Civil War 3 suggestion that I like so much I'm posting it again ;)

[Blood and Thunder Brigade]

Just a suggestion (sing its praises, slap it down or studiously ignore it at your leisure); allow the player to recruit by regiment rather than brigade. The player can then determine the strength (with limits and maximums, obviously) and the geographical composition of said brigades (For example: 3 Virginia regiments + 1 North Carolina regiment + 1 Georgia regiment, or, 2 Alabama regiments + 1 Louisiana regiment. You get the idea). To complete the picture, anybody who was commissioned a brigadier general in the Union or Confederate army should be included in a generals pool, and introduced into the game roughly around the date when they received their commission. The player can then choose a brigadier to command their newly created brigade which then takes on the name of the commanding general.

I like it. I really like it...

[Gray Fox]

It's true that a lot of the generic Brigades in the current game are not crowd pleasers. However, any Brigade commanded by a General cannot be added to a Division as such. So General BloodnThunder would need to be stripped from the unit that bears his name, unless you changed this.

[grimjaw]

allow the player to recruit by regiment rather than brigade

I am already doing this in a mod. There are a few issues with it. Assume you don't alter anything except the units you can recruit. For this example, we won't count the elite brigades (Excelsior, Mississippi, etc), and we change all the brigades to regiments.

Managing the stack panel can get very cumbersome. I don't know if it will affect AI turn processing. I have a fairly good machine, exceeds the stated requirements for CW2 by quite a bit, and even on a vanilla CW2 setup a large stack will slow down the game.

Under the vanilla setup, a "division" requires 4 CP to be effectively commanded. Since there aren't any (or many) brigade units, every "brigade" has to be formed by creating a "division." Most brigadiers out of the chain of command will be at a disadvantage (only 2 CP for a standard brigadier out of command chain).

My solution is to create 1-3 element units for infantry and 1-2 element units for cavalry. There will be a few 2 and 3 element brigades per state. None of the standard units require over 2 CP. The elite brigades are altered to be almost all 3 element units that only require 2 CP. Their unit definition allows them to add another infantry element in the same way a vanilla CW2 militia unit does, so you can end up with a 4 element unit that only costs 2 CP and only requires line replacements. Artillery are all single element units, although I am knocking around the idea of a couple of artillery brigades.

But on a CW3 setup, they'd need to adjust stack panel management with the potential for many more large, unwieldy stacks. I'm just telling you, Joe User, this; I'm sure the devs already know this kind of thing.

[Blood and Thunder Brigade]

It's true that a lot of the generic Brigades in the current game are not crowd pleasers. However, any Brigade commanded by a General cannot be added to a Division as such. So General BloodnThunder would need to be stripped from the unit that bears his name, unless you changed this.

Then why not change it too? Really mix it up a bit

[lightbrave]

I would like to be able to have lesser generals be appointed to Army Commander. This is just a hypothetical. Without promotion the Confederates only have 4 Commanders that can control an Army. In my opinion, the South needs at least that many armies. 2 in Virginia and 2 in Tennessee. That being said, there is no way to shift command without breaking up an army for at least 1 turn. So say Grant is opposing Lee in any given area...……..( in my opinion the best matchup for the Union is Grant vs A S Johnson)………………… Since the Union can change command fairly easily because you can have an excess of qualified Army commanders then Grant can detach from the Army opposing Lee and shift to the one opposing Johnson and the South cant respond without breaking up and Army. Lee wouldn't be able to follow Grant to oppose him. Im hoping this makes sense to people. You should be able to put anybody in command of an army. If they are a sorry leader then it would just effect the whole army but at least you can keep the Corps structure in place. That's one change I would like to see but ill write more later. P.S. one other thing iv seen people say turns should be weekly. Im thinking there should be 10 days turn. 3 per month instead of every week. Also, I think the Loyalty premise needs to be changed. For instance, it doesn't make sense that a region in the south can become 100% loyal to the Union based on presence. They should have loyalty and also another term that can describe (under control but they hate you). There could be some cool cards they could come up with to make that fun too like sabotage or something. Who knows. Also, they should have delayed intel. So if you sent a scout to New Orleans to see whats going on there, but maybe not actually be able to see whats there until the next turn. Although that might be difficult because if you have troops coming 2 days behind then that wouldn't work out as intended. Food for thought. What do you guys think?

[Blood and Thunder Brigade]

I've always said that all generals should be promotable to any level but with increasing amounts of seniority points required to achieve promotion from brigadier general to major general to lieutenant general to general.

Also, 5 day turns....

[grimjaw]

As far as allowing sub-3stars to command armies, the problem exists throughout the command structure of the game. Promotion is only (or mostly) modeled based on battlefield success and not attrition. For example. Bragg got army command for 2 reasons: Johnston's death & Beauregatd being sick/AWOL. If a commander is killed or injured in the game, there is no provision to fill his shoes. The engine provides for something called a provisional leader system which somewhat bridges this gap, but it only applies to 3stars. And anyway, it's not implemented in vanilla CW2. I am trying to code up a set of attrition promotions via script in the same mod I mentioned previously.

Under the current system, penalties & privileges are doled out based on leader seniority, & seniority is not static (although it should be IMO). So if you allow any old general to become army commander, does the current penalty system remain in place? Is it magnified when 1star Quantrill is given command of the Army of the West over AS Johnston? I

[Blood and Thunder Brigade]

I certainly don't think that "any old general" should be able to be given command of an army. I believe that the requisite rank and/or seniority would be necessary.

[lightbrave]

The problem is that Corps wont fight together without a commander. The current system would be fine if 2 corps could coordinate within a battle without an army commander there. That's the problem with the South in my opinion. Federal Army commanders can maneuver easily without breaking up an army and the South cant as easily...….. especially if nobody gets promoted. To my knowledge there are only 4 Southern Army commanders available throughout the game without any promotions.

[grimjaw]

There is such a thing as too much realistic modeling when it comes to a game. WRT the suggestion of allowing sub-3stars to command "armies", I'll list a few. Many of these I'm sure you already know.

There weren't any 3star generals in the Union army besides Grant.

McDowell was a brigadier until March '62, well past his army command period.

There were numerous examples of brigadier corps commanders, mostly Union and mostly temp due to attrition.

IMO, the command structure is modeled poorly in CW2 b/c it's several different shaped pegs all going into round holes.

Never mind the fact that if your army/corps/division commander dies on day 1 of turn, you're at a terrible disadvantage for the remainder of two weeks. Without other extensive modifications, that problem is made worse when you have all regiments instead of brigades. At least under current system, if your divcmdr dies, chances are you've got a large brigade in there that will still fight as a unit. Not so if the division suddenly becomes 17 individual regiments w/associated command penalty. FUBAR.

Don't know how you resolve that unless you have a theoretical temp Cmdr that comes online whenever a leader is KIA and holds unit together albeit with penalties. With 7day turns, that particular problem is less severe.

[Citizen X]

There is such a thing as too much realistic modeling when it comes to a game.

[Blood and Thunder Brigade]

Why the fascination with 7 day turns? Wouldn't 5 day turns be even better and keep everything within a 30 day per month time frame?

[lightbrave]

1 DAY TURNS

[grimjaw]

why the fascination with 7-day turns?

I can only speak for myself. With the current engine, 7-day turns would require the least amount of work. They are already built into the engine. They can't be made to work with CW2 properly because of design decisions about element composition, certain turn-based calculations, etc., but these other parts don't seem to be insurmountable obstacles. It would just take time & effort. (on the dev side; it's changes an end user can't make AFAIK)

The lower amount of days per turn, the more likely it is that a unit will be stuck in a move from region to region over multiple turns. Halving the current time, 2 weeks, already makes it twice as likely. If you thought it was frustrating to haul siege guns thru the swamp to Island 10 before...

[Blood and Thunder Brigade]

The lower amount of days per turn, the more likely it is that a unit will be stuck in a move from region to region over multiple turns. Halving the current time, 2 weeks, already makes it twice as likely. If you thought it was frustrating to haul siege guns thru the swamp to Island 10 before...

I may be way off the mark here but could not this problem be partially solved by more realistic march times between regions? As it is it seems out of whack to me. For example, it shouldn't take a force of any size 7 or 8 days to march from Culpeper to Manassas.

[grimjaw]

RE: more realistic travel times between regions, that's an issue that ought to be addressed separately because it's a big thing to tackle. The way structures are represented in the game means that forts become kind of a thorny problem. Some forts might have been in a town, some outside, some nowhere near. Under current rules if there is a city structure in a region & a fort is built in that region, they are assumed to be the same thing for the purposes of whether a unit is inside or outside. The way that is dealt with for some historical forts: completely separate fort regions that require unrealistic travel times. Something like multiple structure possibilities for individual regions would help, but that would require major engine upgrades.

There are other unrealistic travel times for some regions, but many of them can be addressed with simple edits.

[BigDuke66]

First and foremost, things in the game should work like intended or be removed.
We still got stuff in CW2 that are rather strange like some RDs that are senseless as they do not work like intended or not work at all. The impression of a half done game that could have been so much more is pretty damaging to CW2.
That simply means the scope of CW3 should be so large that it can be handled by the design team but at the same time design should be open enough so that further expansions & improvements can be applied without the need to reinvent or rewrite the game.

Anyhow, I can't imaging how CW3 would work at all with the new engine.

[Blood and Thunder Brigade]

A little bit of research reveals that around 90 men were made brigadier general or better in the Confederate army in 1861 alone. I'm truly hoping that one day all of these generals find their way into the game, including those who were commissioned a brigadier general in '62, '63, '64 and '65.

On a side note, I know a guy who can & will colourise portraits of generals if required.

[Blood and Thunder Brigade]

I'd like to flesh this idea out to its full extent, and forgive me if you feel I'm flogging a dead horse here - I often feel that way myself, but I refuse to give up

Anyhow, as previously stated, I'd like to see a future version of this game (let us pray that's soon!) allow the player to recruit by regiment, rather than brigade. I get a little bored and frustrated with the predetermined brigades we have in the current game, primarily because of their odd structure, size and inflexibility. In a perfect world, the player should be deciding for themselves the size and composition of those brigades. Anyhow, I'll crack on with it and outline my idea/suggestion now.

- As stated, recruit by regiment rather than brigade.
- Those regiments should be of varying size. Perhaps 450, 600, 800 & 1,000 man regiments.
- Regiments of any state can be spliced together to form multi-state brigades.
- Brigades should be a minimum size of two regiments, obviously, with a maximum size of 6 or 7 regiments.
- A formed brigade can be disbanded at the players leisure, and its regiments distributed elsewhere, or further regiments added to it unless it exceeds the number of maximum regiments.
- Once formed, a brigade is obviously going to need a brigade commander, and for this idea to truly work, the game would need a helluva lot more generals than it currently has. I've said before that anybody who was commissioned a brigadier general in the Union or Confederate armies should be included in the game at roughly the date they were given the rank. This would not only ensure that every formed brigade has a commander, but would largely cure the problem of 'unemployed' generals, which, for me, becomes an issue around April/May of 1862, when, quite frankly, there are too many cooks for the kitchen.
- A formed brigade takes on the name of its commander, which can then be added to a division in exactly the same way we currently form a division. The true beauty of it is that, again, the player can at any moment disband that brigade and send its regiments elsewhere, or add regiments to it. The key word being flexibility.

I think that covers it...

[Bamilus]

Would be cool, but the current new AGEOD engine is less complex than the old engine, so I doubt we'd see a game that would be more detailed than Civil War 2.

[Blood and Thunder Brigade]

Would be cool, but the current new AGEOD engine is less complex than the old engine, so I doubt we'd see a game that would be more detailed than Civil War 2.

So a new engine that essentially isn't as good as the old one?

[Bamilus]

Would be cool, but the current new AGEOD engine is less complex than the old engine, so I doubt we'd see a game that would be more detailed than Civil War 2.

So a new engine that essentially isn't as good as the old one?

Eh, there's benefits:

1) The UI still isn't great, but the tooltips and ledgers are much better
2) It's way smoother. None of the weird lag or graphical issues that the old AGE engine would have.
3) Production and trade are way more expanded, as well as events and decisions. Instead of being restricted by RGD's, you can actually do more with regions now.
4) Diplomacy is now a thing. It was a thing in some of the later titles, like how WoN and TEAW had diplomacy regions, but it's actually in the game now with proper UI and menu as opposed to using RGD's on weird off-map boxes.

I still miss the art style of the old engine, but other than that and maybe slightly less complexity I'm not really missing much from old engine. The new engine brings the game to more a modern feel where you can do things easier instead of having to use weird RGD's that are cryptic. I don't know for sure, but I'm also assuming the underlying code is a bit cleaner, too.

The main push from Slitherine, and it's an issue every wargame developer has, is to appeal to a broader audience. I'm in my twenties, but most wargamers are 50 or older and there's a lot less people my age that play wargames than people 50+, so while I don't desire graphics or simpler games, I understand that these companies need to compromise to survive. Also, with the game on Steam, there's access to a much bigger audience. Regardless, FOG:E is still a quite complex game, it's just maybe not as complex as some of the bigger old AGEOD titles.

[Blood and Thunder Brigade]

Sounds like a nice way of saying they're dumbing it down

[Bamilus]

Sounds like a nice way of saying they're dumbing it down

I mean...kind of? Like, because the UI isn't retarded anymore, its less complex. However, they've added entirely new sections that are really good like decadence. Overall game is less complex, but most of that lowered complexity is because it doesn't take a year of just studying the game file code just to learn what the hell is going on.

[Blood and Thunder Brigade]

@Bamilus

Have you heard anything of a Civil War 3 in the making from any of the powers that be? I stand to be corrected here, but I'm sure I saw one of the top dogs say, maybe 12 months or more ago, that there was going to be a major announcement regarding this game coming soon. I'm wondering whether I missed something.

[Blood and Thunder Brigade]

Has anyone heard anything?

[Bamilus]

I haven't, sorry. I know FOG:Empires was a good success and therefore that bodes well for the future, but haven't heard anything about what next title will be.

[Blood and Thunder Brigade]

I haven't, sorry. I know FOG:Empires was a good success and therefore that bodes well for the future, but haven't heard anything about what next title will be.

Thanks for your reply, mate. Hopefully we get a pre-Christmas surprise or something. Let us pray!

[H Gilmer3]

I haven't, sorry. I know FOG:Empires was a good success and therefore that bodes well for the future, but haven't heard anything about what next title will be.

Thanks for your reply, mate. Hopefully we get a pre-Christmas surprise or something. Let us pray!

We can hope. I have enjoyed Civil War 2, but I realize it could be a lot better!

[Blood and Thunder Brigade]

We can hope. I have enjoyed Civil War 2, but I realize it could be a lot better!

CW2 is truly superb, but then I think of a Civil War 3 and the vast potential it has and I can't help but become pretty excited. There's an opportunity to create something groundbreaking there.