Kamikaze level casualties

[Ironclad]

I'm used to some high CW2 casualties at times but playing through a few turns of Jena has generated a mind boggling level. Example French force on offensive posture wins in long 6 round victory over similar sized entrenched Prussians at Leipzig. French lose 45,000 out of 53,000 (90%) and Prussians 48,000 out of 51,000 (94%) and only 5000 of the latter were prisoners. Artillery losses were 123 out of 168 and 157 out of 240.

Couple of other initial observations. Despite the presence of Napoleon and French corps being close to one another MTSG doesn't seem to be generating the level of cooperation experienced in CW2.

The battle gauge doesn't seem to be registering the true numbers that appear in some battles unlike the CW2 ones where one can see the high figures arriving.

These observations are very premature and may not be representative but the kamikaze battle seemed off the scale.

[Pocus]

Yes about kamikaze battles, troops don't want to give up terrain... We are tweaking that but I fear the first patch files are already sent. We will probably ends up proposing a 2nd patch as an unofficial test as soon as the first patch is official though.

[Highlandcharge]

Ironclad where any of armies on attack at all costs or/and hold at all costs?

Its weird as the casualties in my games have been close to realistic....

[lycortas2]

My experience is running through the 1805 Franco-Austrian campaign as France twice. In both cases the losses were higher overall than was normal but certain, small units were crushed. The French guard died to a man in both iterations and the Austrian grenadiers also were crushed. One odd thing I see is like this:

French 1st division caused 16 hits, received 13 hits
French 2nd division caused 22 hits, received 11 hits
etc, all looking as it should.
Then I will get Austrian grenadier division with the leader I cannot remember
Austrian division took 85 hits caused 0 hits.

What? If this is one or twice in dozens of battles, sure that happens. But I am seeing this in two out of two.
Small, high quality units are doomed in a corps battle.

[Highlandcharge]

Its possible the Austrian unit was hit by Arty?

I have just had 2 battles one where it was my French divisions v some Prussian brigades, in the 1st battle all the brigades survived and retreated, in the 2nd battle 5 out of 5 brigades where destroyed, the only difference being the terrain, the 1st battle was fought in forest terrain and the 2nd in woods, could the brigades be being wiped out by arty, they can only absorb a fraction of the damage the the larger divisions can absorb...

[Ironclad]

No hold at all costs but they fought on for 5 rounds. Here is the first sheet of the detailed report:

[ATTACH]36106[/ATTACH]

[Highlandcharge]

Hey could you post the save? I would love to have a look at this brutal battle, I don't think I have seen anything like it

Just a thought were there any locked units in the Prussian stack?

[Ironclad]

Yes you can have the save, how do I get it to you? Don't know about any enemy locked units.

[Highlandcharge]

I will PM you my email address :-)

[lycortas2]

If I had to throw in a guess I think damage is too high, particularly artillery, and either units need lower cohesion or cohesion damage needs to be higher.

[jmscar]

Yes about kamikaze battles, troops don't want to give up terrain... We are tweaking that but I fear the first patch files are already sent. We will probably ends up proposing a 2nd patch as an unofficial test as soon as the first patch is official though.

Hey Pocus:
Great to see there is a patch on the way, but please don't go way overboard on this issue. Its refreshing to finally see forces that can fight a battle, lose, and not almost automatically route, as happens in many of the other titles. I believe this happened WAY TOO OFTEN in other games. I will say that losing 90% in a battle seems a bit too much, but having forces that can fight, lose and stay in an area for the next turn is a good thing! In my CW2 games, it was rare to see a battle fought for three days, someone almost always seem to route out.

There's plenty of issues incomplete stuff that seems to need fixing before getting to crazy with the battle results IMO.

[vicberg]

Hey Pocus:
Great to see there is a patch on the way, but please don't go way overboard on this issue. Its refreshing to finally see forces that can fight a battle, lose, and not almost automatically route, as happens in many of the other titles. I believe this happened WAY TOO OFTEN in other games. I will say that losing 90% in a battle seems a bit too much, but having forces that can fight, lose and stay in an area for the next turn is a good thing! In my CW2 games, it was rare to see a battle fought for three days, someone almost always seem to route out.

There's plenty of issues incomplete stuff that seems to need fixing before getting to crazy with the battle results IMO.

It's not the routing that is at issue. It's the casualties themselves. People are routinely getting 45k casualties for each side, 90k in total. Jn screen shot above in this thread, 91k total casualties. I've gotten similar results as have others. At Waterloo, bloodiest battle in the war, total losses were 47k total for both sides. So right out of the gate, people are getting double the casualties of the bloodiest battle of the war. Could care less about routing or not routing. Casualties are currently WWI level.

This is a problem that has to be fixed.

[PhilThib]

We made a significant change in the current Models for the upcoming patch that should consequently alter this situation by lowering the casualties due to the fact units will "break off" earlier (and not fight to the last man)

[ANTONYO]

We made a significant change in the current Models for the upcoming patch that should consequently alter this situation by lowering the casualties due to the fact units will "break off" earlier (and not fight to the last man)

Good news, you need to tweak it quickly.

I think 8 hits for a regiment of 800 men of infantry are few. One impact of an artillery element and causes 2 hits, ie 25% of the regiment (200 men) .The units do not have time to retreat, before then are destroyed.

If it is increased from 8 to 16 hits infantry elements, approximately lower half would be produced and would not be destroyed before retiring. Although I suppose we would have to touch other aspects of the game surely.

[Pocus]

Cohesion damages from fighting is greatly increased in the first patch, it should lead to different things.

[loki100]

think that increasing cohesion will be a great help. Here's a battle report from something I was testing (using the release .exe not the rc). Its clear that Napoleon's artillery wrecked the cohesion of the Prussians before the battle got started. So French losses are very low but I think that Prussian losses are too high (ie the French fought at full cohesion, the Prussian army had lost a lot of cohesion in the opening cannonade)

[ANTONYO]

The Austrians have lost 73 elements at a distance, I guess most by artillery. I still think 8 hits are few to an infantry regiment of 800 men.

[Ironclad]

That's a useful tooltip, how do you get it to appear?

[veji1]

I suppose there should be a way of distinguishing "opening canonade" which was historically not very deadly to confirmed troops, more akin to cohesion whitling like what tirailleurs did ; and close quarter artillery use. When the Grand battery slamed the russian left in Friedland, this is what opened the way to the french troops. Sameish (albeit less efficiently) in Wagram. At lower levels, key intervention of a few canon brought forwards (during the austerlitz battle for example) would make a massive difference with canister fire.

So maybe opening artillery salvos should see their efficiency lowered : less hits and more cohesion ?

It would all have to be play tested of course.

[lycortas2]

Artillery was a bigger killer in the Napoleonic era than the American civil war, but as of now artillery is probably too strong.

[PhilThib]

All this must be carefully weighted. Wait to see what next patch changes bring in battles before we tweak something else.

[vaalen]

We made a significant change in the current Models for the upcoming patch that should consequently alter this situation by lowering the casualties due to the fact units will "break off" earlier (and not fight to the last man)

I hope it will still be possible to win a large decisive battle, which was always the goal of Napoleon. Not that I think that units should always fight to the death, but it was quite exciting to be able to wreck an enemy army beyond repair in a single battle, in other words, have an Austerlitz or an Auerstadt. I hope the changes you have made will still allow that.to occur. especially when Napoleon or Wellington is involved.

This kind of decisive victory was a key feature of the Napoleonic wars, and such victories did not happen in the American revolution, or the civil war.

[vicberg]

They will start making changes. We will start using them and then post results. This is going to be a work in progress.

Yes, I'm not getting a feeling of leadership yet. Trying to test out the treaty system in Aug Campaign as France and Austrians are consistently causing more damage then the French though the French have a troop and leadership advantage in these battles, probably quality advantage as well. I'm not convinced that MTSG or Leadership is truly coming to bear right now.

Here's an example.

Mack was just beaten out of Ulm the turn before. The red circle is where the combat occurred this turn. Note all the corp adjacent to the battle.

[ATTACH]36189[/ATTACH]

As you will see in combat results, nothing around it, not one corp or Nappy himself did a MTSG. Even with the single corp, the combat shows a 2-1 advantage in men, 3-1 in horse and 3-1 in artillery with Nappy supposedly leading and I take more losses than the Austrians. I understand there may be many bad rolls causing this, but unfortunately, I'm seeing this consistently in game after game. Plus, the Austrians are showing 98% trench effectiveness. Not sure how they even had time to entrench when I retreated them last turn.

[ATTACH]36190[/ATTACH]

[FroBodine]

This is a bit off topic, and I apologize, but it seemed the best place to ask since the screenshot is right here.

What do the numbers next to the hearts and the icon to the right of the heart (grid with an arrow pointing towards it) mean, please? They are in the total at the top, and also in every line of units underneath.

Last question - how can you tell what side is yours in the battle results screen? It is obvious if it's Napoleon fighting, but for someone not as familiar with all the generals, isn't there a nationality flag or some indicator of what side each of the battle results is for? This seems to be an issue with every new AGEOD game, and not until a future patch do they finally include a nationality flag to designate each side of the screen.

Thanks!

[vicberg]

Thinking a bit more about this. During this period of time, forts and redoubts, etc., were the defensive means of choice. These armies didn't entrench in the manner we think of in CW. In the CW, troops starting the war out using Napoleonic tactics were in perfect order and easy to kill. By the end of the war, they were digging and separating more, using more modern tactics. No so during Napoleon. These were set piece battles with troops maneuvering to gain a tactical advantage. Entrenching shouldnt be a part of battles in the field. They should only come into play when someone deliberately places a force into a fortification of some sort.

[Highlandcharge]

Vicberg how many rounds did that battle last for?


If it was just 1 then the adjacent corps didn't have time to MTSG..

[vicberg]

Very very good point. Only 1 round, didn't think about that. So 1 round caused the insane casualties and both sides broke combat. Explains the MTSG.

[vicberg]

Actually, in terms of entrenchments, I remember reading in an CW2 post that entrenchments may reflect defensive terrain that someone can utilize. However, Nappy was very, very good not only at using terrain but also as circumventing terrain. So I'm going to amend my statement about entrenchments with forts only, but I'm still confused how Mack got a 98% with a retreating army versus Nappy at 2-1 (with 3-1 in horses and artillery)?

With Napoleonic battles, there HAS to be rolls to determine if someone has defensive terrain and can actually use it within the battle. So Mack got a 98% trench bonus, though he was outnumbered and retreating. If the engine is giving him that trench bonus based on something without taking into account the force ratio against him and leadership, then that is going to be a problem.

[vicberg]

This is a bit off topic, and I apologize, but it seemed the best place to ask since the screenshot is right here.

What do the numbers next to the hearts and the icon to the right of the heart (grid with an arrow pointing towards it) mean, please? They are in the total at the top, and also in every line of units underneath.

Last question - how can you tell what side is yours in the battle results screen? It is obvious if it's Napoleon fighting, but for someone not as familiar with all the generals, isn't there a nationality flag or some indicator of what side each of the battle results is for? This seems to be an issue with every new AGEOD game, and not until a future patch do they finally include a nationality flag to designate each side of the screen.

Thanks!

Hearts = Number is hit CAUSED. So the Heart under Nappy is amount of hits caused to Austrians. The Grid is the amount of cohesion loss caused.

[vicberg]

A little more on this.

I reviewing many websites about the 3rd Coalition War, and keeping in mind that no game engine is going to perfectly represent this, the French inflicted enormous damage to the Austrians and Russians while taking relatively little damage in return. Part of this was due to Mack's incompetence allowing his army to become surrounded, like it is now in the above screenshot.

Austerlitz was the culmination of this. Nappy took 7-9k of damage while inflicting 25-36k in return, based on website. The numbers differ by website. The idea here is that Nappy was way more organized than his counterparts, should be causing consistently more casualties than he is taking and I'm not getting any sense that this is reflected in the game.