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Ultimate Admiral: Age of Sail

Burning Bridges

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the funny thing is that Ultimate Admiral: Age Of Sail and Dreadnaughts seem to be entirely different games on entirely different engines. I cannot cannot believe they are working on 2 completely different games simulataneously (the name means nothing because I see nothing in common between the 2) so it must be 2 completely separate teams. They also have This Land Is My Land in Early Access so I think that is yet another team.

Ultimate Admiral is running on an improved engine of Ultimate General so this is the only one with a proven formula, I think it will be good, probably easily surpassing Age Of Sail II.

Naval Action will have run dry by now because the loyal players seem indignated and it was plain and simple a shit game. I hope they don't have the Naval Action sail mechanics in UA because that would mean the sail ships would accelerate faster than WW2 destroyers.
 

Alienman

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First time I see Age of Sail, and well it looks fantastic. Really looking forward to it. Wish I discovered it when it was out instead, now I have to suffer and wait ;)
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

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First time I see Age of Sail, and well it looks fantastic. Really looking forward to it. Wish I discovered it when it was out instead, now I have to suffer and wait ;)

You could get Ultimate General Civil War which is a fantastic game by itself, just without ships.
There's actually ships in some scenarios.+M

Still nice from them to do Napoleonic era. I actually would like to see them doing 17th century at some point in future.

edit.
Video about landing operation.
 
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Alienman

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The 3D-engine I think look really cozy. I did notice they had 1070 GPU as recommended on their web-page. Kinda high no? Anyway, I just hope it won't get bogged down by performance issues.

Burning Bridges I will get it at the next sale. I have 'Gettysburg' and enjoyed it.
 
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Wyatt_Derp

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Looks freakin' great.

Hope they'll do a Seven Years' War addon at some point. Much overlooked historical period. This game could do Quebec or Louisbourg battles proper justice.
 

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
the funny thing is that Ultimate Admiral: Age Of Sail and Dreadnaughts seem to be entirely different games on entirely different engines. I cannot cannot believe they are working on 2 completely different games simulataneously (the name means nothing because I see nothing in common between the 2) so it must be 2 completely separate teams. They also have This Land Is My Land in Early Access so I think that is yet another team.

Ultimate Admiral is running on an improved engine of Ultimate General so this is the only one with a proven formula, I think it will be good, probably easily surpassing Age Of Sail II.

Naval Action will have run dry by now because the loyal players seem indignated and it was plain and simple a shit game. I hope they don't have the Naval Action sail mechanics in UA because that would mean the sail ships would accelerate faster than WW2 destroyers.

Yeah I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere that Naval Action was made by a different team and the devs of Ultimate General had nothing to do with it besides publishing it.
 

thesecret1

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Ultimate General Civil War was awesome, especially with how reactive the battles were. Crushed the enemy really hard? Then you win, no need to drag this on into the second day, as it wouldn't make sense historically and so on. Or the alternate history missions if you did really well (Siege of Washington as Confederate was something special, like damn). I have high hopes they'll improve on the formula with this game
 

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I can't stand the sight of how two lines of infantry just shoot and shoot and shoot at each otheruntil one loses enough men to be routed, especially given how british never employed "shoot until routed" crap, which was the unique characteristic of american Civil War and horrified european military observers. Because everyone in Europe used charge after volleys, which reduced casualties drastically. And sure redcoats understood the importance of charge.
 

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Don't give them too much praise now, the experience breaks down somewhat when you crush the enemy in every battlle but the game returns to its predetermined setups or uses unit scaling to even the odds.

It's great for 1 playthrough for each side but then replayability is really bad. The flexible force pool makes this somewhat bearable but the game is woefully predictable on the strategic side.

I also had the feeling that most of your decisions in the force pool are not very important for the battles, a regiment armed with Farmer muskets can get nearly as many kills as one with the latest Springfield rifles. Same with artillery which also seems to be about quantity > quality. To some extent that's also realistic though because engagements where not decided by the model of rifles.
 

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I can't stand the sight of how two lines of infantry just shoot and shoot and shoot at each otheruntil one loses enough men to be routed, especially given how british never employed "shoot until routed" crap, which was the unique characteristic of american Civil War and horrified european military observers. Because everyone in Europe used charge after volleys, which reduced casualties drastically. And sure redcoats understood the importance of charge.

Shelby Foote once said that there were as few bayonet kills in American Civil War as there were in WW1 or WW2. Reaons? Probably lack of training - soldiers did not like kill in hand to hand combat. Shooting someone from a distance is much easier psychologically and may also be safer (they did use cover and did not stand in line most of the time)

It's also important to know that in Civil War many units did not see combat for extremely long periods and when it came it was brutal. It was a large army that moved over an entire continent and cannot be compared to the British who had a much smaller and more professional army.

There are also many notions that modern artillery was crucial but in fact Lee said the cannon he most preferred was 12 pounder Napoleonic, when it was fired with cannister. This makes sense because this was the only time ammunition was used effectively - the rest of the time they were just shooting holes in the landscape.
 

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Latest update adds campaign mode :bounce:

The beginning of this video features character creation, then you get a mandatory battle against the Spanish and the last bit of the video shows a bit of the campaign layer.


Some things I liked:
- Character creation kinda like in UG:CW only with more :obviously: artwork.
- British troops taling in English, Spanish ones talking in Spanish. Always a nice touch.
- Drums version of British Grenadiers March playing while some British units moved around :salute:.
- Units don't have to pivot completely towards their enemy to charge.
- Cooler after-battle news articles.
- Research!
- Ship/crew/equipment screen is reminiscent of the one in UG:CW but there seems to be a bigger emphasis on officers.
 

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Damn, that ship combat look sweet. How the men form up and fire with their rifles when coming close etc. Gonna be a joy to follow the battles.
 

Burning Bridges

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The game looks like what you would expect after Ultimate General. Definitely worth playing.

However it is still largely devoid of strategy. The ships arrive at exactly the right time, the Spanish garrison is just strong enough that you will overcome them, and on a second playthrough you already know in advance what will happen. In a "strategy" game you would be forced to make decisions like withdrawal and attack on another point / day.

These guys also let me down a little with Ultimate General. Once I finished the main campaign I expected new content for the Civil War but after 1.0 they stopped working on the game entirely.
If this is the case they will release it, start eg Ultimate General: Vietnam and then make no more content for Age of Sail.
 

Norfleet

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Shelby Foote once said that there were as few bayonet kills in American Civil War as there were in WW1 or WW2. Reaons? Probably lack of training - soldiers did not like kill in hand to hand combat. Shooting someone from a distance is much easier psychologically and may also be safer (they did use cover and did not stand in line most of the time)
Not necessarily even lack of training, but the psychology of WHO you were fighting against: In the civil war, people were fighting against those they already knew, people who used to be their countrymen: They didn't WANT to run up in their faces and start stabbing them. It was just psychologically easier to sling shots in their general direction, not even really very aimed, and hope they go away. The psychological barriers to directly engaging in lethal hand to hand combat were even higher than usual. The paradox of this is that it actually resulted in bloodier battles. If you charge your enemies and they break, they will simply rout from the field and that will mostly be the end of it. If you shoot at your enemies from a distance and their morale fails, they will, instead of running, simply cower in their trenches and sling potshots back. If your unit's morale isn't doing any better, what you get is two broken units that are just cowering and slinging potshots at each other, neither willing to actually run or attack to put an end to it.
 

thesecret1

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There are also many notions that modern artillery was crucial but in fact Lee said the cannon he most preferred was 12 pounder Napoleonic, when it was fired with cannister. This makes sense because this was the only time ammunition was used effectively - the rest of the time they were just shooting holes in the landscape.
So exactly as it was modelled in the game. Found very little use with artillery, personally – I usually didn't even mind the enemy shelling me, since the casualties gained this way were so minor as to be irrelevant, and the only time I actually feared artillery was when it was positioned straight in front of a charge – it was devastating on close distances, but useless otherwise. Later in the game, I resigned on artillery entirely, and instead built each division to be full of infantry + one detachment of melee cavalry, so as to massacre routing enemies.
 

Burning Bridges

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Artillery is still useful because it has a mucher longer range than muskets.

There are also limitations in the force pool. You cannot draw from unlimited manpower and rifles (except Farmer muskets). Otherwise it's of course possible to build armies entirely from infantry.

I think the problem is how the game is set up. In reality the side with more artillery/ammo would first attack the enemy with a barrage, especially if he is entrenched. In the game, which is mostly based on time limits everything must happen at the same time, and this denies you the advantage of precise long range artillery.
 
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Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

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One obvious role for artillery is counter artillery.
Those low casualty riffled batteries are perfectly capable of taking out enemy "Napoleons".
 
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Burning Bridges

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I think what thesecret1 means is that any infantry regiment has always more overall combat power than an artillery unity, which afaik is correct. If the enemy has artillery you could just take the damage and charge them, and you practically never have to charge into cannister fire head on.

It does however result in more casualties and if the forcepool limits you, that could be a big factor.
 

thesecret1

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I think what thesecret1 means is that any infantry regiment has always more overall combat power than an artillery unity, which afaik is correct.
That, and overall cost/reward of it. Consider how expensive artillery is and how much supply it eats through (can easy deplete a supply wagon all on its own). Even if the range is very long, far longer than that of a musket, if several minutes of constant shelling only costs me a couple dozen troops in a 2k stack, then who cares? It really only makes holes in the landscape and I can afford to ignore it entirely, up until the time enemy leaves it open and I send the cavalry in to massacre it (after all, one can get a lot of $$$ for selling captured cannons). The only time artillery is actualy useful in my experience is in close range, but that presents another issue – first, your troops mustn't stand in front of the artillery, meaning you will be having a gap in fronline plugged only by the artillery alone. The artillery's rate of fire means that unless you already battered the enemy regiment beforehand, it won't break and will just charge onwards, massacring the artillery unit, which is simply too costly to allow. Of course, there are setups in which you could circumvent this issue and give artillery clear line of fire without making it vulnerable, but they cannot be used if you're on the offensive (you could theoretically move the artillery to the enemy while on the offensive, but it's just too slow to keep up with the blitzing infantry and takes forever to set up, not to mention enemy infantry decimating it with just a couple volleys if taken too close), and on defensive, they're highly dependent on terrain. I thus found artillery in general to be highly situational, whereas infantry was powerful, perfectly universal, and relatively cheap in comparison.
 

Burning Bridges

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Artillery is expensive?! I usually capture it from the Yankees.

I haven't played in a long long time but I don't remember it being a dilemma having 1 unit of artillery per brigade. Officers was much more of a problem because they kept dying, so my artillery train was usually given the lowest officers, hoping they would promote before the next spot in an infantry regiment became free.
 

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