Grousing about the lack of Promotions

[Highlandcharge]

RebelYell, what version of the game was this game played on?

[RebelYell]

RebelYell, what version of the game was this game played on?

1.3 and 1.4rc

[Captain_Orso]

Gray, I don't know where you are equating your last paragraph with the first two.

The part about withdraw and retreat losses only talks about how they can cause additional losses not caused through battle line combat (withdraw and retreat work differently), and that retreat losses can be much higher than during an orderly withdraw.

If a defending force is set to Hold At All Costs and they don't break and retreat or withdraw, they will take heavier losses in doing so. This is completely depending on the difference in size and quality of the attacking and defending forces and all other factors pertaining to the battle. I did some testing of this way-back-when in AACW. I found that with attacking forces about 3-1 vs defending, if the defenders even stuck around to fight they took pretty heavy losses, but the rest got away. If the defenders were set to HAAC many times all infantry and cavalry were wiped out, leaving only some badly mangled artillery batteries left in the trenches.

During a retreat cavalry plays a large role in causing losses to a retreating force, or preventing it when they are in a defending force. So if a smallish defending force has more cavalry than the attacker when the retreat starts, there is a fair chance that retreat losses will be low or none.

I'm also pretty sure that the Wiki page is not up to date. If you look at the ..\CW2\Settings\GameLogic.opt file you will find a section with parameters controlling experience point gain (and loss -- I didn't realize myself that leaders could actually loose XP, but there it is).

Also the XP at which a unit (leaders are units of course) gains an EL (Experience Level) has been in the unit model for a long time. The parameter is the ProgRate. Leaders gain their first EL when their XP reaches their ProgRate, which is 10 for all leaders. After that the XP needed doubles. So another 20XP for a total of 30 XP to gain the 2nd EL, and so on.

BTW this works the same for all units. Infantry in general have ProgRate 10, but conscripts have ProgRate 5 and Volunteers have 15, but Militia have 10. All cavalry have ProgRate 5 and all artillery have 20.

These are the pertinent parameters in GameLogic.opt:

expXpGainCoeffLeaderKill = 10 // Leaders get 10% of their subordinate SU xp gain
expXpGainCoeffLeaderDie = 5 // Leaders lose 5% of their subordinate SU xp worth loss
expXPGainWhenHittingH = 50 // this value of hundredth of xp when hitting an enemy

The "expXPGainWhenHittingH = 50" parameter means that for every 2 hits an element scores, it gains one XP. The other two pertain to leaders only. I'm not certain, but don't think that combat units only gain XP if their total hits scored it more than double what they received. This would make gaining XP nearly impossible, and they logically should be gaining XP with every skirmish they are in.

Also not that that descriptions of the expXpGainCoeffLeader[kill|die] parameters show so that a leader gains 10% of hits this elements score, but lose only 5% of hits against his elements.

From other places in the forums I've read that a division commander gains 5% of hits his units score and corps commanders 3%. Since the 5% can no longer be correct, the 3% may also have changed, but I haven't read that anywhere; so who knows for sure. Maybe Pocus would like to shed some light on this.

Leaders will be put up for promotion if they have gained =>4 seniority than their original seniority at their rank. In AACW it used to be fairly easy to assault a single militia garrison with a division sized force and wipe the garrison out. Often the leader would then be eligible for promotion. In CW2 that has been greatly reduced in that the defending garrison generally will surrender first leaving the leader with little chance of gaining a promotion through such an actions.

I can't remember having read exactly how seniority is gained, but I imagine it is either through a similar mechanism as with XP or maybe directly through XP. But I don't really know.

[Gray Fox]

Thanks for the clarification.

[Captain_Orso]

You are more than welcome.

I hope you don't feel like I was trying to rub your nose in all this. It took a long time to gather all that information, many hours in the forums and many doing testing. I wouldn't expect you to have gained this depth in a short time without all of it being pulled together in one place. You've gathered an tremendous understanding of the game already. In retrospect I just hope you don't now feel discouraged, as that was far from what I intended.

[DizoakiusMaximus]

I also have had this problem; in my current game it is currently late May 1863, and only in the last two or three turns have I had any promotions (although I did get about 2-3 in that time frame). Sherman got promoted to ** and Grant from * to ** to *** in consecutive turns, and I believe Rosecrans and McClernand both got promoted to **. However, these were the first ones I've had all game. Does the difficulty level have anything to do with when promotions are handed out? Throughout 1862, I had George Morrell with about 7 or 8k troops take Munfordville KY about three or four times during the course of the year and never lost a battle (until the last one when ASJ hit him with about 22k men and captured his division) and yet remained a *. Also, if you select the prisoner exchange option will you get any General officers back that were captured? I hesitate to select that option because currently I'm beating the rebs in all casualty totals and don't see the need to give them any advantages at this stage in the game.


EDIT:

Leaders will be put up for promotion if they have gained =>4 seniority than their original seniority at their rank. In AACW it used to be fairly easy to assault a single militia garrison with a division sized force and wipe the garrison out. Often the leader would then be eligible for promotion. In CW2 that has been greatly reduced in that the defending garrison generally will surrender first leaving the leader with little chance of gaining a promotion through such an actions.

Just saw the above, so that answers the question about Morrell.

[Jim-NC]

Was there anything different about the battles where you got the promotions? Like a lot of destroyed elements? Or anything else?