AGEOD Forums

Hi everybody,

I am curious how does naval support affects land battles.
I recently had an battle in which I attacked a port. Beside 3 divisions defending a port, port hosted a large Union fleet.

I reckoned, if I could capture the town, I could seize the port and capture anchored shipping.

So I attacked with 5 divisions grouped together in a Stonewall Jackson corps having a 2281:1687 strength advantage.
Opponent was in level 2 entrenchments defending in a swamp region. That is a big advantage, but I reckoned it was nullified by better general, higher national morale and above all by chain of command structure.

Union troops were formed in two separate stacks to avoid command penalty, while I was in full corps, which should have been a big disadvantage. I expected a 50:50 battle which could go either way. I assumed, the possible gain justified the risk.
And I got a whooping defeat.

I am not sure, is the defeat because of union fleet involvement in battle.
When I look at battle report, Union guns where 3:1 more numerous than Confederate guns, and 80% of those guns were from ships. Big number of men listed in in battle report were also from ships .

I thought, from experience in shore bombardment that shipping effect would be of far less importance.

What are your experiences?

I am posting a 2 day battle report.

Do not attribute this result to the navy. 3 divisions entrenched in a swamp is going to be difficult to remove, even for Jackson. ~1.5:1 advantage just will not work here. You will need 3+:1 for a successful attack unless you get lucky with the rolls.

But, what is the effect of defending force being in separate stacks. Shouldn't they fight without coordination, one at a time?

Ace wrote:But, what is the effect of defending force being in separate stacks. Shouldn't they fight without coordination, one at a time?

My understanding is that there is a chance that not all forces will commit to the fight. But if they commit, there is no penalty.

A force can indeed fail entirely to commit. In this case, splitting to much your stacks is risky.

Indeed, the battle reports can be notoriously misleading, as they show all units in the region and not just those that were involved in the fighting. To get a real idea of what happened, you need to go through the battle log and see what elements fired at whom, and what commanders' bonuses were used. My suspicion is that naval units do not participate in land battles, nor do naval commanders (otherwise I'm going to start using Farragut to command floating batteries).

add.: I'm not sure the rules for who fights when multiple stacks are involved. Clearly this is someplace where the battle log could be an immense help. IIRC, stacks in the same region tend to march to the sound of the guns more readily than not.