Altaris
Posts: 1551
Joined: Wed Dec 07, 2011 8:20 pm

September 1861

Sun Feb 12, 2012 3:39 pm

[SIZE="4"]September, 1861[/size]

[SIZE="2"]Abraham Lincoln[/size]
I hope God is on our side, but I must have Kentucky.


Most of the action in September centered around northern the Tennessee-Kentucky border, across it's entire line. The Union made quick progress suppressing most of the pro-Confederacy sections of Kentucky, though Albert S. Johnston managed to reach Bowling Green with a sizable force.

Union forces have made good use of the rivers, landing large numbers of troops at Paducah and Bowling Green, though they suffered a small disaster at Clarkesville, TN when a landing force was stopped and forced to surrender. However, huge numbers of troops got onto land safely at Bowling Green, where no fighting has yet to occur, but the Union troops far outnumber Johnston's small army. Ulysses S. Grant has arrived at Paducah and driven down to Columbus, KY, but his troops are outnumbered there by Polk.

Of particular note has been the contributions of Ben McCullough at Charleston, MO. He and his artillery have put heavy fire on quite a few Union transports in transit. He's also quite lodged in with almost 300 CP worth of troops, making it a nasty thorn in the side of the Union. At first, I wished I had not moved him to this location and had the troops free for other portions of the defensive line, but he's done very admirably in weakening the Union forces coming into the battle of the west. Nearly every transport by him is taking 40-55 hits, not too shabby at all.

While the east was fairly quiet, Magruder did manage to drive off the invasion force in NC with a blistering attack at Onslow on the tired, dispirited Union forces there. He probably would've ravaged this force even more, but I could never get him to activate and launch an offensive, so the Union forces managed to get to ship and evacuate the ill-fated invasion.

The stage is set for large battles across the map when divisions arrive next turn!

The Objectives Screen

[ATTACH]17189[/ATTACH]



The Battle of Clarkesville, where CSA troops intercept the Union landing force, ending with it's full surrender.

[ATTACH]17187[/ATTACH]



The Tennessee-Kentucky border at end of September. The red dots note points of interest, as follows from left to right:
1) Ben McCullough's force of 300 CP has ravished passing Union transports with it's artillery, inflicting 40-50 hits on each passing fleet.
2) Polk faces Grant, the CSA looks to have about a 380:300 CP ratio advantage.
3) Johnston faces a massive Union force at Bowling Green. The CSA has about 200 CP faced down by at least 600 CP on the Union side. This may not end pretty for the South...


[ATTACH]17188[/ATTACH]



Magruder inflicts a final defeat on the Union's invasion force into North Carolina. This final battle saw a retreat of the Union from NC, though Magruder wasn't able to capitalize on the rout due to several turns of inactivity.

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Altaris
Posts: 1551
Joined: Wed Dec 07, 2011 8:20 pm

October 1861

Sun Feb 12, 2012 7:26 pm

[SIZE="4"]October, 1861[/size]

[SIZE="2"]Brigadier General Isaac Trimble[/size]
Before this war is over, I intend to be a Major General or a corpse!


Divisions activated this month, and all kinds of hell broke loose both on the eastern and western fronts. The CSA has been battered but held on strongly at all points except Bowling Green. We even got a chance to counter-attack and take some initiative of our own in the last week of the month.

The Union led with the attacks hitting targets ranging from Columbus and Bowling Green, KY to Manassas and Fredericksburg, VA.

In VA, Manassas held out strongly under the leadership of Longstreet, despite a heavy numerical disadvantage in troops. He took enough damage that I grew a bit concerned though, and began routing troops to Manassas to stave off any future attack. The second battle at Manassas was a far more even affair and resulted in an easy CSA win.

At Fredericksburg, T. Holmes met similar odds but held the day... I was actually quite surprised by this considering his stats, and noticed at that time that the Union forces in VA were suffering -35% penalties, after discussing with Durk, it seems these guys weren't formed up in divisions due to an oversight. I wonder if that was all that saved Holmes and Fredericksburg, as 2:1 odds against T. Holmes is not something I want to test often. The river could've factored into it as well. Any way going, I routed more troops to him and afterwards we held out without trouble, even inflicting a good bit of damage to the fleeing enemy at the end of the month.

Out west, Polk staves off roughly equal forces under Grant, then reinforcements under Hardee arrive to push the enemy back to the Paducah bridgehead, albeit at heavy losses.

Bowling Green, unfortunately, did not go in the CSA's favor. Johnston's entire force was nearly demolished by an overwhelming Union assault. This sent me into a rush to get my defensive lines set up behind the Cumberland River and a desperate attempt to save Nashville. I have a decent defensive line on the TN/KY border, but it's stretched thin and only time will tell if it will hold.

One thing I found very noticeable in this turn was how even casualties tended to be, which doesn't seem to happen in most vanilla games. I would guess this is due to the loss of protection from high entrenchments. Even when I had fairly fresh troops and the Union were tired, the losses were still relatively close most of the time. I'm definitely feeling the strain of replacements much more than I normally do.

The Objectives Screen

[ATTACH]17203[/ATTACH]



Grant fails to defeat relatively equal forces at Columbus, KY, and a follow-up joint attack by Polk and Hardee sends the Union packing to Paducah.

[ATTACH]17199[/ATTACH]



But at Bowling Green, Johnston's army is shattered, and I scramble to reassemble a new defensive line behind the Cumberland.

[ATTACH]17200[/ATTACH]



Longstreet makes two excellent stands at Manassas.

[ATTACH]17201[/ATTACH]



Holmes holds out at Fredericksburg, and Jackson earns a promotion to 2-stars during the action.

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Altaris
Posts: 1551
Joined: Wed Dec 07, 2011 8:20 pm

November 1861

Sun Feb 12, 2012 7:50 pm

[SIZE="4"]November, 1861[/size]

[SIZE="2"]Lt. James Gillette[/size]
We are going through a sort of picking over and sifting process. A brigade put here and another countermarched to where it was a week ago. What they are going to do and when they are going to do it I don't know.


November was fairly quiet compared to the last few bloody months, largely due to winter setting across northern Virginia and parts of Kentucky. On my end, I've begun moving forces around, trying to get a good solid line in place as the Union inexorably marches down to Nashville.

I've also taken the opportunity to launch a few attacks in Virginia where weather favored them and I thought I had a sizeable enough advantage. These attacks were wins, but at heavier costs to me than the enemy, which nullifies most of their purpose.

November ends with the Union poised for a strong assault on Nashville from two directions (I assume Nashville is the target since the majority is on the eastern side of the Cumberland River rather than the western). He has nearly 1200 CP between the two forces arraigned against my 500 CP under Bragg, it is uncertain whether it will hold under a massed assault, but I have some hope since there is a major river between us.

The Objectives Screen

[ATTACH]17207[/ATTACH]



Beauregard pushed Hooker out of Loudon, VA, but at heavier casualties than the Union suffers despite a 4:1 advantage in CP

[ATTACH]17204[/ATTACH]



Jackson makes a dashing attack at Stafford, VA against the tired retreating forces from Fredericksburg.

[ATTACH]17205[/ATTACH]



My defensive line across the TN/KY border, it is about 400-500 CP strong in each region, except for Charleston MO on the far left, which is only around 325

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veji1
AGEod Guard of Honor
Posts: 1271
Joined: Fri Dec 08, 2006 6:27 pm

Sun Feb 12, 2012 8:21 pm

interesting. pretty big losses already; especially for the union. Your morale advantage should really help in battle. What's up in Missouri ?

Altaris
Posts: 1551
Joined: Wed Dec 07, 2011 8:20 pm

Sun Feb 12, 2012 8:47 pm

MO is pretty much the same, there was one battle at Springfield between Lyon and Price again, roughly even odds and the Union retreated. Don't think it's been on either of our radars too much with everything else going on.

Regarding losses, yes, they are high. Durk attacks ALOT, which is where I would attribute most of the loss disparity. I think he does a second attack too often after the first, when I've had time to rail in reinforcements and his cohesion losses are higher than mine, which leads to uneven losses favoring the CSA. Overall, the high attack strategy can be good one, but the secondary attacks I usually don't think are a good idea, and have been costly to the Union.

charlesonmission
Posts: 781
Joined: Wed Mar 09, 2011 5:55 am
Location: USA (somewhere)

Mon Feb 13, 2012 5:17 am

How did you get that brigade to Clarksville?

pesec
Corporal
Posts: 49
Joined: Tue Jan 20, 2009 8:44 am

Mon Feb 13, 2012 11:01 am

Why is Foreign Intervention so low? Have rolls gone consistently against you?

Also, with shorter turns is FI change due to NM and VP twice faster?

Altaris
Posts: 1551
Joined: Wed Dec 07, 2011 8:20 pm

Mon Feb 13, 2012 1:59 pm

pesec wrote:Why is Foreign Intervention so low? Have rolls gone consistently against you?

Also, with shorter turns is FI change due to NM and VP twice faster?


Yes, FI moves twice as fast. To compensate, there's an event that adjusts FI down when it reaches a certain level (sorry, not at home right now, can't remember the exact numbers off the top of my head). The end result is that it's a 200 point sliding scale rather than 100 to compensate for the doubling of speed.

charlesonmission wrote:How did you get that brigade to Clarksville?


I'd have to look, but IIRC, I moved some units from Donelson, Nashville, and interior TN to Clarksville. Where he had his ships positioned, there were no other regions he could've been targeting (except the one north of Donelson which I couldn't reach in time), so I decided to set up a nasty surprise there.

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Spharv2
Posts: 1540
Joined: Sat Feb 25, 2006 5:39 am
Location: Tallahassee, FL

Tue Feb 14, 2012 5:48 pm

veji1 wrote:About the blooy battles, it does raise the question, not new in this game, of the cohesion level of the different units. I always thought that there should be, a bit like for entrenchments, a cohesion curve with hard caps (except for maybe a few Elite units, where the Elite attribute adds +10 or so cohesion points). If in summer 61 the max cohesion level of units was 55 or 60, the battles would be less bloody, then let cohesion go up by increments so that there is no more hard cap in summer 62.

Basically it would be nice to have shorter battles with more elements routing on both sides, regardless of who is winning or not, at the beginning of the game. This low cohesion would aso make exploitation attacks, which could be a problem in a 7 days turn game, that much harder...


I think that back in the day, we did do some fiddling with cohesion to improve that already. In it's initial stages, the battles were much larger and bloodier in the opening part of the war. I think the changes had more to do with recovery though, not a cap. Would be something good to add to the AACW2 ideas thread, which I started around here somewhere. Someday they might get back to re-do this one, and we've got some good ideas in there already, pretty sure it would be something they'd look at.

As for the secondary attacks, is it because he's actively doing it? Or is it a function of the shorter turns? If he can't pull back, even if he sets them on defensive, the military control could cause his forces to go on the offensive, which would cause him to be attacking whether he wants to or not. Could be another problem. Wonder if it would be possible (Not through modding I don't think) to make a retreating force move faster.
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Altaris
Posts: 1551
Joined: Wed Dec 07, 2011 8:20 pm

Tue Feb 14, 2012 9:09 pm

Interesting point about going to Offensive stance due to MC... I hadn't thought about this or to ask my opponent about it. I agree that's a huge issue if he's being forced to attack... however, I don't think that's the case, as I've had units retreat before on 15-day turns and not making it back (usually due to mud) and they didn't get forced into Offensive mode the following turn, IIRC. I'll double-check with Durk and see.

Either way, we've decided to call an end to this game. Both of us agree that the 7-day turns, while an interesting idea, just don't add enough to warrant doubling the number of turns in the game. We're going to start fresh with 15-day turns using the entrenchment changes/reductions in a few days.

Meagher
Sergeant
Posts: 80
Joined: Sat May 23, 2009 3:20 pm

Thu Feb 16, 2012 1:40 am

I am surprised you did not find the 1 week turns to be worth it. To me, the long wait before I can react to a developing situation is one of the few weaknesses of this game. I realize it takes longer to play, but I think I would want to take those extra turns because it makes me more involved in the game.

I think 1 week turns would also help offset the CSA's loss of early entrenchment. With low entrenchment and longer turns, it's easier for the Union to threaten a large area before the CSA can react. More of the game comes down to luck if you anticipate correctly. With shorter turns, it takes more work to draw your opponent out of position rather than just being able to steal a fortnight's march.

veji1
AGEod Guard of Honor
Posts: 1271
Joined: Fri Dec 08, 2006 6:27 pm

Thu Feb 16, 2012 7:43 am

true. I think it is all a test process in the sense that Altaris and Durk might discover that the low entrenchments + 2 weeks turns lead to those type of problems. To prevent this it might be needed to massively lower cohesion, which would slow movement and result in more combat routs.

jrwsdev
Conscript
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed Apr 11, 2012 1:24 pm

Wed Apr 11, 2012 6:50 pm

How much modding is necessary to do 1 week turns? I don't mean just to make it run 7 days at a time as I assume that is the easy change, but overall to bring everything else into line?

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