Perhaps 14 day turns are too much??

[arsan]

Hi!

About the turn length difference between AACW and NCP, my bet is that AGEOD different decisions are not because they felt that going form 15 to 7 day/turns was an improvement on it self.

It’s because each game has a different focus. One game (AACW) is a full war strategic game and the other (NCP) a bunch of shorter scenarios (except the Peninsular one, which is very long but quite small in terrain/number of units compared to AACW).

An AACW full campaign (110 turns or so) is playable but quite long winded already at 15 days turns (maybe its just me, but i need about 45-60 min average to each turn, that’s about 100 game hours )
With 220 weekly turns AACW will be Witp gamer heaven but probably too much to the average player.

Instead if NCP had 15 days turns most of his scenarios would be too short (think of Waterloo at 15 days turn ). In fact, even at 7 days turn most are pretty short affairs.

Of course i would not say no to a 7 days turn mod (although probably i would never be able to reach 1863, not to mention finish a campaign…) but IMHO, there are other things on the game which will benefit more of all that modder/developers time: AI, events, setup, tweaks… the kind of things for example Clovis is trying to make in his mod.
Just my 2 cents

[Jabberwock]

I think it is completely rediculous, for example, that it would take an entire day to move from Baltimore to Washington D.C. by train. I think that needs some re-working....perhaps a 2-region-per-day rate of movement by train.

I totally agree with this. Actually in the game it takes two days between Baltimore and DC via RR. Not considering time spent generating orders, marching to the station, waiting at the station, loading troops on a train, or waiting at a switch for an oncoming train to pass; even a very slow train would generally make the trip in under four hours (a fast one in under two hours). I think three things could make it more realistic:

1. I would like to see some kind of rail coefficient value applied to each model, in a similar manner to the 'police' value. Speed rail movement in general, but add together all these values in a stack, and slow the movement by a percentage based on that number. This would allow the historical long, fast moves by a large number of troops, by separating them out from the big stacks, but they could take some time to reorganize on the other end before being ready to fight as a unified force.

2. In the long run, I believe seven day turns could allow the engine to process 1/2 day at a time, rather than 1 day. This would also make multi-day battle times more realistic.

3. Speed RR movement in general by creating hundreds of two-region rail links. The other problem with this (besides the amount of work) is that it could totally skip sections of destroyed track. I thought I'd throw the idea out there anyway, maybe somebody can make some use of it.


Regarding normal movement, there are already efforts under way to adjust speed and straggling. I'll defer to someone involved in those efforts to address how they need to be reworked to adjust to a seven day turn.

[Gray_Lensman]

Regarding RR movement between regions...

The game engine is using the fastest movement rate (unimpeded no less) by setting it to 1 day between regions.

Without designing a whole new section of code for RR movement you can't get any faster than 1 day per region, and "No" I don't believe it can accomodate fractional movement rates. Currently, even though there are some non realistic circumstances that occur, the system works reasonably well within the game engine design. This is one change that I doubt very seriously will be considered by Pocus and company. I have tried to literally cut corners in some regions to speed up some of the actual RR connections, but this is of limited help.

[Southerner]

Why not a player selectable option for either a 7 or 14 day turn game ?


Heck I would even be willing to ante up some more dough for that ability.

[berto]

I'd prefer 7 day turns, but for this to work, I think they would have to rescale the map with smaller, more numerous regions, not to mention rejigger the AI. AACW2 perhaps?

[GShock]

Everything would work exactly the same with the AI.

The only thing to do is a major work on rebalancement. This is modder's job but the change is totally possible (and auspicable imo).

Rebalancing factors i mean the fact you can call on volounteers every X turns and in 7-day turns that would mean you must mod the game to call on volounteers every X/2 turns.

Things like cohesion recovery, movement speeds, unit/depot building etc etc. All to be rebalanced /2. Not the end of the world

[berto]

Putting aside my skepticism, it would be an interesting mod. I'd even be willing to help playtest it.

Go for it!

[W.Barksdale]

Rebalancing factors i mean the fact you can call on volounteers every X turns and in 7-day turns that would mean you must mod the game to call on volounteers every X/2 turns.

I think you mean call on volunteers every 2X turns. ;p

[Banks6060]

I certainly think the first stepping stone would be to half everything...and double everything to re-balance.....and then play test from there to iron out any rough spots.

[Jagger]

Banks, the PBEM mod was specifically designed to create a more offensive and maneuver oriented game. It doesn't use 7 day turns but the game is much more dynamic both in the east and west. There are many aspects of the standard game, which combined together, produces a very powerful defense which tends to produce a relatively static game.

You may be interested in testing the PBEM mod if you want a more active game of maneuver. There are many notes with the mod which explains the changes and often the reasoning. I suspect many of your concerns have been dealt with in the mod.

Also there is a new version out which brings the mod up to date with 1.09e. It also now uses Jabberwocky's general portraits. Also some bugs with terrain and portraits have been fixed.

[Banks6060]

Banks, the PBEM mod was specifically designed to create a more offensive and maneuver oriented game. It doesn't use 7 day turns but the game is much more dynamic both in the east and west. There are many aspects of the standard game, which combined together, produces a very powerful defense which tends to produce a relatively static game.

You may be interested in testing the PBEM mod if you want a more active game of maneuver. There are many notes with the mod which explains the changes and often the reasoning. I suspect many of your concerns have been dealt with in the mod.

Also there is a new version out which brings the mod up to date with 1.09e. It also now uses Jabberwocky's general portraits. Also some bugs with terrain and portraits have been fixed.

Whereabouts could I test a copy of that?