To Include or Not to Include, That is the Question

[Straight Arrow]

In my current game, I've had 2 precious engineering units destroyed in battle. Both of these units were loose in an army stack containing divisions and other support units.

Would placing support units inside a division limit this type of loss? IIRC Captain Bear once suggested combining a small, vulnerable unit with a leader to increase a small formations survivable rate. Does this work?

[Gray Fox]

Putting them in a Division that is constantly taking hits in battle does not sound like a survival mechanism. I don't have the game in front of me right now. I'll have to check.

[GraniteStater]

I don't even know if you can do that. You didn't used to be able to merge service units with Divs. If so, maybe that's a hint...

[tripax]

I do not have the answer, but I have some thoughts.

For what it is worth, most of my fixed DC support units were lost when you (Straight Arrow) stormed my capital.

I've put support units into a division for one turn so that a commander wouldn't lose statistics in the next turn when their combat units arrived. I've forgotten about that and left units in that division for a few turns and that division has never been selected during the battle, so none of the units were killed.

In battle, division selection is probabilistic and based on power, I think. So if a division of support units were selected, that would probably mean that all of your infantry divisions have retreated or have very little power, but your stack has not yet succeeded at retreating. In this case, you might lose the support units if they were loose, so it isn't clear which is better.

During the retreat phase, do support units take hits (I think they do, but am not sure)? I wonder if they would be more likely to take hits in a division (and I wonder if that is a good or bad thing). Loose unite are more often destroyed during retreat than units in division - this can be rough when a general is injured or killed in a battle. The support units have high evasion, though, so who knows.

[Cardinal Ape]

You can put engineers into divisions.

It might be worth while to put them inside divisions so you don't lose them. Though, you may just be getting unlucky, I can't seem to recall having many support units die in combat.

Even with how expensive engineers are the worst part about losing them is how long it takes to replace them with their 90 day build time. If you need one now and you don't have one, an entire summer campaign season could pass by before your demand is met.

Pontoons might be a better option than engineers. Though, I don't think the CSA gets many of those. I can't recall how the pontooner's entrenchment trait compares to engineers, but they do have one. Pontooners also have those other perks - and as I have recently noticed, but yet to test, is that pontooners may significantly decrease movement time into muddy regions.

[GraniteStater]

+10 on entrenchment, IIRC, and halves river crossing times.

[Gray Fox]

I put together an artillery Division but also added an HQ, pontooneer and engineer element in it. I then fought a major battle in which the stack took about 400 hits. None of the support elements took any hits. So the artillery Division may evolve into a heavy support unit for a Corps or Army. The Division did have 20% less artillery elements as a consequence, but I have noticed in AAR's that most of you use smaller artillery Divisions than I would. Also, if a stack were severely mauled, these elements may still not be invulnerable.

[tripax]

Are you including the artillery when you say, "None of the support elements took any hits"?

[Gray Fox]

Yes. None of the elements in the artillery Division took any hits at all.