Heavy Artillery Replacements as the South

[FightingBuckeye]

What's the best way to handle replacing hits to 20lb batteries, Columbiads (if built), and siege artillery (usually just the Norfolk one)? With all the missing hits to your coastal guns, keeping 1 replacement chit on hand is not a viable route. You could put your artillery in G/G and in a structure to prioritize and facilitate when you have 10+ hits to replace. But that either deprives your side of some of its best guns should you be attacked if you pull just the batteries needing replacements out of your stack or it puts your whole force at a disadvantage if attacked. Plus waiting for 10+ missing hits before ordering replacements is not a great way to be 100% effective. It seems like you either potentially waste resources on coastal guns that might not ever fire a shot or are wiped out whenever the North lands in force OR some of your best guns are constantly below 100% and then you further weaken yourself when it is finally time to make good on their losses.

Seems like CW2 would be greatly served with some sort of special order like 'Do not replace losses' or something similar in order for the player to choose whether certain units can receive replacements.

[veji1]

What's the best way to handle replacing hits to 20lb batteries, Columbiads (if built), and siege artillery (usually just the Norfolk one)? With all the missing hits to your coastal guns, keeping 1 replacement chit on hand is not a viable route. You could put your artillery in G/G and in a structure to prioritize and facilitate when you have 10+ hits to replace. But that either deprives your side of some of its best guns should you be attacked if you pull just the batteries needing replacements out of your stack or it puts your whole force at a disadvantage if attacked. Plus waiting for 10+ missing hits before ordering replacements is not a great way to be 100% effective. It seems like you either potentially waste resources on coastal guns that might not ever fire a shot or are wiped out whenever the North lands in force OR some of your best guns are constantly below 100% and then you further weaken yourself when it is finally time to make good on their losses.

Seems like CW2 would be greatly served with some sort of special order like 'Do not replace losses' or something similar in order for the player to choose whether certain units can receive replacements.

There is no real solution, and nor should there be : I play as the south and I find it quite realistic : if the north consistently pounds your coastal forts into submission, either you pour money into them and your big land guns, or you have to admit that big guns are not for the CSA. You don't need columbiads though to have solid enough defensive fire.

[FightingBuckeye]

Well that's the thing, I want to be able to pour money into replacing losses to my large field guns without replacing any of the coastal guns' missing hit points. If I'm the Southern leader and order a bunch of large field pieces for my armies, I'd be a tad upset if they got diverted to some useless fort like Fort Brown or Fort Marion. The 20lbers and Columbiads do the most cohesion losses and that's a very valuable thing. I usually don't get (m)any Columbiads in my games as the South, it depends on how the war's going and what my economy's like. But the South starts with a couple of larger caliber guns even without buying any 20lbers, Columbiads, or siege batteries. Any that's not accounting for the rare times where you manage to capture a 20lb or Rodman battery.

[Gray Fox]

Artillery in a pure artillery Division hardly ever take hits in combat. If attrition and counterbattery fire are gradually degrading your heavy artillery then I would just build a new 20-lber every now and then. Otherwise you could micromanage this on the turn you want to replace lost guns:

http://www.ageod.net/agewiki/Replacements

"Replacement Rule and Advanced Attrition
A rule can be included in \Settings [usually in GameRules.opt] to regulate the use of replacements to recover hits

rulRecoverHit = 1 // recovery only requires unit to be in supply and stationary at start of turn
[no Replacement chits required or used
rulRecoverHit = 2 // recovery of hits requires the correct type of replacement chit, and
the unit must be stationary at the start of the turn
Separately, when setting Advanced Attrition "on" in the Main Menu, a unit must be stationary at a Depot to replace a missing element [and, of course, the correct type of replacement chit must be available]"

[FightingBuckeye]

No sarcasm, thanks. I knew some of the generalities, but not all the details on that page. Is there a difference between the 'advanced attrition' on that page and 'historical attrition' in CW2? Or is that a game concept for some of Ageod's other titles? I do form artillery divisions as soon as I have the CP and numbers to field them. And yes the replacement costs for those units is pretty steep. But if you have the WS, the money's pretty close between buying a new battery and replacing hits in your current ones. But you could be out of the force pool for 20lbers. Even if you have the units in the force pool, it might make sense (again if you have the WS) to replace hits on your more experienced batteries then it would be to build new ones. And the exorbitant costs of those replacement chits makes it pretty damn important that if you pay the cost that those chits are used on your field pieces vs basically going to waste on coastal guns. Putting units in passive will greatly increase their chances of replacing lost hits, but it's still a random allocation. I didn't know all what weighted that randomization, but I knew passive and depot would give you the best chance. But it's still a lottery and even one chit being spent on coastal artillery's something the CSA can ill afford.

[Gray Fox]

A lot of automated game functions need a human's over-ride key. I have a mountain of supplies in Chicago, but my army just moved two regions away from the port I captured, so all supplies stopped going to that port. It seems very tedious to put all of you coastal arty on P/P and rail your damaged gun batteries to a depot so that maybe they get the replacements. I just think that buying a new battery would be the simplest solution.

[tripax]

Why not just create/mod a separate "kind" of heavy artillery, so that replacements for the two kinds can be purchased separately? Right now heavy artillery chits replace 20lb, Columbiad, siege, fort, and coastal guns. Would you suggest having fort and coastal as one group and the other 3 as the other, put coastal by itself, or a different breakdown?

[FightingBuckeye]

That's actually a really good idea. I'm not too familiar with modding, especially with Ageod's stuff. But I might have to look into doing it myself or seeing if someone's already done something similar.

[DrPostman]

A lot of automated game functions need a human's over-ride key. I have a mountain of supplies in Chicago, but my army just moved two regions away from the port I captured, so all supplies stopped going to that port. It seems very tedious to put all of you coastal arty on P/P and rail your damaged gun batteries to a depot so that maybe they get the replacements. I just think that buying a new battery would be the simplest solution.

Or, build a cheap flatboat and the next turn convert it into a depot there.

[Cardinal Ape]

I'd like to see the coastal artillery chits separated from the field artillery replacements. Was it not a conscious choice for the Confederacy to decide how much too invest in coastal defense?

It is a risk to put your big land gun on passive to get replacements, but as long as they are inside a division they are immune to capture...

[Captain_Orso]

Although I agree that Coastal artillery should not take replacements from the same pool as 20lb-ers, Siege artillery should also not be in the same pool. The biggest issue is however not from which pool replacements are being taken, but to where replacements are being sent.

The mechanism currently in place are nice simple ways for the game to blindly influence the tendency of to where reinforcements go.

<RealityArgument> But if I'm the general in chief and I'm preparing to start a campaign with one or more armies, if I say all the replacements go to those armies, they dang well better go to those armies or somebody will have hell to pay. </RealityArgument>

That being said, it would take a major change in the game engine to implement that so it's not something we'll probably ever see.

I've never looked into it, but I imagine one could mod Coastal, 20lb-er, Roddman, Columbiad and Siege artillery to all use there own pools. You still wouldn't get to say to which 20lb-er batteries replacements when, other than through the aforementioned methods, but at least Coastal artillery couldn't soak-off replacements, even by chance, when I want them in the 20lb-ers.

[kc87]

What's the best way to handle replacing hits to 20lb batteries, Columbiads (if built), and siege artillery (usually just the Norfolk one)? With all the missing hits to your coastal guns, keeping 1 replacement chit on hand is not a viable route. You could put your artillery in G/G and in a structure to prioritize and facilitate when you have 10+ hits to replace. But that either deprives your side of some of its best guns should you be attacked if you pull just the batteries needing replacements out of your stack or it puts your whole force at a disadvantage if attacked. Plus waiting for 10+ missing hits before ordering replacements is not a great way to be 100% effective. It seems like you either potentially waste resources on coastal guns that might not ever fire a shot or are wiped out whenever the North lands in force OR some of your best guns are constantly below 100% and then you further weaken yourself when it is finally time to make good on their losses.

Seems like CW2 would be greatly served with some sort of special order like 'Do not replace losses' or something similar in order for the player to choose whether certain units can receive replacements.

Well historically the 20lb Army Parrot's were replaced as fast as possible. They were faulty and prone to bursting and caused ordinance problems. They were too small to be effective siege guns and too heavy and problematic to be efficient field guns ( I think I remember them impeding movement in game , if they don't they should, they weigh 1800lbs). I try to send them to bolster coastal fortifications and important cities, as the 20lb was originally designed as a naval cannon. In all the Confederacy had 8 20lb parrots by Gettysburg, the Union had 6. The missing heavy artillery chivs are problematic as the south, it costs a tremendous amount of war supply to replace them, and if I remember right the 20lb are not cheap to produce in game which was their main advantage in the war. I start building 12lb Napoleons in North Carolina as soon as possible to replace them in the field.