What's the fuss over Artillery Divisions? And Corps Artillery for that matter...

[Jerzul]

I've been seeing artillery divisions mentioned a time or two, and was wondering why they are a big deal, and also, how they are put together. Are they actually just a ton of artillery under with a leader formed in a division with no other units?

While we are discussing the best use of unbrigaded artillery, what do people generally use for corps artillery? (as in how many batteries, and in all corps, or in the army stack, etc.?)

I look forward to the lively discussion.

[Gray Fox]

I posted long ago that Divisions should contain mostly infantry types, because at range zero during the assault phase the big guns don't fire. I advocated all the artillery loose in a stack of infantry Divisions, because at the time I thought that an artillery Division would just get wiped out in an assault. Then pgr started this post:

http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?38429-The-Artillery-Division&highlight=artillery+division+pgr+cw2

After a lot of discussion enough players tried it to show that artillery Divisions worked well. Its also a way to mimic the historical use of artillery in large groups.

http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?38250-Union-artillery&highlight=artillery+division+pgr+cw2

AGEOD picked up on this and Athena (the AI) was reprogrammed to use artillery Divisions as well. Here's one possible artillery Division:

http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?41565-One-possible-Union-army&highlight=artillery+division+pgr+cw2

Frontage determines how many combat and suppot elements can be used in battle. In open terrain, the General also affects these numbers. Grant/Lee can use up to 24 batteries under ideal conditions.

[W.Barksdale]

I see a lot of people attempting to form artillery divisions in my PBEMs. After much trial and error my personal belief is that it is much more effective to have artillery loose in stacks for several reasons:

There are only so many batteries of light and medium artillery available to be built when using historical forcepools. Using 4-5 batteries per regular division and 5-6 for an elite division very quickly exhausts the supply of light and medium artillery, especially when playing as the rebels. The available light and medium artillery is put to much better use inside standard divisions in order to maximise the number of combat effective divisions at your disposal.

Similarly, there are relatively few numbers of 20lber and Rodman/Columbiads available to be built using historical forcepools, this is again especially true as CSA, . Placing these inside a dedicated artillery division really limits your deployment options if you are forced to split up your army in a strategic movement.

Lastly, once armies get big enough to split into several corps, the best place for stack artillery is directly in the army stack, allowing your corps to max out on combat effective divisions. It will automatically support corps in the same region and gets +10% to its MTSG for engaged corps in adjacent regions. Any extra CPs in your corps can be topped up with loose artillery or cavalry.

[ArmChairGeneral]

While I see your points, Barksdale, I find that dedicated artillery divisions do noticeably more damage in combat. This is (primarily) because of two reasons: the artillery division has an extra layer of commander bonuses (I usually put my best division general in charge of the artillery to maximize this) and the artillery division concentrates its fire on one unit. The concentration is a big factor, as it makes it more likely that the target will get shaken elements early, which then makes it very likely they will break the next time they are hit, causing a cascade of morale checks and potential routs across the battlefield.

[tripax]

...
Lastly, once armies get big enough to split into several corps, the best place for stack artillery is directly in the army stack, allowing your corps to max out on combat effective divisions. It will automatically support corps in the same region and gets +10% to its MTSG for engaged corps in adjacent regions. Any extra CPs in your corps can be topped up with loose artillery or cavalry.

That doesn't match what I understood. I don't think support units like artillery take frontage, so removing an artillery division from a corps doesn't help when only two or three divisions are going to take part in the early rounds of a battle before nearby stacks can MTSG and put in divisions to replace ones that have retired from the front. On the other hand stacks that MTSG don't take part in much of the ranged combat (and don't get an entrenchment bonus or face a river crossing malus), so artillery in such a stack misses out on many of its ranged shots. So unless your stack will mostly fight in high frontage plains areas, filling your fighting stacks with your best artillery, support, and marine units is a good idea.

[W.Barksdale]

The concentration is a big factor, as it makes it more likely that the target will get shaken elements early, which then makes it very likely they will break the next time they are hit, causing a cascade of morale checks and potential routs across the battlefield.

Artillery loose in the stack will also concentrate fire on the single largest enemy unit smashing its cohesion and causing morale checks.

[ArmChairGeneral]

W.Barksdale,
Yes, but not as effectively. Both concentrate fire, so they are equal in those terms, but the division does the job better for a number of other reasons.

First are CP considerations, where the division is clearly superior; you can simply cram more guns into the same amount of CPs (although you can't always take advantage of the extras because of frontage).

Second, in most defensive battles and whenever MTSGing, Army guns will not get to fire on the first round and won't benefit from entrenchments (unless they are the only stack in the region at the point of attack). *

Third, is leadership. This is especially important for the Union, since they have to be on offense a lot, so need every little advantage they can get. If stack artillery are combined into a division instead of loose, they gain an extra +.03 per OFF/DEF to the command-bonus contest, on top of the .05 per OFF/DEF point the stack commander provides to both configurations. Putting the division general with the best rating/ability combo in charge of artillery divisions yields substantial extra hits across corps sized battles.

Fourth is the leadership implications of the frontage selection mechanism. Support elements are chosen from across all elements available. Artillery that is mostly dispersed across combined arms divisions (the traditional, or AACW setup) receives whatever leadership bonus that their (most likely 3-1-1) commander happens to have. Having as big of a proportion as possible of your artillery concentrated under a high stat leader gives you the best opportunity to gain extra bonuses. (You usually can't avoid having one or two artillery in most divisions, but the more you get under the best guy the better your chances of having a high bonus gun selected for the frontage.)

Fifth, by minimizing the artillery in your combat divisions you make room for more infantry (or cav). ** Increasing the number of combat elements in a division (especially the infantry) increases the damage it can take as well as increases its performance in the assault phase. Artillery combined into dedicated divisions rather than spread across combined arms divisions frees space for the combat divisions to pack a larger punch.

By using artillery divisions you get all the advantages of stack artillery combined with bonuses to combat, increased flexibility and overall higher artillery participation in battles. Artillery have the highest likelihood to hit and highest damage of any element type already, so these are the elements that it is worth spending the time to maximize.


----------------------------

*
If any stack is MTSGing, it can only enter combat on the second round or later. These rounds only have two phases, range 1 fire combat and range 0 assault, so the guns do not get in the extra shots at range that they would have gotten in the first round, and MTSGers never benefit from entrenchments.

If an Army stack is defending at the point of attack, and is the only stack in the region, it WILL get to fire in the first round and will get to take advantage of any entrenchments. However, due to the Special Army Commitment rule, if there are other stacks in the region, those stacks will almost always be chosen as the target instead of the Army. When on defense, the Army usually has to sit out the first round, (since no one is attacking it) then advance across the battlefield to support their comrades on the second and later rounds, losing their entrenchments. (They might actually get entrenchments in this case, but I doubt it. The battlelog should show it if anyone wants to check.) When attacking I usually don't get any guff from the Army Commitment rule and things mostly work like normal, especially with synchronized movement, but if you are attacking with an Army stack you would want your artillery in a division anyway, even if only for CPs.

**
Cavalry, unlike artillery, are best dispersed across divisions rather than combined into an all cav division during large battles. Cav need an infantry meat shield to avoid racking up a lot of expensive-to-replace cav hits.

[GraniteStater]

Historically, there were no Arty Divs. The CSA tended towards a Corps Arty structure; the Union integrated some Arty into Divisional and lower echelons, and had a proportionally smaller Corps Arty.

Initially, Cav was integrated into lower echelons; over time, Cav was broken out separately. Note there were no true modern Divisions; the administrative unit was the regiment; brigades and divisions and corps were somewhat ad hoc groupings of convenience (although lasting a long time, months and years).

I tend to build my Divs as 4 x (6# or 12# or Gat), one or two Cav, S/S or Marine or Sailor, and Inf.

I put 10# and 20#, Rodmans, etc., loose in the stack. IIRC, the loose Arty will fire on targets of opportunity, particularly the strong ones; 'divisionalized' Arty picks the 99th Chicken Beaters and stays with them. I could be misremembering.

If I read some comments above rightly, hey, Arty only works well in the opening rounds - do I have that right? So, we have an Arty Div doing its thing and then going to lunch? Also, does an Arty Div pick targets of opportunity?

At any rate, if I want to bring a slide rule to this game, I'll play War in the Pacific or its kin (WitP:AE is awesome, to be sure, but pushes the bounds of playability). Nothing like actuarial tables for a good time.

It's gamey, imho.

Some say pitching, defense, and three-run homers; others say small ball and the running game. Put your team together, I'll put mine together, we'll play 162 in a fifteen team league and see who gets into the playoffs and wins the Series.

This game (or any good game) should reward different approaches. Be pretty boring if The Solution was the only way to go.

[Gray Fox]

I'm not suggesting that one solution fits all. The discussion topic is artillery Divisions.

Any Division that is going to be defending some location all by itself, like a depot or fort, will need artillery as part of its intrinsic organization. The brigades with 6 lbers are good for assembling these mixed "garrison Divisions". Addind a few loose batteries to a mixed Division's position might stiffen its defense. Several light guns will have a much better to-hit chance from being entrenched.

By a similar reckoning, Divisions targeted for offensive action will benefit from more infantry as the 6 lbers are less useful in the assault. Several "heavy infantry Divisions" of mostly men with bayonets still need artillery support and an all artillery Division of big guns provides this quite well. The game doesn't provide a means of assembling an artillery brigade or battalion as was historically used, but an artillery "Division" is for all intents and purposes this formation. Both sides have more than enough batteries to equip several artillery Divisions. These would be for the tip of the spear, the elite force you have assembled to take the key objectives or provide the counterpunch.

Artillery use their full ROF for the first round of combat and then fire once every round until range zero, where they logically do not fire into the melee of the assault phase because their own side's troops are in the way. Artillery are support troops, so they have a separate but rather smaller area of frontage than the combat elements. For this reason, a stack with mixed Divisions of infantry with light artillery and an artillery Division of big guns doesn't work well. Let's say the frontage for support elements is 12. You have three mixed Divisions each with four 6-lbers and an artillery Division with a dozen expensive 20-lbers. That means you have 24 artillery elements and only 12 batteries may fire each round. Half of the time, the light guns will be randomly chosen to fire and your big guns will sit idle.

So, one solution is not the answer, but you wouldn't pound nails with a screwdriver. Know when and why to use a mixed Division alone or heavy infantry Divisions supported by an artillery Division in the assault.

[GraniteStater]

You didn't address targets of opportunity (loose Arty focusing on the strongest oppo). Does an Arty Div do that? Methinks not, but...

And I wasn't saying anyone was preaching the Sole Truth. Just making an observation. If a player beats another player consistently, let's say a non-ArtyDiv guy beating an ArtyDiv guy (which side would matter, of course & other factors), then, there's some evidence, provided both are about the same skill level.

ACW cannon were direct fire, for the most part. They tended to be distributed with formations. I just don't think ArtyDivs are really kosher. Just my opinion.

[Gray Fox]

If you read the links I provided in post #2, you'll see that I did a test with a mixed Division, loose guns in the stack and an artillery Division. The guns always fired at the same target no matter what, so no advantage to any of the choices in that respect. Each loose gun in the stack did not fire at a separate target. Watch the CSPAN video in that link on the actual use of artillery in the Civil War. Yes, guns were initially divided up among the Union Divisions by McClellan...and this may have been a major contribution to all of the early Confederate victories. Napoleon knew that massed artillery at the point of decision was the way to win battles. The Union had to relearn this, but the player does not.

If AGEOD made a flight simulator, then a pilot might notice if the physics needed a tweak. I'm a soldier. A combat simulation needs to obey the laws of war.

[GraniteStater]

If I have my facts straight, as late as '63, Gettysburg, the AotP had artillery attached to Divs - and a centralized formation, too. I'm no expert, but I do recall that, although that statement was read years ago. Note the use of the verb 'to tend' - CSA took a Corps Arty approach, the Union, a bit more spread out. I'm sure there were practices that varied.

I'm a veteran, myself, so are probably quite a few folks here. As an amateur historian, yes, I'm interested in the 'actual' use, too. Maybe you know more.

Your experiment showed no targets of opportunity? I find that surprising. Maybe we should ask the devs if this is WAD.

It's not a simulation, it's a game - the better the modelling, good, but a true simulation means CSA Loses, Every Time. Shelby Foote thought the North fought the war with 'one hand behind its back', to quote him.

I find the use of ArtyDivs undesirable - do you think they reflect the 'laws of war'? I don't, not for direct fire cannon. I find their use to be an exploit, but, hey, it's a free country - thanks to them dam Yankees.

[Gray Fox]

Of course it's an exploit. That's the whole point. An all cavalry Division exploits speed over other pursuing Divisions. A heavy infantry Division exploits staying power in battle. An all artillery Division exploits massed firepower. A garrison Division exploits its entrenched artillery. You're not going to tee off with a putter. As of update 1.06, Athena uses pure artillery Divisions. Mass artillery formations are historically accurate. Napoleon used mass artillery formations for a reason.

[ArmChairGeneral]

Edit: Others beat me to this response while I was typing.

GraniteStater said,

If I read some comments above rightly, hey, Arty only works well in the opening rounds - do I have that right? So, we have an Arty Div doing its thing and then going to lunch? Also, does an Arty Div pick targets of opportunity?

No, you are not reading that right. Artillery works just fine in the later rounds as well. They have the highest hit chance of all element types, and for the most part they do the most damage, too, no matter the round. What we are saying is that artillery that does not fire in the first round (because of MTSG or the stack commitment mechanic, or really any reason) is missing out on the EXTRA chances to hit that it could have had. A setup in which the artillery can fire the first round is superior because, hey, otherwise missed round, but also because the first round has more hit rolls than later rounds. (This can be seen directly in the BR results. The first round usually results in 50-100% more hits than successive rounds in corps vs. corps battles. This doesn't all come from the extra artillery hit rolls, but they are a major factor in the disparity.)

GraniteStater said,

I put 10# and 20#, Rodmans, etc., loose in the stack. IIRC, the loose Arty will fire on targets of opportunity, particularly the strong ones; 'divisionalized' Arty picks the 99th Chicken Beaters and stays with them. I could be misremembering.

Well, there really isn't such a thing as a Target of Opportunity in the game per se. Just like loose stack artillery, dedicated artillery divisions tend to target the largest enemy unit. Target selection is random weighted by unit size measured in number of hits, but with the extra rule that if a unit has suffered a hit from an enemy combat unit it will likely choose the enemy unit that hit it as its target no matter the size. Elements in a unit (division) do not independently select targets, they fire on the same target as everyone else in their unit. This means that both stack artillery and dedicated artillery divisions tend to be free to fire on the largest and most dangerous enemy units, because they are not getting shot at by anyone (combat units draw fire, support units mostly do not, so they do not get sucked into the returning fire thing that leads divisions to face off against each other during battle.) Artillery that is distributed into combined arms divisions is pretty much forced to target the combat division that the rest of their division has engaged. Thus the total number of hits the artillery in the battle generate gets applied to many different units, whereas if they had been loose stack artillery or dedicated division artillery those hits would mostly be concentrated on just a few targets. This concentrated fire is the reason that stack artillery was advantageous in the first place. Artillery divisions give you the same concentration benefits as stack artillery but with other factors on top of that (see earlier post) that make them even better at taking advantage of the concentration.

An artillery division does not stay firing on the 99th Chicken Beaters for every round, their target can change to a different unit (division) the next round, but within one round all fifteen (or is it fourteen, I can never remember) guns are firing at the same unlucky enemy division, which is way more effective than the same number of guns splitting the same number of hits up between multiple divisions.

GraniteStater said,

At any rate, if I want to bring a slide rule to this game, I'll play War in the Pacific or its kin (WitP:AE is awesome, to be sure, but pushes the bounds of playability). Nothing like actuarial tables for a good time.

It's gamey, imho.

Some say pitching, defense, and three-run homers; others say small ball and the running game. Put your team together, I'll put mine together, we'll play 162 in a fifteen team league and see who gets into the playoffs and wins the Series.

The good news is that those of us who do like to break out the slide rule (I am in fact an actuary in my day job, and that kind of thing is up my alley) have already set up the sandboxes to play out the whole season so that you don't have to, and the results are in: the artillery divisions won the pennant. Gray Fox, minipol, tripax, myself and others have all done extensive testing on this subject and many of the results were posted (Gray Fox did the most cogent and informative analysis on this topic if you want to search out the posts). If you think artillery divisions are gamey and ahistorical, then that is perfectly reasonable, (and I don't necessarily disagree with that position) but that is a question of SHOULD rather than IS. When the idea for all-Arty divisions first popped up I thought it was an exploit that would eventually be patched out, but instead the developers adjusted the AI to use Arty divisions as well, making arty divisions an officially sanctioned configuration, and by definition NOT gamey.

[ArmChairGeneral]

You didn't address targets of opportunity (loose Arty focusing on the strongest oppo). Does an Arty Div do that? Methinks not, but...

The answer to this question is that YES, they do.

[GraniteStater]

Well, ACG, it's nice to know that someone else's initial reaction was similar to mine. If the devs have incorporated it, well, I wouldn't buy popocorn, but that's what's at the movie house.

IIRC, Wellington's thin red line beat every French general, including the Corsican. Which was half a century before the Civil War. Things moved fast.

The plain fact of the matter is that, compared to contemporary European conflicts (mid-19th century), the ACW was very, very infantry heavy. Neither side used cav or arty as much, or in the same proportions, as the armies in Europe. I forget my source, but it's out there.

We should actually recruit by regiment, most here know that. From Sumter to Appomattox did that, IIRC, then you formed brigades. I could be mistaken.

Afaik, however, there were no "Artillery Divisions". If Gray Fox wants to contend that it's a good bit of modelling, hey, he's entitled, though I think it's more than a little stretch.

It's not a tactical game, we don't decide to deploy two Cav brigades to slow Heth down on 1 July. On the field, I don't recall Napoleonic bombardments being employed - "softening up", like on 3 July '63, yes (which was counter-batteried to a degree); blowing holes like the French did, I don't recall reading much of over the decades - don't forget that the Emperor's opponents learned his methods and then adapted - by 1810 on, rather well.

I have much difficulty buying ArtyDivs as an organizational feature. Modelling it's use - maybe. Maybe.

[Gray Fox]

If I have an active one-star and a single regiment after Oct. '61, then I can form a Division that only has one regiment. Similarly I can form a Division that only has 15 artillery batteries.

[GraniteStater]

The point being...?

I hope you can read my last post & understand that I'm conceding the issue, however reluctantly that may be. Don't be the car salesman who keeps on talking after the customer says, "I'll buy it."

[Gray Fox]

I agree entirely - maybe. Maybe.

Recapping, mixed Divisions with infantry and some 6-lbers are hard not to use. The force pools of both sides have lots of mixed brigades. These Divisions make good defensive units to hold forts and such. A few additional loose gun batteries would make them even better at this.

Put several mixed Divisions in a stack with a Division of big guns and the 6-lbers compete with the guns you spent so many resources to buy. In a stack with an artillery Division, the Divisions should be all infantry types with a dash of cavalry for the screening/pursuit advantage. The Union has three Generals that can train a total of 6 single militia elements into line infantry every turn, so you can fill lots of heavy infantry Divisions with no cannons. The CSA doesn't have this advantage, but can make twenty Divisions with only one 6-lber:

[ATTACH]38028[/ATTACH]

So, either side can have mixed Divisions hold the line and still have an elite force of heavy infantry Divisions supported by a heavy artillery Division as the tip of the spear.

[Jerzul]

Wow! This was quite the discussion! Thank you to all who were involved. Honestly, the main points of this thread should be saved somewhere. Either stickied or to a wiki. In-depth discussions of game mechanics should be memorialized somewhere!

[Gray Fox]

Thanks, but in all honesty, I'm sure that most players don't really care about such things. The game is great fun no matter what the level of complexity. Good luck!