A few more beginer questions

[lightbrave]

Question 1 - Brigade Generals? When you create a division or corps, lets say you have General Jackson with a new division, since you cant merge a brigade commander(with his brigade) with general Jackson, once you merge the brigades with Jackson(without the brigade commanders), do you put the brigade commanders sitting in his stack for them to get experience(so they can be promoted)?

Question 2 - It cost a lot of resources do provide support units(signal corpse, engineer, headquarters exc...) If I have an army with 3 corpse, do I put one in each corpse stack and 1 in army stack or is just one in the army stack sufficient for the whole army?

Question 3 - how many supply wagons should be in each corpse?

Question 4 - iv read that each division should have an artillery unit and a cavalry unit in the division(or brigade). Is this true or should they be independent in the army stack. Do I make a whole division out of cavalry and artillery. Should say jeb stuart be a division under the "army stack" and same with artillery?

Im sure I will have other questions but these will due for a start. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

[Captain_Orso]

Question 1 - Brigade Generals? When you create a division or corps, lets say you have General Jackson with a new division, since you cant merge a brigade commander(with his brigade) with general Jackson, once you merge the brigades with Jackson(without the brigade commanders), do you put the brigade commanders sitting in his stack for them to get experience(so they can be promoted)?

Leader only gain experience points if they are actually leading something. Once a leader is taken out of the Leader-Brigade combination, and the brigade is put into a division, the released leader only leads if it is higher in rank than the division commander, and both of those are not in a corps. Basically, if you can take the leader out of the stack, and it makes no difference to the stack--other than the CP's he might be providing--, then that leader will not gain any XP.

Example: * T.J.Jackson is division commander with a full division. A division needs 4 CP's to be fully commanded, but * Jackson only provides 2 CP's. Add a * gen subordinate to Jackson to the stack to provide his 2 CP's and now Jackson's stack has the necessary 4 CP's to lead the division, the additional leader acting as a kind of adjutant. In battle, Jackson will gain XP's for hits scored by his division minus hits scored against his division, but the battle engine will not give any XP to the adjutant.

Question 2 - It cost a lot of resources do provide support units(signal corpse, engineer, headquarters exc...) If I have an army with 3 corpse, do I put one in each corpse stack and 1 in army stack or is just one in the army stack sufficient for the whole army?

Engineers, Pontooniers, Hospitals, Signal Co.'s, and Balloon units all provide their bonuses to the stacks they are in.

Put at least 1 each Engineer, Hospital into each Corps stack.

Pontooniers will shorten river-crossing time, so in areas with a lot of rivers, they can be very handy.

Signal Co.'s increase CP's by 1, but unless your Corps is stuffed to the gills that will make little difference. But they also increase a leader's abilities once the leader has gained experience. It can be very nice.

Balloons also add 1 to the stack's CP's, but also increase the stacks detection value by 1.

What you put into an Army HQ stack depends on how you use it. If you fill it with fighting troops and use it as a Corps, then you will need to treat it like a Corps.

Question 3 - how many supply wagons should be in each corpse?

Force size = Supply necessity. My rule of thumb is: 1 full division = 1 supply unit.

Question 4 - iv read that each division should have an artillery unit and a cavalry unit in the division(or brigade). Is this true or should they be independent in the army stack. Do I make a whole division out of cavalry and artillery. Should say jeb stuart be a division under the "army stack" and same with artillery?

If you ask x number of players, you will get x number of unique answers. So I will give you my answer.

1x leader
1x sharpshooter
1-2x cavalry
1x 10lber artillery
3x 6/12lber artillery
10-11x line infantry, at least one of which should have the Strong Morale ability

Gray Fox has a tactic in which he puts his corps artillery into their own division, including any artillery he can strip from divisions, replacing those empty slots with infantry.

Im sure I will have other questions but these will due for a start. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Bring 'em on!!

[Gray Fox]

Question 4

You can easily put any 17 elements you want in a Division and just have some fun. Of course, the game system and history may permit some of your ad hoc Divisions to do better than others. There's the rub.

Infantry form the bulk of your army. If you examine the menus for individual elements, you'll find elite, line, conscript and militia infantry. You even have marines and sailors, although these are listed as elite infantry. Some special brigades of infantry boost the entire Division's cohesion and you might want to put one of these in each Division you plan on attacking with.

If I want a Division to stand up in the attack, I try to put mostly line or elite infantry in that Division. If I plan on a Division garrisoning an entrenched position in the rear area, then militia or conscripts will do.

The more infantry a Division has, the more damage it can take before it routs. If one quarter of the Division is artillery, then it just has less infantry. However, the brigades with 6-lber batteries are hard to pass over. Artillery is more accurate if entrenched, so the militia/conscript garrisons do all right with a few of these brigades with gun batteries.

In the game, gun batteries are support units and fire whether they are in the Division, loose in a stack or in a Division of artillery. As I pointed out, a Division with more infantry may have an advantage over one with less. A pure artillery Division gets the advantage of a Division commander that loose artillery in the stack does not. I think you will find that Athena has been rewritten to form artillery Divisions. Historically, the Union had artillery brigades and the CSA battalions. The only formation the game mechanic allows is the Division, although no artillery Divisions were ever used, it suffices quite well. The player pgr asked about artillery Divisions and my tests convinced me that this was a good idea.

Finally cavalry are the eyes and ears of any army. One element behind enemy lines can give you a view of "what is over the hill". During the war, cavalry skirmished with each other for intel. Small units of cavalry grew ever larger until Divisions and Corps were fighting the info war. In a battle, cavalry can also screen your stack when it withdraws or pursue the enemy when they withdraw. The stack with more cavalry has the advantage. However, a cavalry Division in a stack with other Divisions will sometimes get mauled, so I just put 2 cavalry in each infantry Division. The cavalry help the stack identify more info from nearby enemy stacks, too. Good luck!

[lightbrave]

Thank you orso and greyfox for your input, I really appreciate it. One question about your answer for my first question. You say if Jackson has 2 cp, he needs a lesser commander to make up the other 2 points for the division. So based on that, do you just pick the worst commanders you have so you can use your better ones elsewhere? The lesser commander has NO EFFECT at all except to make up cp's? A better commander wouldn't bring more to the division? Is this just a game mechanic?

[Captain_Orso]

Thank you orso and greyfox for your input, I really appreciate it. One question about your answer for my first question.

You say if Jackson has 2 cp, he needs a lesser commander to make up the other 2 points for the division.

I division requires 4 CP's to be considered fully commanded. For every CP missing the stack loses 5% in mobility and 'power'. Power is what is displayed on the unit, and is a kind of average of the unit's offensive and defensive combat values, which are generally different.

So based on that, do you just pick the worst commanders you have so you can use your better ones elsewhere?

With Jackson, it would be foolish not to do that. If the division commander is one of those common 3-1-1's it doesn't really matter.

The lesser commander has NO EFFECT at all except to make up cp's?

As far as his offensive/defensive rating is concerned, it make no difference. If the 'adjutant' has a special stack ability, such as Artillerist or Cavalryman, that will of course be in affect. But then again, those are leaders I'd rather put into a corps to have the ability affect the largest number of units as possible.

A better commander wouldn't bring more to the division?

A leader with higher values than the division commander, but with lower rank, will not affect that division stack with his strategic/offensive/defensive values in any way.

Is this just a game mechanic?

Yes.

[ArmChairGeneral]

Lets say you have a stack with just one Division. No matter how you set it up, it will need 4 CPs: either two 1*s or one 2*. If you put a high quality 1* in charge of the division, he will still need a second general in order to avoid CP penalties. If he is lower ranked, the second general's stats do not affect anything, and he will not gain experience in battle; this is a great place to park low quality generals to get some use out of them.

If instead, you put a lower ranked 3-1-1 in command of the Division and then put Jackson in the stack so he is in command, the stack will be fully commanded, but as the stack commander, Jackson's stats give a 5% rather than a 3% bonus to combat, while the division leader ALSO gives 3% for each of his stat points. When the stack commander is also in command of the division, the division does not get both bonuses.

(As a question to the community, in the first case, does Jackson give 5% per stat point because he is in command of the stack, or is it only 3% per point because he is a division commander?)

[Gray Fox]

http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?38273-The-effect-of-leadership-during-combat

"[(stack commander offense value x 0.05) + (unit leader offense value x 0.03)] = A
[(stack commander defense value x 0.05) + (unit leader defense value x 0.03)] = B
TCM = 1 + A - B"

So it's 5% for the stack commander and 3% for the unit commander's OFF/DEF value. A senior one star with a Division commanded by a junior one star would get the stack commander bonus.

[ArmChairGeneral]

What about when the senior commander is also the division commander? Is that 5% or 3%?

[Gray Fox]

As I understand it, one cannot be both. If the senior General is the Division commander, then the junior General is just going to provide 2 CP's.

This isn't explained as such in the Combat link, however I did a test with a battle set up both ways and when the senior General is the Division commander, then I didn't get a Stack commander bonus in the battle log.

[Captain_Orso]

Does it say it in the battle log? I can't remember having seen it, and I think I looked for it once or twice specifically because of this question.

[Gray Fox]

You get a line for Commander and then Unit Commander:

"30. Volunteers (OH) - Commander: Phil. Kearny Cmd Coeff. %: 125
30. Volunteers (OH) - Unit Commander: Samuel R. Curtis Cmd Coeff. %: 106"

I've not seen such a line when both are the same.

P.S. Here's one with a Commander, but no unit commander for Loudoun Cavalry:

"*** Start of action # 300 1003557 Loudoun Cav. vs 1006644 11th Illinois Mil. ***
2:20:42 PM (Reporting) Loudoun Cav. - Commander: P.G.T. Beauregard Cmd Coeff. %: 114
2:20:42 PM (Reporting) 11th Illinois Mil. - Commander: Phil. Kearny Cmd Coeff. %: 125
2:20:42 PM (Reporting) 11th Illinois Mil. - Unit Commander: Daniel Butterfield Cmd Coeff. %: 103"

So this is also possible.