In my opinion Waterloo was superior to the civil war games in almost every way. I wasnt actually that excited 8 years ago when I first heard the next Scourge of War game was going to be on Waterloo, as I have always been more of an ACW guy.
But Waterloo won me over with its more complex combat, the interplay between different types of arms, and the vast open battlefields of Europe.
You mention possibly combining the two games and that does make me think, there are a number of Waterloo features that if retroactively applied to the civil war games would make them better, at least to me.
The way of placing units feels much better to me in Waterloo. Placing units with right click and being able to hold the button down while moving the mouse to adjust facing before releasing is much better than having to left click and then manually having to adjust facing by hitting the wheel left/right buttons multiple times like in Gettysburg.
If this system were unified to the Waterloo system for both games, it would do alot for my muscle memory when it comes to going back and forth between the series.
There is a quirk of the Waterloo interface, which, while being an accident, and I do understand its not supposed to be this way, it nevertheless makes the game better. In Waterloo, certain brigade level commands still function from the brigade commander, even if all his units are under TC. Among them are double quick, retreat, charge, advance while engaged, and fall back while engaged. This gives the player alot more control over his units once they become engaged in combat.
In the civil war games, no functions of the brigade commander work while his units are TC,d
Again, I understand that the civil war games are how its supposed to be, and its Waterloo thats the accident. But accident or not, its better. Couple this quirk with multiple levels of TC like TC on/off all subordinates and it makes everything so much more quicker and more efficient when it comes to the ever important dance of jumping back and forth between AI control and TC.
If the civil war games could retroactively work this way, I might be more inclined to go back to them more often, maybe even more so as given the more spread out nature of the forces, hills and dense forests obscuring everything, more control would be even more useful in those games.
Im probably pipedreaming this one though and I understand that. But a guy can dream now cant he?
I dont know how far you want to take this, whether we're just talking remaster, or whether you want to improve the games as well. But Il ramble on anyway and you can take what you like and discard the rest.
Waterloo is a great game, but even so, there are some things that could use some, shall we say, tweaking.
1) There are a number of truly busted scenarios in the base waterloo game that could be fixed. and I think easily fixed with some minor scripting rework and objective placement/value adjustments. Most of the really broken ones are broken in silly ways that could probably be fixed in a few minutes. I wont list them all here, if youre interested, PM me and Il tell you which ones and why theyre broken.
2) The AI still mostly fights like its a civil war AI, with some napoleonics tacked on. The biggest area it could use some help in is how it uses combined arms. Its extremely vulnerable to having combined arms tactics used on it, and lacks the ability to return in kind.
Three key things
A) It leave its artillery behind on the attack, which always means I have the guns and it doesnt.
B) It needs to better support infantry attacks with cavalry. Sending infantry to attack one part of the line, but sending cavalry to attack a different part of the line is not cavalry supporting infantry. Instead they both end up getting destroyed because they both need each other. Infantry has to protect the cavalry, while cavalry controls the enemy formations allowing their infantry to gain the advantage.
C) The AI needs to up its skirmisher game. It doesnt use them nearly enough. If Im shooting one of its line units to pieces using just skirmishers, it should at the least know to kick out a few of its own to screen that unit. Most of the time it doesnt.
That brings me to skirmishers in general. Perhaps no type of unit in the game is as overpowered in so many useful, ultilitarian ways, as skirmishers.
Theres nothing wrong with the way they work on a by unit level. They generally do better in a firefight against an enemy line unit and thats fine, there has to be a reason to use them in the first place.
The problem is when you start to multiply them and multiply them. Swarm the field with them, and screen everything with them that they start to become ridiculous.
I just did a speedrun of the full battle of waterloo as the allies, and Im not kidding, I fought the whole thing with pretty much only skirmishers, theyre that good. You can see it for yourself if you ever feel like checking it out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeEdf-oUfVc&t=2174s
Skirmishers just need to be reigned in somehow. Right now they have no limits. I can kick out as many as I want from any unit I want, from as many units as I want, until the unit literally runs out of men. I can send them as far away from their parent unit as I want, and do anything i want with them.
Thats what they really need, some kind of limitation. Maybe a line unit can only kick out so many skirmishers, or perhaps only certain types of units, or a certain number of units per brigade. Or maybe even only units of a high enough troop quality can kick out skirmishers, say level 5: seasoned and above. Just something that makes them not so limitless. Right now they are an unlimited and constantly recyclable source of manpower.
Well, Im sure I could think of more, but this is enough for now. Also none of this is really meant as heavy criticism. Scourge of War Waterloo is my favorite wargame ever made. By and large, its a masterpiece.
One other thing. If you decide to maybe revisit the toolbars for both games, let Reb do them. Hes the master.