Why did this battle happen?
Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2014 8:42 am
My PBEM and I have a question as to why Jeb's forces got caught: Below is our conversation and the previous turn with orders and the results. And here is our conversation, please let me kow if any of my reasoning is wrong or if anyone has more info:
CSA: Do not understand what happened with Jeb’s div. Jeb was not set to attack anyone, in fact he was set to avoid. The battle report I have shows him trying to engage once and failing. Then he fought a battle in culpeper. I had him set to go on a deep raid, defend only, not a assault. With his modifiers and the other leaders modifier to avoid, forces against him should not even have had a chance to catch him. Roscrans did not even have any Calvary. How could he have caught him? It wiped out half of his force. That is half of my Calvary in the east. How does this happen? It has never happened before while playing the computer, during all the years I have played this game. Jeb is adept raider – 85% chance of retreat. M.J. Thompson, div commander is deep raider – 50% to evasion value, to the stack he is in. Is there some aspect of the game that I do not understand that you can explain to me?
Me (USA): I'll answer the best I can. The first thing I learned is that the message log is very misleading. It should say Jeb's force was forced to engage ..... day 4. Also the 33rd div was a unit I set to Passive. I think this may be an auto message when a stack is in passive and an enemy enters the region. Not sure on that one.
What Jeb ran into was Berry's Corps assaulting into Charlottesville. So, it's not that Jeb attacked Berry, but that Berry attacked Jeb. I believe that Jeb's adept raider 85% applies after combat. There was only 1 round of combat, so I think this actually worked as intended. Thompson's Deep raider trait is a not a 50% less chance of combat, but a 50% increase in evasion value of the lowest unit in the stack. I would imagine that would be the art which would be around 10 or 11 (I'm guessing horse art, as regular is like a value of 6). That would give you an evasion of 15 (I don't think it rounds up). My cav units have a patrol value of 11, That leads only a 4 of 15 successful tries. (This is why div builds suggest 1 element of Cav.) I don't believe a Cav's superior speed matters once in combat.
Another thing is that Jeb was in Defensive stance? If so he would be auto'ed into offensive stance if you had less than 5% MC. This didn't happen according to the battle report, though I had 100% MC with so many troops and winning a battle here last turn.
Other things to consider is that I had 9 elements of Cav in Culpeper when the battle happened, 2 of which are in Berry's corp. You can't see them because the Battle Report only shows the first 9 elements in a unit and the Inf come first (this is why I can't see any art in your units, but the top info says u had art).
As to the high losses, I would set that to the fact that even if Berry's men were the only ones to engage. Each of the 2 units had sharpshooters which gave me initiative and nearly 50 cannons each which had 10 lbs and 12 lbs, which have greater range than any horse art.
I making a post of it at /insert link/ to see if the beta guys and developers my have further insight.
Edit: What does the avoid Combat button really do? Does it decrease the chances of being caught at all or just increase the chance to retreat before the first round of combat? What are its percentages?
CSA: Do not understand what happened with Jeb’s div. Jeb was not set to attack anyone, in fact he was set to avoid. The battle report I have shows him trying to engage once and failing. Then he fought a battle in culpeper. I had him set to go on a deep raid, defend only, not a assault. With his modifiers and the other leaders modifier to avoid, forces against him should not even have had a chance to catch him. Roscrans did not even have any Calvary. How could he have caught him? It wiped out half of his force. That is half of my Calvary in the east. How does this happen? It has never happened before while playing the computer, during all the years I have played this game. Jeb is adept raider – 85% chance of retreat. M.J. Thompson, div commander is deep raider – 50% to evasion value, to the stack he is in. Is there some aspect of the game that I do not understand that you can explain to me?
Me (USA): I'll answer the best I can. The first thing I learned is that the message log is very misleading. It should say Jeb's force was forced to engage ..... day 4. Also the 33rd div was a unit I set to Passive. I think this may be an auto message when a stack is in passive and an enemy enters the region. Not sure on that one.
What Jeb ran into was Berry's Corps assaulting into Charlottesville. So, it's not that Jeb attacked Berry, but that Berry attacked Jeb. I believe that Jeb's adept raider 85% applies after combat. There was only 1 round of combat, so I think this actually worked as intended. Thompson's Deep raider trait is a not a 50% less chance of combat, but a 50% increase in evasion value of the lowest unit in the stack. I would imagine that would be the art which would be around 10 or 11 (I'm guessing horse art, as regular is like a value of 6). That would give you an evasion of 15 (I don't think it rounds up). My cav units have a patrol value of 11, That leads only a 4 of 15 successful tries. (This is why div builds suggest 1 element of Cav.) I don't believe a Cav's superior speed matters once in combat.
Another thing is that Jeb was in Defensive stance? If so he would be auto'ed into offensive stance if you had less than 5% MC. This didn't happen according to the battle report, though I had 100% MC with so many troops and winning a battle here last turn.
Other things to consider is that I had 9 elements of Cav in Culpeper when the battle happened, 2 of which are in Berry's corp. You can't see them because the Battle Report only shows the first 9 elements in a unit and the Inf come first (this is why I can't see any art in your units, but the top info says u had art).
As to the high losses, I would set that to the fact that even if Berry's men were the only ones to engage. Each of the 2 units had sharpshooters which gave me initiative and nearly 50 cannons each which had 10 lbs and 12 lbs, which have greater range than any horse art.
I making a post of it at /insert link/ to see if the beta guys and developers my have further insight.
Edit: What does the avoid Combat button really do? Does it decrease the chances of being caught at all or just increase the chance to retreat before the first round of combat? What are its percentages?