Matrix Games Forums

Each of these shows a few new things, thought you could use a bone although we are very close.

Here's the new game options screen, I'm sure you'll notice a few new options that will make it even easier to set up your game however you like it.

Here's the city list, note the new filters for Universities and Ironworks. Note also that now, when a city cannot muster or conscript for any reason, it's show with two dashes in those boxes. This makes it exceptionally easy to manage all your production, development, impressment, mustering and conscription from this screen rather than having to go into every city.

The military list, note that we now list available/used general slots by rank in the bottom right. The generals database has also had a significant overhaul to improve its historical accuracy (I'm playing with random/hidden stats here though).

The Overview screen... notice anything new?

The Nation screen, note that Emancipation is not available right off the bat any longer.

You can now promote any number of generals each turn, however when playing with Random stats like I am, there's a chance the general's stats will change (not usually for the better) each time he's promoted.

A quick battle, now lists location and engaged total strength above. Quick battle results and casualties are also both more historical and much closer to detailed battle results, the two options now tend to produce very similar results for the same battles.

The new battle report, page 1. Note the Union Quality gain vs. the Confederate Quality gain - those Union troops have a lot to learn and they'll catch up in time to the Confederate quality.

Oops, I didn't save Page 1 - the Union gained about 9.5 total quality points and losses in battle were quite even. Even with the additional pursuit losses (which have generally been very much reduced across the board) from the Union rout, it was still a fairly close battle casualty-wise.

A sample event report from my test turn - note the new way of reporting battle results in the event log, which makes it easy to see the exact losses for each side, no math required.

Page 2 of the sample event report, note that I'm getting multiple musters in cities with large populations. Every 5 population points now gives a muster chance, allowing not only historically large armies, but a historically rapid build-up.

And a lot more mustering...

The last of the mustering and some new generals. Note also the Camps number. Camps now start at a base of about 300 men each and then are increased based on the population of the city they are in, so a Camp in Philadelphia is worth more than a camp in Kansas. Both max population and current population are taken into account for that. Also, each spring when addiitonal population is added to cities, each camp has a small chance to use up a population point.

And this is from another test turn, just showing hidden General abilities being revealed...

The special abilities are also revealed whenever a General teaches them to a unit. The ratings are revealed through battle and it generally only takes a few battles to know what kind of general you've got.

Of note also is that generals can on occasion train up a unit's quality now, up to a point, instead of teaching it an ability, so you might see "Grant raises X Brigade's quality to 2.25" in your report.

WOW, this looks like an entirely different game!

I absolutely love what you have done with the 'generals', I am so looking forward to all the demoting and promoting based on new stats being revealed [:D]

Great work crew, thanks for the update/teaser.

Greetings and salivations!  I'm drooling with anticipation!  Keep up the good work and thanks!

This is great...I'm ready to start playin' again

ORIGINAL: oldspec4

This is great...I'm ready to start playin' again

"Again" being the key word... me too!

Hmmmm, Dinosaur sized bones.....

indeed FOF has its quality improved greatly ! Congratulations ! I'm eager to play a new game !