Discussion thread for the SoW-Gettysburg Campaign

[pakfront]

Give the histwar demo a try. It has some impressive ideas but overall it illustrates just how complex building a good usable wargame is. Makes me really appreciate the thought and work norb has put into his products. If he ever does a campaign game I hope he follows what seems to be his motto so far, KISS, keep it seeming simple. By which I mean straight forward but deep concepts, well executed.

[louie raider]

Fish_au wrote:

Hancock the Superb wrote:

I really would enjoy not seeing a randomly generated map.

i agree, but is it feasible to digitally map even northern virginia at tactical scale, let alone a whole theatre, or . . . even . . . (drum roll) the entire continental theatre of war!

so that you could walk from washington to dallas?

it might be possible to get digital 3D topographical maps that combined with satellite terrain imagery for an ultra-accurate US theatre map, but then you'd have to go over the whole thing to reduce habitation and infrastructure to 1860s levels, and you'd have to mark buildings, forests, clear, slightly soft patches of ground, potholes and weathered shoulders on roads, spots where a chap might trip, etc.

impossible!

not impossible..... just very, very time-consuming.
lessee, that's how many miles chopped up into 2.48-sq. mi. maps...

[Hancock the Superb]

I mean, play on a theater sized map, with units that are scaled down and trees that are scaled down. So one map goes from Richmond to Washington. Main (and a few minor) roads are depicted, main groups of trees depicted, and minimum units in brigade sized strenght.

I do like the idea of getting satelite imagery, though. Satellites can go to the 1/2 meter square per pixle. Use this to upload the height. Then, there are theatre maps with the main towns on it: overlay one of these on the map, and it weeds out all the houses that are not in towns. Looking at the satellite picture, a engine looks for trees, then places trees on the map where there are trees. (If it can tell types of trees, all the better.) Fences are put in between fields (looking at satellite imagery), fields filled in with grain according to image.

Though the coding would be near impossible, this would make you able to do a campaign mode on small maps.

Creating these maps and loading in game would be intersting, though.

[Flanyboy]

I think it would make more sense to do a single historical battle campaign. I like the Peninsula or Overland Campaign personally but Chancellorsville or Antietam might work better for sales.

Atlanta Campaign would be cool also.

Personally I think it would make more sense to do a single battle campaign and then as Norb works on a few things over time, a few more amazingly successful games he will have a good start on the theater maps.

A Peninsula or Chancellorsville campaign would map a good deal of the land needed for a main eastern theater campaign and another campaign in the same region would mean over several releases they could piece together a giant campaign map.

[149th Reg: P.V.]

Another option would be to use a strategic map for force movement and then tactical maps for battle. We have done this with some WWII operations and it seems to work well, do not know how it would transfer to the civil war though. Oh and my first post, just found this and cannot wait for this game to be released.

[IronBMike]

norb wrote:

Louie Raider wrote:

this here's the kind of campaign i'd like to play, personally: develop a character and fight the ACW (almost) first-person-style. see how long you can survive the battles and try to rise up the ranks.

That's always been my long term goal. Fight the entire war using the same character. Build your army and see if you can get promoted and make it to the end.

I also think this would be a unique game experience and I would love to play a game like that. Now, if you had an option not to play like that it bring people in who didn't necessarily want to play the RPG-ish aspect.

But here is what game I am thinking of when I say this, and you'll probably be surprised.....Madden!

In Madden you can play games/seasons/franchises and stuff but then there is also superstar mode where you can only control your one player. I imagine superstar mode in a wargame to be you playing under the commander of the AI and coming up for performance reviews if you don't follow orders. You would have to work your way up to eventual overall command.

And all of this talk about real maps for every battle (not randomly generated) makes me a little giddy inside just thinking about it, although it's not really a feasible goal.

[Flanyboy]

In that sortta way I imagine your career almost like Hancock's. Start with a Brigade during the Peninsula campaign and by mid 1863 your a corps commander. Then it only deviates from Hancock's historical rise to power in that say instead of being wounded at Gettysburg your perfectly healthy and following Meade's failure to advance on Lee after Gettysburg Lincoln chose you to lead the army into the 1864 campaign instead of Grant.

[Hancock the Superb]

What would make that even more interestinger (though that isn't a word), is if I played as myself! :laugh: