Fri Dec 19, 2014 4:23 am
Havi,
It looks like several artillery engaged besides just the Jones Artillery, since your divisions both show the artillery icon which implies that they had guns that were firing (although not necessarily, I think it just means they had an extra % chance to hit because of your fifth level of entrenchment). Artillery frontage is filled from the pool of all available artillery, no matter their location, and basically at random. I am guessing that your artillery frontage was filled, but that by chance only one of the stack artillery got picked while the rest of the frontage was filled with divisional artillery. Without the battle log, though, it is impossible to tell exactly how many did participate. Since we can't see the whole division (I wish this would get fixed, it is one of my primary complaints with the battle log) it is hard to tell just from the graphical battle report how many you had in the divisions. Kind of an unlucky result, since your divisions probably had some 6lbers in them, whereas things might have gone slightly better for you if the bigger stack artillery had been chosen instead.
I don't think 100% of his force got to participate. It looks like the 11th and 22nd Divisions didn't do much in the battle. My guess is that a good portion of the 12th and 13th Divs were chosen for the first round or two, but the damaged units cycled out and were replaced in the frontage by unused elements from those and the other divisions. That is one advantage of numbers even in cases of limited frontage: even though the frontage on any one round is limited, there are fresh troops that can come in during later rounds to take the place of the ones that have been damaged and drop out of the frontage. If 100% of his force was firing at you on every round you would have taken a lot more damage.
I think PGT did a bang up job. He inflicted two and a half times as many hits as he received, the equivalent of three and a half full elements. Had he stuck around any longer the battle would eventually have started to swing the other way: he didn't have fresh troops to rotate into the frontage, and as the hits pile up effectiveness begins to degrade (because eventually somebody will fail a discipline check and either be shaken or routed, like the Chatanooga Garrison did). If you had not had hold at all costs he would probably have retreated after the first round in the face of those kind of overwhelming numbers. Looks like he instead held the field long enough to make the enemy pay but wisely decided to get out of Dodge before he could be overwhelmed, which I think is a pretty good result in the circumstances. IIRC B/R means he won't start making retreat checks until the third round, so I think he stayed an extra round (the third round) above what was required by his orders. Other than putting him in the structure (and he would likely have surrendered in a few turns if you had) there is no way I can think of to force a stack to stick around against those kinds of odds.
Orphan_Kentuckian
It looks like you had at least two corps that participated, since it appears the 22nd Div was in another stack. Did you have a third Corps as well? If so, it is a very good thing that PGT wasn't in the structure (for Havi, that is).