SOW Gettysburg Still Fun.

[mb213]

I used to play SOWGB quite a bit and loved to play multi player with the GCM group, but got busy over the past year and I have not put much time into the game. I recently down loaded SOW Waterloo and started playing SOWGB, sandbox games. While Waterloo is fun I have truely enjoyed SOWGB, it is an awesome game, very deep and diverse. You can play the same senerio, and it is different each time. I am doing day 1, in sandbox, on the GB map, as John Gordon and this time the Union Army is fighging their way up Cemitary Ridge. It is better to be on top.

[NY Cavalry]

Good to see you Jim.

Everyone has there own preferences and Waterloo is fun and a good game, but SOW Gettysburg is a much better game.

For a host of reasons Gettysburg is a better game. I think in some ways matrix pushed to get Waterloo out soon and for that reason it is a little short in my opinion. Waterloo is definitely fun and well worth the buy, but some things like a difficult gui, formation traffic jams, etc just miss the mark.


I'll give one example:
Artillery moving down the road will stop and deploy on the road in front of each other. This is just nuts. The battery should not unlimber unless they are in a proper line. Not strung out along a road each gun in front of the other. It just looks ugly.

SOW GB for me.

[Saddletank]

In many happy hours of road marching ( ) I've not seen that NYC. Weird. Have you a screenshot? Might be worth reporting as a bug.

Of course everyone has a personal preference but IMHO WL is a better game even with the unfortunate choice of GUI. The AI is much improved as is unit pathing. In our recent string of co-op MP battles the AI has beaten the player team 7 times out of 8. In GB we regularly whip the much less subtle AI with ease.

[Gran Capitán]

Artillery moving down the road will stop and deploy on the road in front of each other. This is just nuts.

This might be because you used the road column formation.

[NY Cavalry]

To clarify I do like Waterloo it is a very good game. It has nailed the combined arms operations of the units. The Ai is good and it is well worth the price.

I would like to see more solid formations. I would like to see guns stop firing when they have friendly troops to their front. I would like to see a longer canister range.

This is another issue: artillery commanders need to start following orders. This has been the case in SOW GB, but in Waterloo it is unmanageable. In the full Waterloo battle I decide to try a different approach. I will send Loban's corp with a corp of cavalry to Wellingtons right. I will pull back first corp a little to watch for the Prussians. I will change the avenue of attack from South to north to west to east. I un TC all the officers of the 2 corps and send them left. I will direct them from there north into battle line line and give the order to attack (as now they all have hold). Along the way the artillery just stops. Why??????? One or 2 guns do deploy if they are close, but most are not. They just got a glimpse of the enemy and stop. Waterloo has too many troops to micro manage. I tc the guns and get them moving again. This is all wrong they need to follow orders like the infantry and cavalry. Also, when setting up my line one of my brigaders decided to launch an attack while under a hold order to the northwest and not to the north to clear the allied division and then turn east.

[Saddletank]

To clarify I do like Waterloo it is a very good game. It has nailed the combined arms operations of the units. The Ai is good and it is well worth the price.

I would like to see more solid formations. I would like to see guns stop firing when they have friendly troops to their front. I would like to see a longer canister range.

The KS Mod fixes #1 and #3. Artillery in the KS mod is now absolutely lethal, especially in v1.08 as it now prioritises squares, columns and cavalry in that order over all other targets. In an MP battle a couple of days ago I had a 6 gun battery get a points score of over 250 points per gun.

#2 is a fault common with GB of course and is something I think all players would like to see patched. I think it would be a lot of work for Norb and his team however.

Just to clarify as well on my side of this discussion, I think SoWGB is an excellent game as well - I'm not saying its history now that WL has come along. Our MP group still plays it for other mods like Fontenoy and Custer. The lack of squares functionality in GB means that for some periods it is a better base to mod from.

I honestly haven't see batteries halt and deploy like you have. Maybe its because I only ever enjoy playing any SOW title at the brigade or division level and I TC my battery commanders. If AI controlled battery commanders do this it should be looked at by NSD. Maybe batteries need to be kept close to their supporting inf/cav and only act defensively like this when they are unsupported?

[Marching Thru Georgia]

As Saddletank said, the KS mod fixes many of the artillery shortcomings in the stock game. The problem of guns halting and deploying at great distance is due to the fact that all units, infantry and artillery, begin to engage very near to their maximum range rather than their effective range. This was a complaint of SOWGB too.

There is no simple solution if NSD does not change this. The behavior is in a part of the code that cannot be modified unfortunately. Otherwise it would be a simple fix. However, the KS mod does reduce the problem somewhat and guns do tend to deploy a bit closer to the front lines than in the stock game.

To its credit, the AI is much better in choosing good positions for the guns than it did in the previous game. That alone makes this game a better platform for modelling artillery of this period.