WARNING
Saved games made in the previous version are not compatible with this new version. Complete your previous games before updating or start afresh.
The game has now the new system in place. A PDF document is available on the Steam page (in English onlu for now) to give you all details and explanations. It will be added to the SGS website very soon.
The Concept
Loyalty is a concept that represents the allegiance of local population in the game’s different regions and their tendency to support one side or another. This is based on percentage values, a region is fully loyal to you if your loyalty is 100%, and at 0% it is supporting your opponent.
Loyalty is affected by events, cards and military units, through the concept of Police values of units.
1 - Each region has a Loyalty Value (0-100) for each side. The sum of both sides' loyalties shall not exceed 100.
On the map, this is shown via a special loyalty button in the minimap panel that allows the display of loyalty indicators (vertical bars with tooltips showing the percentages of each side).
2 - Loyalty would go up to the side's by adding each end phase the sum of the ‘PoliceValue' of all the side’s units present there. If there are units from both sides (can happen when you have undiscovered hidden guerrilla units in the region), the loyalty will be adjusted by the difference of those sums of Police values.
3 – All units now have police values, usually from 0 to 10. This is indicated in the unit’s tooltip by a shield with a star and the corresponding value.
4 - Some cards effects will add/remove to loyalty of the different sides, both as a flat value or a % A similar effect will be available also inside events (as it uses the same logic)
5 - When a side's loyalty falls beyond a certain adjustable threshold, there is a chance/risk that the region switches/reverts ownership to the other side…therefore you can't leave disloyal regions without garrisons.
6 – Fog of War is automatically lifted in all regions that are a certain percentage (usually high, e.g. 75%+) loyal to your side, even if enemy occupied. In such regions you can check enemy stacks as if you had played an ‘examine enemy stack’ card (those stacks will bear the mirror glass icon).
7 - An empty region that has at least a certain loyalty in the favor of a side is considered as an eligible valid region for retreat, even if enemy controlled.
8 - Income of a region is modified by loyalty. It will be rounded up or down at 0.5 threshold (0.4 = 0, 0.6 = 1)
9 - Construction of units will require a certain level of loyalty, defined in the Loyalty section of the scenario (information displayed on the sides flags in the top of the UI).
10 - The loyalty rules can be made ON/OFF for a scenario (by designer only). For now, it is only active and useful in the 1775 and 1776 campaign scenarios.
What it changes
The most important effects are region control and Fog of War. As a short summary, a region with a high loyalty in your favour will tend to stay to your side (or switch back to you if enemy has occupied it but not maintained a presence) and, if loyalty is high enough, you will be able to spy on the enemy stacks there or, even if temporarily under enemy control, retreat into them.
This will grandly affect gameplay, as the loyalty changes are effected during the end phase of each turn. Therefore the old tricks of quickly occupying enemy regions to change the control and block enemy supply lines or paths of retreat, for one, will be no longer operative. This will change a lot the way to play, especially for the British side. (in the colonies) and also for the Americans (in Canada or other western or southern regions that favour the British).
In all, a completely new way of playing.
We hope you will like those changes.