Feature #23 : Zooming-out and colored overlays (filters)

[Pocus]

AACW features several levels of smooth zoom-out, handled simply by the mouse wheel. The normal view is best to plan operations up to 5 provinces away from your army, but you can zoom-out at any time to decrease the map scale down to 25% of its original size to get a clearer picture of the war.

Another form of helper is the presence of 6 colored overlays. These are displayed either by pressing a button or with the TAB key. They are:

1. Military control mode. Shows the regions where you have significant patrols or presence (even if you don't have an actual army). Having more than 50% control in a region means that your patrols are able to detect passing enemy armies and can even prevent retreat if a battle ensued!

2. Supply mode: Very handy to know what regions will block the passage of supply and where your main stockpiles are.

3. Loyalty mode: Shows where there are rebel or pro-union populations. Loyalty is a very important aspect of the war (more later...), influencing partisans, production and fog of war.

4. Objectives mode: Show regions where the city is an objective or earns you victory points.

5. States mode: Show US States, each with it's own color.

6. Department mode: Show US Departments (Grand Regions/Districts) each with a color.



Partially zoomed-out view (50%) showing the supply filter. The regions where Union supply can enter are shown in green. The crates indicate the size of the stockpile in a city.

[veji1]

What can I say...

More screens so that we can see the different overlays !!!

[gunnergoz]

I like what I see in the maps, but I wonder if there might be a way to simulate terrain relief for the hills/mountains on the map. This would really help visualize the channels of movement that war often revolves around (e.g. the Shenandoah Valley.)

[James D Burns]

and can even prevent retreat if a battle ensued!

This makes me very nervous. Armies were not prevented from retreating during the civil war simply because a few men on horseback were in the direction of their retreat. It should take a sizable force of at least 25% of the strength of the retreating army to prevent its retreat through an area.

Units too small to block such a retreat should get displaced as the mass of the retreating force would have been too much to resist for smaller forces.

I'm picturing Lee’s army after Gettysburg being forced to be eliminated because of some Union patrollers reported between him and the Potomac. Please tell me this isn't the case.

Also what are the white numbers superimposed on the flags, possibly garrison levels for the towns?

Jim

[Pocus]

it only happens if you don't have 5% control in the region. This is mostly to allow the surrender of completely cornered armies, who blazed in enemy territory while the path close behind them because of your action. In BOA it can happens but this is very rare, and you really have to trap someone to do that (all regions around him with 95% control, that's kinda hard).

[Spharv2]

I'll back up Pocus on this, getting an army trapped like that would be so difficult, I can't imagine it ever happening, unless you really tried hard to make it happen, but running an army deep into enemy territory as fast as you could avoiding battles the whole way.

Where it could happen is with small, deep cavalry raids or something along those lines, which is quite realistic. If you're raiding far enough behind enemy lines and get cornered, you're in trouble. I remember one previous attempt at a Civil War strategy game where I ran a cavalry raid up through Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, basically all over because there was no function like this, so it should be handy for things like this.

[Hobbes]

If you keep one or two units in adjacent terrain to the main force this should prevent this in any case.