sounds good, but the ai programming the units to use their own tactics is going to make your head hurt.

another idea is still controlling them but once they engage all you can order is retreat etc. like have companies of men not single units.

an idea im thinking of doing is having muskets/bayonets and cannons so basically men are the most important resource, cannons have to be manned and are slow to move. men also gain experience to shoot straigher are reload faster,

so its positioning of men, for ambushes etc, one hit kills on the men, cannon balls bounce and tear holes in companies,

u get more men and cannons for every so many kills etc. so the game slowly builds up or whatever

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
oh another thing you could do is the world war 1 trenches, like bombard those trenches, send the men over the top, etc once in no mans land you dont control etc

like the men have to capture enemy trenches and push them back to their base or whatever




[edited by - johnnyBravo on October 3, 2003 7:21:27 AM]

I know I mentioned it before, but here in UK, there''s a program called Time Commanders (BBC 2, Thursdays, 8pm) which is essentially getting a team of four (two ''generals'', two ''lieutenants'') civilians to command one side of a historical battle (so far always involving the Roman army on one side or the other) against a computer general.

The team has three technicians available, each at their own computer, two devoted to working with the lieutenants and handling the details of unit control for them and the third with the generals and controlling the big screen (a ''flying camera''). The team get a while to plan ahead of the battle, including about 5-10 minutes to scout the enemy forces, then get put in control of the battlefield - at which point the enemy forces are also activated. The lieutenants handle all the troop movements and orders (by talking to their respective technician) and the generals, in addition to being able to request the big screen to point at various parts of the field, get (ideally) feedback from their lieutenants and then give instructions to the lieutenants which (ideally) they then carry out.

The point of bringing all this up is that the generals are effectively playing a pure strategy game (with a very sophisticated interface )

And the one thing that divided the good teams from the bad wasn''t how well they planned beforehand (none of them having the experience required to formulate informed strategies) but how well they improvised once things started falling apart. Any "pure strategy" game is pretty much going to have to allow ongoing control after the start of engagement - or else allow at least an option to allow the troops to use their own initiative - or else the player is going to become pretty much irrelevant to the outcome of battles (except by deciding what sort of troops to show up to the battle with)