Questions Questions Questions

[dolphin]

Let me just lay out the situation in order for someone to understand what I am asking. This is a current PBM game and what sux is my opponant will obviously be reading this too, so I hope I get the answer I am hoping for.


Jackson's Corp just took Cairo which has a depot and a massive quantity of stored supplies and ammo that I captured. Enough to last a good long time even given the size of his Corp.

My concern however is what will happen when those supplies run out.

I am most certainly within the 5 jump distance to my network of other depots in the supply chain, but there is the issue of an intervening river and he has river boats all along the rapids in multiple river zones including the area with Cairo's Harbor.

Will my supplies get to him merely based on the distance to other depots, or can his boats prevent supply transit to Cairo?


Is there a simply map display mode to determine which reagions are either in the supply chain, or out of the supply chain? I am familiar with the obvious one, but that seems to only tell you which places have it stored it up. I also notice the map seems to divide the into two colors, but does that have to do with region control, or does it also indicate regions within the supply chain?

Obviously I will not be able to tell if Cairo is getting supplied until its current inventory is used up.

[Ace]

Boats will not impede river transport unless he directly blocks Cairo harbor. In that case, you will not receive river supply, and your town supply production will also be lowered.

[dolphin]

Boats will not impede river transport unless he directly blocks Cairo harbor. In that case, you will not receive river supply, and your town supply production will also be lowered.

Which leads me to my next question.

How do you deal with a blockaded port other than to send in your own ships to do battle? He currently has Richmond and New Orleans blockaded.

Can artillary and coastal defence placed on shore effectively force them to retreat by causing bombardment damage every turn?

I did capture a Coastal Battery and Fort Battery in Cairo. Will they mess with his harbor blockade? I know there is a rule whereby you have to move through two water regions connected to the land based artillary, but I am a little fuzzy on it still. Particulary given my stack outside New Orleans has a button to Bombard passing ships.

I mean once they have suffered one bombardment for passing through two neighboring water regions and then just sit in one spot are ships then immune until they move again making it so they can just blockade free from any further harm?

[Ace]

Which leads me to my next question.

I mean once they have suffered one bombardment for passing through two neighboring water regions and then just sit in one spot are ships then immune until they move again making it so they can just blockade free from any further harm?

You are on spot with this one.

[dolphin]

You are on spot with this one.

So a stack with artillary and a button to bombard passing ships won't do anything to a ship stack just sitting next to it off the coast after the first time it attacks the ships presuming the land based artillary was even connected to two water regions the ships moved through?

Unless of course say the enemy has land troops also in the region and the ships opt to bombard the land troops making the ships vulnerable to land based bombardment and then only if the land based troops opt to bombard the ships otherwise the land troops are immune from naval bombardment?'


So you see how things can be awefully fuzzy?

I have read near all I can find in the Wiki and the Forum on this issue and that is how I currently understand things. Correct me where I might be wrong.


Answers to these questions could radically alter certain moves I plan to make in my current turn.

[Cromagnonman]

You won't bombard ships without provokation. Moving is a provocation. If the ships bombard you, that is also a provocation. They will bombard you only if they are set to bombard and a battle occurs in an adjacent region. As bombardment almost always favors the land force, I'll bet anything he won't have his fleet set to bombard. However, he may eventually run out of supplies and have to leave, or enciunter bad weather. However, riverine blockades spanning multiple river segments are very hard to achieve, so you may be able to simply walk around them if things get dire.

[dolphin]

You won't bombard ships without provokation. Moving is a provocation. If the ships bombard you, that is also a provocation. They will bombard you only if they are set to bombard and a battle occurs in an adjacent region. As bombardment almost always favors the land force, I'll bet anything he won't have his fleet set to bombard. However, he may eventually run out of supplies and have to leave, or enciunter bad weather. However, riverine blockades spanning multiple river segments are very hard to achieve, so you may be able to simply walk around them if things get dire.

I am quite certain my current riverine fleet is up to the task of breaking any attempted blockades. His blockade is currently spanning three river regions.

I already defeated Admiral Farragut in a surprise attack Naval engagement near Fort Pickens with my combined River and Ocean Fleets.

Just a matter of time before his blockade meets with some serious opposition.

I just needed to know the details of the game mechanics before making any decision on what to do this turn.

I am quite certain he will be reading this thread.

[Cromagnonman]

The rebel navy has one small advantage to that of the federals; interior lines. The rebs can move their ironclads at will throughout the coastal zones and up the Mississippi as far as Cairo without encountering a doubly-adjacent Union fort, except for Pickens. In essence, they need on fleet.
However, the Union must run all the forts along the Eastern seaboard and the Mississippi to combine their fleets, or take the long slow route through the Great Lakes (excluding their deepwater ships). In essence, the Union needs 2 fleets, each as strong as the single rebel fleet. A tall order indeed. To me, this is the biggest reason to take and hold the coastal forts, or at least to steal their coastal guns.

[dolphin]

The rebel navy has one small advantage to that of the federals; interior lines. The rebs can move their ironclads at will throughout the coastal zones and up the Mississippi as far as Cairo without encountering a doubly-adjacent Union fort, except for Pickens. In essence, they need on fleet.
However, the Union must run all the forts along the Eastern seaboard and the Mississippi to combine their fleets, or take the long slow route through the Great Lakes (excluding their deepwater ships). In essence, the Union needs 2 fleets, each as strong as the single rebel fleet. A tall order indeed. To me, this is the biggest reason to take and hold the coastal forts, or at least to steal their coastal guns.

I spent a mound of cash repairing my Coastal artillary last turn in fact. How many reenforcement chits does repairing all CSA coastal battery's to full generally cost from anyone with experience to tell?

Multiple uncommitted Divisions are strategically located to respond to any coastal incursions. I even decided to centrally locate my 4th HQ in order to quickly reassign an army when it becomes neccessary. Lt. General Commanders are already on station to form Corps for that army to be.

In other words my Southern Army and its pre-formed Corps with uncommitted divisions are ready and waiting.


Bring it on you decietful spying chicken shit. I know your reading this thread.This cat and mouse game we keep playing is getting unnerving.

[Cromagnonman]

Bring it on you decietful spying chicken shit. I know your reading this thread.This cat and mouse game we keep playing is getting unnerving.

Quite rude and disrespectful, and a good way to find yourself without PBEM opponents. If you post on an open forum, you should expect your opponent to read it; that is, after all, most likely where you found him. You may have noticed several other threads in which active PBEM opponents discuss such things in their games, and quite collegially.

[dolphin]

Quite rude and disrespectful, and a good way to find yourself without PBEM opponents. If you post on an open forum, you should expect your opponent to read it; that is, after all, most likely where you found him. You may have noticed several other threads in which active PBEM opponents discuss such things in their games, and quite collegially.

If my PBM opponant does not realize its all in fun and I am just joking with him then he is not as good an opponant as I thought he was.

I notice certain people in this forum are way too sensitive.

The slightest attempt at levity and sarcasm evokes the most ridiculous out of proportion responses it seems.

As Abner would say; "Don't take the World Serious".

[Cromagnonman]

Your levity would be more recognizeable and appreciated if it did not tend toward such a nasty streak.

[moni kerr]

Is Jackson learning to "love the mud" yet?

[dolphin]

Your levity would be more recognizeable and appreciated if it did not tend toward such a nasty streak.

Its a war game. War is hell.

In any case my posting does not hold any hatred, bias, or any personal intentional insult despite occasions when someone may misinterpret it as such.

I have been posting on the internet since it was birthed and the old BBS's before the internet. I guess its just old hat to me. My experiences in forums over the years have resulted in attacks against me that make what I do very mild by comparrison and yet I NEVER complained.

I am one of those of the opinion that if you can't stand the heat stay out of the fire. In any case I have altered and toned down my rhetoric in this particular forum because I realize it has alot less tolerence than most places.

Furthermore the post I made that your refering to was for the benifit of one person who I know outside the forum as this is our second campaign with each other and we communicate on SKYPE. I am quite sure he was not offended in any way. The second reason I posted it was to bring some levity, sarcasm, and humour to other readers of the thread who have absolutely no reason to take personal offense at what I posted since it was not directed at them in any case.

Perhaps my PBM opponant could weigh in on this issue.

[GraniteStater]

Let me just lay out the situation in order for someone to understand what I am asking. This is a current PBM game and what sux is my opponant will obviously be reading this too, so I hope I get the answer I am hoping for.


Jackson's Corp just took Cairo which has a depot and a massive quantity of stored supplies and ammo that I captured. Enough to last a good long time even given the size of his Corp.

My concern however is what will happen when those supplies run out.

I am most certainly within the 5 jump distance to my network of other depots in the supply chain, but there is the issue of an intervening river and he has river boats all along the rapids in multiple river zones including the area with Cairo's Harbor.

Will my supplies get to him merely based on the distance to other depots, or can his boats prevent supply transit to Cairo?


Is there a simply map display mode to determine which reagions are either in the supply chain, or out of the supply chain? I am familiar with the obvious one, but that seems to only tell you which places have it stored it up. I also notice the map seems to divide the into two colors, but does that have to do with region control, or does it also indicate regions within the supply chain?
Obviously I will not be able to tell if Cairo is getting supplied until its current inventory is used up.

* No.

* Yes, the latter.

It's not complicated - if it's green, it's "in supply".

Contrast your MC map with the supply map. That should tell you a few things, keeping in mind the "min 25% MC" rule for supply flow & RR usage.

Use the "out of supply" button to see which are units are out of supply - and then, look at the situation and see why things are the way they are.

AFAIK, sufficient naval presence (4+ elements?) on a river segment, Forts, or 5+ fortifications will impede Supply.

[dolphin]

Contrast your MC map with the supply map. That should tell you a few things, keeping in mind the "min 25% MC" rule for supply flow & RR usage.

Use the "out of supply" button to see which are units are out of supply - and then, look at the situation and see why things are the way they are.
.

The problem with these checks is if you have a supply surplus that is running out you can't tell in advance if you will be out of supply when it runs out in order to make provisions for the situation when it happens.

[Pat "Stonewall" Cleburne]

If my PBM opponant does not realize its all in fun and I am just joking with him then he is not as good an opponant as I thought he was.

I notice certain people in this forum are way too sensitive.

The slightest attempt at levity and sarcasm evokes the most ridiculous out of proportion responses it seems.

As Abner would say; "Don't take the World Serious".

It's often hard to decipher sarcasm on a written medium like a message board. Most people and every company wants a civil forum. This isn't /b. War is hell, but wargames don't need to be.

Oh, and you can look at supply consumption vs supply level by mousing over the supply level box in the bottom right.

[GraniteStater]

The problem with these checks is if you have a supply surplus that is running out you can't tell in advance if you will be out of supply when it runs out in order to make provisions for the situation when it happens.

You're not using the tools. No, there is no dynamic overlay showing the Supply System as a representation of flows, but use the mouseover on the stack's status symbols in the upper RH row on the "brown wooden" frame - the supply & ammo icons show the usage per Turn and how much is left.

To be frank, I think you're probably a little anxious about your PBEM, which is natural, we humans are competitive against humans and want to do well, want to win. If I may, this is why I recommend playing the AI quite a bit before taking on a human - you've got to have a certain level of comfort with all the possible things that can happen to have a good PBEM.

Call me dense, but it took me a good dozen starts to even get a handle on Supply, and that was 1.09 or before, at least 18 months ago. You've got to go through your situations of "how come this ain't working like I thought it should" until you start to see how the whole thing meshes together.

I can't stress this too much - it all works together, and there ain't no magic bullets.

About 1.12 or so, I could beat CSA Athena on Normal by mid-63 or even late 62 from a 61 start. Then I started ramping up the difficulty.

1.16 - I just beat CSA Athena on Colonel from a 62 start -in Feb65. Yeah, she put up a good fight.

Then I played Pat Cleburne and started chewing nails in frustration - and I have a pretty good idea of what I'm doing. Still...

I'm still learning, there's aspects I haven't even touched or used. Is this a game requiring a Master's degree? No, it's not War in the Pacific or anything, but it's a really good model of the American Civil War and it all works together.

"There's no substitute for experience." Play, play and play. Use the mouseovers, read the Wiki, etc., etc.

[Cromagnonman]

Its a war game. War is hell.

In any case my posting does not hold any hatred, bias, or any personal intentional insult despite occasions when someone may misinterpret it as such.

I have been posting on the internet since it was birthed and the old BBS's before the internet. I guess its just old hat to me. My experiences in forums over the years have resulted in attacks against me that make what I do very mild by comparrison and yet I NEVER complained.

I am one of those of the opinion that if you can't stand the heat stay out of the fire. In any case I have altered and toned down my rhetoric in this particular forum because I realize it has alot less tolerence than most places.

Furthermore the post I made that your refering to was for the benifit of one person who I know outside the forum as this is our second campaign with each other and we communicate on SKYPE. I am quite sure he was not offended in any way. The second reason I posted it was to bring some levity, sarcasm, and humour to other readers of the thread who have absolutely no reason to take personal offense at what I posted since it was not directed at them in any case.

Perhaps my PBM opponant could weigh in on this issue.

Well, this board is run by Europeans, so the civilty & sensitivity bars are set rather higher than the typical American grunt-fest Yet tone is poorly conveyed by text alone, and trash talking is generally left out of conversations in which the taunted party is not participating. A riposte to "stay out of the heat" might be "don't bite the hand that feeds you."

That said, I will assume you are a man of humor and wit, and from now on consider anything offensive you say to be meant so in an ironic and humorous light. I myself consider the raspberry emoticon to be the universal sign of jest, when there is any possibility of confusion.


The supply factors are one of the hardest to figure in this game, since they are mostly hidden. Supply is distributed and then eaten, so supplied units often do not show a full larder. In an isolated situation as with your Mr Jackson, you may be able to divine his supply situation by summing the supply in both Cairo and his stack and produced in Cairo, and subtracting that which his stack consumes. You'll then have to check this value against the total Jackson/Cairo supply next turn, and see whether he has more than predicted. If so, then he is in supply. At least until something changes, like new fortifications or gunboats/ice in the river.

[dolphin]

You're not using the tools. No, there is no dynamic overlay showing the Supply System as a representation of flows, but use the mouseover on the stack's status symbols in the upper RH row on the "brown wooden" frame - the supply & ammo icons show the usage per Turn and how much is left.

To be frank, I think you're probably a little anxious about your PBEM, which is natural, we humans are competitive against humans and want to do well, want to win. If I may, this is why I recommend playing the AI quite a bit before taking on a human - you've got to have a certain level of comfort with all the possible things that can happen to have a good PBEM.

Call me dense, but it took me a good dozen starts to even get a handle on Supply, and that was 1.09 or before, at least 18 months ago. You've got to go through your situations of "how come this ain't working like I thought it should" until you start to see how the whole thing meshes together.

I can't stress this too much - it all works together, and there ain't no magic bullets.

About 1.12 or so, I could beat CSA Athena on Normal by mid-63 or even late 62 from a 61 start. Then I started ramping up the difficulty.

1.16 - I just beat CSA Athena on Colonel from a 62 start -in Feb65. Yeah, she put up a good fight.

Then I played Pat Cleburne and started chewing nails in frustration - and I have a pretty good idea of what I'm doing. Still...

I'm still learning, there's aspects I haven't even touched or used. Is this a game requiring a Master's degree? No, it's not War in the Pacific or anything, but it's a really good model of the American Civil War and it all works together.

"There's no substitute for experience." Play, play and play. Use the mouseovers, read the Wiki, etc., etc.

I know exactly what your saying regarding supply, but I have played these types of games for decades. I get the concepts down fairly quick when I can ask pointed questions and its even better if they are pertaining to an actual game I am in at the moment. My opponant is learning things too, so its a good matchup.

In my last campaign with the same PBM opponant that I won as the CSA it was in fact due to my completely isolating and cutting off "Grants" army from supply by destroying my own supply depots, abandoning Springfield and Fayetteville and on the same turn taking and holding St Louis as well I had all of Kentucky and had advanced into and held Cincenatti after a major battle that I won there involving 60,000 man armies on both sides.

He resigned with my NM at 129 and his at like 83. The West was won and he had no way to push me back out of Kentucky, or Cincinatti and I was well defended everywhere else.

In the end though it was the lack of supply to Grants army that he felt was the nail in his coffin and I felt OK with his resignation. We were close to 40 turns in.


The most embarrassing aspect of that game for me was his capturing at least 15 batteries of my Field Artillary in multiple raids. He drove me nuts. Needless to say I have not lost any this game. I learn.

[dolphin]

Well, this board is run by Europeans, so the civilty & sensitivity bars are set rather higher than the typical American grunt-fest Yet tone is poorly conveyed by text alone, and trash talking is generally left out of conversations in which the taunted party is not participating. A riposte to "stay out of the heat" might be "don't bite the hand that feeds you."

Europeans can be total blockheads. That I will agree with. Most of them spit at Americans and think were all stupid and they are the ones living in a Tower of Babel.

Even the poster has their heads blocked. Note the babies is still round like an American head.





Well maybe they don't spit at us. I got mixed up. That is what Zionists in Israel literally do to Christians and members of the clergy (Nuns and Priests) in particular.

That said, I will assume you are a man of humor and wit, and from now on consider anything offensive you say to be meant so in an ironic and humorous light. I myself consider the raspberry emoticon to be the universal sign of jest, when there is any possibility of confusion.

Thank you and bear that in mind when you read the above.

The supply factors are one of the hardest to figure in this game, since they are mostly hidden. Supply is distributed and then eaten, so supplied units often do not show a full larder. In an isolated situation as with your Mr Jackson, you may be able to divine his supply situation by summing the supply in both Cairo and his stack and produced in Cairo, and subtracting that which his stack consumes. You'll then have to check this value against the total Jackson/Cairo supply next turn, and see whether he has more than predicted. If so, then he is in supply. At least until something changes, like new fortifications or gunboats/ice in the river.

I'm learning by leaps and bounds.

[Cromagnonman]

Yeah, the one way to reliably eliminate enemy leaders is to starve them. If Grant and his homeboys Sherman and Thomas were all stuck on the end of a withered vine, then he was about to lose the cream of his general crop, likely worse than the loss of Cincinatti. The kind of calamity that met Napoleon in Moscow.
That's why I usually keep my valuable generals back from the front, especially since I lost LG Joe Hooker in battle, decapitating my entire Army of the James.

[moni kerr]

They're only blockheads because they didn't take kindly your cotton embargo.

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[dolphin]

They're only blockheads because they didn't take kindly your cotton embargo.

Very good my PBM Pal. I like your sense of humour.

For everyone else "moni kerr" is my PBM opponant and he is refering to our last turn which now has my foreign intervention level down to negative -44.

Nevermind the fact that he forgot to mention his attack he just did on Bowling Green with Grant's Corp and Shermans Division leading the charge against J. Foreny's Corp.

Needless to say he took nearly tripple the losses I did and lost two (2) NM.

Who was it that ever claimed the CSA artillary was lacking?

We had near about equal forces in terms of Infantry and Cavalry (20k each), but I think my x14 12lber and the x4 20lber batteries took him by surprise all entrenched to level 4. Very questionable attack considering I was able to route Grant and Sherman causing an additional 38 hits for a total of 166 hits inflicted. He did manage to surprise me, but mainly because I felt confident of my defenses and was not paying too much attention, or concern of danger and I was right not to be.

Left him with a big ouch.

On the other side of the coin he is threatening Richmond out of Fort Monroe this turn and has given me a bit of a puzzle to solve, but I am not gonna comment on that til after the next turn.

The Cairo situation is still interesting, but he had to withdraw in the West and give back Jefferson City to PGT & Longstreet's threat in order to mass his forces to contain Jackson's Corp in Cairo and it looks as though Lexington is fruit on the tree for me to pick at will.

I can't comment on what Jackson's plans are just yet either.

[Daniel_Morgan]

dolphin

The smiley can go a long way in conveying a less than serious statement. Just some food for thought.

Back on topic:

The other possibility is Cairo maybe producing its own supply, if Illinois had beeen previously industrialised by your opponent its possible.

I believe if you industrialize Illinois its possible.

My example isn't an exact match to your circumstances because I already had Fayetteville and Fort Smith in Arkansas, and they were lightly industrialised by me after capture. So I already had two cities taken in state, where I assume you only have one in Illinois. Not sure if that makes a difference or not. I am just noting that the conditions are not identical just similar,

But, I deliberatly marched with numerous wagons a 2 Division corps to take Little Rock. I don't have Vicksburg yet so I doubt any supply is making its way down the Mississippi, and up the Arkansas river to Little Rock. But immediately after capture, I lightly industrialised Arkansas again, I am getting the messages saying at the bginning of a turn that local craftsman did something amazing and now Little Rock is producing X amounts of GS and Y amounts of ammo, and I am thus: getting supply locally (I assume) despite all the tiles around me being brown for supply. My corps survived and revived over the ensueing winter and is ready now to be a western pincer in the push for Vicksburg.

So my question is have you considered industrializing?

It might be considered gamey, but I am just assuming the corps in Little Rock took lessons from Sherman and are living off the land

[jennison]

dolphin


So my question is have you considered industrializing?

Sorry to butt in, but if I see something I'm not familiar with in the forum, I try and look it up in the manual and didn't see anything about industrializing.

How would one go about industrializing a state?

[dolphin]

Sorry to butt in, but if I see something I'm not familiar with in the forum, I try and look it up in the manual and didn't see anything about industrializing.

How would one go about industrializing a state?

Go into your Bookcase Button and access the "ECONOMICS" screen.

I don't recomend ever doing more than x1 Industry per turn in a single state.

You will also note that different states have different costs.

They will add extra production of Supplies, Ammo, or War Materials, or a combination of them to a random city in that state. It does not work every turn. Sometimes you might get lucky and get it three times in a row and then other times you might waste your investment for two turns in a row until finally hitting it right.

Be forewarned that once you set up a state to produce Industry it will remain spending it every turn til you go back into the "ECONOMIC's" screen and shut it off.

dolphin

The smiley can go a long way in conveying a less than serious statement. Just some food for thought.


So my question is have you considered industrializing?

I know about it, but in this particular case it would not have made a difference.

[jennison]

Go into your Bookcase Button and access the "ECONOMICS" screen.

I don't recomend ever doing more than x1 Industry per turn in a single state.

You will also note that different states have different costs.

They will add extra production of Supplies, Ammo, or War Materials, or a combination of them to a random city in that state. It does not work every turn. Sometimes you might get lucky and get it three times in a row and then other times you might waste your investment for two turns in a row until finally hitting it right.

Be forewarned that once you set up a state to produce Industry it will remain spending it every turn til you go back into the "ECONOMIC's" screen and shut it off.



I know about it, but in this particular case it would not have made a difference.

Now that you mention it I do see in the manual. Thanks for the explanation.

[Daniel_Morgan]

Now that you mention it I do see in the manual. Thanks for the explanation.

It costs cash and some war supplies, and basically gives you a random chance to increase the output of general supply and ammo in a state.

Usually not very helpful for the north, and I guess is a bit helpfull for the south.

I occasionally use it for isolated areas as the USA after I take them over like Western Arkansas. That way I am producing those supplies locally after the take over, and don't have to worry about stressing the supply web with no RR or water connections.