One feature a day serie: #10 Exhausted winner?

[Pocus]

Each unit in the game has a Cohesion Level attached to it. Often you will experience that the opposing armies of a fierce fight (multi-days battles for example) will rout far before being destroyed, as mighty leviathians wounded but still alive. Wait a month or two, so that the morale of your units is restored and the replacements conscripts fill the ranks, and you are again ready to engage the enemy. Try to follow the opponent, and you will often find that you are in as nearly a bad shape as him! Welcome to the first major industrial war of mankind!

[saintsup]

I was waiting for a long time for a global civil war game (since ACW in fact)

I find all the features described very exciting and perfectly in line with you design philosophy as showed in BOA, which I could qualify as 'boardgame' design (model the specificity of an era or a conflict without adding complexity for complexity) ... and for me it's a compliment.

As the learning curve is quiet easy for the player and he can rapidly focus on the strategy, the downside of this design 'philosophy' is that you have to provide a very good AI (as in BOA) for those of us who play a lot against the computer.

Si I just hope the AI can keep pace with all these features and use them well ( for exemple in Paradox games, there is a lot of features the AI doesn't use ... and I hate that).


Keep the good work, BOA was really outstandig for me for its 'elegance dans la conception'

[Hidde]

O'boy! All this is like mini-christmas every day.
I firmly belive that what Pocus is describing is a very, very good thing. In most games of this kind the player is able to have his (or hers ) forces involved in an endless string of battles. Small encounters is one thing but big desicive battles should be hard to achive. Are you trying to get this aspect of the game close to realistic? I'm all for it, if thats the case.

[Pocus]

I just fought a 3-days battle near Manassas yesterday, sending toward Washington a routed Union army, but with most of the regiments still there, in bad shape though. This is just to point out that we should be able to tweak the game so that the armies are really hard to kill entirely in a single battle.

[Florent]

Excellent! In BOA, i had often a napoleonic result with armies severely mauled or destroyed whereas they were often able to disengage to fight another day. When i was in the losing side i discovered that i had perhaps not enough leaders thus i was responsable but not always. Normally my leaders should have disengaged. Very happy that this aspect of the game will be improved in AACW. Yesterday i played the 1813 scenario as the american ...and lost it. One army (mine) was completely destroyed but had been trapped and actually i couldn't save it. I had better results on western front but lose though. Good scenario!!

[Florent]

Yes a string of battles was rather rare, only Grant in 1864, i think after the Wilderness started a chain of battles(Spotsylvannia, Cold Harbor), inflicting numerous losses amongst the veterans of the Armies of potomac and Northern virginia. I read somewhere that it was more or less their destructions as the replacements were young and inexperienced soldiers. It's good that the system will force the players to recuperate morale and replacements. You can do otherwise but at your own risk!! Grant did it ! As a player there will be time to do it also i suppose.

[Florent]

Some of the worst losses in combat were 82% for 1rst Texas at Antietam and 1rst minnesota 85% at Gettysburg. Thus destruction of armies except in sieges or trapped armies should be impossible. A retreat should always be possible. There were no pursuit like Napoleonic wars (especially Napoléon). Lincoln asked Meade to do it after Gettysburg but he was slow to act.

[Remise]

Yes a string of battles was rather rare, only Grant in 1864, i think after the Wilderness started a chain of battles(Spotsylvannia, Cold Harbor), inflicting numerous losses amongst the veterans of the Armies of potomac and Northern virginia. I read somewhere that it was more or less their destructions as the replacements were young and inexperienced soldiers. It's good that the system will force the players to recuperate morale and replacements. You can do otherwise but at your own risk!! Grant did it ! As a player there will be time to do it also i suppose.

It was indeed rare. I think the average Civil War soldier, if he survived the war, saw 20 days of combat during the entire time. But there was an earlier string of battles -- the Seven Days' Battles, so-called because Lee and McClellan fought six major battles in the course of one week, in 1862. So while difficult, it should not be impossible for this to happen, though admittedly the level of casualties in 1862 -- while considered frightful at the time -- was much lower than those in the Wilderness, at Cold Harbor, and elsewhere in 1864.

I think this is a great feature, however, and rarely represented in most games. Armies lose their will to fight before they lose their physical ability to do so, in almost all cases.

B.C. Milligan

[Florent]

I completely forgot the seven days battle where Lee first appeared. Stephen Sears in his book (the peninsula campaign) said that one man out of four was a casualty. Lee did many costly frontal attacks then.

[Remise]

And I tend to believe that one of the reasons Lee attempted the disastrous charge of Pickett's and other troops on the third day at Gettysburg was his memory of a similar attack at Gaines Mill (with almost his entire army), during the Seven Days This assault brought him decisive victory against a foe who was very strongly posted on a hill with a swamp for protection in front of it.

B.C. Milligan

[Feralkoala]

I'm not sure I would call Gaines Mill a decisive victory. Certainly Lee's frontal attacks were not meant to be battle winning--flanking forces were meant to be the decisive element, but their poor performance led to the Union forces being able to retreat away in fairly good order.

Certainly one can see Lee's search for a 'Napoleonic' battle in his offensive engagements, pinning an enemy force and then seeking their flanks to deliver a decisive blow. Sometimes it worked (2nd Manassas, Chancellorsville) and sometimes not (Seven Days, Gettysburg).

[Spharv2]

One of the reasons I really liked this idea when we first heard about it was that it would encourage something games at this scale rarely cause you to do, keep a reserve. Most games, you stick all of your units in the battle, and if you win, then you just keep rolling, especially in MP games. Now, if a player does that, and you've kept a reserve, then you can get the realistic result of one side feeding in fresh troops against an exhausted winner. So even if you lost yesterday, the tables can be quickly turned if you keep pushing without that reserve. If the defender kept one, and feeds it in, your huge, but tired army could end up being the one routed. And with their fresher troops, they could end up being the ones chasing you soon enough.

There was only one real decisive battle (not seige) in the war, in that one side was so completely overwhelmed that the army was never able to reform (Battle of Franklin, TN the end of the Army of Tennessee), and this should help simulate the ability of even a beaten loser to retreat, and reform. Unless of course the attacker prepares his ground and forces well. So now you, as the general, face the question of whether to make an all out push to try and defeat the opposition, or to play it safe, use a reserve, and ensure that you don't suffer what could be a war changing reverse.

[Florent]

Also in many if not all the great battles, with the use of rifles it seems that the attacker sustained a little more casualties. Does the system at this scale reflect this ?

[WallysWorld]

There was only one real decisive battle (not seige) in the war, in that one side was so completely overwhelmed that the army was never able to reform (Battle of Franklin, TN the end of the Army of Tennessee)

Close, but it was the Battle of Nashville (December 15-16, 1864) which finally destroyed Hood's army. At Franklin, the army had been wounded, but was still a coherent organization.

[Spharv2]

Whoops, my mistake.

[Pocus]

Also in many if not all the great battles, with the use of rifles it seems that the attacker sustained a little more casualties. Does the system at this scale reflect this ?

Defensive fire is higher compared to offensive fire yes.