Black Hills1876

Additions

• Buildings you can hold:
  • Right-click a house, cabin, barracks or storehouse and your men file in by the door. One man stands at each door and window and fires out of it, the rest wait inside and step up when he falls.
  • Men at a window or doorway have the log wall round them, so most shots at them miss. Riders and guns can't go in. Right-click a building the enemy holds to attack its garrison.
  • Settlers run for the houses and fire from the windows, and the roof comes off so you can see them.
• Forts:
  • A log stockade with four corner blockhouses at Platte Bridge Station, Fort Rice, Fort McKeen, Fort Pease and Fort Buford. A sod fort at Julesburg and Fort Dilts. Open Army posts with log barracks at Fort Robinson and Fort Fetterman.
  • Wagon corrals for the trains, rifle pits at Red Buttes and Bonepile Creek, the wagon boxes at the Wagon Box fight and the hay corral at the Hayfield fight.
  • Each stretch of wall is ordered on its own and holds a set number of men. Guns and mortars stand on the walls and in the towers and blockhouses, two men's room to each gun.
  • Walls can be battered down with axes, clubs and shells. A broken stretch leaves a gap anyone can walk through. Click a stretch of wall to see its strength.
  • A platform over the gate, and bowmen outside can lob arrows over the wall into the yard.
• Draw a road: hold the right button on your own men and drag. Let go and they march along it, bending round rocks, tents and corners, then form up where it ends.
• Muster flag: click your camp flag, then right-click the field to plant a flag where new troops gather.
• Wagon formations: Round the wagon, Behind the wagon and Man the corral.
• Drag a company card onto another battalion to move it there, or onto another company to swap them.
• Painted cards for the units, and a muster roll made of them with each unit's cost and raising time.
• Deer, elk, cows and a bull, covered wagon teams, two new tipis and burnt wagons by the settlers' cabins.
• Your men inside a roofed blockhouse, and their guns, show as blue outlines through its logs.

Tweaks/Improvements

• Moving your troops:
  • Where you click is where the company goes: the middle of its line stands on that spot.
  • A short move keeps the line the men stand in. A long one marches in column along the ground the lead walked, waits for stragglers, and forms straight into the line at the spot.
  • Squads sent together keep the pace of the slowest one.
  • Right-dragging lays out the formation you picked: a line, skirmish order, a column as wide as you drag, or a square. Left to right faces up the screen, right to left faces down.
  • A square faces out on all four sides, and its field of fire shows a fan from each side.
  • Men stand closer together in lines and columns.
  • Order arrows follow the route the men will take and fade slowly. An order onto a wall ends at the wall itself.
• Walls and guns:
  • Troops sent to a wall go straight to its inside, each to the foot of his own place, and appear up in it. Sent anywhere else, they appear back on the ground and go.
  • A gun on a wall stands with its crew beside it, never with them standing over it. Guns brought down off a wall move off at once.
  • In the field each crew stands behind its own gun, and batteries that stop on top of each other ease apart.
  • The selection ring of a battery is drawn round its guns, not its crew.
  • Men on a wall see and shoot 1.5 times as far, and on a tower or the lookout 1.75 times as far, all round. Their reach shows as a full circle.
  • Each stretch of wall has 5000 strength. The gate opens only for the side that holds the fort.
• Fighting:
  • Troops take more hits to go down: a soldier about twice as many as before, a warrior about a quarter more.
  • Healing and new men at your camp both come 25% slower.
  • Each man picks his own target in the enemy squad, so fire spreads out. The man you click on is shot first.
  • A squad fired on from both sides at once is flanked, and every squad attacking it does 10% more damage.
  • The enemy flanks, concentrates its fire, takes cover and falls back when caught.
  • Every gun and bow reaches 50% further. Skirmishers fire 20% faster.
  • Trees, stumps and small rocks are no longer cover.
• Screen and controls:
  • Selected cards have a bright brass frame, and cards sort by kind until you number them into groups.
  • The right-hand panel shows only the controls. With several squads selected it lists every skill any of them has, and pressing one uses it on every squad that has it.
  • The field of fire is a Total War style fan, and the sight ring covers what every man can see.
  • Health bars sit over the middle of the company, with rank badges beside them.
  • Muzzle flash and smoke come from the barrel of every rifle, cannon and mortar. Shots no longer draw lines.
  • You can zoom out about 50% further.
  • New Army unit names: Regulars, Skirmishers, Sharpshooters, Cavalry and 12 Pound Field Gun.
• The battlefields:
  • Every battle map was checked against the research: forts and villages that weren't there are gone, and woods and grass follow the sources.
  • Reinforcements arrive in your camp. Tipis open toward their fire, and villagers walk round lodges and tents.
  • Every soldier clears the fog of war round himself.
  • Cows ignore everyone and keep grazing.

Bug fixes

• Soldiers no longer get stuck or pace back and forth at cliffs, ramps, corners and lines of men.
• Guns and mortars go onto a wall when ordered, never jump outside the walls, and never get left behind their crew.
• Mortar crews no longer stand still packing up in the yard when they come down off a wall.
• Clicking near a fort or crowded ground no longer sends the line far from where you clicked.
• Riders and warriors no longer jitter in hand-to-hand fighting.
• Fort Pease has no gaps in its palisade and a way out of its gate. Ramps that led nowhere are gone.
• Cows and other animals no longer get stuck at banks, cliffs and walls.
• Wagon teams no longer park against a fort's wall or in its gateway.