The Militia Swarm Conundrum

[Captain_Orso]

Firstly, since this subject was threatening to takeover the How to cut off and destroy an enemy force thread I'm starting this one to be able to continue the discussion with a clean conscience.
[INDENT]Perhaps one of the moderators could move those posts in the above thread into the beginning of this thread to keep all things in their own thread That would be awesome. The posts are numbers 23, 24, 25, 27, 28 and 30.[/INDENT]

I had to think about this for a while and check some things, but in conclusion I don't think that the Militia Swarm is as effective as you claim it to be Jarkko. Let's consider a few facts.

Militia, when in their own state have a strength of about 19[SUP]1)[/SUP]; that is with 100% cohesion and full supplies. Once they start moving their cohesion will start to drop quickly, depending on the terrain through which they are marching and the weather. If they enter a non-home state their strength and cohesion will drop again by 10% so that if they are supplied and rested their strength will be about 15 at the most; this is regardless of whether the state they are now in is friendly or enemy.

To damage a rail line you basically role on a 100-sided die per stack attempting to do so and compare the the strength of the stack to the die role. If you role <= the stack strength you damage the rail line. So a single militia attacking a rail line in a friendly state has just under a 20% chance of damaging the line in that region, if he's still at full strength.

Considering that you have to march to the region you are attacking and militia are not the quickest of marchers because they tend to lose cohesion rather quickly they will not be able to attack very far behind the enemy lines. Then they will need at least one turn to try to damage the the rail lines, at which time they have used up half of their General Supply (GS).

If you manage to meet-up and stack your militia up to have a better chance at damaging the rail line you will not be linearly increasing your chances, because each additional unit in the stack will reduce the stack-strength by another 5%; each militia requires one Command Point (CP) and each lack of a CP reduces the strength of the stack by 5%
[INDENT]EG. one militia unit alone has 19SP (Strength Points) in its home state, two [I]not stacked together have a total of 38SP, but if they are stacked together they have 34SP and three have 48SP. This is under optimal condition which are not often to be found on the field.
[/I][/INDENT]
All this considered, militia are not going to be sortieing very far behind enemy lines to conduct their raids, they will lose cohesion quickly and be lucky if they manage to damage a rail line before they must return to a supply source. If they are attacked anywhere along their path they will either not be able to complete their mission or will take heavy losses, either from battle or lack of supply or both. Because they have lack of range there are only a hand full of locations behind enemy lines where they might find supplies. The depth of this range should about be doubled to prevent the rouge militias from trying to find an unguarded town deep in enemy territory. For this one doesn't need 100 militia units to defend against militia raids. Add a few cavalry to these garrisoned towns to run-down those pesky militia with e couple of militia in reserve to repair a lucky hit on a rail line and your defense in-depth vs marauding militias is set.

All this doesn't even consider the question of how you are going to get militia close enough to the front and into a position from which they can swarm out without being detected first.

I'm not saying that they are not something with which I would have to deal, but I think that over a division of militia might be put to better use by building a division with that manpower.

I'm more worried about True-Raiders™ who are harder to detect, quicker, have a longer range and are more proficient in damaging rail lines especially if they are lead by Quanrill, Mosby, Forest or another competent leader.

[SUP]1)[/SUP] These examples exclude units being lead my a general. Therefore the lose of strength for being under-commanded is already factored in.

[TheDoctorKing]

Militia brigades can be formed by putting two militia regiments together. They still only need one CP, and have a power of 30 at full strength - 27 in another state. That's a reasonable chance of destroying a rail line especially if you are using swarm tactics. Also, they will take military control in a region pretty quickly. Assuming you are willing to do the fiddly-work, you can have a parade of them moving out to a region and returning for more supplies. They could also generate GS from the region they are in through foraging and remain a little longer.

I think militia are too easy to use in AACW. I'd like to see them more handicapped, similar to the regionally locked troops in RUS, who are really useless outside their home regions unless they have one of the special leaders who can convince them to fight. Several states had generals with political skills who were able to get those state militias to deploy outside the state: McClellan in Ohio, Grant in Illinois, etc.

[Captain_Orso]

Indeed if you combine them to a brigade they will have 27SP, but that's still just a 1 in 4 chance of damaging a rail line and only one turn on target in which to do it.

Either you want to do the damage or you just want to threaten to do the damage. Klotzen - nicht Kleckern -Guderian. If you want to insure that a supply line is broken then why not send a regular army brigade in to take a key crossroad with a town and if you're lucky, a depot. Then start your offensive. Then you'll have the enemy dancing from one foot to the other trying to get his depot back and balance his defense. But only if the supply line is absolutely necessary.

I try not to depend on rail lines for supplies specifically for this reason. Rivers are my supply lines. Rails are for transporting my troops quickly. This can't always be done, but I do my best to do it.

If my situation were so precarious that I could only raise militia to harass the enemies supplies then I would do that, but knowing that the militia are cannon-fodder for a greater cause, because they're going to get slaughtered.

I'm not sure how one might go about reducing the ability for militia to freely move -- I mean in an historical retrospect, not technically. I know that in '62 there were some regiments under Lee which were not allowed to cross, I think it was the Rapidan River, because their state constitution only allowed them to move so far from their state boarder when supporting a neighboring state. I think they were from North Carolina.

Honestly, I have no idea how the norther states handled it. As far as I know, until a state unit was called-up and federalized, the federal government had no control over such units. They might coordinate with the federal government, but I don't think even a charismatic or respected leader would be able to influence anything other than convincing the governor to federalized the militias under the understanding that they be under the command of that specific general. This may have been the case with McClernand, at least to some extent. But once under federal control I doubt that the federal government would let a state's governor have a word about their use.

If all militias units were restricted to their own states it would sure cause a change in the way I build militias. They are only rear area garrisons until they upgrade to at least conscripts. Then they are useful to fill-in gaps in divisions or for more forward garrison where I want a better quality of troops with which to garrison. I would eventually miss them sourly in a long game where Richmond has fallen, but not the Confederacy, and I have to invade the Deep-South™, with lots of towns to garrison and hold.

[John Schilling]

Additional weaknesses of the militia raiding swarm are, first, fog of war, and second, the likely enemy reaction.

Raiding more than one region into enemy territory, means raiding blind. The defender can't garrison everyplace, but the regions he does garrison, your militia will tend to blunder into a regiment or two at a time, on offensive posture against an entrenched enemy. The raiders that find ungarrisoned regions may score a few rail cuts, but they will have paid in advance and in blood.

And that's just the down payment, because in order to cut rail, they have to end one turn (and start the next) right on top of an enemy-controlled rail line. Meaning, if the defender has reserves nearby, they can rail in to at least an adjacent region before the militia can flee on foot. If the militia fails to cut the line, the reserves can rail in right on top of them and force a battle; even if the rail is cut, a cavalry reaction force or one which can approach along the raiders' probable line of retreat will have a fair chance of catching them.

Which suggests a tweak for AACW2: instead of rail-cutting being instantaneous but uncertain, perhaps it should always take, say, 200/S days, where "S" is the combat strength of the rail-cutting force. Or maybe manpower would be a better metric, but same principle applies. A lone regiment of militia can cut rail if it isn't interrupted, but it probably will be. Even a strong brigade would be vulnerable for an unpleasant period of time, just as if it were trying to burn a depot.


For now, while the game isn't perfect, I don't think it is too bad in this particular regard. A swarm of raiders will achieve local successes - as they should. If the other side has adequate garrisons and reserves, those local successes will be awfully expensive. And if the other side has also planned adequate margin into his own offensives, a few rail cuts near the front won't cripple him.

If the other side has put everything he has into a "perfectly" planned, highly ambitious offensive with minimal reserves and margins, he deserves everything the raiders are about to do to him :-)

[Pocus]

@Jarkko:
If you agree to Cpt Orso request of moving your posts there, then say it here or by PM. Thanks.

[Jarkko]

Sure, by all means move the posts here, they do not really belong to the other thread



To comment Orso's post (which has many good points)

1) Why not use regular brigades? Because militia is essentially free (print money like mad, draft like mad -> loads of militia) and it thus doesn't matter if they croak on the raid or not. Because lets face it, not many (if any) of the swarm raiders are ever going to come back; they get a one way ticket, and they are detined to cause maximum mayhem before disappearing.

2) In my previous PBEM (as USA) game I sent during the first year (before Kentucky activated) 21 militia brigades behind enemy lines. Five regiments waded through the wilderness of WV, five through the prairies in west, the rest were sent on small ships to land in Florida, Lousiana and Texas and quickly moved inland. When the game ended in autumn 1862 I had lost in all six of those (of which one in Texas, one in Georgia, one in South Carolina, one in Arkansas and two in Virginia) and all the other 15 had turned into infantry somewhere along the road and were alive and well sitting behind enemy lines. The opponent had sent at least four full strength divisions (there might have been more, but I noticed four different divisions; one in the Atlanta area, one in Mobile area, one in east Florida, one in Lousiana) to hunt and/or defend the key positions against these raiders.

2) Suppy lines can be hampered not only by physically cutting the railroads, but also by standing in the way or capturing structures. Early war cavalry can't assault towns anymore (which is good), but militia can.

3) The individual militia regiment is weak, there is no question about that. Still, four militia going red-red seem to storm single regiment garrisons with no sweat.

4) I have yet to have a single militia regiment on evade orders to be captured by anything else but cavalry. So while the "rail in reinforcements to kill the regiment" sounds nice on paper, it just doesn't work. The militia raider is moving on evade orders, and the forces in pursuit forces are on the wild-goose chase I have been talking about quite a few times. The wild-goose chase is one of the things you as a swarm-raider want to cause; I can tell from experience it is frustrating as heck to chase the raiders when you don't know where they go, and even if you succeed to guess the route right they just evade your pursuit force.

[ERISS]

4) I have yet to have a single militia regiment on evade orders to be captured by anything else but cavalry. The militia raider is moving on evade orders, and the forces in pursuit forces are on the wild-goose chase. I can tell from experience it is frustrating as heck to chase the raiders they just evade your pursuit force.

And you didn't talk about chasing cavalry raiders

[Ace]

2) Suppy lines can be hampered not only by physically cutting the railroads, but also by standing in the way or capturing structures. Early war cavalry can't assault towns anymore (which is good), but militia can.
e.

So, the solution is: do not allow militias to capture towns with loyalty below 50%, same as for cavalry and irregulars. This is both historical and easy to implement.

As, for your other swarm the enemy out of ammo tactic. It is heavily GAMEY because it relies on the game engine wasting too much ammo on a lone regiment. When you attack an Army with a lone militia, every element of the Army which can fill the frontage fires on militia, resulting in massive overkill and a waste of ammo. This is unrealistic and shouldn't be exploited. A lone militia could not engage more than 10 opponent regiments, so the ammo waste should be modified accordingly.

[Captain_Orso]

1) Why not use regular brigades? Because militia is essentially free (print money like mad, draft like mad -> loads of militia) and it thus doesn't matter if they croak on the raid or not. Because lets face it, not many (if any) of the swarm raiders are ever going to come back; they get a one way ticket, and they are detined to cause maximum mayhem before disappearing.

I think this is an overly simplified view. Once you've acquired a sh*t-load of money and Conscript Companies (CC), you should ask yourself, how can they best be put to use. Every militia you buy -- those throw-away units in your strategy -- takes away from quality units that will still be doing their job in 6 months.

If I can use a good brigade with maybe a supply unit to take a key depot and then get away with them -- or the most of them -- then afterwards I'm still up all those units that got away.

I'm not saying that sacrificing a few militia would not be worth it if their strategic affect were worth more than their cost, but I just have a hard time wrapping my head around using this tactic as a general strategy.

2) In my previous PBEM (as USA) game I sent during the first year (before Kentucky activated) 21 militia brigades behind enemy lines. Five regiments waded through the wilderness of WV, five through the prairies in west, the rest were sent on small ships to land in Florida, Lousiana and Texas and quickly moved inland. When the game ended in autumn 1862 I had lost in all six of those (of which one in Texas, one in Georgia, one in South Carolina, one in Arkansas and two in Virginia) and all the other 15 had turned into infantry somewhere along the road and were alive and well sitting behind enemy lines. The opponent had sent at least four full strength divisions (there might have been more, but I noticed four different divisions; one in the Atlanta area, one in Mobile area, one in east Florida, one in Lousiana) to hunt and/or defend the key positions against these raiders.

From where are they all getting their supply? In the IT as long as you have those Indian Villages you're okay, but I can't count how many times I've had regular army cav. and inf. kicked out of there by Standwatie hitting them one at a time. And if they push on past the Indian Villages to Panther or into Texas they can grab some local supply on-site, but that is almost immediately gone. Then what?

The same goes for landing on the Texas coast and pushing inland. Without a supply line, from where are your militia taking supply? I don't get it.

2) Suppy lines can be hampered not only by physically cutting the railroads, but also by standing in the way or capturing structures. Early war cavalry can't assault towns anymore (which is good), but militia can.

Depending on the supply line, supply can simply walk around a unit standing on the rail line. A few units standing left and right of the SL will probably effectively block it though, but they will have not staying power.

3) The individual militia regiment is weak, there is no question about that. Still, four militia going red-red seem to storm single regiment garrisons with no sweat.

This idea has its merits, but it is far from a certainty. I can't say how many times I've tried to storm a small town defended by a single militia with for example a brigade of 2 regular infantry and a cavalry -- more powerful than 4 militia -- and just got left standing in the cold.

4) I have yet to have a single militia regiment on evade orders to be captured by anything else but cavalry. So while the "rail in reinforcements to kill the regiment" sounds nice on paper, it just doesn't work. The militia raider is moving on evade orders, and the forces in pursuit forces are on the wild-goose chase I have been talking about quite a few times. The wild-goose chase is one of the things you as a swarm-raider want to cause; I can tell from experience it is frustrating as heck to chase the raiders when you don't know where they go, and even if you succeed to guess the route right they just evade your pursuit force.

I've chased a lot of wild geese in my days Maybe we should put all the theory to proof. I'm up for a bit of a challenge

[Jarkko]

From where are they all getting their supply?

There are lots of harbours along the rivers (not that many in Texas and Far West, but still quite a few). Usually they are not garrisoned, but they each have enough supplies to be looted that a lone militia regiment fills its quota for two turns.

Regarding quality troops, with money and manpower flowing out of your ears it WS which is limiting on how many quality troops you can recruit. What will you do with all that extra money and manpower, invest in factories and hope you get a few more WS sometime in the future?


@Ace, you seemingly have no clue what and how a human wave attack is performed (despite both me and Orso (who did it in a much more eloquent way) have told how it is done). It is not about sending lone regiments against full armies (besides, those lone regiments would attempt to retreat before battle and very likely would succeed), it is triggering combat over and over again with a numerically superior army who has more supplies (aka supply-wagons) present against a weaker army with less supplies. So please, before you deal judgement left and right about what is gamey, at least try to understand what a human wave attack is

[Captain_Orso]

There are lots of harbours along the rivers (not that many in Texas and Far West, but still quite a few). Usually they are not garrisoned, but they each have enough supplies to be looted that a lone militia regiment fills its quota for two turns.

True, true, I do that with cavalry raids often enough. There's Navasota on the western edge north-east of Houston, Jefferson at the end of the Red River and Natchitoche on the Red between Shreveport and Alexandria. A couple more harbors near the Mississippi, but I wouldn't expect militia to survive very long in the swamps there. Florida is divided between the more developed north and the wild-n-swampy south which only has some coastal towns with harbors. Alabama has the most lone-harbors up north.

But if I'm not mistaken, once you take a harbor it's yours and only your faction will now send supplies to it, which is mostly not possible. Navasota might get some supply from Laredo or Tuscon, Jefferson might just maybe get some from just Tuscon, but Natchitoches is simply too far from a supply source to get any; the harbors in Northern Alabama too.

Regarding quality troops, with money and manpower flowing out of your ears it WS which is limiting on how many quality troops you can recruit. What will you do with all that extra money and manpower, invest in factories and hope you get a few more WS sometime in the future?

Honestly, the last couple of times I played the South I built up my blockade runners as quickly as possible. I'm not sure how effective that actually is as far as return-on-investment goes. Somebody did do a statistic on that once, but I don't remember what the results were. But lots of runners in the Boxes will give you a steady flow of WSU that I don't think you could ever reach with industrialization.

As far as the cost of militias goes, even they cost 1 WSU. And going by that premiss, the CS player at the first sign of a Swarm-Militia-Invasion™ should fill his towns and harbors with cheap militia and simply deny your Swarm-Militia-Invasion™ the locations. Thus, your success is dependent on your opponent's neglect.

@Ace, you seemingly have no clue what and how a human wave attack is performed (despite both me and Orso (who did it in a much more eloquent way) have told how it is done). It is not about sending lone regiments against full armies (besides, those lone regiments would attempt to retreat before battle and very likely would succeed), it is triggering combat over and over again with a numerically superior army who has more supplies (aka supply-wagons) present against a weaker army with less supplies. So please, before you deal judgement left and right about what is gamey, at least try to understand what a human wave attack is

If I'm once again not mistaken, only units -- or is it elements? -- which actually engaged in a battle use supply. But as I stated, once the one Human-Wave-Unit™ splatters on the defenders, they -- all of them under the command of the leader active in the battle I believe --, tasting victory, will go to the offensive, and thus all of those will use supply. Enter the next Human-Wave-Unit™ and repeat.

So I still stand on the opinion, that the only issue is in the step which determines that the defender goes on the offensive to attack the supposed retreating or routed enemy. In Advanced Squad Leader terms, the automatically go Berserk and attack the closest enemy

[Jarkko]

So I still stand on the opinion, that the only issue is in the step which determines that the defender goes on the offensive to attack the supposed retreating or routed enemy. In Advanced Squad Leader terms, the automatically go Berserk and attack the closest enemy

Aaaah, now I see! You have actually a fundamental flaw in your logic, and now I am not entirely sure you actually know how the human wave attack works As you saw from the screenshots in the other thread "single regiments causing the defenders to attack" is not the case; that is not human-wave attacking! The CSA force remained in defensive positions for all but the last two fights; it was the US troops who were in the offensive stance, throwing wave after wave of troops against the defenders. The combat was triggered by reinforcements, but only the last one was with a single regiment; it is the fresh infantry who marches boldly forwards, but it is the guns of the army who deal the damage and kills the defenders (once the defenders run run out of ammo it becomes a turkey shoot for the artillery and the infantry still alive after the humnanwave attacks).

[Ace]

@Ace, you seemingly have no clue what and how a human wave attack is performed (despite both me and Orso (who did it in a much more eloquent way) have told how it is done). It is not about sending lone regiments against full armies (besides, those lone regiments would attempt to retreat before battle and very likely would succeed), it is triggering combat over and over again with a numerically superior army who has more supplies (aka supply-wagons) present against a weaker army with less supplies. So please, before you deal judgement left and right about what is gamey, at least try to understand what a human wave attack is

I understood your post completely. The thing is, when you initiate new combat with new units, the defender will fire only on new units, not on ones already present there, and loose the ammo in the process. The only way I would not see this as gamey is when the new units would be approx the same size, or somewhat smaller than the initial Army. That would have a historical feel, like reinforcements arriving at the battlefield.
Am I right?

[Captain_Orso]

I am certain that it's not simply a matter of a continuation of offensive operations and I'll explain why. The exact same thing happens if all forces starting in a region are in Defensive Posture and one side moves even a single infantry regiment into the region.

[INDENT]Situation:
Side-A has a 2-division corp (A-Corp-I) in Region-X
Side-B has a 3-division corp (B-Corp-I) in Region-X and a single infantry regiment (1st-B-Reg.) in neighboring Region-Y

In the previous turn A-Corp-I was defending in Region-X and is entrenched at L-5 and in Defensive Posture (DP) when B-Corp-I entered the region, it went to Offensive Posture (OP) because of a lack of MC in the region (0 at the time) and a battle ensued which B-Corp-I lost, but did not retreat from the region.

It is now the following turn and all stacks are in DP, Side-A has 75% MC in Region-X.

For the coming turn, Side-A plots no change to A-Corp-I, it remains in DP.

Side-B plots that B-Corp-I goes to DP but does not move, and that the 1st-B-Reg, still in DP, moves into Region-X.

Whether in the turn execution B-Corp-I goes to OP for being in a region in which it has <=5% MC is uncertain as the rules for this seem to have changed to take enemy and friendly presence into account. If it does and it again remains in the region the following will occur:

When the 1st-B-Reg enters Region-X it will go to OP and through the presence of B-Corp-I will not attempt to retreat on contacting A-Corp-I, but will execute an attack on A-Corp-I.

Generally you will not see a battle report from this as on contact with A-Corp-I it immediately goes into retreat and is usually destroyed by being pursued.

However a battle the does occur in which you see that A-Corp-I is in OP(!!) and B-Corp-I is still in DP.

In such a situation A-Corp-I will usually lose the battle, for being outnumbered and not having the advantages of entrenchments, which B-Corp-I, although it has lower entrenchments, it also used any terrain advantages that might be present and if B-Corp-I has a large artillery advantage the damage to A-Corp-I will be devastating, especially if they lose the battle, which is very likely, and are pursued; they will take a lot of hits like this.[/INDENT]

In the Mail-Box you get a message that the the 1st-B-Reg. engaged the A-Corp-I.

I've seen this occur a number of times with devastating results for the supposed defender. If you are 'attacking' like this and are uncertain of the outcome of the first battle, you simply add a couple of agitating regiments to the mix and off you go.

Since the battles ensue from the 'defender' being goaded into attacking everything in the region by a very small unit poking them in the side a little and then being dead by the time the real battle starts, I call this an issue, and many players in PBEM agree to not allow for this type of engagement.

[Jarkko]

I understood your post completely. The thing is, when you initiate new combat with new units, the defender will fire only on new units, not on ones already present there, and loose the ammo in the process. The only way I would not see this as gamey is when the new units would be approx the same size, or somewhat smaller than the initial Army. That would have a historical feel, like reinforcements arriving at the battlefield.
Am I right?

You are wrong. You can see from the screenshots in the other thread, both forces were fully involved. I do not know what you are talking about, but you are definitively not talking about human-wave attacks.

[Jarkko]

Orso, why are you coming up with a hypothetical thing that is not what I have been talking about? See the screenshot in the other thread, you will clearly see who is in Offensive Posture and who is in Defensive Posture in the battles.

Ergo, I have a feeling you do not know what a human wave attack is. You are talking about single regiments triggering combat, I am talking about rushing over and over again against the defender with new waves of infantry, while the artillery is doing the killing. Look at the screenshot, look at the casualties. For heavens sake, do not make wild assumptions when the facts are in plain sight.

[Captain_Orso]

Admittedly, I oversaw that Beauregard is in DP the first 5 days of battle, as well as you overlooked that on the 6th battle day he's in OP (oh dang, how did that happen right in the middle of turn resolution?).

So we are both right in respect to what we were stating, just not exclusively.

[Ace]

You are wrong. You can see from the screenshots in the other thread, both forces were fully involved. I do not know what you are talking about, but you are definitively not talking about human-wave attacks.

The screenshots can be deceiving, they show who was involved in the battle, not who is firing on whom. I am pretty sure Beauregard didnt fire on you initial force in any of the subsequent battles.

[Jarkko]

The screenshots can be deceiving, they show who was involved in the battle, not who is firing on whom. I am pretty sure Beauregard didnt fire on you initial force in any of the subsequent battles.

Nice theory brother, but you seem to not know what you are talking about. Why don't you go and try it out yourself?



I suddenly did remember why I originally stopped posting on this forum anything regarding game mechanics.

[Ace]

Nice theory brother, but you seem to not know what you are talking about. Why don't you go and try it out yourself?
I suddenly did remember why I originally stopped posting on this forum anything regarding game mechanics.

You are being rather hostile. I am sure I would whip your tactics to pieces if you would face me in a PBEM.

[Philo32b]

I suddenly did remember why I originally stopped posting on this forum anything regarding game mechanics.

That would be a shame. I know when I see your posts that there will be some good, deep insights into game mechanics.