A bit of a debate question here.
Is there any good reason for a Union player to conquer the whole length of the Mississippi in Civil War II? Historically, of course, it was very important, as it cut the Confederacy in two (particularly the flow of Texas me and cattle to the east) and it re-opened civilian shipping from the Ohio River to New Orleans for the Union.
However, in the game none of those effects are modeled. Taking NO provides a huge boost the Blockade %. Once Tennessee falls (Memphis, Island no. 10, Corinth, and Nashville) the USA generally has gained the upper hand in the VP race. At that point, Jackson and Vicksburg are the only VP and objective cities left along the length of the river, they are rather difficult to get to, and they don't really add too much to the Union cause. Once could argue that the Union is better served focusing next on going from Chattanooga, to Atlanta, to Savanna rather than bothering with securing the rest of the Mississippi.
The simple fix, imo, would be to re balance a bit the VP locations. There are too many in Tennessee, and not enough in Mississippi. I would have only Nashville and Memphis as VP cities in Western Tennessee, and add VP in Grand Gulf. Of course this still means the only direct motivation for securing the Mississippi is a chase for VP.
What the Mississippi needs is some re-occurring event that is linked to controlling all the major towns along the Mississippi. (Think Menphis, Vicksburg, Grand Gulf, Baton Rouge, and NO). As long as as the Union does not control all of those points there is a re-occurring NM and loyality hit (focused in the mid-west) that is like the "Papers push for an immediate Offensive" event that fires in the first few years. If the Union gains control of all, the CSA should receive a "cut in two" penalty that impacts NM and globally impacts supply and manpower production.
This would make the drive to Vicksburg much more relevant than it seems to be now. Food for thought to all those modding inclined people.
Yes PgR u r right there should be somekind bonus to capture of Mississippi.. When did grant concuer Vicksburg was it 62 or 63 well if u can get Mississippi on union hands before that there should be nm rise and if it stays on CSA hands after that day then CSA will get morale bonus or something like that?!
I think the real solution for these things is for there to be more dynamic victory points (similar to how To End All Wars is set up), so that there are more VP's along the Mississippi for a while, and then they change to be more in Tennessee and Georgia.
However, outside of the realm of adding new stuff onto the game, I like both ideas presented here. Money deductions for failing to secure the Mississippi seems like a great incentive, especially considering the fact that in reality the main impetus for securing the Mississippi was largely to reopen trade routes for the Ohio valley. Rejigging victory points, so that the river areas are worth a point or two more while the internal areas are worth a point or two less, would also make sense.
However, outside of the realm of adding new stuff onto the game, I like both ideas presented here. Money deductions for failing to secure the Mississippi seems like a great incentive, especially considering the fact that in reality the main impetus for securing the Mississippi was largely to reopen trade routes for the Ohio valley. Rejigging victory points, so that the river areas are worth a point or two more while the internal areas are worth a point or two less, would also make sense.
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Captain_Orso
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Personally I don't like abstract, arbitrary rules. Shifting VP locations, okay, because the game does need this abstract to measure each sides success; as long as the VP location still have a logical basis.
I have no idea how much GS is produced by the CS west of the Mississippi. If historically it was a substantial amount, then it should also be in the game. Then there would be a logical reason for holding the Mississippi, and not just for VP's which might be taken or an abstract production modification.
Besides, reducing production by capturing certain cities insinuates that those cities were instrumental in producing resources to be used elsewhere.
Currently there are 4 resources in the game--cotton aside, which is nearly totally abstracted in events and RGD's--WSU, GS, AMMO and CC. Of those WSU and CC are generic. It matters not where they are produced, once in their respective pool they are available to be used anywhere. AMMO and GS however are location bound. They are produced in certain locations and must be transported to the troops for use.
So going back to the question of the amount of GS--which is the only representation of food in the game--produced in Texas and western Louisiana, if the Union can block that GS from being transported eastward it will be its own reward for controlling the Mississippi, which would also be historical.
Besides, the strategic advantage of being able to use the Mississippi for moving Union supplies and troops is great. Also being able to restrict CS movement of supplies and troops across any of the western rivers should never be underestimated.
I have no idea how much GS is produced by the CS west of the Mississippi. If historically it was a substantial amount, then it should also be in the game. Then there would be a logical reason for holding the Mississippi, and not just for VP's which might be taken or an abstract production modification.
Besides, reducing production by capturing certain cities insinuates that those cities were instrumental in producing resources to be used elsewhere.
Currently there are 4 resources in the game--cotton aside, which is nearly totally abstracted in events and RGD's--WSU, GS, AMMO and CC. Of those WSU and CC are generic. It matters not where they are produced, once in their respective pool they are available to be used anywhere. AMMO and GS however are location bound. They are produced in certain locations and must be transported to the troops for use.
So going back to the question of the amount of GS--which is the only representation of food in the game--produced in Texas and western Louisiana, if the Union can block that GS from being transported eastward it will be its own reward for controlling the Mississippi, which would also be historical.
Besides, the strategic advantage of being able to use the Mississippi for moving Union supplies and troops is great. Also being able to restrict CS movement of supplies and troops across any of the western rivers should never be underestimated.
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pgr
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@ Captain_Orso
The big drawback of the game is that the economy is mostly abstracted. In historical reality, Texas saw a huge influx of war materials via blockade running and cross border traffic with Mexico (in addition to it's agricultural production). Loosing Vicksburg meant that it became much harder to move war materials (arms etc) from Texas to the East. On the same note, the civilian economy of the North, including the impact of having the Mississippi closed to shipping from the Ohio River valley, is not present at all.
I seems that there should be some penalty for a Union player that doesn't clear the Mississippi, and an event that impacts NM and loyalty levels in the mid-west seems like the simplest solution. As for the CSA...perhaps a global production penalty is too harsh, but there should be some impact beyond stopping GS flow. (As it stands now, I'm not sure there is any GS really flowing across the the Mississippi....I'll have to look at depot locations). Perhaps there should be an increase in Blockade % if the Mississippi is completely controlled by the USA. That could be a way of suggesting that supplies entering Texas from Mexico are having a hard time crossing the blocked Mississippi.
The big drawback of the game is that the economy is mostly abstracted. In historical reality, Texas saw a huge influx of war materials via blockade running and cross border traffic with Mexico (in addition to it's agricultural production). Loosing Vicksburg meant that it became much harder to move war materials (arms etc) from Texas to the East. On the same note, the civilian economy of the North, including the impact of having the Mississippi closed to shipping from the Ohio River valley, is not present at all.
I seems that there should be some penalty for a Union player that doesn't clear the Mississippi, and an event that impacts NM and loyalty levels in the mid-west seems like the simplest solution. As for the CSA...perhaps a global production penalty is too harsh, but there should be some impact beyond stopping GS flow. (As it stands now, I'm not sure there is any GS really flowing across the the Mississippi....I'll have to look at depot locations). Perhaps there should be an increase in Blockade % if the Mississippi is completely controlled by the USA. That could be a way of suggesting that supplies entering Texas from Mexico are having a hard time crossing the blocked Mississippi.
pgr wrote:I seems that there should be some penalty for a Union player that doesn't clear the Mississippi,
I have never been involved in a PBEM game (AACW or CW2) where the Union has not tried to clear the Mississippi. There is an attempt to establish a strategy to ignore every area except Virginia - which would ignore the Mississippi theatre. I do hope this quest for the perfect strategy fails. The game needs multiple paths to a win.
As to closing shipping from the Ohio - railroads (in the north) were taking over much of the traffic which had been moving down the Mississippi. There were complaints from shippers early in the war who immediately lost their revenue - but gradually traffic was changing to the railroads.
Not sure that huge amounts of war materials were moving across the Mississippi - certainly there was some - but huge? After all in the more developed areas of the south (Georgia to Virginia) there are many accounts of the difficulty to move food let alone armaments.
What this game replicates with the whole Anaconda plan is that if the Union manages to control the Mississippi River and either takes or blockades the Atlantic and Gulf ports (the major ones), then the South takes a major hit in all sorts of supply.
So even without victory point incentives to take particular cities, there is a major disruption to the Southern supply network.
No need for game tweaks, just squeezing the import points.
So even without victory point incentives to take particular cities, there is a major disruption to the Southern supply network.
No need for game tweaks, just squeezing the import points.
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ArmChairGeneral
- AGEod Grognard
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There are what, 4 VP cities on the Mississippi, and one of them is New Orleans the ripest target in the entire CSA. I think that the VPs alone constitute a sufficient inducement for the Union to attack along the river, to say nothing of the production value of NO, though there is no specific strategic advantage in-game to controlling the whole thing (if you can get Memphis and New Orleans you might as well skip Vicksburg and go after Atlanta or Mobile instead).
The Mississippi is tactically useful to either side (supply lines, tactical mobility, harbors for fleets etc. and denying same to opponent) but not strategically (NM, VPs, production benefits) above what is given by holding the objective/strategic/stray-VP regions as currently implemented.
The strategic impact of closing the river to Midwest commerce at start is not explicitly modeled. One could posit that it is implicitly modeled, however: what if we said the Union economy settings at start already factor in the loss to midwestern activity from river closure as well as any consequent shift to rail distribution? If we then analyze the in-game payoff (specifically from the Mississippi portion) to the Anaconda Plan, the question becomes whether the VP/NM values (the strategic payoff) of the river cities are an appropriate reward for modeling "controlling" the river.
It is hard to get my head around what else could constitute "control" of the Mississippi in game terms, besides possession of strategic cities, since there is no MC in water regions. Can anyone suggest a plausible metric for control other than the current system (strategic city ownership)?
Currently "cutting off Texas" and "re-opening midwest trade along the river" are modeled through the value of the strategic/objective cities along the river. Are these rewards enough for river control to be an optimal strategy (and should it be)? Should the rewards be tweaked to encourage/discourage "cutting the Confederacy in half," or are the benefits sufficiently modeled in the current implementation (albeit abstractly since you don't need "true" control)?
In the current context, if we want to model FORCING the Union to take the entire river to reap substantial rewards, then either Vicksburg and the smaller harbors in LA need more strategic weight, or some dynamic VP system (like all river VP regions producing one extra VP if you control all of them) needs to be implemented.
On a tactical level, I am sceptical that GS and ammo produced West of the Mississippi contribute in any meaningful way to the ability to field troops in the rest of the Confederacy, in the same way that I am sceptical that driving north to the Great Lakes and cutting off the rail lines between the Midwest and the East Coast hampers the Union in any significant way. Unfortunately there is no way to check either proposition since supply distribution (particularly along and across waterways) is opaque.
The Mississippi is tactically useful to either side (supply lines, tactical mobility, harbors for fleets etc. and denying same to opponent) but not strategically (NM, VPs, production benefits) above what is given by holding the objective/strategic/stray-VP regions as currently implemented.
The strategic impact of closing the river to Midwest commerce at start is not explicitly modeled. One could posit that it is implicitly modeled, however: what if we said the Union economy settings at start already factor in the loss to midwestern activity from river closure as well as any consequent shift to rail distribution? If we then analyze the in-game payoff (specifically from the Mississippi portion) to the Anaconda Plan, the question becomes whether the VP/NM values (the strategic payoff) of the river cities are an appropriate reward for modeling "controlling" the river.
It is hard to get my head around what else could constitute "control" of the Mississippi in game terms, besides possession of strategic cities, since there is no MC in water regions. Can anyone suggest a plausible metric for control other than the current system (strategic city ownership)?
Currently "cutting off Texas" and "re-opening midwest trade along the river" are modeled through the value of the strategic/objective cities along the river. Are these rewards enough for river control to be an optimal strategy (and should it be)? Should the rewards be tweaked to encourage/discourage "cutting the Confederacy in half," or are the benefits sufficiently modeled in the current implementation (albeit abstractly since you don't need "true" control)?
In the current context, if we want to model FORCING the Union to take the entire river to reap substantial rewards, then either Vicksburg and the smaller harbors in LA need more strategic weight, or some dynamic VP system (like all river VP regions producing one extra VP if you control all of them) needs to be implemented.
On a tactical level, I am sceptical that GS and ammo produced West of the Mississippi contribute in any meaningful way to the ability to field troops in the rest of the Confederacy, in the same way that I am sceptical that driving north to the Great Lakes and cutting off the rail lines between the Midwest and the East Coast hampers the Union in any significant way. Unfortunately there is no way to check either proposition since supply distribution (particularly along and across waterways) is opaque.
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Captain_Orso
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And this is exactly why I don't like arbitrary settings as goals; they are fake, inflexible, nearly always far from the reality of the historical situation and once a method to circumnavigate them is found, they are absolutely useless.
From all of my experience playing the Union, the question is not just, what does controlling the Mississippi give me, but what are the consequences of not controlling it.
The reward for controlling the Mississippi should be realized through the general mechanics of the game, in other words, splitting the Far West off from the rest of the Confederacy should have an actual impact on what is going on in the East. Not because the Union has put check marks in all the right places on a list and now the Confederacy gets a hand cut off. But because there are resources in the Far West being shipped to the East which without them the struggle in the East is actually impacted.
If this is not the case, then the game has failed in a fundamental aspect.
BTW, if you really want to know how much supply is being moved from where to where, you can turn supply debugging on. Add "Verbosity_Supp = 1" to ..\CW2\Settings\General.opt. During each turn execution a huge number of messages will be added to "..\My Games\Civil War 2\CW2\Logs\!MainLog.txt".
The message sections and messages are pretty self-explanitory and there is one for each location and each force pertaining to supply production and distribution during each supply phase.
So all the information is there, it's really a question of putting it into a readily usable format and analyzing it.
From all of my experience playing the Union, the question is not just, what does controlling the Mississippi give me, but what are the consequences of not controlling it.
The reward for controlling the Mississippi should be realized through the general mechanics of the game, in other words, splitting the Far West off from the rest of the Confederacy should have an actual impact on what is going on in the East. Not because the Union has put check marks in all the right places on a list and now the Confederacy gets a hand cut off. But because there are resources in the Far West being shipped to the East which without them the struggle in the East is actually impacted.
If this is not the case, then the game has failed in a fundamental aspect.
BTW, if you really want to know how much supply is being moved from where to where, you can turn supply debugging on. Add "Verbosity_Supp = 1" to ..\CW2\Settings\General.opt. During each turn execution a huge number of messages will be added to "..\My Games\Civil War 2\CW2\Logs\!MainLog.txt".
The message sections and messages are pretty self-explanitory and there is one for each location and each force pertaining to supply production and distribution during each supply phase.
So all the information is there, it's really a question of putting it into a readily usable format and analyzing it.
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ArmChairGeneral
- AGEod Grognard
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Captain_Orso wrote:So all the information is there, it's really a question of putting it into a readily usable format and analyzing it.
A non-trivial problem, that is an avalanche of information! It is not unreadable, but I am having difficulty seeing how I could track an individual supply unit from Dallas to see whether it eventually ends up getting used in Georgia.
Looked at from the other direction, if the spice DOES flow, then how could one ever reasonably interdict it? Gunboats in every river region? Blockading all the harbors? Gunboats in all the confluences? None seems attainable/reliable enough to actually stop significant supply transit that might be occurring.
(Just want to make clear, I am not talking about LOCAL supplies, the feeding of stacks via river from friendly depots; that is clearly happening, interdictable and working well. I am talking about large scale supply movement across the map in the general supply shuffle).
Captain_Orso wrote:The message sections and messages are pretty self-explanitory and there is one for each location and each force pertaining to supply production and distribution during each supply phase.
That's really funny, because I was just thinking about this earlier today. It came to mind because of the transports as raiders thread that I started over the weekend, but regardless: it'd be great if the supply view gave some sort of visualization of supply movement (from last turn). Arrows of some sort would be perfectly adequate.
*sigh* I can dream.
Anyway, thanks for the tip. As ArmChair already mentioned, it's not exactly usable, but I at least know that the information is there.
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Captain_Orso
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ArmChairGeneral wrote:A non-trivial problem, that is an avalanche of information! It is not unreadable, but I am having difficulty seeing how I could track an individual supply unit from Dallas to see whether it eventually ends up getting used in Georgia.
Wrong question. There are no "supply units" being pushed around.
There are 3 normal supply distribution phases.
During each of these phases each location is evaluated for it's "Pull" on supplies--cities, forts depots, harbors and friendly troops, etc., and any combination of these will cause and/or increase "Pull".
Then the supplies for one location are actually pulled from a single source. I assume that things like rail/riverine transportation--see levels of rail and riverine transportation pools--, weather, the actual "Pull", the amount of supply in the source, etc. now come into play to determine how much supply is actually delivered.
This happens per location with a "Pull"--ie. with a city, fort, depot, harbor, or regions with friendly units.
So, there is no fixed amount of supply being pulled by each location per phase. It is totally dynamic and generally never the same, and will certainly change even between phases, because the amount of supplies in the pulling and the sending locations are changing from one phase to the next.
ArmChairGeneral wrote:Looked at from the other direction, if the spice DOES flow, then how could one ever reasonably interdict it? Gunboats in every river region? Blockading all the harbors? Gunboats in all the confluences? None seems attainable/reliable enough to actually stop significant supply transit that might be occurring.
AFAIK "Pull" only works over a maximum of 5 regions. So a depot in Knoxville cannot pull supplies directly from Corinth. Knoxville pulls from Chattanooga, Chattanooga pulls from Stevens, Stevens pulls from Tuscumbia and Tuscumbia pulls from Corinth.
This is why you need depots every few regions. If in my chain from Corinth to Knoxville there is a depot missing in Tuscumbia for example, only the "pull" of Tuscumbia as a level 1 city with a level 1 harbor can pull on Corinth, so maybe it pulls only 30 GS. Now Stevens can pull all it wants, it can only get 30 GS--plus what ever was there at the start--from Tuscumbia.
ArmChairGeneral wrote:(Just want to make clear, I am not talking about LOCAL supplies, the feeding of stacks via river from friendly depots; that is clearly happening, interdictable and working well. I am talking about large scale supply movement across the map in the general supply shuffle).
But there are only local supply distributions. The only thing close to long distance distribution is by Naval Supply Distribution, and that is point-to-point--ie from one coastal harbor to another coastal harbor.
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ArmChairGeneral
- AGEod Grognard
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Yes, I understand all this (although that is as cogent an explanation as I have seen). What I am saying is that exactly because of this mechanism, it is unlikely that supply produced in Texas actually gets relayed along to other theaters, so that controlling the Mississippi cannot really affect the ability of an army in Georgia (for example) to eventually benefit from supplies produced in Texas or Arkansas, directly or even indirectly, since long-distance multi-turn supply shuffling is effectively not occurring.
In the second post I was saying that even if that is wrong and the push-pull mechanism can (in effect and over several turns) actually distribute supply generated in Texas to other theaters if the pull is strong enough, then it would be prohibitively difficult to stop that flow because there are too many paths it could take to do so.
Either way, the conclusion I am coming to is that controlling the river cannot "cut the Confederacy in half" in terms of supply distribution because it is either not happening in the first place or is prohibitively difficult to stop if it is.
In the second post I was saying that even if that is wrong and the push-pull mechanism can (in effect and over several turns) actually distribute supply generated in Texas to other theaters if the pull is strong enough, then it would be prohibitively difficult to stop that flow because there are too many paths it could take to do so.
Either way, the conclusion I am coming to is that controlling the river cannot "cut the Confederacy in half" in terms of supply distribution because it is either not happening in the first place or is prohibitively difficult to stop if it is.
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Captain_Orso
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ArmChairGeneral wrote:Yes, I understand all this (although that is as cogent an explanation as I have seen). What I am saying is that exactly because of this mechanism, it is unlikely that supply produced in Texas actually gets relayed along to other theaters, so that controlling the Mississippi cannot really affect the ability of an army in Georgia (for example) to eventually benefit from supplies produced in Texas or Arkansas, directly or even indirectly, since long-distance multi-turn supply shuffling is effectively not occurring.
That will basically depend on a supply line and the pull. I think the bigger question is if the Southern Atlantic coastal states actually need the supply.
ArmChairGeneral wrote:In the second post I was saying that even if that is wrong and the push-pull mechanism can (in effect and over several turns) actually distribute supply generated in Texas to other theaters if the pull is strong enough, then it would be prohibitively difficult to stop that flow because there are too many paths it could take to do so.
As with moving supplies in general, for the South to move GS from Texas to eastern locations there will need to be at least 1 line of depots stretching from west to east.
Breaking that line--or those lines--of depots will not be different than anywhere else in the game.
At the start of the war there are basically 3 supply lines from the west:
Memphis - Corinth - Chattanooga - etc
Vicksburg - Jackson - Meridian - etc
New Orleans - Mobile (along the coastal forts) - etc
As long as New Orleans is Confederate the South might also use Baton Rouge and Port Hudson, but will need their own line of intermediary depots to either Meridian or Mobile.
Once New Orleans and Corinth are taken there's only one viable path for supplies to follow, Vicksburg - Meridian.
So once Vicksburg and Grand Gulf have fallen, unless the Union player is extremely sloppy, there's no path for supply to follow.
ArmChairGeneral wrote:Either way, the conclusion I am coming to is that controlling the river cannot "cut the Confederacy in half" in terms of supply distribution because it is either not happening in the first place or is prohibitively difficult to stop if it is.
I'm not sure exactly how much gunboats block supplies at the moment. If you blockade a harbor no supplies should be able to move in or out.
But the real question is from which location west of the Mississippi to which location east of the Mississippi shall the supplies move if Vicksburg is captured?
I participated in a discussion of this in the history sub-forum. The conclusion was that the Midwest was no longer dependent on the Mississippi by the 1860's. Also, the South had food, they were just incompetent at getting the food to the soldiers. After great expenditure of effort the CSA was "split in two", but the western half did not surrender, so the effect was...?
http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?35195-Importance-of-opening-the-Mississippi
http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?35195-Importance-of-opening-the-Mississippi
I'm the 51st shade of gray. Eat, pray, Charge!
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Captain_Orso
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Gray Fox wrote:I participated in a discussion of this in the history sub-forum. The conclusion was that the Midwest was no longer dependent on the Mississippi by the 1860's. Also, the South had food, they were just incompetent at getting the food to the soldiers. After great expenditure of effort the CSA was "split in two", but the western half did not surrender, so the effect was...?
http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?35195-Importance-of-opening-the-Mississippi
From my understanding, the states and federal governments were poor at procuring food from areas which had an abundance like Georgia, while Texas lost its customers in the north so they were hard-selling to the federal government, who was glad to take what they could get.
Mickey3D wrote:Thanks a lot for the trick. A quick note : the log file is "!HostLog.txt".
*oops* yes, you are quite right.
I'm still of the opinion that if you give the Union player an incentive in something he is guaranteed to be short of, he'll task some forces for the conquest. 10% of, say, $540 a turn would get my attention, and if it isn't deducted before KY goes active, it won't really affect Union build-up either.
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pgr
- General of the Army
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Gray Fox wrote:I participated in a discussion of this in the history sub-forum. The conclusion was that the Midwest was no longer dependent on the Mississippi by the 1860's. Also, the South had food, they were just incompetent at getting the food to the soldiers. After great expenditure of effort the CSA was "split in two", but the western half did not surrender, so the effect was...?
http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?35195-Importance-of-opening-the-Mississippi
Well to say that the mid-west was no longer dependent on the Mississippi is a simplification. The river closure had a large disruptive effect on those in the southern mid-west whose goods normally went down stream. Sure there were replacement routes, but the result was higher shipping rates and some economic turmoil. This in turn had a distinct political effect.
The main weakness of the Union war effort was political. If the republicans lost control of congress or the presidency to pro-peace democrats, a negotiated settlement would have likely resulted.
To quote rather liberally from a particularly good wiki summery of Port Hudson operations:
The political momentum behind the Union actions against Port Hudson came from the elections of November 1862. (Republicans lost the absolute majority in the House, and had to govern with a shaky coalition pro-war democrats) The Republican base, centered in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, had been shaken by embarrassing Democratic victories. A dramatic letter from Indiana Governor Oliver P. Morton to Lincoln claimed “The fate of the North-West is trembling in the balance.” ... Morton believed the states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were in danger of breaking away from the Northeast to join the Confederacy, which was increasingly becoming the more lucrative opportunity.
The threatening political fractures galvanized the Lincoln administration into action... The Union commander of all armies, Henry Wager Halleck stated to Banks that President Lincoln “regards the opening of the Mississippi River as the first and most important of all our military and naval operations, and it is hoped that you will not lose a moment in accomplishing it.”
Militarily, the Mississippi wasn't important because the Confederacy would literally starve with out it, but because having it open was critical to maintaining the northern public's continued political support for the war.
In game terms, I suppose this means National Moral, and frankly there is no NM cost to a Union player who doesn't clear the whole river. As modeled, a Union player gets the lion's share of NM and VP benefit by capturing NO and Memphis, and pressing on to Vicksburg not really that worth it compared to other actions the USA could take. Vicksburg is far from "the most important of all military objectives."
In purely game terms, Grey Fox is very correct is his posts on other threads that the only real way the CSA can win outright is to capture DC and force a NM victory. If the USA shifts its capitol to NY, it becomes impossible for for the CSA to do this. We all know that over time the USA economic advantage becomes overwhelming, so the prudent Federal builds up, nibbles away at the edges, and overwhelms.
Captain_Orso, I dislike arbitrary objectives in war-games as much as anyone else. I find the placement of VP locations in this game to be rather arbitrary and a-historical, and currently a lot of strategy that I have observed in PBEM has revolved around who can rack up the most VP before the clock runs out.
I am quite fond of the "Northern Papers Push for an Offensive" event that fires in the early years and gives a significant NM hit to the Union if Richmond has not been captured. It seems like an appropriate way for the game to model the political need for the North to make progress. The core of what I'm saying is that there should be a similar event that fires annually if the North does not control Memphis, Vicksburg, and New Orleans.
Those two events firing annually all game long, combined with the 1864 election event that raises the USA NM fail score, should result in a Union NM loss if one of those two larger objectives is not completed by the elections of 1864. (Considering how bad the elections went in 62, and how unlikely Lincoln's re-election seemed in the summer of 1864... it is hard to see how Lincoln would have been re-elected if the Mississippi was still not fully cleared after 4 years).
We don't have dynamic VP locations in the game. Economic and political life is essentially not modeled. Strategically, in game, the middle of the Mississippi is largely irrelevant to the CSA supply picture. Finally, the South has a very hard time forcing a NM loss on the USA. An event that impacts Union NM for not going the distance to Vicksburg, would be a relatively simple way of addressing these issues.
pgr wrote:In game terms, I suppose this means National Moral, and frankly there is no NM cost to a Union player who doesn't clear the whole river. As modeled, a Union player gets the lion's share of NM and VP benefit by capturing NO and Memphis, and pressing on to Vicksburg not really that worth it compared to other actions the USA could take. Vicksburg is far from "the most important of all military objectives."
I am quite fond of the "Northern Papers Push for an Offensive" event that fires in the early years and gives a significant NM hit to the Union if Richmond has not been captured. It seems like an appropriate way for the game to model the political need for the North to make progress. The core of what I'm saying is that there should be a similar event that fires annually if the North does not control Memphis, Vicksburg, and New Orleans.
No, and I'll tell you why: It's far, far too easy for a competent CSA player to force both those events in PBEM, and adding another one will cause the Union to turtle. Why risk a few costly failed offensives for a lack of reduction in NM? Non-punitive incentives work IRL, so why not use that aspect of human nature?
Let's assume a game of chess with events. You get VP's every time you move a Knight and NM for every turn you have both Rooks. Now are you really going to make it a point to do those things, or ignore the silliness and just play for the checkmate?
Events that force some kind of political intrigue into the Union strategy are necessary to a certain extent to keep the CSA in the game. Take Manassas when it is impossible. Get close to Richmond when it serves no other military purpose really. Have men slaughtered in the tens of thousands taking a river so that Texas T-bones can no longer be served in Richmond. These are political goals, not military strategic goals. The gains of these political victories evaporated after the next military defeat. The Union had too many professors of military science making plans and not enough warfighters winning battles. If we should indeed make "the opening of the Mississippi River as the first and most important of all our military and naval operations", even more important than taking the capital of the CSA, then make the event worth 50 NM. However, even with the Mississippi in Union hands, Lincoln's re-election was still in trouble.
Events that force some kind of political intrigue into the Union strategy are necessary to a certain extent to keep the CSA in the game. Take Manassas when it is impossible. Get close to Richmond when it serves no other military purpose really. Have men slaughtered in the tens of thousands taking a river so that Texas T-bones can no longer be served in Richmond. These are political goals, not military strategic goals. The gains of these political victories evaporated after the next military defeat. The Union had too many professors of military science making plans and not enough warfighters winning battles. If we should indeed make "the opening of the Mississippi River as the first and most important of all our military and naval operations", even more important than taking the capital of the CSA, then make the event worth 50 NM. However, even with the Mississippi in Union hands, Lincoln's re-election was still in trouble.
I'm the 51st shade of gray. Eat, pray, Charge!
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Captain_Orso
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I assume that in Halleck's statement the "our" was referring to his department and not the nation.
I would not suggest having yearly events posing one-lump-sum win or loss prizes, but something more subtle.
One might be to have a 1 NM penalty for each month starting in July '63 in which not every major city on the Mississippi is in Union hands. That could lead to a sum-total loss of 12 NM over a 12 month period, but spread out over that period and not all at once.
Another possibility would be to use the same concept, but divide it up over each major city on the Mississippi and the penalty be once per quarter. It could even be scripted that the NM penalty might fall somewhere within the quarter with a 12% chance per turn with a 100% chance of it firing on the last turn of the quarter if it had not already fired.
The major cities considered might be Memphis, Vicksburg, Port Hudson, Baton Rouge and New Orleans, but of course any is up for discussion.
I would not suggest having yearly events posing one-lump-sum win or loss prizes, but something more subtle.
One might be to have a 1 NM penalty for each month starting in July '63 in which not every major city on the Mississippi is in Union hands. That could lead to a sum-total loss of 12 NM over a 12 month period, but spread out over that period and not all at once.
Another possibility would be to use the same concept, but divide it up over each major city on the Mississippi and the penalty be once per quarter. It could even be scripted that the NM penalty might fall somewhere within the quarter with a 12% chance per turn with a 100% chance of it firing on the last turn of the quarter if it had not already fired.
The major cities considered might be Memphis, Vicksburg, Port Hudson, Baton Rouge and New Orleans, but of course any is up for discussion.
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pgr
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Captain_Orso wrote:I assume that in Halleck's statement the "our" was referring to his department and not the nation.
I would not suggest having yearly events posing one-lump-sum win or loss prizes, but something more subtle.
One might be to have a 1 NM penalty for each month starting in July '63 in which not every major city on the Mississippi is in Union hands. That could lead to a sum-total loss of 12 NM over a 12 month period, but spread out over that period and not all at once.
Another possibility would be to use the same concept, but divide it up over each major city on the Mississippi and the penalty be once per quarter. It could even be scripted that the NM penalty might fall somewhere within the quarter with a 12% chance per turn with a 100% chance of it firing on the last turn of the quarter if it had not already fired.
The major cities considered might be Memphis, Vicksburg, Port Hudson, Baton Rouge and New Orleans, but of course any is up for discussion.
Ya this subtle approach is probably a better way to program something, than an annual one year big punch. My logic was simply it would be easy to cut and paste the Richmond event to suit my purposes.... being lazy and all
Oh and referring to Halleck, By the time he gave his instructions to Banks, he was General-in-Chef, so it is all departments. (Of course Halleck did have a flair for the dramatic.)
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pgr
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Gray Fox wrote:Let's assume a game of chess with events. You get VP's every time you move a Knight and NM for every turn you have both Rooks. Now are you really going to make it a point to do those things, or ignore the silliness and just play for the checkmate?
I don't really see it in that way. NM in this game is the will to carry on the struggle. Check mate is lowering the other side's NM to the level where they are forced to stop. Vp is really an in game currency used for strategic decisions, influencing Foreign Intervention, and determining a relative winner if the game ends in a tie (as in both sides have NM sufficient to surrender). If I remember right, the manual describes VP as a sort of post war stability measure (which is why things like taking lots of bonds cost VP).
In game, it is pretty straightforward for the Union to checkmate.... just keep taking important cities and CSA moral will eventually fall. For the CSA, the only way to really win outright is to run up big victories and successfully invade the North. There is no real time pressure on Union NM, so how is the CSA expected to outlast the NM of the North (other than simply running out of turns in the game)?
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