Disagreement on General Ratings Poll

[AndrewKurtz]

So far the only disagreement has been with Joe Johnston as far as I can tell.

For those that disagree with his current rating/attributes, what do you believe they should be? Any attribute changes to him as well?

Are there any other leaders where there is disagreement?

[Gray_Lensman]

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[The Wolf]

Whereas McNaughton makes non-emotional, logical statements discussing the same point, and is, frankly, rather persuasive. His comments have me coming around to a change in his strategic rating back to a 4.

As I have said elsewhere, the unaddressed problem with Johnston being disrated in the leader mod is that he winds up spending most of the game being statistically penalized. As he was historically one of the South's best generals and was usually in command of a major Southern force, the disrating is going to be a severely unbalancing handicap for any Southern player.

And the one above didn't have any effect on you? You do realize what the in-game effects of severly downgrading one of the major CSA commanders is going to have? What the effects on game balance are going to be from having him spend most of the game with a -35% penalty?

From the manual:

"Each turn, each Force’s commanding officer makes a test based on his Strategic Rating. If he fails (indicated by a brown envelope icon on the Force), the leader is deemed inactivated and will suffer the following penalties:

Reduced movement (-35% speed)

Combat penalties (35% chance to perform poorly in battle, tested for each element separately)

Offensive Posture prohibited (not applicable for Admirals)"

The attempted downgrade would result in one of the CSA's top generals spending most of the war with a -35% combat and movement penalty. This is not only nonsense - Johnston maneuvered skillfully and won when he fought - but it will seriously damage the CSA and the game's balance by transforming a general who was one of the CSA's few decent army commanders into a bad joke that resembles his historical self in no way whatsoever.

There, is that "non-emotional" enough for you? My "emotion" was outrage caused by the fact that anyone would even attempt to do such a thing.

[The Wolf]

Well stated, and I might add these statements are "borderline rude" and could be construed as harrasment when repeated often enough in regard to runyun99's work effort. He has spent a great many hours of his time working on an area of the game that he perceived needed improvement and as other members of the forum have also stated "The Leader MOD" overall is a darn good add-on MOD.

Hmm, let's parse that. It's rude to criticize someone for making a single glaring error when they've put a lot of work into the overall product? You need to try to sell that idea to the game and book reviewers, and good luck doing it. And if you put a "great many hours" into something then the work is automatically immune to all criticism? I hope that you don't mean that.

I appreciate his work and his mod. I have no problem with him personally. None of that has anything to do with the fact that his work has a single glaring error in it that is not only unjustifiable but that will also affect game balance.

[Rafiki]

Wolf, Andrew has some good points. E.g. which ratings and abilities do you think Johnston
should have?

Personally, I think you are putting too much emphasis on this issue, but as long as you do so in a civil manner, that's your prerogative

[Gray_Lensman]

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[AndrewKurtz]

The attempted downgrade would result in one of the CSA's top generals spending most of the war with a -35% combat and movement penalty. This is not only nonsense - Johnston maneuvered skillfully and won when he fought - but it will seriously damage the CSA and the game's balance by transforming a general who was one of the CSA's few decent army commanders into a bad joke that resembles his historical self in no way whatsoever.

There, is that "non-emotional" enough for you? My "emotion" was outrage caused by the fact that anyone would even attempt to do such a thing.

Honestly? It was until the last paragraph. Then you lost me again.

[AndrewKurtz]

I appreciate his work and his mod. I have no problem with him personally. None of that has anything to do with the fact that his work has a single glaring error in it that is not only unjustifiable but that will also affect game balance.

What do you think JJ should be rated and what attributes?

Personally, I think the MOD is a HUGE improvement regardless of any single generals ratings. The overall impact on enjoyment is signficant. Hancock and runyan99 are to be congratulated and thanked.

The entire AGEOD community would benefit from it, which is why I'd like to see if we can work to make it official. If the only issue anyone has with the leader mod is JJ, perhaps the best thing to do is officially adopt the leader mod with the only change to it being to adjust JJ to his original AGEOD ratings.

That gives the majority, if not all, the benefits of the MOD to the community and reduces runyan99's work on maintaining the mod to JJ and anything new.

[AndrewKurtz]

From the manual:

"Each turn, each Force’s commanding officer makes a test based on his Strategic Rating. If he fails (indicated by a brown envelope icon on the Force), the leader is deemed inactivated and will suffer the following penalties:

Reduced movement (-35% speed)

Combat penalties (35% chance to perform poorly in battle, tested for each element separately)

Offensive Posture prohibited (not applicable for Admirals)"

I may have missed an important aspect of AACW.

If a leader fails his test for activation, does he experience these penalities when in friendly territory and defending? Or only when moving into enemy territory (which I what I thought)?

If the former, then I have to agree that JJ should not suffer these penalties. However, if only when in advancing into enemy controlled territory, I'll stick to my original (for now).

[Gray_Lensman]

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[Franciscus]

I have been following this discussion and would like to add a few more thoughts.
I get a feeling that these arguments have probably been long and arduously fought before, by Pocus, PhilThib and the beta testers of AACW. I personally feel that the vanilla ratings are good enough (to say the least) and surely result from far more hours of thought and study that the ones participating in this discussion could/would spend.
Of course, they can be changed (improved or not, that's debatable) to our heart's content, and that's what mods are for.
So, although I have in the past expressed a different view , now I believe that it would be unnecessary and even a waste of time to change leader stats "officially". Maybe an alternate scenario or a correction of the vanilla ones just with more "correct" events (simple things, like number of CSA divisions up to 48, Ben Mcculloch in Arkansas and Zollicofer in Tennesse, etc) could be considered and would be more useful...(although even this decisions surely were taken for a reason, and changing them might have unwanted consequences)...

[Gray_Lensman]

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[runyan99]

If a leader fails his test for activation, does he experience these penalities when in friendly territory and defending? Or only when moving into enemy territory (which I what I thought)?

As far as I know, it is only when moving into enemy territory. Unactivated leaders defend with no penalty.

But only Pocus would know for sure.

[Gray_Lensman]

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[McNaughton]

I think that a lot of assumptions were made on generals based on specific success and/or failure. Johnston is rated poorly because he was not aggressive as Lee. Hancock is rated strongly because he defended Gettysburg well. Grant is rated strongly because he was aggressive. Etc...

However, I think that just because a general did do individual things, that happen to be famous, should not affect their stats solely based on these situations. What made Grant special over other commanders? Hooker is probably the better field commander, yet is penalized because of his one moment of inaction at Chancellorsville. Grant was great because he was reliable and as aggressive as the most aggressive Confederate Commander.

Lee himself was not necessarily a battlefield Genious. He led his army well, and was aggressive, but, his battle tactics were no better than McClellans (in some cases, worse). What made the AoNV spectacular was the genious found in its two main corps commanders (Longstreet and Jackson were primarily responsible for the great Eastern Confederate victories). Yet, without Lee's aggressive lead from the top, Jackson and Longstreet would not have the same flexibility for success (Lee was keen to listen to outlandish plans). However, when Lee micromanged (West Virginia in 1861 and Gettysburg in 1863 for example) he proved to be a relatively poor battlefield commander.

One thing I propose is to take the 3-star and 2-star generals, and review why they were great by taking their main engagements of success/failure, and connect 3-star and 2-stars together to see exactly why there might be success/failure. Was a general good/bad because of their subordinates, their command chain, or because of their own initiative? From what I see, both ends are propped up to unrealistic levels (i.e., Lee is high, because when developing Lee's abilities and stats he was looked at solely as the leader of the army, while Jackson was rated solely as his ability, ignoring the fact that Lee and Jackson were successful because they worked together, Jackson was successful under other commanders, as well as independently, so he should be rated highly, and Lee definitely wasn't as effective with other subordinates, so he probably should not be rated as high as he is).

[berto]

Great, insightful post, McNaughton.

[lodilefty]

Hmmm...

Actually, I've had pretty good results with JJ as rated in the mod:

1) If I put him in command of an Army (to honor seniority), then give him "agressive" Corps commanders, things work well. JJ has a small defensive force in the "Army", with the "beef" in the Corps. Rarely matters if JJ doesn't actvate, because he carries less "force" and he cannot initiate combat as an Army group anyway.

2) If I make him a Corps commander, I'm careful to put him under a high-rated Army commander, so then JJ gets the "Army leader's bonus" and has adequate activation most of the time. This actually somewhat simulates the "on again, off again" nature of JJ's "reality behavior".

3) If I leave him "independant", then I've failed to get the most out of the "material at hand", and I should be impeached or relieved of command....

So, for me, the ratings as modded achieve what I'm trying to get out of this: and enjoyable passtime that simulates the ACW better than any other game of the genre I've played. Theory and debates about rating numbers are cute, but the actual performance in the game is the bottom line.

Thank you, runyan99!!

[Clovis]

Debates about generals ' values aren't new...after all it begun during the war itself.

There are several problems with any rating system:

- the first being the values signification as each game has its own. Some are rating strategical and tactical values, others are evaluating administrative values when AACW discards completely this notion excepting by the ability bias. Any system is in itself a partial view of command and anyone will find in each game flaws to depict Lee or Hooker...

- second, ratings are yet today distorted by war propaganda. There are here and there usurped reputations created during war, intentionally or not.

- any game system is unable to take into account some leaders were rather inconstant, Sherman being the best example, whose career showed some real failures

- AACW is the only system to really attempting and succeeding partially to show interaction between leaders ( army value being added to corps leaders, abilities like angriness) but it lacks yet to depict some personal inimities ( Grant and Thomas)

- some leaders are despised because they lost a key battle ( Hooker was really better than his Chancellorville performance). Some are doomed because they not only lost but died during the key battle: A S Johnston being the best example. After all, any of the stellar generals performed rather badly at start ( Grant at Belmont, Lee in Western Virginia to cite a few) but at lesat they get another chance. Johnston's Shiloh plan wasn't that bad ( Beauregard messing it) and I'm pretty convinced he would have performed better

- last, any rating is based on performance based on uneven odd ratio and against some general only. Hooker versus Pemberton or Bragg, or to the contrary, Sherman versus Lee would maybe change totally our conceptions over these men ratings...


So there will never be consensus on it. The only way is to draw each our personal line, explain why... and change the needed files to suit our tastes.

[AndrewKurtz]

So there will never be consensus on it. The only way is to draw each our personal line, explain why... and change the needed files to suit our tastes.

Except there needs to be a baseline for PBEM.

[Gray_Lensman]

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[The Wolf]

Wolf, Andrew has some good points. E.g. which ratings and abilities do you think Johnston should have?

I am in total agreement with Andrew: "the best thing to do is officially adopt the leader mod with the only change to it being to adjust JJ to his original AGEOD ratings."

[The Wolf]

I may have missed an important aspect of AACW. If a leader fails his test for activation, does he experience these penalities when in friendly territory and defending? Or only when moving into enemy territory (which I what I thought)? If the former, then I have to agree that JJ should not suffer these penalties.

Both the manual and my AACW gaming experience say the former - which, of course means that disrating JJ, who is otherwise almost always going to be one of the CSA's primary army commanders, is going to hurt the South very badly. Disrating Johnston will, I am certain, completely unbalance the game in a very ahistorical manner.

Your idea of adopting the mod but with Johnston kept at his original AGEOD ratings is an excellent one. I urge AGEOD and the community to adopt it.

[Clovis]

Except there needs to be a baseline for PBEM.

You have to share the same conceptions with your opponent, that's all... Never it will be a consensus about leader values between all of us.

BTW editing leader values is among the simplest modding tasks in AGEOD games. Notepad is sufficient.

[Pocus]

What are the values of JJ Johnston in the leader mod?

[arsan]

What are the values of JJ Johnston in the leader mod?

2-2-4

Personally i don't think the vanilla ones (4-2-4) are wrong, but as i said before i'm no ACW expert and i wouldn´t mind manually changing the stats if the Mod is made oficial.
The rest of the MOD changes seems improvements to me...

How about a 3-2-4 Joe?? Would this make everybody happy... or everybody angry...

[Gray_Lensman]

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[arsan]

Strategic 4
Offensive 2
Defensive 4

This is from an older version of the Leader MOD, but I think its the same.

Gray,
I think that are the vanilla ones, not the leader MOD ones

[Gray_Lensman]

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[arsan]

You do realize what the in-game effects of severly downgrading one of the major CSA commanders is going to have? What the effects on game balance are going to be from having him spend most of the game with a -35% penalty?

From the manual:

"Each turn, each Force’s commanding officer makes a test based on his Strategic Rating. If he fails (indicated by a brown envelope icon on the Force), the leader is deemed inactivated and will suffer the following penalties:

Reduced movement (-35% speed)

Combat penalties (35% chance to perform poorly in battle, tested for each element separately)

Offensive Posture prohibited (not applicable for Admirals)"

The attempted downgrade would result in one of the CSA's top generals spending most of the war with a -35% combat and movement penalty.

Pocus,

Please, could you clarify if the no activation penalties (see above) are applicable on offensive and deffensive actions or only on offensive ones??

I thougt it was the latter, and that a no activated leader could deffend normaly...

Knowing that will be important for disscussing if the effects of a 2 o 4 strategic rating would be adecuate for J.Johnston.

Thanks in advance!!

[Pocus]

I would favor 3-2-4, as a 2 in strat rating always give a further 1 malus passed down to corps commanders, so it seems extreme.