March to the Guns

[Jagger]

How exactly does "march to the guns" work in practice? I have never seen a corps actually march from one region to another to assist another corps w/i the army.

What I have seen is the power of corps in adjacent regions added to a corps when it was attacked without the adjacent corps actually marching to the region. I am assuming this is "march to the guns" in practice.

I had a battle recently in which one of my corps, by itself, was attacked in a region. There were multiple corps in the surrounding regions. The battle screen showed my defending force as much larger than the single corps.

Are those other corps actually participating in the battle? Or are they only used to determine retreat/attack decisions by the attacker and defender?

I do see some losses after the battle in corps in the surrounding region but I don't know if those are previous losses or losses from "marching to the guns" and fighting.

Anybody have a good grasp of the mechanics of "marching to the guns" and can shed some light?

[Hobbes]

I think they march to the region but are then placed back in the region they came from after the battle, maybe you don't see this as an actual movement of the neighbouring unit.

The battle screen can be a little misleading sometimes I think as it shows all units in the region, not necessarily all those that took part in the battle.

A clarification from Pocus would be interesting.
Cheers, Chris

[Pocus]

Indeed, to prevent troubles and possible exploits, the forces are put back in the original region. But they really participate in battle!

The chances are depending of:
a) if the marching general is good and/or activated
b) how fast is the corps
c) if you have a good MC of both regions

and some others less important factors.

[Jagger]

Thanks!! Now I understand.

[Jacek]

The thing I don't get is:
a) battle occurs between friendly corps Y and enemies at day 2 in a region A. Corps Z that marches to the sound of the guns is in region B. Let's say it reinforced corps Y and they both took part in the battle.

MY question is:
How come corps Z gets there in time on day 2, when moving between regions B and A takes normally (train,foot, forced march etc.) from 3 to 10 days?

I don't get it.

[WhoCares]

I had an odd effect out of this when I had a Corps besieging Memphis and another one in an adjacent region. This unit marched to the sound of the guns, participated in the attack on the city, captured a static gun from the defenders, moved back to its starting region and then was stuck there due to the static gun

So I left the gun behind in that region and a few turns later some bushwhackers destroyed the unit (would have been funny if they had recaptured it )

[swang]

I had the same thing happen to me with the DC guns... It got stuck in Montgomery county for the longest time.

[Spharv2]

The thing I don't get is:
a) battle occurs between friendly corps Y and enemies at day 2 in a region A. Corps Z that marches to the sound of the guns is in region B. Let's say it reinforced corps Y and they both took part in the battle.

MY question is:
How come corps Z gets there in time on day 2, when moving between regions B and A takes normally (train,foot, forced march etc.) from 3 to 10 days?

I don't get it.

Well, you'll notice when a unit is moving into a region and the move will take longer than 15 days to complete, at the end of the turn if you look at that unit, it says there is only one or two days to make the move, even though your game piece hasn't physically moved. That's because the unit is near the border of the county, but has not yet crossed it. Well, when you have corps in adjacent regions, it is assumed that they will be close to each other in mutual support, not off two weeks march away from the rest of the army.

So while a march from the center of one province to the center of the next may take say a week, a march from the border of it may only take a day or two.

[Hobbes]

It’s a little abstract but I think it works quite well. It could of course be a unit in the middle region able to support units on regions to either side. The unit couldn’t be at both region edges at the same time but I think you can imagine the unit anticipating an attack into one of the neighbouring regions and positioning itself accordingly. of course this depends on the competence of the commander and he may not always be able to do this.

[Pocus]

Its an abstraction yes, but it is one really needed. This allows players to spread their forces without fearing too much of an overrun. See how Lee or his subordinates countered many efforts in the East during the war by marching and counter-marching.

[Jacek]

Thanks for the answers! Now I get it.

[PBBoeye]

Well, you'll notice when a unit is moving into a region and the move will take longer than 15 days to complete, at the end of the turn if you look at that unit, it says there is only one or two days to make the move, even though your game piece hasn't physically moved. That's because the unit is near the border of the county, but has not yet crossed it. Well, when you have corps in adjacent regions, it is assumed that they will be close to each other in mutual support, not off two weeks march away from the rest of the army.

So while a march from the center of one province to the center of the next may take say a week, a march from the border of it may only take a day or two.

Thanks for that. It helps me envision things well.

Now here's the thing, and I doubt it can be easily addressed (if not already). Does such an outlying force - a corps in wing formation - also take a bit longer to move to move to an adjacent region that is in the opposite direction from the main army? IOW, does the extra movement time come into play here?

I think that would be difficult to code, at least extremely cumbersome.

[Pocus]

no and yes, we have abstracted things here. No for your particular point, but yes because if you started to move toward the region which happens to have a battle, then the code will use the number of days that really remains, and not the theorical (max) one. So somehow in this circumstance, you are really positionned physically within a region within a certain number of day to travel toward the adjacent regions.

But AACW is not a simulation to be used by the military, so the region granularity.

[Spruce]

I don't have problems with the fact that a corps is reinforcing at day 2 of the turn. For what God knows, perhaps 1 week before that the scouts had reported the enemy moving already.

What I do like to know is the weight of the different parameters, mentioned by Pocus, in the formula. Just for intrest ... other parameters also have their importance in this formula,

F.e. - during bad weather (rain, snow) scouting is much more difficult and prelimenary detection of moving enemy units is rather difficult. See also the presence of balloon corps.

[Pocus]

You have 100% chance each round of battle to join, adjusted by:

Code: Select all

  resCostPerDay_        : integer = 10; // -10% for each day of marching
  resModAdjGHQ_         : integer = 10; // +10% if adjacent to army HQ
  resModIsGHQ_          : integer = 25; // +25% if the army HQ itself
  resModLeaderStrat_    : integer = 5;  // +5% for each pt of strat factor of the leader
  resControlChunkMod_   : integer = 5;  // Every 5% of MC lacking gives -1% chance (both for start and end region)


Notes: These variables are not yet exported.

Note that the first parameter is a penalty per day of travel. And the number of days you need is 100% tied to the moving speed of your corps. And this speed is factoring the composition of your corps, if the weather is bad, if you travel by a special mean (rail, river) and if the leader is inactivated or not.

You will see that the % can fluctuate wildly depending of the local conditions, with the possibility of having a very high % being done on purpose. Because people would not spread their corps and create flanks in the other case, and we want people to do that... So this is a WAD to get a % as high as 90% chance of joining a corps, even after 2 hours of battle from an adjacent region. There is a big abstraction here, but it works, it seems.

[blackbellamy]

You have 100% chance each round of battle to join, adjusted by:

Code: Select all

  resCostPerDay_        : integer = 10; // -10% for each day of marching
  resModAdjGHQ_         : integer = 10; // +10% if adjacent to army HQ
  resModIsGHQ_          : integer = 25; // +25% if the army HQ itself
  resModLeaderStrat_    : integer = 5;  // +5% for each pt of strat factor of the leader
  resControlChunkMod_   : integer = 5;  // Every 5% of MC lacking gives -1% chance (both for start and end region)


So I guess the main takeaway from this thread is to keep the Army HQ adjacent to as many corps as possible, even the reserve corps, since the adjacency bonus flows both ways.

[Spruce]

So I guess the main takeaway from this thread is to keep the Army HQ adjacent to as many corps as possible, even the reserve corps, since the adjacency bonus flows both ways.

I'm not sure,

the HQ will reinforce more likely other corps. But if that HQ has only one gun batallion - you won't get much for that ...

I think Pocus means, you have to imbed one full corps at least with the HQ to get a better response to your surrounding provinces.

[Duc_d_Heilsberg]

Would it be possible to have the detailed formulas used by the AACW engine ?

It would enligth greatly the general -sometimes incomplete- explanations and informations of the manual.
Of course that's my wish because I'm very interested in how precisely are managed the different parameters. It's the only way to know what are the exact weight of each parameter in the mechanism. And to better understand the way the game simulates the reality.

Actually, I would want to have a more complete description of the WEGO mechanism, the supply process, the battle processing and so on...

May I hope someone (Pocus? ) will answer my questions ?
And moreover, do these matters are intereting somebody else ?

[tagwyn]

Why don't you just drive over and talk to Pocus in person. While you do ask him if the Hancock Generals mod is seamless and can be safely downloaded? Perhaps you can elicit a response from that worthy person. Tag

[Pocus]

That would be a terrific amount of work to explains in details the usage of the thousands variables of the engine. The Wiki will receive information over time on that, but for now it can only be done on an irregular basis.

tagwyn: The general mods seems to be working for people using it. I can't confirm it is 100% bug free, as I don't have reviewed it. We won't be able to review in third party modification before several weeks at least. Modding is done by players for players, so you have to ask them their experience about the mods.

[Spruce]

Pocus,

so if you have superior generals and the HQ - this means that there's virtually a waterproof system to tackle your enemy anytime - anyday.

Doesn't this remove the randomness from the game? In other words - when Lee marched into Penssylvania in 1863 - he too was the blind man. Even superior generals have their bad days ...

so shouldn't there be a random factor in this formula ? Please notice that I don't have the facts and experience to state this (I don't want to patronize) - it's merely a question.

[PBBoeye]

I don't think it's automatic. However, I am thinking about dropping the isHQ integer value down, and raising the LeaderStrat up a hair. I'd like to put emphasis on the commanding general in particular. I think that gives you better variance.

[Hobbes]

x.

[Hobbes]

A few observations and questions on "March to the Sound of the Guns" :-

From a few tests it seems that a Corps moving to support a defending unit will also enjoy the benefits of defensive terrain. It will also not incur any river crossing penalties. (I have no objections here I just thought it might be of interest).

My questions are :-

1. Will the Corps moving to support a defending stack also benefit from that stack's entrenchment value? (I assume not).

2. Can an attacking Corps also draw into the region a friendly Corps in an adjacent area if that Corps is not commited to any other course of action? (I assume this would not happen but I thought I may have seen it in one of my tests).

Cheers, Chris