Wargame Design Studio is proud to announce that it has added the Civil War Battles to its portfolio of supported series. John Tiller has agreed to licence his Civil War Battles series with all enhanced and future titles to be designed by Wargame Design Studio and published by John Tiller Games.
The American Civil War is a real passion for our lead programmer Berto and he jumped at the chance to work on the game code. We have been fortunate that a number of the original Civil War designers have decided to help update existing titles and look at new release.
Here is some in game shots. Please note everything is work in process and there are known bugs. All images should be clickable to see full size.
New Toolbar;
Middle zoom level – 2D map;
Maximum zoom level – 2D map including new unit icons;
New feature – removable 2D slopes for those that prefer the original HPS look;
New hand drawn 3D map – zoomed out view. All 3D graphics were created by the Old Banshee team;
Hand drawn 3D map – zoomed in;
Here is a series of zoomed in 3D maps – in various situations;
Colourised leaders – at 100% size;
Colourised unit cards – at 200% size;
That’s it for the moment, we have plenty to do!!!
Looking great. Can’t wait. Thanks so much.
Also please add a button to enlarge the tool bar like in PB.
Please add an additional zoom layer for those of those who like to get in close. Take a look at Slitherine’s Sanctus Reach to see a mouse enabled zoom feature.
Great news!! The graphics and the UI are so cool. ACW is one of my favourite Tiller series.
Some known issues and ideas:
1-Make “Alternative scrolling”; “Leaders on top” and “Map cotourns” settings auto-saved on game exit.
2-A hotkey for command range.
3-A new hotkey/icon to see Supply wagons radius (5 hexes).
4-Impossible to hear troops movements (at least in Campaign Overland).
5-Make more clear the 2D fog of war.
6-A new icon/hotkey to see reachable hexes.
7-Brigade colors in the unit box.
8-A more remarkable mouse cursor.
Thanks!!
awesome……….as they say……..lots of work to be done.
it would be nice if something could be done about the huge 70 hex los.
You can change LOS if you go to Scenario Editor, then
Select the battle you want to change, then
At the upper left of the toolbar, click on Help, then
Open Parameter Data and Select All, then
Save it all to your computer’s Wordpad
From there you can look up LOS for the different times of day and change it to what you want, then
Save it under a new name.
If you aren’t sure where the data is you want to change, refer to Scenario Editor Help, given in some of their games.
Then you can go back to the scenario editor and get that PDT and use it for that battle.
I’ve done that to get around the wet ground at the beginning of Waterloo – by changing the date of that battle to a day where it did not rain the night before! And to play all the days of Leipzig without the rain coming on the second day – I just changed the dates (although I haven’t yet actually played all four days).
I also used this to increase the number of men in the Confederate regiments in a couple of the later battles in the Civil War – to get their strength nearer to Union strengths.
Very happy to see the 2D zoom level for ACW. But the 3D map graphics improvement compels me to play at 3D for change. Unit and leader graphics are great change too. Looking forward to it.
These all look fantastic,a huge improvement visually.Now all you need to do is finish them yesterday and move on to the Napoleonic games:)
What Stewart said and SB also.
Please, make the replay phase faster. It´s extremely slow.
PS: I have detected some bugs in the HQ command range, sometimes the shown area is incorrect.
Is there any news on this. It has been a while.
Yes – expect something pretty significant in the next two weeks….
It’s actually the cause of our silence of late!
David
Excellent! The work you guys it is simply wonderful.
Logan
Would like a variable speed, including a pause and skip button on replay, if possible. While some would like the replay to speed up, I very much like the intelligence proffered from a slower replay. Thx.
No kidding. On some email games I’ve played, replay took 45 minutes. That means you need an uninterrupted block of time to view it. Woe to you if the phone rings.
How’s it going guys? Is this amazing looking update going to be out soon? Very excited for it.
Logan
Hi Logan,
Check out our (very) recent post!
David
Will we also be able to update our older Civil War titles?
Hi there,
There is work underway to update the previously released titles, but we’re not committing to any time frames currently.
David
Thank you for the fast replies. You guys are doing an amazing job.
Logan
Gee, I wish you guys could fix cavalry in this series. What I think we need is a Recon function such as we have in PzC — spend 1/3 of your movement allowance to immediately spot all units in view. I’ve had too many cavalry units surrounded by infantry(!?) and shot to pieces because they moved to an elevation line and couldn’t spot the hundreds of enemy units two or three hexes away. Wouldn’t mind some kind of automatic retreat for cavalry approached by infantry. As the Series now stands, Cavalry is too tricky to use and too expensive to lose.
Cool stuff…………….looks great…..While I have many of the tiller games I have not played much PBEM so my experiences have mainly been with the AI which is unfortunately challenged. I have come up with an idea and been playing around with it and I wonder if anything could be done to incorporate this type of idea. I’ve tried playing the Napoleonic battles hot seat against myself. With FOW on it makes it something of a challenge but of course it does take away from the total FOW of playing the computer. One thing I have toyed with is revising the scenarios and making them longer but then having a system whereby only units of one organization can move each turn. So the turns go back and forth with each side moving one organization at a time. Obviously this lengthens the game quite a bit but it works pretty well on smaller scenarios. If you were able to combine this with more uncertainly of which organization could move each “turn” it might actually be more exciting then each side moving all of its units and then the other and so on. I am going to guess this is “pie in the sky” but it would be pretty interesting. I guess its something akin to the system used in conflict of heroes. Good luck
Joseph,
Very interesting idea. Let me share it with the team. I’m thinking a commander fails a command role then his troops are essentially limited in what they can/cannot do.
David
I also would like some kind of limit to the “perfect plan”.failing an initiative test for a commander of a division/corps would really throw a spanner in the works.without specifying how long that would be would be even better.
i would also like a greater penalty for any kind of movement/combat in night turns.at present too many players just carry on probing,fighting as if all their guys have infra red goggles on the hats.
whatever you decide am looking forward to it.
stewart
The 200% colorized Unit view is really needed for the Napoleonic series. While its impossible to do now more than likely the “Command Stand” look with an officer, drummer, trumpeter, flag bearer and soldier would be a nice option. I love what happened to the ACW series in this respect along with the colorized leaders! The sooner this happens the sooner sales will (finally) pick up. The Napoelonics era was one of the most colorful that JTS produces. Right now the unit image is the size of a postage stamp and that aught never to have been the case.
Having an absolute blast with the Panzer Campaign and Battles titles I’ve purchased.
Would love to see an updated/upgraded Squad Battles, or HINT HINT Panzer Battles: The Approach to Stalingrad (or something east front 1941-43/44 ish.