DooberGuy wrote:Really?!?! I've played dozens of times and I've never lost anyone unless their whole command was wiped out. I have the latest patch, so maybe I've been really lucky. That or my guys are cowards, either/or.
I have often enough experienced the same like Carrington. In many heavy battles mostly with an assault stance I take most of my leader losses and then the best of them like my good ole Jackson which I lost in almost three of my four CSA campaigns as Jackson was still a division commander.
You can do simply nothing in most of these cases because without these guys leading your best troops you would lost the battle anyway and you would not get any important experience for them to promote them in the long run.
But it is always a tremendous negative experience for you as the player as you see them counted as a loss after a phyrric victory in a mostly decisive battle. In one of these cases I was in a heavy four days battle against a Union AI foe with superior numbers in manpower at Mannassas but the only advantage I got sofar were my numerous highly experienced troops and leaders equivalent to the Union.
Additionally the only thing which helped me most in that kind of battle was my certain use of good field artillery under direct command of my Army HQ forces (Lee) together with one of the few CSA leaders with the Artillerist trait. And the consequent use of coherent cavalry divisions on the CSA side with some of the best cavalry leaders like Forrest and JEB Stuart.
If you use good, but expensive long range field artillery on the side of the CSA belonging to some different corps and the Army HQ together with some lighter ones in the divisions and the corps you will get eventually some decent success.
In my special case of my second battle of Mannassas around May 1863 I had TWO gatlings available on my side due to the unusual form of transport by the AI. I got both and some additional artillery pieces by some of my raiding parties behind enemy lines because they were all transported unescorted on their way to Washington DC...*grin*
But I think I was now totally offtopic... alittle bit typical for me...*grin*
In any case I can confirm that it is usual that you will lost more than once good promising leaders in AACW on both sides in some heavy battles. Most of them will be lost on divisional command level...
I hope that these will be not always the case in PON. From some battle reports in some different sources even at wikipedia many leaders were lost because they are directly leading their troops into battle. But in that times it was still unusual leading troops from behind from regimental level onwards. Simply remember the ole Custer...
At the end of the 19th century many leaders seemed to change such behaviour and did leading in more modern ways from behind the lines.
But these would be only successful if you have some good discipline and order and organisation for your troops. In an army like the Prussian or the later imperial german one these would be of course no problem but in the Russian or Austrian or Ottoman army which had often enough some morale and discipline problems that would have a tremendous negative effect on the troop morale in some certain cases so that the troops would break faster without the direct involvement of the decisive leader the commanding general.
As I remember the defense of Gallipoli by the Ottoman forces was not only a success due to good defensive lines but mostly due to the kind of command enabled by the generals of Sander and Kemal Pasha which were in many cases in the foremost trenches to improve morale of the defenders.
At Gallipoli the Allies tried to bombard the turkish trenches regularly with their battleships but in the end they had to retreat due to the braverous defense of the turkish troops. In the whole WWI turkish troops were able to withstand for a long time any greater attack if they were well leaded by good officers and well supplied. In the Palestine campaign the turkish field troops would have resisted the British forces eventually much longer if the British had not the support of the irregular fighting Arabs. The Arabs destroyed and captured many supply depots in the rear of the Turkish Palestine army and so it became true what once Napoleon said: that a soldier cannot march or going into battle with an empty stomach...
But to become topic again...I hope that you will be able to research some certain tactics in combination with some command options and that you will be able to train your generals sofar that you can give them more than some simple ratings for attack, defense or morale but also some different traits which could be influence a battle decisively even if both leaders would have nearly the same ratings.
But these traits should be not only gained by battle experience but also if you send such a general to the military academy where he could teach some of his experiences to new officers that would give you some RPG elements ingame...
greetings
Hohenlohe
R.I.P. Henry D.
In Remembrance of my Granduncle Hans Weber, a Hungaro-German Soldier,served in Austro-Hungarian Forces during WWI,war prisoner, missed in Sibiria 1918...
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