Bull Run Scenario

[Gil R.]

ORIGINAL: tevans6220

I have a question concerning brigades. Is there a way to just play with generic brigades and let their fame and attributes be determined throughout the course of the war? Hindsight is 20-20 and everyone knows that the Stonewall Brigade or the Iron Brigade are good units. Starting the war from the beginning players should have no more knowledge than Davis or Lincoln did. How can you have a Bull Run scenario with famous units when all troops on both sides were untried in battle? I would much rather have generic units that gain their fame and attributes on the battlefield if it's possible. That way my Stonewall Brigade might actually be from Tennessee if I sent Jackson there instead of keeping him in Virginia.

tevans6220,
I definitely see your point. I have a two-part response. One is that one shouldn't necessarily think of the Stonewall Brigade as the Stonewall Brigade, but rather as an infantry unit that is way above average when it enters the game. This way, a typical army when the game begins will have units running the range from awful to excellent. It is possible for ordinary units to improve over time, but there is nothing inherently wrong with having some units start off excellent. The other part of my response is that we had already been considering finding a way to let players who don't want them eliminate the Legendary Units. The easiest way is to provide a mod that simply has a blank spreadsheet, though we might also make this a game option. Since we're about to finish all programming (other than bug-fixing and tweaking settings) in the next few days I can't guarantee that it will be an option, but once the game is out we'll be very interested to see what the response is to this issue.

[tevans6220]

Sounds good. Either way it's not a dealbreaker for me. I'm going to buy this game. I just thought it would be little more realistic with untried units and possibly even untried leaders that would have to prove themselves in battle. If nothing else it would add a tremendous amount of replayability to the game. I like your idea of a mod or option to turn off Legendary Units. Not sure how leaders could be worked though. It wouldn't feel the same for me if Lee turned out to be a dud while Pemberton turned into the South's version of Darth Vader. I'm sure it will all be worked out in good time. The most important thing is to get this thing released so that we can play it.

[Gil R.]

ORIGINAL: tevans6220

Sounds good. Either way it's not a dealbreaker for me. I'm going to buy this game. I just thought it would be little more realistic with untried units and possibly even untried leaders that would have to prove themselves in battle. If nothing else it would add a tremendous amount of replayability to the game. I like your idea of a mod or option to turn off Legendary Units. Not sure how leaders could be worked though. It wouldn't feel the same for me if Lee turned out to be a dud while Pemberton turned into the South's version of Darth Vader. I'm sure it will all be worked out in good time. The most important thing is to get this thing released so that we can play it.

Well, we also have generals with historical ratings (e.g., Lee is a "Superb" leader or McClellan has "Terrible" initiative) or with random ones, and for the latter option you can have a related option of "hidden stats" that tells you some of their ratings but not all, so that like Lincoln you might put a guy in charge not fully knowing how good he is, and then possibly regretting it and having to remove him from his command.