Historical Attrition

[Dragoon!]

I've been wondering about this feature-I wanted to check it out because I thought it was killing off my cavalry unduly.
I opened up the Jena scenario and I just moved Mortier's corp back to minden (1 region/3day) and repeated the process five times:

1)~100 cav losses (one 'man' strength icon)
2)~200 inf, ~100 cav losses (2 'men' icons from one element, 1 cav)
3)None!-well, actually, there were roughly 10-20 men lost from each element, but, no one element got creamed-I liked this outcome!
4)~200 inf (2 'men' icons from one element)
5)~400 inf (2 'men' icons from 2 elements)

well, I was amazed..In this survey, the cavalry got off pretty well..they're usually pretty red on the element panel. However, seeing as my corps consisted of 11 inf elements 4 art and 4 cav, and out of 10 strength hits, 3 were cavalry...did seem to be a bit high, even in this survey, which was very kind to the cav

Well, based on this survey, I think that:
a) attrition attacks single elements rather than wears down the entire stack.
b)to a lesser extent-I do think that it might tend to gang up on cavalry units.
I do believe that if someone ran a more broad test, they'd see more cav hits.


Questions:
-Is it right and good for single elements to take big losses like this?
-Is the attrition too high overall? (in this survey ~200 men on a three day march in good weather on a main road)

[Walloc]

A few things on historical attrition as i see them.

First yes Cav should take less hits IMO than inf so yes ur results but as u say its a pretty small base seems to be a bit off. So ofc any arguments has to be seen in that light. Seemingly biasing tho prolly randomly so in hitting the cav. It should have less of a chance hitting cav IMO and it might actually have.

While the corps might have only marched 3 days the turn is 7 so the attrition rate should be checked against that and not 3 days. Attrition is higher when marching, but not exclusiv to that.

Does 200 men right of the bat seems high for a 16k corps marching some of the 7 days, no not to me.

It should be noted that the march in ur example is in own territory and that reduce attrition rates significantly. Using an example of marching through enemy controlled provinces would give another result. In the game is easy to make such an distingtion, less so at times in real life. So using results for tests of attrition rates through enemy territory might be better in terms of showing potential losses.

I've studied effects and casulty rates of attrition, generally called strategic consumption alot. That said mostly for the later campaigns, '09 and on.
While i have looked at both '06 and '05 i cant say i have all the numbers in my head.
Attrition rates do vary alot in the campaigns the quality of the '05 and '06 french army is alot better than some of the later ones. That is ofc one factor in reducing strategic consumption.
Two other factors that plays heavily in are.
1. Faster campaigns and the fact that troops doesnt stay in general long in the same area which means the doesnt exhaust the forage options.
2. Smaller armies that is(can be) better supplied via the organized supply system. U do marching "better" on a full stomach.
All that said the strategic consumption in '06 is far from insignificant.

If u look at later campaigns, '12-'14, 200 men in 7 days would be nothing for a 16k men corps. Especially marching in "enemy" territory.
I "" enemy territory cuz its easier to make the distingtion in '12 than in '13 and '14. While in game it matters much.

Consider that, from the 24th of June to the 7 of Sep. 1812 a mere 10 weeks. The strategic consumption in several of the corps of the Gran Armé reaches as high as near 50% of original infantry strength in a fair number of its bde's. There hasnt been alot of battle casulties up too then. Near 5 % of original strength lost per week in all. Higher in actuality cuz of law of diminishing returns.
If u look at 2nd corps on the 15th of Sep ofc after the battle and those casulties. Finding a bde with more than 50%+ is near impossible. I can only find 1 regiment in 1 of the bdes where that is true. Yes the thruth is that Napoleons armies lost more going into Russia, than comming out of it.

U see corps in both fall and spring of '13 having same or higher strategic consumption rates. % losses are actually higher per week, but u also have more battles in '13. The duration of the campaigns are not as long, so even if u have corps comming out the fall campaign with 100% losses overall losses arent quite as high % wise as '12, tho close. In the weeks leading up too Leipzig up too 2000 men are lost per day. Close to 1% of the entire army, non garrison part, per day from purely strategic consumption reasons. This in supposedly sorta "friendly" territory. Judging what is what in '13 is alot more shades of grey in historic terms IMO. Plus alot more battles and attrition rates are alot higher after those. This is to some extent shown as retreat losses in game.

200 out of 16k is only 1,25% in a week. Again i stress that the example isnt directly transfereble as in the in game modifiers would be different for the march from Niemen to Borodino, than the one used.
Still 1,25 % in a week even in friendly territory doesnt seem particular high to me. If any thing i'd say its on the low to mid end. This being '06 french that isnt totally unexpected. I could state tons of examples in "friendly" territory of strategic consumption in a week for 16k men that far excedes that.



I agree with u that IMO the attrition should be in general leveled out of the units of the corps and not be focused on single units. Its prolly alot harder to program tho.

Giving alot of judgement of the fairly small sample u have and no samples of in enemy controlled territory doesnt, at leased to me, give enough to make "final" opinion on. So what ever i've said about it should be taken in that light.
Non the less you raise an interesting question.


Kind regards,

Rasmus

[Dragoon!]

Thanks for the reply-lot's of good info here.
Yeah, I don't really have a 'final' opinion, either. I just started looking at it because my cavalry units always seemed to be getting bled white, which, combined with a minor skirmish at the end of the route, means lots of lost cavalry elements...However, running it some more, I see that infantry element hits are harder to notice, because sometimes, in larger regiments, don't even show a bit of red in the element panel after taking a strength point hit...I'm not sure about the cav, heck, it might be totally random.
I'm positive to a fault, however, that attrition HURTS cavalry more, because the units are so small. One strength point can often be 1/3d of the unit.

One thing-Do inactive generals attract more attrition hits? Or, is this just done the round-about way by extending move times?

[Walloc]

I'd say if u see more of this cav getting "unfairly" hit, we can ask pocus if the selection is purely random or if cav is getting a bonus on the roll, both for being smaller elements(game mechanics) and from the historic fact that Cav tended to take less attrition than Inf.

The smaller elements purely from a game point mechanic disfavors cav in that there are more elements compared to inf, man for man, and therefor have a higher random chance of getting "hit".
Also cuz of the standart 100 man hit. Those hits, hit a cav element being smaller harder than a inf element, in general, % wise. There ofc are exceptions.

Maybe Pocus will peek in and give his say

Kind regards,

Rasmus

[Pocus]

Its true that the number of hits in a element don't impact the amount of damages received, so it favors big regiments and penalize small cavalry elements.
Although I'm really unsure that attrition should be less for cavalry. Horses generally die in scores when conditions are bad... If someone can provide infos on say the attrition on the Russian Campaign (how calvary fared compared to infantry), we can change our pow though.

[Walloc]

Hi Pocus,


Having looked at numbers for several of the campaigns IMO the 1812 campaign is the odd case. The exception that proves the rule.
Simply in that "every one" endes up dying in the end. It is very true that almost no animals get out from the corps that went to Moscow and back.
In any of the other campaigns i've looked at. Cav does undoubtly fare better.
Ill conjure up some figurs from both '12 and other campaign so u have some material to go by.


As a tidbit of info. If u look at the corps even in '12 that were flank protecturs u see more normal attrition results. For example 23 Chassurs a Cheval of Marbot fame gets out with almost 500 men and horses, 483 IIRC and is the regiment that does best of any. Only losing about 1/3 of original strength IIRC. If u look at those corps u see same result that Cav tends to do better.

If u look at the numbers when moving into Russia up and until Moscow where the army losses more in actual numbers through attrition than when going out. U'd see same results that Cav does better than inf. Its only in that the retreat played out as it did that really finnished of almost all animals and this is pretty much the exception.
Hard Winter = snow so they couldnt grass nor was any availble food supplies for horse, availble through the usually supply system ofc.
Usually as in '07 for a couple of months when its hard winter, operations are suspended.

Near 10.000 cavalry men made actually it out of Russia btw. As the campaign unfolded and before the actual retreat starts, they were unhorses and wandered home in lack of horse replacements. They were gathered up in Mainz.


kind regards,

Rasmus

[LooksLikeRain]

It seems to me that whether Cavalry or Infantry got hit harder would depend on conditions.

Cavalry was usually going to be much better foragers. They might be the lead of the columns, so the first in an area to grab up forage. They also tended to range further, so they would be better able to get forage.

When forage has been stripped clean, its the slower moving elements buried back in the column that find themselves out of supplies and marching through country that's already been stripped clean.

But, cavalry would get hit harder when there are no supplies or forage because the horses needed more supplies.

Maybe a system where cavalry gets a better crack at the forage available in a region, but take bigger hits when supplies are short or gone would model this?

To get really fancy, you might want to track animals in a unit the way you do men. Its the animals that die off first. For two reasons. If food is short, then men are going to keep it for themselves and let the animals starve. And, then the animals become a food source for the men.

That has impacts on units beyond Cav. This hits both artillery and supply wagons as well. One of the things that happened in Russia was that the horses the pulled the artillery were all dead and the men had to move it by hand. Has a bit of an impact on how far those guns can go in a day.

One thing you would definitely see as an army runs out of supplies would be the destruction of the supply wagons. The animals would be eaten for food, and no starving army is going to push empty wagons along by hand.

[LooksLikeRain]

Don't have any idea of how the game mechanics work, but one thing that should have a huge impact on 'attrition' would be the quality of the troops. That's because I'm thinking of desertion as a major factor in 'attrition'.

With armies that were largely conscript, the generals would be reluctant to march them because being on the march gave the men a much better chance to desert. When the army was in camp, it could almost be set up like a prison with guards and patrols that tried to keep the desertion rate down. But when the army was on the move, it was harder to maintain this.

I guess in this game, there really isn't a 'morale', but cohesion seems to serve this role. So, the lower the cohesion, the more desertion you'd expect?

In a lot of armies, that might be why infantry might have higher attrition than cavalry. If the cavalry is a bit of an elite force, then you'd expect fewer desertions than say if the infantry was of low quality or conscripts.

[LooksLikeRain]

PS ... the latter tied into foraging too. Leaders of conscript infantry were very reluctant to turn their troops lose into the country to forage. They knew a lot wouldn't come back. So they needed to keep the troops in column along the roads where they could be better guarded and watched. But marching in a column down a road that 10,000 men have marched down before you means you don't find much forage left.

[Pocus]

Good input all, thanks, I will tweak the formula a bit.