Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

Gary, from earlier in the thread:

"So what is my goal: something in the form of 8-22 turns for the MOST part. That is about 3 hours of time. This doesnt mean that the occaisional 50-60 turn scenario will not emerge but in the long haul the scenarios that work the best for the AI are of shorter duration. They give the player (ie. customer paying bucks) the most enjoyment."

The occaisional 50-60 turn scenario is the full battle for both AI and HTH. No two day battles are featured in this particular game as of yet. And if they are they will be in the form of HTH and available after the game is out via my website.

But I wont ask my playtesters to go through a complete two day battle anymore. They just dont have the time. The best we can do is give it a cursory glance and hope that we are somewhere in the right ballpark. Feedback will help us to correct any errors and since these will be the exception than the norm I think that that will work out fine.

Just figure that you wont see all of the different variations that you saw of each full battle scenario that was offered before. There just wont be time to do that.

Colonel Bill Peters
Armee du Rhin - V Corps, Cavalerie du V Corps, 20ème légère Brigade de Cavalerie, 13ème Hussar Regiment
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt and ... more to come)

[url="http://www.fireandmelee.net"]Fire and Melee Wargame site[/url]

Monsieur I feel sorry for any one who buys these games to play solo. I have seen the AI make some of the dumbest moves, if a person gets off beating the present AI it’s because we are not selling the Club right! Sorry but it’s the way we play some clubs have different levels of play. If a guy or gal comes to this club and gets beat up then they are back to the AI. That how I see it !

Col de Art 6/3 II Corps AN Marbot CS

I hear ya Clifton. But the approach of alot of our customers is to view the game as something they can fire up and play against an adequate AI. Many of them dont want to join a club or play on a ladder.

Thus if the AI scenarios are missing they sort of tire of playing the same few scenarios. There are scenarios I am putting together that though the AI is not a great opponent will make it very hard for the Human player to win at. I just lower the turns you have to work with and basically the AI cant possibly make as many variations it would take in order for the Human to walk all over it. Mainly the on the Defense but ther are some situations where the AI attacks and the Human is very hard pressed to win.

Anyway, I will be putting out alot of AI scenarios to the guys on the team this week to get as much of this done by the time that the Fall begins. Maybe the game will be ready to go by the end of the year. I hope so!

Colonel Bill Peters
Armee du Rhin - V Corps, Cavalerie du V Corps, 20ème légère Brigade de Cavalerie, 13ème Hussar Regiment
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt and ... more to come)

[url="http://www.fireandmelee.net"]Fire and Melee Wargame site[/url]

Appreciate your honesty in all this, Bill.

Cheers

Bill I have a few questions. You state:

<i>There are a few of them that actually say anything but the numbers are there. </i>

and then:

<i>The gist of this is that we are losing sales in part because the solo gamer buys a title and sees that only a smaller percentage of the total scenario count cater to him.</i>

If they are not saying anything how do you know that the reason for the lost sales is because the scenarios "do not cater to them".

How do you know that it's not because they don't like the graphics qualtiy or the rules are to complex etc..? There are a lot of games out there that sell because they are snazzy with the effects; but may not be so great to play for we grognards who are less concerned with such things. I am assumimg there is some sort of empirical data that HPS has analyzed to improve sales if that is the goal. I can't help but take this news as something of a penalty to the loyal customer base. I'll be holding off my purchase of the new game for later "developments" that is for certain. Please don't take this as an attack on you or Tiller I just think this is important feedback for the company.[:D]

Major General Ed Blackburn
Commanding Second Div, II Corps, AAA
3rd Bn / 1st Regiment of Foot Guards

Feedback from Rich over the years. He gets it mainly from the customer and forwards it on to me or just reports on it.

The majority of our customer base is solo players, they are unhappy with the current AI and also with the lack of AI scripts.

'nough said on this issue.

Colonel Bill Peters
Armee du Rhin - V Corps, Cavalerie du V Corps, 20ème légère Brigade de Cavalerie, 13ème Hussar Regiment
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt and ... more to come)

[url="http://www.fireandmelee.net"]Fire and Melee Wargame site[/url]

Bill before the series is trashed..could you please give us the Peninsula War mate.These smaller battles will be ideal for shorter scenarios....also i bet it sells better than any other title

Bill, When I designed scenarios, in order to improve (somewhat) the A/I I used to increase the number of objective hexes. It helps a little bit as fighting tends to focus around the objective hexes.

Also, as it is expensive and difficult to program a better A/I, it is easier to increase the number of available orders for the units. For the moment the AI knows only two attitudes : "attack" or "defend". Could it be possible to give units simple orders like :
MOVE TO a specific hex
REST and do nothing (except laundry, eating, raping, etc.)
RETREAT AND REORGANIZE (for the french only ....)
etc.

Also the way the AI orders follow each others is not good. Ex If you order an unit to "attack la Haye Sainte" at 9:00 and Mont Saint Jean at 11:00, it will attack Mont Saint Jean comes 11:00 having take la Haye Saint or not. It should be implemented that an objective should be acheived before going to the next one.

yrs
stephane

Austrian Army
6th husaren Blankenstein
finally figured out how to have the signature inserted in the post

Wouldn't it be more logical to provide a smaller scenario mix of good quality scenarios that caters for both types of players. Why not just 30 solid scenarios that have been put through a solid play test regime? That would be easier to develop, manage and play test.

80-100 scenarios seems excessive - especially when they will only be catering for part of the support base, albeit the larger part from what I now gather.

What is the point of making this public now if the decision has been made and the game is not to be released until 2009? Huh?



Nik Butler
NWC - Lt Col, 6th Brigade, 4th Div, British Army

Nik - yes, well we are heading in that direction but the campaign still makes for alot of scenarios. I know folks would complain if I didnt offer choices and just having a linear campaign file with no different branches would be boring. But you can take it to the extreme too. So get out your calculator and start multiplying by the power of 2 and you will see why we have so many scenarios in one Nap. title while the Panzer series and Squad Battles dont have to offer so much.

Stephane - thanks for the tips. Yes, that is where I am headed and I also am adding in multiple scripts so that the AI wont do the same thing every game.

Yes, Rich has already said the Pen. Wars is in the works. One of our designers picked up the title and will work it through to completion. We are doing up all of the major campaigns. Things like Egypt might end up getting added to a N.Italian game. Right now we are concentrating on the main campaigns and the other ones will be optional on our list. Maps are the hardest things to get for some of these campaigns ...

Colonel Bill Peters
Armee du Rhin - V Corps, Cavalerie du V Corps, 20ème légère Brigade de Cavalerie, 13ème Hussar Regiment
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt and ... more to come)

[url="http://www.fireandmelee.net"]Fire and Melee Wargame site[/url]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by zinkyusa</i>
If they are not saying anything how do you know that the reason for the lost sales is because the scenarios "do not cater to them".

How do you know that it's not because they don't like the graphics qualtiy or the rules are to complex etc..? There are a lot of games out there that sell because they are snazzy with the effects; but may not be so great to play for we grognards who are less concerned with such things. I am assumimg there is some sort of empirical data that HPS has analyzed to improve sales if that is the goal. I can't help but take this news as something of a penalty to the loyal customer base. I'll be holding off my purchase of the new game for later "developments" that is for certain. Please don't take this as an attack on you or Tiller I just think this is important feedback for the company.[:D]
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Ed et. all,

This isn't an "official" HPS decision or policy, but rather a course of action Bill has chosen to pursue - i.e. focusing mainly on the AI player.

It is true that more customers play against the AI or hot seat, sales numbers verses on-line activity prove that hands down. Feedback over the years have shown it as well. However I personally feel that a smaller pool of scenario that have been play tested extensively for balance against both the computer and PBEM is the way to go. Maybe some leaning more one way than the other, but not an absolute either way. As it stands now most of the games have been designed primarily with PBEM play in mind - mine included. We need to adjust that a bit and take into consideration more of the customer base, rather than just the vocal minority. With that said, we certainly don't want to leave the PBEM community out in the cold either.





Maréchal Hamilton,
Duc de Barbancon
21st Division
VII Corps, ADR

1er Regiment Garde
Fusiler-Grenadiers

Hi Rich and Bill
I started as an AI player not playing anything else for quite a few years. Just on battleground.

My 5 cents is that the full Napoleonic battle was the thing of interest to me not say a fight around Utitza or something similar. This is anecdotal feedback for sure but one would wonder why a player would want to fight a small part of the full action as opposed to, well the full action....

Rich we are a vocal minority for sure. Although I would add we are global advocates for HPS's products and our viral value to HPS should not be underestimated.

I am 20+ years in marketing including my own successful marketing company. I have been thinking recently about writing a case study for my clients about the depth of interaction created via web based communities and the brands companies offer. HPS being the perfect example. HPS are in a great position from a strategic marketing perspective IMHO thanks to the online community and your successful engagement with it. This is leading edge from a product development perspective.

Anyhow I appreciate everyone is an expert [:D][:)][:D][B)][:p] and many factors must be balanced. A problem I have also struck with national branding initiatives in New Zealand where our stakeholder set was 2000+ 'experts'

Keep up the great work guys, can't wait for the next title!

Regards





General de Brigade Knox
Baron de l'Empire
2e Regiment Gardes d'Honneur (the regaled pheasants)
La Jeune Garde
CO. 1er Brigade, III Division Cavalerie Legere, III Corps Armee du Nord
http://www.aspire.co.nz/colinknoxnwc.htm

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Bill Peters</i>
<br />Nik - yes, well we are heading in that direction but the campaign still makes for alot of scenarios. I know folks would complain if I didnt offer choices and just having a linear campaign file with no different branches would be boring. But you can take it to the extreme too. So get out your calculator and start multiplying by the power of 2 and you will see why we have so many scenarios in one Nap. title while the Panzer series and Squad Battles dont have to offer so much.

...

Colonel Bill Peters
Armee du Rhin - V Corps, Cavalerie du V Corps, 20ème légère Brigade de Cavalerie, 13ème Hussar Regiment
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt and ... more to come)

[url="http://www.fireandmelee.net"]Fire and Melee Wargame site[/url]


<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Ah good point thanks Bill. We always get a massive bang for our buck in terms of scenarios.

Nik Butler
NWC - Lt Col, 6th Brigade, 4th Div, British Army

I agree with Colin. Surely many wargamers (pbem or solo, or solo against the AI) crave the big full battle scenarios. I play board games solo (with no AI at all of course[;)]) and it is always the big battle scenarios that excite me the most. To focus mainly on smaller scenarios just to get the best out of the weak AI surely weakens some of the appeal of the games, no matter how you play them?

I wonder, do all these solo gamers only play against the AI? Is there any anecdotal evidence that solo gamers like to play both sides in a battle, to study the battles like that - like boardgamers do? If so then this type of solo gamer has much in common with the pbem gamer and would want some of the big scenarios included.

Also, how many of these supposed solo gamers occasionally play games head to head or hot seat against friends (as Rich has suggested some do), or play pbem against friends without ever joining a club? Surely they want some big battles thrown in which aren't designed with AI limitations in mind? Maybe some people play the games in all the different ways. I agree with Rich that all types of play need catering for.

<center>[url="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/a.r.barlow/Napoleonic/nap.htm"]Brigadier General Antony Barlow[/url]
~ [url="http://www.geocities.com/anglo_allied_army_stats/Anglo_Allied_Army_Cavalry_Corps.htm"]2nd British (Union) Brigade, Anglo-Allied Cavalry Corps[/url] ~
~ [url="http://www.geocities.com/militaireacademie/dragoons.html"]4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards[/url] ~
</center>

And adding to what Rich H. has said - we are NOT forgetting the PBEM crowd either. But time being what it is I dont have the time to both playtest/assemble both HTH and PBEM versions and see them tested through to completion. Its just impossible to ask my playtesters to test BOTH version giving equal amounts of time to BOTH.

Thus as I said before: more AI scenarios, less on PBEM but there will not be a lack of PBEM scenarios. The long scenarios will be there just not in the same numbers as you saw them in the past.

Thus something like this:

Full battle scenarios for AI - probably no more than six scenarios. Historical, some what-ifs.

Medium sized fights - mainly for the AI but probably 10-12 for the PBEM gamer as well. AI scripted for the most part but a few PBEM versions.

Smaller actions - ALOT of these (6-18 turns) - AI scripted for the most part but a few PBEM versions.

So the game will have about a 70/30 mix towards AI.

But remember the HTH versions of ALL of the scenarios will be available for download later.

Simply put guys the ones you download will not be under my maint. agreement with John. They will be offered "As-is" from me out of my own time and that of my playtesters.

Sorry, you are not going to get it for "free" - I dont expect if I came by your business that you would continue to do services for free for me and I assume that you feel the same way. (added by edit) What I mean here is that if I worked on a ton of PBEM scenarios as well its going to delay the release date. I do not mean that you will have to pay for the HTH scenarios from my website. They will be free but I want to get the game out to start generating a bit of revenue.

Times are very tough. If you dont like the version I give you then change it and post it on your own website or put it up on Game Squad.

Rich hit it right on the nose. I am just reacting to the negative feedback from Jena, adjusting accordingly but trying to give all parties the scenarios they like.

Far too much discussion on this. Way too much paranoia guys.

Colonel Bill Peters
Armee du Rhin - V Corps, Cavalerie du V Corps, 20ème légère Brigade de Cavalerie, 13ème Hussar Regiment
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt and ... more to come)

[url="http://www.fireandmelee.net"]Fire and Melee Wargame site[/url]