Victory Conditions discussion

[SurrenderMonkey]

I would like to hear the community's feedback on this issue:

In the interests of making the game more 'playable', certain design decisions have been made (discussed elsewhere). The net effect of these decisions is to make the CSA more 'fun' by giving it a better chance of winning.

In my opinion, this is a mistake. Wouldn't it be better to alter the VICTORY CONDITIONS (as opposed to the historical setup)? That way, if the CSA player does significantly better than history, he wins (even if he loses the war). But if he loses significantly sooner than history, then he 'loses' in game terms.

This puts more pressure on the materially superior Union to force the issue, and IMHO makes it more fun to play the CSA by trying to fight uphill in the hopes of victory. Historically, the longer the CSA held out the more likely it became that they would survive (to a point). This puts the onus on the North to quell the rebellion, and makes for a better game. All that needs be changed are the Victory Conditions.

What do you think?

[Roger Neilson II]

I argued a similar situation in another post so I'm in favour.

Roger

[Erik Rutins]

The point I keep trying to get across is that you already have this capability. Use the provided in-game settings to adjust the strength of the South down and/or the North up until you are happy with the results. I realize folks want this to be the default and that there are some other historical improvements we are working on, but you can already do what you're asking for without changing the victory conditions and the game was designed to do it. It's not a "cheat" or a "fix", it's a designed use of the various settings - that's why we provided so many of them!

Regards,

- Erik

[rook749]

I would much prefer a more historical scenario to choose from, I'm also looking at making a mod on my own but I'm waiting on the next patch first. But I think the game already has some pretty good methods to allow the CSA to win either the war or the "game" while losing the war.

Doesn't the +15 VP for the November turn in 1864 simulate a chance that Lincoln loses the November Election and the war? If the South is at 9 VPs then this +15 VP for the turn gives them the game. Now, thinking about may + 15 is not the right number buts it pretty close.

Every turn from January 1st 1865 the South Gets 1 VP per turn, so that 24 VPs for the entire year. Allowing them to lose the war but win the game on points.

Or am I just way of base here?

Rook

Edited for Spelling

[Joram]

Absolutely SM!  I believe in that approach.
 
Erik, I don't think you entirely understood what he was asking.  We have the ability to change the setup to be historical, but SM is referring to changing the definitions of victory.   If you allowed us to mod that, then I think that would go a long way to satisfying this argument.  Unfortunately, I think the present VP way of defining victory might preclude us from ever modifying it in a satisfactory way.  I hope I'm wrong to be honest.

[jchastain]

While I appreciate what you are saying and would normally agree, this conflict was just so overwhelming out of balance when viewed with the benefit of hindsight for it to be much of a game with entirely accurate numbers unless the rules were just massively overhauled to:
 
(1) prevent the US from doing anything obvious or logical (in which case we'd just be hearing a different series of complaints about how stupid the game is for not allowing people to have realistic levels of control)
 
or
 
(2) devolve into "CSA wins by surviving a full year", in which case we'd be hearing complaints about how ahistoric the game is because it lasted far longer than that in real life.
 
It really is a no-win for the developers and I have to say that I think the current setup, while obviously not perfect, does a pretty reasonable job of striking a playable balance that captures the feel of the era.  In any case, the point is likely moot anyway as I can't see them doing the scale of rewrite that would be necessary to implement this approach.
 
That said, I do not believe anyone would turn away from a magic bullet if one could be found.  It is easy enough to quadruple the economy of the North in the data files and then supplement the OOB a bit to further round out the army and navy.  If anyone know precisely what needs to be added, I'd even be willing to do the file edits.  Then if those interested could generate actual suggestions for easily implementable alternate balance mechanisms, I'm betting there would be an audience willing to consider those recommendations.

[Ironclad]

I am in favour of a more historical balance (or certainly one less skewed than at present) but along with Union extra resources, more troops, dominant navy etc it should also encompass some of the elements that restrained the full use of that superiority. That suggests the need for for an additional initiative penalty that could be reduced on a sliding scale over say 12-18 months. This could be applied only when operating in enemy territory (as defined by at start Union and Confederate boundaries and therefore would still restrain unit movement even in conquered territory). It wouldn't apply to naval movement or military units on board. Another legitimate restraint would be the need to garrison conquered territory to a certain level in order to avoid unrest and ultimate loss of control. Not sure how this would go down but one could also impose a time period (first six months?) when the actual historical leaders had to be retained before changes could occur barring battle losses.

[jchastain]

OK, just for fun I wrote up a fictional AAR from a game with historically accurate numbers just to show how I think it might turn out...


Turn 1: USA

OK, first I’ll take diplomacy to max for every power. There’s no reason not to and that way I can just ignore it for the rest of the game.

If any governor asks for anything, I’ll just go ahead and build it. Again, no reason not to.

Now to the real stuff. I’ll go ahead and get 6 artillery in the queue to beef up the army. After this first build I usually make them half regular and half siege, but this first turn we’ll make it 5 and 1 just to help beat down the enemy army before it gets too strong.

Next, let’s build a dozen cavalry in the cities that do not have foundries. Oooops. Not enough horses. Looks like I’ll have to do 6 this turn and 6 next. Finally, I’ll throw in a handful of high quality infantry. Actually, they’ll be medium quality. High quality will come after I get the training grounds all up and running.

Which reminds me, let’s go ahead and put a new mansion in every city to ensure we don’t run out of space anywhere and then I’ll get training grounds going in all the big cities.

No need to build the navy up any more since the enemy already has nothing to oppose us. We do need to setup blockades against all his cities though. There we go.

And finally, let’s build 3 of each type of research building just to ensure we keep our advantage with the sciences. OK, done.

Sheeesh. After all that building, I don’t have enough cash left to set all my armies to high levels of supply and obviously I don’t want to attack with anything less than that. I guess I’ll have to wait until next turn for that.

End of turn.

Turn 1: CSA

Hmmmmm….. I can’t pay for the support of my current troops. Looks like I need to reduce everyone’s supply to nothing and have them forage. OK, there we go.

Hmmmmm…. I can’t afford to build anything. I guess I shouldn’t move anyone, they’d just suffer movement attrition and lose troops I couldn’t replace.

I do still have 10 money left to spend. No point wasting it on diplomacy as I can’t compete there. Maybe I’ll just save it and build up to buying something big one day, like actually giving a governor something he asks for.

End of Turn.

Wait.

CSA Player: Playing the south isn’t much fun. Can we turn off movement attrition so I can at least move some units around.

USA Player: Sure.

CSA Player: OK, hold on… I’m going to redo my turn. Hmmmmm. Well, I still couldn’t afford to replace the supplies moving would cost me. OK, never mind.

USA Player: I already restarted. So what should I change?

CSA Player: Well, we might as well turn off diplomacy if you are just going to invest the max. There’s really no point in using it if you’re just going to do that.

USA Player: OK, it’s off.

CSA Player: And turn off governors. It really isn’t fair that you can give things to yours but I can’t.

USA Player: OK, that’s off too.

CSA Player: And research. Let’s not do research.

USA Player: Maybe you should just tell me what you want us to use instead.

CSA Player: Actually, let’s not use any advanced rules. They are all just a waste anyway. I’ll just sit in my forts and you can besiege me and we’ll see how long that takes.

USA Player: Uh. That doesn’t sound like much fun.

CSA Player: You’re right. What a stupid game. I can’t believe they put all these features in and they are all worthless because no one can use any of them…


The point of this little story is that when you start radically changing the numbers, you start creating all sorts of deep consequences and the foundations of the game itself begin to break down. Changing the VP calculations won't change the fact that only one side can afford diplomacy with vastly disparate economies. And the next sweeping conclusion is that diplomacy shouldn't be tied to money. And next comes the revelation that governors should not be tied to the economy either. And what about research? At that point, the economy serves no purpose and you begin wondering why it is in the game at all?

As I said before, I think this game does a solid job of creating a Civil war based strategy game. I think it is closely aligned to history but not a slave of it. And I suspect that too stringent an attempt to shoe horn more reality in, runs a better shot of breaking all of the things that are good about the game rather than correcting the perceived weaknesses. Again though, that is all just my own opinions. If others have specific suggestions for how to make things better, I'm all for giving them a try.

[chris0827]

Spending money on diplomacy is a weak point in the game. Neither side gave money to the european powers.
 
Instead of a fictional AAR why not use historically accurate numbers and try a real one?

[SurrenderMonkey]

JChastain = respectfully, your AAR is a bit disingenuous.  No one had that kind of power on the Union side.

Look, I love this game.  It's great.  It's the best ACW game I've seen.  That being said, I am just trying to make a point about the design decisions which drive development.  IMO, it's better to alter victory conditions rather than artificially alter mechanics.  Wargamers are generally interested in history AND alternate history, so long as its plausible.  The fact that a design decision was made to ignore history for the sake of playability diminishes my interest in any game.

Instead, I suggest that it's better to aim for historical starting points, and then alter the Victory Conditions to reflect playability concerns.  Just my two cents.  Proceeding from this assumption, FoF could have had a simple model to reflect the limited influence of the President - even something as simple as a limited supply of "Ops" points each turn which controls how many decisions you get to make. And then the scenario depiced in your AAR evaporates.

Anyway, I love the game.  Paid for it as well as a dozen other Matrix products.  Long-time, loyal customer.  Just talking game philosophy.

[SurrenderMonkey]

JChastain,
 
After I posted my response to your second post above, I read your first post.  It sounds like we're in same ideological ballpark.

[christof139]

I have finally got the Confeds going and have most aspects of the game learned and under control, excpet my mistakes with the mouse due to the layering.
 
The settings I am using show fairly good historical feel and flavor. Believe some tweaking is necessary though.
 
I don't use diplomacy or disease, and from what I see diplomacy is a waste of money which isn'r historical, and disease creates too many casualties. i don't use the movement straggler option either, as both this and disease seem to be too powerful. Cut back the casualties from disease to 10-25% of what they are now and I might consider using it, same for straggling from movement, but in game reality I think this all is not necessary and just clutter, but at very reduced rates I would use them sometimes. Just personal choice.
 
I even don't know what the victory conditons are yet, and I guess I should read this in the manual, unless someone tells me. [:'(]
 
Chris
 
 
 

[regularbird]

I have recently edited William Amos's July 61 scenario. I am testing it out both against the AI and a PBEM opponent. What I have done is remove much of the Souths starting economy. I removed all thier mints, changed all the plantations to mansions, removed most of their arsenals, took away some research building and reduced the base province setting for iron, money, labor and horses. I think I might have it just about right. My goal was to create a base scenario that would closely resemble the starting economy of the south in comparision to the north. Against the AI I still give the north a +3 but play it staight up in PBEM.

With my edits the CSA gets about 60 money, 30 labor, 9 iron 24 horses, resaerch of about 1-4 in each cat and 5 wpns per turn. I left the USA as Amos had it in his mod.

If you are interested I will send you the files in a zip. just email me at rwrobinson@charter.net

[General Quarters]

There are lots of interesting ideas that have been presented here and are worth considering, but I have to sympatheize with Erik's point. The designers went to an awful lot of trouble to give us all these options. And a lot is easily moddable on top of it. You can pretty much create whatever balance you want.

[Berkut]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

The point I keep trying to get across is that you already have this capability. Use the provided in-game settings to adjust the strength of the South down and/or the North up until you are happy with the results. I realize folks want this to be the default and that there are some other historical improvements we are working on, but you can already do what you're asking for without changing the victory conditions and the game was designed to do it. It's not a "cheat" or a "fix", it's a designed use of the various settings - that's why we provided so many of them!

Regards,

- Erik

Erik, there are two problems with this approach:

1. Some of the tweaks are not amenable to settings. How do I keep the southern command/logistics staffs from becoming uber? How do I make sure things I tweak do not inadvertently effect other things in an unintended manner? Etc., etc.

2. For PBEM, this becomes problematic. Now, in order to play a balanced game, I have to negotiate the "proper" settings with a potential opponent. And that enters a rather subjective, and potentially frustrating realm of "did we tweak it enough? Too much?". Not to mention the fact that there is then no consistency - who really cares how a game between two players came out - hard to say who was the better player, since there is no standard and accepted "balanced" play setting. You end up with everyone playing different games, which makes the community discussion, razzing, and AARs much less interesting.

[Erik Rutins]

Berkut,

ORIGINAL: Berkut
1. Some of the tweaks are not amenable to settings. How do I keep the southern command/logistics staffs from becoming uber? How do I make sure things I tweak do not inadvertently effect other things in an unintended manner? Etc., etc.

Well, to the first, just turn the "Staff Ratings" checkbox off. We anticipated that some would not want that, so if you turn that off, the staffs of both sides are always set to "Fair" and that's no longer part of the equation. With that said, I don't think it played as huge a role in the results you posted as you think. I still think something else must have been involved there. I don't suppose you have some saves I could look at for the exact make-up of each side's armies before the battle?

On the latter, it's educated trial and error. Read up on each setting in the appendix and decide on which make the most sense for your personal play style.

2. For PBEM, this becomes problematic. Now, in order to play a balanced game, I have to negotiate the "proper" settings with a potential opponent. And that enters a rather subjective, and potentially frustrating realm of "did we tweak it enough? Too much?". Not to mention the fact that there is then no consistency - who really cares how a game between two players came out - hard to say who was the better player, since there is no standard and accepted "balanced" play setting. You end up with everyone playing different games, which makes the community discussion, razzing, and AARs much less interesting.

Well, it's because of that that we're pretty much in agreement that we at least need to indicate some sort of "more realistic" set of presets so that there will be agreement. The assumption going into release was that the variety of options would allow everyone to have the kind of game they wanted, but I think a few more presets will be helpful at this point as it seems folks really prefer to have that versus it being "free form". My historical tests were a step in that direction, but we'd like to add another button to the menu, so that you can have "basic", "intermediate", "advanced" and "realistic", or something akin to that. That's still on the internal wish list, but I think it will get done.

Regards,

- Erik

[christof139]

Hi RB, Those are very hard setting mods yo have made. I am satisfied with the economy as it is so far and it is still difficult to get the Confeds going if one is just learning the economy as I am, so I'll have to pass on your offer for now.

The South was not barren of industry and financial resources nor armaments when the war started, but I don't know what the North has in the game as I haven't played the North yet, so I can't make any comparisons as you can.

Right now, I need to increase my production in order to keep supply and maintenance up as improved weapons are becoming more and more available and more troops are now being bought by the South with additional troop attributes. Fiddling with the economy in the game is OK, and I like to do this, but sometimes forget something or other so I am getting a decent game so far and having some fun with it.

I am going to concentrate on the Navy a bit I think and see what happens. I'll do this by going on the defensive as the South, with only minor offensives, spoilers taking place.

Take care, Chris

[2gaulle]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

The point I keep trying to get across is that you already have this capability. Use the provided in-game settings to adjust the strength of the South down and/or the North up until you are happy with the results. I realize folks want this to be the default and that there are some other historical improvements we are working on, but you can already do what you're asking for without changing the victory conditions and the game was designed to do it. It's not a "cheat" or a "fix", it's a designed use of the various settings - that's why we provided so many of them!

Regards,

- Erik

I really could not understand this answer. Or the game is equilibrate with regular setting or it's not. For historical wargame, victory condition is 50% of the design. What you propose is only to give more challenge for the south but it's far for creating victory condition equilibrate but in respect with history.

Now I'm fine with current design because I found the strategic situation very interesting. This time I could live with a none historical wargame as in one month there will one[;)].

[Berkut]

Sorry Erik, but I do not, at all, consider turning off a feature to be a way of resolving a bug, or problem.

I do not know if the staff ratings had much influence on the outcome of the fight - in any case, they were messed up whether they ahd a great influence or not. And it feels like another example of Southern fantasyland wishful thinking. My personal play style is to play with all the bells and whistles, but that those bells and whistles work properly, and fairly.

If I were to play a PBEM game right now, I would turn the staff ratings off, since apparently they are broken. IN a simialr manner, for the lasty game we turned the disease feature off, since that is broken as well, having a grossly a-historical effect on operational capability.

But at this point, I am simply not playing. The outrageously lop-sided battle results, the messed up disease model, the pro-Southern game bias, the training mess, lack of information about the QC battle system, silly supply model that doesn't allow the North to engage in seaborne invasions with reasonable risk and ability to then exploit that invasion, out of whack naval costs. Just too much there that results in a lot of time invested into a PBEM game to turn around and have the game decided on a single turns bizaree result.

Many of these issues I am hoping will be resolved in the upcoming patch, and then we will give it another whirl.

[Erik Rutins]

Berkut,

ORIGINAL: Berkut
Sorry Erik, but I do not, at all, consider turning off a feature to be a way of resolving a bug, or problem.

Um... this is an "optional" advanced bell/whistle. It's not necessary to the design, it's provided for those who want it. To be frank, there's no bug here, the system is functioning as designed. The South, by design, is intended to have better staff/junior officers. The North is allowed to train up to them or build more academies to raise starting container staff levels _if this rule is on_. If you disagree that the South had better staff/junior officers, then turn the rule off and in that one area, the North and South will be equivalent. It's a design choice that's put in the player's hands as with the other optional rules.

I do not know if the staff ratings had much influence on the outcome of the fight - in any case, they were messed up whether they ahd a great influence or not. And it feels like another example of Southern fantasyland wishful thinking. My personal play style is to play with all the bells and whistles, but that those bells and whistles work properly, and fairly.

Here's where I don't understand your viewpoint, honestly. The options screen is your way of configuring the design of the game. It's not intended or necessary for everything to be turned on, in fact I'd say some options are mutually exclusive. You asked how to address your concerns that staff balance was off - my answer is to uncheck that box. The Basic and Intermediate games don't use it and work just fine. The Advanced game doesn't have to have it on, just because it's there. Seriously, why is it so bothersome to use that checkbox the way it was intended to be used?

If I were to play a PBEM game right now, I would turn the staff ratings off, since apparently they are broken. IN a simialr manner, for the lasty game we turned the disease feature off, since that is broken as well, having a grossly a-historical effect on operational capability.

Disease is actually just about historical, though we did rebalance it in response to player requests. To my personal taste, I like it to be more severe because it was. I would never play with it off as that would not, IMHO, be anywhere remotely close to historical. To each his own.

Staff ratings are not "broken" either - you use that term, but what it really means is that you disagree with how they were designed. They're working exactly as intended and the option provided to balance both sides to equal staff ratings was specifically provided for those that don't agree the South should have an advantage here.

But at this point, I am simply not playing. The outrageously lop-sided battle results, the messed up disease model, the pro-Southern game bias, the training mess, lack of information about the QC battle system, silly supply model that doesn't allow the North to engage in seaborne invasions with reasonable risk and ability to then exploit that invasion, out of whack naval costs. Just too much there that results in a lot of time invested into a PBEM game to turn around and have the game decided on a single turns bizaree result.

"Pro-Southern game bias"? I assume you mean because of the default settings, which were stated up front as balanced to give the South more of a chance than it had historically. This despite the fact that the provided options allow you to shift the game all the way to a "Pro-Northern game bias".

I've seen a few lop-sided battle results, the most significant was the one that prompted you to get upset in the first place. We've already made changes to tone those down for the next update.

In any case, I think given your concerns, waiting for the next update sounds like a good idea, but I really don't understand your unwillingness to uncheck that "staff ratings" box.

Regards,

- Erik