AGEOD Forums

Should losses be tweaked down

Yes, significantly when armies are green in ammo&supplies.

I don't know how much killing is a less of ammo&supplies now but it's a good reason to make a unit vanish.

Having played BoA so little, I am really in no position to judge, and hence I cannot give a ratio. I do think, however, that large forces (several units) should not usually disappear entirely when losing a battle. I believe they would have enough mass and inherent staying power to have a core survive that could be used to nurse them back to strength. My tuppence.

...Combat losses of more than 50% in an 18th century battle were uncommon before the Age of Napoleon although it did happen as at the Battle of King's Mountain. I would force retreat in most cases after 25% casualties.
...One of the few weaknesses in BOA is the lack of a realistic attrition rate. Any commander of the 18th century would love to have the total lack of attrition experienced during good weather. In reality, any time armies left their barracks, attrition was accelerated due to disease, desertion, accidents,etc. . In this game armies can quickly grow to an unhistorically large size due to the lack of attrition.
...The higher battle losses help to bring this feature back into balance so I see it as desirable to keep the game as it is.
(Note) Higher battle losses in European battles were often caused by cavalry pursuit of retreating armies. Inflicting additional losses to the side with less cavalry would give an enhanced value to the few cavalry units found in BOA.

There is one aspect to this I would like to explore a bit.

BoA seems to have high casualties because the game always assumes that a battle will involve all of the units on both sides slogging it out for all they are worth. That seldom happened in reality. Often, only part of a 18th or 19th century army would be engaged during a major battle.

Examples -

Bunker Hill was fought by only a small portion of the American forces surrounding Boston. Losses were high in the units engaged, but most regiments present were not involved in the battle.

At a Civil War battle like Perryville, the Confederates smashed into the Union left flank. So, on the Union side, the left flank corps was heavily engaged, the center corps was moderatly engaged, and the right wing corps was not really involved at all. At the battle of Gettysburg, some late arriving Union corps were not engaged, as were two corps held in reserve and not used at the battle of Antietam.

These sorts of uneven engagements don't seem to be possible in BoA. Instead, it appears the game lines up the total forces of both sides and has them fire away at each other. So, the losses are probably higher.

The above discussion does not even take into account the varying intensity of battles, based on how aggressively the attacker is pressing the advance, or how determined the defender is to hold their ground. But that is a whole seperate issue.

no it don't works like that. True, the battle report show you ALL forces in the region, but it does not means they are all firing at each other. Two mechanisms are here to simulate historically how forces engaged themselves:

a) Frontage. Each terrain has a maximum capacity, speaking of how much forces on each side can fire at each other during a given hour. There is a 'credit' for lines, and a 'credit' for supports, so you are better, if you can mix infantry and artillery for example. The terrain matrix is very detailed on that, and each unit have a different cost in term of frontage, depending of terrain and weather. For example irregulars in wilderness fight in number whereas regulars can only deploy 4 elements at maximum. Leaders Strategic Rating is only used in open grounds (clear, plain, desert) where you can deploy more usable units, if your leader is a good strategist (this simulate how he attempts flanking and positionning maneuvers).

b) Delayed Commit: This is a rule introduced in BOA 1.10, you have an option for that in the Options window (activated by default). It means that a given formation (a stack) can be engaged in a region and not another, friendly one, who can pass several hours before helping their comrades (this simulate marching to the sound of guns, at the 10 kms scale. Here too there is much details under the hood, like the ability of the commander, if he is activated, if your force is fast, if you control the region and such.

As for the lack of attrition losses in good weather. This is true, this will change when we adapt BOA to the cohesion rules of ACW. For now there is no such attrition and we agree this is ahistorical.

Heldenkaiser wrote: I do think, however, that large forces (several units) should not usually disappear entirely when losing a battle.

Exactly!

I think losses are ok but no the total destruction of a non besieged army.

One thing that could be changed is the way how appear the reinforcements, as i have read, when an army cames into a region the volunteers of that region merge with the army, in both sides.
In the way it works now, you already now what month of the year you should be waiting for allied or enemy reinforcements and this determines a lot the way of playing the game, and specialy in a pbem game.

Pocus wrote:
a) Frontage. Each terrain has a maximum capacity, speaking of how much forces on each side can fire at each other during a given hour. There is a 'credit' for lines, and a 'credit' for supports, so you are better, if you can mix infantry and artillery for example. The terrain matrix is very detailed on that, and each unit have a different cost in term of frontage, depending of terrain and weather. For example irregulars in wilderness fight in number whereas regulars can only deploy 4 elements at maximum. Leaders Strategic Rating is only used in open grounds (clear, plain, desert) where you can deploy more usable units, if your leader is a good strategist (this simulate how he attempts flanking and positionning maneuvers).

The frontage limits the number of units that can be involved per hour, but if the battle goes on for a long time, are all of the units eventually fed into the battle? If so, what difference does the frontage really make?

Let's take a hypothetical. Let's say a British army with 10 regular regiments attacks an American army with 10 militia regiments in wilderness terrain. What happens? 4 British regiments fight with 4 militia regiments for the first hour, right? For the sake of argument, let's say the British destroy the first 4 militia regiments after 2 hours. Do 4 more reserve militia regiments take the place in the front line? Will all 10 regiments eventually make it to the front line?

frontage is the maximal number of men who can fight at a given time. So if the limit is 2 regiments, you don't have 2 rgts at first hour, 4 at hour 2, 6 at hour 3 etc. You only get 2 at max.

And yes, losses are replaced, as even weakened companies can be rotated by being put to the rear so that fresh ones can fight. This is why it is a good thing to have a reserve when you fight, especially against forts, as you will have a lot of companies badly mauled from the assaults.

Pocus wrote:frontage is the maximal number of men who can fight at a given time. So if the limit is 2 regiments, you don't have 2 rgts at first hour, 4 at hour 2, 6 at hour 3 etc. You only get 2 at max.

And yes, losses are replaced, as even weakened companies can be rotated by being put to the rear so that fresh ones can fight. This is why it is a good thing to have a reserve when you fight, especially against forts, as you will have a lot of companies badly mauled from the assaults.

I understand the number of units is not increasing from 2 to 4 to 6. It is a constant 2.

But if losses are replaced with fresh units, it seems to me inevitable that the entire force will eventually be engaged in a large battle, whatever the frontage. Thus, the losses will be quite high, despite the frontage restriction.

What stops the battle?

I just don't quite understand the point of the frontage restriction, if reserves can be fed in ad infinitum.

in BoA you can have up to 6 rounds of battle per day. (call the round an hour or two-hours, as you wish. There is no morale associated to troops (this has been introduced in AACW and will be added back to the BOA 'add-on'), so the fight can last from 0 to 6 rounds, depending if both forces want to fight, or want to retreat.

And a force want to retreat when significantly weaker than the other. If this happen, the said force want will try to retreat, at round 0 (before battle) or at the end of any round, this is re-evaluated each time.

Frontage is still very important, because if you have a frontage of 3 regiments it means that even if you are the smaller sized side, you can hold your own several hours against the enemy, who can't apply any numerical advantage. Here quality of troops will make the battle. This lead to historical outcomes where a smaller forces of superior red coats can defeat militias and then retreat, or on the reverse indians able to beat their enemy in wilderness.

That makes sense.

One option for reducing the casualties then, if that needs to be done, is to reduce the possible number of combat rounds. Reducing the maximum number of rounds per battle from say 6 to 4 would obviously act to make the battles less decisive.

It is possible to know the frontage of each terrain?

There has to be the possibility of achieving a Saratoga in the game. (Or indeed a Braddock's defeat.) I think that losses do tend to be rather high, but toning them down will make it even harder to wipe out an enemy formation, and that is already quite hard to do. What were Washington's losses around New York in 1776? Perhaps not so many combat casualties, but much of his army dissolved.

Leibstandarte wrote:It is possible to know the frontage of each terrain?

not in game, but you can download the terrains matrix from the modding forum.

orca wrote:There has to be the possibility of achieving a Saratoga in the game. (Or indeed a Braddock's defeat.) I think that losses do tend to be rather high, but toning them down will make it even harder to wipe out an enemy formation, and that is already quite hard to do. What were Washington's losses around New York in 1776? Perhaps not so many combat casualties, but much of his army dissolved.

I agree! I'm coming close to completing the full PBEM campaign and there are certainly still many intact formations - not many formations have been wiped out in combat. If losses are toned down I think
replacements should be harder to come by. Both myself and my opponent have had far more available than we could need all game. Maybe with play testing, changes can be made to the next BoA add on but I think it has to be done very carefully, things seem pretty well balanced at the moment.

Why exactly should losses be tweaked down?

Great game, btw!

"There is no morale associated to troops (this has been introduced in AACW and will be added back to the BOA 'add-on')"

What is the is 'add-on' you speak of?

Are your referring to a patch?

No, it's a game extension we plan to release in a few months (hopefully), with lot of new features and content. News will be anounced about it by the end of this month...

I never did vote in the poll, because I wasn't really sure where I came down on the issue. After playing about two years worth of my second PBEM from 1775 to 1777, I have a little more data.

I'm not sure the battles per se are too deadly, but there does seem to be too much of a willingness for the armies to engage in battle after battle until one side or the other has taken 75%+ casualties. That is two or three days of battle after battle, until one side or the other is exhausted.

Especially for the attacker, there should be some kind of threshold, say at 25% casualties, where the AI simply stops attacking and reverts to the defensive until the next turn (without retreating, by the way).

This would probably tend to make the casualties taken on any one given turn a lot more realistic. Stacks set to attack or assault wouldn't bash their brains out repeatedly in one turn against forts or equal opposing forces, battle after battle, until they have taken 80% casualties as I have seen my own armies do on occasion. For God's sake, stop attacking already!

Other players seem to be reporing the same sort of behavior in AACW also, although I haven't played enough yet to know.

As for having lots of reinforcement companies on hand, as some have pointed out, and therefore no need to reduce the lethality of the battles, well it could very well be that there are too many replacement companies available. That's a seperate but related issue.

It might be easier to gauge the lethality of the BoA battles if we had a report on the number of men in the regiments and the number of casualties, a la AACW. Then it would be easier to compare the numbers or percentages in BoA battles to actual Revolutionary or F&IW battles, and make a comparison of the lethality of both.