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Governor's requests:

Some players have complained that the Union does not have enough money to take care of all the governors' requests. This complaint rests on the assumption that it should be possible to meet all governors' requests.

In my first game as the Union, I tried to meet all governors' requests and it prevented me from building other things I vitally needed. It then dawned on me that I did not need to do that. Now I just build those that have some value, the governor is a s.o.b. and might make trouble, or maybe it is a friendly governor who is supporting some valuable activity, or I wait to see if he "insists." I went from responding to 80 percent to ignoring 80 percent and it has worked much better.

In short, the current rules do not prevent you from doing what you need to with regarde to governors.

ORIGINAL: General Quarters

Mansions.

The role of mansions ends up just being irritating. Every time you turn around you have to build another. This just adds an uninteresting bit of micromanagement.

Reducing cost would help, but I have begun to question the whole concept of Mansions. What, historically, are they supposed to represent? If they are included to achieve another purpose, such as slowing down the pace of building, that could be achieved in some other way.

I have to agree here. I assume that "Mansions" represent additional city infastructure needed to support additional activities..., but a lot of it still makes little sense. I mean you don't build a mine or a horse farm in the middle of town. I'd rather see each city given an "upper growth limit" based on it's actual population in 1860-61 and mansions/plantations done away with. Or be limited to those occasions where you wanted to expand the "upper growth limit" in a specific city (like Richmond during the war).

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

ORIGINAL: General Quarters

Mansions.

The role of mansions ends up just being irritating. Every time you turn around you have to build another. This just adds an uninteresting bit of micromanagement.

Reducing cost would help, but I have begun to question the whole concept of Mansions. What, historically, are they supposed to represent? If they are included to achieve another purpose, such as slowing down the pace of building, that could be achieved in some other way.

I have to agree here. I assume that "Mansions" represent additional city infastructure needed to support additional activities..., but a lot of it still makes little sense. I mean you don't build a mine or a horse farm in the middle of town. I'd rather see each city given an "upper growth limit" based on it's actual population in 1860-61 and mansions/plantations done away with. Or be limited to those occasions where you wanted to expand the "upper growth limit" in a specific city (like Richmond during the war).

I would be happy to do away with them all together. If the Government was in fact building scads of industry and research centers and military instalations in a given area, Mansions and Plantations would follow -- not lead -- such expansion. They also wouldn't be build by the Government, rather built by private funding.

Regards,
Feltan

Moved to play balance thread

The way I look at it is that Mansions and Plantations represent all the smaller companies and even banks involved in supplying the war efforts of the USA and CSA, and this includes farming and victuals, food production in other words.
 
Maybe give the Mansions a money and maybe iron or another production values of 1 and that's it since the USA may already have an advantage over the south. i haven't played enough nor have gotten the hang of the game enough yet in reality, but this is what I so far derive.
 
Chris
 

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

I have to agree here. I assume that "Mansions" represent additional city infastructure needed to support additional activities..., but a lot of it still makes little sense. I mean you don't build a mine or a horse farm in the middle of town...

Is it really that hard to see the "city" as an abstraction representing the town proper and the surrounding area? Horse farms, mines, plantations, etc., etc. are obviously not all downtown. It probably comes as no surprise that I disagree with your suggestion to do away with plantations and mansions. [;)]

ORIGINAL: Feltan
If the Government was in fact building scads of industry and research centers and military instalations in a given area, Mansions and Plantations would follow -- not lead -- such expansion. They also wouldn't be build by the Government, rather built by private funding.

Government v. private is a valid distinction here. Presumably, government was building a lot of the "military-industrial complex" and so it makes sense that armories, telegraphs, rail capacity, even universities (the Morrill Act establishing land-grant universities dates from this period), but not plantations.

"Mansion" is just the name of a fancy residence. If it is supposed to represent governmental functions that might include police, fire, roads, courts, etc., maybe it should be called "courthouse" or "magistracy" or "munciple (or state) building" or "administrative building" or just "roads" or something like that, the idea being that the private sector cannot expand beyond the state's provision of these support services.

In my first game as the Union, the South showed some nice aggressiveness in Kentucky, but when I took a province that cut off their supplies, they continued to sit there turn after turn, even though there were empty provinces of mine they could have moved into. I see in the discussion threads that another player had a similar experience in the East. I know these contextual things are very difficult to program but I mention it in case something could be done.

ORIGINAL: General Quarters
"Mansion" is just the name of a fancy residence. If it is supposed to represent governmental functions that might include police, fire, roads, courts, etc., maybe it should be called "courthouse" or "magistracy" or "munciple (or state) building" or "administrative building" or just "roads" or something like that, the idea being that the private sector cannot expand beyond the state's provision of these support services.

GQ,

I disagree.

During this time period, mainly in the days of pre-electricty, towns and cities grew and developed without regard for governmental sponsored infrastructure. There was no electric wires to run; the roads were made of dirt, and the sewer system was a little hut behind your house. Government sponsored infrastructure only came into being after massive development, not before -- and was sponsored and supported by local taxes, not some grand state planned development.

Regards,
Feltan

No disespect intended here because I love what Eric and Company has done.  But the AI is brutal, The 1861 scenario the AI is completely worthless, for some reason it does not seem to build containers and it always moves in small units that are easily destroyed.  It does a little better in the standard campaign but it certainly does much standing around.  Playing the USA is bad as well the south is overly agressive and gets chewed up by silly assaults.
 
I am playing my 1st PBEM and so far it is pretty fun.  I wish there was some way to smarten up the AI, maybe programming some moves or counter moves.

RB

I think some of what you are seeing is the level of the game you are playing, the AI changes what it wants and will do, based on how good the troops are, the better the morale, the more it will try to do

the July campaign was a Mod and add on, it was not tested for balance, part of the idea of the late war start for the game is get in a major early battle and then the winter rebuild period, which the July start leaves the Union in a very poor state, and a good player can ruin the Union Army before 62 rolls around

I got some ideas, will see what the "boys" think

HS,

I play on the major general level.  Don't get me wrong because I find the Tactical AI rather challenging which is nice.  I understand about the july scenario, I am holding out hope that Eric addresses it with this next patch.  I am currently in a standard scenario so far not impressed with the Union AI I will hold any other comments until I destroy them.

Some technical wishes:

Find someone to tighten up the code. Loading the game takes forever. Exiting the game taxkes forever. It takes everal seconds just to bring up the standard Windows File Selection dialogue when loading a PBEM game!

And definitely get the resolution thing sorted out. Kind of silly that the game cannot run in my desktop resolution.

Game play wishes:

1. A turn/QB replay. I play exclusively PBEM, and the lack of this is really kind of alarming. Frankly, I would not have purchased the game had I known it was missing such a core piece of functionality.

2. More information. Related to above, but right now when I lose a fight, I have no idea why. Do my generals stink? Their staffs? Bad luck? Lack of supplies? Low quality troops? Poor weapons? Who knows? And there doesn't seem to be any way to find out.

There's not much in the loading or exiting code that can be tightened, unfortunately.  The delay in loading occurs in a series of calls to standard Windows routines that load graphics and other data from the harddrive; it's longer on systems which need to use some virtual memory.  Exiting delay is also related to virtual memory caching during memory deallocation, and there's not a lot we can do about that.

Gosh, eric, shouldn't you be watching football? I'm not a fan myself, but every wargamer I know is.

ORIGINAL: General Quarters

Stats
Maybe somebody has already pointed this out but, in case they haven't, sometimes one of the stat lines for USA or CSU is at the very top or bottom border and is very hard to see. In general, I find those very thin, pale lines hard to see.

I'm not sure what you're describing. Perhaps post a screenshot, so we can judge what's going on.

There has been considerable discussion of the possible consequences of British or French intervention other than their sending troops, which seems implausible. I don't know how the game currently models foreign intervention, other than sending troops, but one consequence surely would have been a strengthening of National Will and political support for the administration in the South, and a corresponding weakening of both in the North.

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

Hopefully the promised "Historical Scenarios" will correct this anomaly and make the raids and rail cutting a more realistic Southern ploy. Have to agree in the current scenarios it's overkill.....

Mike, please elaborate. I'm not sure what you're hoping to see done.

ORIGINAL: spruce

I whish general skills could be rebalanced - somewhat lesser stats for a large bulk of confederate generals.

As the bios project progresses, the random ratings for 9-percenters are being replaced with historical ratings, so this will change over time.