RCW Remastered or Remake in this new DLC?

[gamer78]

I don't remember which platform I've bought Breakthrough but I remember it was Battlefront store first play Strategic Command games. I remember playing RCW in that version and it was similar to this latest DLC. Start date, factions and maybe some events. I know well any designer interest about conflict and topic greatly improves any game. Compare early 1861 start in ACW and late start such as jan 1919 Bolshevik revolution without much informative content. Kazan already captured there is no Czechoslovak Legion involment around. And there are news about Irish uprising and Sweden and Norway in diplomacy. Is it really about RCW? And no Baku flavour events or what if situation you do in other games.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasus_campaign

[OldCrowBalthazor]

I don't remember which platform I've bought Breakthrough but I remember it was Battlefront store first play Strategic Command games. I remember playing RCW in that version and it was similar to this latest DLC. Start date, factions and maybe some events. I know well any designer interest about conflict and topic greatly improves any game. Compare early 1861 start in ACW and late start such as jan 1919 Bolshevik revolution without much informative content. Kazan already captured there is no Czechoslovak Legion involment around. And there are news about Irish uprising and Sweden and Norway in diplomacy. Is it really about RCW? And no Baku flavour events or what if situation you do in other games.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasus_campaign

There's Czechoslovak Legion DECs and units that can appear in SotT.
Baku also super important...got to garrison it with UK units or bad things can happen.
Also, not showing on the map, but in certain areas of the Caucasus...Red faction elements can pop up in rebellion against the Whites. (The locations are specified in the Strategy Guide).

[BiteNibbleChomp]

Shadow of the Tsars is a partial remake of the SC2 Russian Civil War campaign, yes. Consequently I brought a lot of the events from the original over to the new version. However I've also introduced a considerable number of improvements to the campaign too - Allied intervention has been made more historically faithful by the use of tighter conditions for the use of British units, Poland is now an active participant from the beginning, as is the West Ukrainian Peoples Republic. Orders of battle have been revamped giving both sides much more capacity to plan their key offensives for the spring campaign and making the decision of where to strike more consequential than it was in the original. I've also increased the turn count from 40-odd to 59, as I found the original had some pacing issues.
The original released 10 years ago, during which time there have been numerous upgrades to the engine that this campaign takes full advantage of. You're getting very much more than a simple re-release of an old campaign

The start date question is something I gave a lot of thought to. The SC2 version started on November 11, 1918, while I opted to begin several weeks later, with January 2, 1919. There's a few reasons for this. Firstly, the date I chose was the date that the Bolsheviks began their campaign to take over Ukraine, while Riga was captured the following day (I've placed a Bolshevik unit in Riga, however Latvia does not actually move its government until the end of the first turn), while the Whites were beginning offensives in the Kuban and Terek regions, and Poland was beginning to besiege Lvov. That's four fronts where major battles are beginning and the situation was very much in doubt for at least three of them, thrusting the player into the position of making decisions of great importance right from the beginning. It also cuts down on the number of winter turns before the 1919 spring offensives get going.

Going earlier poses its own set of problems. Unlike say the ACW, the RCW doesn't really have a date at which the fighting really "started" (except perhaps the day of the October Revolution) - throughout 1917 and 1918 it really grew out of the civil strife of the two revolutions, Cossack uprisings, independence movements, Allied intervention and the Bolshevik crackdowns on opposition to their rule - there was never a single date where these movements coalesced into a united "White" opposition to the Bolsheviks, rather it happened more or less organically as events transpired during 1918. So any date that I choose - be it early or late - is going to be rather arbitrary.
The other elephant in the room is the Germans - any earlier than 1918/11/11 and they have to be represented in the campaign - their hundreds of thousands of soldiers were pretty hard to ignore. SC works on the basis that every nation is either part of Faction A, part of Faction B, or neutral - and the Germans don't fit into this framework very well at all. Obviously they weren't on the White side, being both at war with the Western Allies and actively occupying the likes of Poland and the Baltics. They weren't in the Red faction, as they were actively supporting the White side in Finland with German soldiers. And they weren't neutral either - the Baltic Freikorps was nothing more than German soldiers left behind after the armistice. Then when the armistice comes, it leaves behind several power vacuums - something else SC struggles to reflect well (the territory belongs to someone, and ultimately one side or other will be able to just rail some units in - real life is more complicated than that).
What I found as I was working through all of this is that a lot of these questions are rather peripheral to the RCW as a whole (Germany had its own interests - it wasn't looking to support the Reds or Whites), and a lot of the events of 1918 would distract from the experience as opposed to adding it. Not to mention, it could all come across as very confusing to newer players or players less familiar with the RCW period.
January 1919 I think strikes that balance between representing the intrafactional strife among the Whites and the complexities of the White movement's position vis-a-vis the Reds and the rest of the world, while also being easy enough to understand and fun to play.

- BNC

[gamer78]

Thanks guys for reponse. It was more about budget about improving map aspects rather than improving what is done previously. Designer is not responsible for this. Ex: ACW far west Indian territory is not necessary to win ACW but still in there as playable. But Turkestan theatre do not exist in RCW. Frunze has statue in Istanbul. Komuch forces do not exist at least in guides. There are no independent anarchists and green(Peasant) rebellion. Maybe limitation of the engine. It is complicated conflict I imagine.

My last wiki article was wrong about Baku by mistake, Here is the correct one about what if in Baku:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_A ... e_Caucasus

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Thanks guys for reponse. It was more about budget about improving map aspects rather than improving what is done previously. Designer is not responsible for this. Ex: ACW far west Indian territory is not necessary to win ACW but still in there as playable. But Turkestan theatre do not exist in RCW. Frunze has statue in Istanbul. Komuch forces do not exist at least in guides. There are no independent anarchists and green(Peasant) rebellion. Maybe limitation of the engine. It is complicated conflict I imagine.

My last wiki article was wrong about Baku by mistake, Here is the correct one about what if in Baku:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_A ... e_Caucasus

Yeah the Turkestan portion of the conflict and the Russian Far East isn't really covered.
The Ukrainians Anarchists polity in Huliopole though thrives.
As for the 'Greens'....well there is the chance of the Karelian and other small outbreaks against Bolshevik rule that can break out. As I understood, the Karelians were considered a 'Green' movement and took Petrozavodzk on Lake Onega.
I think the game engine can't really allow a 3 way conflict space, but there are militia type units that can pop up that maybe would be considered 'Green' but are either pro-Red or pro-White.
Btw, thanks for the Baku link.