I'm sure most of us have seen the
Civil War game making its rounds on the Internet. Now, as a history nerd (and major), I am very excited about this. I get to play in one of my favorite points in history, one that has long been neglected. Yet, I'm almost certain that this game will fail. Let's take a look at some of the historical reasons why:
Tactically, The Civil War was at an akward point in history, where technology was updated, but the tactics were not. This is part of the reason why there were so many deaths during the Civil War. Tactically, you were supposed to fight in lined regiments, like they did, because the guns were so horribly innacurate. The tactics were all based off of Napoleon's rules of war from the Napoleonic Wars, which didn't reflect the new and improved tech that was coming out.
The technology had changed in several ways since the Revolutionary War. First, there was the switch from smoothbore to rifled guns. What this means is that instead of guns being accurate up to 50 feet, they were now accurate up to a mile. So now, when you fired at someone, you were going to get a lot more casualties. In Napoleon's War manual, it was estimated that it would take 500lbs of lead fired to kill 1 man. Now, it was a lot less. We also have the introduction of the gatling gun. If you want to count it, the air force was also introduced during the Civil War, with the Union having a brigade of baloons spying on Confederates.
Why does this make the game unlikely to succeed? Well, the game is supposed to be accurate, as it bears the branding of The History Channel. Therefore, the AI should act in this fashion for a battle. This is pretty different from the scheme of all past FPS AI, which takes place in WWII at the earliest. In WWII, automatic weapons and squad based tactics had already been developed, so one man off on his own was not the strangest thing. Yet, in Civil War games, this sort of mentality doesn't exist. It kinda kills the atmosphere of the Civil War, and is just going to end up being Battlefield 1942 with a Civil War skin, and that, a Civil War game is not.
Also, if the player follows any iota of FPS tactics, they'll slaughter the AI. If the AI is to be accurate to the time, then they'll wait until they're about 50 yards or so to fire, and you can shoot them from much farther away, if you bother to aim at all. Oh, and let's not forget the awesome reloading times. Might as well just weave and then attack everyone with the bayonet. Or be cavalry. Those guys will be broken. They'll have both repeater rifles, which were single shot rifles with a clip, and swords.
Sorry, I really had to geek out on this topic.
Contest:
10:09 PM on 09.19.2006
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