Totally new player questions

[soloswolf]

Got Lee to 2399 power tonight. He's still got a little room to grow. Took Louisville, rested and is laying siege to Cincinnati..

That can be done in the chain of command with Army/Corps/Divisional designations too...

[Mickey3D]

Got Lee to 2399 power tonight. He's still got a little room to grow. Took Louisville, rested and is laying siege to Cincinnati..

I'm sure that with Jackson (corps commander under Lee) you can go over the 3'000.

[Major Dilemma]

I meant Lee as an army commander with no divisions or corps within his stack.

I thought 2400 was quite high for this arrangement. Oh well at least I still have Jackson to power up.

[Major Dilemma]

Still a newb by every measure, things are coming at me quick. Today I have come to the conclusion (likely wrong) that trans-Miss is for the Union to hold and the CSA to ignore. Well I mean everything north of Arkansas and west of Cairo. That includes the plum city of St. Louis. The CSA should simply act as though it is no man's land because that's what it is and given the manpower advantage of the North the South must focus what it has where it counts.

Missouri doesn't count considering the manpower required to keep it so why dissipate inevitably outnumbered CSA manpower into the plains of Missouri/Kansas/Iowa?

Well this is my thought of the hour and I could find out how I'm wrong the hard way by many more days of gameplay or I could simply hope someone who knows how to win will comment. Thanks.

[Mickey3D]

Still a newb by every measure, things are coming at me quick. Today I have come to the conclusion (likely wrong) that trans-Miss is for the Union to hold and the CSA to ignore. Well I mean everything north of Arkansas and west of Cairo. That includes the plum city of St. Louis. The CSA should simply act as though it is no man's land because that's what it is and given the manpower advantage of the North the South must focus what it has where it counts.

Missouri doesn't count considering the manpower required to keep it so why dissipate inevitably outnumbered CSA manpower into the plains of Missouri/Kansas/Iowa?

Well this is my thought of the hour and I could find out how I'm wrong the hard way by many more days of gameplay or I could simply hope someone who knows how to win will comment. Thanks.

My (small) experience with the south teach me that you should try to destroy the depots in Missouri to slow the north advance. But St Louis is out of reach. Cavalry raids are possible but I don't know if they are worthwhile.

I saw several south player attacking Tucson.


Note : As we are at the beginning of a PBEM don't think that I want to lure you...

[squarian]

Still a newb by every measure, things are coming at me quick. Today I have come to the conclusion (likely wrong) that trans-Miss is for the Union to hold and the CSA to ignore.

I've been playing since last Aug, but definitely still a newb too - can't rely on defeating the AI yet, not by a long shot. Interesting to find your observation just now, since I've been toying over the weekend with a CSA "western strategy" vs Athena - and getting whipped for my trouble.

Early as possible in '61, I sent good generals west and raised a strong division in Tx, then another in AK, supplemented with all the Rangers and Tx militia I could muster. And it worked - swept the trans-Miss, Price spent the winter in Denver, raiders were deep in Il and Ia, and Polk was poised to descend on St Louis in force come spring.

Only problem - I had also lost Fredericksburg, Richmond and Norfolk. In fact, I'd pretty much lost Va entirely. And Raleigh was besieged.

So I'm inclined to say you're right - Trans-Miss isn't worth the effort. Especially without corps in '61 (a change I'm very glad for, btw), it doesn't seem possible to hold a front in N Va without maximum concentration of force - in fact, without the march to the guns, I'm not sure how to defend VA even with those two extra divisions I had roaming around MO and Kansas.

[gunnergoz]

I was tickled pink to see an exploit so quickly pounced upon and set up for removal by the powers-that-be, once exposed/admitted in the forum. I am not one of these guys who likes to cheat games into victory by finding flaws in the programming or logic. I like to see things as realistic as possible since I doubt that Lee or Grant sat around counting up command points before issuing orders.
One more reason why I'm really liking this AGEOD outfit more and more!

[Major Dilemma]

To me the variations of command points could very well be a numerical translation of the caliber of junior officers in the brigade. More command points compared to overall power or size could be viewed as the way the game expresses brigades with mediocre captains and colonels who require a closer oversight. Higher quality brigades with better trained or more experienced leaders would naturally be preferred by Lee or Grant or any corps commander.

Yes I think they most certainly did consider the command load a brigade would require as compared to its overall power when determining which to receive into their force structure. By reputation and observation and performance history since they did not have fixed numbers to reference as we do in this game. But then maybe they simply took whatever they could scrape together. When it came time to divide then perhaps who got what was determined chiefly by seniority. The forces needed to accomplish the tasks assigned likely too often were a secondary consideration. But this is all conjecture. Historical references must be somebody's forte perhaps they can weigh in with some pertinent examples.

[Gray_Lensman]

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[Major Dilemma]

Okay, I give up, I've pounced on so many exploits that I've lost track of some of them. There's still a few out there yet to squash, so which specific exploit might you be referring to?

Hmm well I think it was the line/line/cav and the line/line/cav/Lart costing two command points either way. With the line/line/cav/Lart you get the light art for no extra cp cost.

But I don't think this should necessarily be considered an exploit.

[Gray_Lensman]

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[Major Dilemma]

I was referring to the actual generals of the day.

For the game to get it close to accurate the programmers would have to double all the command points and tweak up or down from there. 1,2,3 or 4 cp's just does not flesh out the field IMO. Probably too great an overhaul of existing code to bother with.

All I am saying is not all brigades were created equal and naturally the superior officers would prefer the better led brigades.

[Gray_Lensman]

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[Major Dilemma]

Why don't they just let us design 30 or so of our own? Much more fun and within the purview of any respectable President.

[Gray_Lensman]

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[Redeemer]

Why not just remove brigade recruitment completely and replace it with individual regiments. Then we could form our own brigades. This would be more realistic. We could form the historical Union artillery brigades attached to "normal" divisions, etc. Just change the "open slots" for "full" brigade. Make the Union brigade have a smaller limitation, say 5 or 6 total regiments, and 6-8 for the Confeds.

[Major Dilemma]

Yeah a combine button for brigade creation as regiments are assembled and join into a stack same as division formation. Until a regiment is assigned to a brigade it suffers even more of a cp penalty such as 60% rendering it virtually unusable until it is a brigade or part of a brigade. So then only regiments can be "purchased" and from them all brigades are formed. From one to seven regiments, one CP per regiment. Such brigades could be permanent or breakable, whatever. That way nothing but regiments need to be displayed on the purchase screen. Which states offer which regiments of what quantity could add to the challenge and retain the essence of the current format.

[Gray_Lensman]

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[Redeemer]

Redeemer and Major Dilemma:

This game design has already been set in place and in use for almost 2 years and it's also in use in several other games, the game executable code being common in a lot of way between the other games.

Though, interesting, you will probably not see an extra step of "brigade" creation added to a game 2 years old, especially since the game was designed around divisions in the first place. As I understand it, the only reason for the "brigades" was to reduce the number of "units" necessary to display on the reinforcement screens for purchase.

Maybe I am being dense, but wouldn't this change actually decrease the number of units in the reinforcement screens for purchase?

Instead of all the different brigades by state in the regular tab, you simply have regular inf regiments by state, with maybe some states getting two or three varieties to represent Zouaves and Black regiments. Militia, Cav, Art tabs would stay the same with the exception of maybe adding more being available to purchase to make up for the loss in the regular screen.

And the combining of units already exsists, just the number of "free slots" would need to be adjusted. ie, you can combine two militia regiments, isn't changing this to "4" a simple number change?

I know I am oversimplifying it some and it would take some work, but I do still see some other complicated work being done for 1.12a.

[arsan]

IMHO, the last thing AACW needs is still more micromanagement...
Assembling forces can be rather cumbersome already with brigades... but having to buy individual regiments, keep track of where they appear and move them around the map to the front and organize them on divisions one elemnet at a time looks more like a nightmare that a game to me
Maybe in AACW2 (if it gets done someday) the idea could be OL, but ir will need new game mechanism to lighten the micromanagement burden... like being able to select where the units will appear or tell them where to go automatically after being recruited (rally points) or even being able to organize them off map and deploy them latter on map.
Personally, i don't see any problem with the use of premade brigades.
Just my two cents

[Major Dilemma]

IMHO, the last thing AACW needs is still more micromanagement...
Assembling forces can be rather cumbersome already with brigades... but having to buy individual regiments, keep track of where they appear and move them around the map to the front and organize them on divisions one elemnet at a time looks more like a nightmare that a game to me
Maybe in AACW2 (if it gets done someday) the idea could be OL, but ir will need new game mechanism to lighten the micromanagement burden... like being able to select where the units will appear or tell them where to go automatically after being recruited (rally points) or even being able to organize them off map and deploy them latter on map.
Personally, i don't see any problem with the use of premade brigades.
Just my two cents

Yes I agree it is just where the conversation led. It was an outgrowth of the considerations concerning CP efficiency and how some brigades are more command efficient than others. I think there is nothing wrong with different efficiencies and everything is just fine the way it is.

I still think Lee with 2400 power (no divisions within) is quite a thing and cannot be done without paying attention to command point efficiency.

[Gray_Lensman]

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[Rafiki]

However, even if this is soemthing that cannot be worked into AACW (1), it doesn't mean that it is a useless discussion to have. I have every hope that we some day will see an AACW 2, and general ideas might also be applied to other AGE games.

[Gray_Lensman]

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[Gray_Lensman]

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[Redeemer]

Okay... Let's do the math

There are at least 15 separate states/areas that produce various items. Just looking at Regular infantry regiments and Militia infantry regiments alone which would be common to all 15 of these area, you have already used 30 of the slots... Start throwing in Zouves, and other units, you will very easily exceed the max of 40. But let's just say we can indeed squeeze in a change like this and keep it at or below the maximum of 40 units. Here's the real kicker:

I understand that it probably won't be done, but you keep loosing me here, maybe we are looking at different things. If I look at the Reinforcement screen and the Regular tab, I see Sailors, Marines, and then 33 other brigades from all the union states (18). If it was changed to Sailor, Marines, 18 state inf regiments (brigades)(one for each state), plus add in the 3 Zouaves current available in PA, CT, and NY, you get 23, 10 less. Currently you have 5 open blocks for black troops or whatever (I don't remember how many actually get added), with just regiments you would have 15 open blocks.

[soundoff]

I think that picking where the units are produced would be way too much micromanagement especially since historically, there was no actual control over where units were built/formed... What is actually needed is a "muster" command, so that once the unit is placed on the map, you could assign a "mustering" location that the unit would then head for itself, without the necessity of pre-plotting movement destinations.

+ However many you will allow

[Major Dilemma]

For another game.. yes i think that the regiments could be all on one screen and then within each type of regiment you could have a list of states where they can be built as a pull down menu. That way you don't have the redundancy of listing the same regimental type for each of the many states.

Or conversely you could have a single box for each of the states. Then within each box representing the production options for the state you could have a list of which regiment types are available from that selected state. No need to provide a separate box for each regimental type for each state. Plenty of room for everything.. in a new game like say AACW2?

Each state could have a predetermined mustering city/region, the capitol of that state or it's largest city seems logical. "All 'cruits report to the processing point" in .. Atlanta for instance for all Georgia regiments. This would be accomplished without the need to actually animate the movement, it would be designed as a nondisplayed function concept and the first time the regiments actually appear would be at their mustering point at the time of production completion plus the travel time. or for simplicity's sake you could just omit the additional travel time from the appearance schedule.

There at the mustering region the player can create brigades out of whatever regiments are available and only after the brigade assignment is received can a regiment leave the mustering region.

Now then there is the question of which states can produce which kind of regimental types for instance one state can produce sharpshooters but not artillery and vice versa in another state and we can understand Prez Davis would want to form brigades using a combination of regimental types from more than one state. So then perhaps this limitation of a regiment not being able to leave its mustering point before being assigned to a brigade would be a design mistake. But there could be a very hefty cp penalty for doing so until it gets assigned to a brigade..

***

I do like the way the command point efficiency is a valid consideration in this game and would hope there is some way for it to be translated into a new production such as AACW2. I have an idea for this, according to experince there could be a gradual reduction in command cost. Cumulatively this could present the player with an opportunity to command additional regiments over time as the more experienced units become more organized and require less oversight to be effective.

Say a regiment gains one experience point and thus it could receive a reduction of command point requirement of perhaps 1% for each experience point. With ten regiments that would be a 9.9 cp requirement. After ten experience points earned for each of the ten regiments (9 cp's total required) the commander would enjoy the opportunity to add an addititonal element to his force. There could be a command point total for a stack or force which would calculate to the tenth or hundredth of a command point according the each regiment's experience and this total would change as experience is gained or there was a change of units within the force.

Another way to translate the value of unit experience into real gameplay value which I think has historical merit.

[Gray_Lensman]

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[Clovis]

Maybe I am being dense, but wouldn't this change actually decrease the number of units in the reinforcement screens for purchase?

Instead of all the different brigades by state in the regular tab, you simply have regular inf regiments by state, with maybe some states getting two or three varieties to represent Zouaves and Black regiments. Militia, Cav, Art tabs would stay the same with the exception of maybe adding more being available to purchase to make up for the loss in the regular screen.

And the combining of units already exsists, just the number of "free slots" would need to be adjusted. ie, you can combine two militia regiments, isn't changing this to "4" a simple number change?

I know I am oversimplifying it some and it would take some work, but I do still see some other complicated work being done for 1.12a.

We would lose too an historical fact: central governments didn't had full control over unit size and composition as large parts of regulation was left to States authority or even to individualsrecruiting their own unit...