Historical Attrition settings easier against AI

[ArmChairGeneral]

In his Supply Essay, GraniteStater posted this about supply, but I started a new thread since my comments are only tangentially related to supply:

* Play with Historical Attrition ON. Then you get Replacements at Depots only. This is more realistic, IMHO, and forces invaders to retreat to a Depot point after a bloody repulse. IOW, ya gotta plan more & make darn sure of your Supplies, etc.

I second your recommendation to play with historical attrition, not only is it more realistic, counter-intuitively, it actually makes things easier against Athena:

It is very hard to completely destroy large formations in AGE games (well, enemy formations, it is easy to lose your own). Making Athena march her low cohesion, just defeated troops three or four regions back to the nearest depot to regain hits means you have a chance to follow up on your victories as they flee, and also to let weather and terrain do some (if not most) of the work for you. She typically won't move into bad positions intentionally, but the withdrawal subroutine often leaves defeated forces in terrible spots: combine bad weather, poor supply and poor terrain, and a withdrawal from a minor battle can turn into a Division losing catastrophe. The AI handles this situation poorly compared to a human, and it is relatively straight forward to then keep her bottled up in bad land for a turn or two until you can bring your fully recovered main force back to finish her off; with each blocking force she has to fight through to get home (even if she wins), the more hits she accumulates and the weaker her force is for the next engagement. (Play WIA for a crash course in this technique; the wilderness is your friend!) If your attrition settings were too "easy" she could simply rest a turn and come right back at you, or easily escape to fight another day (a bit of an oversimplification, but you get the idea). Without historical attrition she can also do things like lay siege in the winter, march divisions over the Appalachians safely or bypass well-defended depots while invading.

Historical attrition also clarifies and simplifies your strategic and tactical thinking. Depots become much more valuable, so removing/capturing/defending them become your obvious strategic goals. Tactically, you base operations around a secure, rail-connected depot in an area you are contesting, regularly rotating the short distance back to your base when you suffer too many casualties, ideally by rail. Distance to the nearest depot becomes a major tactical consideration, and the human can finesse this better than Athena. With low attrition settings, her forces are instead free to wander around the map, recovering hits pretty much wherever they happen to be and rarely having to leave the front lines to recover.

[aaminoff]

Play with Historical Attrition ON. Then you get Replacements at Depots only

I am under the impression that you can still recover *hits* on damaged elements, its just reconstituting entirely destroyed elements of a surviving brigade that requires a depot.

[GraniteStater]

I think you are right. However, I can't recall how many hits make an element, but recently I had a classic case (this is the context I thinking of) as the CSA in WVa in 1861. In short, got a little too ambitious with mezza-mezza Leaders, got walloped, and had to retreat after some distinct bloodletting, mostly mine.

Uh, didn't move real fast. Didja ever notice how, after a good hammering, your guys now take 12 Days to retreat into a Region they crossed in 4? Howza 'bout weather? Any, uh, Wagons around? Are we near a road? How's MC in the neighborhood? Loyalty? Can we rail outta here (this is where ZOCs can come in)?

Gee, one lil' measly wagon track. In late October. And it's 1861 & we were in a hurry & didn't bring any Wagons. Or, the ones we did got a lotta S&A used up.

Yer gonna run a Hit Deficit, my friend, slow down even more and then Surrender or Evaporate. The Message Box is not always your friend.

Thass why Depots are important. They are your Bases, so to speak.

[ArmChairGeneral]

aaminoff, you are 100% right, there is a calculation for the max % rate at which you can recover hits based on structure, posture, MC and development (plus I'm sure other stuff, can't quote the complete formula), and this is one of the specifics that I was equivocating on with my oversimplification parenthetical.

In practice, what happens is that defenders holding the field in regions with depots (or whatever structural advantage they have) can recover hits much more quickly than forced-to-retreat-into-the-open-losers-of-a-battle, and so have an opportunity to press the advantage for a decisive blow that destroys many elements (which is the main source of NM). The A.I. is not as good at doing this to you as you can be in doing it to her. Historical Attrition compounds the A.I. disadvantage in these situations by magnifying the consequences of that GraniteStater vividly describes. (Sure it's a little tougher when you are the one getting bounced out, but Athena isn't particularly good at preventing your escape, so advantage->human.)

GraniteStater: The precise situation you describe has cost me a ton of NM and replacements in several games through too aggressive moves against Union Athena in W.V. Militia suck, and Floyd makes them even worse. I now withdraw south as soon as he becomes active and either leave W.V. entirely or wait till early '62 to join up with an offensive along the B+O if I hold Harper's Ferry (a fast mover is useful to help them get across the mountains in either case).

What I am saying is that if you can put the A.I. in the above situation , it is neither as good as a human player at escaping, nor delivering the coup-de-grace to a stranded force. This is the primary place that I as the human player with a strong (but far from complete) grasp of the game mechanics can win decisive victories over the A.I., and is why I assert that the tougher the attrition settings, the more advantageous for the human player against the computer.

[GraniteStater]

I would say that (a) Athena can be trickier than one thinks. I've played her a lot in AACW and she can still surprise you in the 50th game, and (b) I would recommend Depots Only in PbeM.

For an AI, she's one of the better. That's why I played so much. I still remember firing up a 62 start (my favorite - AND I WANT IT BACK - THE WHOLE SCENARIO) after the 1.16, IIRC, and blithely dialing it All the Way Up and watching AS Johnston kick Grant & the AoT's sorry behinds back to Kaintuck. Pocus sniggered over my post about that.

Another thing I liked about the 1862 GC was that you started with Nashville in Union hands, but you really had to watch it - Athena would take it back if you gave her half a chance.

Still, I'm waitin' for PbeM.

P. S. - I lost the game mentioned above - I resigned after half a dozen Stax O' Doom were laying waste to vast sections of the Midwest.

[ArmChairGeneral]

Oh, yeah, I'm with you, Athena has kicked my butt from Rome to Syracuse (Sicily) to Syracuse (New York) to Montreal and back to Washington D.C. and Richmnond, and done it so hard I felt like I was just watching the moves go by. She's completely steamrolled me at least once in every title (I've got four) and again with every new patch-incarnation I installed. I'm definitely not saying she's got no game (Athena is the goddess of skill in battle, after all) just that the type of situation we have been discussing is the source of our main legitimate advantage over her as human players. Being able to destroy a couple of divisions worth of elements over the course of a full CW2 or AACW campaign using the above techniques is the ONLY consistent method I have found to eke out an advantage at higher settings as the CSA, and I believe that this is exactly how the developers intended it. I maintain that harsher attrition settings magnify the gains resulting from maneuvering Athena into these situations, making "tougher" attrition settings favor the human, other things being equal. I am not criticizing the A.I., merely identifying the tactical situations in which she underperforms, and noting how attrition settings can exacerbate or alleviate these situations for her. Also, I want to encourage people to play historically accurately: not only is the game-experience better, it can give you the advantage you need to win over the AI if you can figure out how to use it.

I regard historical attrition as the standard difficulty and find that with decreased attrition settings I have more and more difficulty achieving those decisive NM winning victories against the AI that are necessary to stay ahead of her. She's a shifty devil, and woe-unto-him who finds himself behind in NM half-way through a game! The best way to keep ahead is to watch out for when she gets carried away like above and tomake her pay for it by trapping her into a position where you can destroy, either in battle (ideally) or through attrition as many elements as possible.

What do you mean by:

(b) I would recommend Depots Only in PbeM.

Are you advocating a Depot Only strategy when playing against humans (i.e. never bother to stand your ground if your aren't in a Depot) or are you saying that depot based strategies are not as effective against Athena, or what?

[ArmChairGeneral]

Oh, yeah BTW, I never beat 1.16 at All The Way Up settings as the CSA, not once. 1.16 is defintiely a beast, so good I got tired of losing to her and went to play some of the other titles instead. I think the detection buff is actually the best thing you can do for her, really cuts down on her overly-hasty attacks that lead her into the traps we have been discussing.

[ArmChairGeneral]

Further disambiguation: I am talking about the setting where historical attrition is on for the AI, the far-right setting on the slider. It is obviously most difficult to play against Athena with the middle slider setting, where you have to replace at depots but the AI does not. I was comparing in this post the far-left setting (no attrition for either) to the far right-setting (historical attrition for both), and maintaining that the far-right slider is somewhat easier than the far-left setting due to tactical situations arising that you are better able to exploit.

[GraniteStater]

What do you mean by:

(b) I would recommend Depots Only in PbeM.

Are you advocating a Depot Only strategy when playing against humans (i.e. never bother to stand your ground if your aren't in a Depot) or are you saying that depot based strategies are not as effective against Athena, or what?

(c) - "What": merely that humans should play with Depots Only against each other. Against Athena, the 'middle' setting, Depots Only for Human Only.

Yes, I have lost to Athena, but just a few times. Twice when I didn't guard DC well enough or see some moves she had. All on high difficulties.

I think I'll start a thread on Settings. Nonetheless, didja ever stop and think that in PbeM, there are no difficulty settings? The whole tab, 'AI", is nugatory. This includes Detection, Base Unit Speed (Jackson doesn't get to go even faster, as he can against the AI), Aggressiveness (the great player P. "Stonewall" Cleburne, aka Cleburne the Crafty, who schooled me but good about the Rappahannock and how to use Rivers and Region's placement and contiguity, chuckled once and told me my Leader Trait should be 'Reckless' ), and a coupla other corollaries.

PbeM is about as close to 'level playing field' as you can get.

[ArmChairGeneral]

Oh yeah, definitely would enjoy PBeM, and no arguments here about the fact that human players are better, (as is the case in every game I have ever played) but my wife puts serious constraints on when and for how long I get to play, she already refers to herself as the last remaining Civil War widow Not sure I would be able to keep my end of a game up consistently enough to be enjoyable for anyone playing against me, although I seem to have plenty of time this week since she is out of town. (And I have been spending as much of that time as I can with my other girlfriend, Athena!) WIA or AJE might fit my time constraints a bit better, but the Civil War titles are the ones I fell in love with originally and like to play the most.

I don't lose to the computer much anymore either; I've racked up a lot of hours against her and know a lot of her bad habits, but she delivers fun and challenging games for those of us who don't/can't play PBeM, which I suspect is quite a few of us. She has her flaws (Athena that is, my wife is perfect) but is still a smart lady who can show you a good time!

I only recently put two and two together to realize that the MIDDLE attrition setting is the hardest for the human, even though the info is right in the tooltip. I just slid it to the right without thinking about it much, so I have started a new All The Way Up game where only I have to use depots (which means, as I now know, that my earlier games weren't All The Way Up), and we'll see how I do.

Looking forward to your forthcoming Settings post. I am especially curious about others' experience with non-historical force pools since I haven't used them before. Also I would be very interested in hearing more about the lessons you learned on rivers, region placement and contiguity.

[GraniteStater]

Also I would be very interested in hearing more about the lessons you learned on rivers, region placement and contiguity.

P. "Stonewall" Cleburne might consent to give us a few whippings, uh, I mean lessons. The key criterion, that I should have mentioned, is MTSG, that's what puts it all together and makes you see that Yes, there are tactical considerations in the game. Yes, the engine is Organize - Point - Shoot with Leadership involved, but there are some nice wrinkles in the map - you might even think they did it on purpose.

Speaking of other posters/players, where the heck is Longshanks? I lost against him, too (I'm a proud 0 - 4 in PbeMs, two to P. Cleburne as both sides, one to Longshanks with me as the North, and a substitute player in the Tournament as the South. Learned a lot, though.).