Blood in the Run questions

[MrSpkr]

RebBugler wrote:

1The double VP's is a feint...HEH HEH HEH

Take it up with the designer.

The designer is an evil, evil person.

Steve

[Ingles of the 57th]

This is an introductory scenario which serves as the qualifier for a further five scenarios.

New buyers of the game will soon get discouraged and shove it to the back of the cupboard (or wait for the first cheats to appear) if you allow your game designer to abandon the sole “objective” mid-game, leaving barely enough value left on the board to achieve the promotion level. Leave “seek and destroy” to sandbox battles.

I am an experienced player of TC2M over several years and even I have still not managed yet after several tries over the last couple of days to get beyond 2600 in this scenario 02 even at the lowest skill level.

A succession of rolling objectives is fine but every battle must have at least one objective at all times …. Only in Iraq can an objective be so vague as to be near non-existent.

The descriptions given by Mr Spkr and bscottkangum of how they achieved a result seems fortuitous and “Mickey Mouse” to an extreme …… more suited to “Lost Vikings” than “Gettysburg”. Let difficulty be determined, please. by the skill level setting used, not by a game designer trying to show how clever and sneaky he is. The spec said 45 minutes duration ….so 45 minutes it should be.

If to win the game you have to rush at full speed to the objective which then becomes valueless after 20 minutes, then let there be some clues to this in the scenario briefing or in the initial courier despatches.

The Iron Brigade had only one shot at the problem all those years back without the benefit of numerous replays to fathom out the “designer’s intent”. How would they have known they had to tackle the job like a bat-out-of-hell. If after 45 minutes they still held the position, and had beaten off the enemy, I would have dared you, Mr Designer, to have confronted “Long Sol” Meredith to his face and told him he had failed simply on a technicality !

You would doubtless have received a sword inserted appropriately.

Geoff Laver
Late of Her Majesty’s 57th Regiment of Foot

[DrMike1997]

I tried a novel approach last night and followed the directions given to the letter.
Granted I double timed to the battle but I believe the Iron bgde did the same in 1863.
I simply moved up to the left of the woods and swept in on their flank and rear. Got a victory only a few points from a major victory. I should have earned thse points as two reb regiments routed right through my lines ( in general the surender mech is working much better in G'burg than it did in TC2M - but not this time!) This was on normal setting so it can be done without gamey tricks. Besides, Pin and flank is a gamey trick? Well, who knew?

[Ingles of the 57th]

Hi Dr Mike

I just took the opportunity of looking up Solomon Meredith in some depth. Quite a strange character.

The following extract does indeed confirm that the Iron Brigade doubled to the objective so some indication of urgency must indeed have been extended to him .... even though he was the last to arrive.

"The morning of July 1 found the Iron Brigade marching toward Gettysburg on the Emmitsburg Road. After nearing to within a mile of the battlefield, the brigade broke into a double-quick step, arriving at McPherson's Ridge around 10:30 A.M., with Meredith riding the rear of the column. In the next hour, Meredith's men enveloped Archer's Brigade, routed it with heavy casualties, captured General Archer and a substantial number of his brigade, and broke the initial charge of Heth's Division. Meredith pulled his brigade back after its successful envelopment of the surprised Confederates."

Geoff Laver

[Nikolaj]

Ingles of the 57th wrote:

If to win the game you have to rush at full speed to the objective which then becomes valueless after 20 minutes, then let there be some clues to this in the scenario briefing or in the initial courier despatches.

I agree with this. I still don't know why the objective dissappears, but I assume that there's some historical reason for it. It would be nice to at least receive a dispatch when it dissappears, telling you why the objective is no longer important.

On a similar note, I was not aware that Devin's brigade in the "Boys Got Their Dander Up" battle retreated historically, and that the game is apparantly programmed to recreate that behavior. Hence I couldn't figure out why they kept retreating, until I read a thread on these forums.

I'm enjoying the game very much, but it would be nice to have these things explained in-game, so that those of us who don't know the details of the American Civil War have a chance of figuring out what's going on.

[Amish John]

Here's a nice writeup to provide some information on Gamble's and Devin's actions on July 1st.

http://www.gdg.org/Research/People/Buford/witt4.html

[Ingles of the 57th]

Hi Amish John

Thanks for the excellent article on Burford’s brigades.

I find the following extract from the article interesting also

“Upon receipt of this message, Meade reportedly responded, "Good! That is just like Reynolds, he will hold out to the bitter end. Reynolds then issued orders to his division commanders to come to the front at the double quick.”

This is clearly the inspiration for Sol Meredith to double up to the objective. But a shame we weren’t told.

It remains a moot point however whether knowledge of the actual events helps or hinders the game. Either in the writing of scenarios or in the playing of them. It surely becomes a compromise. And the AI soon drifts away from actual.

In 60 minutes in true life Meredith virtually destroyed Archer’s Brigade and almost died doing it. He certainly didn’t do this sitting on his butt on any arbitrary red-circled “objective”. Yet the only way to score big in this game is to do just that. Actual combat points become a sideshow. Indeed, deciding actually to fight people can lose you points.

Perhaps I was unfair to the designer (Sorry, Mark, I couldn’t have done it) Perhaps he was trying to come nearer to the real life situation, in limiting the objective-holding time and then hopefully unleashing the destruction. But this also made achieving the required score damned difficult and is discouraging to moderate players. A challenge , yes please. Near impossibility, no thanks.

Perhaps scoring should be biased more towards killing and less towards holding ?

But Norb must obviously have agonised long and deeply over this very basic and contraversial point and I must respect his judgement.
________________________________________________________________________

A better intro would have helped though …… and kept pedants like me quiet. Something urgent like:-

“A rebel attack is building up near McPherson’s farm. Get up there fast and assist Cutler to push them off the ridge. Consolidate your position, then give those rebels hell.”

The administrative stuff could have come later in a follow-up despatch.

Does anyone know whether the despatches displayed in SOWG actually reflect the real thing or whether just imagined by the designer ?

Geoff Laver
Late of her Majesty’s 57th Regiment of Foot

[Little Powell]

The OBJ disappearing 10 minutes to go will be fixed in the first patch.

[UglyElmo]

I have a quick question about this scenario. When I attach the 6th Wisconsin, instead of leaving it like the scenario says, what is the penalty/cost in VP's for using it. I didn't notice a negative score on the 6th Wisconsin or Meredith while playing, nor a subtraction on the final scoring tally.

I will have to try to double-time to the VP, to win this one since the best I have done without double-timing is approx. 2750. We should probably start a scenario post providing a bullet list of how to attack this scenario.

1. Rush headlong into the woods, not worrying about casualties but more on capturing the VP quickly through sheer numbers.

2. Hold off the Rebs.

3. At the 10 minute mark when VP dissappears, begin a withdrawal if Reb re-enforcements are overwhelming your position.

Sound pretty good? Feel free to add details if you like, I am going back to play this scenario again.

Have fun!

[Little Powell]

UglyElmo wrote:

I have a quick question about this scenario. When I attach the 6th Wisconsin, instead of leaving it like the scenario says, what is the penalty/cost in VP's for using it. I didn't notice a negative score on the 6th Wisconsin or Meredith while playing, nor a subtraction on the final scoring tally.

I will have to try to double-time to the VP, to win this one since the best I have done without double-timing is approx. 2750. We should probably start a scenario post providing some tips to everyone on how to increase their score.

Using the 6th Wisconsin doesn't effect your score. It's just recommended at the start of the scenario because historically they were held in reserve.