American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

ACWGC Forums

* ACWGC    * Dpt. of Records (DoR)    *Club Recruiting Office     ACWGC Memorial

* CSA HQ    * VMI   * Join CSA    

* Union HQ   * UMA   * Join Union    

CSA Armies:   ANV   AoT

Union Armies:   AotP    AotT

Link Express

Club Forums:     NWC    CCC     Home Pages:     NWC    CCC    ACWGC
It is currently Thu Mar 28, 2024 8:40 am

All times are UTC - 5 hours




Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 2 posts ] 
Author Message
 Post subject: AEGOD ACW
PostPosted: Mon Dec 05, 2011 5:37 am 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Fri Dec 02, 2011 7:42 pm
Posts: 5
Hi,

I've just got AEGOD ACW and finding it quite a learning curve to get used to it. Have done the tutorial which only covers the very basics. If there are any other players of this sim passing by this forum be interesting to hear if you have any ideas of how to get up to speed on this sim quickly as I'd like get to a level where I can feel ready for a training game.

I'm happy to in return help anyone learn GGWBTS as thats the game I know best so far.

Jon

_________________
Lt Jon Moore
United States Volunteers
Army of the Tennessee
4th Brigade, 1st Division, XVI Corps
Image
Image


Top
 Profile Send private message  
Reply with quote  
 Post subject: Re: AEGOD ACW
PostPosted: Mon Dec 05, 2011 9:49 am 
Offline

Joined: Thu Sep 11, 2003 4:32 am
Posts: 1737
Location: USA
I have a little bit posted in the CSA War College. The trouble with the tutorials is they cover only the basics of the game in a short battle scenario. The game works very poorly on short scenarios because the real guts in the game are its logistics system and they only work in the one year and longer scenarios. I have always played the campaign starting in 1861 with Kentucky neutrality.

One thing if you just got the game you may not have downloaded the latest patches. They fix some major problems and also introduce the new Kentucky neutrality rules. You should be on version 1.16.

The other thing is go to the AGEOD forums. The game is old so there is little new published there by if you search them by topic you will find short write ups on how to do just about anything. But its scattered all over the place. Unfortunately no one ever pulled all the information together into a useable form.

The game is probably the best strategic Civil War simulation published to date. It does have some bugs and poor handling of certain situations because the company didn't provide long term support. That is why all the latest patches are beta. They are put out by some of the people who worked on the game but are not sponsored by the company.

The blue ocean simulation doesn't work well. It is sort of an ophan child of the main game and wasn't finished. You want to put some blockade fleets out in the Ocean boxes but it isn't worth while to blockade ports. The main use of ocean going fleets is for transporting invasion forces. Also ships, ocean or river, are useless against forts. This was put in to fix another serious problem on balance.

The game is a little to restrictive on Army Generals. The Union will have a problem with this. The political cost is a little to high for bypassing the worse generals so you will find it difficult to get the command mix that resulted historically by games end.

The game is bugged on handling the end of game victory. It also never implemented as far as I can see a victory point ending. I recommend that when you play someone a full campaign that you set up your own victory conditions. The Morale victory works but is very difficult to achieve. This is because it tends to "age" back to even if you aren't able to continuously generate major wins yielding high Morale points. The so called "Victory Point" system doesn't seem to do much of anything. What I usually do is say that a National morale victory is a major victory and if you end the game without a National Morale victory then who ever has more than two to one on Victory Points is the margianl winner. However, you will find that you can conguer the entire North or South without generating the National Victory or even sometimes the 2:1. Unfortunately, I have not played the game through enough (it is a really long game) to have better rules of thumbe for victory rules.

The games economy system has some problems as well. I think they never got it into balance with other things. I have seen some posts by people claiming there was a gain to investing in infrastructure but I never could see it. The only thing I put money and resources into was railroads and river transport.

The combat system is poorly displayed. The final results screen is very difficult to interprete and you will find that you can't determine why you lost or even won a particular battle based on it. That is because it shows all troops in the region but not who actually fought. Who fights and how depends on some very complex calculations and the actual battle consists of hundreds of individual clashes. The only way to see these and really understand the combat system is to turn on the debug log so they are recorded. This file contains every combat resolution that occurred in the turn. But it has no structure. Someone wrote a utility that would separate it into individual battles and make it make some sense. Not sure if I can find it again or if it still works on newest version.

But to summarize, a battle consists for the individual brigades and divisions being feed into the conflict. How they enter and how the fight depends on what brought on the battle. Some will be in position entrenched. Others will enter as reinforcements. How many can fight at one time depends on terrain and generalship. In mountains the army frontage is reduce to almost division size. All fights are between divisions or smaller units. In open terrain larger frontages are possible but whether they coordinate depends on your generals. That is why you will see Jackson with a small force in the valley able to put up an outstanding fight and Lee with good Corps commanders able to defend Richmond against larger forces. If the designers of the game had found a way to antimate what actually was going on and display that instead of that end of battle summary screen this would have been hands down the best Civil War game published. As is you just sit there wondering how 2000 men fought 20,000 to a stand still.

Here is a very summarized checklist for each turn in game:

I. Strategic overview (not needed every turn):
1. Review VP and NM values.
2. Review Objectives (F9).
3. Review Loyalty settings (F7).
4. Review Politics settings(F8).

II. Field Work
1. Review Supply Network.
2. Trenches
3. Railroad Building/Repairs

III. Resource Management:
1. Raise Men (F4).
2. Raise Money (F5).
3. Review Investment Settings (F6).

IV. Building Units
1. Analyze Needs
2. Purchase Units based on priority requirements

V. Leaders
1. Review available Leader pool
2. Reposition Leaders.
3. Promotions and Removals

VI. River Naval Forces
1. Review Available Naval Forces.
2. Position Naval Forces for Future Operations
3. Adjust Fleets (makup and leaders)
4. Conduct transport/amphibious operations

VII. Oceanic Naval Forces
1. Review Naval Forces
2. Position Available Naval Forces for Future Operations
3. Adjust fleets
4. Load pre-positioned Land units (transport and amphibious)
5. Conduct transport/amphibious operations

VIII. Military Organizations
1. Review Forces Chains of Command
2. Position Units/Leaders for commands
3. optiize Force command structures.
4. Set Force positures

IX. Operational Movement/Combat orders
1. Review short term and long term objectives
2. Plan movements/combat to support objectives
3. Ensure Force properly positioned to achieve objectives.
4. Set movement/combat orders.

Execute

It as complicated as it looks since many of these steps are only required every few turns. The most important thing is to remember the E/R and T/Y keys are you friends. They cycle through all land and naval units so you don't miss one.

_________________
General Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
AoT II/1/3 (CSA)


Top
 Profile Send private message  
Reply with quote  
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 2 posts ] 

All times are UTC - 5 hours


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 131 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Search for:
Jump to:  
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group