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Actually there could be a lot of internal diplomacy depending on how it is set up. If it starts before the actual war, in the build up period there could be an effort to try and get different states on your side. The border states were very much a historical issue and had a extra state or two flipped it might have gone quite differently. I would look forward to it. As to how it would sell, I am not sure depends on how it is set up. I had never heard of crusader kings or paradox until Crusader Kings 2.
you'd be surprised how relatively few did. in 2012 i only ever heard of paradox and HOI 3 (a kind of game i had actually been searching for for years) through my uncle, who played the hell out of between during USAF/diplomatic and independent contractor stints in the middle east.
2013 i think was really paradox's watershed year. with CK2 and the newly released EU4 absolutely exploding in popularity.
While it may work in the US, the rest of the World will looka at a game about the ACW and say "who cares". And Europe is for example an important market for PDX. So the ACW will probably only be in installments of the Victoria series.
The US is also an important market for PDX. How many copies of EU 1-4 do you think were sold in the US?
Not to mention if you got tanks and poison gas warfare before 1900 the tanks barely were any more effective than guard units, and other side rapidly develops gas defense when they don't even know what the gas is.... At least the gas is OP for a while, >_>
If I hadn't found a retail copy of EU3 at walmart....well I'd probably not found Pdox for quite sometime after..... *looks at icons*
If it's a good game I'd play it regardless, just as there are Americans who play Renaissance wargames about wars that happened before the US ever existed.
This can't be said enough. Warfare is by far the weakest part of V1 and V2 and if V3 is ever to happen Paradox really need to engage with that. Simply saying "but it's not a wargame" doesn't cut it.
Yup.
Of course Johan has said that the market for this kind of game is too limited for Paradox, and he may be right about that.
For what it's worth, my dream ACW game isn't actually a traditional Paradox real-time grand-strategy game. Instead it's a hybrid of the mechanics you find in Vicky and those you find in Cossacks 2 - specifically the quick movement and assembly of regiments at particular junctions or river-crossings, and maybe a province-move system isn't the best for that.
AGEOD (a company that Paradox used to own) has made an ACW game which I was interested in until I read about the phased combat system at which point I lost interest because it sounded a bit over-complex and unlikely to be fun - has anyone played it?
Ironically, I'd say that ACW setting would still attract more interest in Europe than any of the European wars in latter half of 19th century. Has anyone even ever made a computer wargame for Crimean, Franco-Prussian or Russo-Turkish '77 war?
I'd say any small scope war game that isn't WW2 (or maybe WW1) would not succeed. The Napoleonic game they tried didn't sell.
EUs before 3, not many at all, though they tried both times. EU 3 sold decently, especially since it was rereleased twice (Complete and Chronicles), i.e. EU 3 had a rather long lifespan, and became very profitable over time. The EU games cover the whole world over a long time span. That's completely different than a limited scope game. That's why EU, CK and even Victoria work. They cover a long time period, not just a single war. HoI works because it's WW2.
It's actually a fairly safe bet that an ACW game would sell better than WW I. It's certainly been that way for board games as well as historically in computer games going as far back as the SSI games way back when.
That said, I'm not sure a Clausewitz style ACW game would make all that much sense.
Actually I think it could work relatively fine on the American market (the big issue being only two playable nations), but wouldn't work outside the States at all.
The pity of this is you're right. People think (wrongly) that WW1 was just fixed-position warfare so any game focusing on it will be boring.
The fronts were fixed on the Western, Greek, and Isonzo fronts. The others, Serbia, Romania, Russia, Egypt, etc. were pretty fluid.
And even on the Western and Greek front they became mobile in 1918, whilst the Isonzo front became mobile during the 1917 Caporetto offensive. But propose a WW1 game and everyone will say "but won't that just be boring trench warfare?"
An ACW game won't be made in the near future for the commercial reasons that others have given, but I also think that there are three reasons which make it quite unsuited to the Clausewitz engine with the grand strategy mechanics we know and love.
Firstly, there's really only one possible conflict and limited replayability. In EUIV, you can play as France and decide to go colonial, or expand into the Med, or turn Protestant and reform the HRE, or.... Even in HoI, there are multiple possibilities. Japan can go north into Siberia, south into the Malay Barrier, or sink everything into China. Germany can try to finish off Britain before invading the USSR. The British Empire & Commonwealth can focus its efforts in northwest Europe, the Near East or the Far East. What would people say about an ACW game where the Union decided, "OK, you can keep slavery if you want to, we're off to fight Canada"?!!!
Yes, there is the possibility of the British Empire, France, Mexico, and maybe even Spain joining the war, but they would have to be mainly off-map powers (like China in CK2 Jade Dragon). How many times would people have replayed Street Fighter if had been the same two characters every time, or Civilization if it had only had two civs?
Secondly, as others have said, those two sides were so imbalanced. I'm sure someone will make a mod for HoI 4 eventually, but to be realistic it's going to have to give half a dozen factories to the South and fifty to the North. The South's strength was in cotton production and I've yet to see a wargame where that featured heavily. For the South to survive it needs exceptional generalship, which is not the AI's strong point. You can give the South general characters with better attributes, but it means that the player is set up to either win or lose in advance, which isn't fun at all. With only two imbalanced sides, there's no possibility of any rock-paper-scissors dynamic to keep players interested.
Thirdly, the two sides' strategic choices are relatively limited: advance along the coast, advance up/down the Mississippi, advance along the Tennessee valley.... The real interest in the ACW is more about tactics. Although I haven't played them, there are apparently some very good tactical games for the ACW, such as Ultimate General, and Sid Meier's Gettysburg! But anyone who's ever played a Clausewitz game knows that's it's not about tactics, even in HoI; that's why individual battles play out in minigames that you can only influence to a very limited extent.
These issues didn't apply to March of the Eagles or Sengoku, which both featured environments with multiple competitive countries/daimyos and many possible diplomatic and military strategies. Runemaster tried to use the Clausewitz engine for a non-grand strategy game and never reached a playable state, I believe.
There's nothing wrong with ACW games, which can sell well in the US, but a Clausewitz GSG isn't the way to do it.
Firstly, there's really only one possible conflict and limited replayability. In EUIV, you can play as France and decide to go colonial, or expand into the Med, or turn Protestant and reform the HRE, or.... Even in HoI, there are multiple possibilities. Japan can go north into Siberia, south into the Malay Barrier, or sink everything into China. Germany can try to finish off Britain before invading the USSR. The British Empire & Commonwealth can focus its efforts in northwest Europe, the Near East or the Far East. What would people say about an ACW game where the Union decided, "OK, you can keep slavery if you want to, we're off to fight Canada"?!!!
Yes, there is the possibility of the British Empire, France, Mexico, and maybe even Spain joining the war, but they would have to be mainly off-map powers (like China in CK2 Jade Dragon). How many times would people have replayed Street Fighter if had been the same two characters every time, or Civilization if it had only had two civs?
Secondly, as others have said, those two sides were so imbalanced. I'm sure someone will make a mod for HoI 4 eventually, but to be realistic it's going to have to give half a dozen factories to the South and fifty to the North. The South's strength was in cotton production and I've yet to see a wargame where that featured heavily. For the South to survive it needs exceptional generalship, which is not the AI's strong point. You can give the South general characters with better attributes, but it means that the player is set up to either win or lose in advance, which isn't fun at all. With only two imbalanced sides, there's no possibility of any rock-paper-scissors dynamic to keep players interested.
Thirdly, the two sides' strategic choices are relatively limited: advance along the coast, advance up/down the Mississippi, advance along the Tennessee valley.... The real interest in the ACW is more about tactics. Although I haven't played them, there are apparently some very good tactical games for the ACW, such as Ultimate General, and Sid Meier's Gettysburg! But anyone who's ever played a Clausewitz game knows that's it's not about tactics, even in HoI; that's why individual battles play out in minigames that you can only influence to a very limited extent.
These issues didn't apply to March of the Eagles or Sengoku, which both featured environments with multiple competitive countries/daimyos and many possible diplomatic and military strategies. Runemaster tried to use the Clausewitz engine for a non-grand strategy game and never reached a playable state, I believe.
There's nothing wrong with ACW games, which can sell well in the US, but a Clausewitz GSG isn't the way to do it.
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