Next Scourge of War Project

[mikeck]

Welly criticism concerns how regiments and brigades interact on the battlefield...often facing weird directions with one regiment wondering off I to the distance. No semblance of lines. I have played it since tc2m so I think that criticism is fair

[Skoop]

I think the Operational layer they talked about has me the most interested.  I have histwar as well and i'm not really looking to get another napoleon era game, but if they are going add a feature like an operational layer I'm sold.

[agathosdaimon]

if they add that operation layer then i urge the developers to look at Frank Hunters Campaigns on the Danube and also Wargamer 1813 - that has an excellent operational campaign level - an easy interface with lots of options that just work with right click popup menus

[em2nought]

Man, if I ever retire someday...  I will be in gamer heaven.  ;D

[MengJiao]

mikeck: Like I said, the 100 days, Waterloo and the invasion of France are similar in scale in many ways, but not the earlier battles. Leipzig involved over half a million men. Like agathosdaimon points out, a battle like Leipzig could be broken into components, but that massive number of men was still there.

A quick look on wikipedia for a figure gives a bit over 100.000 for Antietam and Shiloh, and indeed a higher number than Waterloo for Chancellorsville. However, the 100 days were exceptional in the sense that neither Napoleon (who couldn't mobilize enough men in such a limited timeframe) nor his opponents (whose armies moved towards France one by one) had enough time to field the armies they fielded during the times when France was at war with Prussia, Russia, Austria, Britain and their smaller allies.

It depends on the period and theatre in napoleonic wars, towards the end, fighting was less rigid with much more skirmishing being done, also the wars are full of smaller battles , just have to read any decent work , - like the battle of teugn hausen in1809 or the battles around and
Leading up to the battle of the nations at leipzig, which was massive but went over several days so it wasnt hundreds of thousands fighting all at once, also you can break larger battles down into component battles like in Sow gettysburg.

True, the smaller battles were there, but they were rarely decisive. None of the battles fought from the end of the Russian campaign up to Leipzig were as decisive as Leipzig turned out to be, and the outcome of Leipzig itself was an anomaly of sorts. Likewise, the victories of Napoleon in France were irrelevant because he couldn't stop the entirety of the allied forces, the means to do so were just not available.

This is as opposed to the US Civil War where the terrain and more limited number of available forces meant delaying actions or smaller battles could have a decisive influence on the course of the campaign of that year. On the other hand, there were also few disasters that destroyed most of an opposing force or at the least its ability of engaging in offensive action.

At chancellorsville, there we're over 170,000 combatants. Same at wilderness. Gettysburg was about 160,009. Spotsylvania had about 155,000.  Now I know there were some napoleonic battles which were a bit bigger but the idea here is to duplicate Waterloo. Surely they can do that since many civil war battles were just as large or larger.

For me, the issue is appearance and order. It's one thing for a US civil war army to look like a
Mob but not a napoleonic European army. They have to find away or keep the regiments from going everywhere and pointing in different directions

  While Waterloo for most of the battle involved about 130,000 men...if you include all the forces that were within a few hours march of the battle field, there would be more like 300,000 on hand.

[mikeck]

Were not talking about nearby...fact is Waterloo was no larger of the battle then Gettysburg Chancellorsville, wilderness,  Spotsylvania Courthouse or any other number of US Civil War battles. The point being that the scourge of war engine could certainly handle a battle such as Waterlow

[Nefaro]

I dont understand why CA hasnt done a Civil War total war game yet, some of the ETw mods looked spectacular

Although I wouldn't mind seeing an ACW version of total war, I think there are a couple of potential reasons.

- For the most part, only two factions, North and the South....unless you tried to model outside assistance from other countries.
- What kind of diplomacy would be in the game?  Maybe with outside countries for possible intervention and food/supplies, but what else?
- It seems this game series does better with swords then rifles....
- Would only cover a short period of time, assuming you were confined to the original war years
etc.

Don't get me wrong, I would buy it on sight, but thinking these might be some of the reasons it hasn't happened....

There are probably more roadblocks to such a thing.  Such as CA (the developers) being British.  In my experience, the Brits generally don't care about the ACW so I certainly wouldn't expect British devs to even consider it. 

Besides that, the lack of faction variety is a killer.  I thought the variety in Shogun 2 was pushing the limits.   ???   We should just hope Norbsoft creates a good meta-campaign in the distant future for SOW.

[Nefaro]

Man, if I ever retire someday...  I will be in gamer heaven.  ;D

You still won't be able to play even a fraction of what's available out there!  :P

[ArizonaTank]

They will need to make some significant changes to the SOW engine to pull this off.  Also, I really think they will need to dump the low res 2D sprites. 

The period wasn't know as the "tailor's wars" for nothing. 

Still, I can't wait to see how it comes out. 

[agathosdaimon]

i think the 2d sprites for SOW are actually pretty good - the best sprites i have ever seen and they look good up close and far away, in fact it looks more like a painting with teh 2 sprites then it does with say 3d figures like in NTW - the 3d figures in rome2 though look pretty good and move well, but i doubt SOW would be able to go down that route.

as far as napoleonic battles, i think ones like those surrounding the final crossing of the berezina could be prety decisive, in terms of trying to just save lives of fleeing french rather than victory - actually i would love to see an operational campaign around that alone - one where the player would need ot figure out where to build the bridges and how to stop the russians from knowing the location for long enough and then for the russians if played against the french AI - the french AI would be dynamic in that it may not always choose the studianka location for the crossing - - but perhaps thats just a smaller campaign within a larger game.

[HistoricalGamer]

Also, I really think they will need to dump the low res 2D sprites. 

The period wasn't know as the "tailor's wars" for nothing. 

Given they've said they need the game to play with 50,000 sprites on screen at the same time and they are increasing the number of uniforms substantially, and they need to be able to support the SOW AI which HAS to be more resource intensive than the drone that is the AI of TW I doubt that will be an option.

[Nefaro]

Also, I really think they will need to dump the low res 2D sprites. 

The period wasn't know as the "tailor's wars" for nothing. 

Given they've said they need the game to play with 50,000 sprites on screen at the same time and they are increasing the number of uniforms substantially, and they need to be able to support the SOW AI which HAS to be more resource intensive than the drone that is the AI of TW I doubt that will be an option.

Exactly.

SOW can be a resource hog already, in large battles.  We're not talking twenty units per side on a 1kmx1km map here.

[HistoricalGamer]

There's a shortened podcast, if you missed it or simply didn't want to sit through an hour long podcast check out the below video for the highlights of the launch announcement for Scourge of War: Waterloo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md1EKet-PAc&feature=youtu.be

Wont let me embed for some reason.

[mikeck]

Did not want to start a new thread so I Necro'd this one

There has been too good mods for scorch of war here recently. They already had a Blenheim mod which is great...and now they have released a Fontenoy mod and a Dettingen mod

http://www.norbsoftdev.net/forum/modifications/63307-fontenoy-mod


http://www.norbsoftdev.net/media/kunena/attachments/174/screen0105_2014-07-09.jpg

[Nefaro]

Did not want to start a new thread so I Necro'd this one

There has been too good mods for scorch of war here recently. They already had a Blenheim mod which is great...and now they have released a Fontenoy mod and a Dettingen mod

http://www.norbsoftdev.net/forum/modifications/63307-fontenoy-mod


http://www.norbsoftdev.net/media/kunena/attachments/174/screen0105_2014-07-09.jpg

Nice.  I imagine after Waterloo is released, we'll see a number of mods for it.