How do you "succeed in retreating" when there's nowhere to retreat to?

[Heldenkaiser]

I have an enemy stack completely surrounded in the region of New Orleans. All land exits are blocked, all adjacent sea areas are blockaded. I have an own stack about four times the size in the same region, set on offensive. Turn after turn I get the message that the enemy stack "succeeded in retreating", and either there is no battle, or a very small battles with hardly any casualties. This has been going on for five or six turns, and it's getting mighty annoying. Where is this stack retreating to, I wonder? It isn't. It's just sitting there. I have 55,000 men with 132 cannon in the region and they just can't engage these guys for the hell of them. How do I make sense of this? Do I imagine that they simply can't find the Rebs, or that they're chasing them around the region in circles, never getting hold of them? It doesn't make sense, or does it?

[SkyWestNM]

Can you give us a screen shot, maybe?

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[W.Barksdale]

Yeah I've had it happen a few times. Game engine limitation...

Just keep trying to attack, moving a corps in and out and in and out of the region (by rail if you can). Also, be sure you have at least 4 cavalry regiments in each of your corps, and the army stack to maximize the chances of an engagement, and to pursue any routed enemies.

If all else fails, wait until they starve. This is one of the most annoying game limitations by far. Good luck!

[TheDoctorKing]

You must be playing the v 1.14 public beta? Because I have had the total annihilation thing happen to me in 1.13, and that was seriously annoying...

Actually, I thought the solution was going to be to allow the defeated units to retreat into an adjacent zone that they had a little bit of control in, rather than to allow them to remain in the same area.

Remember, though, that these areas are dozens of miles across. Plenty of room there for a couple of 50,000-man armies to remain out of contact with each other for several weeks. Especially in the Civil War when armies would often refrain from engaging each other for longer periods of time even when in close proximity - like with Halleck after Shiloh advancing on Corinth for literally months, with the Confederates only a few miles away and almost no shots fired, or McClellan sapping up to Magruder's lines on the James peninsula for weeks. The defending force here is obviously on a passive posture with "avoid combat" option picked.

[Heldenkaiser]

Can you give us a screen shot, maybe?

Yes, absolutely. Does this help?



I'll reply to the other replies later.

[Heldenkaiser]

The message should say that Combat has successfully been broken off, though I'm not sure if the game engine can determine the difference between normal retreats out of the region and those retreats that just result in combat being broken off.

Thank you. Just to be sure, I had some battles that were broken off too, usually resulting in little to no losses to either side. On other turns (this one), no battle at all occurred.

The actual size (scale) of the regions justifies this quite well, though it can be a bit disconcerting not to be able to pin down an enemy combat force.

Especially for about three months on end!
Now how big is this region actually? Shouldn't 55,000 men (strength of 2000+) be able to pin down a sizeable (it started out with about a strength of 900 IIRC, but lost a good deal since then) enemy force at one point over such a long time? Afterall, these are about enough guys to physically surround them!

I would be concerned if they were continually getting away from a structure that you might have beseiged, though there are historical accounts of that happening also. (Forrest escaping from supposedly totally surrounded Ft Donnelson come to mind.).

With a small force though, not with two divisions ... and he didn't linger in the region for an entire season, never actually getting caught. Somehow my feeling says if a force cannot retreat out of the region, it shouldn't be able to continually evade battle within the region, unless it's really tiny and mobile. 200 Reb cavalry conducting a guerrilla war, yes. In broken terrain in the backcountry. But two regular divisions in the vicinity of one of the largest cities of the continent?

For darn sure, I don't want the game engine to revert back to total annilation of entire armies like it was doing in past versions of the game.

Not as a rule, for sure. But aren't there conditions under which an army would be completely annihilated? For instance if it's surrounded and attacked by a far superior force?

[Heldenkaiser]

Just keep trying to attack, moving a corps in and out and in and out of the region (by rail if you can). Also, be sure you have at least 4 cavalry regiments in each of your corps, and the army stack to maximize the chances of an engagement, and to pursue any routed enemies.

That's very good advice, thank you. (I would add to your reputation if I could! :thumbsup

[Heldenkaiser]

You must be playing the v 1.14 public beta? Because I have had the total annihilation thing happen to me in 1.13, and that was seriously annoying...

Actually I'll have to admit that I play v. 1.10. This is a long PBEM moving slowly and at one point we were advised not to patch during an ongoing game ... But of course I should have mentioned that, my apologies, I always forget.

Remember, though, that these areas are dozens of miles across. Plenty of room there for a couple of 50,000-man armies to remain out of contact with each other for several weeks. Especially in the Civil War when armies would often refrain from engaging each other for longer periods of time even when in close proximity - .....

Yes indeed. Only I don't refrain. Unlike Halleck and McClellan I am desperately trying to engage those Rebs. Now are there examples from the actual war where a sizeable army tried to engage an enemy army of roughly comparable size and didn't manage to do so while both remained in the same "region" for three months?

[Heldenkaiser]

Sooo .... any comments?

[SkyWestNM]

This is seriously frustrating and disappointing to say at the least. I see some rationalize a real world reasoning for it but as Barksdale concludes, and I agree, it must be an engine or coding limitation. Maybe the program gets caught in a "do loop" and defaults out after twenty or so times to unsuccessully retreat. And it does so without a battle. Dunno as I am not a programmer nor modder.

Perhaps also 1.10 coding was less sophisticated than the current 1.13b. I see nothing in your screen shot that indicates any reasonable rationale for the number of turns you have been stuck in non-resolution. Your situation is troublesome and all I can offer is my sympathy.

[Heldenkaiser]

Well, on the turn after that turn, the Reb division finally surrendered. Or at least it was gone, even though the battle screen showed only a small number of elements as actually destroyed in combat. Wonder if the rest simply dissolved, or whatever happens in such a situation? They're definitely no longer around. I also gained 2 NM.

But yes, I also still think it's hard a rationalize their escaping destruction for so long.