Command Point penalties

[Hobbes]

Hi chaps, one thing I always puzzled about but never resolved. Are you better off defending a fort with one stack that has say a 15% CP penalty or stripping off 3 units so you have the main stack with no penalty and another stack of three units with a 15% penalty. Does it make any difference? I tended to strip off the three in the past as it would seem less units have a penalty?

Cheers,
Chris

[Hobbes]

Whenever I play an AGEOD game I always seem to come up with questions. So I thought I would start dumping them in this thread in case anyone can answer them. Most are probably of very little consequence.

If I have merchant ships in a shipping box is there any benefit to putting them into passive mode?
Why does the box tooltip tell me I need 12 naval elements to blockade the zone? Is this mentioned in the manual somewhere?

[Durk]

Hi chaps, one thing I always puzzled about but never resolved. Are you better off defending a fort with one stack that has say a 15% CP penalty or stripping off 3 units so you have the main stack with no penalty and another stack of three units with a 15% penalty. Does it make any difference? I tended to strip off the three in the past as it would seem less units have a penalty?

Cheers,
Chris

If a leader is present, then make two stacks, the leader stack with no penalty, as you gain the fort advantage. Without a leader, it does not really matter.

[Durk]

Whenever I play an AGEOD game I always seem to come up with questions. So I thought I would start dumping them in this thread in case anyone can answer them. Most are probably of very little consequence.

If I have merchant ships in a shipping box is there any benefit to putting them into passive mode?
Why does the box tooltip tell me I need 12 naval elements to blockade the zone? Is this mentioned in the manual somewhere?

I do always have my understandings, which may be contradicted by those who actually know.

No benefit to being in passive mode, even if playing with the most active naval setting.
No clue. I am pretty sure this is a carryover from other versions which used ocean blockade. In this game, one privateer in each box is a close as anyone comes to a blockade.

[Hobbes]

Many thanks Durk.

[Hobbes]

I'm still confused about the CP penalty if there is no leader. I have three units in a fort (Two local milita and a British cannon). If I combine them I have a 35% penalty. If I keep all three seperate in the fort each has a 5% penalty. It seems that keeping them seperate would be the best option? Seems a bit odd.

Cheers,
Chris

[Durk]

I am by no means an expert on the combat system of this game, but it seems when more than one stack is inside a city the system picks a stack to attack, not the whole lot of whomever is inside. So if you spread them out, you do indeed reduce the command penalty, but now only a single unit will defend. For me, it is better to have the stronger stack even with penalty.

Of course, the size of the opposing force would also be a factor. If similar in size, then dispersing to lower the command penalty might work best.

[Hobbes]

I had a similar 'feeling'. But I was never sure how it worked really. Maybe Philippe can coment if he see's the post. It makes no sense if one has to split a stack to reduce the CP penalty to gain an advantage in this circumstance. But maybe it is a problem with the game. It rings a bell - maybe this was mentioned some years ago?

[Pocus]

well, that's a decision that try to prevents too glaring exploits. Undercommanded stacks get -5% per missing CP. And so indeed smaller stacks get less. But on the other hand, smaller stacks can be engaged piecemeal and more easily destroyed.

The aim is to have no cheesy solution to have units, without leaders, and without a serious problem.

[Hobbes]

Thanks Philippe. I have no idea whether to deploy three small stacks with a 5% penalty or one with a 35% penalty - but I'll go with the 35% to keep things less cheesy. Also I don't want to risk the cannon being the unit engaged piecemeal if that is possible.

Chris

[Hobbes]

Another confusion. I just inflicted 25% casualties against a French commander with two units - but when I mouse over the French units next turn the tooltip shows 24/24 and 29/29 as if they have suffered no losses. Is this a fog of war thing? They are in the open and in a fight so they can't have received replacements or recovered losses?

Also how do you post screenshots now? I can't see an option to upload an image? I am getting old!

Thanks,
Chris

[Durk]

Not sure I have an answer as to the opposing force, but FoW is my guess too.

Find the Img link at the top when posting for pasting an image.

[Hobbes]

Going back to my first posts. Rather than just dumping questions, also an observation. It seems strange that Indians don't have the same local area restrictions that militia do. You certainly wouldn't expect Indian tribes to move too far away from home? I also don't think they should be able to be transported in any boat that isn't shallow draft. Just a thought for WiAIII

Cheers,
Chris

[Durk]

Good observation, but this would be my quibble: While some deployment of Native Americans was purely local; Native American loyalties did not follow the conventional boundaries which state militia would observe. Their tribal and national boundaries were very broad and individual warriors would travel hundreds if miles.

As to the shallow draft, that makes sense as there are no instances of tribal warrior taking ship.

[Smooth4111]

Hey guys - I bought this game years ago and recently changed computers. Trying to find a link to the most recent patch so I can get it to work on my new PC, can anyone lend a hand? Thanks!

[Hobbes]

Hi Smooth, if you look at the post "Anyone still playing this" next to this post there is a link in there.

Cheers,
Chris

[Hobbes]

Hi Durk, yes it would have to be restricted to a certain number of regions from a certain area - but probably not workable. I once had another idea about being able to create tracks in a region - also not workable for various reasons. If nothing else every idea like this would give a human player yet another advantage against Athena, especially if she hadn't been programmed for it.

I like the shallow draft idea but then there is a problem with differentiating between indians and other types of light troops. But for WiAIII one day ...

I've had a few ideas for the game in general over the years and Pocus was wonderful for adding quite a few that were workable. I think the best one I had that was not added to the game was for AJE. Just a simple display of the beautiful units when hovering the mouse over enemy stacks. I think that was a missed opportunity as Pocus was keen at first and said it would only take a day to code, but then cooled on the idea.

Cheers,
Chris

[Durk]

For Smooth et als - I put patches into a folder in the game. Then when I update, I just need to move that folder to my new computer to have all of the patches.

For Chris, it is nice to have open architecture for these games, but as you know very well, it is not a simple this does that, as there are dependencies and interactions. I too would throw my support behind a WIA III

[Hobbes]

It's a great game and so many things can be changed to suit a player. I've recently started playing Lock N Load and the first thing that struck me is that I hate the way the screen scrolls. With the AGEOD games you can just edit a file to change that to be exactly how you like it. I got spoilt by that and I now expect to be able to change simple things like that with all the games I play. The AGEOD games are also very moddable (but not easy to do - you have to be bored at work + have the kind of help that was around back in the day from the developers and the wonderful people on the forum).

Cheers,
Chris

[Hobbes]

P.S. I spent three years trying to make the Aurelian scenario for AJE. I had a lot of problems with the game and some in life. But the main reason I had to give up on it was that I could never get the bloody barbarians to attack as they would have done historically. That was so frustrating. I thought at the time there should be a way of instructing Athena that an AI interest of 100 in the script should be an all out attack to a specific target. But again probably a simplistic idea and not workable. I hated to have to give up on that after so long and with the work others had put in also.

Apart from that frustration the only other major problem I remember was in the King William's War scenario. When testing it as British, every so often I would see Frontenac wandering about in the wilderness in charge of a few Indian units. I never found a way of preventing that so I thought the game would be better played PBEM rather than against Athena. I was very happy with her though when playing as the British in Pontiac's War and as either side in King Philip's War.

Now that is all off my chest i can go to bed

Cheers,
Chris

[Durk]

Seriously, thank you for sharing. I know your work was a labor of love, and I love the scenarios you have added. As I never play against AI and think nobody should, I appreciate your challenges, but I still think of computer wargames as board games where any AI is simply impossible. One must play both sides.

[Smooth4111]

Hey guys - thanks for the info. The patches worked OK it seems, but when I play, the AI is inactive. I clicked all the appropriate things on the settings, but I'm not sure what to do. Any ideas?

[Hobbes]

Hi Smooth, If you have all the correct settings I don't know why you are seeing this problem. What scenario are you playing and how many turns have you played? What are you seeing that makes you think the AI is inactive? No movement at all from the AI?

Cheers,
Chris

[Hobbes]

Seriously, thank you for sharing. I know your work was a labor of love, and I love the scenarios you have added. As I never play against AI and think nobody should, I appreciate your challenges, but I still think of computer wargames as board games where any AI is simply impossible. One must play both sides.

Thanks Durk. I certainly enjoyed making the WiA scenarios. They were a lot of fun to do. I loved doing the historical research as well. I miss all of it (and the forum at the time). The AI is doing a few weird things at the moment in my F&IW game - mainly moving leaders around into agressive positions when they command no troops. But as Athena's main job is to defend she is doing OK. I do like PBEM games far more though.

Cheers,
Chris

[Smooth4111]

hey Hobbs - I tried both the 1755 campaign (for about a year and a half) and the 1775 one and the same thing happened. I didn't go quite as far this time. Maybe I'll uninstall and try all over again...

[Hobbes]

Sorry Smooth. If I was sitting next to you I'm sure I could figure out the problem but from here it is very difficult to do.
The AI options are obvious - but you've looked at them so I can't think what the problem could be.

Let us know if you manage to fix it!

Cheers,
Chris

[Hobbes]

P.S. unless there is a box that you think should't be ticked that should be. I can only suggest posting a screenshot of the AI options.

[Durk]

Smooth, my suggestion, try playing both sides and see if this fixes the issue. It is a way of troubleshooting. AI has to follow certain measures which might be outside your expectations.

[Smooth4111]

Hmm - weird, I started a new game in 1755 and the French opponent moved and attacked. So problem hopefully is solved. As an aside, I don't see where you can play both sides?

[Durk]

To play both sides, you make a move from either side, say the British, make your move. .Then save.
Exit the game, then reenter as the other side, the French, make your move, save and run the turn.
Then you can either make a new French move or go to the British side for the new move. Depends upon which side you want to watch the turn resolved while viewing