Just lost the whole Army of the Potomac

[briny_norman]

Sounds good!
And you're right - I guess we do also have to be careful not to understate the casualty rates - they were actually pretty absurd in some battles in real life too...

[berto]

I guess we do also have to be careful not to understate the casualty rates - they were actually pretty absurd in some battles in real life too...

Not really.

The example given, of 80,000 to 100,000 casualties, was over three distinct battles (and more; see below): Wilderness, Spottsylvania, and Cold Harbor.

In AACW game terms, this would be like:

(Wilderness)
Early May, Days 5,6,7
North: forces 102K, losses 18K, loss rate 18% (~6% per day)
South: forces 61K, losses 11K, loss rate 18% (~6% per day)

(Spottsylvania)
Early May, Days 8-15 (not continuous, gaps in action)
Late May, Days 16-18 (ditto)
North: forces 100K, losses 18K, loss rate 18% (a few % per day)
South: forces 52K, losses 12K, loss rate 23% (a few % per day)

(Cold Harbor)
Early June, Days 1,2,3
North: forces 108K, losses 13K, loss rate 12% (~4% per day)
South: forces 62K, losses 2.5K, loss rate 4% (1-2% per day)

(Source: Wikipedia)

So, Grant's army suffered 49K losses, but not out of just the initial 102K, because his army was continuously reinforced throughout the campaign. Total campaign losses were more like 30%, over three distinct battles, with per-battle losses of 18%, 18% & 12%.

Lee's army suffered ~25K losses, and his army too was reinforced. Total campaign losses were more like ~30%, with per-battle losses of 18%, 23% & 4%.

Where does the suggested "80,000 to 100,000 losses cumulated for both sides in one month" come from? All theaters? More than one month, the entire campaign from Wilderness to Petersburg? Including Butler's engagements, not just Grant's? Does it also factor in normal attrition (from disease, etc.?)

I think it is mistaken to draw comparisons with the war in the east during late spring to early summer 1864 and infer that AACW battle losses--where 1 day losses are often 20% or more, and where 2 and 3 day battle losses are often 50% or more--are in any way comparable.

[Clovis]

Berto,

You're right...and you're wrong.

I don't believe any wargame, even as detailed as AACW is for operational war, to be a perfect simulation. There is always a part of abstraction because the real thing isn't reproducible but can just be simulated. The simulation must give of course plausible results we name historical but by using abstractions and computation that are totally different than the reality is.

To come back to the Overland campaign, I highly doubt we will have during 3 turns at least a succession of 10 to 15 battles a turn necessary to replicate the continual fighting which occured. I doubt too most of these battles will only engage a part of the 2 armies. What we'll have at best is 3 to 4 battles a turn between the largest part of each opponents.

With 3 to 4 battles we will have the flavour of the continuous meatgrinding and I bet only the gnrognardest part of the grognards, few players will only notice the simulation to be false.

But if these less numerous battles don't produce higher amounts of losses than in reality we will not have the same historical feeling about loss rate in 1864.

So to seem right, the loss system has to be exaggerated or more simply put to be wrong.

[berto]

Berto,

You're right...and you're wrong.

I don't believe any wargame, even as detailed as AACW is for operational war, to be a perfect simulation. There is always a part of abstraction because the real thing isn't reproducible but can just be simulated. The simulation must give of course plausible results we name historical but by using abstractions and computation that are totally different than the reality is.

To come back to the Overland campaign, I highly doubt we will have during 3 turns at least a succession of 10 to 15 battles a turn necessary to replicate the continual fighting which occured. I doubt too most of these battles will only engage a part of the 2 armies. What we'll have at best is 3 to 4 battles a turn between the largest part of each opponents.

With 3 to 4 battles we will have the flavour of the continuous meatgrinding and I bet only the gnrognardest part of the grognards, few players will only notice the simulation to be false.

But if these less numerous battles don't produce higher amounts of losses than in reality we will not have the same historical feeling about loss rate in 1864.

So to seem right, the loss system has to be exaggerated or more simply put to be wrong.

But you could simulate the higher overall loss rates of 1864 without abstraction simply by doing what Grant did: ratchet up the force dispositions and ROEs to higher aggressiveness levels. In short, overall loss rates were higher in 1864 (in the east) because that was the essence of Grant's strategy. Also because of higher entrenchment levels. And we can directly model that, no abstraction required.

The problem, too, is that this "abstraction" seems to apply across the board, to every theater, to every year. In my Gettysburg 1863 tests, neither side would deliberately have been pursuing a meatgrinder strategy. Yet we can see 1864-type losses there, at that time, and at earlier stages of the war, too (see my earlier reported Kentucky 1862 results).

A "realistic" simulation (apart from the "game" aspect) should be able to account for the changing nature of the war: from 1861's Napoleonic stand out in the open and fire away to 1864-65's WWI-like trench warfare; from 1861's low loss rates to 1864's relatively high loss rates. (I commend you for addressing this problem in your mod.)

(We could just as easily suppose the opposite: that by 1864, both sides might be getting sick and squeamish with the high casualties, that in later stages of the war casualty rates might be falling, not rising. Some wars are like that. Maybe AACW, too, if a particular player or players choose to do it that way. What if McClellan had won the 1864 elections and given Grant the sack?)

I kind of don't get it: why it is thought more important to endlessly quibble over leader ratings, to have precisely accurate OOBs, to get the RRs just right, etc.; but thought less important to model accurately movement rates, force levels (200K armies?!), battle losses?

It reminds me of these medieval fantasy movies where the actors and actresses are dressed in historically accurate costumes, where the expensive sets (supplemented by the best CGI graphics money can buy) are picture (and historically) perfect; but where the actors/actresses mouth 20th century dialog set to rock music. The anachronisms, the differing standards of historical realism are jarring, not at all to my taste.

So, why go to the trouble of having this super complicated, super detailed AACW game, then overly abstract (IMO) how all the details interact?

It's like speaking a language with 50,000 nouns and 30,000 adjectives, but just a few hundred verbs and adverbs.

If anybody equates great masses of detail with historical realism (not saying that you do), I think they are mistaken.

Something's not right with this picture.

[berto]

Oh, I hope that Gray_Lensman, Jabberwock, Runyan et al don't take offense. I think their devotion to getting right their areas of expertise/fascination is wonderful. I just wish for equal zeal given (by others) to some of these other areas, no less important IMO.

[Franciscus]

We could be discussing this endlessly, but in the end, this is just a game, and a very good one, at that. Games are meant to be played and to have fun with it. I am having great fun, with vanilla AACW, which I feel, by the way, to have probably attained a "finished" level with 1.10d (ie, no more meddling really needed. The only important addiction I would welcome would be for the USA AI to be able to mount real amphibious invasions, and this might be in store in the future, being apparently a feature of WIA ).

Really, I feel that it is time for Pocus and co to move on, and for me it is time to play and have fun.

(PS: being in essence a hedonist, of course I can understand if for others fun/pleasure is attained by modding, tweaking the RRs or the battle losses. But please, have FUN !:niark

[Clovis]

But you could simulate the higher overall loss rates of 1864 without abstraction simply by doing what Grant did: ratchet up the force dispositions and ROEs to higher aggressiveness levels. In short, overall loss rates were higher in 1864 (in the east) because that was the essence of Grant's strategy. Also because of higher entrenchment levels. And we can directly model that, no abstraction required.

The problem, too, is that this "abstraction" seems to apply across the board, to every theater, to every year. In my Gettysburg 1863 tests, neither side would deliberately have been pursuing a meatgrinder strategy. Yet we can see 1864-type losses there, at that time, and at earlier stages of the war, too (see my earlier reported Kentucky 1862 results).

A "realistic" simulation (apart from the "game" aspect) should be able to account for the changing nature of the war: from 1861's Napoleonic stand out in the open and fire away to 1864-65's WWI-like trench warfare; from 1861's low loss rates to 1864's relatively high loss rates. (I commend you for addressing this problem in your mod.) (We could just as easily suppose the opposite: that by 1864, both sides might be getting sick and squeamish with the high casualties, that in later stages of the war casualty rates should be falling, not rising. Some wars are like that. Maybe AACW, too, if a particular player or players choose to play it that way.)

I kind of don't get it: why it is thought more important to endlessly quibble over leader ratings, to have precisely accurate OOBs, to get the RRs just right, etc.; but thought less important to model accurately movement rates, force levels (200K armies?!), battle losses?

It reminds me of these medieval fantasy movies where the actors and actresses are dressed in historically accurate costumes, where the expensive sets (supplemented by the best CGI graphics money can buy) are picture (and historically) perfect; but where the actors/actresses mouth 20th century dialog set to rock music. The anachronisms, the differing standards of historical realism are jarring, not at all to my taste.

So, why go to the trouble of having this super complicated, super detailed AACW game, then overly abstract (IMO) how all the details interact?

It's like speaking a language with 50,000 nouns and 30,000 adjectives, but just a few hundreds verbs and adverbs.

If anybody equates great masses of detail with historical realism (not saying that you do), I think they are mistaken.

Something's not right with this picture.

The Eastern 1864 campaign is an anomaly. In the West the Atlanta campaign didn't got this continuous fighting aspect and even side operations in Virginia ( Butler, Shenandoah Early Sheridan confrontation) kept a more traditional pace.

Indeed, the Overland fighting resulted from very special circumstances, ie a rather confined theater where maneuver was limited and mostly the fact 2 genius were directing the armies. Grant didn't made the choice of the attrition, he simply accepted it when each of his maneuver to catch Lee failed, due to the skill of the latter. who faced the same dilemn and until the end tried to avoid by maneuver the trench warfare he made. Grant failed until Appomatox to surround Lee as he surrounded Pemberton.

Designing a game model able to reproduce anomalies is certainly very difficult for the least and certainly impossible. The fact is whatever the front losses raised with time during the Civil War, in spite of the lack of any largely used technological improvments. The tools used in 1865 were known in 1861. The killing ratio evolution is then tied with the progressive emergence of veteran units more chesive, trained, experienced, which killed more quickly and stayed more on the Battlefield before retreating.

This point is perfectly detailed in AACW. The anomalies aren't and I suppose can't be.

I agree the vanilla system to be broken, imho because it is largely based on 3 wrong appreciations: rifled weapons were more lethal ( but recent studies show rifled firearms weren't often used diffrently than smoothbores muskets), artillery was a powerful weapon ( but it was more useful in defense than offensive and its primary gain was to break unit cohesion rather than killing men) and last a too high initial cohesion level.

[Jabberwock]

No offense here. I can see why this is a big concern. We just have different priorities.

[Clovis]

We could be discussing this endlessly, but in the end, this is just a game, and a very good one, at that. Games are meant to be played and to have fun with it. I am having great fun, with vanilla AACW, which I feel, by the way, to have probably attained a "finished" level with 1.10d (ie, no more meddling really needed. The only important addiction I would welcome would be for the USA AI to be able to mount real amphibious invasions, and this might be in store in the future, being apparently a feature of WIA ).

Really, I feel that it is time for Pocus and co to move on, and for me it is time to play and have fun.

(PS: being in essence a hedonist, of course I can understand if for others fun/pleasure is attained by modding, tweaking the RRs or the battle losses. But please, have FUN !:niark

Oh I've fun, even with modding ( and I persist to have more fun in modding AACW than playing Forge of Freedom)

[boboneilltexas]

I agree with berto about the losses. I think the easy setting favors the player too much and the normal has too great of losses. Also to be more historic, the game should favor the South more in battles because (for whatever reason) historically the North lost more men in battles. This might give the South more of a chance of winning the game also.

[berto]

Oh I've fun, even with modding ( and I persist to have more fun in modding AACW than playing Forge of Freedom)

I have fun helping to mod Europa Universalis III (I'm on the Magna Mundi team). For AACW, I choose to have fun playing it.

[Brochgale]

We could be discussing this endlessly, but in the end, this is just a game, and a very good one, at that. Games are meant to be played and to have fun with it. I am having great fun, with vanilla AACW, which I feel, by the way, to have probably attained a "finished" level with 1.10d (ie, no more meddling really needed. The only important addiction I would welcome would be for the USA AI to be able to mount real amphibious invasions, and this might be in store in the future, being apparently a feature of WIA ).

Really, I feel that it is time for Pocus and co to move on, and for me it is time to play and have fun.

(PS: being in essence a hedonist, of course I can understand if for others fun/pleasure is attained by modding, tweaking the RRs or the battle losses. But please, have FUN !:niark

I in part agree with this - the game is certainly playable in a human v human situation. I now have one excellent game going agaist one of my nephews. It is however a fairly bloody affair now that he has found a way round my normally fabian starategy as CSA. He might actually beat me this time. leure: Time to knock over the game I think and be a poor loser? Accuse him of cheating?

[FM WarB]

Can anyone name a wargame in the history of wargaming where battle casualties weren't higher than historical? We were pushing cardboard, now computer sprites, and tend to be ruthless.
Disease and straggling cost armies more than battle casualties, but impliment it and there will be howls of protest from those who want to send their 150K+ armies into the meatgrinder. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

[Banks6060]

I think an easy fix for this would be to incorporate a MUCH longer update time for line infantry....and perhaps having them update in different ways.

I know that a vast majority of confederate troops were still armed with the Smoothbore in 1862...and like someone said....the rifled, musket, while more accurate, didn't really prove itself fully on the battlefield until entrenchments were introduced.

I'd say the only REAL appalling battle, as casualties go, didn't occur until Antietam. Just reading about that battle is fascinating. Both sides saw almost entire units, for the first time in the war, almost melt away completely.

Now I know it's hard to abstract, but I believe possibly lowering the rate at which "conscripts" become "line" infantry....or creating certain other divisions by weapon TYPE.

Perhaps units have attack and defense ratings similar to that of artillery, based on the type of weapon. You had many units with JUST smoothbores...many that had a mix....and many that had all rifles.

I'd say maybe something like:

Smoothbore element = attack 9 defense 15
mixed element = attack 10 defense 17
rifled element = attack 11 defense 20

each element would randomly be given a certain designation....and would randomly be upgraded.

I believe cohesion should be more directly tied to experience. Say you give an element a base value of 65....and have it increase 5 or 10 points for every level of experience earned PLUS the benefits earned by NM.

NOW...that's probably tough to model...but perhaps someone could give it a shot.

[Jabberwock]

I'd say maybe something like:

Smoothbore element = attack 9 defense 15
mixed element = attack 10 defense 17
rifled element = attack 11 defense 20

HPS does this, with range limits for each regiment as well, but their games are on a different level of abstraction.

I think the mass casualties in AACW are mainly caused by two factors: Excessive cohesion, which is being addressed here by those with more expertise than I have, and ... extremely effective anti-personnel artillery, with limited counter-battery targeting.

[Banks6060]

Yeah, but I still think you could carry this out to the operational level somehow. If you can already do it for artillery. I agree though that cohesion probably needs some adjustment.

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[berto]

I agree though that cohesion probably needs some adjustment.

And around and around we go...

Cohesion was tweaked along with the recent adjustment in movement rates.

No, IMO we should now leave cohesion more or less alone, and instead adjust other factors impacting casualty rates.

[arsan]

No, IMO we should now leave cohesion more or less alone, and instead adjust other factors impacting casualty rates.

Like the long time units take to break in combat??
Thats caused by too much cohesion and/or little cohesion loss in combat i think.
Tweaking this cohesion elements will affect how much losses were taken in combat.
On the last movement rates changes total units cohesion was not tweaked from what i know. What was tweaked is how much cohesion loss was produced by movement, heavily reducing the loss.
That way the changes are probably causing more bloody battles as units enter combat with much more cohesion than before.

If Clovis is having success with his changes (as it seems) i think it would be sensible to follow his work, at least as a starting point.
Regards

[veji1]

I disagree with Berto, I want cohesion to be the key. It tends to stay way too high in this game :
- Armies that keep fighting during battles until they reach an amazing level of losses
- Armies that reiterate fight in the same turn or next after a bloody battle while IRL they would have recuperated instead.

In battles forces that fall to a certain cohesion level should try to withdraw and the opposing army should have a chance of preventing that retreat in great part based on its own cohesion level, so that a winning army has basically no chance to pursue after a costly victory, except if it can bring lots of reinforcements à la Grant 1864...

Actually if it was possible I would want to try to see if activated/deactivated statute could be based on cohesion level as well...

[Gray_Lensman]

Like the long time units take to break in combat??
Thats caused by too much cohesion and/or little cohesion loss in combat i think.
Tweaking this cohesion elements will affect how much losses were taken in combat.
On the last movement rates changes total units cohesion was not tweaked from what i know. What was tweaked is how much cohesion loss was produced by movement, heavily reducing the loss.
That way the changes are probably causing more bloody battles as units enter combat with much more cohesion than before.

If Clovis is having success with his changes (as it seems) i think it would be sensible to follow his work, at least as a starting point.
Regards

That's what I'm observing. It seems reducing the cohesion loss due to movement was only half the job. It'll be a while before I have time to really get into this, so I'm just observing and watching how Clovis' MOD is being affected.

[arsan]

Thanks Gray.
Don't worry and take your time. You are certainly doing waaaay beyond your duty with all this AACW improvements

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[berto]

I meant leave alone the cohesion loss rates due to movement.

Go ahead and tweak the cohesion loss due to combat, and/or do some other tweak to reduce cohesion levels overall.

Just please don't return to the situation where normal movement makes armies start to fly apart. (For doing so makes impossible fast movements from historical example. See earlier threads where this was discussed to death.)

[Banks6060]

The severe cohesion hit that was corrected through patches just solved a problem that most experienced players just avoided in the first place.

You just didn't move much and you didn't fight much either....unless your cohesion was high enough.

[berto]

The severe cohesion hit that was corrected through patches just solved a problem that most experienced players just avoided in the first place.

You just didn't move much and you didn't fight much either....unless your cohesion was high enough.

Hence an "historical", "realistic" style of game play was impossible.

[arsan]

I meant leave alone the cohesion loss rates due to movement.

Go ahead and tweak the cohesion loss due to combat, and/or do some other tweak to reduce cohesion levels overall.

Just please don't return to the situation where normal movement makes armies start to fly apart. (For doing so makes impossible fast movements from historical example. See earlier threads where this was discussed to death.)

No, off course i would not like that. I´m pretty happy with the new movement tweaks.
Armies should not loss tons of cohesion by moving around. They should loss it by heavy fighting, and try to stop fighting and break contact with the under certain cohesion levels.

Regarding Veiji proposal, if i understand correctly he means that stacks which had lost most of their cohesion in a fight should become unactivated and incapable of offensive combat.
The idea seems very interesting, but probably is not easily doable and would ask for different tweaks around the game engine.
Maybe for AACW2?

Regards

[Banks6060]

Hence a "historical", "realistic" style of game play was impossible.

I certainly don't disagree. Like'say.....I think infantry should be treated more like artillery in AACW. with attack and defense values tied to equipment

and then cohesion tied to experience. With starting levels at around "militia level" or just higher. Increasing with each star earned. But that's just me.

[Coregonas]

Unfortunately, seems trying to simulate sherman s march has had a few collateral effects.

Perhaps upgrading a bit more the Skill "Fast Mover" could do the job... instead of giving a +15%, give a +40% to some special leaders (i e sherman). .... those leaders are limited... 4/5 in each side? and would help reducing the battle high losses now detected.

Also, I am a small voice asking for no 7 days turns. Uncertainty in 14 days turns gives a good fear/expectation and so on feeling..., and also less control on the game exact moves, so allowing a bit less tricky moves.

[Banks6060]

I've become a 15 day/turn believer .