Scourge of war remastered

[Bardolph]

Yah, I'll buy it just to support getting the ACW stuff back and updated. For all its quirks there really isn't much out there like it.

[JasonPratt]

As an aside, I don't think 1:1 unit representation in the SoW series makes much sense (however cool it may look) due to a map scale that seems more like 1:6 (if I recall my calculations when doing my "Volunteers" visual AAR several years ago. Come to think of it, I seem to recall the max 'resolution' for unit figures also being 1:6 originally.)

To be fair, I was playing the original Take Command game for that example. My occasional mp forays into the later SoW didn't give me any opportunities to compare map scale with unit scale, but I'm sure I took a moderate ratio reduction to help prevent my computer slogging while processing my side of the game i/o for the other players.

The engine, even going back to TC1 days, is kind of indescribable for more-or-less 3rd person leader action on the field -- both as a compliment and as a complaint, the latter being mostly about the bizarre user interface(s). Your on-screen character really shouldn't have to use the same clunky command movements (yet crucially different sometimes!) as the military units, but I understand why the limits of the engine design require it.

It's ambitious and amazing when it works and gnashing when it janks. An acquired taste to be sure. Nothing else really like it for multiplayer though!

[Destraex]

I have to ask all of you civil war fans in this thread. Have you seen the blu ray version of waterloo?
What gets me about Napoleonic vs Civil War is the rock paper scissors, chess like balance of infantry, cavalry, artillery. In civil war battles it's infantry supported by artillery with cavalry more in a mounted infantry role.
Napoleonic to me is also much more colourful as a spectacle. Napoleonic also offers much more diversity of Nations and theirfore tactics. Which equates to more armies with differing doctrines and tactics and even types of weapons. Something I have heard USA folks argue is just as diverse for the ACW.
The reason I am stating all of this is that I think a lot of ACW fans that do not like Napoleonic are really missing out.
For myself, I love the ACW for wargaming but I think Napoleonic is a lot more interesting. Both are good. But why are ACW fans so much less happy to go with napoleonic? They are not mutually exclusive. I mean if we could get more USA based software devs behind the napoleonic period it would be amazing. As it is Napoleonic games seem to mostly come from the east and in far inferior numbers of games than from the USA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterloo_(1970_film)

[Grim.Reaper]

Guessing it is a matter of what country you're from.  If your from the United States, civil war is going to be much more interesting to you .  If not from unites states, then certainly European wars going to be more appealing.  Just a matter of what you have grown up with

[JasonPratt]

I actually own Bonderchunk's Waterloo (and just recently finished showing Mom a version of his War and Peace that I edited down to only 5 hours. {g})

There is a special tragedy to a civil war that always colors ACW games, brothers vs brothers. Also while in one sense the warfare seems to have regressed concerning the cavalry, the artillery and other factors advanced almost to the point of WW1 during that fearsome crucible; which games like Forge of Freedom (for example) sometimes are able to emulate (also Ultimate General:CW in somewhat different ways). That's part of why despite my admiration for Napoleonic warfare in its World War Zero ways, I have always had trouble getting into the much larger and more expansive Nappy version of the same engine as FoF: it just seems more primitive. (Also the game engine was a little more primitive, even in its Emperor's edition, despite being naturally much more expanded than FoF ever was or topically could have been.)

As someone who has lived in Tennessee all his life (mostly and currently central West TN) the past reality and present effects of the ACW are still very much alive for us. The Napoleon wars were/are something that happened all-around-over there somewhere, so have their own esoteric (exoteric?) attraction -- but they aren't the home fires. My Mom's ancestors (on either side of her parents) helped settle this area; and I have extra-great-grand-cousins who fought on each side of the war, Union and Confederate. I can drive ten minutes north to a graveyard where a civil war memorial tomb shows the graves of my ancestors who fought in that war; some to defend their homes from invasion and murder, the others to free people from the hell of slavery (granting their best motives either way).

Many people in the United States can't really care about the ACW, and I understand that. But those of us with roots in the countrysides of the states who fought: we know those people when we see them portrayed in games and films and TV shows and books, for better and for worse.

For better and for worse, those are our people; our heroes, our villains, our families, not someone else's. Not other people's people (for better and for worse), but ours -- who should have been brothers.

The Napoleonic Wars have a massive number of worthwhile stories in their histories, but those stories are about other people fighting people who, mostly, weren't 'their' people, even though all sides at least nominally granted that all people everywhere are fellow children together under God. The ACW is about our people who really knew we were and should be 'our' people, wherever we originally came from, and the cutting tragedies (and sometimes chivalry) of knowing that. Thus explaining the wonder of the world that such bitter foes should become such good friends, at least among their fighting men, soon thereafter, against governmental forces mostly dedicated to exploiting our war against each other. But Abraham Lincoln, and some of those who fought (like Grant), knew better. Thank God.

Apply to some recent American news, understandably not to be mentioned directly, as appropriate.

[Old TImer]

I actually own Bonderchunk's Waterloo (and just recently finished showing Mom a version of his War and Peace that I edited down to only 5 hours. {g})

There is a special tragedy to a civil war that always colors ACW games, brothers vs brothers. Also while in one sense the warfare seems to have regressed concerning the cavalry, the artillery and other factors advanced almost to the point of WW1 during that fearsome crucible; which games like Forge of Freedom (for example) sometimes are able to emulate (also Ultimate General:CW in somewhat different ways). That's part of why despite my admiration for Napoleonic warfare in its World War Zero ways, I have always had trouble getting into the much larger and more expansive Nappy version of the same engine as FoF: it just seems more primitive. (Also the game engine was a little more primitive, even in its Emperor's edition, despite being naturally much more expanded than FoF ever was or topically could have been.)

As someone who has lived in Tennessee all his life (mostly and currently central West TN) the past reality and present effects of the ACW are still very much alive for us. The Napoleon wars were/are something that happened all-around-over there somewhere, so have their own esoteric (exoteric?) attraction -- but they aren't the home fires. My Mom's ancestors (on either side of her parents) helped settle this area; and I have extra-great-grand-cousins who fought on each side of the war, Union and Confederate. I can drive ten minutes north to a graveyard where a civil war memorial tomb shows the graves of my ancestors who fought in that war; some to defend their homes from invasion and murder, the others to free people from the hell of slavery (granting their best motives either way).

Many people in the United States can't really care about the ACW, and I understand that. But those of us with roots in the countrysides of the states who fought: we know those people when we see them portrayed in games and films and TV shows and books, for better and for worse.

For better and for worse, those are our people; our heroes, our villains, our families, not someone else's. Not other people's people (for better and for worse), but ours -- who should have been brothers.

The Napoleonic Wars have a massive number of worthwhile stories in their histories, but those stories are about other people fighting people who, mostly, weren't 'their' people, even though all sides at least nominally granted that all people everywhere are fellow children together under God. The ACW is about our people who really knew we were and should be 'our' people, wherever we originally came from, and the cutting tragedies (and sometimes chivalry) of knowing that. Thus explaining the wonder of the world that such bitter foes should become such good friends, at least among their fighting men, soon thereafter, against governmental forces mostly dedicated to exploiting our war against each other. But Abraham Lincoln, and some of those who fought (like Grant), knew better. Thank God.

Apply to some recent American news, understandably not to be mentioned directly, as appropriate.

A well reasoned and thoughtful comment.  Thank you.

[Destraex]

This is how you show off the new graphics improvements.
a) At the menu go to the modifications - enable "waterloo maps HD".
b) Go to settings page 2 - set everything to best or max and set sprite ratio to 1. Make all draw distances max. Enable off map trees and terrain tick boxes.
c) Go to settings page 3 - Set all camera move settings to max speed. Don't worry it will be slow even at this setting.
d) Choose singleplayer then "SANDBOX" from main menu and then choose a HD map. Preferably the HD Waterloo map. Choose army vs army. Load the game.

Things look really good using these settings for me. However my FPS is only between 7 and 11 fps and my CPU utilisation at 1% and GPU at 3%. 2.6gig of memory being used by SOW:W
The game only appears to be using one core and even though my CPU is doing other things only 1% on average is taken up by SOW.
This says to me that the game could do so much better and is using barely any of the PC resources it could be. This gives me hope that a 1:1 ratio map and sprites are more than possible with some optimisation.

Before this I was playing scenarios and those cannot use the HD maps!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So my testing was invalid earlier. I could not figure out why the improvements were so negligible. As you can see, compared to my earlier screenshots these are night and day apart. Infinitely better. I might actually play this game properly now. Without wondering where the trees and terrain are that I could not see!!


























Edge of the map... you start in the corner in this scenario as seen in the first screenshot.

[Jarhead0331]

They need to lose the 2D sprites and come into the 21st century.

[Destraex]

They need to lose the 2D sprites and come into the 21st century.

I'm happy enough. All it needs now is a HD sprites mod. I think the ultimate general series is sprites?
The number of men on the field is staggering in SOW:W and without sprites we would probably have total war numbers instead. Total War draws around 1-8000 men a battle iirc and it strips the detail down to sprite level when you zoom even a little anyway. Notwithstanding the total war maps are tiny.

My next challenge is to see if I can see how big the map is. The minimap certainly makes it look large, but often the scale is misleading on maps. The icons drawn smaller than they should be. If the map is not large enough a lot of tactical moves will be precluded as they are with tabletop edges.

The other thing I will say is that the devs mentioned that it was a lot of effort for them to get this far and that they don't have the energy to do the huge hours they used to while having full time jobs. This seems to be more of a retirement hobby for them now, a last hurrah. They will fix the game for modern systems, have opened the files to modders and will continue to do small bug fix patches after that would be my guess.

P.S. To all you civil war fans out their. They started with Waterloo because it was their latest and therefore most up to date engine. So I lucked out but would think that the devs would still consider civil war as their first love.

 

[Tanaka]

I have to ask all of you civil war fans in this thread. Have you seen the blu ray version of waterloo?
What gets me about Napoleonic vs Civil War is the rock paper scissors, chess like balance of infantry, cavalry, artillery. In civil war battles it's infantry supported by artillery with cavalry more in a mounted infantry role.
Napoleonic to me is also much more colourful as a spectacle. Napoleonic also offers much more diversity of Nations and theirfore tactics. Which equates to more armies with differing doctrines and tactics and even types of weapons. Something I have heard USA folks argue is just as diverse for the ACW.
The reason I am stating all of this is that I think a lot of ACW fans that do not like Napoleonic are really missing out.
For myself, I love the ACW for wargaming but I think Napoleonic is a lot more interesting. Both are good. But why are ACW fans so much less happy to go with napoleonic? They are not mutually exclusive. I mean if we could get more USA based software devs behind the napoleonic period it would be amazing. As it is Napoleonic games seem to mostly come from the east and in far inferior numbers of games than from the USA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterloo_(1970_film)

I actually own Bonderchunk's Waterloo (and just recently finished showing Mom a version of his War and Peace that I edited down to only 5 hours. {g})

There is a special tragedy to a civil war that always colors ACW games, brothers vs brothers. Also while in one sense the warfare seems to have regressed concerning the cavalry, the artillery and other factors advanced almost to the point of WW1 during that fearsome crucible; which games like Forge of Freedom (for example) sometimes are able to emulate (also Ultimate General:CW in somewhat different ways). That's part of why despite my admiration for Napoleonic warfare in its World War Zero ways, I have always had trouble getting into the much larger and more expansive Nappy version of the same engine as FoF: it just seems more primitive. (Also the game engine was a little more primitive, even in its Emperor's edition, despite being naturally much more expanded than FoF ever was or topically could have been.)

As someone who has lived in Tennessee all his life (mostly and currently central West TN) the past reality and present effects of the ACW are still very much alive for us. The Napoleon wars were/are something that happened all-around-over there somewhere, so have their own esoteric (exoteric?) attraction -- but they aren't the home fires. My Mom's ancestors (on either side of her parents) helped settle this area; and I have extra-great-grand-cousins who fought on each side of the war, Union and Confederate. I can drive ten minutes north to a graveyard where a civil war memorial tomb shows the graves of my ancestors who fought in that war; some to defend their homes from invasion and murder, the others to free people from the hell of slavery (granting their best motives either way).

Many people in the United States can't really care about the ACW, and I understand that. But those of us with roots in the countrysides of the states who fought: we know those people when we see them portrayed in games and films and TV shows and books, for better and for worse.

For better and for worse, those are our people; our heroes, our villains, our families, not someone else's. Not other people's people (for better and for worse), but ours -- who should have been brothers.

The Napoleonic Wars have a massive number of worthwhile stories in their histories, but those stories are about other people fighting people who, mostly, weren't 'their' people, even though all sides at least nominally granted that all people everywhere are fellow children together under God. The ACW is about our people who really knew we were and should be 'our' people, wherever we originally came from, and the cutting tragedies (and sometimes chivalry) of knowing that. Thus explaining the wonder of the world that such bitter foes should become such good friends, at least among their fighting men, soon thereafter, against governmental forces mostly dedicated to exploiting our war against each other. But Abraham Lincoln, and some of those who fought (like Grant), knew better. Thank God.

Apply to some recent American news, understandably not to be mentioned directly, as appropriate.

Nicely written. I have always been much more into the ACW games than the Napoleon games for the same reasons. Being from Alabama I feel this. You grow up with the past and present all around you. There are still confederate flags everywhere. The histories and monuments and cemeteries are everywhere. You grow up hearing the stories and about the relatives. About the battles and the generals. You visit the battlefields. Chattanooga, Chickamauga, Stone Mountain, Nashville, Atlanta, Savannah, Charleston, Richmond...you see and visit these places hands on growing up. You feel and touch these places vs the Napoleon battlefields so far away. The cultural differences and the aversion to the north is still prevalent. My Dad still calls them Yankees haha. Things have come a long way since then and the sixties though...but yes the removal of Confederate names and monuments is of course very controversial in these places...

[Tripoli]

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Nicely written. I have always been much more into the ACW games than the Napoleon games for the same reasons. Being from Alabama I feel this. You grow up with the past and present all around you. There are still confederate flags everywhere. The histories and monuments and cemeteries are everywhere. You grow up hearing the stories and about the relatives. About the battles and the generals. You visit the battlefields. Chattanooga, Chickamauga, Stone Mountain, Nashville, Atlanta, Savannah, Charleston, Richmond...you see and visit these places hands on growing up. You feel and touch these places vs the Napoleon battlefields so far away. The cultural differences and the aversion to the north is still prevalent. My Dad still calls them Yankees haha. Things have come a long way since then and the sixties though...but yes the removal of Confederate names and monuments is of course very controversial in these places...

 My hypothesis is that for those Grogheads who live in the South, you have a much more personal feel to the USCW, as the battlefields, both big and small, are near where you live.  Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and the Carolinas have major battlefields within 30 minutes drive of any major  population center. Minor battlefields are everywhere throughout the South.    Heck, half the housing developments have roads named after people who fought in the USCW, and until recently every school district had at least one school named after a Civil War personality.  In the North, it isn't quite as common.  Aside from Antietam, Gettysburg, Harper's Ferry and Monocacy, there aren't any battlefields to remind us Yankees of our heritage.  Thus, for many of us, it is a more faint echo than for those from the south.  I'm probably a bit different, as my family is originally from Adams County, PA (in fact, the opening shot of Gettysburg probably embedded itself somewhere on the family farm but that's another story....).  North of the Mason-Dixon line, there aren't as many monuments to the USCW in what remains of our small towns, so the memory of that was is somewhat dimmer.  Additionally, much of the immigration that took place after the Civil War went to northern cities.  These immigrants didn't have ties at all to the USCW, so naturally it doesn't have the same pull to them, or to their descendants as it does to those living in the south.

 

[Tanaka]

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Nicely written. I have always been much more into the ACW games than the Napoleon games for the same reasons. Being from Alabama I feel this. You grow up with the past and present all around you. There are still confederate flags everywhere. The histories and monuments and cemeteries are everywhere. You grow up hearing the stories and about the relatives. About the battles and the generals. You visit the battlefields. Chattanooga, Chickamauga, Stone Mountain, Nashville, Atlanta, Savannah, Charleston, Richmond...you see and visit these places hands on growing up. You feel and touch these places vs the Napoleon battlefields so far away. The cultural differences and the aversion to the north is still prevalent. My Dad still calls them Yankees haha. Things have come a long way since then and the sixties though...but yes the removal of Confederate names and monuments is of course very controversial in these places...

 My hypothesis is that for those Grogheads who live in the South, you have a much more personal feel to the USCW, as the battlefields, both big and small, are near where you live.  Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and the Carolinas have major battlefields within 30 minutes drive of any major  population center. Minor battlefields are everywhere throughout the South.    Heck, half the housing developments have roads named after people who fought in the USCW, and until recently every school district had at least one school named after a Civil War personality.  In the North, it isn't quite as common.  Aside from Antietam, Gettysburg, Harper's Ferry and Monocacy, there aren't any battlefields to remind us Yankees of our heritage.  Thus, for many of us, it is a more faint echo than for those from the south.  I'm probably a bit different, as my family is originally from Adams County, PA (in fact, the opening shot of Gettysburg probably embedded itself somewhere on the family farm but that's another story....).  North of the Mason-Dixon line, there aren't as many monuments to the USCW in what remains of our small towns, so the memory of that was is somewhat dimmer.  Additionally, much of the immigration that took place after the Civil War went to northern cities.  These immigrants didn't have ties at all to the USCW, so naturally it doesn't have the same pull to them, or to their descendants as it does to those living in the south.

 

Yes that makes sense. And yes there are a ton of schools in Alabama named after confederate generals among other things although they are changing the names or have changed them. I'm trying to remember any Union monuments or histories I have seen in my travels in the north. In Maine I saw signs about Joshua Chamberlain and the college he taught at. Can anyone else describe some others around?  I have seen some things in DC of course. Never been to Antietam or Gettysburg that is a goal one day!

[Gusington]

^If you get the chance visit West Point, US Military Academy, and your thirst will be slaked 

[Tanaka]

^If you get the chance visit West Point, US Military Academy, and your thirst will be slaked 

Aha yes of course!

[Old TImer]

"The cultural differences and the aversion to the north is still prevalent. My Dad still calls them Yankees haha. Things have come a long way since then and the sixties though...but yes the removal of Confederate names and monuments is of course very controversial in these places..."

Probably one reason I have an aversion to the South to this day.  In my humble opinion the victorious North should have pounded the South to dust and forbade any use of symbols, flags and/or memorials to the traitorous southerners.  Similar to how Nazi Germany and Nazi symbology was and is banned in Germany.  The leadership in the North following the Civil War (and up to about 1900) was poor.  I won't get into the mistakes of the Reconstruction Era.

As far as visits are concerned I'd throw in Springfield, Illinois (Lincoln), Galena, Illinois (Grant) and I'll throw in Arlington National Cemetery.

I really hope they get on with the remastering of the Civil War titles.  There's really nothing else like them.