Wishlist

[Jabberwock]

As CP maluses are not used on Naval affairs...

that favours even more the big fleets destroying all artillery in the coast without cost.

I believe some kind of CP penalties should be used on naval also.

Definitely important. The one true "Death Star" fleet historically was the one under Porter at Fort Fisher. So how did Porter manage that fleet? He divided up his 80-odd ships into five lines (like divisions) and assigned each line an area of responsibilty - gunboats to guard the beach approaches, monitors for the close-in work, first and second battle lines for the main bombardment, and auxiliary to guard transports and supplies. Obviously he couldn't supervise everything personally, he had competent subordinates available. This was the second item on my list, I was just trying to give the team one priority to focus on.

[Asa]

Things I'd like to do:
- recruit cavalry brigades,
- see the max number of elements in a Brigade,
- know when my ships are sunk by an enemy fort,
- have all the logs of the game in a single text document (very useful for AAR).

And...

NO DIVISION CAP !!!

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[squarian]

I'd hate to see the division cap go, myself. If anything, it ought to be smaller in 1861.

A log.txt file would be cool.

Having ships vanish with little notice (the sound of gunfire and a brief flashing icon being the only clues a naval engagement is even happening) is annoying, but everyone agrees that the naval war needs improvement and I suppose this would be fixed when the rest of it is.

[Copper Head]

In no particular order...

1. More regions in the vicinity of northern Virginia, especially around the Peninsula and Shenandoah areas. This would open up more strategic options for players regarding army movements, etc.

2. A much more easier to understand battle resolution screen. I’ve been playing the game for the last 18 months and still have little idea what happened in the battles I fought.

3. For historical purposes, any large battle could be marked on the map with a little crossed sword symbol. Clicking this will show a pop up box showing a summary of the battle.

4. The ability to show an OOB for each army and that leads be nicely onto…

5. The total reworking on the army/division/brigade structure. At the moment it seems confusing and a pain in the ass for newcomers and veterans alike in forming these.

6. Leaders. This ties in with the above point. Have the ability to assign leaders to brigades within divisions. When they do well in battle you can promote them so they will be eligible for divisional command. Same for divisional commanders to corp commanders and corp commanders to army commanders. Promoting a leader would incur some sort of cost (political points and/or a monetary cost) to limit the amount of armies and divisions on the field.

7. Instead of raising brigades, let the user instead raise individual regiments within states. Give the user the ability then to form these regiments into brigades of his own making. The number of regiments in a brigade would be limited to maybe a command rating of the brigade commander and/or the doctrine of the chosen side ( i.e. Maybe 3-4 regiments for a union brigade, 4-6 regiments for a confederate brigade). This logic could also be applied to the number of brigades in a division.

8. More leaders actually being wounded and killed in battle to reflect the historical numbers of leaders killed/wounded in action.

[Moriety]

Two wishes:

I have played two campaign games (v1.12) and each has only lasted about 60 turns before victory.

Given that a province loyalty never shifts by more than one, and that imposing martial law will shift this loyalty in policed provinces by 1 anyway:
1) The police values of a unit are largely redundant
2) I will never shift the province loyalty over the critical 50% in any game.

The result is I have to have 20-30 units just shifting between provinces to keep control over 50%. This is really tedious and time-consuming as well as making the overview map a useless sea of blue, so my proposal is this:

-For every 3 police points of units stationed in a province the loyalty will automatically shift 1 point in your favour.

This will still tie-down a lot of units but at least they could then be grouped and will actually achieve something.

My second wish:
The grand campaign game is too short and very frantic at the start.
I propose a 7-day turn with NO attacks allowed at all for the first twenty turns: This will force Athena to actually group her units, rather than send them off one-by-one on suicide missions into Union/Rebel territory. whilst allowing the human player the chance to do some grouping of his/her own without playing constant "cat and mouse" which currently is the case.

Okay I lied: 3 wishes!:

I would like to be able to group naval units into blockade-style fleets of 8-10 units with the ability to split them up again if needed.

Any thoughts on my ideas? (The police one is critical to me as it's begining to put me off the game- horrendous micro-management for no achievement other than control maintenance)

And one-ish other thing....
-Could we have another tab that instantly brings up all Officers who can be promoted that turn (in the forces ledger overview)?
-and.....could you also display the number of your troops held prisioner by the other side in order to understand whether it is worthwhile conducting a prisioner exchange? (I assume the value currently displayed is the number of prisioners you currently hold)

[Redeemer]

7. Instead of raising brigades, let the user instead raise individual regiments within states. Give the user the ability then to form these regiments into brigades of his own making. The number of regiments in a brigade would be limited to maybe a command rating of the brigade commander and/or the doctrine of the chosen side ( i.e. Maybe 3-4 regiments for a union brigade, 4-6 regiments for a confederate brigade). This logic could also be applied to the number of brigades in a division.

This would be at the top of my list, it is more historical. To go along with it, at least for the union, I would like to ability to merge depleted units. ie., merge two deplete regiments into one, like the 20th Maine and the 2nd(?)Maine before Gettysburg.

[Pocus]

About the loyalty change, this is 1 from local martial law, +1 from the Domestic policy screen. So no redundancy really...

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[Rafiki]

Also, perhaps you're spreading yourself too much, allowing for multiple or unecessarily long supply routes?

[Maqver]

1) That Cairo was garrisoned at the beginning of the game

2) Failing that, that when the CSA controls the city (Cairo), that the Cairo garrison does not still spawn in the region. In otherwords, if the CSA controls Cairo then why does the garrison still spawn there? (I suspect it is because the depot has not been destroyed but I could be wrong and it could be hard coded.) This essentially gives the CSA a couple of nice free cannons, one of them a siege cannon.

3) More variability (uncertainty) in the early game, such as certain groups of troops, including some locked border garrisons, that could spawn a turn or two early than expected. Currently the early game feels as if it is being scripted due to the certainty of knowing when and where troops will spawn. A little uncertainty would go a long way here.

[Major Dilemma]

I have not read all the wishes and suggestions included here so at the risk of repeating what others may have already mentioned:

Two dimensional view. Your 3D map is outstanding but I love the functionality of 2D. All map reliant war games should offer the 2D option IMO. Barring that at least some organizational generic box for whatever region the selected stack is in. As it is oftentimes one stack is covering and preventing access to other stacks. Some regions are small such as the region in which Richmond, VA is located and much reorganization is required within that region. Stacks on top of other stacks makes this a job to sort out. I know how to use the tags but it remains difficult to re-assign units into new tags and an organizational region box might be preferred. This is one way a roomy top-down view 2D map can be a big bonus.

Option to start with hidden general attributes. This is actually more historical since no one knew how leaders would perform and that unknown plagued the efforts of the respective presidents for much of the war. For that matter an option to start with ahistorical generals with ahistorical names and portraits would suit me just fine. As an option of course since some will want the actual personages in all their gameplay.

A way to move with rail and on foot within the same movement turn. As it is the either or move by rail/ship option requires me to accept the auto-routing which is sometimes directly through the enemies' main force. I want to use rail for a portion of my two week march and get on and off where I need to.

The option to assign all new units to designated staging areas. They could simply appear there or move there as their first command.

The option to design my own brigades or at least to be able to disassemble brigades into their respective individual regiments.

A way to eliminate generals from the sort list. Personally if a general has less than 3 strategy (I use the random stats) I banish him to the Bayou for the duration. I would rather suffer the CP penalty of an un-assigned brigade than give them to a general which will be browned out for most turns. If I could remove from the sort list say.. all generals with less than 3 strategy plus those which have unfavorable attributes (Holms Floyd,Bragg etc.) I could much better organize those remaining generals I want to use.

A way to scrap certain units or ships. At least I could release some conscripts to build a useful unit.

A way to turn off the raid/pillage action. Would be nice to use some units to enter territory I will soon call my own.

A way to build brand new rail lines.

General movement orders for units besides sentry, such as rebuild rails or defend Northern Georgia or advance with various degrees of caution into enemy territory, giving general movement orders to stacks could open up many new approaches to gameplay.

Designing regiments. A whole new area full of fun. Processing raw recruits according to individual attributes, horsemanship, footspeed, marksmanship, etc.

Starting the game some months prior to the war's outbreak, allowing redeployment of initial forces before conflict begins.

Initial forces being randomized as to location and disposition. It is ok to not be totally historical since there is no such thing as repeating what happened in a different way without it being truly different within the geographic, political and technological parameters of the time period.

I want to be president, commander in chief, not simply replay Davis or Lincoln. Give me choices which they with more imagination might very well have pursued.

Well that's enough to keep anyone busy for the next twenty years thanks a bunch.


***


hmm thought of a couple more things..

The ability to zoom out to the whole map. I want to see the whole map on my screen. I want to see the zone of control as blue or grey on the whole map at once. The mini map does not show the zone of control as either blue or grey. It shows cities but no zone of control. I want to see the supply depot cities on the whole map. To be able to zoom out and see it all at one time is important to strategic planning. I need the context. Bad... give me the context.

Oh yeah also one week turns instead of two. Winter comes too soon. But I guess winter would come too soon anyway. But one week turns would help make movement more accurate. I have to choose between one move taking 8 days or a two turn move taking 16 days and the rest of the days they just sit and play cards. Leads to discipline problems in the ranks.

Thanks

[gunnergoz]

At the risk of repeating some things others have said, this is what's important to me after playing the game a few times:

I'd like to see the realistic map style of Napoleon's Campaigns brought into this game.
I'd also like a key-combination set up to see the terrain without troops, since the clutter can block information about cities, etc on the map.
It would also be great if the roster could tell us which divisions had how many elements - just a number would be fine, although it would be great if they also listed by type of element.
I'm sure I'll think of more as I get experience at this wonderful game.

[Gray_Lensman]

At the risk of repeating some things others have said, this is what's important to me after playing the game a few times:

I'd like to see the realistic map style of Napoleon's Campaigns brought into this game.

<snip>

Forget changing the map. Changing it would cause the patch size to increase to over 400+ GigaBytes.

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[arsan]

I'd also like a key-combination set up to see the terrain without troops, since the clutter can block information about cities, etc on the map.

Hi!
This is already there (added on patch 1.06). According to the patch changes readme (you can find it on the installation folder on a file called ACW Updates) it works like this
Control+F1: filter fixed units
Control+F2: enemy units
Control+F3: your land units
Control+F4: all units

[Major Tom]

I would like to be able to see the previous turn's messages. That way I can go back and see if I missed something important. It would also let me go bak and see the list of all the units that said their training was nearly complete.

Speaking of which, I understand that we get those "nerarly complete" message because now the new units are able to move but still low on cohesion. It would be nice ot get a follow-u on the next turn to say their training is complete. Then you could just click on the message to go straight to the unit so you can issue movement orders.

[wpurdom]

This is largely a repost of an item in the Historical Accuracy Mod thread.

I would most like to see some political texture similar to Maryland in Tennessee (and Kentucky). There were profound regional differences that were major influences in the strategy of the Civil War. The South had to maintain troops sitting on East Tennessee and Lincoln was always pressing for an incursion into East Tennessee causing friction with Buell and Rosecrans (due to logistical diffculties) until he was finally able to push Burnside into a moderately risky incursion into Knoxville. Ironically, after for over a year, after the fall of Memphis, the Union controlled the secessionist part of the state and the South controlled the unionist part of the State.

Here's a start of the political texture of Tennessee:
Tennessee Loyalty

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

East Tennessee loyalty figures need profound adjustment in the vanilla 1861 versions. Tennessee had a referendum on secession after secession had been effectuated and troops sent to Virginia. The 26 East Tenneessee counties voted 2-1 against secession (69%).

"Governor Harris angrily refused to abide such an effort. Believing that Tennesseans now preferred joining the Confederacy to preserving the Union by force, he promoted a renewed effort to depart from the United States. This culminated in another referendum four months after the initial defeat of the convention call. This time Tennessee voters were directly asked if they favored or opposed "separation." The result of this second election, June 6, 1861, approved exiting the Union. A comparison of the February and June returns reveals that there was little change in opinion in either the west or the east. The former remained in tune with secession, although Weakley, Carroll, Henderson, Decatur, and Hardin counties did defeat the proposal and went on to provide significant numbers of recruits for the Union Army. In the east, only five counties (Rhea, Meigs, Polk, Monroe, and Sullivan) favored abandoning the old flag. It was in Middle Tennessee where the greatest shift in opinion occurred. There, twelve counties that opposed a convention call in February, suggesting a reluctance to secede then, approved secession in June. These twelve (Jackson, Overton, Wilson, Smith, Putnam, Williamson, Rutherford, DeKalb, White, Cannon, Bedford, and Coffee) had the balance of power as they accounted for the different outcomes of the two elections.6

6Nashville Union and American 25 June 1861."

http://spider.georgetowncollege.edu/...11/fr-cope.htm

(There is also info in this paper about different levels of support in Kentucky and the counties which provided union volunteers and didn't)

Tennessee also provided 31,000 volunteers for the Union army - 3.19% of the population (compared to a high of 12.56% in IL and a low of 8.95% in NJ) and about 100,000 for the Confederacy (I've seen ranges of 100-112K). 44 TN counties voted for secession by more than 2-1. East Tennessee political figures then attempted to seceed from the state and confederate troops basically had to occupy the region.

Also see War at Every Door: Partisan Politics and Guerrilla Violence in ... - Google Books Result
by Noel C. Fisher - 2001 - History - 264 pages - the Google excerpt contains a map of the election results (county majorities).

The regions which should be effected are 568-69, 592-608. I alter 569 and 592 to 55% loyalty and the rest to 45% to be conservative, but given the atmosphere under which folks were openly voting against secession (no secret ballot yet) 33% Confederate is probably more accurate for most of east Tennessee.

[Mickey3D]

It should be possible to promote a division leader inside a corps without having to extract it from the corps.

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[mwardcsufs]

Couldn't it be the same as forming divisions, redeploying generals, etc? Click on a General and if he can be promoted, the promote button is enabled?

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[Mickey3D]

Not possible, since the Corps might contain multiple division leaders that may or may not be elibible for promotion. You have to isolate the individual leader in order for the game engine to know specifically which leader is to be promoted,

I never try it but is it possible to isolate the leader, promote it (click on the button) and, in the same turn, put it back in the corps ?

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[Chertio]

Another wish that may have been mentioned before...

A roster page which shows what units are in the process of building, showing
Elements in unit
Turns remaining to completion
Theatre (or as that is not a concept in the game, State or nearest Army HQ)

I'm having trouble keeping track of which units I am building where, despite a spreadsheet (which I keep forgetting to fill out) and what more units I need to, say, complete a division with the elements I want.

[cptcav]

I would like to see the ability to delay a unit's move at any point along it march. For example, before it moves, you could have the unit stay in its present location for 2 days. Or, it would move to the next area and, then, stay in that area 5 days before moving on, etc.

This would help a player coordinate the arrival of various forces at a common destination on the same day (barring any non-planned delays ). So, a commander could plan a battle like Shiloh where several different army's were to gather before assaulting. This would enable a player to have multiple armies in different areas gather for an attack in an area adjacent to the enemy and, then, launch the attack all during the same turn. As it is now, you either have to gather for one turn giving the opponent warning; or, you have to attack piecemeal depending on the move rates through the different areas.

So, when a force receives orders to rendezvous on a certain date with the main army, it can actually start its march with the rendezvous date in mind.

Thank you for considering.

CptCav

[gchristie]

A hearty second of Maqvr's motion:

"1) That Cairo was garrisoned at the beginning of the game

UNLESS there is a solid historically based reason not to garrison Cairo.

I think having one militia unit, similar to Harper's Ferry, would strike the right balance.

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[marecone]

In every single book about ACW you have OOB (order of battle). That would be a great feature IMHO. Month or two ago, somebody posted a pic of OOB and everybody loved it.

Also, I would love to see battles history with forces and generals engaged, with casulties and who won. Perhaps add one more ledger saying history of ACW and then fill that part with fought battles and captured cities. It would also serve as a nice timline so you could check where did you start winning or loseing.

From that ledger we could draw data for generals which is my third suggestion. It sucks a bit as you can't really say how succefull your generals are. Well, you can, but only through seniority points. It would be great if we could click on a general and you would get info on battles he fought and where he lost or won.

Fourth idea would be to add something that Frank Hunter's ACW already has; Alternate history start.
Like following options:

1. Kentucky and or Missouri joined CSA before the war
2. Europe did recoginize CSA from the start
and so on....

For example, with first option we would get stronger CSA and new places for battles such as Indiana, Ohio...

Just my two cents and still enjoying this game so much althought I have it since beta

Hi Pocus and company! Long time no see. I am back and enjoying ACW again. I just wanted to ask is there any progress on this idea with histories? Few months ago you said something could be done. This would improve game greatly and could be used in all your games as well. It would be nice to track your favorite general or to see what battle was a turning point of the war.

Regards,
Marko