Improved Weather and Retreats?

[Omnius]

I gave up on AGEOD games with the Napoleon's Campaigns title. I love the WEGO system but found that in NC there were two bad features that killed my desire to play any other AGEOD games.

The first was really poor retreat decisions made by the program. In the 1806 campaign the Prussian army under Hohenloe would retreat back into the region it came from, a wooded area that was absolutely worthless to retreat to because it lacked everything. Hohenloe wouldn't retreat across the river even when his army was the first to enter the battle region. He wouldn't retreat towards a supply depot which was where he should have been retreating to. I did see in the video tutorial that we human players have more choice in which region to retreat to but that still leaves the AI to make bad retreat decisions for it's forces.

The second bad feature was weather, winter weather was absolutely ludicrous in it's effects, vastly over done. It screwed up timing and AGEOD fudged starting positions and times to try to overcome this most reprehensible of all weather systems in any game I ever played.

So I'm wondering if anyone can convince me that AGEOD has improved these two features over the pathetic ones in NC.

[Omnius]

I ended up biting the bullet and giving Wars of Napoleon a shot. The movement in weather was much better than in Napoleon's Campaigns. At least I didn't have units marching to a destination getting stuck and turn after turn the estimated time to arrive would increase. Now they actually move in snow. I'm sure Blizzard will be tougher.

[Ostwindflak]

The attrition you suffer moving in snow usually makes it not worth while to do so.

[Omnius]

Yet the AI runs amok in the snow, or frozen or blizzard and suffers little attrition. In NC Moving units in blizzard actually took more time to reach the close destination each turn. I agree it's not worth moving in winter, but sometimes it happens like at Friedland.

[Omnius]

So far the retreat function looks as stupid as it was in Napoleon's Campaigns. Just stupid to see retreats go away from a depot and the nation's capital in favor of some region where it is cut off from supply. It also seems that crossing rivers in a retreat is taboo when it would be the smart retreat route. A shame that the randomly ignorant retreat routine has never been smartened up to have the program make smart retreat decisions for computer controlled forces.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Omnius

So far the retreat function looks as stupid as it was in Napoleon's Campaigns. Just stupid to see retreats go away from a depot and the nation's capital in favor of some region where it is cut off from supply. It also seems that crossing rivers in a retreat is taboo when it would be the smart retreat route. A shame that the randomly ignorant retreat routine has never been smartened up to have the program make smart retreat decisions for computer controlled forces.

its not random, it follows a clear set of rules.

Now it can be frustrating that is true but then an army retreating from a losing battle is rarely going to always make an optimum choice?

Even better if you don't like the rules it follows, you can change them. To help you I've included a screenshot of the retreat rules, you can find them in / .. /NGC/Settings/GameLogic. Best to open with notepad or similar and of course make a save of the original just in case;