March to the Sound of the Guns?

[TheDoctorKing]

Can somebody point me to a discussion of how this works? I'm apparently misunderstanding something. In an ongoing game, I had a division garrisoning Richmond, with Lee's army and one of its corps in an adjacent area. The Yankees marched in and attacked Richmond, fighting two days of battles with the garrison before capturing the place, while Marse Robert and his (5 activation rating) corps commander sat idly by a few miles away. Did I just blow some dice, or is there some other reason why they didn't come to help?

[arsan]

The march to the sound of the guns only work between corps and army stacks of the same army organization.
Your division was out of Lee's army structure so it didn't "called" for help.
Check this wiki article
http://ageod.nsen.ch/aacwwiki/Marching_to_the_sound_of_the_guns

[TheDoctorKing]

OK, live and learn. I knew I should have put a 2-star in command there. Thanks!

[Mickey3D]

OK, live and learn. I knew I should have put a 2-star in command there. Thanks!

Put a 2-star command and create a corps linked to Lee's army

[mikee64]

Harvey (denisonh) - don't scroll down unless you want a FOW lift!






......situation and screenies below........

















Does anyone know if Corps will board river transports to MtSG if that is quicker than marching overland? I swear I think I have a case where that just happened. Take a look:

Orders are for Forney's Corp to assault the cav in Paducah; the march will take 10 days due to mud (dang mud cost me in not getting there in time, too). Johnson's Corp is ordered to Hickman KY in support; his march will take 6 days. Please note he has orders to the region and not to join Forney:



Turn executes and Forney assaults a hastily reinforced Paducah, where he is victorious but does not take the city (days 12 and 13). I look at the map and panic as Johnson's Corp is nowhere in sight. I actually had to go to the roster to locate him. Well, he's on tranports heading to McCracken, I can only assume he was trying to MtSG and the river was faster than the 10 day overland trip? So now he's still on the ships showing 7 days to arrive in McCracken:



Any other ideas? I know MTSG is abstracted movement but I know of no other reason why this would be happening.

thanks!

[Banks6060]

I think somewhere along the line you may have accidentaly dragged E. Johnston's Corps on top of another stack and thereby ordered him to target that stack and follow it wherever it goes.

[mikee64]

Banks- that was my first thought too. But if you look closely at the first screenie you can see Johnson is ordered to the region, and he does not have the "crossed swords" indicating he is to meet with another unit.

Upon seeing the results I immediately went back to the last turn backup to make sure the orders were correct. What you see in screenie one are the orders that were executed.

[Redeemer]

Hmmm strange. And his weight is 18, but there is only a difference of 6 in the river transport between the two screen shots. My answer would have been you accidently dropped him on the cav unit going to Paducah, but you say not.... Is your AI turned on?

[mikee64]

Redeemer, I do have "Activate AI' turned on, buts it's a pbem so that shouldn't matter, right?

I double checked the backup and Johnson had orders to move to the region and not follow anyone. You can see this in the first screenshot if you look closely.

I'm not sure what you're using in the first screenie to compare the weight to in the second. But I was as surprised as anyone to see his admittedly small corps all loaded on boats.

BTW this is the same game with the suspected missing element in the TX Rgr brigade, if anyone wants to see the turns and backups I can post, just let me know.

You can then also see the mess I have gotten myself into as the CSA.

[Redeemer]

Redeemer, I do have "Activate AI' turned on, buts it's a pbem so that shouldn't matter, right?

I double checked the backup and Johnson had orders to move to the region and not follow anyone. You can see this in the first screenshot if you look closely.

I'm not sure what you're using in the first screenie to compare the weight to in the second. But I was as surprised as anyone to see his admittedly small corps all loaded on boats.

BTW this is the same game with the suspected missing element in the TX Rgr brigade, if anyone wants to see the turns and backups I can post, just let me know.

You can then also see the mess I have gotten myself as the CSA.

I've been "told" the AI has no effect or should not with PBEM, but I personally have experienced weird things with the AI turned on, like unexpected moves, retreats, etc.

Try re-running the turn and see if the same thing happens, if it does, try turning off the AI and re-run the turn. The results may be interesting.

[mikee64]

Since we had another small issue with this same game (see bottom of post), I'm going to go ahead and post the saves to see if anyone can reproduce the things we are seeing. I have deleted the replay files and included 7 backups to keep it under the size limit; there is no current US turn file as I am in the process of doing the CS move.

This should be sufficient to check the following:

-River transport issue shown in screenies above. My best guess is the unit was trying to MTG and the river was the fastest route, but its just that, a guess.

- TX Rgr brigade sat in Houston for 4+ turns with cav replacements available and never received the last element. The unit is now roaming around but you can find him inside Houston in passive mode in several of the older backups.

- Latest issue, this can be seen when executing the late May/Early June turn. Grant attacks AS Johnston in Nashville region. Johnston takes a huge beating and loses many elements and about 1/2 his army, but manages to hold onto the region in "standard" defense mode. Both forces were low on cohesion as this was the second turn Grant attacked. Battle is reported as a CSA victory. No problem here, but...
After the turn the text in the "Mail Box" reports that the battle results in +10 NM for the CSA. denisonh confirms it was reported to him as a -10 NM US loss. However, upon proceeding to the next turn we see the game has actually credited the US with +10 NM and CS with -10 NM. We both added up all the turns NM changes to confirm it credited the 10 NM opposite as was reported.
So, it's not the battle results we are concerned with but rather the inaccurate report about the NM results.

[mikee64]

After the turn the text in the "Mail Box" reports that the battle results in +10 NM for the CSA. denisonh confirms it was reported to him as a -10 NM US loss. However, upon proceeding to the next turn we see the game has actually credited the US with +10 NM and CS with -10 NM...
So, it's not the battle results we are concerned with but rather the inaccurate report about the NM results.

It looks like this same issue has appeared in soundoff's game with Banks according to his most recent AAR post.

[soundoff]

It looks like this same issue has appeared in soundoff's game with Banks according to his most recent AAR post.

Yes we have.

On the issue of Johnson's Corp though. It cannot possibily be MTSG's. That just happens. If Johnson's command had been MTSG then his Corp would have arrived at Paducah on the day of the battle, fought and then returned to Columbus/Hickman. So there has to be another reason.

[Gray_Lensman]

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[mikee64]

Sorry about that Gray. Check your PM and I'll send you the same .zip Pocus was able to look at.

As far as an update on these issues...

Even though I can re-create the weird Johnson naval move over and over on my computer (w/ & w/o AI), it cannot be duplicated on other machines. So it is at this point a non issue as far as the game engine; I still would like to know what happened just out of curiosity, but I can chalk it up to an anomaly. Soundoff was right, Pocus confirmed no MTSG issue here.

It was confirmed by Pocus that TX RGR bgde can only receive the 2 elements via replacement, and the third as stated in TOE has to be added manually. Someone mentioned this on the thread but I don't remember who; anyway, it will stay this way. Consider it a manual overloading of the unit.

Lastly the NM issue - he has asked others to help since it is probably a DB text issue and the code is working fine. Just need to fix the mail box reports.

Finally, I must say again this has to be the best support (both internal and external) I have ever seen for a game. And this game is fast approaching one of the best computer wargames ever, if not already there.

Hats off to everyone who has stuck with it. But one shining thing is that Pocus' (and the other Philippe) vision from the start was amazingly clear. This is very much a crowning achievement in wargaming!

BTW, PBEM really rocks now.

[Gray_Lensman]

You can delete the various .rpl files and that should shrink the .zip file to an acceptable size for posting. (The .rpl files are only needed for PBEM replays, i.e. I don't need them to reproduce the turn information)

edit> I only need the turn of the incorrect message and the one preceding it. If you can't isolate it to those turns, forget it. The message will come up again sometime, at which time I'll take a look at it.

[mikee64]

Here is a newly zipped file Gray. I can open this fine so hopefully it will upload ok this time.

[mikee64]

Gray, did you ever have a chance to look at the latest zip file in this thread? Here are details of the turn on which it happens:

Latest issue, this can be seen when executing the late May/Early June turn.

The reason I ask is because in addition to Soundoff's game it just happened to me again in another PBEM. Unfortunately I'm not hosting so can't post the files for that one, but it's a similar situation; big battle with NM gain/loss reported to the wrong side.

Thanks.

[mikee64]

Here is a newly zipped file Gray. I can open this fine so hopefully it will upload ok this time.

Gray, did you ever track down this NM reporting error in the mailbox dialogue? I saw it popped up in one of the pbem tourney games but I know they are playing with the last official patch not the beta.

If its been fixed sorry for bringing it up, but I have no way to check. I have specific saves and turns for when it happens if you still need it.

thanks.

[Gray_Lensman]

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