Scourge of War Boards

Part two of a Napoleonic scenario on Davinci's 10 Mile Map will be played this weekend by the KriegSpiel group. Part one saw the use of light cavalry in its traditional role of scouting and screening while the two armies maneuvered for position. Part two will see the battle joined as the Austrians and French try to carry out their strategic objectives. If you have an interest in giving HITS Napoleonic warfare a try, join us. A link to the KS thread is here: KS Napoleonic Scenario

Part 1 was full of surprises (and a large dose of confusion) for both sides. It plays out on a very large map with plenty of room for maneuver.

Part 2 will reveal who got the better of the early positioning as the armies come together in what will surely be an epic brawl. As with other KS Napoleon scenarios, the action will be so realistic, you'll want to check for powder burns afterward.

Plenty of commands are available. Don't miss it!

I played in the first part of this game and need to offer a big thank you to Da Vinci who made the map. I had downloaded it a long time ago but for some reason never used it. When I saw it for the first time in the MP game last weekend I was seriously impressed. It has a lot of good detail in the vegetation and crops and feels a lot like Brandy Station in build-quality. I really like the wide open flat expanses which feel like 19th C. Europe to me, maybe Poland, perfect for a Napoleonic game.

I commented afterwards that someone should make a WW2 mod for SoW because this map is crying out for 100s of T-34s and Panthers to go grinding across it.

MTG – Hey, do you think that the map would work better if some of the mapname .csv properties were removed, to help speed the map up?

Or, have you already done this?

Way back when, we worked on the Alpine map, I added in a lot of road-names, but you commented that it slowed the map up.

davinci

There were two things that the 10 mile map lacked (entirely IMHO of course):

1) Some creeks or rivers.

2) More buildings. Just 2 to 3 houses or shacks at road intersections would be enough to give the sense of a village or small township. You could use the simplest, lowest poly-count models NSD has made or limit the building selection to those that use the fewest texture sheets/repeated or common texture sheets so the players PC has to load the smallest amount of data into memory.

MTG – Hey, do you think that the map would work better if some of the mapname .csv properties were removed, to help speed the map up?
Or, have you already done this?

I made a number of changes so it plays as one of our standard nappy maps. We had a 10 players game last week with a large number of troops and had very little lag.

I made a number of changes so it plays as one of our standard nappy maps. We had a 10 players game last week with a large number of troops and had very little lag.

Good News, I never would have thought that it would work in Multi-Play!

There were two things that the 10 mile map lacked (entirely IMHO of course):
1) Some creeks or rivers.
2) More buildings. Just 2 to 3 houses or shacks at road intersections would be enough to give the sense of a village or small township. You could use the simplest, lowest poly-count models NSD has made or limit the building selection to those that use the fewest texture sheets/repeated or common texture sheets so the players PC has to load the smallest amount of data into memory.

I sort of held off responding back to avoid jumping the topic here, till after the weekend’s game.

As far as I can tell there is very little impact on the FPS as far as adding houses and fences as long as they are spread out a bit.

I now have over sixteen hundred structures on the map, along with four-thousand plus fences and the map still works as normal. I try to add something to the map weekly just to see if there is a point that breaks the map. There doesn’t seem to be.

The small town-ships were not done due to the fact that I really don’t like restricting the movements of the AI . The human player would simply place their troops in a position to force the AI to constantly get bogged-down in the structures.

The water-system is well……how do I put this……changed!

The Power-Render program has an amazing-water-system built into the PR-Program, but that system is now broken.

Rivers and streams can still be added to the maps, but the process takes a hundred times longer than the previous games map-making-took.

I did manage to get the water into the game by changing some of the files from this version of the PR-Program to the last version of the PR-Program, but the ability to smooth out the river banks doesn’t work.

I'm sure that there is another work-around but I haven't discovered it as of now.

davinci

The game had ~100,000 men on the field. and we had no problems. Only near the end of the battle when the number of dead bodies started to mount did I notice any lag. It's a very nice map for these kind of scenarios. I may set up another one in a couple of months. Join us next time, Davinci, and take a brigade into battle. You will get a very different perspective of your map.

The game had ~100,000 men on the field and we had no problems. Only near the end of the battle when the number of dead bodies started to mount did I notice any lag.

Hey, considering that the game uses several dead-sprite-animations each with a file size of 1025kb, would it help to use lo-res animations for the casualties.
Or, would that mess the game up?

I may set up another one in a couple of months. Join us next time, Davinci, and take a brigade into battle. You will get a very different perspective of your map.

My, Internet-Speed is terrible, too slow to even watch a YouTube video, most of the time I just use my phone to get on the internet.

davinci

The small town-ships were not done due to the fact that I really don’t like restricting the movements of the AI . The human player would simply place their troops in a position to force the AI to constantly get bogged-down in the structures.

Thank you for the input and for your explanations.

Yes, I understand what you mean about the AI getting bogged down among buildings but in my experience that mainly becomes a problem when many buildings are close together such as in the towns of Gettysburg or Sharpsburg or Lynchburg. I think if you only placed 2 or 3 small buildings at each road junction quite widely spaced apart - lets say further apart than the frontage of a regiment in line - I think you'd be being fair on your AI. Please remember also that in MP games we often don't have much fully-controlled AI and players can force a regiment around an obstacle like a building. MTG has created a minimap for this map that sets it in Germany with 'towns' all over it - and it helps a great deal with orienting yourself on this big map when you look at a road junction from a distance and can see a couple of buildings there.

I don't think complex settlements are needed with barns, outhouses, hayricks and such, just something to represent the presence of a settlement.