First C.S.A. Campaign. Union AI dropped acid.

[kezardinjnr]

Also I've seen frontage mentioned here but I'm not real certain with it... Are certain provinces easier to defend because of it.
Thanks

There's some information, including formulas, here.

[Poorlaggedman]

Question:

I got lucky and Heitzleman tried to leave the region I had him besieged in and he lost ~16,000 of his 25,000 man force. I lost ~3,000.
I naturally assaulted the next turn. But wary of previous disasters I did a "conservative attack" assault. I messed him up bad but my 2 Corps retreated and cost me a lot of hits retreating... Should I have just made it an all-out-assault? The siege was lifted also but as far as I know it was never doing much due to another supply route he had via river or something.

I won the battle BTW, enough so that all of my leaders involved were congratulated

[Captain_Orso]

First off, if there are enemy units in structure you will not see a unit icon on the map, but rather a wimple on the flag pole of the structure. See the flagpole on New Orleans in the illustration below.

As soon as you have any unit in the same region as enemy units in a structure, you are besieging them and a siege icon will appear the next turn in that region. See the Iberiaville region in the illustration below.



If other enemy units are in the same region as the besieged structure I believe that their artillery is applied to the breach-check each turn. The more artillery that the besieged units have compared to the besieging units, the less likely that a breach will occur and the more likely that a breach will be repaired.

If you hover your mouse pointer over the siege icon you will get a tool-tip telling you how many breaches have been made in that structure and if the structure still affords protection. If the structure as been completely breached and affords no protection you may continue the siege, but the only results will be occasionally getting hits on the besieged unit(s).

To attack units in a besieged structure -- whether it is intact or completely breached -- you must set your units to Assault Posture. Assault Posture is no different than Offensive Posture other than that units in AP will ignore that the defending units are in a structure. Units in Offensive Posture will not attack units inside a structure, but will attack units outside the structure. If you attack units outside of a structure it can cause units inside the structure to become involved in the battle, but I believe that units inside the structure will still enjoy the advantages of being inside the structure.

So in the battle of Trappahannock, if the Union had units outside the town, with Lee in Offensive Posture he would attack them, even if those units were leaving the town and trying to escape. If this happens a general engagement can -- often will -- occur involving up to all units in the region, also those inside the besieged structure. This is what I believe happened in that battle.

As far as the Rules of Engagement (RoE) go, I would not set to All-Out-Assault vs units entrenched in a structure unless I had overwhelming odds, at least 5-1 and more likely 10-1, otherwise it will be extremely costly on your losses. If I were attaching Richmond, I might consider it, but attacking Trappahannock, no way. If I were intending to assault, I would use normal assault RoE to lessen my casualties.

--------------

A word about how I believe the Trappahannock battle occurred and this gamey tactic. Since it is know to many and I am against secret rules I'll explain this further. If there are units of opposing sides deadlocked in a region -- both in Defensive Posture -- no engagement will occur as long as nobody attacks. However even if only the smallest unit on either side changes to Offensive Posture or a moving unit not even on Offensive Posture is intercepted by defending units, a general engagement can occur.

In the illustration above, this is what happened and how Johnston was repulsed and retreated across the Mississippi. Both the Union and CSA were close to equal in size and strength in Iberiaville. I, the Union player, received a single militia unit -- 1st LA Chasseur d'Afrique -- which was still building. I didn't want to put this unit into my army stack, because it would have caused it to be under-commanded, so I left it outside.

The next turn the 1st LA completed training and for reasons unsure to me attacked Johnston, which caused Johnston to start a general engagement. Since my entire army was well entrenched and in Defensive Posture and Johnston was at corp size outside of New Orleans the battle that ensued had Rosencrans' 51,690 vs Johnstons 13,015 men. The results was a slaughter and since it occurred through a strange quark that was completely unintentional and seemed very gamey to us, we backed up to the previous turn and I put the 1st LA into the army to prevent this gamey battle from occurring.

The thing is, that this reactionary type of battle can be provoked by one side sacrificing a single regiment to attack the other side and provoke a battle, even if the attacking regiment is immediately destroyed -- the battle report showed that this is what happened to the 1st LA -- the battle still develops into a full engagement.

I've also seen this happen when sending a single cavalry regiment out of such a region in Defensive Posture with avoid engagement in effect. The cavalry regiment got caught and the same thing happened. Admittedly, this it is very rare that such a cavalry unit would be caught, but it can happen with spectacular results.

But I find this to be a very gamey tactic to provoke a battle with a single unit like that and it's not something I'd do intentionally and were somebody to do that to me in a PBEM game I'd call foul.

[Poorlaggedman]

Yeah that does seem kind of gamey. Thanks for the detailed response

I'm a little confused because the structure was showing as totally breached in Tappahanock. Yet I was still making breaches instead of hits which I wanted to inflict. Up to 14 before he moved out and I assaulted him.

I eventually overran the position/destroyed them.

Which leads me to another question.
POWs. Why when an exchange happens, does it say ~100,000 or so POWs were released by each side when I'm *positive* I didnt lose that many and I only had about ~30,000 in my camps. Also, when you wipe out a unit that has been suffering from supply drops, you seem to capture more prisoners than were actually present at the start of the battle. Is this including the troops who were lost to attrition??? I suppose maybe they were just combat ineffective but still.

I won the campaign BTW (this is actually my 3rd try as C.S.A.)! Taking St Louis did it in addition to destroying the units caught in the siege. It was August 1864 so win conditions were lower. Lincoln still got reelected though (LoL). I am still playing though and very happy the game allows you to do so (first time I tried to).

There are 3 yankee Corps holed up in Fort Monroe, they were pushed there from an earlier campaign. I naturally want to cut them off/destroy them. Probably impossible with the Yankee navy but I'd still like to try! I am doing great financially/economy-wise and have a decent little Navy that can compete with smaller Union Navy's. However there's a massive Union Navy in the James River just past Fort Monroe. I just drove back an invasion around the Norfolk area and built a fort at Norfolk. I have 3 Coastal batteries there (2 of which I captured earlier) and I'm hoping this can help blockade/keep Yankee Navy from destroying mine/lifting the blockade once I place it. However I am unsure which sea zone the Fort overlooks and can interdict. Is there any way to tell?


I am also wondering if it makes a difference whether there is a leader in the fort with the fort's batteries and whether they have a command penalty. I just put Beuregaurd there with his fort defender ability and gave the batteries to his stack.

Thanks

[Captain_Orso]

I'm a little confused because the structure was showing as totally breached in Tappahanock. Yet I was still making breaches instead of hits which I wanted to inflict. Up to 14 before he moved out and I assaulted him.

On large forces, the hits are pretty negligible. One infantry line regiment has 20 hits. In a full division with 4 batteries, 1 cavalry, 11 infantry and 1 skirmisher regiments there are a lot of hits to be spread around, although IIRC the hits are usually against artillery.

Which leads me to another question.
POWs. Why when an exchange happens, does it say ~100,000 or so POWs were released by each side when I'm *positive* I didnt lose that many and I only had about ~30,000 in my camps. Also, when you wipe out a unit that has been suffering from supply drops, you seem to capture more prisoners than were actually present at the start of the battle. Is this including the troops who were lost to attrition??? I suppose maybe they were just combat ineffective but still.

I've never exchanged prisoners, so I can't really say. How many prisoners you have should be listed under <F9>.

I'd just take the messages with a grain of salt, just like the battle messages that say 100 prisoners were taken, when the enemy unit involved had far less than 100 men in it.

There are 3 yankee Corps holed up in Fort Monroe, they were pushed there from an earlier campaign. I naturally want to cut them off/destroy them. Probably impossible with the Yankee navy but I'd still like to try! I am doing great financially/economy-wise and have a decent little Navy that can compete with smaller Union Navy's. However there's a massive Union Navy in the James River just past Fort Monroe. I just drove back an invasion around the Norfolk area and built a fort at Norfolk. I have 3 Coastal batteries there (2 of which I captured earlier) and I'm hoping this can help blockade/keep Yankee Navy from destroying mine/lifting the blockade once I place it. However I am unsure which sea zone the Fort overlooks and can interdict. Is there any way to tell?

To prevent supplies from reaching Ft Monroe you have to block all overland paths to it -- which you have already done -- and blockade the harbor. To blockade the harbor you will need about 12 naval combat elements in exit-point of the Ft Monroe harbor, which is Hampton Roads. Friendly and enemy artillery which can bombard into Hampton Roads can modify the number of ships needed, but I'm not sure of the mechanics of that. Just hold your mouse pointer over the Hampton Roads region and look at the tool-tip. It will tell you how many naval elements you need to blockade the harbor.

Enemy ships in the region will however probably not stand around to let you blockade the harbor .

I am also wondering if it makes a difference whether there is a leader in the fort with the fort's batteries and whether they have a command penalty. I just put Beuregaurd there with his fort defender ability and gave the batteries to his stack.

To affect a blockade batteries must be able to bombard into the harbor exit-point.
To bombard, if a battery is under the command of a leader, the leader must be activated.
Leaders often become inactivated -- brownie: have a brown envelope on their unit display -- in which case the battery cannot bombard and will not influence the blockade.

It is therefore better to leave the coastal artillery un-lead. I don't think that leadership influences the blockade through artillery at all. I'm not sure if other than the artillerist trait of a leader would influence bombardment. Leaders influence combat, other than through their traits, through influencing frontage. The higher ranking and the higher the defensive/offensive value -- depending on whether the leader's stack is defending or attacking -- increases the frontage -- the number of units that can be engaged in a battle at one time.

Since bombarding ships does not use frontage, leadership should make no difference. Giving the artillery a supply unit will enhance their power by 10% though. I'm not sure if this also applies to other supply sources in the batteries region -- town/harbor/depot -- but that would be logical.

I've played a number of games beyond winning through reducing the enemies NM, because I wanted to complete a campaign or just see how much of enemy territory I could capture . But once the opposing side has lost, their ability to resist is so limited that the whole thing just becomes an exercise in managing a large number of huge armies vs a much smaller number of forces that cannot really defend themselves anymore. In one such exercise as the CSA after having taken everything except New England, NY, PA and a small part of WV I gave up, because I was playing against the engine to keep my armies in supply by capturing depots and large cities more than anything else .

[Poorlaggedman]

Its Summer 1866 and I'm still going.

I ended up blockading Fort Monroe with the fleet I had. I was engaged a couple times by smaller Union Navies but won. I took my commerce raiders out of the Union commerce box to help out, with their leaders too. My 4 (4!) coastal batteries in "Fort Norfolk" seemed to have helped out quite a bit in beating down ~ landing 50+ hits on passing ships and preventing or damaging anything that traversed into / out of the James to engage my Navy.

My blockade seems to have worked because only one Corps drove them out of Fort Monroe in a small fight, the Fort surrendered 1-2 turns later. Although the Union's 3 Corps managed to retreat into the province I had *just* left from in attacking. It seems to me the blockade worked because the units were severely depleted although still showed as having a certain percentage of supply. Most of them then proceeded to float up to Fredericksburg, where I then encircled and will hopefully crush them this time so I can focus on retaking Northern Virginia.

In the West, I'm invading Indiana but its bogged down as the AI has some massive Army messing around with me and even retaking Cairo and some of lower Kentucky on me too.

A decent-sized Union Navy is also in the James River still and I'm reccuperating my Navy from the blockade to go in and mess them up.

Did not know coastal batteries would not bombard if under a commander that's inactive. I will move Beauregard out and back into the fight then, just leaving a garrison behind.

I noticed earlier that when blockading Fort Monroe, it did not seem to have an effect on a Union Corps further inland along the James (the harbor region near Petersburg). I had to blockade that on my own with another Navy from Richmond in order to get the blockade symbol on them. Is this correct that blockading the River's exit does not blockade inner ports from getting supply through there?

Also, being an ambitious noob who played games like Hearts of Iron before, I like *trying* to destroy enemy commands. It seems to me that surrounding one isn't exactly good enough and that if you send a unit in to attack, even if there are other units all around, the enemy will still try to retreat into your other units and begin a vicious cycle of retreating back and forth (?) from force to force, but might also retreat through your units?

Thanks

[Longshanks]

Gettings kills via retreats is tough in AACW. Here's two ways.

The first way is to catch a stack in an area where you have (or can get) military control in the regions all around him. If there's just a brigade active in every region around it, the retreating enemy stack can "bounce" from one region to another. Works best if you have two stacks to work it over. I've lost entire corps this way, and forced losses on other players this way too.

Another way is to sic an aggressive, fast mover commander (Jackson, Walker, et al) who, in good weather, can chase a stack it has targeted from one region to the next with as many as 5 or so battles in one turn.

In both cases, it's best to have plenty of cav and/or light infantry in your stacks.

[H Gilmer3]

Many of them knew each other as former colleagues, schoolmates, instructors, or students, and had a pretty good idea of what they were up against.

And dare I say it... friends.

[H Gilmer3]

I'd just like to say, keep at it. I post a lot, but haven't played nearly as much as the rest. I finally got my first win as the Union (I cannot even consider the CSA yet). I didn't think I had a chance but I kept plugging. I was winning the NM battle, but I could never seem to get over the hump. I finally came at Richmond from two sides.... one from the North and one from Norfolk where I landed a sizable army and started them through Virginia. I lost a lot of battles and sieged Richmond it seemed forever with their armies attacking and me barely beating them off.

In the West, I built up an army of 144,000. I didn't do it on purpose, but McClellan disappeared and I just attached his corps on to Grant's army. I had something like 7 corps. I started steam rolling through West Tennessee and I threw caution to the wind. I finally took Richmond and Memphis and the game was over. WHEW!!!