How do you keep the game from bogging down into WW1?

[Joel Billings]

If the Union is ever outnumbered by the south, you're in big trouble. If there's a script, it would be something like this:

1) Draft on turn 1 or 2.
2) Secure the border states.
3) Secure the islands, maximize your blockade.
4) Take advantage of opportunities to launch "relatively safe" amphibious invasions on the coast.
5) Deal with Kentucky somehow (there are varied opinions on this).
6) Don't waste a lot of troops attacking in 1861 with militia against strong defending forces.
7) Make sure you've got the best leaders you can in key positions.
8) Condider a draft in early 1862.

After that, I don't see a script. If you take care of these things, you can set yourself up in a decent position to attack in 1862 with a numerical superiority. Take a look at some of the AARs to see how the Union player can get things rolling. You might want to switch to the CSA side for a bit to see what it's like from the other side. You'll also get to see what the Union AI likes to do. Good luck.

[madgamer2]

From the nature of your posts here on this forum it begs the question "Do you really enjoy this game? Is there any strategic level game (AACW,FoF,etc) that you like? Like people games have to be accepted as they are. If you do not like them then why bother us with you dislikes. It seems to me that your not interested in playing but in putting forth your "this is not right and it should be done differently" kind of attitude on the forum.

Regards,
Madgamer

[rclawson007]

You probably all know this... but the whinnings posted here were in fact the very nature of the USCW. If you want to play WW2, then play WW2. Don't expect a good STRATEGIC LEVEL civil war game to play like a tactical Russian Front.

[madgamer2]

do you except PM's? if not PM me it might be worth it

Madgamer

[Pford]

ORIGINAL: Queeg

I wonder from looking at the map whether there is enough room in Virginia for the sorts of maneuver in that occurred historically in that theater.

People are forgetting that the Civil War DID turn into WW1 after 1864. At least the Eastern theatre.

[Queeg]

ORIGINAL: Pford

ORIGINAL: Queeg

I wonder from looking at the map whether there is enough room in Virginia for the sorts of maneuver in that occurred historically in that theater.

People are forgetting that the Civil War DID turn into WW1 after 1864. At least the Eastern theatre.

I haven't forgotten that at all. But the war in the East, for the first three years, was very much a war of maneuver.

[tran505]

Couple of things.....

Although the appearance of a continuous line of fortifications from on end of the map to the other does suggest WW I, the game does not play that way IFF you understand the system. The early turns are critical to set yourself up for success (or failure) in '62. Taking Missouri and W. Virginia is automatic on turn 1, and taking Kentucky is not that much harder within the next turn or two. DRAFT on turn 1; delaying all builds for a turn will get you 50+ militia to train on turn one alone.

I have no doubt that there is all sort of "maneuvering" going on; except that at this scale it occurs within a single zone within a single month. If you want lower detail -- try AGEODS's product. This system works within its intended scope.

I liked the comment someone made that you need to "crack the egg and spill the yolk"". It really works that way. You will need to fight like hell in Tennessee, but things will get better once you punch through.

Yes if do not "do the right things" you may get bogged down. It has happened to me. But if you take the many easy "gimmies" that are available, you will have enough PP for a turn 1 draft and an early '62 draft, and you will be able to punch through with improved leaders AND enough soldiers to do the job.

Regards,

P

[Berkut]

ORIGINAL: madgamer

From the nature of your posts here on this forum it begs the question "Do you really enjoy this game? Is there any strategic level game (AACW,FoF,etc) that you like? Like people games have to be accepted as they are. If you do not like them then why bother us with you dislikes. It seems to me that your not interested in playing but in putting forth your "this is not right and it should be done differently" kind of attitude on the forum.

Regards,
Madgamer

Well, I will agree that I am not your typical "OMG DIS GAME IS TEH BESTED EVER IT IS PERFECT OMG!" fanboy, and that is true in every game that I like. If I did not like the game, you would never even hear from me, since I would not waste my time commenting on it, asking questions, and challenging the fanbois.

But if you want to bring up my motivations in an effort to make ad hom attacks, rather than address my points, I don't really have any time for you either.

And no, games do NOT have to be accepted as they are - nothing in life has to be "accepted as they are". Things improve and get better via feedback, constructive criticism, and discussion. I don't just bitch and complain, I ask questions, raise issues that I think are relevant, and invite discussion. If this bothers you, and I understand there are lots of people out there bothered by this kind of "challenge" to their paradigm, then I invite you to simply ignore my posts.

[Berkut]

ORIGINAL: rclawson007

You probably all know this... but the whinnings posted here were in fact the very nature of the USCW. If you want to play WW2, then play WW2. Don't expect a good STRATEGIC LEVEL civil war game to play like a tactical Russian Front.

I am not sure who you are talking to here - the only people I have notice "whinning" are the ones complaining about what other people post, like they are the self appointed forum police.

[Pford]

ORIGINAL: Feralkoala

I think Berkut's problem has more to do with the scale of the game; at the scale depicted, there were very few times you saw a 'war of movement'.

I agree and would also add 'hindsight'. In 1861, the Civil War commanders were operating off the Napoleonic template; sweeping maneuvers, concentration and decisive battles. In period photographs, ever notice how many generals posed with right hand slipped under the breast lapel? Technology, like rifling, had transferred the advantage to the defender. The player knows this but the actual leaders had to grope towards this epiphany.

So, given the player's pre-knowledge, campaigns in WBTS tend, in my experience, to unwind in a conservative, a-historical fashion. Taking the Confed side you see that the Union AI will NOT hazard a Bullrun but will consolidate at leisure before invading Virginia in 1862. And is wise to do so, despite the political climate that rendered inertia inconceivable- Lincoln basically nagged McClellan into action. But I believe the combat mechanics and results are pretty unimpeachable, abstracting out political realities.

[WarHunter]

I think I must be doing something wrong - any pointers out there on how to make the game (at least in the West) be a little bit more about moving, and less about gigantic fights?

Well, I will agree that I am not your typical "OMG DIS GAME IS TEH BESTED EVER IT IS PERFECT OMG!" fanboy, and that is true in every game that I like. If I did not like the game, you would never even hear from me, since I would not waste my time commenting on it, asking questions, and challenging the fanbois.

I see now you were never really interested in any pointers. All you really care about are the fanbois. Just because there are people who see the glass half full, you have appointed yourself the half empty guy. You have become the classic See no good, hear no good, speak no good.

Be sure to ignore any and all aspects of the game that make it wonderful to play, a challenge for the mind and one of the few gems in the rough playable out of the box. Oh, and a clean pbem for 2 players. yep, there are some out there who actually enjoy the game.

No doubt you will be patted on the head, told you have pointed out a possible fix and maybe get an "attaboy". Amazingly enough there are others out there who are doing just the same thing. But they actually read the rules and play the game from both sides to gauge if there is a problem to bring up.

Not everyone can see everything from 1 side of the coin. You are something special.

Btw, i know you will ignore everything i have said. its ok, i'll live.

[Berkut]

ORIGINAL: Pford

ORIGINAL: Feralkoala

I think Berkut's problem has more to do with the scale of the game; at the scale depicted, there were very few times you saw a 'war of movement'.

I agree and would also add 'hindsight'. In 1861, the Civil War commanders were operating off the Napoleonic template; sweeping maneuvers, concentration and decisive battles. In period photographs, ever notice how many generals posed with right hand slipped under the breast lapel? Technology, like rifling, had transferred the advantage to the defender. The player knows this but the actual leaders had to grope towards this epiphany.

So, given the player's pre-knowledge, campaigns in WBTS tend, in my experience, to unwind in a conservative, a-historical fashion. Taking the Confed side you see that the Union AI will NOT attempt a Bullrun but will consolidate at leisure before invading Virginia in 1862. And is wise to do so, despite the political climate which would have rendered inertia inconceivable. But I believe the combat mechanics and results are pretty unimpeachable, abstracting out political realities.

But I believe the combat mechanics and results are pretty unimpeachable

I do not at all think the mechanics are unimpeachable - at the scale of the game, the idea that the defense can be spread out, and then come together for every fight is an interesting mechanic,but what it is trying to portray? That certainly did not happen during the war. The entire flexibility between offense and defense rests with the defense due to the activation and reaction mechanics.

I think Bull Run will not be attempted not because historically the Union could not win it - that is simply not the case. It will not be attempted because in this game the Union will almost always lose that fight - and almost any fight like it. The Union only gets to attack with whatever units activate, the South gets to defend with whatever units are in the space the Union attacks, plus whatever units can be moved to that space - which is, essentially, everyone within several spaces.

Bull Run was not a foregone Confederate victory historically, and most people who study Civil War history would tell you that the war likely could have been won much earlier given an aggressive Union commander willing to exploit his numerical advantage to crush the ANV. The only "hindsight" that ought to apply here should result in a stronger Union, since in fact the player should know that the Pinkerton reports are bogus, and that the AoP seriously outnumbers ANV most of the time.

It is not hindsight that holds the Union player back - nor is it even the superior Southern leaders. It is the game mechanics that greatly favor the defender, far beyond any historical reality.

The ACW was NOT WW1 on the Western Front, even if it foreshadowed it. There are no preponderence of machine guns and indirect fire artillery backed by millions of rounds and massed to an average strength measured in tubes per yards here.

[Berkut]

ORIGINAL: WarHunter

I think I must be doing something wrong - any pointers out there on how to make the game (at least in the West) be a little bit more about moving, and less about gigantic fights?

Well, I will agree that I am not your typical "OMG DIS GAME IS TEH BESTED EVER IT IS PERFECT OMG!" fanboy, and that is true in every game that I like. If I did not like the game, you would never even hear from me, since I would not waste my time commenting on it, asking questions, and challenging the fanbois.

I see now you were never really interested in any pointers. All you really care about are the fanbois. Just because there are people who see the glass half full, you have appointed yourself the half empty guy. You have become the classic See no good, hear no good, speak no good.

Be sure to ignore any and all aspects of the game that make it wonderful to play, a challenge for the mind and one of the few gems in the rough playable out of the box. Oh, and a clean pbem for 2 players. yep, there are some out there who actually enjoy the game.

No doubt you will be patted on the head, told you have pointed out a possible fix and maybe get an "attaboy". Amazingly enough there are others out there who are doing just the same thing. But they actually read the rules and play the game from both sides to gauge if there is a problem to bring up.

Not everyone can see everything from 1 side of the coin. You are something special.

Btw, i know you will ignore everything i have said. its ok, i'll live.

What an interesting perspecive. You claim I am going to ignore everything you say, and to the extent that your entire post is simply a personal attack, I guess it is worthy of being ignored.

I have no idea why there are these people who feel such a misplaced sense of attachment to a game such that they lash out at other fans who discuss potential issues. I am not sure what you and madgamer and pyle hope to accomplish by slandering others and turning the forum into some form of pissing contest. Maybe you think this will make the game designers think you are cool or something? I have no idea.

You do not respond to my posts, you simply flame away. I suppose that is cool if that is your thing - certainly the internet is chock full of people with the great courage to slander anonymously like this, so you are in numerous, if not notable, company.

Let me know when you want to talk about the game though - it is pretty damn good, and you might consider playing it and understanding it more, and flaming people on the internet less. The only people impressed by such displays are usually your fellow flame warriors.

[Pford]

ORIGINAL: Berkut

I do not at all think the mechanics are unimpeachable - at the scale of the game, the idea that the defense can be spread out, and then come together for every fight is an interesting mechanic,but what it is trying to portray? That certainly did not happen during the war. The entire flexibility between offense and defense rests with the defense due to the activation and reaction mechanics.

Defenders react in WBTS with significant penalties. They arrive later at the battlefield and lose the possibility of entrenching. I find the mechanics rather ingenious. Maybe the 'unspotted' bonus could be tweaked down a bit, I don't know. The game just came out, for chrissakes, cut them some slack. I'm confident they'll revisit a lot of aspects.

It is not hindsight that holds the Union player back - nor is it even the superior Southern leaders. It is the game mechanics that greatly favor the defender, far beyond any historical reality.

Civil War battles tended be grinding, slogging matches. They hardly ressembled the Napoleonic set piece, typically in less rugged terrain and dominated by the smoothbore musket, effective out to about 100m. Austerlitz, Jena and many others were destructive, conclusive affairs. For similiar lopsided outcomes in the US war you had Fredericksburg- an incompetent general colliding with an unassailable defensive position.

[ssclark]

ORIGINAL: WarHunter

I think I must be doing something wrong - any pointers out there on how to make the game (at least in the West) be a little bit more about moving, and less about gigantic fights?

Well, I will agree that I am not your typical "OMG DIS GAME IS TEH BESTED EVER IT IS PERFECT OMG!" fanboy, and that is true in every game that I like. If I did not like the game, you would never even hear from me, since I would not waste my time commenting on it, asking questions, and challenging the fanbois.

I see now you were never really interested in any pointers. All you really care about are the fanbois. Just because there are people who see the glass half full, you have appointed yourself the half empty guy. You have become the classic See no good, hear no good, speak no good.

Be sure to ignore any and all aspects of the game that make it wonderful to play, a challenge for the mind and one of the few gems in the rough playable out of the box. Oh, and a clean pbem for 2 players. yep, there are some out there who actually enjoy the game.

No doubt you will be patted on the head, told you have pointed out a possible fix and maybe get an "attaboy". Amazingly enough there are others out there who are doing just the same thing. But they actually read the rules and play the game from both sides to gauge if there is a problem to bring up.

Not everyone can see everything from 1 side of the coin. You are something special.

Btw, i know you will ignore everything i have said. its ok, i'll live.

Wow. Your post is nothing more than a personal attack on a guy who, it seems to me, is addressing some honest concerns he has about the game.

As someone who is considering buying this game, but is concerned with his concerns, how about addressing those? An added benefit of that is that you might help convince me to buy this game...

[Berkut]

ORIGINAL: Pford

ORIGINAL: Berkut

I do not at all think the mechanics are unimpeachable - at the scale of the game, the idea that the defense can be spread out, and then come together for every fight is an interesting mechanic,but what it is trying to portray? That certainly did not happen during the war. The entire flexibility between offense and defense rests with the defense due to the activation and reaction mechanics.

Defenders react in WBTS with significant penalties. They arrive later at the battlefield and lose the possibility of entrenching. I find the mechanics rather ingenious. Maybe the 'unspotted' bonus could be tweaked down a bit, I don't know. The game just came out, for chrissakes, cut them some slack. I'm confident they'll revisit a lot of aspects.

Holy cow, I don't need to cut them any slack, because I am not hanging them (I think that is where that term came from). I don't doubt at all that there will be some tweaks - hopefully I am providing some small part of the feedback necessary to make such tweaks happen..

I like this game, and want to see it get better. More than that, I want to get better at it, and asking questions and raising issues with the mechanics is the means by which both of those things happen.

If I did not like the game, or thought it was terribly broken and unworkable, you could tell because you would never see my posting, just like I don't post on the 99.9% of game forums, because I don't play those games, and don't really care if anyone makes them better.

[Berkut]

ORIGINAL: Pford
Civil War battles tended be grinding, slogging matches. They hardly ressembled the Napoleonic set piece, typically in less rugged terrain and dominated by the smoothbore musket, effective out to about 100m. Austerlitz, Jena and many others were destructive, conclusive affairs. For similiar lopsided outcomes in the US war you had Fredericksburg- an incompetent general colliding with an unassailable defensive position.

At the scale of this game, we aren't really looking at battles - we are looking at campaigns. A given "battle" in this game could represent a singular battle, like Getysburg, I guess, but what it really represents is a operational campaign, which could include several different battles.

The unit of maneuver, and scale of manuever is a full month. A civil war army could move rather far in a month, and this is reflected to a degree in the ability to the defender to move far to reinforce an area under attack. Part of the issue is that they can do so while largely ignoring whatever is in front of them, since they know they can almost certainly get back before whatever is in front of them can exploit them being gone. Even if the reaction uses all their movement, in most cases they can still strat move back into position, all during their own turn.

Even if they cannot within their own turn, the odds of whatever was in front of them activating during the next turn are slim. And even if it DOES activate, that still isn't that big a deal, since you will have the next turn to react to THAT activation, and bring in all the reinforcements from all around to do so.

Funny thing - this system would be really interesting in a situation where both sides need to both attack and defend, since the dynamic of reacting makes it hard for you to attack during your own turn (I think, I am going a bit out on a limb here). But the South is generally content to just meet the Norths attacks most of the time, so they enjoy the benefit of this mechanic to a great degree.

I suspect this would make a very interesting WW1 game mechanic, where the defender almost always wins the operational fight, at least on the Western Front, and the Allies have to try to just wear down the German army by making them fight all over Europe.

[tedhealy]

One of the things that gets lost is that the battles aren't necessarily a single battle.  Perhaps I'm way off on this, but I view them as a serious of engagements over the course of a month.  I don't have too much of a problem with reaction moves when battles are viewed in that context because troops are moved in to the area over the course of the month, but what I might like is for reaction moved troops to have a harder time actually being committed to the battle.  You may be able to get the troops near the battle but coordinating the move well and getting them to fight perhaps could be harder. 

I like the reaction move mechanic personally, but would certainly be open to tweaks.

edit [:D] similar points posted at the same time going in somewhat different directions. I like the idea of making the reaction moves slightly more dangerous either by allowing a counter-counter attack or something a bit closer to a WEGO mechanic during reaction, but I suppose those things change the underlying mechanics of the game too much. Just making it harder to recover after a reaction move might be interesting.

[Berkut]

ORIGINAL: ssclark

As someone who is considering buying this game, but is concerned with his concerns, how about addressing those? An added benefit of that is that you might help convince me to buy this game...

ss, don't worry about it, this kind of thing is standard in the gaming world.

As far as buying the game, I will say this as someone who has bought it and played it for several hours in a couple of PBEM games (the only way I really play):

On the one hand, I have already gotten my moneys worth in fun. The game does one thing that is, to me, utterly necessary for any PBEM wargames: create that sense of tightness in the stomach when I see my opponent has sent a turn and I am nervous about the outcome of a battle - that sense of *caring* about what happened. This is kind of subjective of course, but I have played plenty of technically excellent games that I just could not get into because they didn't make me CARE. This is not on of those.

On the other hand, I think there are some odd design decisions, that I think savvy players will learn to exploit rather quickly. However, I also think this is largely inevitable in ANY wargame that is more than Risk-like complexity. Quite simply, humans are too good at "gaming" the game, and designers and developers have a hard time imagining the ways they will do so. IMO, all games, and especially wargames, require significant post release balancing work. This one is no different. To a great extent, me buying any game on release is a leap of faith that these things will get done eventually, presuming the core of the system is workable.

For all the issues I have raised, I do not regret buying the game.

[PyleDriver]

Berkut, I'll try to be nice, which is hard for me. Melo dude. If you have seggestions make them, If you don't like how the game is laided out get another one. Almost all the players except you find this to be inovative and flowing game. Sure no game is perfect, but this one fun, fun, game.

[8D]
Jon