Multiplayer American Civil War game

[Garnier44]

HDN website:
http://www.mastersofthefield.com/dn_menu.shtml

Hawks group forum:
http://www.mastersofthefield.com/forums

Screenshots:
http://www.mastersofthefield.com/dn_scr ... s_page.htm

American Conquest - Divided Nation, with my mod the "Hawks' Divided Nation" (HDN) mod, is currently the best ACW real time multiplayer game out there. The only real competition currently would be Sid Meiers Gettysburg, or some other old turn-based games.

The game American Conquest Divided Nation was a big failure, and there was never any real multiplayer activity. As of the past 6 months however when HDN was finalized, a lot of multiplayer activity started, even a lot of 6-7 player battles. When I say game from now on I refer to the game with my mod, since it's the only way the game is played online.

I fully expect that when SoWGB arrives, this game will be outclassed, and many of us will be playing SoWGB instead. HDN can't compete with the War3d engine for a tactical or strategic simulator (and I don't want it to). But in the meantime, it might be fun for some of you itching for ACW multiplayer, as it has been for many others.

The best way to describe it would be a 1:1 scale representation of civil war combat, on the following scale: You get some 10,000-20,000 individual troops on a map 1.4 miles across, with up to 7 players. We've made over 30 battlefields including most of the major battles of the Eastern Theatre.
Here you can see the maps:
http://www.mastersofthefield.com/dn_maps_menu.shtml

Instead of capturing an entire battle on one map, Gettysburg for instance is broken into 5 maps. Rather than abstraction, this game focuses on making a smaller part of the engagement feel real. You have regiments of ~300 individual soldiers, loading, firing, routing, dying independently. The troops are organized into battalions of 100-150 men.


The engine isn't as good as what we're used to here, but it is multiplayer. (The mod is entirely focused on multiplayer, no singleplayer support whatever.)

[RebBugler]

I played American Conquest - Divided Nation several years ago. Pretty good game until I discovered TC2M, haven't been back. Your mod sounds interesting, especially 1:1 scale, I'm into that heavily as you may have noticed with my SR1 mods (GrayGhost) with TC2M .

Too busy testing SOW at present, or I'd give your mod a try, just don't have time to play anything else. Curious...Did they ever patch in a fatigue factor with AC?...that omission alone made the game pretty weak...plus, it was real buggy.

Remember once, all my troops dropped dead suddenly on the field, I had neglected to grow and harvest crops to feed them...I'm a General wantabe, not a farmer. :woohoo:

[Garnier44]

The mod does away with resource management (except artillery ammunition), and there is no fatigue. I did make my own fatigue model once where troops would reload slower after fighting too long, but disabled it because it only confused people.

A large part of this mod is the extension to the game engine itself in C++. I wrote a scenario system that allow us to make OOBs and objectives and such, among many other things that no typical mod could do.

In the end the game is weak as a simulation (at the core it is a traditional RTS). It's fun because of the spectacle of 15000 troops in action, and multiplayer can make anything enjoyable.