Scourge of War Boards

It seems to me like rather than the whole war, Vicksburg or wherever, the place to start for a campaign mode for SOWG might be...... the Gettsyburg Campaign. Mods could then take it from there.

I think the Campaign idea could be approched in many different ways;

One; From Sumter to Appomatix

Two; Regional Campaign (East/West)

Three; Local Campaign (Any # of running battles)

Four; A mix of the above selections (East + # of battles ex.)

To me if the battles are scripted or unscripted is a big question. It would be a huge project whichever way the campaign theme goes.

BOSTON )

I really would enjoy not seeing a randomly generated map.

My idea is that everything is played on one BIG map that you can zoom around on from way up high!

I do like the idea of Fredericksburg Campaign - learned that it is the most daring manoever the AotP every commited, leaving its right flank open to Jackson in the Valley, abandoning its supply wagons (for the most part), and, most importantly, leaving the AoNV closer to Washington than it was!

Burnside's NC Expedition would be nice to see. Or even better, a whole coastal campaign thing - Hunter's Dept of the South and Burnside's Dept of NC in some huge scale campaigning.

Chancellorsville would be an intersting campaign.

So would the Tallahooma Campaign! Bragg, trying to defeat the Union army while it was split up into 3 wings. And Rosecrans, trying to capture Chattanooga without wasting a man.

How about a campaign where you start out with the same forces each side had on the day Fort Sumter happened. The player could then attempt to change the entire way the Civil War went. The Confederates could attack another fort or go straight at the undefended Washington D.C. The Union could hold up in Washing ton and train for the correct period of time to make the troops well enough fighters then attack the Confederates and maybe win. A whole number of ideas could be used.

Another idea would be the coastal war engagements with the Marines and Sailors and so forth. This could open up fort battles like Fort Fisher or Wagner etc. This could even make the Peninsula campaign much more realistic if it is done of course.

Another idea would be a type of RPG where the player get's commissioned colonel of a regiment (chooses his state first) and then he can customize the regimental uniform and fighting style. He could have a fancy zouave regiment or a plain regiment (cheaper) that has been drill profeciantly.
or
The player can choose to be in the Regular Army but he first must take a test at West Point to determine his rank and branch of service. He could then lead Regulars into battle.
Now if the player does well in his fighting he will be promoted or if his brigadier is killed he may be placed in command.

Those are just a few ideas I came up with recently.

If SOW is as open for modding as TCM was (and I suspect it will be, or better) and Norb gives us the ability to dump end-of-battle stats to a text file some interesting things could happen.

It would be possible for a someone to write a quick little app that transfers those battle results into a 3rd party ACW campaign. AGEOD's ACW would be a great candidate as they also have a very open text format for their games. They also handle things down to the brigade/regiment level so you could get an almost 1-to-1 mapping of units and personalities.

Or a meta-campaign could happen similar to Combat Mission Meta-campaign. This is more of a forum based Kriegspiel with a GM but battles are resolved in the Combat Mission game. It takes them years of real time to play out just a few weeks of game time though. Those are some dedicated guys!
(A Civil War Kriegspiel link here )

A real challenge would be creating the terrain for all the battles. Unless people were OK with constantly fighting over the same ground, manually making maps would be very time consuming. I've looked into it a little and satellite SRTM geo-data just isn't detailed enough to be used without either humans adding detail or having the computer procedurally add detail. Humans make much more interesting maps but tend to get bored.

Joshua l.Chamberlain wrote:

Another idea would be a type of RPG where the player get's commissioned colonel of a regiment (chooses his state first) and then he can customize the regimental uniform and fighting style. He could have a fancy zouave regiment or a plain regiment (cheaper) that has been drill profeciantly.
or
The player can choose to be in the Regular Army but he first must take a test at West Point to determine his rank and branch of service. He could then lead Regulars into battle.
Now if the player does well in his fighting he will be promoted or if his brigadier is killed he may be placed in command.

this here's the kind of campaign i'd like to play, personally: develop a character and fight the ACW (almost) first-person-style. see how long you can survive the battles and try to rise up the ranks.

Louie Raider wrote:

this here's the kind of campaign i'd like to play, personally: develop a character and fight the ACW (almost) first-person-style. see how long you can survive the battles and try to rise up the ranks.

That's always been my long term goal. Fight the entire war using the same character. Build your army and see if you can get promoted and make it to the end.

norb wrote:

Louie Raider wrote:

this here's the kind of campaign i'd like to play, personally: develop a character and fight the ACW (almost) first-person-style. see how long you can survive the battles and try to rise up the ranks.

That's always been my long term goal. Fight the entire war using the same character. Build your army and see if you can get promoted and make it to the end.

Might be a problem if you were to be playing Jackson or Reynolds, ect., or fired like some others. :dry:

Hancock the Superb wrote:

I really would enjoy not seeing a randomly generated map.

i agree, but is it feasible to digitally map even northern virginia at tactical scale, let alone a whole theatre, or . . . even . . . (drum roll) the entire continental theatre of war!

so that you could walk from washington to dallas?

it might be possible to get digital 3D topographical maps that combined with satellite terrain imagery for an ultra-accurate US theatre map, but then you'd have to go over the whole thing to reduce habitation and infrastructure to 1860s levels, and you'd have to mark buildings, forests, clear, slightly soft patches of ground, potholes and weathered shoulders on roads, spots where a chap might trip, etc.

impossible!

If His-War can do a round-about campaign game, No doubt that the NSD Team (engine) can do it better. Mind you I have not tried His-War yet and don't know if their battles are chained in some way.