"New" Retreat Rules?

[Captain_Orso]

The simple answer is, if you do something dumb, you get disastrous results[SUP]1)[/SUP].

Here are the facts as I understand them:
- McDowell was in the middle of a retreat across the Potomac, from Fairfax to King George.. Queensland.. ... what ever the region is with Washington DC is.
- McDowell's stack had <5 MC in Fairfax.
- The Union player, in plotting the move for the turn after the battle, put McDowell's stack in to DP; remember, it is still in Fairfax, with <5 MC, which at the start of the turn automatically changes your stack to OP, which causes the stack to attack.
- When a stack is in a battle, which starts while it is crossing a river, the stack receives the invasion penalty during that battle, which can make for some very high casualties.

There is nothing surprising about this, other than that the player put McDowell into DP while McDowell was in a region, where he had <5 MC.


[SUP]1)[/SUP] Making mistakes is how you learn. It's painful, but effective. Now you have learned.

[Jerzul]

The simple answer is, if you do something dumb, you get disastrous results[SUP]1)[/SUP].

Here are the facts as I understand them:
- McDowell was in the middle of a retreat across the Potomac, from Fairfax to King George.. Queensland.. ... what ever the region is with Washington DC is.
- McDowell's stack had <5 MC in Fairfax.
- The Union player, in plotting the move for the turn after the battle, put McDowell's stack in to DP; remember, it is still in Fairfax, with <5 MC, which at the start of the turn automatically changes your stack to OP, which causes the stack to attack.
- When a stack is in a battle, which starts while it is crossing a river, the stack receives the invasion penalty during that battle, which can make for some very high casualties.

There is nothing surprising about this, other than that the player put McDowell into DP while McDowell was in a region, where he had <5 MC.


[SUP]1)[/SUP] Making mistakes is how you learn. It's painful, but effective. Now you have learned.

Except that those aren't the facts at all. I explained everything in the post above.

But to clarify, my two retreating stacks were both green/green and moving into to Washington. I did not change their postures to defensive. Also, my MC in Fairfax was >5.

The move was also not plotted to Stafford from Fairfax. The move was one that was "tacked" on to the move after DC - (non deliberately) - so DC-Fairfax-Stafford was the plotted course.

Either way the attack was clearly a user-error issue. Although, I do give the clunky/cluttered interface partial blame for it to even have happened that way (all those symbols cluttered in one location can make for some easy mistakes).

But random disaster is the spice of (Civil War) life. We'll see how the Union deals with this disaster. Can they get back up? Can they hold Washington? Time will tell!

[Captain_Orso]

You guys are not making sense. Who attacked in Fairfax on the second turn? McDowell or Johnston? If Johnston attacked on the second turn too, why the **** didn't you say that Wraith?

There is no "tacking on" of movement plots. The only time the game engine plots the move of a stack is when that stack is forced to retreat.

[Jerzul]

You guys are not making sense. Who attacked in Fairfax on the second turn? McDowell or Johnston? If Johnston attacked on the second turn too, why the **** didn't you say that Wraith?

There is no "tacking on" of movement plots. The only time the game engine plots the move of a stack is when that stack is forced to retreat.

In Wraith's defense, the initial battle looked as if it was a victim of the retreat rules which kept Lyon's forces (from much earlier in this thread) trapped for months and constantly switching to the offensive without being able to escape.

Upon further review I noticed that McDowell went back to DC and then started heading south.

I looked at the old turn, found that his retreat order was still in progress (five days to DC) but that his pointer (the camp icon) had somehow been moved down to Stafford, VA. So in essence, he retreated, and then moved south. By the time he got back into Alexandria, the CSA had full MC so he switched to the offensive and the battle commenced in the most Fredericksburg-style imaginable.

Like I said above. It was user error. I certainly didn't want McDowell to head to Stafford. But with the clicking through DC and the lag I get with this game sometimes it is quite easy to for me to see how it happened.

Last when I said "Tacking on" what I meant was that you can make stacks take the routes you want by dragging them point by point. McDowell was already heading to DC, and then his pointer was moved to Stafford, making his path Alexandria (starting point) -> DC -> Alexandria -> Stafford...

He never made it to Stafford

[Captain_Orso]

That still does not make sense. Retreat is always into an adjacent region and no further.

If the retreat move is completed during the turn of the battle, the stack simply stops in the retreat-target region. This is however apparently not the case here.

If the retreat has not completed by the end of the battle turn, it remains plotted, the same as any move the player may have plotted, which does not complete during that turn.

At this point, the player can plot any move and/or posture change within the rules. He can cancel the rest of the retreat move, by simply selecting the retreating stack and pressing <Del>, which leaves the retreating stack in the region from which it is retreating, and from which it may be plotted to move to/toward any valid target region. He may even plot to continue the retreating move into the original retreat-target-region, which will maintain the days already moved during its retreat during the previous turn.

But if a retreating stack, which has not had its retreat canceled by the player, is attacked and forced to retreat again, it will not attempt to complete the first retreat, and then make a second. It will simply have the first retreat canceled and then have a new retreat-target chosen, which unless the first retreat-target has lost considerably on favorability or it cannot make the move at all, because the river region it must cross is now being blocked by gunboats, will more than likely be the first retreat-target region again.