Army Goaded into an Unintended Battle

[Captain_Orso]

I have a game a PBEM game going and we have experienced a very strange thing.

I am the Union and have invaded New Orleans where there is a level 2 fortification heavily garrisoned from within. I have Rosecrans (3-2-3 - Army of the South) with 3 divisions besieging and on defensive. My opponent brought Johnston (4-2-4 - Johnston's Army) into Iberville with a corp, also in defensive. Union ~27,500 - CSA ~34,500. We're just sitting there staring each other down.

I got a militia regiment (1st LA 'Chasseur d.Afrique') built per event and placed in Iberville. It was locked because it was still forming up and I left it standing there.

The next turn on day 2 I get a message that saying that the 1st LA 'Chasseur d.Afrique' has engaged Johnston's army and after that all hell broke lose with Johnston attacking my army entrenched at level 4 in the swamps of Iberville, with a very ugly ending for Johnston's army. My opponent says that he was on defensive the entire time, which I believe.

This seems to be a strange thing, which I've actually done on purpose in other games. Your force is entrenched in a region and the enemy has advanced into your region, but refuses to attack. Take a sacrificial cavalry or infantry regiment and attack your besieger and it causes them to attack you full out, with the consequences that they attack your entire force in its entrenchments and get smashed.

This seems very strange to me to to be forced to start a full attack just because some flimsy regiment provoked your corp or army. I think in Real-Life™ the force being attacked by this sacrificial lamb would just shrug it off and laugh about the stupid suicide regiment getting wiped out.

Does anybody know how to prevent your entrenched army from getting goaded into making such an unintentional attack?

[Jim-NC]

Don't know how to prevent with the current engine. You can also use that trick to force a commander to retreat (useful with hard activation).

[rattler01]

I've seen this before, in my past PBEMs we changed the make-up and re-ran the turn. While it was an accident, its kinda a huge deal when dealing with armies.

[Captain_Orso]

Hi Jim & rattler

thanks for your replies. It seems that the only solution in my situation is to turn the game back to before the battle and put the militia regiment into my army stack. I don't know why I didn't think of that before. Dumb I guess .