A dialogue on BOA2

[squarian]

I thought this might be of general interest and asked Bertram if he'd mind my posting it - it's just two grognards grumbling to each other, but I think there are some useful observations here.

We've been playing BOA2 for several months now. We finished a 1775 campaign under 1.05 with Bertram playing the Americans and I playing the Brits, then started a second game under 1.06 with sides reversed. In trading turns back and forth we have occasionally discussed aspects of the game, and here's one exchange. I've put Bertram's comments in italics for clarity.

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There are a few design decision that make little sense in this one. With the French intervention so scripted, they might as well skip the diplomatic options, and just make it random between a number of months. That is less frustrating then this pseudo influence you have.


Since there's a random factor to the chance of intervention anyway, what sense is there in spending EP on it? The Americans can hardly afford it, and the British are better off buying extra regiments to help conquer all four regions of the colonies, which means the diplomacy options are useless window-dressing.

The buying system isn't very well thought out either. I can buy loads of boats, flotilla's and merchantmen, get 40 militia replacements for free (but have hardly any militia units), and can't get regular replacements. If I could just swap those militia for regulars, even at a 1-4 rate... Or even having no replacements at all would be better, having thousands of militia men, but being unable to replace losses in the regiments is a bit strange.


I suspect this is the result of the interplay of two factors. On the one hand, 1.06 saw a pretty important revision of the EP system, with fewer EPs and more costly options, but supposedly the options ("training soldiers" for new element) would occur more frequently. On the other hand, there has been discussion on the board lately about the automatic recovery of hits and replacement of elements - in our games and solo, both seem to take forever, and I'm beginning to wonder if these functions are broken. The Americans get their regular drafts, but you really notice it as the Brits - in our last game, I had a whole army of broken, understrength regiments sitting on a depot in Baltimore in passive mode for the entire second half of the game.


And then there is a lack of information. Now and then I get a message that I am getting less popular. Is this an ongoing thing? Can I prevent it? Does losing battles (or winning them) and garrisons influence it? I think so, but am not sure. Same goes for taking towns. Taking New York seems to get me a bunch of troops, and now replacements. Nice, but why? Cant they land elsewhere? I got a depot in Boston now - why can't the King just send them here? Kind of the same with the French and Spanish intervention. I know of the French, but the Spanish haven't been mentioned yet. I know they will attack because we have played the game before, but I think the British could have a bit more information than in the game.

As it is you have to play the game lots of times to know what effect your actions have. For some that is all right - the actors in the real thing often didn't know what would happen either. In other instances it is like fighting blind (like the importance of New York, or in the previous build of Philadelphia - the opponents would know those effects, or at least the kind of effect taking or loosing those towns would have).


All good points, I think. Some of these problems, like loyalist militia units showing up when you take a city, could be better explained with event messages, which are used for some but not all such reinforcements. For the New York and Philadelphia loyalist units, for instance, a brief message with some background about the leading loyalists in the city forming militia regiments would be useful (and I suppose I should volunteer to write them - Lodilefty has plenty to do as it is). Better, clearer event messages for Fr/Sp intervention would be helpful, also.

Regarding replacement elements turning up at random locations, you're not the only one to complain - the message board discussion I mentioned above began with exactly the same. It would be nice if the players had more control over where replacements go, or at least if the system was predictable. Surely Lord George Germain would know the destination of newly-raised companies of foot embarked for the colonies?

[arsan]

On the other hand, there has been discussion on the board lately about the automatic recovery of hits and replacement of elements - in our games and solo, both seem to take forever, and I'm beginning to wonder if these functions are broken. The Americans get their regular drafts, but you really notice it as the Brits - in our last game, I had a whole army of broken, understrength regiments sitting on a depot in Baltimore in passive mode for the entire second half of the game.

Hi!
Interesting observations... i hope you also talked about something positive about the game in your dialogs and not just grumbled

Regarding the quoted part... From my game play experience 100% of the times a stack don't recover strength is because they don't have enough supply.
For an army to recover hits they must:
1- be in a structure, the bigger the faster they will recover (i think the % are on the manual). Surely you both already know this
2- Have replenished 100% of the stack supply stocks and have some supply to spare in the region.

Point 2 i usually the tricky part.
If you have a big army sometimes even depots and medium sized cities will provide just enough supply for the guys to feed, but maybe only slowly replenish their inherent supply stocks. So if an army goes to a city depleted after a camping, with just 40% supply on their stocks it may take many turns to replenish at a base where the supply surplus is only enough to increase their stocks by 5% per turn or so. (and when winter comes, regions supply generation is somewhat reduced, what can make matters worse).

As long as you are striving to have you army stacks 100% replenished, they won't recover a single hit. Seems pretty reasonable, as if you have problems to keep fed 10.000 guys its not a good idea to send 2.000 recruits there to replenish its ranks as it will create more supply problems.

So for quickly recovering hits on a understrength army you have to send them back to a safe base with plenty of supply. For big armies (or even medium sized armies on non civilized areas it may mean dividing your army in several stacks and send them to several towns/depots so they don't strain the local supply capabilities.

Oh, ans something i take some time to notice: sailors also eat!! Fleets consume a lot of supplies at port so usually is not a good idea to keep you big armies ans big fleets at the same place of you will have problem feeding them all.

Hope it may help!

Cheers!

[Heldenkaiser]

The lack of regular replacements is also something I'm also increasingly irritated about. I am playing a F&IW campaign as the Brits. I am in 1759 and I haven't had regular infantry replacements for the first five years or so of the game. All my armies are skeletons for lack of replacements, and have been for years. Once or twice in the past few turns, a single regular infantry replacement became available for purchase, swallowed up without noticeable effect in a single turn of course. I am always out. It's hard to fight a war without men, and to me it's seriously taking away from the game.

[lodilefty]

The lack of regular replacements is also something I'm also increasingly irritated about. I am playing a F&IW campaign as the Brits. I am in 1759 and I haven't had regular infantry replacements for the first five years or so of the game. All my armies are skeletons for lack of replacements, and have been for years. Once or twice in the past few turns, a single regular infantry replacement became available for purchase, swallowed up without noticeable effect in a single turn of course. I am always out. It's hard to fight a war without men, and to me it's seriously taking away from the game.

Feedback is so fascinating!

This was implemented several patches back, as we had complaints of too many replacements, especially free ones.

[arsan]

Heldenkaiser,
In case you haven't noticed, in WIA you don't need to have replacements of a given type for the units to recover hits.
Everybody located on a structure and with adequate supply will progressively recover hits. In WIA replacements are only used for recovering "full missing elements". So they are scarcer
So if you have skeleton forces maybe its because you don't let them rest and refit enough.
In any case, having many regiments missing elements is WAD as i understand it. In both 1756 and 1775 campigns
This are colonial wars and the units were usually scarce and understrength, as getting replacements sent there were not than easy or cheap.
Bear in min, F&IW was a the biggest of the several "colonial wars" UK was fighting at the same time around the globe, but the "main show" which would probably get most of the replacements, was being fought on Germany as you will see on RoP
In any case, if you feel that you are "fighting the war without men" , don't play the French side of that scenario.
In F&IW the brits are like the North on AACW. They have a huge men and material superiority (except on the first years).
For me, in FIW the Brits main challenge is not lack of men, but lack of supply to feed all that regiments when you put them on campaign. That is teh interesting part of the camping

Cheers!

[Heldenkaiser]

In case you haven't noticed, in WIA you don't need to have replacements of a given type for the units to recover hits.
Everybody located on a structure and with adequate supply will progressively recover hits. In WIA replacements are only used for recovering "full missing elements".

Interesting. I didn't know that. Nevertheless, whereever the replacements come from, I do of course rest depleted units in structures for extended periods of time to allow them to recover losses, as I would do in BoA or AACW. I haven't seen many of them really regain strength.

I appreciate that metropolitan manpower was scarce in these wars and communications were what they were. Still, there was ample colonial manpower available, and rather than have plenty of well-filled provincial units and skeleton line troops, authorities would have drafted these guys as replacements for their regular regiments. As you'll know, Braddock's line battalions (44th and 48th) at the Monongahela arrived in America understrength and were topped up with hundreds of provincial soldiers, ending up with one-third of the rank and file in these two units being Americans.

[arsan]

Interesting. I didn't know that. Nevertheless, whereever the replacements come from, I do of course rest depleted units in structures for extended periods of time to allow them to recover losses, as I would do in BoA or AACW. I haven't seen many of them really regain strength.

Make sure the problem is not what i explained on post 2 on this thread: lack of enough supply to quickly replenish the stack's supply stock to 100%, something that is mandatory to start recovering strength.

Don't expect a big army to refit at a fort in the wilderness, even with a fort+depot its supply production is only enough to feed medium sized armies.
But as soon as you get those skeleton forces to some civilized area (like Albany if it still has a depot, New York city, New England...) they will get up to 100% in 3 or 4 turns. Check the manual for the % hit recovery in each structure type.
Cheers!
PD: in fact, strength recovery on WIA seems more lenient to me that on AACW where you have to but replacement chits for every kind of unit.

[squarian]

I'm not so much bothered by the rate replacement elements come available as I am by very slow or no hit recovery - and yes, I am aware of the supply requirement, so I'm talking about stacks which are fully supplied and still take forever to recovery strength. Is this really working properly?

But that's not the only topic Bertram and I were discussing - what got the most attention was the lack of descriptive information via events. Anybody else have some thoughts on this?

[lodilefty]

To clarify, the rate at which hits are recovered depends on the structure type and level:

RecoverRate

Harbor = 5 [ships only]
Fort = 10
Depot = 30
City = 20
IndianVillage = 20
Settlement = 20
Stockade = 10

Where [AFAIK]:
RecoveredHits [per unit fully supplied] = MaxHits * RecoveryRate * StructureLevel /100

This only occurs, of course, if supply requirement is fully met with some remaining....

So small structures will recover hits very slowly. Indian Villages also have a very very slow [if not 0] rate because they inherently have barely enough supply to feed the units residing there 'the 'Tribe' units]

..and remember that Supply in harsh weather [aka Winter] is usually lower due to, well, Winter!!!

The design decision was made to accentuate the Logistical challenges of North America vs. Europe. Don't compare WIA's supply, replacements, etc to NCP [Europe] or AACW [railroads].....

"Amateurs study Strategy, Professionals study Logistics"

WIA also is considered to be a "Theater Commander" role, where full control over "who goes where" is really controlled by the "home office". Do you think Howe was happy about Burgoyne going home, getting troops, and going to Canada? Howe didn't go to Albany because he had his own ideas of the strategy [Philadelphia and New York]....

[Heldenkaiser]

Thanks, Gentlemen, that helped a lot. Now to see if I can get it to work ...

[caranorn]

I also think that the problem most people are experiencing is due to units having less than 100% supply. Consider, most of the time those depleted forces are returning from some campaign and are a low supply (particularly wagons). So they will first resupply which can take several turns for larger armies, particularly if they brought their wagons along. By the time that army has replenished its supply it's likely that you brought some other force/fleet to that same city to recover, which is again low on supply. So while force 1 is now at 100% supply there still is no surplus supply in the region as all supply is used to replenish force 2. And note that fleets, particularly with ships of the line eat up a lot of supply. Most large cities with depot, fort and port can bring an army (say some 20 battalions) that was recently in the field back to 100% supply in 3-4 turns and then start replacing losses. Very important cities (mostly New York City) can do that for several armies or fleets at once. Smaller regional centres just can't do it for large forces, regardless of the presence of a depot...