AACW's little mysteries...

[tc237]

I like them.
All the little inner workings of the game engine that we don't have 100% information about.
Playing this game is more an art than science.

My turn consists of looking at the map, trying to outflank or out manuever the AI. Organizing my forces to make the best use of Leaders and special abilities.
I'm not wasting time looking at numbers, calculating friendly to enemy strength ratios, etc...

Some previous threads had me thinking, as I have the same questions.
How many ships do I need to stop enemy cavalry from crossing the Ohio?
How many units do I need to garrison a region?
I like that we don't know the answer, that we have to figure out solutions to the problem.

Civil War commanders didn't know how many troops or ships it would take, they used what assests they had available and adjusted from there. (While modern armies have doctrine and hindsight, they still do not know if it will work untill tested)

In a way Pocus and Ageod have spoiled us by including an enormous amount of information in the tooltips. More information for the player than any other game I know of.

The big reason I really like this game, mysteries and learning something new about it everytime I play.

[Heldenkaiser]

I like them.
Civil War commanders didn't know how many troops or ships it would take, they used what assests they had available and adjusted from there. [...]
The big reason I really like this game, mysteries and learning something new about it everytime I play.

Hear hear! That's what I love about this games, games on this level generally, but this even more.

I really loved my first two turns in the campaign. Improvising armies from this incoherent lot of units of different type, quality, organization, and this confusing pool of leaders of the most different quality, spread all over the map.

[Chamberlain]

TC237,

Very well put.....

Chamberlain

[Rafiki]

By and large I agree, but on the other hand, when game mechanics diverge from what might be seen as being the intuitive (such as having to blockade harbors directly rather than cutting of at sounds further out), the player needs to have some insight into game mechanics.

[Queeg]

A little mystery is a good thing. In the old board gaming days, everyone had to know exactly how everything worked. One of the beauties of computers is the ability to recreate the uncertainty that bedeviled real-world commanders. When I get a new game, I almost always skip the section of the manual that reveals all the numbers. I enjoy not knowing.