Scourge of War: Ligny

[Toonces]

Tc2m was on steam a long time ago.  I have it on steam.  It got pulled for some reason.  I believe the code for it was released by the dev so there are a lot of mod possibilities with it.

Wrt Waterloo, I only use couriers, so without being able to use them solely it's kind of a deal breaker for me. 

[Nefaro]

I've spent some time with Waterloo and to be honest I much prefer the Civil War version.  I can tell you one solid reason why has to do with the couriers.  In Waterloo, for some reason, you can't assign orders to "move to" a specific map point by clicking on the map.  The best I can see is you can specify a named location, but not a specific point.  This is frustrating if you don't want to send your troops to a named place, or even worse, don't know the names of all the places on the map! 

And I'll be damned if I can figure out how the campaign works.  I've followed the directions but it doesn't seem to be working so far.  Frustrating.

Although I bought the whole Waterloo smack, I find myself mostly sticking with the Civil War games for now.  A bit of buyer's remorse TBH.  If I could send Waterloo back, I would.

Oh god that drives me up the friggin wall to. Its the main reason I refuse to use the courier thing. Last i checked it wouldnt be that hard to scrawl out a formation on a little minimap!

I agree with Hof.

While the full-on courier system in SOW was a great idea, it has too many flaws.  Courier pathfinding was always terrible.  Sometimes horribly so.  The supposedly modular text messages you sent weren't all that modular after all, and could be messed up if you didn't do some combinations properly.

I just stuck to issuing orders via the map.  Even though having the sometimes suicidal and often AWOL courier take off in the wrong direction was still a reality, at least you could be sure the orders were clearly understood.

[Toonces]

Fair enough.  I agree it's not perfect, but I've grown fond of playing the game exclusively using the courier system, flaws and all.  I'll check that tactical map thing; I'm not sure I understood that was how to order troops around.

I mostly bought Waterloo to try to hook up with some multiplayer.  From what I understand that's pretty awesome in Waterloo.

[mikeck]

Couriers can be frustrating but when one has trouble I move my commander closer to the unit I'm trying to get a message to in order to get a better line. Usually works well.

[Rayfer]

I'm a SoW:G player but never use the couriers, so my comment is more of a question. Perhaps the frustrations over using couriers is actually very realistic and simulates the real commanders frustration with his orders never reaching his sub-commanders, or arriving late, or being interpreted by the sub-commander different than the commander intended, or the sub-commander disagreeing and going off doing what he feels is a better course of action....all of which occurred in real life battles?

[mikeck]

 Sometimes no. There's been times where there is a clear lane between me and the unit destination;  But the courier insists on running off through the enemy troops  For some reason.

[Toonces]

There is definitely some fog of war using couriers, but it can also be buggy, like others have said.  The courier pathfinding can be questionable, and if you don't script your message properly the AI may not execute it.

I've grown fond of using it.  I usually, lately anyway, play Army vs. Army level fights in the sandbox, and an entire engagement might see me send 40 total messages.  So the AI is doing much of the heavy lifting, and the challenge is in communicating your plan to your AI subordinates in a way that they'll execute it properly, and then handling the inevitable changes that occur as the enemy's plan develops.  Plus, mitigating mistakes, and lost couriers or messages that didn't get executed quite like I wanted.  The AI generals have personalities and will use some discretion on how they do what you tell them to do.

It's not a perfect system, but it's fun to me.  If Waterloo had the move to map point available in the courier screen like it does in Gettysburg, I wouldn't have even brought it up...it's just something I use so much that its absence is really a bummer.  I need to try that tactical map, though...I hadn't spent much time with Waterloo once I realized the courier thing to be honest.

[RyanE]

I don't play SOW.  But the comments about pathfinding for couriers made me chuckle.  I read in one the Civil War histories in the mountain battles in West Virginia there was a Union courier captured when he went down the wrong road.  I think we forget sometimes how screwed up and unpredictable humans can be

[mikeck]

Well, it's a bit more than that. I'm standing behind 1st division in line firing at an enemy 100 yards to the front. I want to tell the 2nd division on the same "line" but left of 1st. I send a courier. Instead of running straight left behind the lines and along the roads, the courier will (sometimes) take off through my lines, through no-man's land, through the enemy lines and get shot. Each successive courier does the same until I move my commander to another point on the map to reset the path finding. It's not All The time....buts it's more than a "fog of war"/ "friction of war" lost couriers thing.

I still love the games, just an issue is all

[RyanE]

I'm not saying SOW isn't screwed up in some way, as I said, I don't play it.  Just thought I'd point out humans are just as dumb as AI sometimes.

[Toonces]

LOL @ Mikeck!

I had a game a few weeks ago where I got about 10 intercepted courier messages in a row, about every 20 seconds I'd get a new one.  One of the AI generals was trying to move a gun group to support someone, and the courier must have kept doing exactly what you're saying, so I'd get this same message directed to this gun crew to move their battery to a new spot over, and over, and over, and over.  It was funny, but then started to get kind of annoying.

So yeah, there can definitely be some wonky behavior!