General death rates too low?

[BossGnome]

Hi,

It seems to me like the general mortality of generals does not accurately reflect the rate at which casualties were sustained in the general staff. Here I found a list of Union generals killed in the Civil War. There seems to have been 38, with another 29 "dying of wounds received in action." Now, I realize that probably not all those people are "named" in-game (I don't really know what a "brevet" brigadier general is(?)) but, to give an example, in the game I am playing it is now July 63 and there have been a total of 3 deaths of generals - one of the Union side, two on the confederate side. Shouldnt this number be much higher?

Also, while I understand that it would really suck to, say, have a bad dice roll and have Lee die in his first battle or something, the fact that 3-star generals are immune to death does not allow a character like A.S. Johnston to perish like he did historically, which is unfortunate. I am not saying that ASJ should usually die, but having it impossible for a historical event such as his death to be replicated in a game like this shows a flaw in the design, wouldn't you say?

[ArmChairGeneral]

I kind of agree, but I think of it in terms of the Role Playing Game model. In some games character death is always on the table; it is a dangerous world, and people get killed when stuck with swords. At other tables, character death is implicitly not going to happen; what's the fun in putting a lot of work into developing a character's personality, only to have them get killed by a lucky roll from an orc? A boss fight maybe, but mooks certainly won't take you down. I think low rates of general death represent a bit of "plot armor" that lends itself to narration. When generals die it is a spectacular and memorable event, and the current death rate suits the pacing and flow of the game well IMO.

Mechanically, there aren't enough generals to go around as it is, and there is not a ready pool of brevetable brigade commanders (military slang for battlefield promotion) that spawn to take their places. In real life if a general died, someone would be found to take his place; generals are as expendable and replaceable as any other soldier. The alternative of higher death rate would necessitate a brevet spawning system to replace them, or else your troops would not not have any commanders left half way through the war, which isn't historical either. At least for the 1*s there would be no effective difference between one of the predefined generals and a spawned general, which would take away some of the historical flavor that the portraits and stats convey. Easier and better for immersion to simply make the generals (who are the characters in this game) hard to kill. Under the current system general death is a big loss of capability and carries both mechanical as well as narrative weight that would be lost if it were more common.

This is definitely a game-design choice on the part of the devs, and I think the current system makes a narratively interesting game, though I agree that it is ahistorical.

[Captain_Orso]

There are far fewer leaders in the game then were actually in the war, even when considering only those fulfilling the rank of brigadier general and above.

The probability of a leader being killed in battle is .2% per battle regardless of rank.

There have been discussions about how mortality and wounding might be changed in the game with widely varying opinions and suggestions.

A brevet is a non-regular promotion to a leader to allow him to hold a position within the military organization. The brevetted rank was maintained by that leader as long as he held that position. If a leader is granted a normal promotion, he will maintain that rank regardless of his position. Also note that during the civil war there were two different ranking organization, the regular army and the volunteer army. AFAIK their ranks were equivalent during the war, but after the war the volunteers officers would generally be reduced to a peace time rank required by the non-regular (militia) organization according to position.

The game makes no distinction between the type of promotion nor professional or volunteer/militia organizations.

[Mickey3D]

Mechanically, there aren't enough generals to go around as it is, and there is not a ready pool of brevetable brigade commanders (military slang for battlefield promotion) that spawn to take their places. In real life if a general died, someone would be found to take his place; generals are as expendable and replaceable as any other soldier. The alternative of higher death rate would necessitate a brevet spawning system to replace them, or else your troops would not not have any commanders left half way through the war, which isn't historical either. At least for the 1*s there would be no effective difference between one of the predefined generals and a spawned general, which would take away some of the historical flavor that the portraits and stats convey

I'm thinking aloud and I know this won't be implemented but :

- A KIA officer acting as divisional commander could be automatically replaced by a "brevet" officer with basic/poor statistics (2-1-1 or 2-0-1). If the division is disbanded, the "brevet" officer disappear at the end of the turn.

- If a corps or army commander is killed, he could be replaced by the next most senior commander in the region his stack is. This one would be in turn replaced by the next senior officer, etc. If a leader is missing at the end of the chain to replace a promoted officer, he would be replaced by a "brevet" officer.

[wsatterwhite]

It's important to remember that leaders in the game theoretically are only supposed to represent divisional level commanders and up, most of the general casualties in the war were brigade commanders. By my count, the Union lost 1 army commander (serving under a higher level commander), 3 corps commanders and 14 division commanders (at least two of these being relatively small organizations that probably wouldn't qualify as "divisions" in game). In real life, July 63 saw the Union lose its 2nd corps commander and 8th general overall.

[Captain_Orso]

There currently is --or there was?-- code in place, which kept a division together as a division if the commander was wounded or killed in battle. I've seen it happen exactly once. Whether there is some such rules for corps commanders IDK.

[veji1]

As said, this was discussed a lot and a big part of the thinking was that higher death ratios would cripple the AI because she would have a hard time facing it. To me a big battle (say like the one that just occurred in Mickey3D and GF's AAR) should lead on average to one leader death and one or two injuries... All big battles in the ACW with more than 15 000 casualties (altogether) had that kind of ratio. The best way to allow the AI not to be crippled by this would be to have the code avoid division or corps break up by having a random general pop up with bad stats, say 1-0-1, as a place holder to keep the division or corps together. That way the ripple effect of leader losses would be lower.

At the end of a long hard fought game finishing in 64/65, each side should have had about 10/15 dead leaders and double that in terms of injuries (blocking a general from 2 to 8 turns and sometimes altering their stats). But as said this has been discussed many times and the suggestion was always that players can mod and alter the odds, but without a systemic solution (ie place holder random generals), than I doubt the developper change it, which is a shame because it is part of the flavour of the game, to be able to follow the adventures of leaders, etc... have Longstree be injured in summer 62, coming back in the autumn you send him in the west, etc. CW2, just like AACW lacks in this department which is a shame because it wouldn't be overcomplicated to fix it.

[Mickey3D]

To me a big battle (say like the one that just occurred in Mickey3D and GF's AAR) should lead on average to one leader death and one or two injuries...

I did not report it in the AAR, but I lose a division leader in the last big battle you are referring to. In previous battles I loose another officer and Pickett was injured. I don't know what happened on GF's side.

[pgr]

The game represents Division leaders and up. (Divisions, Corps, Armies). My bet is that a large number of the dead and wounded Generals in the war were leading brigades. (Think Pickett's Charge. All of Pickett's brigade leaders were killed or wounded, Garnett, Armistead, and Kemper. They were all generals, but in the game, Pickett is depicted as the only leader.) Brigade leaders typically lead from the front, placing themselves in considerable danger, while division leaders (and higher level leaders) stayed back to exercise better command and control of the whole. So knowing that, I don't think the general death rates are too off.

Now as the organizer of the Civil War 2 PBEM tournament currently under way, I can attest to the fact that Army commanders (3 star generals) can indeed die. (Reference The Big Muddy Grant Disaster.

I asked Pocus about it and he told me the following:

Any battle makes all leaders roll a death dice each round, provided their stack is involved. This is increased in case of heavy losses, but even no loss can result in a very unlikely death. Thinks lucky sharpshooter here...
But if there is a total of 0 combat ships, probably a force in river move should not engage any target though.

This seems to indicate there are two leader death checks. One is for the leader of the stack. Any stack that comes into contact with an enemy stack will have a check to see if its leader is killed (or wounded). Then during combat firing rounds, unit leaders can be killed in relation to battle losses (and it seems like 3 stars are immune from this process).

So I'd say that given the fact the game represents only upper echelon leaders, the leader death process isn't too off the mark.