When do you usually win (or lose)?

[grimjaw]

I'm posting this here instead of the modding forum because I'm hoping to get more feedback. I figure more people play the game than mod it, and the main question I have is: in the full campaigns, when have you usually won or lost?

I'm working on modding the generals, their appearances in the game and their abilities. I'm starting with the CSA, which is why I'll mention their command structure in this post instead of the Union. I've heard the common thread that the full campaign is usually won or lost, USA or CSA respectively, by 1863. This is usually true in my games as well. As such several of the generals and units in the full campaign are never even seen, much less used, even though these were making impacts earlier in the war. Generals who do make appearances in the game sometimes weren't even generals but are there for "flavor" (Quantrill, Mosby, Baylor, etc), displacing more important and notable contributors.

Many of the CSA generals' appearances match their promotion dates to major general, probably to simulate that the CSA usually gave division command to major generals (and corps command to lieutenant generals). I'm moving many of them up to their brigadier appointments, and trying to place them in the theater in which they operated.

The launches in Florida, or lack thereof, are a major annoyance. For example, Bragg operated out of Pensacola as early at March 1861. I put him in Pensacola (or Florida if Pensacola isn't available) on 05/01/1861, and automate his promotion to 2-star later. Ruggles was serving as a 1-star under Bragg in Florida early on and followed him north, as did J.P. Anderson. Both of their events now launch them with Bragg or in the southeast, but Ruggles appears later than the '61 generals dump. In the unmodified game, Pemberton launches in rural Florida, even though he only fought there during the Seminole Wars. I put him in Charleston (or the deep south VP cities, whatever is available), earlier, and with a higher seniority to make his promotion to major general easier. Richard Anderson ideally starts in Pensacola (FL or SC as a backup) so he can reenact the Battle of Santa Rosa Island.

Another example. Prior to Pea Ridge, Van Dorn operated as a 1-star commander of the Army of Potomac cavalry force, as well as other cavalry experience with the US Army. He was never appointed lieutenant general. He generally did poorly when commanding large forces and subordinate generals, but not because he bickered with them. I remove his ranger perk, restore his cavalry perk, start him as a high seniority 1-star with Beauregard or in the mid-Atlantic, and restrict him to 2-star rank. I lower his political value. This way he can still be promoted to 2-star quickly, giving him additional CP and seniority for use in command of his "army" at Pea Ridge if so desired. His command ability suffers with larger forces, not because he suffers from the quickly-angered ability, but because he can't organize an army. Maury gets his own event.

Some generals have modified seniority and political values, making promotion more or less expensive. Some are denied lofty perches that they could attain in the game, but never did in real life. Some are raised from ranks they never held, like G.W. Smith (freeing his 1-star model for a new general or rank for an existing one ;D )

These are minor details and don't affect much. I consider the most significant change to be their availability dates. The overall effect, I hope, is that more commanders are available earlier. Some, like J.O. Shelby, are moved back quite a bit. It should strengthen, or maybe more accurately "flavor", one of the few advantages the CSA has in the game, which was leadership. Production, force totals, and command point structure are not changed. Even with more generals, there's a limit to how many divisions you can put in a corps. Even without historical force totals the CSA can only produce so much, and more generals does not mean full-strength divisions. This is especially true early in the game, when I make the generals available.

Just because some commanders show up earlier in the game doesn't make them better commanders, or less prone to dying in battle.

[Durk]

This is a bit of an odd post to reply to as I think you did not ask the question you intended to ask.
For the most part generals appear in the game when the came to minor command.
I suspect you play versus AI as in my pbem games most games end in 1864/1865 or in 1862. Early CSA generals allow offensives to win early. Mid-game USA generals allow USA win.

Are you asking when generals should historically appear against a particular criteria?

[tripax]

I keep winning in late 1862 against Athena. In PBEMs, I think games usually go to 1865, but I haven't played many PBEMs.

When doing my unit names mod, I created a little database of orders of battle - keeping track of armies, corps, divisions, brigades, regiments, and their commanders. If you are interested, I can give you a list of Generals who had division command at the outset of a major battle and the date and name of that battle. I don't have every battle in the database, but I have a lot of them.

[...]For the most part generals appear in the game when the came to minor command. [...]

This may be somewhat true for the generals that appear individually, but not really so for the generals who appear in January in the capitals.

[grimjaw]

I suspect you play versus AI

Guilty as charged but I'm interested in PBEM player input as well.

I'd *really* like to change the command structure setup and ranking system to more closely match historical. I'm not sure if I can mod that, and I'm fairly certain what I want will not make it into CW2 via the developers. Most people on the forum seem to be OK with what is already there (especially the beta testers, who often tell me I should just shut up and live with it), but I *hate* seeing a half-dozen or more 3-star Union commanders. I know why it was done, and I understand that. I. Absolutely. Hate. It.

Since I'm going to work with the existing structure, I would like to see more *generals* in the game (CW2) on the CSA side but also for the Union, even though the Union has an abundance of them already. I don't want commanders commanding divisions and corps who never even commanded brigades. *I* can enable this just by not doing it, but Athena will not. One way to do this without creating a bunch of new generals is to move up the existing generals' appearance dates to when they were nominated and/or confirmed at brigadier rank. I can also go by the date where they were commanding one or more brigades, as that date is available for many of them.

Several that had minor command still don't make an appearance until they were either nominated or confirmed at major general rank, or were commanding divisions vs. brigades. Mahone (general officer rank confirmed 1861/12/13) is an example, who was commanding brigades well before he appears in the vanilla game (1864/08/30). Yet E.P. Alexander (general officer rank confirmed 1864/05/28, and was most often not leading troops in battle) shows up almost three years before him (1862/01/01). I turn EPA into "flavor." Make him a unit like Belle Boyd or Pinkerton, with no command ability but with an artillery perk that assists the stack. In addition, I move up Mahone's entry date. Helps my peace of mind and doesn't hurt Athena, especially when she has the CSA. There are several more examples like this, but I don't want to veer the thread into nitpicking about specific commanders.

Durk mentioned PBEM. I would like to play that way more often, but without agreements on restrictions under the vanilla game to stay more in a historical line I don't really think I'd like it. I'd like it if what I intend to mod would be agreeable to more people than not. I'd like to be able to apply the mod to a PBEM game.

So if most games are won or lost by X, and if the resources (commanders, land/naval units, etc) were available historically well before X, I want them to appear in the game to be utilized by myself or Athena or another player (before X).

[indythinker]

grimjaw, Durk, and tripax,

I usually do not monitor or respond to the forums, because I'm still getting use to CWII. However, my game play thus far has been more of a cerebral exercise combined with entertainment. I'm probably the OLD MAN of these forums, for I will shortly turn 64. That said, I have been a Civil War Buff since grade school, studied the war in depth in college, and even been a Civil War Reenacter while living in both California and Virginia.

If I may make a few suggestions (without having the tech know-how to mod them myself), there are several things I research when dealing with Generals. (I retired from the Air Force as a Major but spent 6 years in the Army enlisted).
Let's compare CWII to the Scourge of War civil war series.

1. Unlike Scourge of War, unless I'm missing something CWII provides no indepth link to Union or Confederate Generals. The focus in my game (thus far) has been on Union Generals. I find myself using Wiki links (not leaks) to check out when and where a General activated. Thus this should be a decent resource for both Union and Confederate Generals.

2. I noticed on a few CWII forums that some players get overwhelmed with the large number of Generals thrown at them at the same time. The way I deal with this in the Union is that if I don't know off the top of my head when and where they were deployed (active) I look it up.

3. Once I know where they belong I try getting them to that region by rail, since part of the game is a lesson in logistics per se, getting both troops and Generals in the vicinity of where they belong can be quite a challenge.

4. And my last point: I thought about how to cut down on the number of Generals I have available in any region. I believe the problem all players run into is having more Generals than troops (unrealistic since most troops especially during the early war years were raised by local politicians, etc. One way I cut down on the number of Generals available (historically) is to check out when they died (attrition).

CWII doesn't appear to take senior officer attrition into consideration. However, a player can kill off a General at the historic point when he died. On the special orders menu (the hammer symbol) is a skull that should light up when your select a General to make deceased. Once a player does this the General's icon will turn RED.

Note: You have to take that General out of the stack or you will end up killing the entire stack.

What I did was Google Union (or Confederate) Generals by date of death which gave me a few listings. The one I printed off was broken down in Generals killed in action and those who later died of their wounds. For purposes of game play I combined the two by war year.

This is especially helpful if a player gets of group of Generals who were little known.

I hope these suggestion a helpful, but I have no clue how to MOD date of death into the game so that a General is removed from the game when he historically passed away.

Lastly, when a player designates a General for demise, the next turn CWII reports not the death of said General, but that he has been removed from command.

[grimjaw]

indythinker, thanks for your input. Let me respond to your points.

1: I've done the same thing WRT to history of the personalities represented in the game, and it was almost as interesting doing that. I actually started playing AACW when I was laid up with two broken arms, since it was something that didn't require alot of dexterity and I had time to read.

2, 3 & 4: I'm hoping that by placing the generals in, or closer to, the theater in which they historically operated, it will reduce the overwhelming part of this equation, as well as save time and moves to get a general where he ought to have been historically. As the Union, I spend a third of my early January turns just dispersing the giant general dump.

As far as senior officer attrition goes, I'm adding some of that in. It's fairly easy to add an event to do this. What you detailed about killing the general off does work, but in some cases there is a VP penalty involved, and it's another thing the player has to keep up with that he shouldn't have to.

A few generals resigned their commissions to seek and/or hold public office, or for other reasons. McClellan was one, but there are other examples. Robert Schenck & Milledge Bonham are two off the top of my head. I'm adding in events like that, using the criteria that they served the government or war effort in another capacity for the duration of the conflict.

Death via natural causes, disease or from accidents unrelated to the war to match historical events are up for debate, but I don't really think they should be modeled. If you're going to do that for one general, might as well add in a random chance o' death per turn for all of them. If the events in the game become so fixed, it becomes less of a game and more of a history lesson, IMO.

[khbynum]

I'm probably the OLD MAN of these forums, for I will shortly turn 64.

Welcome to the forum, indythinker. Not quite, I'm 67.

[ArmChairGeneral]

Playing as CSA vs AI, when I win outright it is usually between mid-1862 and mid-1863 (though I have pulled off a DC rush earlier than this).

That being said, most games I quit playing mid-1863: I am usually very far ahead and it is just a matter of grinding out the win (whether on points or waiting for the opportunity to take DC). Just to be sure, I have played several games further than that: the Union was usually able to mount a good comeback and make up some ground but I still won handily on VPs in the cases where I could not pull off a late-game NM victory.

When not in the driver's seat as the CSA by mid-1863 (rare these days) I usually count the game as a lost cause. I have ground out a few of these as well, but have only been able to salvage a VP win once. If I'm not "winning" by mid-1863, I figure I am not going to and often call the game.

Playing out "winning"/"losing" games was instructive and interesting, but these days I usually prefer to put those hours into a new game. (Obviously the choice of whether to play every game to the finish varies for each player.)

[Durk]

Grimjaw, tripax indythinker,* sorry ArmChairGeneral* , we are on a seriously divergent discussion from the thread topic. I think I understand the desire to reign in the commander divergence from the historical. While like khbynum, I will not as of yet conceded old man of the forums to indythinker, a love of the American Civil War complicates an appreciation of how leaders are handled.

Civil War 2 is an excellent study of generals. One thing which is very important to my understanding of play is that leaders do not have to succumb to an historical death. Upper leaders are not shielded from the accidents of war, but are in a somewhat protected mode: “Please Marse Lee, go to the rear an we will hold the line.” Civil War 2 does allow for senior leader death, but it is as limited as it was historically.

I do love to play historically despite the game, so I tend to send generals to the theater where they historically commanded; however, I am not in an historical straight jacket. Just as Hood and Hooker played significant roles in both the East and the West, I only provide a theater limit to generals such as Stonewall Jackson, Price and Richard Taylor who really were place bound.

Games are by their nature alternative history. My ancestor who died at Cold Harbor can live in a game recreation. So can the generals of this time live beyond their years and their appointments.

[indythinker]

With all due respect too.

[indythinker]

Durk,

Sorry if I contributed to getting off topic. In fact, maybe I should have put my comments in the "I win too soon" thread. If not accurate, I recall glancing at such a thread. That said, I'm frankly still in the process of learning the game (CWII).

I have to admit thought that I'm forcing myself to play moreso because it tends to be more cerebrial than entertaining. Meaning CWII is not as complex as the Total War series that also include economic, social, geographical, and strategic features but also allow one to get more into the tactical level.

I also take a time out from heaving thinking required for CWII and enjoy the Scourge of War series for it's tactical level play.

A few games have an encyclopedia section that only lacks coverage when aspects of the game are modded and models not updated in the main vanilla game.

I've learned to enjoy using the analytical ability and basic knowledge of history required to get into the game.

To get back on topic "when do I usually win or lose?"

I don't know yet, it's my first shot. However, at the rate I'm going and using the approach mentioned above, I also factor in the weather and the reality that there were very few military operations during the winter or bad weather months. I'm constantly monitoring the weather, terrain, and so forth that comes with the map.

I use this in winter camp time to focus more on recruitment, and naval operations.

This I believe give the Confederate AI the opportunity to do the same, for I note hardly any Confederate action during the extremely bad weather or mud conditions.

I'm now into late 1863 and the game I'm playing tends to follow an historic flow although the significant historic battles are not appearing. I believe that I can take the game to 1865 by the decisions I make, observation of weather trends, and political events.

Of course alot will also depend on how the AI moves and reacts.

Lastly, I have the game setting on trainee (or easiest) level, because I'm still learning the game. I would make the AI a bit more challenging next time. For now, it looks as if the Union is destined to win, but I'm not playing a what if scenario.