Attacking with 1vs1 power

[Daxil]

Does it ever work? Even 2-1 often seems to fail. What are the odds and are your odds for success increased if you use all out attack? Not with standing disastrous battle results of course.

[squarian]

Does it ever work? Even 2-1 often seems to fail. What are the odds and are your odds for success increased if you use all out attack? Not with standing disastrous battle results of course.

Generally, playing on hard difficulty, I figure I have even odds of success if the relative strengths of the forces are 2-1 in my favor. More than that, and I'm favored to win.

My impression after a relatively short time playing is that the importance of relative strengths in the combat equation is fairly stable and predictable within the range of variables.

[Daxil]

Generally, playing on hard difficulty, I figure I have even odds of success if the relative strengths of the forces are 2-1 in my favor. More than that, and I'm favored to win.

My impression after a relatively short time playing is that the importance of relative strengths in the combat equation is fairly stable and predictable within the range of variables.

I wish it wasn't quite so predictable, but I don't know if that's even the case. Sometimes I get the feeling this game is a mathemetician's dream, and it shouldnt be that way because warfare simply isnt predictable. Its organized chaos. Anyways, it would be nice to get a concrete spreadsheet on odds and variation. We know that hills give a moderate defense bonus, but what does that mean numbers wise, for example.

[Banks6060]

You throw in some good generals, trenches...bad weather, terrain...you've got plenty of variables that can make even a presumable cake walk an actual nightmare.

[Ethy]

theres too many variables to consider when conducting a battle to predict loses etc with regards to entrenchment, weather, generals, subbordinats, fatigue etc which is wat makes AACW such a great game.

may i remind you that even if one army has less loses in a battle they can still loose the battle from a strategic point of view. one general can walk away with a higher casualty raite than his contender but still non the less walk away the victor.

even if there was a way to mathematically calculate loses and know to the last man who is gonna get killed the computer can still chuck you the loose dice

[Coffee Sergeant]

Strictly in terms of manpower, yeah, I've gotten it to wor. If you have a big artillery advantage and commander with good offensive rating.

[kyle]

I "win" all the time with lopsided odds. You must define win. If "winning" is taking over the objective, it usually takes someone like a Jackson to win close to 1 to 1, and in my experience that only works on a division scale or less (div vs div) but if the objective is to have less causaulties, I "win" all the time. I got used to setting the stances to below the "standard" orange. I find it useful for delaying fronts or an advance out into the open. A smaller force with a decent led general and proper organization is able to hold its own against an onslaught, granted they usually give up the ground, but it was never my objective to hold the ground. When I play I tend to ignore the victory point objectives, and look at "strategic" objectives. I look to preserve the army and destroy the opponents army. I think it is more fun that way. Arguably more realistic. I wish the option to stay/retreat was more up to the player, giving the simulation of armies within close proximety. And do away with the victory points for objects particularly for pbem. But back to the original 1 to 1, don't always use Orange attack, orange stance, and particularly blue defend, orange defend. Use something like blue defend blue stance, and you will likely find though you may give up someground to a larger force, you gave them a whooping casualty wise. That is my experience anyway.

[Daxil]

I'm still trying to figure out what win actually means in game terms.

If you're an attacker it would mean dislodging the enemy to me, which is probably more difficult than inflicting more casualties. I suppose it depends on your overall strategy to define the actual victor. Sometimes "winning" might mean forcing an adjacent dug-in corps to assist and therefore give up its entrenchment, heh.

[kyle]

... the computer can still chuck you the loose dice

So is that what determines who "leaves" is a victor dice roll, or is the victor based on who retreats?

Than again, I noticed even on draws there is someone retreating.

Personally I get annoyed by the retreating mechanism. I wish the "battle" retreat was not tied to the strategic map retreat. Particularly since it is an abstraction. Perhaps something to look forward to in the future...

[kyle]

I'm still trying to figure out what win actually means in game terms.

If you're an attacker it would mean dislodging the enemy to me, which is probably more difficult than inflicting more casualties. I suppose it depends on your overall strategy to define the actual victor. Sometimes "winning" might mean forcing an adjacent dug-in corps to assist and therefore give up its entrenchment, heh.

Don't forget those who go cavalry/raid crazy and trade thousands of horses just for twisted rail and supply transfer chaos. Who really "won"...

[Daxil]

hay, that's my strategy, careful! It certainly helps slow down an otherwise overwhelming Union avalanche by 1864.

[ohms_law]

Calvalry raiding is a waste though (although not completely). All those conscript points, cash, and war supplies... you're much better off saving up and buying the strong regular units and building up good divisions. Defence is very powerful, tactically. Defend always, and attack with movement and placement.

[Jabberwock]

Calvalry raiding is a waste though (although not completely). All those conscript points, cash, and war supplies... you're much better off saving up and buying the strong regular units and building up good divisions. Defence is very powerful, tactically. Defend always, and attack with movement and placement.

Daxil - Would you like to teach him about raiding, or shall I? How about you take ohm, and I'll take kyle.

[ohms_law]

lol

oh, I've done it myself. It's certainly not useless by any means... I just don't think that it pays off that well, is all.

I'll add to that: It'd be very much worth it if your opponent responds directly to it. One of the main points to raiding is disrupting supply. Slowing down movement is nice, but the real payoff is cutting off supply to enemy Corp that aren't protecting their rear. You can threaten me with the largest, most perfectly formed Corp possible all you want, but it'll be pretty useless (and dead) if I can cut off it's supply...

[Jabberwock]

Cutting off the enemy's ability to manuever by rail is a key to outmanuevering them and being able to stay on defense with the larger forces. Raiders are key to having enough time to get set in good entrenchments. Cutting an enemy's reinforcement chain is a key to being there "fust with the most", and better than 1-to-1 odds. If the enemy is all tied up in direct response, that is more troops from the front line. Destroying rail around key depots makes them vulnerable to sudden lunges by larger forces.

From a strictly economic resources standpoint, cavalry that is evading in a 1-on-1 situation (if they even wind up in the same region) has about a 3% chance of getting caught by the official rules. Add 3% for every enemy cavalry regiment. Depending on enemy strategy, I can usually expect each lone raider regiment to last over a year on average in those conditions, as long as I don't run them out of supply. I can expect to destroy about 30 regions worth of rail in that time the way I do it. That's $60? (never clarified by the developers) and 90WS to replace. Quite a return, lots of artillery I'll never have to face in battle. Enemy troops are also tied up fixing rail. On the way out or back, I can destroy some of my own rail in non-critical areas or on expected invasion routes for 2WS each region. Add in replacing the occasional depot (or tying up troops as garrisons), at a cost of either two wagons or two transports.

Raiders are a wonderful investment, if used correctly.

[dragoon47]

I fought this battle recently in my Vicksburg campaign and it surprised me a great deal! The amount of men taken prisoner and the amount killed along with a victory at those odds struck me like lightning. Then again it was probably a symbolic objective increasing my men's will to fight but those are horrible odds with "attack at all costs" selected with a victory.

Mind you I'm not very good at this game as I only got it four days ago do I don't know about all the modifiers and everything. I also know that the battle may have been won because of supply problems on the Union side and other things but there are my results nonetheless and I hope they were somewhat contributory.



EDIT: There were four parts to that battle across four days with each one getting worse and worse until a confederate victory was assured by the arrival of another confederate division under Breckinridge. I can post pics of those heavily lopsided battles also if you like.

[Jabberwock]

This battle looks like one particular union division already had heavy attrition to be losing so many units with so few casualties, and that was the only one that engaged in combat.

Maybe other troops were routed by the destruction of that one, and then destroyed in the pursuit?

[dragoon47]

Well, there you go, my inexperience shines . May I ask how you know it was only one division? It would be extremely helpful to know on my end, because I hardly know what any of this stuff means. No matter how many time I read the manual I'll never get it....

[Jabberwock]

Just a guess based on the fact that three cavalry and five infantry regiments were destroyed. Since there were only ~800 union casualties total, that's only about 100 in each regiment. There's another 19,000 union troops that apparently didn't fight, so I'm guessing the casualties were all grouped together.

[dragoon47]

Oh, ok...sorry.

[Jabberwock]

Don't apologize, I enjoy analyzing this stuff.

[dragoon47]

So you're saying that my units had a bit of a shock and awe effect on Grant's troops by decimating said division and that's what led to the victory possibly? Kind of like Chancellorsville in a way, where as long as you get one section to rout the others have a chance of joining in?

The depth of this game has become apparent and daunting if that's what it means ;p.

[Jabberwock]

That's how it looks. You "got the bulge" as Forrest would say.

[dragoon47]

I just find that pretty funny considering that I attacked them with divisions that were at a quarter of their original strength at best and just came from a losing battle in Jackson where I lost a good 10,000 troops in a single battle, which means they only had one day's worth of rest. What could have caused such attrition to Grant's troops to lose against the beaten, ragtag army I sent against him in desperation? He stayed out of the bad weather for the most part and stayed in a city south of Vicksburg who's name escapes me. Unless I actually cut off enough railroads to make him angry But I doubt it because I never do stuff like that right.

EDIT: Here's the battle my troops came from. It was followed by a few more battles that gave my men to time to rest.

[Jabberwock]

Hmm. Maybe that one division came from the same battle at Jackson? Possibly they were trying to do something tricky like landing from the river? Maybe they just completed a forced march through the areas where you had cut the railroads? I really don't have enough information to make one educated guess.

EDIT: Looks like the union forces at Jackson had pretty low cohesion to have an almost even power rating with half as many troops on your side. You won that battle, too. I think you're doing better than you think you are.

ANOTHER EDIT: I just noticed some of Grant's troops are low on ammo. I'll bet the ones you fought on day 10 did just come from Jackson.

[dragoon47]

You've been a big help! I'm starting a PBEM game against an opponent as illiterate in this game as I and I hope I'll continue to learn some more. Then maybe in the future you can bash me around .

Any reason that I won that battle is irrelevant now, jk, the victory there made me more happy than any other game I've played in a while. The battle lasting 30 real time seconds just made the suspense even worse with the battle happening on the final turn and it's outcome deciding the campaign. That's more than I can say for most other games. The fact that the win was against Grant just made the victory sweeter.

Is there any way to check the Union armies out? Like to load the save right before the battle on like turn 9 to see what they had to bring to the table? That would settle the question outright.

EDIT: So, some did come from Jackson?! That just made the battle more maddeningly unhelpful then. Chasing me everywhere like a dog. The attack at Jackson was also out of desperation. In fact, nearly every attack I made was out of desperation the second I ran out of money and supply lines were almost non-existant.

[Jabberwock]

On the load game screen there is a little button in the upper right that looks like a computer. You can use that to look at the opponents turn. If you make a copy of your save folder (so you can keep playing), you can back up a turn by putting the cursor over a saved game and hitting the Home button.

[Jabberwock]

Ord's troops were almost completely out of ammo at Jackson.

[dragoon47]

Ok, I'm going to try that then and post a pic of Grant's and my forces when I'm done looking. Should be interesting to see this campaign from a different perspective ;p.

EDIT: I just got done looking and I'm going to post more battle pics to show the degradation of the Union troops in another post. It's just ridiculous watching a perfectly good Union army get destroyed.

Another EDIT: Apparently most of the Union army was in good order. The Army of the Mississippi came in to reinforce Grant's Army and was routed in detail. Only one corps of the army was able to come out of it with a few divisions intact.

Grant's army had only 5 divisions left total by the end of the Battle of Vicksburg, two being under his personal command and both battered, and the Army of The Mississippi only had Sherman's corp left with 5 battered divisions and one completely lost at Vicksburg while Sherman moved South to Honey Island lol. Pics up as soon as I upload them.

[dragoon47]

Ok, I looked at the turn before the battles and it was more frightening than I thought. The Union actually attacked with around 16 divisions, but they were a bit spread out but each one was at least 8-10 elements. I had 5 big divisions in the battle area each one numbering 15-18 elements though they were battered. One of my divisions had 10 elements but only 210 men! Pics up soon, photobucket is slower than I remember it to be.

First battle in Vicksburg, this led to a broken division. Barely got away across a river held by my gunboats.

http://i365.photobucket.com/albums/oo95/PzGrenadiere/AACW/BattleVicksburgDay3Turn8.jpg

First contact in Jackson

http://i365.photobucket.com/albums/oo95/PzGrenadiere/AACW/BattleJacksonDay10Turn4.jpg

Here is where fighting starts to get fierce in the area around Jackson and support for the battle there becomes my top priority.



The Federals renew their attack within three days

http://i365.photobucket.com/albums/oo95/PzGrenadiere/AACW/BattleJacksonDay7Turn6.jpg

The climax of the battle



The beginning of the siege of Vicksburg



The counterattack failed to gain ground



Renewed counterattack, utter failure due to loss of manpower but the federals are put under siege within Vicksburg



Funny skirmish in the backdrop of the largest battle in the campaign

http://i365.photobucket.com/albums/oo95/PzGrenadiere/AACW/CavalrySkirmishStJosephDay1Turn10.jpg

Vicksburg falls

http://i365.photobucket.com/albums/oo95/PzGrenadiere/AACW/SiegeAssaultVicksburgDay11Turn10.jpg

Victory Screen

http://i365.photobucket.com/albums/oo95/PzGrenadiere/AACW/Victory.jpg