Protecting Ft. Monroe

[FortyEighter]

Is there any way to protect Ft. Monroe from falling into confederate hands besides reinforcing its garrison?
I've Adm. Farragut's fleet with a power of 900 sailing around Ft. Monroe - but nevertheless the confeds take the Fort. How are they able to sneak past Farragut?

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[FortyEighter]

Ah, ok! Thanks Gray_Lensman!

[BigDuke66]

I just had a bit action around Ft. Monroe and I'm not really sure about 3 points that may also interact with each other.

1. A fleet in the James was ordered to moved back into the bay, Ft. Monroe is under siege and the Conf. fired on the fleet.
I guess that's they way it should work as Ft. Monroe connects to the James river and Hampton Roads so a fleet passing can be fired upon. Is that so?

2. A unit(USMC) was ordered to move by river transport from Ft. Monroe to Annapolis but the next turn it still sat there with very low cohesion and the messages just mentioned it wasn't moved because of it's low cohesion. Why did the cohesion drop so drastically?

3. Butlers command switched to offensive posture but why? It was set to defensive posture.

PS Is there a way to turn off units so I can better see the map?

[Jim-NC]

We would need a saved game to help you with your points.

[BigDuke66]

Here.
Turn 11 is the turn after it happened but maybe the replay is not enough so I also attached turn 10 so you can see my setup.

[halfmanhalfsquidman]

Is it possible there was one of the random events that switches posture that made Butler go on the offensive? I know I've gotten several "So-and-so issues contradictory orders and reverts to Defensive posture" messages. Could this cause it switch to offensive posture?

[BigDuke66]

I guess it would show up in the news list but there isn't any news that suggest that.

[Jim-NC]

BigDuke66,

The answer is you have 2 USMC units. The "USMC" is at Ft. Monroe, and set on attack posture. The "1st USMC" is in New York City. Both of them were moving to Annapolis. The "USMC" was attacked by the AOP as it tried to escape from Ft. Monroe, and took a thrashing. It then retreated into the fort, joining Butler's command. The "1st USMC" moved from NYC to Annapolis by rail, and arrived on day 10.

That is why you see the 2 messages about it. As to the attack posture, the "USMC" was in attack posture. Butler just sat there and watched it get attacked. He never switched posture. If you mouse over the attack posture on the after battle report, it indicates that 1 of your units (not necessarily all) had attack posture orders. You will also notice that the screen shows that 94% of your force was inside the fort during the attack.

Hope this helps, and removes confusion.

[BigDuke66]

Well the second USMC unit doesn't have anything to do with what happened.
As you can see in the older save that I made before ending the turn the USMC unit in Ft. Monroe is set to a defensive posture and has a movement order to Anne Arundel via riverine transport.
I thought it would just use the forts harbor, load and move up the bay.
What it instead did was moving out of the fort and that's why it started fighting with the Beauregard? Why the hell did it do that?

I tried that turn again and again the USMC unit pumped into Beauregard.
Initially I thought Butler did something as I assumed the USMC unit would just travel up the bay so it didn't participated in the battle.

As I just dropped the unit off some turns earlier without any problem although Ft. Monroe was already being besieged I thought getting it out would be the that easy too looks like I was wrong.

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted