American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

I agree with Chris Perleberg . . . both his suggestions are at the top of my list. Put a pause button into playbacks; have some kind of dynamic sighting. You should be able to see what's in a valley from the top of a surrounding hill, not have to go into the valley and bump into them to "see" them.

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Your Obedient Servant,
Lt Gen Dwight McBride
Ist Division/1st Brigade
V Corps/AOP/USA

Playing the downloadable scenario "!Raid on Stephensons Depot" I have run into infantry twice now that are hiding below an elevation line.

I live in the area of this scenario and it is mostly a gradual decent from west to east. This is not a criticism of the scenario designer nor of the map designer. It is a criticism of the game engine (although a small criticism) with a possible solution going forwards.

If I could mod this game what I would do is create two different elevation types. One hexside elevation would only reflect an elevation change without blocking line of site. The other elevation hexside would block line of site.

Basically if you were looking at a topographical map then one would reflect an elevation change but a gradual one. The other would reflect a more dramatic elevation change but not to the point of being an embankment. There should be a middle ground in there. If you think about it a gradual slope, even if a mile long, doesn't block line of site. Yet a gradual slope in this game is going to have an elevation change that does block line of site and allows for some rather ahistorical results and ambushes.

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Lt. Col. Thomas Wayne (Iddings)
6th Brigade, 3rd Division, I Corps
Army of the West

I have a few things to add to this thread:

I would like to see a more defined distinction between mounted and dismounted officers. According to the parameter data I have seen, other than the movement points, there seems to be no real difference, and thus, no point to dismount.

Secondly, I would like to see some improvement on fixed units. I completely understand the rationale for fixed units, but I am presently in a battle where my opponent is attacking fixed units, and the rest of the units in that area that have not been fired on remain fixed even though in a real life situation, they would most certainly react in some way. Perhaps a better way to handle fixed units would be either:

1) Pay a victory point penalty to activate them
2) Use a hex radius to activate them instead of being fired on

Just some thoughts...

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Brig. Gen. Daniel Houghtaling
(aka Billy Barlow)
7th Reserve Infantry Brigade, Second Division, XVI Corps
ilovetiaca@gmail.com

For the later try using the "Alternate Fixed Unit Release" optional rule, it works this way:
"Select Alternate Fixed Unit Release to have Fixed units become released
whenever an enemy unit comes within 5 hexes of them regardless of the line-
of-sight to that enemy unit."

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Lieutenant General Christian Hecht
Commander I Corps, Army of the Potomac

"Where to stop? I don't know. At Hell, I expect."

Army supply wagons should be recognized as falling underneath the Army Commander and thus would follow the Commander when control alt is used. Corps and division supply wagons do this so why not Army.

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Gen Ned Simms
2/XVI Corps/AotT
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00

In a melee, it requires a minimum of 4 units to be in position around a unit in decent shape in order to eliminate the unit. If the unit is routed but not isolated, it requires a minimum of 6 units in position around the routed unit to eliminate it. If the unit is routed and is isolated from the previous turn, it requires only one unit to eliminate it. A routed unit should not require more units to eliminate it than a unit in good status.

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Gen Ned Simms
2/XVI Corps/AotT
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00

There seems to be flaw in the way that the JTS/HPS Campaign series handle the last turn of a campaign battle. The last player in sequence gets to complete that turn, but the program does not allow the other player to view it! As soon as the last player hits the Next Turn tool button, the program immediately whisks away to the start of the next campaign battle setup, without allowing the first player to view the last player's move. Ordinarily this poses no real problem, but occasionally that last half of the final game turn can decide the victory level, leaving the first player in sequence in the dark as to what exactly happened. Moreover, some of us like to keep track of regimental losses in a campaign effort, and it is not inconceivable that an entire regiment or two might be eliminated in that last half of the turn.

The game engine should allow an opponent to view that last half turn of the battle before advancing on to the next campaign battle setup.

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General Jos. C. Meyer, ACWGC
Union Army Chief of Staff
Commander, Army of the Shenandoah
Commander, Army of the Tennessee
(2011-2014 UA CoA/GinC)

I agree!

And I wonder why there is no password protection on the campaign games?

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Lt. Col. Thomas Wayne (Iddings)
6th Brigade, 3rd Division, I Corps
Army of the West

The reason for the lack of a password for campaigns is passwords would not allow causalities, etc to carry over to the next scenario. And the carry over is one of the important aspects of the campaigns.

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General Ernie Sands
President ACWGC -Sept 2015- Dec 2020
7th Brigade, 1st Division, XVI Corps, AoT
ACWGC Records Site Admin

"If you do not know where you are going, any road will take you there."

Some of the roads in the latest games are the same color (brown) as the background/terrain and are practically impossible to distinguish even when using Bill Peters road and water enhancements.

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Gen Ned Simms
2/XVI Corps/AotT
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00

It would still be helpful to have a password for the player to start his turn of the game without encryption of files. It would help prevent a person from accidently seeing the other players position (I've done this thinking I had a new file that I just received and not paying attention to the prompts) and make it difficult to cheat without going to an awful lot of work decoding files.

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

Yes, I could go for this. Several of the scenarios in the Gettysburg and other games have these large CSA regiments but the USA regiments are broken down into detachments making it easier to do scouting. If one of the USA units is surrounded and destroyed its not a huge loss but if one of the CSA regiments gets cut off and destroyed it often can mean the end of the chances of the South winning the scenario. In other words both sides should have smaller unit detachments if they are going to be used at all.

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Optional Rules I Use in WDS ACW Games:
(by column from left to right)
Column 1: All ON except for Man. Def. Fire; Column 2: All ON except for Alt Fixed Unit Rel.; Column 3: All ON except for Art.Capt. & Prop.Op.Fire

Gettysburg has a problem that was resolved a few years ago but has raised its head again. When arty pieces are destroyed by arty fire, the game does not always recognize it in the scoreboard (the piece disappears on the board but the number of lost arty pieces may not be advanced in the scoreboard and if so, points are not adjusted). My understanding was that it was found that the game had trouble counting lost arty pieces and a table was created to do the counting. It appeared to operate correctly for a long time but now it is doing the same thing again. Was the table eliminated in the updates?

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Gen Ned Simms
2/XVI Corps/AotT
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00

I have this in a current game on Campaign Ozark. My opponent and I assume that it could have been the combination of infantry & artillery fire that could be the cause, our guess here is that it leads to crew loss & unit elimination at the same time and that this might make the engine not count the gun losses.

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Lieutenant General Christian Hecht
Commander I Corps, Army of the Potomac

"Where to stop? I don't know. At Hell, I expect."

Well, going back to some older posts, I would like to see ammo set per unit and that there are limber/caisson supply wagons for artillery.

I don't like the random formula to figure if a unit goes low/out of ammo. I think it can be set in the .oob files and would be more accurately depleted based on the number of times a unit engages in combat.

The other example I can think of, for artillery, is where I captured some Reb guns that were out of ammo and my supply units were nearly on the other side of the map. Because I still had artillery ammo I was able to turn the guns and unload on the Rebs below. This wouldn't be possible considering the unit had no ammo and there were no supplies for at least 30 hexes. I really think that would help the accuracy of some battles and would be a nice upgrade for one of the future releases. ;o)

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Union War Dog!
MG. Derek Hampel
Cmdr. Second Div., XV Corps
Army of the Tennessee