Unlimited Battlefields.

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Gen’l,

With this log entry, we start to look into the future of Grand Tactician and what new and reworked features the next title will have when compared to The Civil War. Currently we’re rebuilding the battle layer, so we’ll focus on the changes there during this and the upcoming log entries.

The New Battle Layer.

As discussed in our earlier log entry, there are many aspects we want to change in the Grand Tactician’s battle layer. This is anything from the limited number of battlefields, rigid unit system, and visual scale of the action, to the combat system itself (especially lack of proper melee system), performance, AI… As was discussed, it’s better to do this as one big overhaul vs. trying to improve each sub-system within the main system. While doing a re-write, we can also include other ambitions, like improved moddability, support for localization, and modularity that will later make patching and further development much easier.

The first new thing to discuss has to do with the battlefields themselves. In The Civil War (1861-1865), which we will refer to as GT1 from here on, all battlefields are drawn by hand and then integrated into the campaign map using coordinates, radius, and any randomization options. The system was developed as early as 2016-17 and was among the very first things we ever created for Grand Tactician. As each map took me up to two weeks to draw and integrate into the battle layer (to create battlefield functionality for the units), this naturally meant that only a limited number of battlefields are available in GT1 – 30 historical ones and 13 non-historical ones to be exact. It took a similar time for Wasel to draw the beautiful papermaps in parallel.

How the GT1 maps were created is discussed in further detail here in an old log entry from 2019.


Image – This is how GT1’s main campaign map looks with all the historical battlefields.

This approach has its pros, but also quite heavy cons:

  1. - As you can see in the above image, most of North America is void of battlefields. As each battlefield is 8×8 miles in scale, the populated area is limited. We added 4 “random map” sets to fill the void. The maps within these sets (mountainous, farmlands, wetlands, plains) are called “random” as one in the set is randomly chosen when a battle is initiated.
  2. - Only the most important battlefields have sufficient reference material available. The topography of historical battlefields looks very different today, and proper maps (or battle descriptions also focusing on the topography and terrain features) are hard to come by. Even if drawing a map out of only rough or almost non-existent reference material, doing it by hand still takes a lot of time. When we look at different historical periods from the 17th to 19th Centuries, the amount and quality of reference material for the Civil War battlefields is probably the best, all other conflicts have it mostly much worse.
  3. - Most importantly from the gameplay point of view, the campaign to battlefield topography link is missing. This means the cunning maneuvers on the campaign map play no role once battle is joined. As the nearest available battle map is loaded, this could be a hundred miles away from the area where the campaign map depicts the battle taking place, with a completely different topography. The river you were following and hoping to anchor your flank to is missing, and so are the roads, hills, forests…

The 20th Battle of Manassas?

We tackled all 3 main issues by developing a map generator, which creates the battle maps from campaign map data. The data is created from multiple bitmaps that cover terrain height, infrastructure and vegetation. Location data allows adding the names on the map in correct locations.

In GT1, whenever you fight a battle in the Northern part of Virginia, you end up fighting it out in the Manassas (Bull Run) map, and always more or less around the Bull Run -line. The new system allows creating an unlimited number of battlefields that will always represent the campaign map situation accurately. The terrain is generated according to data in that exact location, including all the main terrain features you’d expect to see on the map. Now, army placement on the campaign map plays a much bigger role, introducing one important aspect more to the aspiring Grand Tacticians!

While the introduction of the terrain generator does not remove the possibility to use hand-drawn maps, it also introduces two more pros: scalability and moddability. Depending on the campaign map dataset scale (i.e. how many meters does one pixel in the bitmaps represent), and the size of the “slice” (X pixels vertically/horizontally), the battlefield scale can be easily changed. The data is read from bitmaps and text files, meaning it does not require any dedicated modding tools to create a complete dataset to generate maps.

The Terrain.

We also made some changes in the terrain itself, and the unit to terrain link, to allow more realistic unit behavior in different types of terrain. These aspects are built around terrain types (and properties) and navigation data, that also control units’ pathfinding.

In GT1 the terrain types and navigation data have a quite simple connection. The terrain types are limited to only a few (open ground, fields, forest, swamp, water), while most differences are visual only. Further granularity is added through linear objects like roads, streams, fences… Units can move on all terrain but water (if not frozen), and very steep slopes, but otherwise, there are no limits. Also, how the terrain affects units is always the same: forest slows down skirmishers and cavalry brigades just the same, and does not prevent artillery deployment like in reality.

From a pathfinding point of view, all terrain is the same, so when giving a movement order (player or AI), the units do know to prioritize roads for fast movement, but do not make a difference between an open plain or swamp. This leads to units moving through difficult terrain more often than necessary, getting tired and slowing down, which in turn breaks group (for example division) cohesion, and affects especially the AI.

In the new terrain engine, the number of different terrain types has been expanded. For example, there are forests of different tree density. They are now included in the navigation engine, so each terrain type can have its own navigation characteristics. This is further augmented with unit heaviness, which determines how different types of units are affected by terrain. For example, very light units (such as skirmishers) have no issues moving through a forest, but a large cavalry formation or artillery battery cannot enter a thicket, or try to cross a swamp. This is part of pathfinding, so giving movement orders will take this into account, units preferring easier terrain, and going around obstacles – when allowed to.


Image – Left: the old terrain system. From a pathfinding point of view open terrain, forests, fields are the same, even if the latter ones slow units down more. Right: the new terrain system. Here each terrain type (different colors) has its own pathfinding properties and characteristics for different types of units.

While at it, we also added further detail on how weather affects the terrain. Instead of raining true/false as in GT1, we now track precipitation and terrain wetness separately. The former increases the latter, and when the rain stops, the terrain will slowly start to dry up. During winter, the same is true with snowing and terrain snow coverage, which increases or melts gradually.

Like said, this is the first building block in the re-worked battle layer. In the next log entry we’ll take a look at how the unit system has changed, and what kind of effects this will have on game play, performance, AI and moddability. Until next time!

Most Respy,
Ilja, Lead Designer
The Grand Engineer Corps.

Comments

  1. New maps are a great idea. AI Battle improvement and a graphical upgrade would be nice. Not sure about multi-player.

  2. Super excited, keep up the good work! Let me pay you, take my money!

  3. This is a great start, and I look forward to more, similarly exciting information as time goes on. On to Richmond (or maybe Washington)!

  4. Like your thinking. what ever you decide if you can incorporate into GT1 to allow us to continue the Civil War theme would be awesome.

  5. Though a little rough, Grand Tactician is one of my most favourite and played games. I am really happy you are still working on it and I am really excited for this!

  6. YeeeHaw!

  7. I’m so excited, keep it up!

  8. Excited to see the Engineer Corps back in action, was very worried the game was dead, continue your path of transparency with the development and you’ll receive all the support you want from me and other soldiers. Very amped for the future of this game.

  9. LOOKING FORWARD TO THE UPCOMING CHANGES!!! KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK GUYS, AND IT IS GOOD TO KNOW YOU ARE GOING FORWARD WITH OTHER PROJECTS. ONE GREAT ADDITION WOULD BE THE ABILIITY FOR MODDING FOR SURE.

  10. I will just leave my steam review, as all of my say is in that.
    This is the best RTS Civil War game I’ve played. I will say that the game is much smother with the DLC which is unfortunate, and while the game is the best I’ve played, this could be so much better.

    Mechanics:

    Several of the game mechanics are useless in the DLC, which I like, because in the regular game, they come into play out of nowhere, and destroy your entire campaign. Such as the economy, trading, and budgets.

    Troop movement is very simple, and its said you can move multiple units at once, but I’ve never found that to be true. There are also many many many times where movement is awful, such as how you have to manual tell each Zouave regiment to sprint, but you cant have them sprint from the commander. They are also several times where a single regiment can take several in game hours to move a short distance. I wish there was a drag and click system similar to what I’ve seen ultimate general has.

    As far as European intervention goes, you can see my play time, and I’ve done about 18-20 play throughs in both modes, and I’ve never had European intervention, as either Yank or Reb. I personally think that its far to hard to get any chance of Europe intervening.

    Naval….it sucks. It takes forever to get ironclads, and by the time you do, you probably dont have a large enough home port to construct them. As the Confederacy, once the blockades start, even on the easiest mode, thats the end of any chance of naval victories for you. At times, naval is very unbalanced. I once had a squadron of about 5-8 Ironclads and a few other wood ships (about 3 additional) go up against a blockade squadron with about 20-25ish ships, and I absolutely destroyed them. While I enjoy it as the Confederacy, it does seem a bit unbalanced.

    Weapon purchasing has never made sense to me, and its really frustrating when your trying to make a sharps brigade, and all you can give them is Springfields, because the sharps rifles “aren’t in stock” while about 20k are clearly in stock. Same goes for cannons, and constructing ships.

    ship construction. I have money, and have enough space, can I build ironclads, I have bought the thing that lets me build them, can I? no. Why? No.

    Drafting is also one thing that should be controlled by the player but inst, you pass the act and a few thousand men become available or reinforce your already fielded regiments.

    I have all in entry and exit points to the map in my control, the enemy has to surrender now right? nope, you will capture a large portion of them, but the whole enemy force wont surrender.

    Major and Minor Victories/Defeats make no sense. I had 70k troops engaged, killed 10k enemy troops, lost 2k of my own but the battle was still a minor victory? I had 10k troops engaged, killed 300 enemy troops, lost 20 and its a major victory??? I believe that system needs a simple rework

    Sound designs:

    Beautiful.

    Visuals:

    While the visuals look like there from an old COD game, they can still very very easily crash your game. even on the lowest graphics settings, the game still runs pretty slow if you have like 80k + troops, which happens pretty often once you get serious about drafting troops.

    One of my personal pet peeves is that you cant see the true size of your regiments, the models seem to only have a Large Medium and Small size.

    Feature that should be added:

    I would like to see an actual draft system, that allows the player to select how many men out of the countries total population he can draft I.E. the country has a pop of 15 million men, the economy allows for 8 million men to be drafted, the player then selects to draft 3 million men.

    A drag and click order movement system so troops can converge on an area or move together more easily. I.E. you drag a box around three regiments, which would then select all three, and you order all three to move forward together.

    If all entry/exit point are in your control, and the enemy losses the battle, the commanding general surrenders his forces. I.E. just like how the player can surrender, but for the AI, this would also allow for more newspapers, and a bigger hit to the enemy nations morale, depending on if it was a major loss or minor loss. this would bring the need of prison camps, and quite frankly give them the use they deserve, as well as bring about actual strategy to trying to get a surrender instead of just killing/wounded as many troops as possible until the enemy unit is absolved. This would also apply to if a unit is completely cut off from escape (I.E. the enemy unit is completely surrounded or enveloped).

    “Grant Surrenders to Jackson: Union in risk of losing the Shenandoah!”

    “After the Battle of Gettysburg, Brigadier General Grant of the Union’s XXX Corps surrendered his troops to Lieutenant General “Stonewall” Jackson of the Confederate LV Corps. an approximate 10,000 troops have been taken POW with 20,000 being paroled due to no room in prison camps…..”

  11. Awesome News! Thanks for continuing your work on my FAVORITE Civil war game!

    Thanks!

  12. This sounds wonderful. In the course of doing this it would be grand if you could create all the fields in any given campaign, as in the Peninsula Campaign, it is well documented, Yorktown, Williamsburg, Eltham’s Landing, Battle of the Monitor and Merrimack/Virginia in Hampton Roads, Norfolk, Drewry’s Bluff, Hanover Courthouse, Stuarts Ride around McClellan, Oak Grove, Seven Pines/Fair Oaks, Mechanicsville, Gaines Mill, Savage Station, Glendale/Frasier’s Farm, Malvern Hill, and the resulting Union retreat to Westover Plantation/Harrison’s Landing and Stuart’s screw up at Elvington Heights. Make the navies functional this time so that the York/Pamunkey and James Rivers can be used, as well as a good map of Hampton Roads.
    But good to hear from you guys! And keep them rolling.
    Oh, will this be an add-on / revision to the existing game format?
    T.

  13. glad to here work keeps going in 2025. were behind you. Thanks

  14. Are you talking about this game, Grand Taction The Civil War or some other game?

  15. It’s weird how every single commenter on here misses the point that this is for the NEW game, not GT:CW. They literally say it in the post.

  16. Any plans for battlefield-deformation? Like textures for cannon-ball craters and bounces, or fences and cover degrading from damage? Or even foliage removal? I understand that’s alot, but the details would be awesome to see non-the-less!

  17. I’m just hoping that the new game’s siege siege system is like that of “The Seven Years War (1756-1763)”. I LOVED being able to go “well I don’t have enough infantry to storm the walls, and I don’t have the patience to out wait their supplies. But I DO have enough artillery the blow their walls and morale to smithereens AND I get to imagine big guns going BOOM”! It felt so much more engaging than GT:CW’s “Abstract Slider” siege system

  18. Thanks for the update! I really enjoy playing GT1. Any chance of a future game on the Great Northern War 1700-1721?

  19. A few years ago I requested a map for the Battle of Franklin, TN. Maybe my wish will finally be realized.

  20. I want to encourage you guys to continue to consider Whiskey and Lemons in your gameplay. This makes the game an incredible journey that’s not just about winning but simply having fun and playing your part. That DLC alone added another 400 hours of gameplay for me, and as a matter of fact, it’s all that I play personally. You have a lot of great ideas and a unique twist/spin here—what a genius idea.

  21. Looking forward to the next game, I hope it is another civil war iteration with the engine improvements you guys are making. GT really scratches an itch no other game even tries for

  22. The new ideas sound outstanding. Great to hear you guys are focused on the task. As a former SW developer I know you always learn a lot the first time you undertake a project and I am excited to hear you are getting a chance to build something even better applying all you have learned. In addition to the new ideas on the tactical battlefields, I would love to hear your thoughts relating to what conditions cause a tactical battle to start, to end, and what are the goals/objectives/victory conditions of each battle. It seems to me in GT1 that a tactical battle can occur whenever two opposing forces come within the combat radius of each other, but I am not sure what determines whether it is a siege combat or an engagement. I would like to see a system where both sides get a choice as to whether to initiate a tactical battle. For example, if two armies come within range of each other, propose a tactical battle and then if one side refuses to join battle perhaps they should be forced to retreat out of combat range on the map. Also, it seems each commander should be able to determine their own objective for the battle. Am I trying to hold some ground or strategic position, take some ground or strategic position, or simply inflict casualties. And finally, how to decide when a tactical battle ends? Did I satisfy my objectives? Did I take the position I wanted to take? Have I changed my mind and decided the objective is not worth the cost? Do I just want to inflict more casualties, or have I had enough? Perhaps each commander should be offered the choice to limp away when night falls if the battle is not going as desired for them? Again, if one side elects to stay and keep fighting but one side has had enough, perhaps the side that does not want to fight should be forced to retreat on the campaign map. Anyway, great work and I will look forward to your next article.

  23. This is excellent, most of my concerns about this game are being addressed here. Thankyou for still working on this game. most developers would have abandoned it by now. This game has great potential and I believe that one day it could be the best civil war strategy game made.

  24. katana

  25. In the order of pathfinding, I would also love to see a kind of collision system between units. Units in good order shouldn’t be trying to run over each other on a road. Sure, when someone is collapsing or retreating they’ll do that and throw the other unit into disorder, but not just regularly marching to the battle.

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