American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

Gents,
I was wondering, is there a full campaign feature that utilizes the much touted "Largest Map in a HPS game?" Was thinking that it'd be fun to do a full, obscenely long campaign on that one.
<salute>

_________________
Brig. Gen. Nick DeStefano
5th Artillery Battalion, 2nd Division, II "Wolf-Pack" Corps, AotM
[img]http://www.acwgc.org/IVCorps/Image/IVCorps250.png[/img]

I have often thought the same but I can't find any campaign that uses just that map. My only idea is to simply edit a map and increase the number of turns. Much like the Fort Henry to Fort Donelson Battle on HPS Shiloh is 450 turns the Atlanta Campaign (on the large map) would have to be about that... or even more. Given that our Yankee opponents have a hard time counting past 99 it could be hard finding an opponent to battle.

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20.

That is as high as any Rebel can count. NOW, if he has shoes on or wears mittens, the count really goes down.

And, ole' 9 fingered Billy Bob can only count to 19!

_________________
General Ernie Sands
President ACWGC -Sept 2015- Dec 2020
7th Brigade, 1st Division, XVI Corps, AoT
ACWGC Records Site Admin

"If you do not know where you are going, any road will take you there."

While I will defer to others for the specific answer, I am of the opinion that without any form of loss recovery would make it extremely difficult, if not impossible to make a scenario that works. Of course that is just my opinion based upon the current engine iteration and could change in the future for all anyone knows.

_________________
~Retired~

Steve's reply raises an extremely interesting possibility! If one were to incorporate such a game mechanism it could be broadly appicable to every other game in the Campaign series. One would then "only" need the co-joined maps from each game to create what would be called the "open campaign" formats! Of course these "open campaigns" would demand a considerable amount of time in non-battle turns.

_________________
General Jos. C. Meyer, ACWGC
Union Army Chief of Staff
Commander, Army of the Shenandoah
Commander, Army of the Tennessee
(2011-2014 UA CoA/GinC)

That is a good point. The larger the map, the greater the time to play it and the greater the options. Consider the GB large map, in addition to Atlanta; how long would it take to FIND each other, if the Armies did not meet at McPherson's? ( I think that is right.) I think it would be almost unplayable, IMO. Huge scenarios/campaigns are not the norm. Even the 3 day GB scenario is a huge investment in time and effort. ( My game of the 3 day battle is in it's THIRD YEAR, maybe it is FOUR! Granted, my opponent is a truck driver and is gone for quite awhile from time to time, but still it is very long.)

So, I think smaller campaigns/scenarios will remain the norm.

_________________
General Ernie Sands
President ACWGC -Sept 2015- Dec 2020
7th Brigade, 1st Division, XVI Corps, AoT
ACWGC Records Site Admin

"If you do not know where you are going, any road will take you there."

Limiting myself to the the scope of HPS ... part of this involves how engine changes get incorporated into HPS titles. (Other projects are outside the scope of my reply).

I don't know what they have planned in that area, however I will note that there are Tiller games in other series that do use a recovery mechanism (PzC, MC, FWWC to name a few).

I probably should specify, that what I was referring to is a guesstimate that units would fought to nothingness and at the end of said scenario -it is my guess that there'd not be much left (it is bad enough in some stand alone scenarios as it stands now). The linked campaign aspect does have a recovery mechanism -so unless the entire scenario is taking in a rather narrow scope of time -it would seem to be open to some issues with attrition.

That being said - I can say that I had sort of dabbled around with that map (in the process of making a screen shot image) -and it is a big one ... (understatement). I think Bill Peters might have some bigger ones in some of his NB titles ... and -well, it is a bit of a challenge even just taking screen shots all in one sitting. (I haven't managed it yet).

_________________
~Retired~

Whoa! I created a monster here...
Anyone ever play "Age of Rifles"? Probably. I only ever got to mess around with the demo (came on the same PC Gamer disk as the Battleground Gettysburg Demo, way way way way back in the day (1996? if I'm not mistaken)) but there was another category to fire results: stragglers. I remember playing the Battle of Omdurman, and having entire regiments of British Infantry using Martini-Henry rifles, unload into a mass of Mahdists, and only scoring...maybe...5-10 kills...maybe...10 wounded, but inflicting like 50-60 straggler casualties...since I never got any further than the stand-alone battles included in the demo, I have no idea if there was a campaign feature, or if those "straggler" casualties were ever regained by their parent units...I can only assume "stragglers" would be like...disrupted units in the TS/HPS games...taking cover, pinned under fire; demoralized; what-have-you, and for that reason did not advance with their parent unit, thus incurring a strength loss...
As for larger maps, even the large Gettysburg map isn't so bad when compared to the large Atlanta map, and with enough cavalry you can make short work of reconning that area, at least to get an idea of where your opponent is. It takes a long, long time to move 80,000 men around, even on good roads, and that map has pretty decent LOS at some points.
<salute>

_________________
Brig. Gen. Nick DeStefano
5th Artillery Battalion, 2nd Division, II "Wolf-Pack" Corps, AotM
[img]http://www.acwgc.org/IVCorps/Image/IVCorps250.png[/img]

Where on the Atlanta disk may one see that "largest HPS map" ever made? I can't find it.

_________________
Your Obedient Servant,
Lt Gen Dwight McBride
Ist Division/1st Brigade
V Corps/AOP/USA

Dwight: go in to the scenario editor (you have to do this if it isn't used in a scenario). cwedit.exe

Close off all of the boxes that pop up or select any scenario (it won't matter- as you have to eventually tell the program that you want to start designing a new scenario.).

After you do that ... go up to 'File' and choose 'new' ... the first thing then you are asked to pick out is a map ... there are 2 Full Atlanta maps (03 and 03b) -then you have to chose an oob and a pdt (which can be anything -if you are only wanting to have a look at the map file). If there are any annoying boxes still there ( like an OOB box- just 'x' out of it to clear it off your screen.

____

In the John Tiller designed series losses are more of a catch-all, which means basically loss of combat effectiveness (the design complication is that when the series was designed it was done so mainly with the idea of smaller battles -as such the larger battles, are sort of left for as well as the scenario designers (the HPS ones- since JT doesn't do the scenarios any longer) can fit them in.

_________________
~Retired~