CSA complaint about the game system based on a recent PBEM

[grimjaw]

In response to the original poster and thread topic,

It seems to me that the early war pressure on the Union military to advance on the Confederacy and defeat the rebellion was of a political nature. If I understand what I've read of it, the inaction of McClellan did not diminish the army's willingness to fight. Nor did it weaken the Union's desire to defeat rather than treat with the Confederacy. Instead the outcry increased from individuals and groups, to replace military leaders who didn't perform as desired. The cost of inaction, if there can be said to be a cost, was political. It also came in the form of missed opportunities.

[grimjaw]

If you want to break the economy down into where what raw resources were produced that could be a stand-alone game just as complex as CW2 is

This is what I was getting at when I objected to breaking down resource production into the system proposed. I don't necessarily think that the current CW2 system is perfect or ideal. But I didn't think what I was reading was an improvement. It left me thinking, OK, this is definitely more *complex* but I don't see where I'm benefiting as a player, nor that the model proposed is any more accurate than the current one.

[elxaime]

to me the key should be to find a simple way to encourage ACTION in the game, the players know how history went, how with time the Union becomes a steamroller. But the game dynamic should still encourage aggressive action from both and more so from the Union. I just want the game to make 61 and 62 fun to play, with those sweeping campaigns we saw in the game.

Probably the best way to do that is to use a combination of the random leader values option plus randomizing leader names. Granted, people won't necessarily like commanding the Army of the Potomac with someone named William Bumpkiss, but if you randomize the names as well you will be closer to the historical situation where Lincoln and Davis didn't know what they would get and had to do things on the fly. I would go even farther and apply some fog of war to the leader values themselves. The numbers would slowly appear as leaders participated in battles. But folks who hadn't fought yet would just have a question mark. But not sure the system can handle it though.

The main problem with things as they stand is that everyone knows exactly which leaders can do what. Knowing this, it makes sense for the Union to be more cautious than historically in 1861-1862.

[grimjaw]

Probably the best way to do that is to use a combination of the random leader values option plus randomizing leader names.

It would take more than that, because the player can still see what his own leaders are capable of. You'd have to hide those values from the players or only give the most vague of indicators, and let them figure it out through trial and error.

[Z74]

If you want to break the economy down into where what raw resources were produced that could be a stand-alone game just as complex as CW2 is

This is what I was getting at when I objected to breaking down resource production into the system proposed. I don't necessarily think that the current CW2 system is perfect or ideal. But I didn't think what I was reading was an improvement. It left me thinking, OK, this is definitely more *complex* but I don't see where I'm benefiting as a player, nor that the model proposed is any more accurate than the current one.

Take a history book in your hands and you'll find out the challenge for both sides was to put those resources where needed.
When you add this "layer" (the initial assumption is CORRECT: it is a game in the game) to the military aspect of the game, you should then visualize the practical aspects of capturing a settlement that produces a particular resource.

When that resource goes missing the whole state feels the loss because it can't draw them from the unrealistic national pool of resources we have now.

That loss must be accounted for by the President via transfer and this transfer has a cost: don't just look at the resource cost and the % of the transfer failing, look at the SURE loss in loyalty it implies (loyalty is a resource in this system).
This doesn't just mean a game of territorial control and an added layer of resource management. It implies management of local decisions involving the control of loyalty which ALSO is a resource and therein lies the advantage for CSA which had mostly an unfaltering loyalty whereas the Union had serious problems in its bordering states. The management of transport capabilities (also a resource in this system), which is completely absent in the game, is another major issue this game has.

Since this works BOTH WAYS, that gives the Union a BAIT to attack secondary objectives (all settlements have a contribute to building that state resource pool) and the CSA a reason to neglect entrenchment and go offensive (hit the local Union resources AND hit its local loyalty factors).

I think the national pool and the ability to produce whatever you want, wherever you want, is the greatest problem this game has and once tackled, many other things will fall into proper place.

However, as I mentioned and concured with Orso, I have zero hopes that such a step will be taken.

[grimjaw]

Take a history book in your hands and you'll find out the challenge for both sides was to put those resources where needed.

Thanks. I have been (re)reading Foote's work for the last couple of weeks. New thread, please. This one has definitely gone off the rails from a lack of management.

[Captain_Orso]

Probably the best way to do that is to use a combination of the random leader values option plus randomizing leader names. Granted, people won't necessarily like commanding the Army of the Potomac with someone named William Bumpkiss, but if you randomize the names as well you will be closer to the historical situation where Lincoln and Davis didn't know what they would get and had to do things on the fly. I would go even farther and apply some fog of war to the leader values themselves. The numbers would slowly appear as leaders participated in battles. But folks who hadn't fought yet would just have a question mark. But not sure the system can handle it though.

The main problem with things as they stand is that everyone knows exactly which leaders can do what. Knowing this, it makes sense for the Union to be more cautious than historically in 1861-1862.

We discussed random characteristics, hidden characteristics and random-hidden characteristics for leaders a lot in brainstorming. There are a few factors which lead to it not being developed.

One of the reasons the South held out so long was that it took the Union damn long to find the leaders with the right stuff. The leaders who historically eventually cooked to the top of the cauldron also went through their own learning processes to get there, which also encompassed learning their trade at a level they had never experienced. Their superiors were not always waiting with open arms for them either.

So imagine a game with random-hidden characteristics. It's July '61 and the South is defending Virginia with a bunch of leaders--unannounced to him--in the caliber of Floyd, while the Union is fighting--through random chance--with leaders in the caliber of Grant, Sherman and Sheridan. Even if the players don't know their characteristics, they will soon find out when an irresistible blue wave roles over them and on to Richmond. As the newspapers had predicted, the troop are home by Christmas. The best thing that can be said about this playing of the game, is that it was over quickly. Completely random characteristics always risk extreme imbalance. You wouldn't play chess either if the pieces each side gets were random.

Hidden characteristics alone also bear imbalance with it. You have to introduce all the leaders a player gets in within a time frame all at once. Otherwise the player can know who a leader is from when and where he spawns. The Union has far more leaders than he can reasonably use enough to discover the characteristics of each and every one of them. Try finding Grant under 40 leaders just by battle results. Good leaders will get lost in the masses, which raises the question, "how many good leaders got lost in the masses in reality?". Should there be non-historical leaders that might be "found"? Can there be any balance in the game, if knowing who your good leaders are, happens by random chance? And without knowing who they are, the player cannot use them properly, and thus the ability of the player to play the game as it was designed to be played, becomes random.

It always sounds quite appealing and romantically challenging, the thought -what if the player were were faced with the same plight as Lincoln in his search for the men with the right stuff-, but in reality, many of his choices were practically forced upon him by politics, and the range of his choices were rather limited. He wasn't picking division and corps commanders; he was picking army commanders. His greatest challenge was to get those commanders to fight the war successfully and not destroy him politically.

This challenge, the player can have without random-hidden leader characteristics. That's what this thread was started about, how to get the Union player to do something in the first two years more than build an even larger army and wait for better commanders.

[elxaime]

We discussed random characteristics, hidden characteristics and random-hidden characteristics for leaders a lot in brainstorming. There are a few factors which lead to it not being developed.

One of the reasons the South held out so long was that it took the Union damn long to find the leaders with the right stuff. The leaders who historically eventually cooked to the top of the cauldron also went through their own learning processes to get there, which also encompassed learning their trade at a level they had never experienced. Their superiors were not always waiting with open arms for them either.

So imagine a game with random-hidden characteristics. It's July '61 and the South is defending Virginia with a bunch of leaders--unannounced to him--in the caliber of Floyd, while the Union is fighting--through random chance--with leaders in the caliber of Grant, Sherman and Sheridan. Even if the players don't know their characteristics, they will soon find out when an irresistible blue wave roles over them and on to Richmond. As the newspapers had predicted, the troop are home by Christmas. The best thing that can be said about this playing of the game, is that it was over quickly. Completely random characteristics always risk extreme imbalance. You wouldn't play chess either if the pieces each side gets were random.

Hidden characteristics alone also bear imbalance with it. You have to introduce all the leaders a player gets in within a time frame all at once. Otherwise the player can know who a leader is from when and where he spawns. The Union has far more leaders than he can reasonably use enough to discover the characteristics of each and every one of them. Try finding Grant under 40 leaders just by battle results. Good leaders will get lost in the masses, which raises the question, "how many good leaders got lost in the masses in reality?". Should there be non-historical leaders that might be "found"? Can there be any balance in the game, if knowing who your good leaders are, happens by random chance? And without knowing who they are, the player cannot use them properly, and thus the ability of the player to play the game as it was designed to be played, becomes random.

It always sounds quite appealing and romantically challenging, the thought -what if the player were were faced with the same plight as Lincoln in his search for the men with the right stuff-, but in reality, many of his choices were practically forced upon him by politics, and the range of his choices were rather limited. He wasn't picking division and corps commanders; he was picking army commanders. His greatest challenge was to get those commanders to fight the war successfully and not destroy him politically.

This challenge, the player can have without random-hidden leader characteristics. That's what this thread was started about, how to get the Union player to do something in the first two years more than build an even larger army and wait for better commanders.

I don't disagree that randomness can go both ways. But it is another legitimate route if people want to encourage less gaming of the system. IMO, it is at least as legitimate as inventing all sorts of "historical" restrictions and demands on the Union player to force them to do things they otherwise would prefer not to. This second route may provide more action, but it basically involves applying hindsight to one of the players and not the other. In other words, we assume that because Lincoln did X, Y or Z, he HAD to, whereas Jeff Davis had a menu of options and freedom to choose among them. Arguably both leaders had to make tough calls. You could as easily create an 1861-1862 "Not One Inch!" rule to force the Confederacy to defend every population center or lose NM in order to replicate the demands on Davis from local political leaders. In the game, the CSA can adopt a Russian-style defense in depth if he wants. The latter freedom is fine. But denying the same to the Union side seems justifiable only as a game-balancing mechanism, not as a nod to historical demands.

On this:

"One of the reasons the South held out so long was that it took the Union damn long to find the leaders with the right stuff. The leaders who historically eventually cooked to th"e top of the cauldron also went through their own learning processes to get there, which also encompassed learning their trade at a level they had never experienced. Their superiors were not always waiting with open arms for them either."

This is difficult to model without applying hindsight, but again there were no sure things. We know it took the North longer to find the top generals it needed, but that is because that is what happened historically. There are a ton of what-if's:

What if "Granny Lee" caught a bullet before he was appointed to command the ANV and become the "Marse Robert" of legend? Probably we would model his unit as a 0-1-1. We never know how Lyon would have turned out if he wasn't killed. Or Stonewall Jackson for that matter, if he lived and, say, took Hood's spot to command the Army of Tennessee against Sherman. Hood, Hooker and Early had illustrious careers as corps commanders, but are regarded as failed army commanders. How do we know that? Many think Hood took over with a losing hand already, and his aggressive approach was about a legitimate as any other - certainly the worst Hood did was comparable to Lee's ordering Pickett's Charge - a bad call that didn't impact Lee's ACW2 ratings. Hooker might have acted differently at Chancellorville if that cannonball hadn't hit near his head and stunned him. Early probably would have remained a legendary commander but, like Hood, he was in aggressive mode for a few battles too many, past the time where the odds remained reasonable.

At the start of the war, some historians point to the fact that most of the West Pointers went South as evidence of a Southern "baked-in" leadership edge. Yet having a West Point diploma was not a solid indicator of success. Little Mac had one, so did Sibley. Some of the finest commanders that emerged came from the volunteers. So again, this is largely hindsight. Because we know now that Southern leaders, on balance, seemed to perform better early on, we need to find a reason for this and so we latch onto the West Point degree. In reality, that comet of greatness could hit anyone, and Lady Luck (Napoleon's favorite attribute of a successful general) bestowed her favors without regard to resume.

[ohms_law]

There's a lot more to the "Southern 'baked-in' leadership edge" than a West Point degree. The majority of them served in the Mexican - American War, if nothing else.

I agree that the Union found some of the better commanders, eventually. Remember that Grant, for example, had been an officer before the war, but was unable to deal with the peacetime army (politics, and such).

[Captain_Orso]

We weren't talking about strategies in hindsight nor comparing Hood to Lee. We were talking about the balance of the game played with not only random stats on the leaders, but also hidden stats. It's a double blast against balance, plain and simple.

The one thing I could see doing would be to have variable stats, especially with leaders who died during the war, Bee, Kearney, Lyon. As you stated who knows how they might have actually turned out.

On the side of --just to make things interesting-- one could make even the tried and true leaders variable, but with balance. You could take leaders who come into the game at or near the same time and take some quality from one and give it to another, but without showing it to the player other than that he know the leader's actual quality is not show. For example, instead of **Grant starting 5-6-4 start him at 4-5-3 and give **Lyon, when he is promoted, instead of 5-2-2, 6-3-3. Leave the original values on the leaders, but put a "?" behind them until they've been proven in battle. You might even take a few leaders and put a "?" behind their vales, just to keep the player guessing a little. But if you go overboard with such things, the game will become unplayable.

[Captain_Orso]

There's a lot more to the "Southern 'baked-in' leadership edge" than a West Point degree. The majority of them served in the Mexican - American War, if nothing else.

I agree that the Union found some of the better commanders, eventually. Remember that Grant, for example, had been an officer before the war, but was unable to deal with the peacetime army (politics, and such).

Boredom and separations from his wife. He needed something straight forward to intellectually challenge him.

[elxaime]

There's a lot more to the "Southern 'baked-in' leadership edge" than a West Point degree. The majority of them served in the Mexican - American War, if nothing else.

I agree that the Union found some of the better commanders, eventually. Remember that Grant, for example, had been an officer before the war, but was unable to deal with the peacetime army (politics, and such).

It is not easy to generalize across the ranks the southern officers were more competent at their job than northerners. On both sides, sometimes you have good men dealt bad hands and vice versa. And not sure how "baked-in" any edge is without considering all the other things that go into the mix.

in WW2, for example, on paper US General Joseph Stilwell, according to his contemporaries, had all the right stuff to be an outstanding battle commander. Yet he had the misfortune (again in hindsight) to be sent to China by FDR and Marshall, largely based on Stilwell's having served three tours in China, being a master of spoken and written Chinese, and was having been the military attaché at the U.S. Legation in Beijing from 1935 to 1939. At the start of America's involvement in WW2, it wasn't preordained that China would turn out to be a backwater. Nor was the tremendous corruption and incompetence of Chiang Kai-Shek's regime fully appreciated. Stilwell wasn't sent to China as a punishment, despite how it turned out. Yet in the pantheon of US WW2 heroes, Stilwell rates barely a mention, despite having done some great work with what he had. British General William Slim, Stilwell's counterpart in the CBI Theater, is also regarded by history as doing a great job without having much to work with.

Their contemporaries, Patton and Montgomery, are the household names. But with a few breaks, we might instead have pillars with the names Stilwell and Slim on them at the Normandy memorials.

What I am getting at here is there is no completely "right answer" on things like generalship and political decision-making. ACW2 seems to do a rough justice in recreating the general situation. By all means, let's tweak it if we want or need to, including to make the game more fun. But we have to be careful to not go to far on the judgment calls. Even after 150 years, there are a tremendous amount of enduring myths about the Civil War.

[grimjaw]

Boredom and separations from his wife. He needed something straight forward to intellectually challenge him.

There should be a Grant's Wife unit, similar to Belle Boyd, and without her in Grant's stack he suffers penalties.

[Z74]

Best solution with generals is to give them a degree of stat/skill/attribute randomization + a degree of unknown stats the player needs to find out (this is the approach GGWBTS took and it works very well. Offensive stats revealed only if you attack with that general, for example) + a small shuffle of those stats when the general is promoted.

[Captain_Orso]

There should be a Grant's Wife unit, similar to Belle Boyd, and without her in Grant's stack he suffers penalties.

LOL but only if he hasn't plotted a move. Otherwise there's a chance that the Wild Turkey event fires.

It looks like this:

[tripax]

There should be a Grant's Wife unit, similar to Belle Boyd, and without her in Grant's stack he suffers penalties.

For what it is worth, I'd love to be able to include entourages for generals. Grant could have Cincinnati and Charles Dana hanging around, for instance.

[Captain_Orso]

Best solution with generals is to give them a degree of stat/skill/attribute randomization + a degree of unknown stats the player needs to find out (this is the approach GGWBTS took and it works very well. Offensive stats revealed only if you attack with that general, for example) + a small shuffle of those stats when the general is promoted.

That doesn't sound bad.

[Z74]

That doesn't sound bad.

That's a total incognita for the players of both sides and it builds a big set of losses for the Union because the player can't avoid attacking blindly at the beginning and he knows the basic stats of CSA are higher while the level of randomization can be customized so it doesn't go too far from historical values.

In case it's on, it can be mild, medium or completely random.

However, as far as I can remember, WBTS lacks the option of a "small" shuffle in case of promotion.
What it has, instead, and this is what I had mistakenly assumed at the beginning as "promotion change of stats" I had mentioned, is another couple of stats that only come into play when a general assumes the role of Theater Commander or Army Commander.

In order to reveal those stats, the player has to give the generals those promotions because without assuming that role, the key stats it employs can never be revealed (they are not used by normal generals).

[veji1]

That's a total incognita for the players of both sides and it builds a big set of losses for the Union because the player can't avoid attacking blindly at the beginning and he knows the basic stats of CSA are higher while the level of randomization can be customized so it doesn't go too far from historical values.

In case it's on, it can be mild, medium or completely random.

However, as far as I can remember, WBTS lacks the option of a "small" shuffle in case of promotion.
What it has, instead, and this is what I had mistakenly assumed at the beginning as "promotion change of stats" I had mentioned, is another couple of stats that only come into play when a general assumes the role of Theater Commander or Army Commander.

In order to reveal those stats, the player has to give the generals those promotions because without assuming that role, the key stats it employs can never be revealed (they are not used by normal generals).

that would have been awesome, we discussed it in the past a few times but indeed, a simpler way of having this randomized pool of leaders would be to just have the game "shuffle" the stats of the leader's on each side, for any given year, between the historical names. Say for example that the CSA gets overall 16 generals in 61, 22 in 62, 14 in 63, 9 in 64 and 3 in 65 for example. Well have the computer shuffle the IDs of the generals around. Simpler than inventing completely new stats and traits which might not match well, it would still make it quite different : Stonewall might be matched with Holmes stats, A.S. Johonston might be matched with Longstreet's stats (yey!!), etc..

This would mean that the CSA leader pool in 61 or 62 would remain the same in terms of higher quality than the USA one, but the cards being shuffled, you might end up with your best leaders being 1* in the west, or your 2 important 3* stars in the east with crap stats (Floyd's and Pillow's stats, argh!!!). This I think would require a simplish little algorithm added to the game: as the game loads, if you have chosen the "shuffle leaders" option, the game shuffles the stats per side and per year. No big code changes.

Then there is the issue of hiding the stats and making the player discover those as he plays, ie "through contact with the ennemy". This would be awesome but I fear this would be too big a change to make in the code, probably can't happen for this game.

I remember that I managed to get the "hidden activation" option into the game in one of the first few patches to add some element of surprise to the game, ie the player can't know in advance if his leaders will be active or not and can't therefore do "leader shopping". One other change that should be somewhat easy to do is to hide the stats of one's general to the other player (in the battle resolution screen, in game, etc). That way at least if the player knows which of his generals are good or bad, the opponent can't and must "learn" through experience ("hmm, he has been using Porter extensively and Porter seems to move real fast and always be very active, I wonder if that lucky bastard hasn't got Porter with Sherman's stats....").

To me these are changes that remain in the realm of what "could be done" in the game without it being too complicated. Ideally it could even be done by modding :
- Hidden activation (done already)
- Shuffle leader's stats (ie match a leader's name and portrait with one of the sets of stats of that year's batch of leaders, that way the general dynamic of better CSA leaders at the beginning, not so at the end, stays)
- Hide leader's stats to the opponent (that way he has to "learn" who is good or not).

This would really be great.

[Geohff]

I see here a lot of discussion about the Union Player not being aggressive and should be punished for not being aggressive. In a few post I've seen the argument that as a human player we have knowledge of the benefit of building strong armies before attacking - very legit, especially because Confederate Forces early in the game have so much punch no Union Force can contend with them. The question then should not be how do we force the Union player to act more aggressively against sure defeat instead of waiting until able to contend, but what incentive does he have to do so? Compare Brigades; Confederate: (Pre Made from the start, before activation allows and much more powerful than any Union ones that can be made; if; a leader is activated, or come later as Pre Made. These Confederate Brigades also sit in a Army Stack from their inception and Provide all such benefits to that Army stack) Union: (The only stack which gets Brigades early on is McDowell with 5 "Brigades", however he is in-active as well as his Brigade Generals. Each "Brigade" is 3 - 5 stacks, yet upon activation each Brigade General can absorb only 1 of his supposed Brigade elements.)

So why as a Union player would you initiate combat against full Confederate Brigades; formed without concern for their Brigade Generals being activated and within an Army stack granting their Brigade benefit to that Army stacks command, with you own Army which has at best; if all Brigade Generals happen to activate; (not likely); 5 Brigade Generals with only parts of their "Brigades" truly under their command and all the rest of their Brigade units actually draining the overall command of the Army Leader?

In essence the "why not be aggressive" as the Union player has good cause; in this example and others. So if you want to inspire the Union player to be more aggressive early on you do not "make him", "penalize him" or "script him" into an action completely against all logic. And BTW Numerous occasions to not move ran thru many Generals in the Civil War regardless of Political pressure, McDowell, Rosecrans, Buell, McClelland, Halleck even to name a few because they knew it was completely against all logic.

So what is the answer? Make the options to be aggressive available. Such as unlock McClelland and give him the troops he had to invade Western Virginia; long before Bull Run. The Union at real Bull Run had "Full Brigade" and even Divisional structure, they should have the same Brigade and Divisional abilities as the Confederates in the game, they may not still have the leadership or the moral the Confederates enjoy but for sure they should be able to match them in force size and make-up. The fact is as the Union player so much is locked, and what does become unlocked is small forces few at a time, far from the front, without hope of support and very impractical to be aggressive with early on against forces much stronger pre placed in the locations you desire to set your sights upon and subject to huge reinforcements close at hand.

My humble opinion as a Union Player who logically builds up my forces and waits for Brigade and Divisional command to level the odds.

[BattleVonWar]

The system that gives benefits for winning and losing battles make it tough to really expend the resources early on. I'm sure that -5 NM% is the worst most Union Players will face running a full on Bull Run. Meanwhile with the NM normalization, it really doesn't matter if she loses there or anywhere else so long as she can hold her defenses. So why not build up? All the penalties in the game will only make it a very long game if the Union and the CSA tries to attack fortifications, bleeding their troops out for no real gain? Meanwhile attacking fortifications if done right is a losing proposition.(in game a well fortified bastion is too bloody for any player to want to assault, and political pressure is really just a tiny thing) So the game stagnates cause the reward system for winning battles even narrowly just isn't good enough. Perhaps reward the Generals with much higher ratings that they keep. That or abilities that they keep. If a player is rewarded for playing well in this way it could really change things. That and perhaps mega NM Boosts that run a few turns and give each economy/morale of troops? Sort of like a Blitzkrieg if you win 3 consecutive battles? Something similar to where Lee was at the end of Chancellorsville.

Right now things go slow cause winning battles really doesn't mean much. Also the Union is not as weak as people make them out to be. They just have no incentive to fight early.