SoW DLC Maps

So what does "RMF" stand for? French? Ford? False?

It certainly does seem to channel things to the crossings, though.

Fortifications. They were used in the nappy mod for SOWGB. They simulated buildings that could be fortified by a battalion in square formation. You'll see rock walls arranged in a small square in various parts of the map. They have a very high defensive value.

Ah. Always wondered about field fortifications. Would be hard to do a battle like Borodino without them. Then again, it would be hard to do Borodino under any circumstances.

Thanks for the info.

Clever Kevin can add field fortifications to any map. They use the Gettysburg 'logpile' type entrenchment sprites seen on the default Culps Hill map. It means adding to the greyscale bitmap so you end up with a permanently changed map, which of course you need to save under a different name. If you look at the Alpine RMF map there are a whole series of these defences around the NE town which we used as a fortified city in one of our campaign battles.

Some time ago one of our group made a Raevski Redoubt scenario for Borodino using this method.

There are also several NSD and free maps with fortifications on such as Lynchburg, Fredericksburg/Salem's Church, several of the Chancellorsville maps, etc.

The RM makes for some interesting action. Have to watch for the fords, though. The game always seems to know where they are!

The AI will sacrifice a lot of infantry trying to give its artillery time to set up counter-battery fire on the guns defending the crossing.

Indded. It also allows one to recreate Friedland or Aspern/Essling type battles.

So we played a scenario I designed last night on the Antietam RM map and a couple of things became apparent and then there is one big one that I'll get to at the end.

First, when testing the scenario on SP there seemed to be some of those square stone forts you mentioned near the bridge in the center.  Yet, when I changed the type to mp and started it the "fort" did not appear.  More of a curiosity than anything else but does the switch to MP change the way the game reads the map?

Second, some enemy units crossed the river anyway.  Because they were enemy units we couldn't tell exactly what they were.  I was wondering if "Light" or "Jaeger" battalions and cavalry regiments were exempt.  It seemed that the bulk of the infantry and all of the artillery either crossed near or on the bridge or simply lined up and fired at the French across the river.

Third, and this was weird and makes no sense to me, I set it up so that there was a small French Corps defending each bridge.  

Massena was the army commander, and Victor and Marmont were the Corps commanders.  When we started we each took a corps since Massena was, or seemed to be, superfluous.  The game crashed 29 seconds in.  All that the log said was that the connection was lost.
We tried it again.  This time it crashed in 11 seconds.  We tried it again and neither of us touched the mouse.  It crashed in 18 seconds.
Now of course the game opened up on Victor and I noticed couriers riding by which could only be sent out by the AI through Massena.  Just for the hell of it we tried it again but this time I selected Massena and he still took Marmont.  The game ran without a hitch for the next 3 hours.  WTH?  When you guys play your MP games does someone have to take on the role of Army Commander?

First, when testing the scenario on SP there seemed to be some of those square stone forts you mentioned near the bridge in the center. Yet, when I changed the type to mp and started it the "fort" did not appear. More of a curiosity than anything else but does the switch to MP change the way the game reads the map?

I didn't realize there were fortress squares on the Antietam map. Are you sure? In any case, there is no difference in what is shown on the Sp or MP battlefield.

Second, some enemy units crossed the river anyway. Because they were enemy units we couldn't tell exactly what they were. I was wondering if "Light" or "Jaeger" battalions and cavalry regiments were exempt. It seemed that the bulk of the infantry and all of the artillery either crossed near or on the bridge or simply lined up and fired at the French across the river.

Once a unit has retreated, something is set in the code so that the unit does not recognize impassible terrain. Nothing can be done about that. I assume it's a bug. This also occurs in the GB game. There are also a couple of "hidden" fords that allow troops to cross, that are not apparent to players. Perhaps one or both of these conditions were involved.

Massena was the army commander, and Victor and Marmont were the Corps commanders. When we started we each took a corps since Massena was, or seemed to be, superfluous. The game crashed 29 seconds in. All that the log said was that the connection was lost.

This is a bug in the game for MP play. If there are more than one corps, there can be no army commander. He must be deleted from the scenario csv file.

In addition the impassable river code is not perfect. The AI will sometimes manage to get troops across despite the greyscale bitmap indicating the river is impassable. I recall a thread on the NSD forum where their map maker admitted the system wasn't perfect.

I didn't realize there were fortress squares on the Antietam map. Are you sure? wrote:

Just across the center bridge when I was testing on SP there were two adjacent square structures which permitted a unit to walk in, form square, and take very few casualties. If it isn't a "fort" it is the next best thing. In fact, there was one on the other side of the river. When we tried it on MP all three were missing. I don't seem to be able to take screen shots on my computer or I'd send you one.

Very interesting about the Army Commander thing. Now that I know I can work around it.

I did wonder about the hidden ford thing but then it seemed odd that so few enemy units used it while most of the rest marched headlong into the batteries covering the approach to the bridge. All that means is that the AI is a lot smarter than Burnside! A little randomness is exciting.

As always gentlemen. Thanks for your insight.

I will look into this. On your Antietam RM map, look on the minimap and tell me what is the town of Sharpsburg renamed to? Also, what is the map name? It will be called something like "Nap_[country name]_Ant_[number]_RM".

At Middle Bridge on the west bank there are large walled enclosures on the default map but these are much bigger than a square would fit in. There's a wall overlooking the bridge on the east bank too. I doubt you'd confuse the two but I wanted to let you know that there are walled enclosures around where you describe.

The army commander bug has allowed us to write some interesting games for MP involving multiple AI corps, so the cloud has a silver lining.

Copied from the scenario config file: map=Nap_Spain_Ant_1_RM
The town is named Alagon.

Yes, indeed. The enclosures I saw during SP were far larger than a single square would need.... unless it was a huge battalion. Maybe some of those British Guards' Bns would fill it up. But the unit I put in there fought for the whole battle against whichever allied units came across the bridge and took 6 casualties. Like I said, if that wasn't what you meant by a fort it was the next best thing! But now I really don't understand why they vanish from the map on MP.

That's an interesting workaround you discovered. We won't need it because instead of choosing the two corps commanders one of us can just take the army commander and the game plays fine. I was wondering how someone would be Army Commander with HITS? I recall that scene in Waterloo where Napoleon is standing on a hill resting his telescope on the shoulder of one of his guards.

There are no forts of the square stone walled enclosure type on that map, we have never put them on:

Middle Bridge:
http://www.atomic-album.com/showPic.php/22426/Spain_RM_Middle.jpg

Burnside Bridge:
http://www.atomic-album.com/showPic.php/22426/Spain_RM_Burnside.jpg

Upper Bridge:
http://www.atomic-album.com/showPic.php/22426/Spain_RM_Upper.jpg

I am at a loss as to what you are seeing!


To upload a screenshot, hit F4 in-game. Multiple screens can be saved. When you close the game all the screens will be saved in as type .bmp. You'll need an image editor (MSPaint is fine) to save them as type .jpg and maybe reduce the size a little.


You will need to upload your image to some webspace somewhere, such as Photobucket, MySpace, Imgur or Tumblr. Or your ISP may provide storage space.


To put them on the forum click on the blue TV screen icon which is the second icon from the left of the fifth from left set of buttons in the reply post screen. Then put the url of your image in the top input line.




Alternatively, if they are huge images like mine above, just write the url of the image file and users can click on it.

Okay, F4 did nothing but bring up the map.  My keyboard says use PrtSrn for that but it never works.  I tried a screen capture utility and that did not work either.

Not about to beaten by a goddamn machine I took a couple of pictures with my cell phone and hosted them on TinyPic!

Here you go.

https://2img.net/h/oi66.tinypic.com/mhaxeb.jpg

The first one is on the French side of the river with the trees turned off so you can see a similar structure on the Allied side at the top of the bank.


The second photo

http://tinypic.com/m/jsoeuh/2

shows the 1/9 Legere drawn up in square in the "fort."  As I said, they fought for over two hours as the Allied units tried to force a crossing of the bridge and took 6 casualties when I tested the game on SP.  For the record, this Allied column was not as smart as the column in the south and did not try to find another crossing which leads me to think that your idea about a hidden ford down south is probably the correct answer.

Anyway, I can't access the MP game until my son gets home from work... and sometimes he doesn't wake up from his "nap" until too late but next time we do it I'll get another picture of the same spot showing nothing like what you see on SP.

Your first picture is a square light grey wooden fence around one of the houses on the east bank. Your second picture isn't showing.

Here's the same scene: As you can see the far hill's fenced area uses the same texture as the foreground fences. Notice how different the texture is to the lower, darker stone walls.

http://www.atomic-album.com/showPic.php/22426/Spain_RM_Middle_02.jpg

And a close up, again compare to the stone wall texture at left:

http://www.atomic-album.com/showPic.php/22426/Spain_RM_Middle_03.jpg

You can edit keyboard.csv to make F4 take a screenshot. You can also hit F1 which should pull up your list of keyboard commands. I attach a link to my own keyboard.csv which takes screens on F4.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xhh0kqnndgcyvam/keyboard.csv?dl=0


You can play MP alone BTW, just fire it up in the usual way and make a room, then go to the staging room with only you in it. All the MP protocols are then in place but you as host are not sending any packets anywhere. Its a good way to test the differences in MP scenarios over those the SP game has.

Do you have the MP graphics options set to best?

I'll check the graphics. This raises more questions though. I am not seeing buildings for the most part in the game which I could live with.

The fence with the house looks compelling although as you see, I have no house in it nor in the other one. And still remaining is the question of why even the fences disappear on MP. Which file is supposed to put the buildings on the map? I have the trees. I just turned the off to make the far bank more visible.

The graphics in the SP game were set to "high" I increased it to "best" and voila - there were the houses.  The multiplayer option seems to say "map objects" and that was on "low."  I increased that to "best" and will now try to replicate Mr. Digby's suggestion to test MP but I have a feeling that it was set so low that it was showing virtually nothing on the map which is why the fences/walls disappeared.

I don't know why the second picture didn't work with the url



It sort of works here.

Unless 'Show Map Objects' is set to Best, various graphic objects including buildings will not be seen. That was your problem. Glad you solved it.

You can play MP alone BTW, just fire it up in the usual way and make a room, then go to the staging room with only you in it. wrote:

Well I will be dipped in shit. It works. And not only that but the graphics are fixed. Thanks again. I can't believe how much I have learned from you guys.

Wavre DLC has been released.

It's expensive and although I've not seen the map it probably has a high MP potential like Ligny.

http://www.matrixgames.com/products/691/details/Scourge.of.War.Wavre

Thanks for the heads up. I'll check it out. How expensive could it be?

Looks like streams can only be crossed at bridges - and fords I suppose if there are any. That's a step up. They should have done that at Waterloo and Ligny. It didn't rain any harder the night before at Wavre.

Were the instructions for how to convert a map to KS ever published?

I just move all the files associated with the map itself into my Supplementary Maps Mod and then delete the rest of the dlc as I have no interest in the OOBs or scenarios. My advice is no use though if you want to play the scenarios. Kevin?

The only danger to moving them into the supplementary maps folder is not remembering to move them again when a newer version of that part of the mod comes out. It might be safer to move them into the GB lsl Files folder. That doesn't get updated.