Ultimate General: American Revolution

[SirAndrewD]

Balance is a bit tough right now. 

I'm not really able to get much into my first campaign, a week at best, before the Brits come out of Boston with about 3k Redcoats and roll up everything I've taken. 

Am I missing something?  Boston is already loaded with a qualitative and quantitively superior force and they instantly get heavy reinforcements.

[Destraex]

Right now I would like to know how detailed supply lines are? One thing total war always completely missed was how context and supply affected generals decisions to advance or retreat. Can the area support a large army or must it march in two columns of march for instance.

It's pretty simple but I think it works for what the game is trying to achieve.  Units stay in supply as long as they can trace a supply line back to its supply hubs.  Supply travels from the hubs, which are capitals, ports ect, and then via villages to the army.
 
Take a town along the line and it can disconnect the other towns further from the hub. 

You can specify units to be on less or even no supply so you can prioritize other units. 

You can also set the army to forage or loot, drawing supply from the civilians at a cost of public support.

Units need to rest on the command map so they can draw supply and recover exhaustion or you can send a unit into battle exhausted and with low ammo.

Armies always march in multiple parts so each brigade is drawing supply individually.  Have a lot of brigades in one point and there seems to be only so much supply to go around.

That actually sounds really outstanding.
Only other thing I could ask for was that towns run out of supply. As in during winter it would be harder to supply an army in the field without special consideration. To supply stockpiles.

[Destraex]

Right now I would like to know how detailed supply lines are? One thing total war always completely missed was how context and supply affected generals decisions to advance or retreat. Can the area support a large army or must it march in two columns of march for instance.

Just some additional information from the published info on supply and supply lines.....also good video.

Three base supply items are needed for each unit: weapons, ammunition and food. Weapons and ammunition are provided by weapon factories. Weapons are received when a new unit is created and later these weapons can be replaced by better ones, according to availability. Ammunition consists of gunpowder, bullets and balls which are spent in battle and must be replenished for maintaining your army in a minimum fighting condition. It is also necessary to constantly supply your army with food, otherwise non-combat losses will grow and the morale of the soldiers will drop. The army can forage a territory for food but, in this case, the welfare of the region and the loyalty of population will deteriorate.

Moving food and ammunition requires supply wagons, supply ships, and well-developed infrastructure. If the region is cut off from the supply line, then the army in the region can consume only its own supplies and rely on what lies in the region's warehouse or is produced by the region. The enemy can intercept convoys and, in this case, part of the supply will be captured by the enemy. Therefore, It is absolutely necessary to secure your supply lines and avoid letting your army be cut off from supply centers.

Well it looks like it has pretty well everything I need. Weapons factories though? Did the revolutionaries capture armouries and hold them? If so that's crazy good.

This really could be a total war killer.

[Tripoli]

VTH gaming is doing a playthrough on Youtube, for those who may be thinking about the game:

[Grim.Reaper]

After hopefully correcting my PC issues, been able to play this a little bit more.  Really see a good foundation for a really good game.  Started a campaign and the first battle that came up was Concord, where the Americans had to defend a storage area.  At first, the British came on strong, forcing my initial units on the battlefield to fallback and regroup.  While that was happening, British did seize the storage buildings but on came my reinforcements which brought the situation more parity.  My troops fought back and ended up basically routing the British army off the battlefield.  It was a lot of back and forth, which added to the tension, between firefights and charges, was a brutal day.

Although not a knock on the game as it pretends to be nothing else, I still find it hard to control all the units across the battlefield.  In the chaos of battle, units end up in different parts, which makes me forget about them when they aren't right in front of me.  I get so caught up in watching the very good graphics play out in a skirmish, I lose track of the bigger picture.  And for the life of me can't really keep things organized, I just throw whatever unit I can at the enemy without really looking at how they are organized and whether they are best suited for the task at hand.  I probably have to slow things down a bit and take advantage of the pause feature more.  I also find it a bit hard to move and lineup the units how I want, because the controls are a bit sensitive.

With all that said, I think by the time of the official release, I think it will be the game I had always hoped for on this subject and can't wait until more is made available and they continue to tweak and balance things, already has been two patches since release.

[glen55]

After hopefully correcting my PC issues, been able to play this a little bit more.  Really see a good foundation for a really good game.  Started a campaign and the first battle that came up was Concord, where the Americans had to defend a storage area.  At first, the British came on strong, forcing my initial units on the battlefield to fallback and regroup.  While that was happening, British did seize the storage buildings but on came my reinforcements which brought the situation more parity.  My troops fought back and ended up basically routing the British army off the battlefield.  It was a lot of back and forth, which added to the tension, between firefights and charges, was a brutal day.

Although not a knock on the game as it pretends to be nothing else, I still find it hard to control all the units across the battlefield.  In the chaos of battle, units end up in different parts, which makes me forget about them when they aren't right in front of me.  I get so caught up in watching the very good graphics play out in a skirmish, I lose track of the bigger picture.  And for the life of me can't really keep things organized, I just throw whatever unit I can at the enemy without really looking at how they are organized and whether they are best suited for the task at hand.  I probably have to slow things down a bit and take advantage of the pause feature more.  I also find it a bit hard to move and lineup the units how I want, because the controls are a bit sensitive.

With all that said, I think by the time of the official release, I think it will be the game I had always hoped for on this subject and can't wait until more is made available and they continue to tweak and balance things, already has been two patches since release.

You can still pause the battle at any time, I hope.

[Jarhead0331]

^Yes, you can. Time can mercifully be slowed, as well.

[W8taminute]

So after watching several LP's on YouTube and listening to what grogheads have to say I'm at a crossroads.

Do I buy now or wait for the Steam release next year? 
Decisions...

[Gusington]

I have enjoyed Game Labs releases. With that said I am waiting for the Steam release 

[W8taminute]

^Me too Gus. 

But I feel my resistance weakening and I'm tempted to buy right now and not wait.  I know I should wait for the Steam release but man, this game looks so good I want to party like it's 1999!

[Gusington]

I love a party. I will be the first on line when they release what I hope is their future title of Ultimate General: Crimean War, Ultimate General: Franco-Prussian War or Ultimate General: Spanish-American War. Any of those would be a reason to celebrate   

[Grim.Reaper]

Love the fact they are releasing a fair amount of patches that include fixes, balancing, and new features at a pretty decent pace.  Five have already been released since the game came out.

Patch v0.1.23 rev.48199 BB1:
Correction of the ability to start a tactical battle
Fixed freezing in the final window, and added statistics
Reduce difficulty on normal and easy levels. Britain will have fewer troops and send fewer of them.
Improvement in AI retreat on the global map
Cavalry melee combat has been rebalanced. Other units will be less dependent on their condition in melee battle.
Improved interface in the headquarters, because players could not understand that there is a research tree in each department
Added tutorial videos to the menu
Fixed arrows for ghost units in delayed reports
Various minor fixes and improvements.
Improved British sabotage events - rebellion and betrayer.


Patch v0.1.24 rev.48229 BB1:
Missing units at the start of a tactical battle have been fixed.
Lags in naval battles have been fixed.
Fixed reflection in water in naval battles.
Improvements in global map AI retreat behavior
The officers's project in HQ will offer more officers. Now you can get 1 strong, 2 medium, or 3 weak officers in the project.
Balanced cover effect in tactical battles. Forest will give better resistance against damage from firearms.
Minor fixes and new bugs


Patch v0.1.25 rev.48255 BB1:
Fixed repetitive quests
Fixed maps with forts where trees and buildings were inside of forts.
Added options - select fps limit. It can solve some graphics artifacts if Vsync doesn't help.
Increased intelligence report cost.
Changed scenario end conditions for all 3 scenarios.
Solved the issue when impossible to add a company into unique units.
Fixed different issues and added new ones.


Patch v0.1.26 rev.48269 BB1:
Added end battle statistics into tactical battles
Added international relation tension changing events
Fixed British Sabotage Events, their impact decreased
Added hints and advises on how to avoid British sabotage events
Fixed a situation where many random events were generated on one day

Patch v0.1.28 rev.48381 BB1
Difficulty balance for the existing campaign stages. Work in progress.
Prisoners of war mechanics and events. Initial version
AI will upgrade regions and construct buildings
Added sabotage decrement research into the Intellinge department
Different fixes in global map AI
Some memory leaks and memory consumption are fixed. It increases loading speed. Work in progress.
added logs for those who have issues starting the game in the launcher
many minor things and added new bugs

[Grim.Reaper]

Although I love all the patches, it does come with risk:)  Developers indicated with the last patch the campaign feature got broken and only skirmish battles reliably working.  No ETA on fix resolution, but they are aware.

[Grim.Reaper]

Patches continue to come out, latest includes alpha version of custom battles...can even play as the British within the custom battles.

[Grim.Reaper]

Nice to see content/changes being made....haven't had time much to play but will have to jump back in.



Hello Generals

We would like to announce that Backer Build 2 is available.

Campaign content is extended until June 15, 1777. You can continue any save game before August 12, 1776. This will extend gameplay time up to 30 hours.

You will fight the largest landing of enemy troops in the United States in history. Admiral Hoewe plans to bring 30K troops to New York, including Hessian mercenaries.

We have added new mechanics and improved old ones. The patch received above 250 new historical and speculative events. European wars and conflicts with the Natives have appeared, which can significantly affect the balance of power in America.

Tactical combat has been heavily reworked thanks to the creator of the UGCW mod joining the team.

Naval strategic gameplay has also been reworked. Enemy troops now travel on transports that can be captured. Ships have suffered the effect of structural fatigue, when after multiple repairs the ship's performance decreases.

Patch Notes

Additional content and improvements
* Custom land and naval battles
* Prisoners of war and related events
* Minimap for the global map showing critical events
* Missions for player's officers
* Optimization of performance
* ...and many other things