Simply Murder

[roboczar]

It's battles like this that make me wish I had my error logging on. I would have loved to see the details and make up a nice AAR, but I think the image speaks for itself...

Even a simulated Irvin McDowell heads back to Washington in shame...

[roboczar]

3 Days later, Buell came by and lost another 10,000 men to my 500. It almost feels like an exploit to have 60,000+ union troops come after you and watch 1/3 of them just melt away...

[Jacek]

Remeber that 1/3 of the losses goes back to the troops pool, so the Union effectively lost 16,000 soldiers in the first battle.

[James D Burns]

The sad part is there were probably less than 10 regiments total if combining both sides that were outright destroyed during the entire war, but here in one battle we see 40 destroyed. FORTY! That's almost half a years worth of Union production lost in one battle.

This kind of over the top mayhem is the one critical weakness of the game in my opinion. Regiments need far more staying power if we ever hope to see Lee’s fighting withdraw in the face of Grants overwhelming strength.

With the current system Lee’s army would be vapor after 2-3 fights and the war will be over after a month due to a total lack of confederate units left in the East.

Jim

[James D Burns]

Remeber that 1/3 of the losses goes back to the troops pool, so the Union effectively lost 16,000 soldiers in the first battle.

Don't forget he lost another 8,600 prisoners too.

Jim

[roboczar]

Yeah, I was amused at the time, but for the rest of the war, it was just annihilation after annihilation. It's no wonder that Washington was mine by November.

My opponent gave up soon after that point; he'd honestly expected to crush me with his forces and was totally blown away at his losses in battle after battle. I can't say I disagreed with him (I was terrified at first)... until we started getting results back.

If I were making a judgement call strategically, I wouldn't have been too worried about making the attack either, even though McDowell only trumps Holmes' defensive rating by 1. Even a 6+ level entrenchment shouldn't produce that kind of carnage. Again, I wish I had the logs so I could see what the real problem was.

[Jacek]

Roboczar, go to the AACW folder on your computer, find the Docs folder, then Logs folder and there sits a battle log. Good luck!

[roboczar]

I didn't have error logging on for that game, unfortunately. It's been overwritten now, anyway. I've been watching the log for my current game.

[Jagger]

I conceded a PBEM by April 1862 as the Union.

First the rebs steamrolled my entire Eastern Union army in their level 7 entrenchments at Alexandria. Then they attacked Washington with a 2-1 odds advantage in numbers and routed most of the Union army....I had enough. I conceded.

The West plays historically and seems balanced but the East is not right.

First, the Union cannot and should not attack in the East....period. It is simply counterproductive suicide. Second, the Union leadership is sooooo bad and the Reb leadership sooooo good combined with the reb ability to mobilize an equal or larger army in the east, that the Union will be very lucky to hold Washington against aggressive confederate attacks. The union can only entrench in the East and hope to survive the rebel attacks. And it is highly likely, the Union won't survive the reb attacks. Even if the bad union leaders put up a good fight, bad leadership commanders tend to retreat anyway-right out of their level 7 entrenchments. And there isn't much room to retreat in the east. Lose a couple battles and Washington falls.

The rebs can put very large numbers of troops in the East which combined with the arrival of Lee, Longstreet and Jackson produces an unstoppable steamroller in aggressive hands. The Union cannot win in the West before the war is over in the East.

Are the leadership values of the Reb eastern leaders too high or the Union leaders too low? Are the rebs able to build too large of an army early in the game by maxing mobilization and printing money? I know I was amazed at the large reb armies in the first year of the war. Although large armies can be built if you are willing to print money and fully mobilize from day one.

IMO, the scenario needs tweaking as it is vulnerable to a single winning strategy which has too high a probability of ending the game in less than a year.