Question about scenario development time

[MarshalJean]

Hello, friends.

I don't own any SoW games so forgive my ignorance. But I was wondering, now that the SDK has been released, and the the KS mod is up and running, if a player has properly installed the KS mod, how difficult/time consuming is it to take a map and create an army-sized (multi-corps) level force for both sides and then jump into the action as an army commander for one of the sides? Minutes? Hours?

For instance, if I wanted to simulate a fictional battle using Napoleon's 1813 army against Schwarzenberg's Army of Bohemia in a non-descript town, how long would it take me to create the OoBs and then start playing, once I was acclimated to the scenario editor?

Thanks ahead of time for the response. I'm asking because my time prevents me from playing multi-player and so I'm looking for a decent AI opponent using a system that allows me to simulate battles across the Napoleonic Wars era with the ability to create formations/OoBs fairly quickly. I'm not sure such a game exists (I love HistWar, but it's AI is lacking). Anyway, any help on this would be great. I will also post this in the KS Mod thread, in case this thread is an inappropriate place.

Thanks again.

MJ

[Grog]

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Hello MJ

The most time consuming element is creating an OOB but once it is created, you have a master which scenario tools can draw upon and is both quick and easy, once you know how.

With the KS mod there is already a massive OOB covering the 1809 campaign in Bavaria/Austria (and another on the 1809 Italian campaign).

Army sized battles are possible at high sprite ratios but I'm not sure the AI engine is best suited to this level. At KS the games are at Corps v Corps level. The AI excels at this level and will give you a worthwhile opponent. Play the games at Horseback level (HITS) and you will be given a game that is both more challenging and feels humongous.

[Grog]

MJ

Please feel free to drop by to the Kriegsspiel group.

It is a shame you cannot play MP, especially since we have a 1813 campaign running and are always glad to have new players join us.

http://kriegsspiel.forumotion.net/

Grog

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[Saddletank]

I am umpiring the 1813 campaign and have created a full OOB for the spring campaign (May), not the more famous summer/autumn (Leipzig) campaign. I have scaled it down somewhat as the armies are so huge but essentially most of the units are there at battalion/regiment level and all the commanders, it just needs some 'jiggling' work to get it up to full scale. I did compress/combine artillery companies however.

I would think there's about a weeks worth of evenings work to do (at my slow pace) to get it complete at full scale. You might be able to work faster. However as Grog says, army vs army really doesn't work in SoW as the maps are only 5 miles square (25 sq miles area) and a couple of corps per side can easily make this quite crowded and turn it into a slugging match. If that's your thing then that's fine but I have found that SoW works better for smaller fights of around corps vs corps size.

There is also quite an art in single-player scenario design that invokes the scripting to allow forces to be held inactive until needed and many other neat tricks. I write scenarios exclusively for MP and the scripting does not work in MP so I have never looked at it, but there are some good scenario writers on the forums who I am sure can give you some guidance.

SoW has its faults and you just have to either ignore or work around these but I think it stands alone in Napoleonic RTS gaming for now and certainly is very much better than Histwar.