The American Civil War or Conflicts of The Late 1800s

[BornGinger]

I just about finished watching the nine parts documentary series The Civil War. When I watched that documentary series it seemed to me that although it began as a conflict to prevent a division of the United States it quite quickly turned into a war about prestige. If the Confederate States had been allowed to exist it wouldn't have surprised me that the USA and the CSA quite quickly would have begun to work well together.

While I watched this documentary series I couldn't but think about what a game about this conflict in the hands of Battlefront would possibly look like. There seem to have been enough battles and smaller skirmiches in this four years conflict to give the players enough scenarios and campaigns to be busy for a long time.

If a game about the American Civil War wouldn't offer enough battles and campaigns, Battlefront could maybe make a game about some of the different larger conflicts during the late 1800s and call the game Conflicts Of The Late 1800s.

And with a scenario editor the players could make and upload battles and skirmiches from more recent wars just to see how they might play out with the old time weapons and horses instead of submachine guns, tanks and long range cannons. It could have been fun to play a quick battle where Prussian or Ottoman soldiers fight against the Boer soldiers or soldiers of the Confederate States.

As the soldiers in the American civil war were fighting in columns I'm at least pretty certain that the scenario maps would have to be quite large for the bigger battles. And the shooting would be a bit slower and I'm sure quite a bit more tense with the men having to reload their rifles and risk getting shot down if the enemy troops are able to reload much quicker.

To use good tactics in an H2H game would probably be much more important in a game with soldiers that are using the frontloaded rifles from the 1860s and cavalry troops to attack the flanks of the enemy columns and possibly attack the enemy's artillery batteries too.

And with a wego system it could be interesting to play H2H or a scenario, containing a good trigger system, and watch your troops walk forward towards your enemy who you know is just behind a hill and in the last ten seconds of that minute get surprised by having an enemy cavalry ride out from the edge of a forest straight into the flank of your men.
 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

I've been looking for a good ACW game for a while, but TBH I'm not sure CM would be the right engine for it.

[womble]

The sheer number of infantry in a battle would, I reckon, make the engine unsuitable. Concealment and stealth would be overmodelled. You could elide all the armour code, and pretty much the offboard arty.

One of the features of the period is the inertia of your units, something that people complain about CMx2 WW2 titles failing to model; there would need to be an order delay system, since subunit commanders generally did not have the permission to use their initiative to anything like the degree that WW2 NCOs did. No, CM would be starting from scratch to make such a game.

 

[Erwin]

A company already made a couple of ACW tactical games a decade or two ago that looked very much like an ACW version of CM2.  Unfortunately, I cannot find it anymore so may be defunct. 

https://www.matrixgames.com/game/scourge-of-war-chancellorsville is the closest to what it looked like.

The problem with pre 20th Century war is that it lends itself much more to operational/strategic treatment.  I found that after playing a few of the ACW tactical battles, they all started to feel the same.  

 

[MOS:96B2P]

5 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

I've been looking for a good ACW game for a while, but TBH I'm not sure CM would be the right engine for it.

Grand Tactician The Civil War.  Its on STEAM.  

[StieliAlpha]

On 12/12/2021 at 10:08 PM, Sgt.Squarehead said:

I've been looking for a good ACW game for a while, but TBH I'm not sure CM would be the right engine for it.

Try the Scourge of War Series.

[StieliAlpha]

On 12/12/2021 at 7:58 PM, BornGinger said:

I just about finished watching the nine parts documentary series The Civil War. When I watched that documentary series it seemed to me that although it began as a conflict to prevent a division of the United States it quite quickly turned into a war about prestige. If the Confederate States had been allowed to exist it wouldn't have surprised me that the USA and the CSA quite quickly would have begun to work well together.

While I watched this documentary series I couldn't but think about what a game about this conflict in the hands of Battlefront would possibly look like. There seem to have been enough battles and smaller skirmiches in this four years conflict to give the players enough scenarios and campaigns to be busy for a long time.

If a game about the American Civil War wouldn't offer enough battles and campaigns, Battlefront could maybe make a game about some of the different larger conflicts during the late 1800s and call the game Conflicts Of The Late 1800s.

And with a scenario editor the players could make and upload battles and skirmiches from more recent wars just to see how they might play out with the old time weapons and horses instead of submachine guns, tanks and long range cannons. It could have been fun to play a quick battle where Prussian or Ottoman soldiers fight against the Boer soldiers or soldiers of the Confederate States.

As the soldiers in the American civil war were fighting in columns I'm at least pretty certain that the scenario maps would have to be quite large for the bigger battles. And the shooting would be a bit slower and I'm sure quite a bit more tense with the men having to reload their rifles and risk getting shot down if the enemy troops are able to reload much quicker.

To use good tactics in an H2H game would probably be much more important in a game with soldiers that are using the frontloaded rifles from the 1860s and cavalry troops to attack the flanks of the enemy columns and possibly attack the enemy's artillery batteries too.

And with a wego system it could be interesting to play H2H or a scenario, containing a good trigger system, and watch your troops walk forward towards your enemy who you know is just behind a hill and in the last ten seconds of that minute get surprised by having an enemy cavalry ride out from the edge of a forest straight into the flank of your men.
 

As so often, the “request“ is by far too broad. „Battles of the 1800‘s“‘ covers Waterloo to British-US War of 1812 Tom Crimean War to Prussian-Danish to Prussian-Austrian to Prussian-French to American-Mexican to Civil War to Boer Wars to Opium Wars to Afghanistan Wars to Sudan Wars to a million others. Most of the completely different.

But the game you are looking for is probably Scourge of War, too…..

[BornGinger]

2 hours ago, StieliAlpha said:

As so often, the “request“ is by far too broad. „Battles of the 1800‘s“

If you look again you'll see that it should be Conflicts (or Battles if you prefer) of the late 1800s. So as it is the late 1800s it narrows it down quite a bit.

And when we talk conflicts of the late 1800s there would be too many to choose from so we are talking about the most interesting ones.

Of that reason the correct title could possibly be Conflicts Of The Late 1800s - But Only The Most Interesting Ones With Large Juicy Battles And Small But Just As Juicy Skirmishes.

Edited December 14, 2021 by BornGinger

[StieliAlpha]

On 12/14/2021 at 2:28 AM, BornGinger said:

If you look again you'll see that it should be Conflicts (or Battles if you prefer) of the late 1800s. So as it is the late 1800s it narrows it down quite a bit.

And when we talk conflicts of the late 1800s there would be too many to choose from so we are talking about the most interesting ones.

Of that reason the correct title could possibly be Conflicts Of The Late 1800s - But Only The Most Interesting Ones With Large Juicy Battles And Small But Just As Juicy Skirmishes.

„Conflicts“ are for my understanding the larger scale, like complete wars or campaigns. Far outside the scope of CM.

Otherwise, ah, you mean like the battles of German-French War of 1870/71. Pretty „juicy“ and in many aspects almost „WW1-style“.

Or rather the Victorian Brits during the Mahdi rise in Sudan 1885 and later? Their battles were pretty „juicy“, too. Mobs armed with spears wiping out „moving red-coat squares“ armed with Martiny-Henry rifles. Well, at least in some cases.

 

 

[BornGinger]

8 hours ago, StieliAlpha said:

Conflicts“ are for my understanding the larger scale, like complete wars or campaigns. Far outside the scope of CM.

Red Thunder is the conflict on the Eastern Front and Battle for Normandy and Final Blitz are the conflict on the Western Front. Then we have The Hitler's Underbelly Conflict (Sicily and Italy) and the Cold War conflict and so on. So not outside the scope of CM.

[StieliAlpha]

53 minutes ago, BornGinger said:

Red Thunder is the conflict on the Eastern Front and Battle for Normandy and Final Blitz are the conflict on the Western Front. Then we have The Hitler's Underbelly Conflict (Sicily and Italy) and the Cold War conflict and so on. So not outside the scope of CM.

Nope, the definition on „Conflict“ is much broader.

RT shows us some battles within Operation Bagration, which is only one part of “The War in the East”. One might argue, if “The War in the East” equals  „the Conflict in the East“. I.e., if the war between Germany and Russia was not just the culmination of the conflict. The battles are at best events within the Conflict.The „Conflict“ between Germany and Russia probably started in the 1920’ s.@Aragorn2002 might be happy to give some insight from his perspective.

Same or similar for BN and FB.

WW1 or the Crimean War are other nice examples of how underlying Conflicts can result in open wars, which include “juicy” battles.

But, anyway…

[BornGinger]

Well, whatever you like. But if there ever was to be a game about the American civil war or about conflicts of the late 1800s it could still contain some of the battles and skirmishes from that period no matter how large and long some conflicts actually were.

Just as the WW2 CM-games we have today don't give us all battles that happened and don't give us a true representation of the battles because of time and scenario map limitations, a game about the American civil war or about the conflicts of the late 1800s wouldn't give us all battles and skirmishes or a true represenatation of the battles because of limitations.

I still think it would be fun to have a CM game about the American civil war, or about conflicts of the late 1800s, with some kind of C&C system where messengers on horses would have to be used to spread the knowledge of enemy movements to the different batallions and have other kinds of weapons than we have now.

I doubt that Battlefront will make such a game. But who knows, one day Steven maybe wakes up with a brilliant idea about making a game that effected USA for a very long time and wants to make it a bit different than the other games about the American civil war.

[landser]

I agree with you BornGinger, I think it would be a compelling focus for a Combat Mission game.  SteiliAlpha is splitting hairs over what the word conflict means, but I get what you are saying. One of the things I think would make it a neat twist in the series is what you touched on with your last post. and that's command and control. How a commander gets the word to those that need it.

Co-ordinating movement and other orders would be unlike anything we have now, post-radio. In this set up things like force concentration takes on a new meaning, as it's not just an aspect of combat power, but would have a direct effect on the formations' ability to achieve cohesiveness with the surrounding units. And right, how would it be done? What happens to your plans when your rider is gunned down and the company on the far left flank never gets the word to move out? I think it would be a very interesting and fun twist on the CM formula. It would put a sharp emphasis on the commander's ability to control his forces, and to get all his pieces working in concert despite many factors actively working against it. Flags? Bugles? Riders? Smoke signals? Haha.

Battlefront would need to re-embrace the concept of command delay, but I think it would make for compelling command-level play.

I think both Scourge of War and Grand Tactician (both recommended above) are good suggestions. Grand Tactician is done by the same dev who did Seven Years War, which was a promising title that never fully convinced me. It's a one-man band in that studio (still?) and progress seems slow. Grand Tactician was removed from the oven a little early in my view, and needs more time to bake. There is again a lot of promise here, more so to me than just about any other Civil War game, in that it's not a history replicator/duplicator, but a game with more of an emergent and dynamic feel to it. It's ambitious, and maybe too much so, but I think if he is able to pull it off it will be a good one. Conceptually I really like it. Now the mechanical and system sides need to match that vision. It needs polish. I hope he pulls it off.

On the battlefield I think the American Civil War would fit really well with Combat Mission and WEGO. I think of titles I play like TW Napoleon or the Fall of the Samurai expansion for Shogun 2, tactical combat in the gunpowder era, and I can envision it in Combat Mission. The rifle ranks, the smoke, the maneuver, the cannon booming. Grapeshot, cavalry raids. TW Napoleon, especially with Darth Mod, really does an excellent job of capturing the essence of this type of combat and I think it would work great in Combat Mission. But would it be popular, and enough to justify it's development? I can't answer that, but from a suitability standpoint I like the idea.

Edited December 17, 2021 by landser

[womble]

1 hour ago, landser said:

I agree with you BornGinger, I think it would be a compelling focus for a Combat Mission game. 

Only it wouldn't be Combat Mission. If BFC made it, it would pretty much need to be an entire new game line. The current engine pays far too much attention to factors that are irrelevant to horse-and-musket warfare (even in the days of breech-loaded cartridge weapons like the Martini-Henry, and early bolt-action rifles), and entirely insufficient attention to factors that are directly relevant. Horses, for one  ; they don't even do dead horse flavour items in the WW2 and later games. Unit cohesion and formation isn't even a thing in current titles. Melee doesn't exist.

It simply wouldn't be an "adaptation" of the current code base; the architecture doesn't appear to be there to support it, because why would you put the framework for unnecessary irrelevancies in ab initio when you're not even considering including cavalry, formations, command delay? They'd be starting mostly from scratch. I don't even know whether the BFC "powers that be" even have a passing interest in the period, let alone sufficient to do all the work necessary to make a product they'd be happy with. They have enough of a hard time ferreting out OoB details for units from a war 75-80 years ago, let alone one twice that old.y 

The US market might have a small niche for an ACW game, but that niche shrivels to insignificance in an international market, as the dearth of current titles indicates, and the other conflicts that have been talked about are even smaller interest groups. The work to spread an ACW title out to the "rest of the century" wouldn't be insignificant and would be struggling for eyes, for a very low chance of any comparable return.

 

[landser]

Well then sure, if it isn't already possible in a decade old engine then it will never be.

Horses? You want horses! Combat Mission doesn't do horses, man.

I read what you wrote and I still agree with BG.

What if we called it Mission: Combat instead?

 

Quote

They'd be starting mostly from scratch.

I think you're on to something

[BornGinger]

27 minutes ago, womble said:

they don't even do dead horse flavour items in the WW2 and ... games.

Final Blitz has dead horse flavour items. And dead cows too, I think.

Why such a negative opinionated post womble? You need to be a bit more positive, butty.

Edited December 17, 2021 by BornGinger

[womble]

12 minutes ago, BornGinger said:

Final Blitz has dead horse flavour items. And dead cows too, I think.

Why such a negative opinionated post womble? You need to be a bit more positive, butty.

Well, dang. It only took them what? a decade (not entirely sure, but it certainly wasn't part of CMx2's first expansion, was it?) to get around to dead, static depictions of animals. How long do you think a plausible horse animation in all four of its gaits would take? With a rider? And that's just moving in a straight line. Now put 'em 100 abreast and watch the engine melt your CPU and turn the replay into a slideshow as it calculates all those changing LOSes, and the same for the 3-7 ranks behind them.

I'm extremely down on this idea, because I don't want precious brain-in-a-jar resources wasted on a commercial non-starter. Not that I'm in any way concerned that Steve would set out down such a path. But since we're still waiting for the "work back towards the beginning" part of "we'll get to the end, then start working our way back to the beginning" development path that BFC have previously espoused, it seems that flapping gums about jumping 80 years past the beginning that we haven't even reached yet is the acme of "pointless yammering".

Starting a whole new line, which emphatically wouldn't be "Combat Mission" any more, just another quality BFC product? Maybe that has legs, if it's really darn cheap. And can be done by a newly-formed group of researchers and programmers. Diverting resource from CMxnext  into something this niche doesn't bear considering.

 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Have to agree with @womble  the changes needed to make this sort of game would mean the end product wouldn't be CM.....Nor should it be IMHO, CM is designed to model a completely different sort of warfare.

That said, if Battlefront were to create an ACW (or ECW or Napoleonic) game that modelled that conflict with the same authenticity that CM models later wars, I'd be first in the queue to buy it.

Edited December 17, 2021 by Sgt.Squarehead

[BornGinger]

A whole lot of talk about Combat Mission and the current game engine in this thread although my first post doesn't mention neither Combat Mission nor the CM2 Engine. The first post only mentions "a game" and when I later on mention "the scope of CM" it is as an answer to a post.

If we also consider that this thread is in the General Discussion section separated from the sections about the different CM1 and CM2 games, is there really a reason to argue about whether or not the CM2 Engine would manage to play a game about the "old days" when a man was courting a woman with poems and long walks and the talk about her bossom would make her faint?

If "a game" about the late 1800s would be made by Battlefront I'm sure they would do what is necessary to be able to play it. Would that be a new game engine or would that be a refurbishment of the CM2 Engine? Only Battlefront knows, so there's no reason for any of us to try to argue about it.