My take on forming Divisions

[GraniteStater]

Yes.

Y'see, I want the sixes & twelves primarily for defense, most especially if I'm well dug in, etc. Attacking, not so much; I'm hardly going to re-arrange my Div makeup just to optimize an attack - thus, the stack/corps arty - also, Defense is Strong, so I'm going to dogpile the D, I'm not going to play fair at all, I am going to gang up as much as I can and leave a greasy spot.

You win on the attack with Overwhelming Numbers, Good Leaders & a coupla other criteria - we do not select tactics: repeat - we do not choose how the battle is conducted (except for the Battle Planner now, but that's Athena only, in just some instances and you still aren't really doing tactical stuff).

We are not generals - we are NOT generals.

We are stage managers, quartermasters, ushers & PR reps. We are not generals. Lee is a general, Farragut is an admiral - we are the Secretary of Get This Done.

When one has apprehended this, then one is on the way to understanding the Zen of CW2.

"Time for you to leave, grasshopper."

[aariediger]

Sorry, I don’t buy it. No, the player is not the corps or division commander, but you most certainly do play the role of Army commander. You exercise operational level control, setting lines of march for your corps, set the engagement rules, and tell them how hard to press the attack.

No commander can affect a battle after it starts. You set it up as best as you can and then you take your chances. Grant was the best commander of the war, and yet look at how quickly things got away from him in the Wilderness. Or Lee at Gettysburg. No plan survives contact with the enemy. You should never plan to win to an even battle. Amateurs study tactics, generals study logistics. The way to win is to find a way to deny supply to your enemy, while keeping your force in supply. Do that, then take an objective on the cheap, or smash their starving armies.

[minipol]

I added some of the points to my previous conclusions, which are now a bit more elaborate,
but provide an easier way to read what has been discusses in this whole thread:

- Independent force: use 'standard' div: Inf/some Cav/SS/4 art
- Div in a corps: more inf is possible, cav can be retained or use a cav div in the army.
6 lbs and 12 lbs in the Div (shoot at direct opponent), 10 lbs and 20 lbs guns in the Corps (shoot at target of opportunity)
- Army contains: some units to absorb hits, 10 lbs and 20 lbs guns in the Army.
- Try to use at least 1 elite brigade in a division.
- If needed, include sailors or marines in a few divisions for attacking across rivers or amphibious operations.
- Div artillery will fire on the enemy that fires on you, while Corps artillery might select another target
- Div artillery get the stats of the general (chance to hit roll)
- Div artillery will do assault damage in the assault phase.
- Div artillery competes with the corps artillery because not all guns fire at the same time (frontage)
- Do not use independent cav in a division, use them for screening, intel gaining, rail destroying.
For div, use the integrated cavs instead.
- For catching partisans and cavalry, you need more than 1 cav in a division, or better yet, use your own
dedicated cav divs (div doesn't have to be completely filled) to catch them.
- Large stacks suffer a hide penalty if they have fewer than 4 cavalry in the stack
- Troops for fort crushing shouldn't have cavalry and include heavy artillery

Related info:
- 1 cav needed in a stack for patrol value to go up by 1 (important for blocking troops)
- Damage is done on an element level. If an element routes, the unit might rout.
- As CSA, it's harder to construct 'perfect' divisions, mainly because of the cost of certain units
- If army/corps don't operate in the same or adjacent square, there might not be a need for a Cav
Div in the Army. The cav div can't help the div by means of MTSG. That's when you will need integrated cav.
It depends on how you use C/A.
- Cav has a hight patrol value, and helps you gain MC faster.
A higher MC means a greater cohesion loss for enemy troops traveling towards your position.
If MC gets very low <25%, no supply can travel through the region
- Big guns and supply wagons slow down your troops. Supply wagons do help in a battle

Info from the manual (yes, the manual ! )
- For these reasons, artillery is usually present at the Division level for direct fire
support of their own Division and also present at the Corps and Army level from
which it can be committed to battle when needed.
- A single cavalry regiment per Stack (e.g., Corps) is sufficient for most purposes.
- Some infantry, cavalry and artillery with the Army HQ can prove a useful reserve to support its Corps
- Corps – 2 or 3 Divisions at 4 CP each plus some additional smaller Units selected for their special
attributes such as cavalry, artillery or engineers.
- Supply Wagons slow the Corps but provide important bonuses and incur no CP cost, so one or more Supply Wagon Units are advisable
- Partisans, Indians and small raiding forces can be elusive and tie down many detachments in garrisons
of strategic points. They are best chased down with a mix of flying columns (mounted troops and horse
artillery with leaders having relevant bonuses) and a network of garrisons to obstruct enemy freedom of movement

[GraniteStater]

Sorry, don’t buy it. No, the player is not the corps or division commander, but you most certainly do play the role of Army commander. You exercise operational level control, setting lines of march for your corps, set the engagement rules, and tell them how hard to press the attack.

No commander can affect a battle after it starts. You set it up as best as you can and then you take your chances. Grant was the best commander of the war, and yet look at how quickly things got away from him in the Wilderness. Or Lee at Gettysburg. No plan survives contact with the enemy. You should never plan to win to an even battle. Amateurs study tactics, generals study logistics. The way to win is to find a way to deny supply to your enemy, while keeping your force in supply. Do that, then take an objective on the cheap, or smash their starving armies.

Sorry you don't see it. Your second paragraph tends to rebut your first, though. Did you play AACW a lot? - I mean a lot, because there were some very nice wrinkles that Athena, even in AACW, displayed. And humans are downright devious. Athena 2.0 is even better & I've played only eight or so game instances and just one to completion in CW2. I haven't begun to explore this puppy. Permit me to address your points.

* You exercise operational level control - No, you don't. This is too highly abstracted. A real field order, in real life, can run to 200 pages for even a modestly complex op. This is Plans. Eisenhower was instructed to write the plan (not all by his lonesome, of course) for a projected landing in North Africa. When he was done, he was told he better believe in it, because he was going to lead the op. It took him some six months of 18 hour days, seven days a week, to write it. In terms of simulations or 'games', if you want operational level, try War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition. That is what you could, to some degree, deem 'operational'. I will spare everyone here the detailed comparison, but if you have played WitP, you should realize that CW2 is not operational, not even close. WitP tries mightily to give you a field level experience, but it too, is a model and abstracts things, a model has to.

* setting lines of march for your corps - No, you don't. One should always bear in mind that even small regions are pretty big. You tell the stacks to enter a region & that is it. Even pretty big stacks in a region can decline the invitations to get it on. Posture is a good mechanic, but there are no guarantees - I have seen many, many instances of two 2000 PWR stacks staring at each other in the same region. This can be affected by Options, but it does happen. Again, to contrast: WitP is daily, over hexes that are 40 nautical miles across. Your scouting squadrons can quite plausibly miss the IJN carrier task force steaming up your stern. Not very often at all, but it can happen. The regions in CW2 are bigger than the hexes described; Butler County, KS (not on CW2 map) is practically right next door to Sedgwick County (Wichita, where I lived) and is larger than Rhode Island, i. e., over 1000 square miles. Regions are not small & in the mid-19th century, even Montgomery County, right next to DC, could hide a Corps if you didn't scout it or had friendly civvies & spies giving you reports. The Soldier's Home in DC (in DC) was frequented by Lincoln to get away from things - a half-hour's carriage ride for him. That's in DC, which is less than 100 square miles on the Potomac side. The Soldier's Home is something like seven miles from the White House. We 'moderns' are almost incapable of understanding how slow and unreliable transportation was. Please don't mention railroads - the game model is highly, highly abstracted and bears little relationship to actual RR operations - if the design tried to do this, it would be well-nigh unplayable.

* set the engagement rules...how hard to attack - You're closer here, but, have you ever had Cohesion (or lack thereof) obviate your orders, 'cuz you forgot to scope it out before that nasty surprise you were going to spring? No? You haven't played enough then, or are a master of detail every single Turn. How about weather? You've never had a Leader decline your kind offers? Never overlooked anything? Never been surprised or had an unexpected result? I don't know about you, but I've played this puppy a lot and I'm still saying, "How come...?" to myself. It's a major part of learning this application, at least for me.

* Logistics - Sorry, there are no logistics in this game. There is Supply. I refer you to an old AACW thread, I Just Don't Understand Supply, to which I contributed what I believe was a helpful and informative concise 'explanation' of how the system works. We had some nice follow up posts in it, 'cuz I had a pretty good model laid out for the reader, but details, details...Still, what we have is Supply, which is cool & a pretty good game mechanic and does, thankfully, actually affect things - but it's not really logistics. Try WitP again - that's a tad closer, but even that is an abstraction, although the player must cart every single ton of Supply and Fuel (and maybe Oil & Resources, too) across the Pacific, in each and every individual hull.

If one has not read Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (in the 1970s, and still the landmark study, I believe), or been in procurement, like I was at one point (supplying a modest little hospital ward in Maryland, which was a full time job and me only a Spec 4, but hey, my sig was good up to $500 - and I was Da Man, although of course, I was accountable to the officers, but they were MDs & didn't care as long as I had saline solution in stock), then intenet forums talking about logistics just make me smile.

We are not generals. We aren't even privates. We are stage managers, who deal with temperamental divas on an open air stage where performances get cancelled for several reasons and, if they do go off per the supposed opening time, quite often turn out to be Verdi's Otello, not Shakespeare's Othello.

Once the player realizes this, then he doesn't have unreasonable expectations within the game. It only took me some dozen starts in AACW to figure out how come my PA troops in early 61, near the MD line, were starving to death in Pennsylvania in the summer. Call me stupid. This is a really, really good model, but 'operational'? Nope. 'Logistics' - no, not really. A Broadway opening? Yup. What this application is actually good for is illustrating some of the skills needed for Project Management, believe it or not.

Guess what, you're a project manager. I'll forbear the screed on Risk Management, other than to note that it includes opportunity management as well as what most folks consider 'risk' - and that includes Dumping the Whole Thing for Better Opportunities, just to illustrate.

Yes, it's project management. After Whatshisname has fallen flat on his face, yet again, you fire him and find better generals, for one small example. Yeah, it's fun 'pushing arrows', but hey, give McClellan a try as a Corps commander under Grant - he will truly surprise you & show how awesome Grant really is.

Grant is a general, to whom I give the clearest orders I can. I prep his Army, give 'em Stuff & Support and slap on the back. The rest is up to Digital Grant.

[GraniteStater]

ADDENDUM

My fellow poster is right about Supply, though - it is a very important aspect & plays a key role.

It's just not logistics, though. Even very detailed games/applications have a challenge modeling real logistics. Incidentally, if one does read Supplying War, the author's conclusion is that no one has ever solved the Logistical Problem in a fully satisfactory way, not even the US/UK in northwestern Europe in 1944 - the Red Ball Express was a marvel of improvisation, but still an improvisation. No, not even the US today. Distance & co-ordination are formidable constraints - and that's just two criteria.

As a small example in the game, how about fodder for animals? Again, Lee's army, retreating from Gettysburg, had a wagon train ten miles long.

And he was undersupplied.

[Gray Fox]

Good day!
First and foremost, I have not bought this game, as I cannot find it in a store and I can paint my house in less time than it takes to DL it. However, spring break is next week and I will try to acquire it so that I can demonstrate in an AAR what I advocate. I am not pontificating. Enjoy a great game any way you like, but you might like this if you try it.

Divisions with intrinsic artillery and cavalry are a must. Really. I've never said any thing to the contrary. They make great Mountain Divisions, Jungle Warfare Divisions, garrisons for depots, choak points and securing MC. Make as many as you need...and then some. However, there is also a Division model without intrinsic artillery or cavalry. You only need six of these Heavy Infantry Divisions (HID). Just a half dozen. That's what I'm saying. I'm sure that we each have enough Albert Speer in us to arrange this.

An army stack should have two of them and two Corps stacks of this army should also each have two. That's about the same number of infantry you would get in three conventional wisdom Divisions in just two HID. The army stack should have a cavalry Division as well, because you need cav to trample your enemy's withdrawal and we don't want cav in the HID. Every other CP in these Army and Corps stacks should be applied to artillery. This army group should have your best Army/Corps/Division leaders, your artillerists and cavalry commanders, your medics and pontoons, your supply wagons and elite cohesion bonus units. This is the point of your spear, your Panzer Armee Guderian, your SEAL Team Six. All those mechanics that we undeniably agree work best, e.g., infantry in assault, artillery in support and cavalry in pursuit, this army would do on steroids.

If the game mechanics are shared with AACW, then a battery has about a 24% chance to actually hit in ranged combat against entrenched troops. If you have massed 24 batteries or more in the two Corps, then 6 will cause hits each and every round (the 1st round they cause 12 hits due to Rate of Fire). So in round one at range 7 most elements of an enemy Division gets hit once. At range 6 a different or the same Division get 6 hits and so on. This army's massed artillery gets to do a lot of damage and your 20-lbers, Rodman/Columbiad, siege mortars obviously deal out more damage than their 12-lbers. Then the HID sends them running to their mommys and the cavalry finish them off. Either the game was meant to model this correctly or we should all just play checkers.

Assemble this Army as soon as you can and aim it at your opponent's capital.
"But Fox, Athena/(Greatest player ever) put every single unit to defend D.C/Richmond!"
A finite number of units fight your units in any battle due to the frontage. The program will cycle new units in and your artillery will shred them, your HID will sink its canines into their throats and your cavalry will shake its head vigorously. You only have to rout enough of the enemy to rout all of the enemy.
L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace. Always be audacious.

(P.S. I updated this post with the excellent info the ArmChairGeneral brought to light)

[Ol' Choctaw]

If you want the boxed edition go to the To the AGEOD Online Store
On the main Forum page. It shouldn’t take long to arrive, as long as it isn’t shipped by Royal Mail.

[GraniteStater]

You really need to actually, uh, play the game to see how it differs from AACW.

The first analyst who hops on here and posts a 15,000 word essay on what These Differences Are, I'll buy everyone popcorn.

I'm absolutely sure some mechanics & aspects are largely intact. From what I see, this is not the Athena I dated and took to the prom. She's smarter. Prettier, too (you knew that was coming).

I haven't really explored the Cards to the degree some have. I have said a bit now predicated on if. If it's the same on certain algorithms, etc. There's a lot of AACW knowledge & experience that is useful.

But...

it is not the same game with a makeover.

We're all still testing, so to speak.

Yes, audacity has its rightful place, particularly in a general. However:

* Athens was audacious and landed in Sicily. A horror show. Sparta won.

* Alexander was audacious and if not for the intervention of one of his followers, would've exited the stage early, decapitated. Very lucky that day. Very, very lucky.

* Hannibal was audacious. Romans were prosaic. Rome won.

* Edward III and Henry V were audacious. France won.

* Louis XIV had some outstanding and audacious generals. Patient statecraft by William of Orange won - it took another hundred years and more, to make it clear, but William laid the foundations for Britain's ability to be the deciding factor in European affairs.

* Napoleon was audacious and the greatest military genius of the last half-millennium. His opponents learned from him and turned the tables. Invading Russia was extremely audacious. In the epilogue, that boring Duke won the finale (he is one of the few who never lost a battle - one of the very few).

* Chancellorsville is a monument to audacity. Lee surrendered to Grant, who, in my considered opinion, under the circumstances in which they lived and fought, was the better general.

The South was extremely audacious to attempt to secede. At a certain point, audacity becomes hubris.

"The best general is not he who wins a hundred battles. The best general is he who compels the end of the conflict in his favor without loosing a single arrow."

Watch your six.

[Gray Fox]

Thanks for the link OC. So I should get Civil War II, then the expansion and the patch, or can I get by with just the CW2?

GS, when I was stationed at Fort Hood, I never met a Texan who doubted the benefits of audacity.

[minipol]

You can get by with just CW2. The patch is also available for those without the expansion.
It's well worth the money.

[Ol' Choctaw]

You can get by with just the game and then decide when you are ready for the expansion. The patch you will have to download.

Audacity pays off if you can fool the enemy. Unfortunately that is not programmed into the game and if you attack at 1 to 3 odds you are going to get creamed.

I was at Ft Hood too, my condolences.

[Gray Fox]

I was saving up to buy a huge, gaudy, neon shrine to my humility, but I guess this would be a better buy. I'm off to the cookie jar.

[GraniteStater]

Thanks for the link OC. So I should get Civil War II, then the expansion and the patch, or can I get by with just the CW2?

GS, when I was stationed at Fort Hood, I never met a Texan who doubted the benefits of audacity.

I am a curmudgeonly inhabitant of a state strewn with grumpy curmudgeons. We like who we are and like it that way. Our everyday conversations are peppered by, "Yeah, sez who?", "Watch it, bub," and other sterling examples of wit and social intercourse.

But I do love Texas - and Grant was very audacious in the Vicksburg campaign.

I'm not gonna tell anyone how to play. All I can do is report what I've seen & experienced. With my noteworthy track record in PbeMs (0-4, but maybe I'll break this streak now against havi), I wouldn't blame anyone here to tell me to take a hike - my first three PbeMs were against Pat (P. "SW" Cleburne), who came in second in The Tournament (we don't count our first one for good reasons which I forget, but they're legitimate) and took me to a postgraduate course in how to play AACW. I was the Union in each game.

Then I played Longshanks as the Union in a '62 start and had one heck of a game - lost on NM, largely because I made two strategic errors: I didn't switch over fast enough to pressing for 'Nooga when he slammed the door to Memphis and foolishly went for a GA/SC/Seacoast campaign instead of robbing his purse in New Orleans.

Then I subbed & took over a game as the South in the tourney. I lost, but was valiant.

So, all here can tell me to get lost, but I've learned, I hope, and had really good teachers.

GS

[aariediger]

Quick word, I did not mean my first post to come nearly as harsh as it sounded when I read back through, as starting a post with ‘Sorry, but’ is almost never a good way to start a nice conversation! I really do love this game, and have played the first AACW to death. I still do, both PBEM and trying as hard as I might to win the ’64 scenario as the South (side note: If it was really as bad as this scenario, it’s amazing the South made it ‘til April ’65.) I have played a bunch of PBEM games. But they’ve all been against one person so I haven’t been exposed to any of the radical strategies, except what I read on this site.

Anyway, I still disagree about what ‘role’ we play. Take a look at Madden. At different times, you play the role of GM, coach, and player. Some of your players are better than others. When running a play you have to understand the strengths and limitations of your QB, even as you are playing as him. Imagine for a second that all the production and political decisions were handled by the AI, and all you did was move troops. Could you still win? Sure! Simply putting together command structures and moving units you could still get the job done. You take on the role of your generals, and their flaws and strengths.

Another thing, I do think this game has logistics in it, a lot of it. No, you don’t run the rail schedules, but neither did Lee. Or Grant for that matter. The entire reason Grant kept Meade around was to see to the little things, all the stuff that makes an army run day-to-day, freeing up his mind for bigger things. Wide ranging flanking maneuvers to cut off supply is my preferred tactic, and finding a way to do that and still keep supply flowing to your boys is the real challenge. Rail lines are so vulnerable, and this game helps you understand why Grant didn’t flank Richmond from the west. But you take Petersburg, and the game is up.

[GraniteStater]

Don't really disagree that much. I think my particular way of viewing it can be helpful to some.

Believe me, when I'm trying to figure out how to bust someone's river line without getting MTSGed to smithereens - well , the immersion does start to take over.

[GraniteStater]

Since we having been using this thread to cover a lot, let me say that I have been incorrect in some things about Arty, DivArty, etc.

Go to the old AACW Wiki about Frontage. Read the Artillery discussion. Some very interesting qualifications and caveats in that discussion. Seems like my DivArty ain't firing all the time.

Most of the detailed discussion starts to make my eyeballs glaze over. I've tried to refresh myself on this & take what I can from it. Some of you might love it. Thought I'd mention it.

I don't know why, but I have no problem rereading Supreme Court opinions & delving into the pedigree of the cases; I did pretty good in Physics; I can understand readily why the indefinite integral from zero to infinity of 1/e^[x^2] = [sqrt pi]/2, but reading about Frontage gives me a headache.

[Chaplain Lovejoy]

I don't know why, but I have no problem rereading Supreme Court opinions & delving into the pedigree of the cases; I did pretty good in Physics; I can understand readily why the indefinite integral from zero to infinity of 1/e^[x^2] = [sqrt pi]/2, but reading about Frontage gives me a headache.

It's like I have a twin!

[GraniteStater]

Good to see ya again.