I decided to try out the 1805 Invade England scenario to see how the naval aspect worked and was rather disappointed in the scenario design. I set the autoturn to play the game so I could watch both AI's go at it. Somewhere between turns 19 and 28 the game encountered an insufficient memory problem and dumped me back to the game's main screen instead of all the way to desktop.
I was disappointed that there was a bunch of stuff in the scenario setup like troops in India and Canada that really had no bearing on the scenario's outcome. Really no reason to see Wellesley in India when India doesn't figure into the victory conditions or true area of play. This seems to be a recurring problem as the 1815 scenario had the same problem. Scenario playing areas should be limited to those truly germane to the playing and winning of the scenario and those areas not needed should be put out of play. All these superfluous areas do is give the AI's more areas to waste it's units moving to and from.
The other really disappointing thing was no options for buying new replacement units. Really sad to see the British amass so many conscripts and money only to not have anything to spend them on. Can't really play with hard attrition with this scenario because of the lack of replacements. A real shame the time wasted on putting superfluous units on the map wasn't better invested in making options for buying more replacements.
I was really disappointed in how militia replacements just seem to accumulate while line infantry gets wasted on manning depots when we play the option to draft from depots. Kind of pointless to play that option when the replacements end up wasted on manning depots while militia replacements pile up. I also noticed that light artillery replacements don't get used up either and medium artillery gets wasted on fortress guns in out of the way forts. I'm glad that Bohemond is fixing that oversight and can't wait to see how he has used the various artillery classes that the original scenario designs didn't. I also enjoyed playing around with Bohemond's 1815 scenario where militia replacements get used as garrisons in France, just wish that had been done to all scenarios in the initial offerings. So far I haven't seen a scenario that gives us supply wagon replacements or even an option to buy them. Some scenarios have replacements for Generals yet all they do is pile up.
Better scenario designs could have made NCP a much more enjoyable game and given us players more value. Ever since the industry started going towards moddable scenarios they've dumbed down their scenario designs as a way to save manpower time and cost. Moddable scenarios should not be used as an excuse to dumb down scenario design, not everyone wants to learn a scripting language to mod a scenario to be more playable and enjoyable. Why should having fun be so much work?
Every game company sings the same old lame song about not wanting to invest more in proper scenario design as a way to save production time and cost. Then they wonder why their game's lose player interest after a short period of time. I sure hope that AGEOD will do more to improve scenario designs so that they are enjoyable right out of the box with no mussing and fussing by us players. There's just no excuse for the myriad minor muffs in every scenario's design and these should be fixed by AGEOD and not left to hoping some customer like Bohemond will do the trick long after release. I also hope that AGEOD does better at providing a better area on the forum for players who do like to mod to post their handiwork for others to enjoy.