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How do you guys get screenies? Gamecam never works with WIA for me.

You can use prntscreen and then post into word/paint et al. But thats horribly slow & I find it leads to AGEOD games hanging up (my laptop being just good enough to play but ..). So my own solution is FastStone Capture which you leave open and it captures either complete screen or partial images and saves them as you go along. Its on 30 day trial, the freeware version just allows you to take full screen images (but of course you can edit in any image editor software), the paid version allows you to take partial images, add text, arrows etc at the time you take the image. I tried FRAPs and it just didn't work for me, this is pretty intuitive and as easy as the F11 function within Paradox Clauswitz based games.
 
Actually, even the "free trial" version allows you to cut the image or add arrows or whatever.
 
You guys got me interested in this game. :)

Even against the AI I suck though. Montcalm lost all his cannons in a rash attempt to sail down the champlain lake in 1756.
 
You guys got me interested in this game. :)

Even against the AI I suck though. Montcalm lost all his cannons in a rash attempt to sail down the champlain lake in 1756.

Its actually not easy with the French against the AI. I'm doing a SP game at the moment and did a lot better in 55-56 than I did here, but the AI has built a very good set of blocking positions around Albany and has reacted very aggressively to me trying a southern strategy akin to this game. The gain of course is those units the AI has sent south are badly out of position.

What its doing, which is clever, is after I secured Duquesne by burning down Cumberland, its putting a lot of pressure on Fort Niagara and trying to break into the western regions that way. The AGE AI is pretty tricky, I never feel I have it under the thumb
 
October 1759 – No Canada for you. Come back next year !

Well, October 1759 is a month of retreat on all fronts :

On the Champlain :

retreat-4.jpg


Surprised by winter, but it is not too bad.

On the Ontario :

Starved.jpg


Not too much to retreat, eh… Just an officer. The three other officer were sent to Quebec were I was lacking CP.

Note that the French did not insist either :

retreat2.jpg


So the landing I was expecting did not happen.

And finally, I am going to lift the siege and retreat by ships in Quebec :

Siegelifted.jpg


I say “by ship”, because it was not obvious. I had thought of taking Trois-Rivieres to have a full season in 1760. I did not, though, for too reasons :
- The supply output would not have been enough. My army needs 101 in supply, and Trois-Rivières has a level 2 city and a level 2 port, i.e 10 supply levels (in winter). Add a depot to this, that’s 20 supply levels, ergo 100 supplies produced. Just enough, but it means my army would have been depleted by attrition.
- I cannot go to Trois-Rivières in less than 2 turns, due to the enemy zone of controls, in red on the map.
For this reason, I evacuate by ships. I don’t want to be trapped by ice, either.

Beginner’s corner – Zone of control, Patrol, Evade
I might be wrong on a few points, as it is complex and the manual is not up-to-date.
One of the game concepts that you can play without for quite a long time before it bites you savagely is zone of control. Basically, zone of control are provinces you cannot go into without fighting your way first.
Each region has a “patrol” value, which is calculated is the addition of :
- The sum of the “Patrol” value of all the UNITS of a region, this patrol value being the average of the values of its elements.
- 100*The level of fortification of the province (if you own it)
This sum is then divided by the percentage of military control you have in the region.

This patrol value is then compared to the Evasion value of units trying to “get through”
The minimum value of the evasion value of an army (the better the higher) :
- A bonus if the weather is good, a malus if it is bad
- A bonus if the unit is small, a malus if it is big. Small is less than CP AND units large, large is more than 9 CP OR units large.
Here is where you find those values (with some examples) :

ZOC1.jpg

ZOC2.jpg

ZOC3.jpg

ZOC4.jpg

ZOC5.jpg


Once you have that, the Patrol value is divided by the Evade value. The “blocked” army cannot move in any adjacent region where its level of military control is less than this number.
Numerical example :
The enemy has a patrol value of 500. You want to go through with a gun unit (Evade : 2). You can only go in province with at least 500/2 = 250% of Military Control. Impossible.
The enemy has a patrol value of 500. Your cavalry has a Evade value of 12. 500/12 = 41,7% You can only go in the provinces where you have at least 42% of Military Control.
Remember you don’t count the Patrol value of the provinces you want to move IN. Only the ones you want to move TO.

Practical examples. In Montréal, the French patrol value is :
- A level two fort : 200
- The units – 34. I opened the French file to know this (the game is finished).
- Military Control : 75%
Patrol value : (200+34)*0,75 = 176.

Here are some examples based on this. Remember that due to the “small size” bonus that I cannot calculate to add to the theorical value, and a bonus due to the stormy weather.

Evade1.jpg

Evade2.jpg

Evade4.jpg





The Patrol / Evade might also have a link with the chance to be intercepted when avoiding battle, but I don’t know more.

Conclusion : it might be useful to send a small unit first when you want to go somewhere in enemy ZOC, so you raise your Military Control. Then, you can move the rest of the army.

End of beginner’s corner

In the South, we exchange our position, as I take the boat and they take the road :

South-2.jpg


The difference is that the French left no one in Savannah, which is now mine. Pity I could not capture the boats, though.
 
C'est comme comparer le sexe et la masturbation ;P
 
Tsk, tsk, such smutty talk. :) Anyway, I'm not qualified to talk about it (ahem - single player vs. multiplayer, that is), so let me say instead that the zone of control thingy is always a useful reminder (haven't quite got it all straight in my head yet, but at least I'm aware of it).

Nice to see winter once again throw a wrench in all plans, as the hasty retreat to a safe place begins again.
 
How much better is it to play against a human opponent as opposed to the AI?

a lot, I don't find it easy to beat the AI in the AGEOD games but then I'm only slowly getting used to the basic game system and still find it hard to 'read' the maps, remember all the options and check everything that needs to be checked. So if you play on hard, give the AI more time and use a restrictive activation rule for the AI it will give you an enjoyable challenge and possibly take delight in handing you your head if it gets the chance.

but I think with the 'end of turn' processing model, the games are built for MP. Its a very different MP experience to Paradox where many players tend to simplify game play due to lack of time, here you have all the time you need to think and plot, but you have to be aware all the time that your opponent won't just do something competent but something utterly unexpected ... we'll come to an eg of this in 1760 when Narwhal resolves the problem of me having the central position (& thus able to shuttle between Mont Royal and Quebec at will) in a quite unexpected way. So you lose none of the thinking time etc and gain all the challenge and unpredictability.

Tsk, tsk, such smutty talk. :) Anyway, I'm not qualified to talk about it (ahem - single player vs. multiplayer, that is), so let me say instead that the zone of control thingy is always a useful reminder (haven't quite got it all straight in my head yet, but at least I'm aware of it).

Nice to see winter once again throw a wrench in all plans, as the hasty retreat to a safe place begins again.

Even more than RoP, you are very aware of the way that winter so fundamentally affects this campaign (except in the south) and the way it forces a mindset whereby come October you are starting to position stuff for winter and so on.

Military Control is one of those rather subtle AGEOD rules that most of the time you can pay no attention to ... then something horrible happens due to it. In RoP it was yet another reason to use Hussars etc as a scouting/advance guard force and one way in which well positioned fortresses constricted the movement options
 
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Raiding those peripheral small forts with indians - is it worth it? I mean those are just useless structures to begin with, aren't they? aren't you better off torching the lot of the iroquois?
 
Raiding those peripheral small forts with indians - is it worth it? I mean those are just useless structures to begin with, aren't they? aren't you better off torching the lot of the iroquois?

it depends to be honest. A scorched earth strategy can really affect the movement options. Regulars need regular (if you forgive the pun) structures to regain org as they move across wilderness, all troops need structures (& this includes villages) to hang out in winter to avoid attrition. So the less structures there are, the less options your opponent has and in turn the more secure you are (thats why my faiilure around Duquesne-Cumberland was so important, its not that either really matter but they in turn open up or close down the map)
 
FOr my experiance, it all depends on the first year. If you can protect Duquesne, you should burn all village in the south to keep the enemy from the Ohio Valley. If you keep it, I would recommend striking hard on the Iroquois or they will burn threw the back of your empire easily.
 
it depends to be honest. A scorched earth strategy can really affect the movement options. Regulars need regular (if you forgive the pun) structures to regain org as they move across wilderness, all troops need structures (& this includes villages) to hang out in winter to avoid attrition. So the less structures there are, the less options your opponent has and in turn the more secure you are (thats why my faiilure around Duquesne-Cumberland was so important, its not that either really matter but they in turn open up or close down the map)

In the Cumberland area - I totally agree. But what about the deep south where you have a good half of your indians? Or Maine, where you can use the Algonkin + Mikmacs from New Brunswick?

Also, quite hilariously the settlement in Chignecto is called "Grand Pré" when that town was 2-3 provinces away from that aera. It turns to the correct "Ft Beauséjour" name when the anglos take it over, though.
 
it depends to be honest. A scorched earth strategy can really affect the movement options. Regulars need regular (if you forgive the pun) structures to regain org as they move across wilderness, all troops need structures (& this includes villages) to hang out in winter to avoid attrition. So the less structures there are, the less options your opponent has and in turn the more secure you are (thats why my faiilure around Duquesne-Cumberland was so important, its not that either really matter but they in turn open up or close down the map)
Always burn the forts as the French unless the troops are needed somewhere else. For each structure you burn, you get victory points. In addition, many forts are in very important spots, including those you mentioned and the Champlain ones.
 
Actually, even the "free trial" version allows you to cut the image or add arrows or whatever.

So far as I can see, there is no rotate function that I'm used to from simple graphics like in Word or Excel, so all text etc is left to right. You may see the artistic merit of my substitute - free form writing with mouse for a pen - in the China AAR. I think I need something that allows more object flexibility.
 
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Further update today:
Patrol Value is NOT modified by the MC in the region,
Exceptions are included in the engine that allows "movement by Orders" into an uncontrolled region

http://www.ageod.net/agewiki/Zone_of_Control
Thank you lodilefty. With the new rules, we now don't know when we can move "by order" to another region :) Except when it is too late, of course.

Also... does the level of MC have an impact on the patrol of fortifications ? The Wiki says yes for now :)