Units starving instead of surrendering

[Captain_Orso]

I don't want to open another can of worms here, but I'm a bit perplexed. In my thread Generals are sooooo prissy I asked about how to get rid of those pesky *** Generals with the least detrimental affect. One answer I got was to send McClellan into the swamps of Louisiana with a militia regiment and leave him there until he starves along with the regiment. Now I don't think this will work, at least not always. This is why.

In my current campaign -April '61, both theaters, w/Ky, patch 1.14c update5- incurred a situation where in the summer of '62 I have a fortification in James City, VA/Hampton being held by a corp with two full divisions, about strength 1100 and the James Estuary blockaded. The CSA sent a corp under Albert S. Johnston and a command under R.E. Lee in to attack and had me under siege for months. I managed to pull two corps of my own in behind him, one in Williamsburg, VA just to the norht-west holding the rear door and one in New Kent, VA just to the north-west of that protecting against advances from Richmond.

At a lucky moment, having both corps in James City and Williamsburg active I risked an attack on my besiegers, and won. I had 45,055 Men, 7391 Horses and 216 Canons. He had 25,375 Men, 5049 Horses and 47 Canons. My losses were 6934 Men and 307 Horses, his were 7626 Men and 1137 Horses; and he's still stuck between a rock and a hard place.

After that I reinforced James City with another division and was waiting to get both corps active again to finish the destruction of Johnston and Lee once and for all. Suddenly in '63 Late January my besiegers were gone. They simply disappeared from the map. The replay started at day one with them missing from the map and showed no movements anywhere in the area.

I was totally perplex. So I made a save of the game, renamed the files and copied them back into the Saves directory into a new game directory, loaded that game and backed up one turn at a time to see if I had missed anything. The only thing I saw was that the number of units in his stack besieging me in James City was getting smaller, but I thought he was recombining them and that I just couldn't detect them. The tool-tips were showing very little information.

So I copied my 'test' save back and had a look at Athena's moves. There were none. She just let the units stand there and starve into oblivion.

I also noted that Albert S. Johnston and Edmund K. Smith are in Richmond in Late January '63 as per the tool-tips shown to the Union player. Where Lee, Ewell, DH Hill, JG Walker, D. Ruggles and M. Bonham are I don't know. They're not in Richmond according to the toop-tip. They were all present in James City after the big battle. Maybe they are dead and maybe they are in Richmond and I can't see them, maybe they are elsewhere.

What really has me wondering is, if any of those generals had died in either the battle or through starvation afterwords, would I get a report about it? What happened to all the canons left on the field that didn't get destroyed through battle. Of course if I were the owner of such canons and knew that I was going to die or could not save them from capture I'd spike them if possible. But there is no provision for that in the game; at least none that I know of.

I'm wonder if it would be a suggestion for AACW2 that units trapped like this should surrender rather than starve to death. The only mass-surrender that I can think of at the moment during the war was at Ft Donelson. Did any situation in real life similar to what I've described above ever happen?

I rather think that if Fremont had gotten behind Jackson trapping him between himself and Banks between Harrisonburg and New Market during Jackson's valley campaign, Jackson would have fought to the last man, or at least he'd have ordered it, but Jackson is a special case. What if it were someone else?

I know that if you are besieged and your general supply runs out that there is a good chance that all defending units will surrender. But in my situation, Johnson is only trapped, not besieged. Is this one of those once-in-a-lifetime situations?

[Heldenkaiser]

The only mass-surrender that I can think of at the moment during the war was at Ft Donelson.

Vicksburg.

[Big Ideas]

Units out of supply suffer 25% losses each turn- so even full strength elements will only last four turns once their supply runs out. Also their cohesion drops and they receive further penalties if forced into battle. The besiegers will melt away in the game if out of supply and nothing improves to help them, they starve to death. But for those inside cities or forts they have a high chance of surrendering if their supplies run out. If a division of 17 elements surrenders that is a 5 NM hit/gain for each side.

At Vicksburg all the Confederate canons were surrendered intact- (from memory about 172).

[Captain_Orso]

Hi guys, thanks for your answers. Yeah, how could I forget Vicksburg.

From the results that I got, the 'hits' Johnston and Lee took are equivalent to hits incurred through combat, because the 47 canons and the thousands of rifles, or how ever many were left after the one battle, disappeared along with the men manning them.

Thinking back, this situation almost happened to me the other way around in a previous game. I was close to Richmond en force and the tool-tip showed that Richmond was held rather weakly compared to the forces I was fighting two or three regions away. Either that or Athena moved reinforcements into Richmond the exact same moment I attacked. Is it normal to get misleading information about troop strengths from the tool-tip?

I attacked with Hooker's corp and got the surprise of my life. Richmond was held by about 2-3 times as many troops as the game told me previous to my attacking. After the attack I was stuck in the Richmond region, all regions around Richmond were marked red for Hooker and I couldn't move him out of there. The tool-tips said that I needed so-and-so much of control over the other regions to which I wanted to move in order to move there.

So I sent a second corp into a neighboring region to gain control. But the next turn the tool-tip while trying to move Hooker to the region where the second corp was, showed that I now needed even more control over that region than the turn before, and the difference was greater than the amount of control I had gained in that region through the other corp being there.

I was losing the battle between control of the region and the need for control of the region for Hooker's corp to move there. Not knowing what else to do, I moved the second corp into Richmond in defensive posture. The turn after that both corps were allowed to move out of Richmond unscathed.

If I hadn't had that second corp in position to assist Hooker, he would have stood before Richmond and starved too. In Jackson's words, it was my 'divine providence' that the forces in Richmond didn't sortie out to finish Hooker in his dilemma.

I wonder if a forces in just such a predicament shouldn't also be subject to siege resolution. Anybody have any thoughts on that for AACW2?

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[Captain_Orso]

Hi Gray, thanks for your answer. I wanted to here a few opinions about it first. I have no idea how often this happens in the game or how historically relevant it is.

[DaemoneIsos]

I know Sun-Tzu did not fight for Robert E Lee, but surely he would have approved. The idea of trapping Hooker was bold, crafty and strategic. Luring an enemy into a trap is what makes a general famous (and the lured, infamous).

I like the idea of clarifying and feeding back to the player the effects of the enemy's entrapment and starvation. If an army is facing starvation, it seems reasonable that an enemy could acquire that intelligence from deserting troops.

I think this broadens the strategic options in an already great game.

Good Luck,

-D