Gen’l,
While news have been scarce during the summer, the Grand Tactician -team has been pushing full steam ahead on multiple fronts.
Fleets are Being Constructed.
Construction of ships and creating fleets under naval officers is possible. Depending on capacity in your ports, you can build ship types depending on available technology and resources. With certain policies, you could also import new ship types from Europe. Assembling a fleet is as easy as managing the armies: simply drag and drop ships from ports (“pool”) to the fleets. You can even do this if the ships are not yet finished. They will join the fleet once ready. Moving single ships between ports and fleets has a delay depending on travel speed and distance to cover.
There are 26 different ship types available to build, from simple gunboat steamers (mainly civilian ships with some armament) to ocean going ironclads. Each one has different attributes, for example the number of days they can spend at sea. As these numbers will be different within a fleet, to reduce micromanagement, we have added automatic ship rotation within fleets. This means the fleet itself will always be where you ordered it to be, for example blockading enemy ports or patrolling, but single ships will autonomously return to port for supplies, repairs, and upgrades, then return to the fleet. If you add a monitor class ironclad to a fleet with sailing sloops-of-war, it means the sloops can stay out a lot longer, and the monitor will need to resupply about every 20 days…
Campaign Map Gets Populated.
Work on an epic campaign map has been ongoing from producing the tools to populating the map with cities, towns, roads, railroads, and so on. This includes a ton of historical research, and sites like bridgehunter.com have become real useful in finding out which bridges and ferries have existed at what time, and when they were built. As we allow expanding the railroad network during the game, we will also have the correct railroads ready and available depending on campaign starting date: years before the war the rail network started expanding rapidly, and work continued throughout the war.
With an infrastructure network concept implemented, the map, including economy and logistics, will interact with the armies. Armies will be able to block trade and supply flows through towns, bridges, mountain passes, rivers, canals, etc. This allows real nice maneuvering to cut enemy supply lines by taking choke-points or raiding railroads. Taking hold of Mississippi river alone, for example, will be possible without the need to control whole states in south.
This will take some time, though, as the map is huge. Once ready, the map looks will be improved by the artists, and this will include also the beautiful paper map as seen in previous blogs.
Bolstering the Armies.
By adding customizable attributes to armies and fleets player can make his experienced units more effective. For example an army could become more effective in intelligence gathering in multiple ways. Using a balloon is slow, but with experience, the aeronauts could maybe direct artillery fire, making the army slightly more effective in sieges? Or an intelligence bureau would improve accuracy of information about unseen enemy movements and the information delay? Or maybe organize hand picked cavalry scouts to work behind enemy lines, like Wade Hampton’s iron scouts? The amount of attributes for armies will be limited in numbers, so you better choose wisely. And yes, here too we aim for historical accuracy instead of gamey superpowers.
We also added a little feature called “history” for commanders and units. This means the game will track what your armies and officers are doing during the game – listing dates of promotions, battles fought, and such. Additional information about, for example, pre-campaign history can be added manually. This allows the player to better keep track on who’s who in his military.
Armies and fleets already roam the campaign map, and the campaign-to-battle-to-campaign -link is established. Though a lot of work is still ahead on this side, including combat models for sieges, naval battle and so on, it’s encouraging to see the main ideas behind the game come to life.
Bolstering the Story.
As you can see, a lot has happened in Grand Tactician during the summer. We also are finalizing the original soundtrack recordings, and starting the work on the campaign videos, using LionHeart FilmWorks’ beautiful footage, with a professional TV producer. All this will allow better immersion into the Civil War world of Grand Tactician!
Have a great summer! Most Respy,
Gen’l. Ilja Varha,
Chief Designer, &c.
Comments
Brian L. #
Looks awesome: take the time you need to get it right and we’ll play it and love it.
joseph colao #
Great news thanks! Sounds like this map is gonna be excellent.
Warga #
Hope on Some Alpha/Beta Testing soon :)
Alan Stewart #
Really looking forward to this one…I wonder if it’s too late to included domestic-international politics and macroeconomics. The gaming world needs a proper grand strategy game. The care and detail you seem to have have taken with this game shows. It would be nice if you could, as your next title, consider publishing a game that would include economics, politics and the military assets. Time interval would begin in the post WWII era to current times. It would included R&D, weapons technology, domestic and international politics, global institutions (IMF, WTO, NATO et al) and conflicts could be fought using an operational map a la The Operational Art of War. No 3-D models, only NATO counters please. For eye candy, one could integrate and license some of Osprey UK artwork for weapons depictions. Items they don’t have could be developed internally using the same visual detail and style. Thank you for your consideration.
Cameron Harris #
Nice blog post but the ‘ye old typewriter’ font is pretty hard to read. It’s not easy to attract eyeballs in the first instance let alone send them on an army assault course upon arrival.
steve #
Excellent news – the features you describe sound very exciting! Finally, a strategic/operational/tactical simulator that will allow realistic planning, actions, movements, and logistics using full suite of maps.
Steven Harrison #
Really looking forward to this game. Sounds just what I’ve been looking for over the past few years
Harald Grabmayr #
What a little team of enthusiasts produces here is really remarkable! And it is even more remarkable that you have been working on it for years after work, on weekends and on vacation! So keep up the great work and give us a great time with a game, which has the playing depth, which we miss with other titles.
Hi #
Thanks for update. Love the detail.
Bugwar #
Riverine warfare?
Can the Memphis naval battle occur?
Is there a chance for a repeat of Grant making an amphibious attack on Belmont?
iv (Author) #
Yes, you are able to sail armies down the major rivers like Mississippi to make amphibious attacks.
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