Marching to the Sound of Guns Q's

[ajarnlance]

... MTSG has some nice benefits for the attacker, including the fact that stacks that MTSG in support of an attack across a river do not have river crossing penalties..

Some good points about the utility of MTSG on the attack. As for the issue of no river crossing penalty for MTSG I wonder if this needs to be looked at... seems unrealistic doesn't it? Do all the MTSG troops grow wings and fly across the river...?? Surely the same movement penalty should apply...

[Merlin]

The attacking corps/army pays the penalty and gets a bridgehead. The follow-on corps are penalized by having a higher probability to fail the MTSG check due to longer march times imposed by the river. Don't do it unless you heavily outnumber the enemy, your corps have good commanders, and everybody has pontoons.

[Captain_Orso]

Remember, for the enemy to cause your stack to be hit by the river-crossing penalties, that side must have >75% MC in the region (that is, if and when the moving player has =>25% MC, other friendly stack(s) entering the region by crossing are not subjected to the river crossing penalties.

[Merlin]

Remember, for the enemy to cause your stack to be hit by the river-crossing penalties, that side must have >75% MC in the region (that is, if and when the moving player has =>25% MC, other friendly stack(s) entering the region by crossing are not subjected to the river crossing penalties.

And lest anyone be mistaken here, attacking something like an enemy corps across a river into a region where you have say, 50% MC, you're going to get the penalty because the region will be damn near converted by the time you get there.

[ajarnlance]

Remember, for the enemy to cause your stack to be hit by the river-crossing penalties, that side must have >75% MC in the region (that is, if and when the moving player has =>25% MC, other friendly stack(s) entering the region by crossing are not subjected to the river crossing penalties.

Another gem of information... still learning all the subtleties of this game. I think that 'military control' is a very clever concept and well implemented in this game.

[ArmChairGeneral]

Re river crossing:

Something to bear in mind, there are two separate effects of river crossing, the time it takes to cross the river (reflected in the percentage chance to MTSG) and the actual combat malus. The combat malus to amphibious landing always and everywhere ONLY occurs on the first round of combat. This is often the most bloody round, since separate fire phases occur at each of the available ranges. The second and succeeding rounds have only two phases each, a range 1 fire phase and a range 0 assault phase.

MTSGers pay the time (i.e. percentage chance) and cohesion cost to cross rivers, always. MTSGers do not receive a combat malus from crossing rivers because they arrive on the second or later round, when the field has already become a pitched, close-in contest, and no amphibious penalty applies to anyone. Additionally, there is the beachhead effect in which a certain level of MC in a region negates the amphibious combat malus even during the first round (but which does not matter for MTSG, since MTSG does not occur in the first round).

[ArmChairGeneral]

OK, I just ran about 20 tests and dug through their logs to determine whether MTSG uses rail movement or not, and the results are... inconclusive.

When I originally ran the tests, I had thought that Commit Chance (listed at the beginning of each round during the stack-targeting portion of the log) referred to the chance to MTSG, but after this round of testing, I am starting to think that Commit Chance refers to something else. If that is the case, then I can't find ANY entries in the battlelog that refer to the MTSG percentage roll.

That being said, though I did not have a statistically large enough sample to draw any valid conclusions, the battles I tested resulted in MTSG behavior just as often without rail orders as with; it happened almost every single time under both orders. Unfortunately, the sandbox I threw together had pretty low marching times, 7 days. What I really need to do is click through some scenario until I can get some snow or mud in the appropriate regions to get a base time of 12+ days, so that the rail vs no rail probabilities are as far apart as they can be. Then it should be pretty obvious after ten repeats or so whether there is a difference between the two.

Unfortunately I used the Shiloh scenario as the sandbox, which has pretty good weather and is too short to let me hold out for the bad stuff, so I will have to start a different scenario and organize, click through, etc. to get the right conditions. Unfortunately I will not be able to get to it again until after Thanksgiving, so if anyone else wants to give it a go in the meantime....