Army Commanders: Part II

[aariediger]

A while ago I posted some ideas for trying to change the way commanders and armies were used and rated. Although it kind of devolved into people shouting back and forth about McClellan, I did actually get to test some of the changes I proposed in a PBEM game about a month ago. The game itself is still going on, but I’ll outline what we did for changes and house rules.

First things first, house rules. We can only teleport 1 star leaders, no Union drafting until partial in ’62 and full available in ’63, and the retreat rule was modded back to the old 5% (see this for discussion.) Anyway, none of these have anything to do directly with the leader changes, but I just wanted to explain the situation in-which these changes are being used. I myself am playing the Union. Here are the stats changes we tried, and my explaination from the last email I sent before starting the game:

Halleck 2-0-1 seniority 3
McDowell 2-0-1
Grant seniority 16
McClellan 2-3-0

Beauregard 5-2-3 seniority 16
A. Johnston 4-3-1
J. Johnston 3-2-5

“I changed Grants seniority to 16, which drops him below Pope and Buell both, and Rosecrans too, if he doesn't have an army before that. Plus, there is a limit to how many HQs you can build, I don't remember off the top of my head, but I know you couldn't just build them all to get Grant a command before at seniority 8, and now it should take even longer. I think this is a good first step, and should make the game play different. I say we run with this, and make any other changes we want before the next game. That way, we can test these, and each game will be just a little different and maybe a little better too. I know we didn't talk as much about the south's changes, but I kind of want their high command generals to seem and play different from each other, with different strengths and weaknesses. Before, everybody besides Lee had the same strat and attack ratings, so I like having A. Johnston hit hardest, Bory be quickest with a plan, and Joe the slowest but best defender. Kind of gives them a little flavor.”

It is now December 1862, with the draft right around the corner. I hold Nashville, Island 10, Ft.s Henry and Donaldson, and all of Kentucky in the west, while I am in Fredericksburg/Charlottesville in the east, along with an army south of the James that captured Norfolk. While the game is far from over, I have noticed some things I plan on changing.

1. Halleck worked out nicely in the west, but his 3 seniority meant that when McDowell got canned, he had more seniority than McClellan! Anyway, I’m going to change Mac’s seniority to 1, which is the way it was at one point I’m pretty sure. This should fix that problem anyway.

2. When Grant assaulted Norfolk, he gained a bunch of seniority, going from 16 all the way up to 10. However, when I then gave Fremont (seniority 5) an army command, Grant threw a fit. 141 Victory Points, and it hurt his seniority! Not sure what’s going on here, this one is still under investigation.

3. I still don’t have any reason to put Banks/Burnside/McClernand in the field. They all suck at general-ing, and putting them in cities is a much better way to use them. I didn’t want to jump into modding stats, seniority, and traits all at once, so we didn’t actually change any traits at all. Next time I’m going to mod all recruiting officers to have the Patriot trait instead. Hopefully this help get them involved in the action.

4. I just got the bulk of the Union ‘good’ leaders, and some of them are just too good. Don’t get me wrong, I love me-some-Meade, but should he really have the same 5-4-4 that Jackson does plus Gifted Commander? Why would I ever make this guy a second in command instead of giving him his own army, or at least his own corps? Also, Rosecrans is a little too active and good at defending for my tastes. When you look at the near disasters he presided over at Stones River and Chickamauga, I just can’t justify a 3 on defense.

5. Beauregard is a southern commander so not directly related to this exactly, but there isn’t really a reason to give Johnston the army instead of him. Maybe he needs a negative trait, or Joe needs another positive one?




So what are we to do about this? The Grant seniority thing I don’t know anything about, so if anybody knows anything please help me understand what’s going on. Also, I’m stumped on Bory, maybe Johnston should get Gifted Commander or something? Don’t know. On the others, I guess I’ll go one by one on what I’m going to propose.

Banks 2-0-1 Patriot, Slow Mover
Burnside 3-1-2 Militiaman, Patriot (one star Burnside, no changes to 2 and 3 star)
McClernand 3-1-1 Patriot
Field 3-2-2 Patriot

All four of these leaders get their Recruiting Officer trait changed to Patriot. When you consider how much fighting these four were all involved in, I see no reason to reward the player for doing the opposite. I believe these are the only four guys with this trait, if there are any others I would change them as well. A long time ago, the Over Cautious trait was removed, not because there weren’t leaders who were Over Cautious, but because the way the trait was written didn’t really model what they wanted, and it had other, larger, unintended consequences. I think the Recruiting Officer trait has a similar problem. (on a somewhat related note, does Burnside deserve Dispirited? I know he was a downer to his men, but was he as bad for morale as Bragg and Pope? Maybe Slow Mover would be the better ‘bad’ trait to give him, but that’s for another time.)

Rosecrans 2-2-1 Fast Mover, Dispersed Move

Rosecrans is hard to rate because of for all his faults, his Tullahoma Campaign was masterful. So, how do you rate someone who would not move, but when he did it was amazing? I knocked his old 3 strat rating to 2 because he wouldn’t move when ordered, and a one on Defense because of Stones River and Chickamauga. I gave him Fast Mover for Tullahoma, and Dispersed Mover for getting practically ambushed by Bragg right before Chickamauga.

Meade 4-4-4 Defensive Engineer, Signal Cmd, Quickly Angered

Meade is awesome, but hear me out: his nickname is literally ‘Old Snapping Turtle’, he was known to have a short temper, and furthermore, he actually had his army organized into too many corps with too few divisions, exactly what ‘Quickly Angered’ simulates. He also was a little too slow to act, and 4 means he will be inactive every so often, not much, but it is something you’ll have to account for. A 4 strat rating plus -4 to CP points for all is corps means he is a competent commander, but not ideal. Also, Signal cmd and Defensive Engingeer are both active even if they aren’t the stack leader. This means you can use him as a ‘Chief of Staff guy’, just like how we need to stick ‘artillerist’ guys in army stacks. He works a lot like Warren , and it allows you to get ignore ‘Quickly Angered’ too.

So, how do all these changes add up? Changes are marked in italics. Now this list isn’t comprehensive, but here’s a guide to the tiers of army generals:

1st
Halleck 2-0-1 Troop Trainer, Master Logistician, Good Army Admin
McDowell 2-0-1
Fremont 2-0-1 Occupier
Butler 2-0-1 Hated Occupant
Banks 2-0-1 Slow Mover, Patriot

2nd
Pope 3-2-2 Siege Expert, Occupier, Dispirited Leader
Burnsides 2-2-3 Dispirited Leader
Rosecrans 2-2-1 Fast Mover, Dispersed Move
McClellan 2-3-0 Troop Trainer, Poor Spy, Charismatic
Buell 2-2-2 Slow Mover, Good Pop Admin

3rd
Meade 4-4-4 Defensive Engineer, Signal Cmd, Quickly Angered
Thomas 3-3-6 Master Logician, Defensive Engineer
Lyon 4-2-2 Charismatic, Occupier
Hooker 4-2-2 Good Army Admin, Dispersed Move

4th
Grant 6-6-4 Siege Expert, Good Sub, Master Logistician
Sherman 6-4-3 Good Sub, Master Logistician, Scorched Earth
Sheridan 6-5-2 Cavalryman, Fast Mover, Charismatic, Scorched Earth



I am still a long ways from getting to try this new round of changes, but it’s coming. I am still on AACW 1, and plan on buying AACW 2 this summer when I pick up a newer, stronger computer (I’ve heard it needs a bit more juice to run.) Also, I tried posting this in the history/discussion forum on AACW 1, but it appears the two Civil War forums are linked, so if an admin feels this is in the wrong place, please feel free to move it where you think it should go.

[Eugene Carr]

Interesting!
I agree with your thoughts on 'Recruiting Officer' keeping Banks, McLernand et al stamping recruitment forms in the big cities is too much of a win-win the Union needs them in the field as demanded by their political connections.
They can fall by the wayside later on.

S!

[aariediger]

Quick update, we managed to find out what was wrong with Grant, my opponent hadn’t edited his seniority to 16 from 8, so when he ran the turns on his machine, it would penalize me, even though my machine had the ‘correct’ seniority. He re-ran the turn with the same orders, and it worked just fine. Actually, Grant stomped on Hood guarding the Garysburg depot, basically destroying his division, but he went in active afterward! Thus putting an end to my North Carolina raid.

On the Johnston/Beauregard problem, I think I came up with an idea: Over Cautious. Yes, the very trait I tore apart in the first post, that one. Why give that trait to a 5 strat leader who is more than willing to attack? Well, some say a chance was wasted to take Washington after Bull Run. That’s one. The big one though is Shiloh, where Bory didn’t press the attack, figuring he would finish off Grant in the morning. Okay, so we can understand the flavor, but what will this actually do? One thing it will do is make Bory less attractive as an army commander. However, 3 star Jackson has the same CP problem, so it’s just one thing. The biggest, though, is once divisional command is opened up, Joe Johnston can command more men in his stack than Bory can, and this may force the player to switch right then and there. But the effects don’t stop there. Because of his low seniority, it will be hard to get Beauregard another army command, and he just isn’t as good as a corps commander as some other guys who won’t have CP penalties. Further, a non-affiliated stack maxes out at 8 CP points, take 4 off of that and he can command only a single division. Now you can start to see how and why a 5-2-3 leader might get pushed to the fringes of the action, ala Charleston and Petersburg.
I see the South’s leadership lining up like this:

Lee 6-5-5 Fast Mover, Charismatic, Siege Engineer, Reckless
J Johnston 3-2-5 Good Army Admin, Skirmisher
Bragg 5-3-1 Dispirited Leader, Master Driller
Beauregard 5-2-3 Deceiver, Fort Defender, Over Cautious
A Johnston 4-3-1 Surpriser
Hood 5-0-1 Dispirited Leader, Hothead

One can argue on whether Bragg or Johnston (Joe) was better, but the main jist is this. All the other ‘army’ commanders the south had were more like corps commanders in a sense, between Pemberton, Van Dorn, Price and whoever else. I think Hood needs some sort of change, as he is completely unusable currently. I know he’s bad, the worst Rebel general in fact, but shouldn’t he have something that makes him even slightly attractive. Don’t know, maybe a trait or a slightly higher attack rating? Fast Mover?

Back to the Feds, how about Hooker? He used to have it at one point, and Hooker frozen at Chancellorsville matches Bory at Shiloh. Also, if we are going to penalize Meade for having too many small corps, Hooker had the same problem, and Quickly Angered does the same thing Over Cautious, just with different flavor text. This would mean replacing Dispersed Move, but he’s gotta have at least one negative trait for that disaster at Chancellorsville. How about:

Hooker 4-2-2 Good Army Admin, Over Cautious