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How do you scout out an Army? I thought you just needed to be next to the opposing army and have a greater detect value than their hide value. Do I need to run some Calvary through their position to thoroughly scout their them? Oh yeah and i'm glad forums finally back up been waiting to ask this since the day it went down. Good job getting it back up thanks.

wolv18 wrote:How do you scout out an Army? I thought you just needed to be next to the opposing army and have a greater detect value than their hide value. Do I need to run some Calvary through their position to thoroughly scout their them? Oh yeah and i'm glad forums finally back up been waiting to ask this since the day it went down. Good job getting it back up thanks.

At the beginning of the game replacements don't seem necessary for new units just created or existing units, except for HQ units and coastal batteries. It seems for HQ and coastal batteries you have to put multiple points into replacements to get them up to 100 percent. I was just wondering if anyone had specifics on this. Thanks.

The exact game mechanics I couldn't tell you; I've never tried to figure it out is detail. Basically the larger the force the easier it is to detect what is present, but the more cavalry that stack has the more difficult it will be and if a deceiver is present in the stack it will be even more difficult.

Here are a couple of things you can read: AACW Wiki: Manual:Fog_of_war, and our dearest queen Aphrodite Mae posted a link to this thread recently Organizing non-standard divisions--Cavalry, etc??? which deals with FOW too.

Personally if I want to scout out an enemy stack I take a cavalry regiment or two, put them into green/green RoE and avoid combat and either put them adjacent or into the region with the stack I want to scout. If you do put them into the region, be sure to move them out again the next turn or else they risk getting whacked.

wolv18 wrote:At the beginning of the game replacements don't seem necessary for new units just created or existing units, except for HQ units and coastal batteries. It seems for HQ and coastal batteries you have to put multiple points into replacements to get them up to 100 percent. I was just wondering if anyone had specifics on this. Thanks.

It depends on your game settings and with scenario you are playing.

Attrition

There are 3 game settings for attrition

1. Non-Historical: Both side lose units to attition only when moving.
2. Historical for the player only: The human player only suffers from attrition while not moving; the amount depends on supply, weather, the civilization level of the region and entrenchment; there may be more things that I can't think of at the moment.
3. Historical for both the human player and the AI: as above for both sides.

If you are playing with historical attrition for your side, you will need replacements constantly.

Scenarios

Scenarios such as both of the April '61 Campaigns present you with some units (not ones that you raise yourself) with only about 30% of their strength. To bring these up to full strength you

1. must have the correct replacements in the replacement pools (look at the detail display of the unit display to ascertain the correct replacement class [click on a unit on the map to open the unit display, then click on the stack in the unit display to show the stack display on the right of the unit display, then click on the NATO symbol of the element in question to see its current strength, class and various other information])
2. must be on a depot*

* You can receive some replacements in large (size 3 or larger) cities too, but you will not receive replacement regiments or batteries for ones lost from a brigade, and the number of replacements in general will be low.

wolv18 wrote:How do you scout out an Army? I thought you just needed to be next to the opposing army and have a greater detect value than their hide value. Do I need to run some Calvary through their position to thoroughly scout their them? Oh yeah and i'm glad forums finally back up been waiting to ask this since the day it went down. Good job getting it back up thanks.

The higher your detection is vs. their hide, the more you see. I don't remember the exact numbers at this point. There had been a post somewhere. There are several levels of what you can see - from a picture only (no stack details) all the way to knowing which generals are there, what divisions they control, the division's strengths, and the general's stats. When mousing over the stack, you can see their hide value, and mousing over the region shows your detection value. So in general, you want a high detection value to see the most you can of their armies.

As Captain_Orso states, the best intel is having a cav unit in the same region (sometimes a bit suicidal for the cav unit however). The next best is having several cav units next to the region holding the enemy (I prefer this method - using independent cav regiments).

Any unit with a high detect makes a good spy for this, like, um, spies [Belle Boyd, Pinkerton]?

Look for high detectLand and high hideValue for best snooper to send into region.
Usually Raiders, Partisans, Guerrillas, Indians fit this need best.

Same rules work at sea: Frigates are best scouts [highest detectSea] and CSA Brigs [Runners] are best at hiding