Civil War Battles - Optional Rules Guide 1.3(4.04.1)

[BigDuke66]

Meanwhile I have collected experience against some human opponents and I have adjusted the rules.
Main change is from turn gameplay to phased gameplay, it simply had to be done as turn gameplay did not give the defender the historical advantage he usually had, also other options were adjusted.
As I'm confident with this set I call this 1.0, but that doesn't mean changes won't happen again.

PS
Changed to 1.01, had to fix the Automated Defensive Fire paragraph.

[phoenix]

I'm a bit confused here, now. Just starting with this series, really, having previously given up on it because I couldn't see the 2d maps well enough, but now that an extra 2d zoom level is being rolled out I'm trying again. However, I don't really want to double the PBEM moves, so I wonder if someone might post a list of recommended options for PBEM play without MDF? To achieve play closest to the historical, and most balanced, I mean. I assume the helpful list of options BigDuke 66 has selected and recommended is for play with MDF on. But I really want to play with with MDF off.

Cheers,

Peter

[BigDuke66]

Quick shot from my end.
If you don't want to do the defensive fire manually just turn on "Automated Defensive Fire", by that you still can play in phases(what I strongly recommend) but the defensive fire phase is done by the AI, obviously not as good as you but better than nothing and better than turn gameplay for sure.

PS
Regarding my guide, I'm currently testing the "Higher Fatigue Recovery Rates". There was some discussion on the ACWGC about this and I consider it worth trying. The higher rates should lead to 2 things, players will sooner disengage as not to drive their units units into high fatigue levels and players will rest their forces after such an disengagement as to regain combat power for either new assaults or a switch to defense.

[BigDuke66]

Updated to 1.02.

[The_General]

I play PBEM games in turn-based mode and usually play with all optional rules ON except:
- Manual Defensive Fire
- Optional Fire Results
- Optional Melee Results
- Higher Fatigue Recovery Rates
- Rout Limiting

[zovs66]

Is there any update for the WDS 4.0 line of games?

[2-81 Armor]

I play PBEM games in turn-based mode and usually play with all optional rules ON except:
- Manual Defensive Fire
- Optional Fire Results
- Optional Melee Results
- Higher Fatigue Recovery Rates
- Rout Limiting

@Zovs: The major changes in the 4.0 patches are the threshold to deploy skirmishers strength is reduced now to 50 (was 100), if using a custom .pdt file, night and day maximum visibility can now be adjusted, when using extreme FOW some tweaking has been done regarding unit detection and strength estimation, and many new naval rules were added. As far as the optional rules selection menu and the choices it has available nothing has changed. It still looks and has the choices just like in the illustration above.

[BigDuke66]

What I had not covered is the extreme FoW OR.
For now I suggest to used it as it seems to be an overall improvement of FoW that was to weak.

[BigDuke66]

A long due update has been made.

We are now at version 1.3 which has the latest set of OR covered based on 4.04.1.
The OR screenshot as well as the descriptions have been updated.
If you see any error please point it out to me by posting or via PM.

Really new is only the older "Extreme Fog of War" OR and the very new "Limited Artillery Unlimber" OR, I guess the later may cause some discussions as this got standard in the Nappy series but here is only an OR.
Artillery was used differently and also units looked differently(more mixed) in the CW area compared to the Nappy area, so in the CW area we can have a range of historical situations and ways these situation are depicted in a scenario and I guess that may not always fit with my recommendation to turn this OR ON.
Simply said, generally the OR is to be tuned ON, but special situations may demand a different approach like turning it OFF and using house rules.