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Screens - 4/11/2005 7:31:56 PM

herbie

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hi,

please can you show us new screens (about battles ...........)

bye

herbie

Post #: 1

RE: Screens - 4/11/2005 11:41:07 PM

ericbabe

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Sure! I'll try to get something together tonight.

The 3D unit icons for the battles are almost implemented -- we need to change how we do infantry and skirmishers just a bit. Also our firing smoke and flashes are just a bit misaligned.

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Post #: 2

RE: Screens - 4/12/2005 4:02:48 AM

ericbabe

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Here's a winter battle from the 1796 scenario between Austria and France. My graphics guy will be mad at me because the Austrians are still wearing Prussian uniforms (I switched the file numbers by accident and haven't fixed it yet and he's been nagging me to do it for a while).

The French flag with the artillery unit shows the presence of a commander. The Austrian division on the road is disordered and out of supply. There's a French guard south of the caisson and the artillery, and a French light infantry at the east side of the map.

Attachment (1)

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RE: Screens - 4/12/2005 4:03:57 AM

ericbabe

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Here's the same view but with the very popular chits instead of the 3d icons.

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Post #: 4

RE: Screens - 4/12/2005 4:10:47 AM

ericbabe

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Here's a snap of the strategic map. It's updated from the snaps on our website -- has the 3D icons in place.

There's an Austrian commander and supply depot in Veneto, and an Austrian diplomat in Tyrolia. The striped areas are under Austrian protectorate. You can see the strategic fog of war on the west side.

One thing unfinished on the strategic map is city placement -- we need to sit down and put all the cities in (roughly) the proper locations.

That's all I've got right now. I'll try to remember to keep taking snaps during testing and will try to upload a new one every few days.

Attachment (1)

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RE: Screens - 4/12/2005 4:28:31 AM

CushVA

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From: Virginia, USA
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Thanks for the screens. What is the flag with the red/blue triangles in each corner? (or the green ones in Switzerland) Is that the fog of war? There might be units there, but you're not sure what type?

On edit: I guess I could have just called them the flags with the diamonds in the center

< Message edited by Cush -- 4/12/2005 4:29:08 AM >

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Post #: 6

RE: Screens - 4/12/2005 7:10:27 AM

ericbabe

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Flags represent armies, corps, or stacks of armies/corps.

The flag with the white diamond is French. The green/white is our generic minor country flag (in this case, Swiss.) The boxes beneath them show strength. You can right click on them to open popup box showing everything the flag represents.

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RE: Screens - 4/12/2005 7:58:15 AM

sol_invictus

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Very nice screens.

Show as many as you can.

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RE: Screens - 4/12/2005 11:25:24 AM

ancient doctor

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They look very nice,especially the one of strategic map with province info.However i still fail to understand how battle is done in tactical map.What scale of units is the smallest in it?Regiment,brigade,division and how the mechanics of battle are actually handled?something like panzer general series of SSI or Imperialism 1?Are the fighting units in tactical battle one type per icon(infantry,cavalry,artillery)each alone or units represent a mess of the above and their combined strength fires?

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RE: Screens - 4/12/2005 11:48:45 AM

herbie

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thanks, thanks ...........

please more

herbie

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RE: Screens - 4/12/2005 5:14:20 PM

ericbabe

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There is a bit of information about the tactical battles on our website, west-civ.com. They are fought at the division level, though the divisions may be split into two units. As best as I can recall that game, I believe it is similar to SSI's Panzer Generals in terms of general interface and turn structure, though there are some important differences.

Each icon represents a single type of division -- though obviously at the division level (theoretical strength of 10,000 men) there needs to be some abstraction going on: for instance, when a division is in line formation it only represents that a majority of regiments are deployed in this formation, not that every single man is formed into line.

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RE: Screens - 4/12/2005 5:14:53 PM

ericbabe

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Herbie, thank you for the interest in COG.

Eric

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Post #: 12

RE: Screens - 4/12/2005 8:37:33 PM

herbie

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thanks for the information.

herbie

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Post #: 13

RE: Screens - 4/14/2005 3:08:41 AM

ericbabe

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Here's a snapshot showing the forts (at night, in the rain).

My Austrians were up on the height overlooking the southern fort and managed to blast a breach in the walls. Mack's division worked their way inside when the northern garrison was disordered, but then became disordered in a fight with the western French garrison. You can't see it on the snapshot but there are a few French divisions in line formation just west of the fort obscured by the fog-of-war. (These are in addition to the two I'm trying to distract on the far west side.) I've got reinforcements coming down the road on the east, but the odds are against my holding out until they arrive.

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RE: Screens - 4/14/2005 4:40:07 AM

Becket

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Wow, I *love* the 3D units, eric. Looking great - I can hardly wait for this one. AAR! AAR! AAR!

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RE: Screens - 4/14/2005 6:12:14 AM

CushVA

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was the wall breached by Artillery, or are the other ways of doing it?

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RE: Screens - 4/14/2005 5:41:16 PM

ericbabe

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Hi Cush,

Artillery units are the best way to breach the walls, but infantry divisions are considered to have some artillery attached and so their attacks have a chance to breach as well.

There's a military training upgrade -- Engineering Corps -- that gives a nation's units a greater chance of smashing walls (and helps with other things, like defending in villages and crossing rivers).

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Post #: 17

RE: Screens - 4/14/2005 5:48:02 PM

ericbabe

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Thanks Becket, I'll pass your kind words along to the graphics guy, Mr Barish.

We're hoping to squeeze more of the 3D infantry icons into a hex -- maybe 3 per unit. I'd also like to add separate, smaller unit bits for units with skirmishers deployed: right now the 3D icons kneel when skirmishers are deployed (you can see it in the raining snapshot -- Austrian skirmishers opposed to French between the two forts). The kneeling icons look good, but it's hard to tell at a glance when skirmishers are deployed.

The beta team is working hard helping me rout-out a couple of troublesome bugs, but hopefully somebody will get a chance to put together an AAR.

Thanks for the interest,

Eric

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Post #: 18

RE: Screens - 4/14/2005 5:56:45 PM

ericbabe

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Here's another Austria vs France battle, this time in 1805. (I finally fixed the Austrian uniforms.) I'm the Austrians; AI is playing the French. They drove me out of the fortress at the start of the battle. I've got the two garrisons remaining in the fortress, but they are disordered and very depleted. Units in the fortress are considered to have access to the big guns and can attack as heavy artillery, so the French infantry division in column at the northern part of the fortress has just started blowing away Archduke Charles' division in the woods beside it.

It set up in line formation on the ridge at the east at the beginning of the battle but my units there are too far out of range to do much good. The two French artillery in the middle have been doing a lot of damage, and I see they have a third artillery coming up from the rear. The French have reinforcements on the way and I do not, so I better hurry up.

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RE: Screens - 4/14/2005 6:08:01 PM

ericbabe

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Here's the same battle five hours later. (I had to include this one just to show off our fine smoke effects.)

French reinforcements are here. Notice the heavy cavalry (black horse) facing my artillery and the French guard helping to flank my milita at the top of the map. I'm moving around to flank his line at the south but France has several cavalry down there holding me back. He's also got two cavalry that just rallied north of the river that are headed my way.

I ended up winning the battle, but just barely. I managed to drive off the cavalry and complete the flank at the south just before their guard and cavalry moved in position to flank my line at the north. (I was able to split the Austrian infantry division at the north and hold the horses on the other side of the river for an hour before the guard finally knocked me back and let the cavalry through, but by then my infantry in the south had rolled back their line.)

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RE: Screens - 4/14/2005 8:09:18 PM

Lannes

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wonderful

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RE: Screens - 4/14/2005 9:15:33 PM

CushVA

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Whats the range of your artillery? (meaning how many hexes can they fire)

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RE: Screens - 4/14/2005 9:51:11 PM

ericbabe

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They are most effective in the first four hexes, after which they fall off considerably. I think they can actually attack something at range of 10 hexes, but at that range they don't do very much, unless maybe against a squared infantry on ice.

Infantry divisions are condsidered to have at least some small amount of artillery attached and can attack minimally at a range of 6, though most of their damage falls off after the first 2 hexes.

I found data from the Prussian military of the percentage of hits from infantrymen firing at a sheet of cloth roughly man sized in height at various ranges and have based our hit numbers using this as the normalized optimal result. It was hard to stick to a uniform scale using units at the division level, since in reality a division wouldn't be stuck in one hex, so we consider the divisions to be operating with the unit icon as their center of operations, and tweaked the range tables a bit for the sake of game playability.

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RE: Screens - 4/15/2005 4:20:37 PM

I�aki Harrizabalagatar

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Eric
Probably you will need to lower that optimal, as performance in real battle is always dramatically worst than in training

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RE: Screens - 4/15/2005 5:51:20 PM

ericbabe

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Hi Inaki,

Thank you again for the data you sent me.

What I meant by *normalized* optimal is that I used the range curve generated by the Prussian data as the shape for the range curve for my combat data.

I balanced the scale of the Prussian data by calculating an average casualty rate for Napoleonic battles, based on a table listing battles and casualty rates. I then ran many battle simulations to generate averages for my rules, and then tweaked the scale of the damage curve up/down until an approximate fit with the historical data was obtained.

I did change the range values somewhat for the sake of playability -- giving infantry divisions and artillery slightly longer effective ranges makes the battles much more interesting, and can be justified by the understanding that divisions are only abstractly located in the hex in which they are represented (consider that hex their base of operations) and so their ranges might extend a bit farther than the simple calculation of the parabolic arc of a cannonball might otherwise allow.

Eric

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RE: Screens - 4/16/2005 10:03:30 PM

CushVA

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Do buildings and houses give any kind of defense bonus?

And are forts (major ones) predetermined (meaning will the always be there)? Or can you have your engineer units construct them?

< Message edited by Cush -- 4/16/2005 10:08:09 PM >

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RE: Screens - 4/17/2005 12:35:08 AM

ericbabe

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Villages give defensive bonuses, but units in them attack out at a penalty compared to their performance in open terrain. (This penalty is greatly reduced for light infantry and skirmishing infantry.) Villages and forts also provide a small amount of re-supply to units that begin their turn located in them.

The maps for the battles are randomly created based on the parameters of the province you are fighting in. On our strategic map of Europe, terrain is associated with edges of provinces. If the invader of a province passes through mountains along at least one edge then the map is more likely to be mountainous. The number of villages is related to the population level of the province. The number of roads is related to its level of the "roads" development. Each province also has a "guns" development level; this determines the chance that there are forts on the map, and if there are forts it is related to how many there are and how large they are.

Currently the maps are generated from scratch each time a player enters a battle in a province. We have considered keeping track of a list of random seeds for each province and using these seeds to generate the maps, so that each province might only have 4 - 5 maps associated with it; the idea being that players might like to get to know the maps associated with each province.

Eric

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RE: Screens - 4/17/2005 2:11:24 AM

Le Tondu

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From: Seattle, WA
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quote:

ORIGINAL: ericbabe

Here's another Austria vs France battle, this time in 1805. (I finally fixed the Austrian uniforms.) I'm the Austrians; AI is playing the French. They drove me out of the fortress at the start of the battle. I've got the two garrisons remaining in the fortress, but they are disordered and very depleted. Units in the fortress are considered to have access to the big guns and can attack as heavy artillery, so the French infantry division in column at the northern part of the fortress has just started blowing away Archduke Charles' division in the woods beside it.

It set up in line formation on the ridge at the east at the beginning of the battle but my units there are too far out of range to do much good. The two French artillery in the middle have been doing a lot of damage, and I see they have a third artillery coming up from the rear. The French have reinforcements on the way and I do not, so I better hurry up.

I don't mean to be picky, but I have a quick question.

1. What uniforms are your Austrians wearing if they are fixed? Didn't Austrian infantry generally wear off-white for their enlisted? (Brighter white for their officers?) Maybe its my monitor, but I don't see any white at all.

I gotta say that I still prefer the NATO symbols to the 3D images. (They're just too hard to make out any detail.)

Thanks,

Rick

Oh yeah. What's that red and white flag? I've never seen an Austrian flag like that. (Thanks again.)

< Message edited by Le Tondu -- 4/17/2005 2:13:47 AM >

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RE: Screens - 4/17/2005 2:49:22 AM

Pippin

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Ok, so why is it I see no ships in these shots :P People just don't want to do naval battles?

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RE: Screens - 4/17/2005 4:12:02 AM

Le Tondu

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Good point Pippin ----even though naval battles are on the back burner for me.

One big question I have is : Will the fog of war model be applied to naval matters as well?

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Post #: 30