Latest Patch

[klunick924]

Something odd with the latest patch. Anyone else having the AI coming from lord knows what direction? I can see where the entry arrows are and several times have had the AI attack from a side of a river that there is no way they could have crossed. Not a creek, a river. Might have say, 2 of my corps taking on 3 of the AI and 1/2 way through the battle the 3rd AI corp completely backdoors me. Yep, all the crossings were covered. Literally like the AI came in at the same spot I did. Understand the fog-of-war deal, but that is insane. Right now I'm in August 61 and this has happened perhaps 5 or 6 times. One heck of a way to turn the tide of a battle. Outnumbers the AI 50k to 40k, nope, that doesn't matter because during battle morale drops, units get spread out, then boom. Cute, real cute.

[LCcmdr]

Yes, I have experienced that in three major battles now--enemy troops crossing rivers where there are no possible bridges or apparent shallows.

I guess these are CW marines... :)

[Waxolm5]

I wonder if the devs gave the AI more cheats since river crossings were so broken and it led to destroyed AI armies before? But this sounds excessive.

[Lordsamuel]

well in my case i did squadron fleet doing some shenanigan in the campaign map like deny the law of physic about the waters and going full movement on actual land wich is funny

[Idlemania]

Originally posted by klunick924:

Something odd with the latest patch. Anyone else having the AI coming from lord knows what direction? I can see where the entry arrows are and several times have had the AI attack from a side of a river that there is no way they could have crossed. Not a creek, a river. Might have say, 2 of my corps taking on 3 of the AI and 1/2 way through the battle the 3rd AI corp completely backdoors me. Yep, all the crossings were covered. Literally like the AI came in at the same spot I did. Understand the fog-of-war deal, but that is insane. Right now I'm in August 61 and this has happened perhaps 5 or 6 times. One heck of a way to turn the tide of a battle. Outnumbers the AI 50k to 40k, nope, that doesn't matter because during battle morale drops, units get spread out, then boom. Cute, real cute.

I had confederates get confused by a riverbend and get stuck their for a minute. saveing and exiting the battle seemed to fix it.

[Scotters]

I remember that the developers discussed this when we interviewed them on the unofficial discord channel. Basically, it can't be fixed. I don't remember the details, but they messed up a bit when making the maps and the rivers. These guys are awesome, but they are independent developers, and they did make a lot of mistakes when developing this massive game, and as they have said, they have learned a lot so that the same mistakes won't be made in the next game.

In my mind, I just pretend that the AI found a crossing. It works for me. I just kind of incorporate any "jankiness" into the way I role play the game. However, I do not blame anyone who is really bothered by this jank.

[Luxiwow]

This is new to me and I don't like that. So instead of trying to fix the current maps we get "oh well we know it's broken and too hard to fix, won't happen again next game" That is for sure the last nail in the coffin holy damn. How can you expect to grow and bloom in the video game market if you accept your game is ♥♥♥♥ and not try to fix it. And to say "it cannot be fixed" is just wrong and lazy. Yes it could. Redoe all the maps with correct pathing on terrain for the AI. Yes takes probably a lot of time but not doing it just says they don't care about their game.

[Sunbather]

Originally posted by Luxiwow:

So instead of trying to fix the current maps we get "oh well we know it's broken and too hard to fix, won't happen again next game" That is for sure the last nail in the coffin holy damn. How can you expect to grow and bloom in the video game market if you accept your game is ♥♥♥♥ and not try to fix it. And to say "it cannot be fixed" is just wrong and lazy. Yes it could. Redoe all the maps with correct pathing on terrain for the AI. Yes takes probably a lot of time but not doing it just says they don't care about their game.

It's, of course, not that simple, Redoing all the maps could take at least 1 year of unpaid work.
Also, as an experienced EA / Kickstarter gamer I know that this isn't a completely new thing. There are dozens of examples of EA/Kickstartes games that were just "finished" (or had to be finished) at some point and then the devs tried to make it better with their next game. And more often than not they succeeded!

Originally posted by Luxiwow:

This is new to me and I don't like that.

I am curious because I am thinking about buying the game: did you actually encounter the bug yourself?

[Luxiwow]

Originally posted by Sunbather:

I am curious because I am thinking about buying the game: did you actually encounter the bug yourself?

The Game is terrible for the price they're asking. I was being harassed before by people from this community for stating my opinion and they've even found my discord. It was a big hassle but I'll give the short of it again. Idk what type of gamer you are or what exp you have so excuse me if somethings don't mean a thing to you.

-There is no Online campaign or even battle. So no playing with or against friends.

-broken world map, Sometimes you can see an army being on a ship just cruising by ON LAND. You have the river blocked by your Ships but because there was one of those oopsie moments when they made the maps, I think near TN Ships sometimes just go on land...

-broken battle AI, totally stupid and boring to play against. They just do the 1945 Soviet Russia way of overrunning you with Unites and also things like "readiness" a mechanic to make it more realistic that an army cannot just run around 24/7 does not effect the AI.

-buildinds and economy, broken from day 1. AI will sometimes spam build the same building on the same spot X amount

-4 or something years later and I been asking this for at least 3 years now, you still cannot demote an officer, so if you accidently click one too many times you are ♥♥♥♥♥♥. Nope cannot change it. Better reload a save or something.

-graphics, given they managed to update from 2D to 3D but still the game looks like ass. I played games back in 2004 that looked better. Given this is unity I don't see any excuse to cut on graphics for performance reasons.

-price $45 bucks for the main game alone, are you kidding me? this game should be $19,99 AT MOST. What gives the justification to have this be an almost AA+ titel game? nothing

TLDR the game has too many things going wrong, devs that are overwhelmed, and a fan base that is so far up their own ass I don't even know.

[Scotters]

Luxiwow, I understand your views and that is fine. Many of us are having a blast, I am about to lose Richmond in a 62 Vanilla CSA campaign, and I can't wait to play the new version of the AOM mod. The community, at least the one on my unofficial discord channel for the game, understands the issues, we have communicated those with the developers, and have had an honest feedback. Now a days, we make jokes about a lot of the issues, but that does not mean they were not addressed by the community, heck we have a McClellan's complaints channel for when some of us get frustrated by some things.

Sunbather, if you look at the reviews, and the amount of hours of entertainment a lot of us have had, you can see that a lot of fun can be had. It is the best civil war game ever made, and the developers have supported it for a few years after release! If you play the game on max difficulty, realistic settings, like delayed orders, feuds and readiness on, continous VP off, Historical AI, it is a heck of a game. I would stay away from the Spring 61 campaign, the AI can't handle that, neither can it handle the regiments Eastern Theatre Campaign in Whiskey and Lemons. As long as you don't cheese things, like using cavalry to cap all the entrance points on a tactical map, and no mass cavalry charges, stuff like that, it is the most realistic war game I have ever played on the American Civil War. I just checked the reviews, and 77% of the almost 2,000 reviews are positive, and many of those reviewers have hundreds of hour played!

If you like the Civil War, and you want both a strategic campaign and tactical battles, this is the best game ever on that. If you would like the same turn based, there is Forge of Freedom from Matrix games. That was my favorite civil war game before this one!

[LCcmdr]

+1

[Ole "Slim Jolo" the Hobo Hero]

Honestly my issues with the game tend to be pathfinding related or just issues when AI whonkiness also leads to AI cheating, like when you route an army only for them to retreat INTO your lands and stuff like that, some struggles with pathfinding controls and so on

The reason that stuff upsets me is because the game really has so much potential. I'm Canadian so really didn't know much about the civil war on a kind of year by year basis, so seeing an era game that includes atmospheric news and events, has things like your messenger horses running about on battle fields, has a pretty detailed world map and some great battlemaps and so on has been really interesting to play.

I kind of wish there were more gunpowder era war games in general, and i appreciate how this game seems to be the first that even acknowledges how battles for the time could last several days, which is something you kind of lose in other total war esque games where it tends to be abstracted to a single battle you can do in like, 20 mins

But the bugginess and such is annoying. If anything though I also feel like if the team had the willpower for it, they could do other gunpowder era things, from napoleonic and so on. I think it's a good framework for other conflicts similar to the period, from Mexican-American, 1812, Spanish American, etc.

[Sunbather]

Originally posted by Ole "Slim Jolo" the Hobo Hero:

But the bugginess and such is annoying. If anything though I also feel like if the team had the willpower for it, they could do other gunpowder era things, from napoleonic and so on. I think it's a good framework for other conflicts similar to the period, from Mexican-American, 1812, Spanish American, etc.

I think everyone familiar with Grand Tactician hopes that they will make another game in the gunpowder era. After all, the first game by the lead dev was the Seven Years War.

That being said, maybe it would be wise to lower the scale for the next game - at least in the beginning. So only have Napoleon's and Wellington's Peninsular War, for example. And then, when everything is locked down, expand the game. People would probably pay gladly for DLCs if the base is solid.

Originally posted by Luxiwow:

The Game is terrible for the price they're asking.

Thanks for all the input. I didn't see any harrassment here myself but know that developers in general can be stressed out a bit. There is only so much criticism you can take - deserved or undeserved. And when you hear the same stuff over and over again...
Still, I think your main point stands. Yes this is a niche product, a wargame. But by now the base price should have been lowered to 30€ and sale price at least 35% off. I would buy it in a heartbeat.

Originally posted by Scotters:

Sunbather, if you look at the reviews, and the amount of hours of entertainment a lot of us have had, you can see that a lot of fun can be had. It is the best civil war game ever made, and the developers have supported it for a few years after release! If you play the game on max difficulty, realistic settings, like delayed orders, feuds and readiness on, continous VP off, Historical AI, it is a heck of a game. I would stay away from the Spring 61 campaign, the AI can't handle that, neither can it handle the regiments Eastern Theatre Campaign in Whiskey and Lemons. As long as you don't cheese things, like using cavalry to cap all the entrance points on a tactical map, and no mass cavalry charges, stuff like that, it is the most realistic war game I have ever played on the American Civil War. I just checked the reviews, and 77% of the almost 2,000 reviews are positive, and many of those reviewers have hundreds of hour played!

All of that rings very true and I have been following the game for a long time now. Yes, there are many positive reviews but barely a single one without the caveat of bugs, performance, AI etc. etc.

Personally, I refunded the game some time ago because I just couldn't stand the performance of 20fps and what's much worse: the mouse cursor was tied to the framerate. This really killed any feeling for me to get into the game. Why is there no hardware cursor? Curiously, some videos on Youtube show a much smoother cursor and framerate overall.
And of course there were very stupid bugs of the AI even in the tutorial.

But in general, you're probably right. If you don't exploit and/or cheese the game, it might actually be fun. And after all, the IRL commanders did some very stupid things as well. So it might be realistic.

Gosh, I just wish this game had the same polish and AI as Graviteam Tactics.

////

Anyways, thanks for your input. If I don't buy much else during the sales period, I am going to pick this one up!

[Scotters]

The 20 fps performance, I'm not sure what your specs are, but make sure you play the game at a lower resolution, and in settings choose: graphics quality low (move the slider all the way left), down sizing units in large battles, and number of models in battle (move that slider all the way left. Start there, and if things are good, then you can always increase the resolution, graphics, number of units, etc. I know with my previous computer the big battles go laggy, and that computer still had a good cpu, i7 8700, but trying to play this game in 4k, it just could not handle it. The 2080 ti graphics card was irrelevant, its the cpu that is used in this game. Now with my monster computer with a 13900k processor, it runs everything smooth, but most people aren't crazy enough to spend that much on a gaming computer.

Also, you can email the developers if you are having technical problems, and in the past they always got back to people on stuff like that. Hopefully that is still the case.