Seven days battle

[James D Burns]

are (1) the huge size of the Union army at the outset of the series of battles (150,000+ in 1862!) and (2) that the AI fought its army to destruction instead of retreating.

We need to be careful of jumping to conclusions too quickly. Ai armies might be too large because it is forgoing purchasing historical naval units and other items.

That would mean the AI needs to be tweaked to spread its purchases out among other high cost items, not a reduction in the Union economy.

Also most historical accounts of battles give figures for the line troops that fought, things like medical trains, supply trains, etc. are not included in the total army counts. This game counts everything, so we need to discern between combat formations and support formations when determining the size of an army’s manpower. 150,000 might only be 80,000 combat troops when you have 50-80 supply wagons in the count.

Jim

[marecone]

We need to be careful of jumping to conclusions too quickly. Ai armies might be too large because it is forgoing purchasing historical naval units and other items.

That would mean the AI needs to be tweaked to spread its purchases out among other high cost items, not a reduction in the Union economy.

Also most historical accounts of battles give figures for the line troops that fought, things like medical trains, supply trains, etc. are not included in the total army counts. This game counts everything, so we need to discern between combat formations and support formations when determining the size of an army’s manpower. 150,000 might only be 80,000 combat troops when you have 50-80 supply wagons in the count.

Jim

Very good point Jim. I second that

[jimwinsor]

Ah, so then (major?) rivers like the Potomac do block retreat then? That is good!

[Pocus]

not for the moment. It would depends of your current military control anyway: if you have half of the region, you are supposed to have enough room to maneuver and retreat across the river.

You are prevented to retreat if:
you are besieged
are landing on a beach

you are prevented to retreat in a given region if:
you have less than 5% control in the region
you are prevented to retreat because the zone of control generated by the enemy in the region you are in is more important than the military control you have in the region you want to retreat (shown as a red region on the map)

For Butler, this was the latter case: the CSA was in the region with much forces, and all surrounding regions were not controlled enough to allow passage (all red)

[Hinkel]

Thank you very much Pocus! Its clearer for me now and it sounds logical for me!
But have you looked at the first battle, the sevens day battle! I want to know, why my forces fight to the death and do not retreat after the stalement?

Thx for that!

[Spharv2]

Thank you very much Pocus! Its clearer for me now and it sounds logical for me!
But have you looked at the first battle, the sevens day battle! I want to know, why my forces fight to the death and do not retreat after the stalement?

Thx for that!

When you say they were on "aggressive", do you mean assault or attack? If it was assault, they will go all out to try and defeat the enemy, pretty much regardless of casualties. That's why that setting should be used very sparingly.

[Pocus]

Thank you very much Pocus! Its clearer for me now and it sounds logical for me!
But have you looked at the first battle, the sevens day battle! I want to know, why my forces fight to the death and do not retreat after the stalement?

Thx for that!

the turn I should look at is the late may one? I see that there is a string of battles in Early June, and the same explaination can be done in my opinion for any others battles involving Lee with substancial troops: The man don't like to retreat, so unless routed, he won't, as long as he has some power at hand. Lee has the reckless trait, but as he is a very good leader, he render his army difficult to rout, so overall in a battle attriting aways 2 armies, he will not relinquish the region voluntary.

This is the best explaination I can think, the other options would be to check in detail the 10.000 lines or so of the battle logs, but I just can't do that, with some bugs still around to be handled in priority.

Hope it helps.