Game Today, August 2nd?

Is there a game today? If so, I will plan my day accordingly!

I didn't create anything but we can try Friday's scenario from the French side.


The French cannot abide their frog legs falling into the hands of such culinary heathens.

Général de div. Dominique Vandamme (29152 Inf.  4812 Cav.  57 Guns))

 Général de div. Claude Alexandre Legrand (9175 Inf.  1140 Cav.  14 Guns)
   Général de brig. François Joseph Leguay (3675 Inf. 5 battalions  Avg. Exp. 4.
   Général de brig. Guy Louis Henri de Valory (3675 Inf. 5 battalions  Avg. Exp. 4.4)
   Général de brig. Antoine Anatole Jarry (1825 Inf. 4 battalions  Avg. Exp. 3.7)
   Général de brig. François Marie Clément  (1140 Cav. 6 squadrons  Avg.Exp. 4.7)
   Capit – 7e Co/5e Artillerie à pied (8 Guns   Avg. Exp. 6.0)
   Capit – 3e Co/5e Artillerie à cheval (6 Guns   Avg. Exp. 5.0)

 Général de div. Claude Carra-Saint-Cyr  (5118 Inf.  1020 Cav.  15 Guns)
   Général de brig. Joseph Barbanègre (2250 Inf. 4 battalions  Avg. Exp. 4.7)
   Generalmajor Scharfenstein (2868 Inf. 5 battalions  Avg. Exp. 5.1)
   Generalmajor Karl Seydewitz (1020 Cav. 4 squadrons  Avg.Exp. 5.0)
   Capit. 7e batterie à pied (8 Guns   Avg. Exp. 6.0)
   Capit – 16e Co/7e Artillerie à cheval (7 Guns   Avg. Exp. 5.0)

 Général de div. Jean Victor Tharreau (6709 Inf.  894 Cav.  14 Guns)
   Général de brig. Jacques Laurent Gilly  (4275 Inf. 6 battalions  Avg. Exp. 4.7)
   Col Pierre Berthezène  (2434 Inf. 3 battalions  Avg. Exp. 6.7)
   Général de brigade Antoine-Louis de Saint-Germain (894 Cav. 6 squadrons  Avg.Exp. 5.0)
   Capit – 2e Co/7e Artillerie à pied (8 Guns   Avg. Exp. 5.0)
   Kapit Munter (6 Guns   Avg. Exp. 5.0)

 GL Bernhard von Deroy (8150 Inf.  1758 Cav.  14 Guns)
   Generalmajor Justus Heinrich Siebein (3975 Inf. 5 battalions  Avg. Exp. 4.4)
   Général de brig. Francois l'Hullier de Hoff (4175 Inf. 6 battalions  Avg. Exp. 4.0)
   Général de brig. Pajol (1758 Cav. 7 squadrons  Avg.Exp. 5.0)
   Capit. 4e Co/7e Artillerie à pied (8 Guns   Avg. Exp. 5.0)
   Hauptmann 2. Schwere Fußbatterie (6 Guns   Avg. Exp. 6.0)

I am very, very new to the KS way and I would be interested in having a go. I am in Dallas, TX CST.

Regards.

I could take Général de div. Jean Victor Tharreau

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPk1UnwZ9j8

Hi Skelos, you're extremely welcome to join us. We usually meet in TS about 19:30 to 19:45 BST which is 5 hours ahead of US EST. We start the game about 20:00 BST or within 30 minutes after.

If you're new then a brigade command is best, probably infantry. We use couriers for all in-game comms and only use TS for technical issues and arranging games/player roles.

For us ex-colonials the game time is 15:00EST, 14:00CST, 13:00MST and 12:00PST.

Sounds great. Infantry Brigade commander sounds good. I was worried about getting stuck with a division, which might have been a little hard for me at this time.

Doing my high level math that means I will play 1500-1700

Fun game! Sorry I had to bug out at 1710. There were several "firsts" for me in today's game:

1. First time Acting as operations planning consultant. (Make the plan and let someone else execute it for real lol) Since everyone else knew more or less where the bad guys were, I came up with the hardly original -but hopefully effective - plan of keepin enemy attention to SE while our hammer came from North. Wonder how that came out?

2. First time Zoning out team speak conversations. I rarely drop inadvertently ( power loss being the exception) so I neither looked at the blue circles nor had my volume settings reasonable enough to realize I had dropped and people were calling me lol. It WAS strange how far I could penetrate so far without being detected tho lol. That should have clued me in.

3. First time cavalry commander. Very different. But pretty cool. I scouted where Martin needed me to, and found the bad guys about the same time he did (thereby causing me to order our brigade to read our "how to do recon" books this week for remedial training). I think I covered our division's withdraw okay enough with several charges before reforming in the rear of our infantry. I found it really hard for me this time to double quick my commander without doing it to whole brigade. Overall my reactions were slow. Had there been a more aggressive opponent I think I would have been hurt. Definitely want to work with Cav some more. I think they lasted more than 90 minutes lol.

You did very well and worked with me in just the way I needed. I was shocked when we were going N once we'd gone past Lugny and found an Austrian division headed E right across our path. I tried to play possum in the long grass and let them by so we could continue on to the objective behind them (and obviously Soldier would be fine dealing with that division as well as whatever was to his front), but the pastry chefs saw us and I had a pretty tense 5 minutes while I got my division out of a very awkward position and back onto some rising ground further south. I had extreme trouble getting the AI brigades to deploy where I needed them and cursed that useless directional arrow multiple times.

My worst moment was when you vanished from sight completely to the NW behind some trees towards the river and it looked like the enemy division had got between you and me but you found your way back and proceeded to do great work on my left flank stamping on skirmishers like they were roaches. Trampling sk units with cavalry is probably the most fun you'll have with a mounted unit but I wish the AI took more notice of cavalry with its sk units - its almost as if the fearcheck routine is disabled for them and they frequently don't seem to withdraw at their short range threshold like they should.

Kevin - is there anything that can be done to improve this?

After I got organised and my left was secure I went on the offensive and the Austrian division soon crumpled and faded away. After you left Pat I set the cavalry to"raid weak targets" (my favourite stance in the whole menu) and they went off to cause absolute chaos, even classifying the enemy kuirassiere brigade as a weak target!

I then resumed my NW-erly progress across the river and onto a very nice rise beyond to get a grand stand view of the Austrian corps being destroyed by French units arriving from the N. I think it was Soldier's division dealing out the hurt in front of me with Roland's troops facing stiffer opposition in the woodlands bordering the river. Marks men were vaguely visible in the far north.

The enemy was completely defeated and we celebrated that evening on a fine dinner of repatriated frogs legs.

Last night felt like fighting on Dromund Kaas or maybe even on the moon of Endor! My brave soldiers were not only facing vicious Austrians but also had to deal with flesh eating slugs and aggressive vegetation that picked my men off one by one as we entered the woods... Fangorn forest was a picknick in comparison to that!

Everyone else seemed to enjoy themselves while I had to take the beating - but that came as no surprise once I had been assigned the "reconaissance in force"-task... they always end with a grave stone stating "here lies Edmund Blackadder, and he's bloody annoyed"


wasn't my best day I am afraid... glad the rest of the team ensured our victory!

Fortunes of war. There will be another day...

Yeah Martin I am impressed with the AI in this game. In fact it is about the first time in gaming where I don't mind playing vs. the computer. In any other game I have played, I might do that once or twice but prefer to play real people. So I was just as startled as you were when they were blowing west to east in front of me. It got me disoriented for a few moments. That and the array of Austrian uniforms. Never saw Austrians before. I mean, you know, in this game. When you told me to stay out of range of their artillery I took one look at my compact formations out in the open at the bottom of the hill and trotted into the trees.

Then it was like harps and flutes playing as we emerged out of the trees on the other side of the creek and it was all open -- and unoccupied. Birds signing. Young couples strolling along the paths. Wow. Good place to be. So I pressed North to get a better position -- since you wanted me to avoid contact and said we'd let these guys pass by -- and that was when I got your second message to come back. I could hear the concern in the otherwise professional tone lol. They had decided to come down upon my comrades!

But Roland they were merely reacting to your brilliant "recon in force" (a.k.a. please look at me and then shoot me with any of your available troops whilst my comrades do other things) and believe you me when I say I thought of you more than once, how you were setting us all up for victory. And how valiant that was. And those Austrian uniforms that you might or might not wear daily in your current job. So please believe that and feel good about it because in reality it isn't true and I knew that every "recon in force" casualty meant one less for me -- Besides I had forgotten whose division was going where (except Martin's) and in any event really only cared about my brigade and the rest of Martin's division.

LOL

I do not know this little command called "attack weak targets" ... cool ... so Martin do tell: ok so in that case do you un-TC the brigade commander to do that effectively or is that sort of order more effective with that brigade commander TC-ed? And how does the cavalry behave in that situation as compared to say "probe" orders?

So the hammer blow came from the North, eh? Excellent! Where did our reserve division (behind Roland with grand-stand view of the "recon in force") support? Did they angle NW or W or SW?

Yes, "attack weak targets" is an order you can only give to cavalry. You need to un-TC the brigade commander and all his squadrons that you want to be sent on a rampage and issue it to him. It's on the "orders" tab, middle row of buttons towards the right. Weak targets are classed as artillery, skirmishers, supply wagons, routers and any unit that looks like it's wavering and uncertain. The only downside is the brigade's squadrons will gallop off all over the place often quite far away and you tend to lose control of them, so best to use it towards the conclusion of a successful battle when you are confident of meeting no new organised resistance. You can think of it as being a bit like a cavalry force sent to pursue and harass a beaten and retreating enemy. I did manage to recover them for the final victory parade march over the river though. Your brigade ended up with 1100 points, the highest scoring unit in the division and you didn't lose a single squadron which must be a first for any cavalry under my command!

The battle actually developed into 3 separate engagements: us in the south vs one division, Soldier and Roland in the east vs a second and Mark in the N vs a third. Mark's attack stalled when he left the game and it was Soldier's troops who did most of the work getting to the objective. Our still complete division coming up from the SE was the straw that broke the Austrian camel's back.

Here's the replay file.

It was a good battle. I'm having issues moving my commander around though, lots of right clicking and not many arrows showing up.

You can give the attack weak units to individual squadrons. But beware, once you let loose the hounds, you may never see them again. I did that in the GCM/KS game Ron hosted last week. I thought I had the enemy's flank turned and sent all my cavalry squadrons sans one on search and destroy. Soon after, a whole French division showed up to my rear. With a big mess of cavalry! And I had one squadron with which to hold them off.

My arrows disappear when I come into contact with the enemy. It is so frustrating; I crashed last night but in addition to that the arrows are horrendous, even when moving. It's almost unplayable for me because I like to exercise rigid control over my division: not being able to have the game respond kills any fun I have playing it. Even clicking a movement order button takes an additional second, and sometimes requires two or three tries.

Not ideal in the heat of combat. Ya this game is much more representative of Napoleonic tactics but at least the last game worked mechanically. I'll take that everyday of the week.

I think the non-working arrows is due to the strict pathing controls of the game. Units won't be allowed to go where other units are also being sent, so two units won't occupy the same space. In this case a "unit" is also your avatar which is frustrating. Oddly, avatars will happily sit inside squares so those must have a hollow boundary.

I wish there was a way to allow the player avatar to go anywhere at all except actually inside a block of rank and file inf/cav troops.

Sometimes you are near a friendly unit but can't send a courier to it because an enemy unit is also nearby and when you click to try and get closer the AI pathing routine sends you further away because it considers the area "full up" of other units.

To get around this I use the Ins/Home/PgUp/PgDn/End/Del key block to move my avatar. This seems to override the unit boundaries logic.

If you're something of a control freak and need things to happen and go where you need them to be, I'm surprised you can play the SoW franchise at all! The game is all about imperfect command control and dealing with the deficiency as best you can

No it was my brigade and regiments. I could not click them, I had to cycle through using the arrow keys. Then I would be able to click for awhile and it would go out again. All I want is the ability to click. I can't close a menu or anything when it happens. Something is wrong with the game.

I'm not sure something is wrong with the game as I have never had this problem, and if it were a game fault we'd have found it long before now during our own weeks of testing and mod tweaking.

You can sometimes have too small a hotspot on a units flag/marker making it hard to hit.

You can't click on anything "through" your own avatar's flag so doing it from ground level rather than 10 yds up is advisable but I think I heard you say you were at ground level already.

You also have to click away on the terrain or sky before you can click on anything else if you don't have that irritating context menu option disabled.

Martin James has also had some problems with all kinds of menus not responding after a click due to a PC that is really struggling to run the game. He has to (for example) click a toolbar button 3 or 4 times before it responds. His fps can be as low as 3 so if yours is skipping along in double figures of any sort its not likely to be that.

hmmm I have no idea; but my system is top of the line so I dunno.

Perhaps a new mouse?