbered in detailed combat and was successful in picking "Surprise Attack" from the scouting options).

 I'd like to be able to see Grant in a POW camp and make sure he's still there, and maybe even taunt him a little! [:D]

[Gil R.]

Falconius,
I do like the idea of doing something with this. Originally, we decided not to include generals exchanges because that would require additional interface (= coding + graphics), and would marginally add to the fun. But maybe the solution is to have it randomly -- e.g., twice a year each side gets back a certain number of generals in a prisoner exchange. It would just be a random event, and not something the player would have control over. That would be less work than a formal exchange-negotiating feature.

Right now, we've got so many excellent ideas for a future FOF product that there will be no way to include them all, but the sort of thing I describe will definitely be considered.

[terje439]

Not sure if this has been requested/wanted/desired before, but since I only have a few minutes before going to work I do not have the time to read all the pages in here [:(]

What I would like to see is a few things conserning training of troops;

1. I would like to be able to set a general on training duty, keeping him with some green troops in the rear, doing nothing but marching the would be soldiers up and down, therby improving them (to a certain degree, as I see that this would be too powerful if not.)

2. To be able to not let generals teach certain skills. (swampwise for one is a skill I hate to see one of my brigades be tought..)

3. That brigades are not thought a skill twice if they do not get double benefits from it. I often have artillery units with diggers-diggers. This seems like a huge waste to me.

Just my two cents thou [:)]
Thank you for a great game!
Terje

[ericbabe]

Those are good ideas.  It was up to individual commanders whether they were going to train their troops beyond the very basics, there was really no organized plan on either side for anything like regular training as far as I can tell.  We kind of model this now by giving commanders with better stats an increased chance of training, and then by making most of their training an increase of the quality of poor-quality troops.

I also kind of like that generals "choose" how they're going to train their men without direct player input.  For one thing, it keeps micromanagement down.  But it also makes players have to take into consideration the various things a general can teach, making the decisions about where to place generals a little more interesting.  We do have code that prevents double-teaching of some special abilities and I'm surprised that Diggers isn't on the list of things we prevent.

[Valdemar]

Unit Training by Generals

Allow players to choose the special ability and the unit which learns it when generals make their training roll.

I realize the developers really love randomness in the game, especially if it is the simplest solution, but randomness here is really more than a disappointment, it is not historical or logical. When generals decided on a set of skills that they thought their armies needed to win, they trained every unit under them to the same standard. Individual brigade commanders may have emphasized one skill above another, or added additional skills, but it certainly was not a random affair. Keep in mind that I am only suggesting this for special abilities and that the quality upgrades that generals can give are not included.

I'm certainly no coding expert, but this hardly seems like a difficult process to code.

Please consider this change.

Regards.

[Gil R.]

ORIGINAL: Valdemar

Unit Training by Generals

Allow players to choose the special ability and the unit which learns it when generals make their training roll.

I realize the developers really love randomness in the game, especially if it is the simplest solution, but randomness here is really more than a disappointment, it is not historical or logical. When generals decided on a set of skills that they thought their armies needed to win, they trained every unit under them to the same standard. Individual brigade commanders may have emphasized one skill above another, or added additional skills, but it certainly was not a random affair. Keep in mind that I am only suggesting this for special abilities and that the quality upgrades that generals can give are not included.

I'm certainly no coding expert, but this hardly seems like a difficult process to code.

Please consider this change.

Regards.

You make an interesting point, and I can see how giving each general prioritized special abilities to teach would be appealing, but the problem here is that for only a few generals would it be clear which ability/abilities to prioritize. So while the coding probably wouldn't be too tough to give Ability#1 a greater chance of being taught than Ability #2, and so on, for only a few generals would the ranking be truly justifiable. I'd welcome thoughts on this, though.

While assigning which brigades should be taught which abilities was something we didn't do because we didn't want excessive micromanagement, I can see how this could be done as an option. What I have in mind is that players who want to bother with this could go to the Military screen, click on the brigade, and then have a menu pop up that lists only the abilities that that brigade's army/corps/division general(s) have, letting the player choose the ability he wants a chance at getting. And players who wouldn't want to bother could do nothing, and let the current random system handle training. It's something to consider, certainly.

[Valdemar]

Gil,

I'm suggesting that players be allowed to pick both the unit that gets trained, and the skill as well.

1) General makes training check.
2) Player prompted to pick which of his skills is taught
3) and to which unit in his command.

Thus, there is no need to prioritize. The whole idea is to allow the player to prioritize which skills get passed along. Assume a general with 4 skills makes his check. The player then chooses which skill of the four to train and which unit receives the training.

I hadn't thought about your idea of allowing players to choose this as an option, but that is a grand idea for those that do not wish to deal with more detail. However, if you implemented this change, I feel safe in saying that most players will use it.

Regards.

[Gil R.]

Oh, I see -- an end of turn pop-up box similar to the one for promoting generals, but listing units and potential abilities. Well, that would be another way of doing it, so long as it's an option that can be turned off.

But I should stress that we have dozens of ideas that we can implement, so we can make no promises about which ones would make it into a FOF expansion.

[ericbabe]

Players, in general, don't have perfect control over their generals.  When a general rallies a unit in detailed battle using the "special rally", for instance, the general "chooses" which unit to rally, not the player.  I know that some players don't enjoy anything but perfect control over all their units (we hear from these players every time we implement a C&C-type rule), but I personally think it makes for a better game -- there is less micromanaging and, well, not having perfect god-like control over all your pieces seems somehow more realistic (logical?) to me than having perfect control does.  So in that sense, I-the-developer do like things that are "random" in the sense that I don't like having perfect control over everything.  Also from a game-mechanic point-of-view, if we let players choose which units to give abilities and which abilities to give them, inevitably you'd end up with your best units having the best couple abilities ("heroes all the way around!") and that would seem to make the special abilities less of an interesting game mechanic.  Finally, it makes sense to me that junior officers whose job it is actually to implement this type of training may not "get" certain types of training but might "get" other types.  I've been in classes in which everyone was taught the same thing, but in which people learned quite different things.

[terje439]

ORIGINAL: ericbabe

We do have code that prevents double-teaching of some special abilities and I'm surprised that Diggers isn't on the list of things we prevent.

If this is so, I am just throwing something out to you guys, is the "no double teaching" list checked against the "abilities gained from combat" list?
If a brigade is not supposed to be tought diggers twice, maybe the general taught (bah spelling?!) it once, and they then got it again by experience? Just a thought...

[terje439]

Come to think of another thing I would like to see in this game, a "popularity" rating of generals, giving an idea as to how popular they are with their troops. Why? If a popular general is wounded in detailed combat, the troops under his command would make a moral roll, or suffer a blow to moral due to loss of a loved leader. Well just something that would add even more flavor to the game... Well I'm allowed to hope ain't I? [:D]

[cragpider]

How about a true step by step tutorial on how the game works, even just using the small scenario, like a majority of the SSI games, as well as the Total War franchise always published. I've had this game for awhile now and I still haven't got passed the small scenario level, which I still don't understand, I put in a request for an AAR of the small scenario but to no avail, some sort of strategy guide would also be helpful, and before anyone responds, baptism by fire doesn't work with this game, it only frustrates new players more and more, I hate to think I wasted my money.

[moose1999]

A step-by-step tutorial, where you perform the steps in-game, would actually be a really nice feature.
It would help enormously in making the game more accessible for the casual gamer and help you reach a wider audience.
And you could perhaps avoid the somewhat irritating Steep-Learning-Curve and For-Grogs-Only labels that many reviewers tend to put on really deep, complex strategy games and which, I think, scare away some potential customers.

[Gil R.]

cragpider,
What exactly is it that you're not understanding? Is it the interface, e.g. how to put brigades in a division or how to move an army into a province, etc. etc.? Or is it what you need to do to win?

The forum not only has those threads with advice on how to win as the North or South, but countless other threads with tips on how to play. I'm assuming that you've looked at these, so what else would you need to move beyond the basicmost version of the game?