Slitherine

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Battlefield Tactics allow the player to make decisions that can turn the tide of battle.

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ORIGINAL: Philippe at bay

The fundamental problem with *not* auto-resolving combat in a game like this is the risk that a player with a force commanded by weak or incompetant leaders will win battles on the battlefield that he should in fact have been losing.

If you really want to see what happens on those battlefields, take a look at Richard Bodley Scott's Pike and Shot Campaigns.

http://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=299

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But in AGEOD system what is critical is the quality of units, and many attributes, the terrain, weather, cohesion, ammo, morale, leader in command and his abbilities,... So it is not so much in hands of the fortune.

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In such a game you have no control over the combat unless you are in command of the army in the battle physically, but you are the whole commander of all the troops, leaders, resources,....

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ORIGINAL: Leibst

I've been thinking even going further, not in an Ageod game, but in a future engine, regarding having even less information and not as we have here an online information of what is happening to us the player, the commander of all the armies.
A game simulating you are in a city, where you have the Heaquarter of your whole Army, and from there send orders that really have to be sent and arrive to the destiny, receive reports and that in the UI map you see what your reports say and in fact dont has to be the real situation until you receive an update. For example you are Gen Washington and you are in New York, some weeks ago you sent Greene with 4k men to advance to Saratoga and take it. You can see where was Greene the day your last update says, but you really dont know if Sarataga has fallen or even Greene has been defeated.
In such a game you have no control over the combat unless you are in command of the army in the battle phisically, but you are the whole commander of all the troops, leaders, resources,....

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I think Leicester might be in the right place on the map. It is the map label 'Nottinghamshire' that is in the wrong place. It is too far south.

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The city of Nottingham should be in the game / on the map. The Civil War started there ('Standard Hill') and it was a Parliamentarian base throughout most of the war. Nottingham was also larger than many of the other towns I've seen in the screenshots. It also had a defensible castle - which the Royalists failed to capture during the war.

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The City of Leicester should be in Leicestershire not Nottinghamshire ...

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[ A current map should suffice for your needs, as most of the county boundaries have remained relatively unchanged, except for some of the very small counties that have now been merged with larger neighbours. ]

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One final point - I saw a screenshot which referred to the Earl of Essex as Robert Deveraux - real names were never used if you had a title.

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ORIGINAL: theprisoner

I am very excited about this project, having tried to design an ECW high level simulation myself (using Microsoft Access / VBA). The frustrating part is the relation between time and distance - if you have a game turn of a week or more then armies can march from one key centre to another (such as London and Oxford) in a single move and all sense of the campaign is lost. If you have a more realistic timeframe such as daily moves, the games drag on for hundreds of turns.
There is also the problem that there were hundreds of fortified sites, such as castles, manor houses, country estates, even old iron age hill forts, that could block enemy movement and which had to be besieged, so that there were countless small engagements as part of any campaign. Many of the "regions" depicted on the maps in the screenshots would have had several major military centres. I don't expect this level of complexity to be reflected in the game but if there could be truly regional campaigns on bigger maps - such as the war in the west from Cornwall to Bristol - then it could get very interesting indeed without the level of detail becoming overwhelming.
One final point - I saw a screenshot which referred to the Earl of Essex as Robert Deveraux - real names were never used if you had a title.

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ORIGINAL: redcoat




I wish you had continued with your ECW project. You obviously have some understanding of the war. Your post makes some very good points. Welcome to the Matrix forums.

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ORIGINAL: theprisoner

.... I do hope the developers are open to suggestions before everything is locked down.

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ORIGINAL: theprisoner

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ORIGINAL: redcoat




I wish you had continued with your ECW project. You obviously have some understanding of the war. Your post makes some very good points. Welcome to the Matrix forums.

It is really hard to get the balance of gameplay right. I played with different ideas for about ten years and wrote a huge amount of code to handle things like battles, attrition, supply, recruitment and taxation. My sim has both "marching" and regional armies, with militia that would only fight in their home counties. Armies without the right command structure fought at a disadvantage. I had visions of naval conflicts and of blockades of the other side's attempts to buy supplies from the continent. And I did a lot of research on the cost of munitions and supplies so that the decisions made as to what to spend tax income on were realistic, even down to not paying your troops and facing desertions as a result.

I came across Rise of Prussia quite recently, bought it, and was amazed to see that the game design was really close to the way I had been designing (but they did the graphics about 1000 times better). I do hope the developers are open to suggestions before everything is locked down.

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The tutorial text has typos including "Flee" for "Fleet".

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There appear to be two General Hampdens. They have the same portrait, stats and seniority so presume it is a duplicate. One starts in Portsmouth, the other at London.

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Map errors -

There is a Town called "Reading" in the Newbury region, and a region called "Reading" next door. Surely that can't be right. Maybe the region should be called "Windsor".

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There is a region in Essex called "Shouthminster". I presume this is meant to be "Southminster". According to the game the region is forest. No trees are shown on thermap unlike the other forest regions. It should probably not be forest but marsh instead given the low lying nature of the area.