AGEOD Forums

Hello!

Playing with Randomized Generals seems like a great way to enjoy the game with new strategies after playing the game for awhile; yet I have concerns and have a few questions:

1) Is the Randomization truly random, or will the game ensure that neither side gains an advantage by the luck of the results? If it is possible that the USA gets all great Generals at the beginning and the CSA gets all bad ones; then this would not be a viable option for me. To me; the best method would be that each side has the same overall quality of Generals throughout as with the normal game; yet the quality of each individual General is randomized within that fixed expectation.

2) I loaded one highly Randomized General game as the USA to take a look at the result and it appeared to me that all the Generals where greatly improved; the result was "All Great Generals" instead of "All Randomized Generals". Most of the strategic ratings where 5 and higher; with no General below the base 3-1-1 rating. Is this a normal feature of the option?

3) Based on my experience in Question 2 above; does the level of the Randomization selected impact how much each individual General can change or does it impact the range of ratings used in the Randomization? For example; will the Highly Randomized game mean a bigger spread of 7-7-7 and 0-0-0 Generals or does the Highly Randomized game just result in each individual General having a higher chance to a greater change? I would prefer that the mix of quality in ratings stays about the same as the normal game with just the individual Generals changing; but I am not sure if the levels of Randomization are meant to change the spread of the overall mix of ratings instead. I hope the way I explained this makes sense.

Thank you for your input; as I think this is a great game option to try, but there is too much unknown about how it works for me to feel comfortable enough to actually play.

I often use the highly randomised setting. To know too much about it to take away some of the magic.

The best randomization setting would be like a card deck shuffling setting per year : Take all the stats and traits of the 61 CSA generals and shuffle them around, same for all the 62 generals, 63 generals, etc... Same for the USA of course. Why ? Because you would get coherent stats/traits (no random Stonewall being slow as hell yet fast mover, or Longstreet with crap defense stat yet his defensive traits) and you would still get the same overall game balance with the early advantage in CSA generals.

Seconda aspect is that hidden general stats, at least for the opponent, would be great. That way you would never know in a random game if the general Pope you are facing in Tennessee is an average/bad or good general. Imagine Stanley Price in the east being shuffled with RE Lee stats for example ? Waht a waste, but hey, you would get an opportunity to do something in the transmississippi wouldn't you ?

I think this should be doable codewise, if would be adding a simple module during the scenario loading phase that would rebranch the general ids (names and pictures) with the shuffled set of stats.