Developers' Diary: Ageod's Civil War II

[Philkian]

One feature a day series#8: In the Army now!




Civil War II is primarily a strategic war game, most of its features revolving on the conduct of war and winning it, with economy being one of the tools at your disposal, historical options geared toward furthering a military goal or another and politic being limited to enticing the British and French in joining the Confederates (or if you are the Union, making sure they stay neutral). In Civil War II, you can only make peace with the other side by defeating it, period!

This strong focus on warfare could only work well if the military system is deep and historical. We humbly believe we managed to do that on several (many?) occasions, although as CW2 is still a game, we often have to abstract features, because of the sheer complexity of some historical feats and events or simply because a game which is not fun has lost quite of its appeal to many, including us.

In Civil War II, most of your operations will revolve around a few generals (or admirals). Generals can be good or bad, and can have some special abilities, some being drawbacks even. In addition to that, a general on a given turn can be active or inactive. In the second case, he can basically only do defensive tasks in a territory under your control. That's how we have modeled that the Union appeared so lethargic or clumsy at the start of the war, at least in the East. We also introduced a few safe guards, like seniority, a mechanism were some generals will be quite disgruntled if a junior officer gets promoted before them (and unhappy in the game means losing victory points or worse, national morale!). This feature has very strong root in reality, as many generals had strong political connections and friends, and lobbied one against another to reach a new rank or a better command.

Once you have your army all set up, with generals at the head of each large formation, you'll want to move in enemy territory to either defeat opposing armies or conquer objectives. Here, you'll have to take into account the fatigue of your men, moving in enemy territory or difficult terrains. The fog of war (not detecting the enemy) will be a problem, unless you have strong cavalry forces. Some special orders will be at your disposal, like force marching, setting up a new supply depot, moving your forces by railways (should you have enough rolling stock). Each of your force will be commanded by a general, probably, but if they are too large for the officer to handle, you'll suffer a command penalty, that will slow down your forces and make them fight poorly. Juggling between too many small forces and a few large, under-commanded forces will also be part of the equation you'll face.

And then there will be battles. Here too the game engine will compute for your the minutiae, but you'll have to take into account, at least at a semi conscious level, that you just can't expect to line up tens of thousands of men in difficult terrains. Some regions will be restricted in the size of battles, and so small elite forces, or soldiers knowing the land (partisans, skirmishers) can do very well again larger forces. Battles will be conducted over several rounds, and if you organized your armies in corps, then corps can support each other by marching to the sounds of guns. Seeing a whole corps coming at the rescue from an adjacent region is always a great pleasure (or a great dismay, if they are enemies...).
No plan survives contact with the enemy said Colin Powell (admittedly quoting Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder ), and that's quite true, particularly in a game engine where each side move simultaneously. Always keep forces in reserve and prepare a contingency plan.
Expect the unexpected each turn and enjoy, as we do, the thrill of clicking on 'end turn' and see marches, counter-marches and battles happen before you!

[Philkian]

One feature a day series #9 : Unexpected guests




One intriguing feature of Civil War is the foreign intervention of two countries of importance: Great-Britain and France. This interesting what-if outcome is not drawn from thin air either, as Great-Britain and Union had their shares of tensions during the struggle, culminating in late 61 with the Trent Affair, where USS San Jacinto boarded a British ship and captured two Confederates diplomats, on the ground that they were contrabands, as Union did not recognize Confederacy. The affair escalated with Great-Britain demanding that the envoys be released and a formal apology issued. Orders were sent throughout the British Empire in case war erupted, and for example in Canada alone, 38,000 men were conscripted, whereas a significant part of the Gibraltar squadron was being readied to sail to North America.

As for the French, they saw themselves involved in Mexico from early 1862, a war instigated in no small part by Napoleon III of France. With significant ground forces, and the support of both Spain and Great Britain (only in the first few months), while the Union supported the opposite side (President Benito Juarez), tensions rose high for several years, with a peak in 1863 and 1864. By1864 Maximilian was enthroned Emperor of Mexico. Tensions continued with the Union (now again the United States of America) until 1867, when the French pulled out.
In Civil War 2, the intervention of Foreign Powers is called the Foreign Entry, a rating going from -100 to +100. To see both the British and French join the war, the value must reach or exceed +100. Should it crumble down to -100 at anytime, the Confederacy will never be able to get foreign help. This leads to several sub-games within the game, as each opponent try to move the value toward its own safe zone.

For that, you get two tools mainly. The main one is activating historical options, mostly from the Union side. The difficulty here for the Union is that most of the options can have a short term interest too, so it might be tempting to use them without an afterthought, but that would be an error as all may go the wrong way, and so timing is important. For example declaring complete blockade will allow the construction of many blockade ships, that will in turn, once deployed, reduce significantly Confederate trade outcome. As with all Foreign Entries options though, this can backfire, in the sense that it may raise tension with Europe, and thus augment Foreign Entry. The Union can also sacrifice long term prospects (i.e. lose VP) by giving away trade and territorial concessions, in exchange of a lowering of the entry.

The second sub-game is having a better morale than the enemy or more victory points (VPs). In this case, each turn, there is a chance you move the foreign entry value one notch toward your safe zone. So you'll often see players try to beat at least by one meager point the tally of the opponent, either in national morale or in victory points. This means that sometime you'll ask yourself if it is a good thing to produce more paper money or use this additional regional decision. Not because of the absolute cost of the option (for example 5 victory points) but because it might cause you to lose the lead, thus creating a side effect on foreign entry.

Last but not least, and this information will be of great interest to returning players. In CW2, both the British and the French are governed by their own AI. In American Civil War I, this was not the case, and the Confederacy would move, as if part of a unique integrated command (which is not really plausible), all units, in case of successful foreign intervention. Not so anymore, and now each country may have its own agenda and will also protect its own assets. Rest assured though, with a bigger playable area (going up to Quebec in the north!) and some extra reinforcements, things will still be very tense for the Union.

[Philkian]

One feature a day series #10: Wrapping up



Gents,

This will be the last developers’ notes for Civil War II, as the game will be out tomorrow! As such, we don't want to miss the opportunity here to say many thanks to all the volunteers who helped us shape Civil War II into what it is now! Some of you betas really went beyond 'duty', with discussions, historical notes and reports several times a day, even on weekends.

That said, and in a kind of mirror statement to the first notes, we think it is important to remind everyone one more time what were the two avenues of approach we took when working on this awesome project.

* First, we wanted to take American Civil War I were we left it, and then add more accessibility for new players, because new blood is always good (target practice! Oops no, I did not say that ).
* Second, and in equal importance, because our current community is what allows us to continue creating games, we wanted to add extra functionalities for returning players.

Here are a few examples of minor or not so minor additions in Civil War II, compared to the first opus. Bear with me for the mix & match style, as these features are rather diverse.

For newcomers to Civil War, we added several options in the entry menu.
* One of particular importance is the 'easy supply' option. Basically with this option, you can only be in trouble in the case of a siege or if you are in hostile territory. We meant ‘Easy’ as supply should not be a concern to the new player when he is moving troops at home.
* Another helping function is the AI buying for you replacements for weakened units, so that you have one less burden to bear.

Then, there are functionalities that are new and will please both groups of players.
* In Civil War II, contrary to ACW1, you can click on a city and see all buildings there. Simple and yet cool, as it's really easier to remember where are your powder mills and armories now.
* We also have a much better tooltip system that you probably saw in some screenshots. We went from tooltips in single color to tooltips that can be colored as we wish, and with embedded icons.

And last (but not least), there is the third group, i.e. features that are new but will probably be of greater interest to veterans as it was often requested by them.
* The new terrain effect table for example (see the screenshot in this post) that at last give you enough info about each terrain, including effects in battle.
* Another one? You can now promote a single general in an army, without him having to leave it.
* Also, development level in each region will greatly impact move speed in the wild areas (use liberally regional decisions to improve that!).

There is much more than that, and these are only a few examples, but we hope you understand that Civil War II is in essence American Civil War I, but more accessible. There is no 'toning down' here! We streamlined the interface considerably and improved accessibility (and some options can disable many game rules, because we don't want to overwhelm new players!), but in no way we watered down the game.

And that's good

See you soon in the forum, to share your experience of the game!

The Civil War II Team - Ageod.


Structures



Terrain Tooltips