jscott991
Lieutenant
Posts: 140
Joined: Tue May 08, 2012 9:51 pm

1862 Scenario: Can You Launch the Peninsula Campaign?

Fri Aug 29, 2014 1:50 am

I'm trying to learn the game and I've picked the 1862 scenario because I am a huge fan of McClellan.

However, unless I'm completely missing something, I can't duplicate his grand campaign to take Richmond. The Union simply doesn't have the transports and the game mechanics of loading and unloading troops won't support it anyway.

Am I wrong?

Is there any way to use the 60 transport points in Anne Arundel and the 40 transport points in NY to transport 5 of the 6 Army of the Potomac corps to Fort Monroe in a reasonable amount of time?

Here are some questions to make sure I'm understanding things correctly.

1. Can a force that doesn't start in the same region as a group of transports load themselves onto those transports after moving? I think the answer is no. So even though Anne Arundel is only two days away from the Army of Potomac by rail, you can't move a corps there and load it on the first turn. This makes both transport fleets useless in the first half of March.

2. Can a transport group move multiple loads in a single turn? Again, I think the answer is no. Even if Fort Monroe is only 6 days away from Port Tobacco, once it picks up one corp and move to Fort Monroe that is the only load it can take on that turn.

3. Can a transport group load a corps, move to a port, unload it, and then move back to its original location? Again, I think the answer is no. The transport must ends it movement in the port where it disembarks its load.

If I'm right about those three things, there's no way to launch a Peninsula Campaign from the March 1862 scenario in the historical time frame. That's a . . . pretty big oversight. It's almost as bad as the game thinking McClellan was the worst general of the war. At least the latter was easily fixable. This seems beyond just a simple mod. It's a breakdown in mechanics and initial force setup, unless I'm wrong,

User avatar
ArmChairGeneral
AGEod Grognard
Posts: 997
Joined: Thu Nov 21, 2013 9:00 am
Location: Austin, TX, USA

Fri Aug 29, 2014 6:43 am

1. You are correct, the answer is no.

2. You are correct, the answer is no.

3. At first I thought no, but you might be able to do that, now that I think about it. (I only play as the CSA, so do not have as much experience using tranports as Union players). Troops automatically disembark when their transport enters a harbor, and this may happen instantaneously. It might be possible to plot the move in and then back out to the neighboring coastal region; you might not be able to drag the fleet all the way back to the starting region because it interprets dropping an icon on its current location as a move cancellation. I think there is a hot key that lets the game know you are trying to make a round-trip and not cancelling the order.


I can't really say about the 1862 scenario, I didn't play it much. I can assure you that it is eminently doable if you start in 1861 and put everything in place yourself. It is possible that the scenario designer thought the Peninsular campaign was a blunder and set up the scenario to discourage the Union from pursuing it. You will definitely have more freedom to execute this plan in the 1861 starts. (The Peninsula really isn't a good plan though no matter which scenario you try it, as in real life. The terrain is bad, the supply lines are difficult, it takes a long time to move in the area, the CSA is fighting on better ground, I could go on and on. As a CSA player, I welcome Union troops on the Peninsula; they are easily defeated and drain Union troops away from Northern Virginia.)

Once you get the hang of the mechanics, (and it sounds like you have) you should probably just go ahead and play the grand campaigns (the two 1861 starts). I think that is going to be closer to the game experience you are looking for. If you want to do Anaconda, go for it. Try to break through to Richmond on the Peninsula? Probably doable if you commit to it. Split the CSA in half along the Mississippi? That can work too. The scenarios rely on someone else placing the units where they think they should go for the way they think that scenario should play out. In an historically accurate scenario, the Union SHOULDN'T be able to execute a successful Peninsula Campaign. In CW2 the Sibley scenario is almost unwinnable as the CSA, which is even more historically correct!

jscott991
Lieutenant
Posts: 140
Joined: Tue May 08, 2012 9:51 pm

Fri Aug 29, 2014 2:49 pm

It isn't about making the Peninsula Campaign a success, it's about starting it at all.

In the 1862 scenario, I don't think you can even start the campaign. The game postulates that the Union didn't have the capacity to move troops to the Peninsula. That's clearly false. McClellan did it, and did it with relative ease. His campaign failed for other reasons.

User avatar
ArmChairGeneral
AGEod Grognard
Posts: 997
Joined: Thu Nov 21, 2013 9:00 am
Location: Austin, TX, USA

Fri Aug 29, 2014 5:17 pm

Check out Cpt Orso's reply about transport movement in your thread on the CW2 forum, it has one of the tricks you are looking for. You can definitely launch a Peninsular campaign if for some reason you are so inclined. Moving by transport has tricky mechanics that you just need to get the hang of (part of the steep learning curve).

User avatar
ArmChairGeneral
AGEod Grognard
Posts: 997
Joined: Thu Nov 21, 2013 9:00 am
Location: Austin, TX, USA

Fri Aug 29, 2014 9:25 pm

You too can move like McClellan!

Now these screenies are taken from CW2, using the Struggle for the Heartland 1862 Two Theater scenario, but it doesn't matter, this trick is how you move large numbers of troops from harbor to harbor quickly and it worked basically the same way in AACW as I recall (I know it also worked this way in WIA).

[ATTACH]30173[/ATTACH]

Butler's starting force loaded on the transports at Annapolisl. I plotted their move to Monroe (entering the harbor). I then chose the Distant Unload Order (small red circle) and clicked on the narrow area surrounding the fort graphic; (its land region). It turned dark blue like you can hopefully see above. Time: six days. Then I plotted the fleet (it still showed the troops as being on board) to DC, (I would have needed to hold shift if wanted it to go back to Annapolis). 13 days.
[ATTACH]30174[/ATTACH]
I actually changed my mind and decided to stage at Port Tobacco rather than DC since it was likely the fleet would be delayed a day or two and not quite make it to DC, so I also moved McClellan and a couple of ~60 weight stacks from Fairfax to Port T to meet it. The shot above shows the earlier plan, plotted to DC.

[ATTACH]30175[/ATTACH]

Above is the beginning of the second turn. The fleet has dropped off Butler at Ft. Monroe and arrived in Pt. Tobacco. Here I have loaded McClellan's stack and laid in the round trip to Ft Monroe so that on the next turn,

[ATTACH]30177[/ATTACH]

it is back to pick up the second stack, and with another round trip we get to Turn 4, Early April, and this is what is at Ft. Monroe:

[ATTACH]30178[/ATTACH]

Four and a half divisions with supply and support units, ~2500 PWR. Not bad. Assume two more full divisions on the next turn using the same method and you could have seven full divisions in Monroe by April 15, approximately the same number of divisions as McClellan (he had 10, one of them a reserve and another Stoneman's Cavalry and historical Divisions at the beginning of the war were a little bit smaller than what the game uses) and only two turns behind schedule. In the CW2 1862 scenario Morgan Smith has already taken James City (Yorktown) so McClellan and friends can march right through it to Williamsburg in one turn (weather and activation permitting) and are right on schedule to be there the first week in May and then on to Seven Pines in late May/early June just in time for the historical date of May 31st (source: wikipedia).

Granted, this will end up only being around 45,000 "men" for the Union in the current patch of CW2, but this is irrelevant: the appropriate number of Divisions can get there and do what they did historically. If you add up the Confederate forces available, they will end up with 3-5 divisions to defend with, depending on how they are organized and how seriously the CSA takes a Peninsula Campaign, so will have about 15-25000 "men". IRL McClellan had what, half again as large a force as Magruder, Johnson, et al. at Seven Pines? These proportions come out about right, depending on CSA choices. In-game McClellan can easily get to Seven Pines within the historical time-frame with a roughly historically appropriate force to fight a roughly historically appropriate Confederate defense.

If you would rather that the manpower numbers said 107,000 men for this many divisions, it is trivial to change the elements to 1200 men each (or whatever). It is one of the easiest mods to do, and can be done with notepad in thirty seconds, and changes nothing about how your campaign will be resolved: you have 7 or 8 divisions against their 3 to 5.
Attachments
Turn 4.jpg
Turn 3.jpg
Turn 2.jpg
Turn 1 Annapolis Move pt 2.jpg
Turn 1 Annapolis move.jpg

jscott991
Lieutenant
Posts: 140
Joined: Tue May 08, 2012 9:51 pm

Tue Sep 02, 2014 11:50 pm

What file is needed to change the amount of men per element?

By the way, this was extremely helpful.

User avatar
ArmChairGeneral
AGEod Grognard
Posts: 997
Joined: Thu Nov 21, 2013 9:00 am
Location: Austin, TX, USA

Wed Sep 03, 2014 3:03 pm

Unfortunately, I do not have AACW installed anymore, so hopefully someone who does can help you find it. In CW2, I believe it is this line in the Settings->GameLogic file:

cbtMenPerConscriptPt = 100 // each conscript point represents 100 men

but I would need confirmation from someone with more modding experience. If this is not it, then I may have spoken too soon about how easy this is to mod.

Glad the illustration helped!

Return to “AACW Strategy discussions”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 27 guests