American Campaign Economy and Bugs?

[Captain Dodson]

So I have started playing the American campaign today and overall I have enjoyed it. However, the ship choice from the admiralty is horrid and the resources are incredibly miniscule. I played on easy mind you. I understand the developers are trying to give a sense of inferiority to the Royal Navy but its a bit too much in my opinion.  

My biggest pet peeve right now is the fact that one of the few choices for ships you have from the admiralty is an unrated cutter. When I bought the first unrated cutter from the admiralty, I didnt have any choices at all for mounting cannon on it (no its not a troop ship). I bought another cutter meant to have 12 guns and still didnt have any choices to mount guns. Essentially I bought two ships from the admiralty and could not use them at all... Now I have had literally only two choices of armed ships so far, a cutter and sloop. One type I cannot arm at all and the other I simply cant afford. The 3rd choice is 5 or 6 troop carrying sloops when I only need one this far in the campaign.

Am I missing something here?

Besides these issues and a few bugs its been fairly decent! The Royal Navy campaign is much more enjoyable so far.

[WilliamTheIII]

It would make little sense for the US to have 5th rates being sold in the ship or really have an abundance of equipment. For money, the best way to get it is through weapons and capturing supplies (troop transports). Equipment is also extremely scarce and you will need to unlock technology to even get access to most it. In general, there is absolutely zero point in every buying ships from the shop as you can capture more than enough in both campaigns. The money reward will eventually go up however, by capturing supplies and through the abundance of points of interest, I had a 50k positive and the campaign was going quite well.

[doublebuck]

I mostly agree with you.  I mean I like the entire game but of course we all may have some issues and yes it is EA.  I found the Britain campaign very good on normal difficulty and the American campaign on normal a little harder and even the resources not as good as the Britain campaign and I can't imagine playing hard due to the hit on resources. As for the ships I bought the cutter and had an option to place guns on it but as noted I don't find myself being able to buy all the things I like to that I bought in the Britain campaign and now playing American on normal difficulty it's lacking in rewards in my POV.  I know if I start it an easy least I would have more money but I like a little challenge too so I am on normal.

[WilliamTheIII]

Well the US Navy never really received funding during this time which is why capturing is very important. Focus on capturing land units and taking the troop transports. This will give you an abundance of cash. Also, by capturing a lot of the early ships, you can use them on points of interest to gain ~7k each. On some stages where there are 5 of them, this can provide a very healthy reward. I have already played the US campaign on hard (up to stage 3 as I hit a game breaking bug) and while the mission rewards are tighter, there are plenty of ways to gain money.

[Sir Texas Sir]

It needs to be balanced.  If the US isn't going to get all the money that the Britissh Campaign gets than the US Privateer needs to get a lot more prestige to take prizes they capture or something like reduction on crew cost.  It seems even on easy I'm struggling on the US (I just finished the british with a good sum of money and ships).   That and I think I might have a bug in my US, second mission I did I go against two 28/30 gun ships when I'm only in a Brig with a captured sloop.  Way out gun and crewed so couldn't protect the Trade ship with me.

[doublebuck]

13 minutes ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

It needs to be balanced.  If the US isn't going to get all the money that the Britissh Campaign gets than the US Privateer needs to get a lot more prestige to take prizes they capture or something like reduction on crew cost.  It seems even on easy I'm struggling on the US (I just finished the british with a good sum of money and ships).   That and I think I might have a bug in my US, second mission I did I go against two 28/30 gun ships when I'm only in a Brig with a captured sloop.  Way out gun and crewed so couldn't protect the Trade ship with me.

You all have some good points.  <William>  If that is so then yes we somehow should get a lot of rep to unlock the many ships you think we should capture then that should be the focus of the American Campaign when it comes to ships. The rewards are too low I mean what is the point if we can't unlock the ships we capture or buy ships.  Sure, we can give them back for little peanuts and try to build the rep up then unlock but we can't unlock enough to make a big difference and it sucks a little  compared to the Britain campaign. I guess I could play easy just to enjoy that 25% reward you don't get in the normal play. LOL

Edited December 31, 2019 by doublebuck

[buddha69]

Quote

 

I think my issue is that on Easy, the US campaign is still very difficult for a first time player.  You are going up against larger ships, with HUGE troop numbers.  The British campaign on easy, is just that. Easy.  I feel like the two campaigns should be equal in that manner.  However this is just my opinion, the developers may intend the American campaign to be more difficult overall.

[WilliamTheIII]

I think part of it is that the American campaign is indeed supposed to be harder. The other part is that I have noticed that scaling isn't nearly as influential in AOS when compared to UGCW. This is mainly due to scripting for the battles to try to keep them balanced. For example, the mission with old truelove will always have a support vessel plus a 5th rate. On easy, the 5th might only be an Diana, while on normal/hard, it will be an endy. Because of this, I would argue that normal and to some degrees hard have the potential to be easier. This is with the caveat assuming you are capable of capturing very strong ships with little resources. However, once you do, the scripting can be used to your advantage and the campaign becomes quite easy when you have ships such as the endy.

[Anthropoid]

I have solely been playing as Yanks for about 40 or so hours. All of my play is with both Navy and Army on "Easy" during the character generation sequence. I did not take the time to read through every post in this thread yet. Here are my observations on "balance" for the American position:

1. If the intent is to be completely historical, the balance is probably _OVERALL_ just about right, or maybe even a bit too easy. Based on my read of the American Revolution, it was not by any means probably that the Rebellion would succeed at the outset. I am not an historian, and with only two books and a few sundry sources under my belt (and all of those from years past, so memory has got a bit fuzzy) I don't mean to suggest that I'm an expert. With that said, my take is: if not for brilliant leadership on the American side (at multiple levels of organization), insane leadership on the Brit side (at least at the top levels, and to some extent at intermediate levels, though I think that at the theater levels and below command was quite good), and some degree of luck, the revolution would have failed.

With all that said, if the goal of the game design is to strive toward historicity as much as possible without breaking game play value, then even on Easiest settings, the Yank Campaign should be pretty damn hard. Medium should be about twice as hard as the Brit Medium and Hard or higher basically impossible.

2. I'm only into 1776, so I certainly don't have it all figured out. But the trick to doing well with the American position seems to be to capture good enemy ships and turn them into your own, and then once better ships come along sell them. Right now I have three warships (One 5th Rate which the Admiralty allocated to me in early 1776, which honestly doesn't seem very "realistic," but ah well), and two 6th rates (USS Virginia which was allocated, and USS Maine which was captured). In addition to those I had probably captured about 5 to 7 additional Brit warships added them to fleet and then sold them. I did this because the game doesn't exactly put any incentive on having "more ships" so much as having "enough ships" and certainly "better ships." Also there is a need to have marines, and that requires money and prestige. Vengeance and Earlston were sold pretty early once I had captured one of the larger transports, I think it was Old True Love (I renamed it USMC Fidelis), which has a capacity of 1200, i.e., it can hold around three companies of 300 marines plus a decent size crew (~190?). The other one is one I renamed USMC Valiant, and I think it was originally Margaret (from Wounded Game). It also holds 1200. With somewhere in the ballpark of 1100 marines Battle in the Rice Fields wasn't terribly taxing, though losses were still higher than I would've liked. The game definitely doesn't offer a great deal of "here is the easy way" options to the maps . . .

3. What I do is, preview all of my mission options. See what they need and allow in terms of ships/troops/tonnage. I generally try to do the ones which are "older" (meaning the date associated with the Mission) and will wait to spend my resources until I figure out which mission I'm doing next. Then I blow my wad to set up my forces for that next mission (often necessitating sacrifices like selling ships or arms I would prefer to keep), and then try to minimize losses (also a theme in my career point allocation: MINIMIZE LOSSES in order to cope with austerity). Wait till the last mission in a stage, hope that I've got enough resources left over to be able to do one or two maybe even three PoIs as I go for the last mission.

4. Accepting "Defeat," and/or skipping a mission altogether might make good sense from time to time. I suffered "Defeat" from Naval Blockade even though I considered it a Draw and was happy with the outcome (losses/damage not too bad, and I captured a 6th Rate). I also skipped "Nantucket" altogether. However I won Bunker Hill, First Contact, Old True Love, Chelsea, Norfolk, Wounded Prey, Nassau and Rice Fields, so it evens out. I'd call this basic design EXCEPTIONAL. It is uncommon that a game can manage to impose sufficient challenge that a player wins some and loses some; what is much more common is totally one-sided outcomes one way or the other.

5. Now with all that said: I'm not sure if some of the things need to be balanced better. Shortage of arms seems to be pretty intense and rewards for missions seem fairly meager.

Edited January 23, 2020 by Anthropoid

[Sturm561]

Anthropoid is doing the EXACT same method I use and I am about where he says he is and I fully agree with everything he says, HOWEVER where/how do I acquire the tech to get more cannons available for the American side?  I think that if we could see the a tech tree showing future techs and how to get there would be a great help to understanding the sequence needed.