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janh -> Wish List (7/2/2010 4:24:56 PM)
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- reduce the "superaggressivity" of AI at the strategic level, often depleting itself in short time;
- AI also is slow in feeding reserve brigades into the depleted containers in the western theaters, while always completely trying to fill out the containers in the east. It would be better if AI had a decreasing probability with number of brigades in container (1: 100%, 2: 100%, 3: 85%, 4:50, 5: 33%, 6. 5%; 1st artillery on top: 100%, 2nd art: 5%).
- smaller provinces (counties, i.e. at least 6x -- 8x more "areas" per present province (if not even switch to a province independent, continuous movement path); connected in detail with minor and major roads, minor and major rivers, and minor and major railways such that movement of containers takes account of road quality, gaps in mountain ranges, bridges, fords etc.; maybe strategic movement should be division, corps, plus an Army headquarters including baggage train and engineers (no specific Army containers)). With smaller terrain, also a reduction of the game speed to 2 or 3 day turns would be awesome!
- Towns connecting by railways should all have railroad heads, that can be plundered/burned, rendering the railroad unusable until repaired. Similarly, with smaller provinces the railroads to get real trestles and bridges that could be burned, repaired etc.
- Reinforcement from neighboring "provinces" is too fast (instantaneous appearance in DC). And there should be a railroad station in the DC map if reinforcement appear by rail1!
- moddable, separate minimum unit strengths for artillery, infantry, cavalry etc. (incl. routing limits to <250, AI weapon upgrade thresholds etc); i.e. artillery=battalion sized (160-640 men).
- allow TOE of containers more flexible (see brigade filling above): allowed more units per divisions and div per corps and army as well to allow for a real formation "Army of Potomac"; I tuned down max infantry strength to 2500 men, which is way closer to average brigades in the CW; tune weapon, unit and building costs, times, etc to adapt them to the other changes and result in historic equipment and building rates.
- Allow all art to use indirect fire without the upgrade (more realistic), and tune down rifle and carbine ranges to typically 2 fields (200 yards), and max 3 fields for the expensive sharpshooter rifles. This makes battlefields seem bigger, i.e. more maneuvering space and fun. Also AI artillery doesn't get slaughtered so easily if the rifles are weaker and have shorter ranges. In DC AI needs to be tuned to use artillery from longer ranges, and keep it safer in the back, and maybe occasionally concentrate artillery from several containers for an initial bombardment.
- A true supply system including baggage train units in the TOE of a container, and a real supply line from a container to a nearby city or port that should be possible to be severed, and should affect the strategic movement (advance rate) of humans and AI, and should affect supply in DC.
- One more crucial fix I would hope to see would be the promotion system. I have modified the Commanders.txt to get all the famous names already right at the beginning and kind of assign them as brigade commanders. It would be nice to be able to correctly assign them. AI usually get also way more commanders, and then begins filling up all the containers East with dozens of leaders, while the Western armies and divisions barely get a head. Leaders should be limited ideally to the "number of brigades" in the container, plus "one for the container leader" itself (in DC every brigade should be allowed to hold its brigade general, plus a maximum of 1 higher rank officer of each rank). AI should really assign them in the proper way.
- Since AI only uses a 20% random in assigning leaders, it doesn't go through a "learning curve" like Lincoln in the CW: McDowell, McClellan, Pope, McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, Meade, Meade&Grant, to give one example. It would be nice if (A) the "uncover general ability" parameter were moddable, and I would tune it down a lot (1% per battle or week or so). I would like AI to take into account only known attributes, duty age and present rank, and not right at the start of 1861 put Grant at the head of AoP because he has the best parameters. He should slowly climb up the ladder one rank by one, and only once AI knows his true strengths, put him into promotion. Maybe one way would be to also allow generals to learn "leadership experience" in battle like units do: say max of +0.25 gain/loss for the "leadership" category per won/lost battle. And have all generals start out with similar values except the ones that in 1861 were really of rank:
0-3: can only be brigade generals
4-6: division capable
7-8: corps
9-10: can be promoted to Army or higher.
Then only allow AI to use this leadership category (plus Cavalry) to assign leaders. That kind of could mimic the duty age and promotions succession in a simple way and probably is a small enough chance to be modded!
- better DC AI for tactical combat, particularly add a function for it to find tactically good terrain to occupy and connect (i.e. give it the capability to form the fishhook line if you give it a map of Gettysburg as input -- i.e. more complex lines != straight front line diagonal across the battlefield, but curved etc.). Tune aggressiveness, make it behave more like civil war generals: lots of idle times for units in battle, an then movement typically as a whole formation (division wise attack, or corps), rather than treating each brigade almost independently.
- nicer, more realistic maps for DC: particularly a road network and cities/villages that could be realistic patterns, and make AI take advantage of those road nets: I.e. advance along roads, and not more cross-country in woods etc. Fight for control of woods and villages, hill etc (identify tactically important terrain features, see above).
EDIT:
- mentioned earlier: an interface to export "orders of battle" with time and terrain information so one could write an import/export filter to other games such as the Scourge of War engine (Norbsoft I think) to fight out battles. It would of course be awesome if the internal detailed combat engine would at some point be replaced with such a 3D engine, including features like "headquarters in the saddle" (player is represented as a general, i.e. first person view and no other overview perspective other than a sketched battlefield map; brigades, divisions, corps can be given separate detailed orders {"... hold Brawners farm at all costs","send reinforcements from neighboring division"...}, i.e. AI generals take over battle control over friendly formations, and AI generals of containers have very distinct habits, aggressiveness etc.
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