Possible retreat path problem....

[Longhairedlout]

Hi there, I am in the middle of a Pbem game and I have a question, I am playing the Union and I had recently captured Little Rock with 3 divisions under Sherman who landed by boat, now I left a division of about 7000 men, 40 guns and a unit of Gatling guns under general Logan to defend LR.

Further north and west in Missouri I had AS Johnston on the run, my forces there outnumbered his forces by just over 2 to 1, so after retreating and leaving Van Dorn with some cavalry to destroy the Supply depot at Fort Smith, A S Johnston moved down the river to Little Rock and amphibiously attacked Logan who was pretty well dug in around LR, when ASJ attacked because the Confederates controlled all the region's around Little Rock, Logan had no retreat path's and so stayed to fight it out, now this is where me and my opponent are a bit puzzled, Johnston had 3 good strength divisions to Logan's 1, so Logan realising he is heavily outnumbered tries to retreat during the battle, but having no retreat path, over about 3-4 days of fighting and multiple retreat attempts he sticks it out and fights to almost his last man.

At the end of the fighting ASJ's Reb's have been mostly captured or killed and Logan has but a fraction of his men left with only 9 cohesion left for his division, so a little bit more fighting and he would have been routed.

Sorry for going on, what me and my opponent are asking is why did ASJ not retreat after the 2nd or 3rd days fighting when it was obvious that Logan was going to stick it out and fight, ASJ had taken appalling losses and had thousands captured by that time, was it because he was attacking with a river to his rear and had nowhere to retreat to, does the game take that into account? or was it some other reason?


Thanks

[arsan]

Hi
It's probably because of the amphibious assault. They are VERY risky unless you have overwhelming odds as i think (not 100% sure, some AACW grognard may confirm ) the amphibious assaulting stack won't be able to retreat back to their ships if defeated
AS Johnston would have done better landing on an adjacent empty region and attacking from land.
Cheers

[willgamer]

Did you use river transport points or actual river transports?

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[Longhairedlout]

Thanks for all your answers, em I think he used the river transport pool rather than a fleet of transports, I think Arsan is right, again thanks for your help

[willgamer]

Thanks for all your answers, em I think he used the river transport pool rather than a fleet of transports, I think Arsan is right, again thanks for your help

Basically that's the kiss of death for amphib ops to use the pool.

You'll get much better results (and safer too, if you escort) with explict transport.