Leader Death?

[pgr]

I just bought the game, and have been enjoying it quite a bit. I have a question about leaders. Can they be killed or wounded? (it seems like they can't be captured).

It occured to me when I was playing the Shiloh that A.S. Johnston was around for the entire campaign. Of course IRL, he was killed rallying troops. Other leaders met similar fates, like stonewall, yet the game seems not to model it. Should I play more and my generals will be killed or wounded, or is this a feature that will be added in future patches?

(oh, and if someone could explain when one stars can be promoted to two stars, I would greatly appreciate it)

Other than that, great game!

(et si jamais vous avez besoin d'un américain en France pour aider dans le testing ou la recherche, je serais ravi d'aider!)

[Kensai]

If it is like the other AGEOD games, they CAN be killed. The probability is higher for 2-star Generals, than 3. I am not sure if they can be captured though. Anyway, given they will be KO for the rest of the campaign you can consider them "killed".

[Le Ricain]

Leaders can also be wounded where they are side lined for a few turns.

[Jim-NC]

Promotions happen when a general gains enough "seniority points" in one battle, or advances to number 1. Each battle, a general can either gain or lose seniority points depending on how well he did during the battle. Inflict more casualties than you take, and your general goes up, if you receive more casualties than you inflict, you can go down. If you gain enough (IIRC, it's 4) in 1 battle, your general can be promoted. Also, if you get up to first, you can be promoted.

[G-Burg Bullet]

I have seen leaders wounded a few times. But the only way I could tell is that a message came up stating "General X is recovering from wounds somewhere" or some such. I haven't seen any deaths yet. Maybe I missed it, but I'd love to see a leader wound/death noted on the battle recap screen.

[Q-Ball]

In general (sorry for the pun), I find that it's:

--Far less bloody for generals than the real Civil War; I've lost 2-3 over an entire war. IRL, dozens of named leaders in the game were KIA
--Far harder to get leaders promoted than RL

I suppose they balance a bit, but that's my tke

[Jim-NC]

Yes, your observation is correct. Leader death/wounding is much lower in the game than in the actual civil war.

[Keeler]

In general (sorry for the pun), I find that it's:

--Far less bloody for generals than the real Civil War; I've lost 2-3 over an entire war. IRL, dozens of named leaders in the game were KIA
--Far harder to get leaders promoted than RL

I suppose they balance a bit, but that's my tke

Unfortunately the AGEOD engine's implementation of stacks, command points, activation, et all makes it difficult to simulate realistic leader casualties since removing leaders causes stacks to fall apart. For example, I imagine Athena would have a difficult time fielding effective stacks if divisions and corps exploded after every battle.

Perhaps a solution would be to have wounded or killed leaders receive a ratings/CP malus rather than being removed from the stack. This would make it possible for more leader casualties to occur but allow the stacks to remain intact. It would also reflect the fact that less experienced commanders are now serving above their rank resulting in a less efficient command until the dead/wounded commander either recovers (a random, hidden number of turns) or is replaced. One problem I see with such a system would be what happens to dead leader units once they are removed from their embedded element. Perhaps it would be possible remove/delete "dead" leaders units from the game once they are no longer in a stack?

I think leader promotions are a little harder to get than they should be. Promotions is an area that I hope the developers will look into expanding some point.

[minipol]

I have suggested before that it would be great to have new generals emerge after a battle.
Just with some randomized stats but apparently it's not that easy to work with the db then.

[Z74]

With a generic portrait and a set of completely fictious colonels and generals, I'd have the thing implemented so that all bdes have their own commander embedded.
Randomized stats are a blessing... we could actually build the career of any of these unknown individuals up to the top of the chain (which is intriguing considering the NM penalties and seniority issues involved).

[veji1]

Unfortunately the AGEOD engine's implementation of stacks, command points, activation, et all makes it difficult to simulate realistic leader casualties since removing leaders causes stacks to fall apart. For example, I imagine Athena would have a difficult time fielding effective stacks if divisions and corps exploded after every battle.

Perhaps a solution would be to have wounded or killed leaders receive a ratings/CP malus rather than being removed from the stack. This would make it possible for more leader casualties to occur but allow the stacks to remain intact. It would also reflect the fact that less experienced commanders are now serving above their rank resulting in a less efficient command until the dead/wounded commander either recovers (a random, hidden number of turns) or is replaced. One problem I see with such a system would be what happens to dead leader units once they are removed from their embedded element. Perhaps it would be possible remove/delete "dead" leaders units from the game once they are no longer in a stack?

I think leader promotions are a little harder to get than they should be. Promotions is an area that I hope the developers will look into expanding some point.

Agreed, the engine is a big issue, because the turns are 2 weeks long, what happens if in a battle on day 4 one your corps commanders gets killed and then you have another battle on day 10 your force isn't a corps anymore because the 2* is dead and therefore you get not MTSG and you get creamed ? If the casualties where a historical rate, it would really screw things up. Keeler's solution might be something to look at : leaders killed during the turn stay sort of alive for the whole turn (ie if possible turn their stats to 0-0-1 for the rest of the turn) and you have to replace them at the end of the turn. So say you are fighting in Virginia and as you play the CSA your corps commander T Jackson gets killed in a battle, well he stays "alive" as a 0-0-1 ghost for the rest of the turn but you have to replace him at the end of it. But at least for the rest of the turn your command structure isn't totally messed up. Same for divisions. A division should'nt fall apart because it's general dies, give the dead general 0-0-1 stats fort the rest of the turn and you will have to find a new division commander for the next turn.

Of course more leader's losses would also mean that players (particularly the CSA) need more 2* star leaders to play with to compensate, or that promotion should be a lot easier. I don't know how the game could handle it, but couldn't be a solution to try to have a check that every time a 2* star general gets killed, the next in line in terms of seniority gets promoted ? I have no idea how possible that would be. I don't know the innerworkings of the engine but it seems to me that the "make the promotion of X possible" is a direct consequence of the battle engine : ie battle happens, deemed a defeat or victory, check for losses, apply seniority point gains to leaders, if trigger reached, make promotion possible. Adding an extra check sort of : battle happens, deemed a defeat of victory, check for losses, check for leader losses, if 2 stars or 3 stars killed autopromote next in line in terms of seniority, apply seniority gains to leaders, etc...

so the way I see it, to have a more historical feel in terms of leader losses (I mean I want to lose Lyons, Rosecrans or Sherman from time to time, it is part of the fun, what makes it a what if : Grant gets killed by a sharpshooter while attacking Columbus in septembre 61, boom, history feels very different) we need 3 changes :
- Actually make leader losses more likely in battles, so alter the battle engine code
- find a turnaround so that inturn loss of a leader doesn't result in utter chaos in terms of force structure. the best way probably being radical alteration of a leader stats (0-0-1) for the rest of the turn + either make it mandatory for the player to do the leader changes himself at the end of the turn or have an autodisappear feature at the end of the 15th day that makes the leader go away.
- make the promotion engine a bit more dynamic by having automatic promotions to 2* or 3* of the next in line in terms of seniority if such a leader is killed, so that you might be stuck with a crappy new 2* taking the place of your great Stonewall Jackson or WT Sherman, but at least (mainly a problem for the CSA) you are not stuck without a leader to fill in the place.

It would be great if Pocus could tell us if it would be possible, because leaders' losses are a great part of the flavour. I have often wondered what a general like Barnard Bee would have become had he been part of the war longer, and of course the death of Stonewall is part of the mythology of the civil war. Leaders' losses are an essential part of the unpredictability of a game. It is a shame that they don't play half the role they should play here.

EDIT : All one has to do is look at all the losses of generals on the different list one finds on Wikipedia (how many senior officers did the CSA lose at Franklin !!!) and we see that a player should during the campaigning months of the game lose 1/2 generals per turn. If we look at QBall's campaign on the Matrix forums, I count around 12/15 biggish battles. in each of those each side should have lost 1/2 generals. Add to that losses in smaller fights and QBall should have lost a good 25/30 generals over the course of the game. I wonder how many he's lost ?

[Eugene Carr]

Fromhttp://www.civilwar.org/battlefield ... sburg.html

Of 120 generals present at Gettysburg, nine were killed or mortally wounded during the battle.

On the Confederate side, generals Semmes, Barksdale, Armistead, Garnett, and Pender (plus Pettigrew during the retreat). On the Union side, generals Reynolds, Zook, Weed, and Farnsworth (and Vincent, promoted posthumously). No other battle claimed as many general officers.

bearing in mind that in game generals usually command Armies/Corps/Divisions (possibly some Cavalry brigades, artillery/Engineer specialists) from the above list we get Reynolds, Pender and Pettigrew.
I used to have a bookmark which ranked General Officer battle fatalities by their appointment rather than grade, it wasn't qiute as many as you might think. Unfortunately I can't find it or it has died
Of course disease and jealous husbands should also play their part!

S!

[pgr]

Unfortunately the AGEOD engine's implementation of stacks, command points, activation, et all makes it difficult to simulate realistic leader casualties since removing leaders causes stacks to fall apart. For example, I imagine Athena would have a difficult time fielding effective stacks if divisions and corps exploded after every battle.

Perhaps a solution would be to have wounded or killed leaders receive a ratings/CP malus rather than being removed from the stack. This would make it possible for more leader casualties to occur but allow the stacks to remain intact. It would also reflect the fact that less experienced commanders are now serving above their rank resulting in a less efficient command until the dead/wounded commander either recovers (a random, hidden number of turns) or is replaced. One problem I see with such a system would be what happens to dead leader units once they are removed from their embedded element. Perhaps it would be possible remove/delete "dead" leaders units from the game once they are no longer in a stack?

I think leader promotions are a little harder to get than they should be. Promotions is an area that I hope the developers will look into expanding some point.

I'm wondering if it would be possible to code a random leader generator for divisions that loose a commander. A bit of a coding task, but have a list of say 999 names of colonels for the USA and CSA, and when a division leader is killed he is automatically replaced by Col X with random stats who at the end of the turn becomes a 1 star at the bottom of the seniority pile. Loss of a corps or army commander should be pretty straight forward, the most senior lower level officer in the stack fills the command (with his slot in his division being filled by a rando)

It does seem like the higher up you are the safer you get, so division commanders are the most at risk. Does any one know if stance and ROE effects what happens to leaders? It seems logical that all out assaults would up the risk for the division commanders leading from the front.

[veji1]

Fromhttp://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/gettysburg/assets/ten-facts-about/ten-facts-about-gettysburg.html
bearing in mind that in game generals usually command Armies/Corps/Divisions (possibly some Cavalry brigades, artillery/Engineer specialists) from the above list we get Reynolds, Pender and Pettigrew.
I used to have a bookmark which ranked General Officer battle fatalities by their appointment rather than grade, it wasn't qiute as many as you might think. Unfortunately I can't find it or it has died
Of course disease and jealous husbands should also play their part!

S!

Nevertheless I think we can agree that on a 60 000 against 70 000 battle such as we often see in game, which means 8/12 divisions on each side, there should be on average 1 death per side.

[Q-Ball]

Fromhttp://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/gettysburg/assets/ten-facts-about/ten-facts-about-gettysburg.html
bearing in mind that in game generals usually command Armies/Corps/Divisions (possibly some Cavalry brigades, artillery/Engineer specialists) from the above list we get Reynolds, Pender and Pettigrew.
I used to have a bookmark which ranked General Officer battle fatalities by their appointment rather than grade, it wasn't qiute as many as you might think. Unfortunately I can't find it or it has died
Of course disease and jealous husbands should also play their part!

S!

Indeed, though even just looking at Generals listed in-game, it was alot bloodier. This list is from Memory, I may be missing some, but I can think of:

USA: McPherson, Lyon, Berry, Isaac Stevens, Mansfield, Sedgwick, Reynolds, Kearny, Reno, Nelson (murdered), Wadsworth, Israel Richardson, WHL Wallace, and I'm probably missing some. (That's 13 at least)
CSA: AS Johnston, Jackson, Polk, Cleburne, AP Hill, Rodes, Pender, Stuart, Bee, Zollicoffer, McCulloch, Van Dorn (shot by angry husband), Mouton, Winder....that's another 14

[GraniteStater]

Wow. That's a boatload & and a half.

Can't count murder victims and philanderers, though.

In my current game I've lost Lyons (somewhat early) and Kearny ('bout his RL death date, again). About a half dozen with hospital spells.

I think your chances of getting popped one way or the other are enhanced by reckless (not the attribute for Leaders) engagements or being overwhelmed. Just a surmise.

[Eugene Carr]

Nevertheless I think we can agree that on a 60 000 against 70 000 battle such as we often see in game, which means 8/12 divisions on each side, there should be on average 1 death per side.

I could live with that
In AACW the calculation was a number /1000 I wonder if its still built into CW2 (would need a column added to models file)
A lot of generals were lost to other reasons which it may be easier to make scripted events for to reduce disruption during ongoing combat.
Certainly a greater variation in generals keeps things more interesting.

S!

ps I always felt that the Reckless/Hothead leaders seemed more likely to get killed

[G-Burg Bullet]

Well... I just found out firsthand. I lost Lew Wallace (2*) in a rather inconsequential action. a real blow. So 2* do get it from time to time. I haven't lost a 3* yet.

[Q-Ball]

I could live with that
In AACW the calculation was a number /1000 I wonder if its still built into CW2 (would need a column added to models file)
A lot of generals were lost to other reasons which it may be easier to make scripted events for to reduce disruption during ongoing combat.
Certainly a greater variation in generals keeps things more interesting.

S!

ps I always felt that the Reckless/Hothead leaders seemed more likely to get killed

Thanks for the full list....we're not even counting guys like Buford or Birney who just simply died, or all the generals who resigned, mostly to pursue political office. I forgot about Wharton, since he was shot right at the end of the war

BTW, someone asked how many leaders I have had KIA in my game vs. Gunnulf. At this point, we have each lost over 400,000 men in combat. I have lost 1 general. I can't remember who, it was a 3-1-1 division guy....maybe Rosseau

[veji1]

Thanks for the full list....we're not even counting guys like Buford or Birney who just simply died, or all the generals who resigned, mostly to pursue political office. I forgot about Wharton, since he was shot right at the end of the war

BTW, someone asked how many leaders I have had KIA in my game vs. Gunnulf. At this point, we have each lost over 400,000 men in combat. I have lost 1 general. I can't remember who, it was a 3-1-1 division guy....maybe Rosseau

Thanks Qball. This is clearly an issue. With your losses you should each have lost at least 10ish generals. It is a key part of the game, because of the influence leadership has. And it is also a key part of the civil war's command demography, the generals of later years rose because their predecessors were promoted, or died, or left. In game you get more and more senior officers as time goes by, but without part of the reason why they rose, which is that someone had to be replaced !

Now I understand that the real issue is to ensure that more realistic (and more fun!) leader losses don't result in breaking the game because of how leaders and forces interact ingame. so whether dead leaders remain until the end of the turn with (if possible) degraded stats, or whether a mechanism auto promotes leaders in the same stack (which would mean players should have spare leaders in important stacks) or else, I don't know, but really something has to be done.

Your AAR just shows how this has to change. It is also something else that plays a role in potentially slowing down the game : If the Union is on the move and loses a good corps commander, it might have to pause to properly reorganise for example.

[veji1]

I don't know what the stats are, but for me a leader should have 1/100 chance to be killed per round of battle. Add to this say for a brigade commander (embedded) an division commander, 1/25 per X hits his unit received. for a Corps commander 1/25 per 3X hits troops under his command have received for example. For a cavalry leader make it 1/25 per X/3 for example.

I'll make a silly simplification sim but With such a ratio I could imagine say a biggish battle with for the player : 1 3*, 3 corps ( 3 2*) and total of 9 divisions + 2 cavalry leaders and their brigade/reg. Say the battle lasts 5 rounds. So each leader is at the end of each round checked once at 1/100 odds. Say the battle results overall in 33X hits taken as follow :
- Corps I is quite battered and takes 14X hits with div1 6X, div2 4X and div3 4X.
- Corps II takes 13X hits as well : div4 5X, div5 6X and div6 2X
- Coprs III takes 7X hits : Div7 takes 4X, div8 takes 3X and div9 0X.

for de different leaders the checks would be :
5 successive 1/100 checks for all
Army commander : nothing else
Commander of Corps I : 3 successive 1/25 checks (each time a threshold of 3X hits losses is reached is his corps)
Commander of Corps II : same
Commander of Corps III : 2 successive 1/25 checks
div1 commander : 7 times 1/25
div2 commander : 4 times 1/25
div 3 : 4
div4 : 5
div5 : 6
Div6 : 2
etc... this would in all likelyness result in a pair of lost leaders. change the ratios for some traits (if you are reckless it becomes 1/20 instead of 1/25) and you start having something...

[veji1]

Pocus, could you tell us a bit more about how the leader death/injury checks work and how it might be possible ingame to deal with the consequences of leaders' death without making the whole command structure kaput, particularly for the AI ?

[GraniteStater]

And, just for the record, same Union game - Hancock killed (big, big battle, very bloody and elements lost, etc.).

Losing Hancock is Very Disappointing. That's CW2 - adapt, improvise, overcome.

[Ace]

cbtLdrCasuDiceSides = 500 // Nb of sides for the casualty dice for rank 1 leaders, at the end of combat (twice as low for rank 2, rank 3 excluded)

This is the line in GameLogic.opt file. You can easily mod it if you wish for more leader casualties.

[Aleatory]

cbtLdrCasuDiceSides = 500 // Nb of sides for the casualty dice for rank 1 leaders, at the end of combat (twice as low for rank 2, rank 3 excluded)

This is the line in GameLogic.opt file. You can easily mod it if you wish for more leader casualties.

I assume the lower the number there, the higher the chance for a leader to die? Basically, that there's a 1 in x chance that a leader is killed, and you set x? Also, 73 lines down from that (towards the end of the ***** COMMAND AND LEADERS ***** section), there's apparently a switch to allow leader deaths through sickness, old age, etc. I wonder how well that works?

ldrDeathBySickness = 0 // Added 111227: if = 1, leaders can die from sickness, old age, or practices better not discussed here.

[Ace]

The switch ldrDeathBySickness has been inactive for long time, so I think you can experiment with the above probability only. Try setting it at 1 instead of 500 and see if there is leader bloodbath happening in the following turns?

[minipol]

It would be very interesting to know the impact of the "cbtLdrCasuDiceSides" setting, although it would now probably hurt the AI more than the player.
Also, it's not really usefull if you don't get some low stats replacements in return (and the odd gem general off course, not all replacements are cr*p )

[G-Burg Bullet]

Well, didn't have a KIA but just had A.S. Johnston wounded TWICE as an army commander playing the Western Theater scenario. Seems like really bad luck to have a 3* wounded twice in one game given the comments above that 3*s are rarely casualties. Maybe with him in particular there is some historical bias built in, given what happened at Shiloh in RL!