James Cornelius
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Posts posted by James Cornelius
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Hi all,
Just a thought here. Obviously, it is a good function of the game to represent the decreased effectiveness of a brigade when its commanding officer is killed or wounded. However, in battles that represent multi-day affairs, there is historical precedent to allow officers to be appointed to fill those positions. I am not proposing the player get "free" officers, but I am suggesting that in the event of a multi-day battle, or if a significant phase completes, an option should be presented to assign an available commander to a division, move a brigade commander up into division command, and/or replace a brigade commander with an available officer from the barracks.
There is historical precedent for this suggestion. While the decreased effectiveness might still be present for an untested officer, or one new to a level of command, there were ample cases when a brigade commander was temporarily promoted, or an unassigned officer took command of a formation mid-way through battle.
The Battle of Gettysburg is the best example since it was a three-day battle that saw many changes in command of divisions and brigades. For the best example of what I am proposing, consider Pender's Division of Hill's Corps. Since Pender was wounded on the second day, his division was given to Major General Isaac Trimble on the third day, who at that time was an unassigned officer attached to Ewell's Corps.
So, in a battle like Shiloh, Gettysburg, etc, after each day of fighting, a brigade commander could be reassigned (but not actually promoted) to replace a division commander, or if you have an unassigned brigadier or major general in your command, could be put into that place. It would encourage the player to have a small pool of unassigned field grade or general officers (maybe a couple colonels and a brigadier general) in case such an event was required. Again, for a single day battle no change in existing procedure in the game, and even if this were implemented, perhaps still a smaller malus to the unit to simulate a new commander unfamiliar with his command.
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No worries. Crafting level is not a problem for me. I only recently moved over to PVP1 from PVP2 and am level 50, but as I no longer have any useful blueprints it's more effective for now to try to give labor to others in exchange for what I need until I am back on my feet. I was hoping to utilize this mechanism, but I don;t want to create a new outpost somewhere else near KPR just to do this. Very unfortunate. One would think the capital would be the place for a labor office building.
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Hi,
Apologies if this was covered some place else. What is the requisite to build a labor office? I am attempting to build one in my nation capital at KPR, and it doesn't show up as an option under buildings - just coal mine and lignum vitae forest.
Any ideas?
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Now if you could just permanently do this in the army management screen....
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Having played it now, I agree that Fredericksburg is quite beatable as the Union - both in the historical battle and campaign. I expected it to be much trickier; I found the Confederate Antietam to be harder.
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There is a historical basis for this in each level of command from brigades up to corps. It is also good if you have two three-star veteran brigades that are depleted. By combining them instead of reinforcing, you end up with one close to full strength veteran brigade and one green brigade (from your reinforcements) instead of filling both up and having two mediocre brigades.
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In the war, officers - particularly at the regimental level - had a much higher statistical chance of death.
And, there were numerous corps commanders who were killed in action or seriously wounded (Reno, Mansfield, Reynolds, Sedgewick come to mind on the Union side. Jackson, Polk, Hill, Stuart on the confederate though I am sure there are others I am forgetting). I believe Johnston and McPherson were the only army commanders to be killed though.
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Read Longstreet's memoirs, "From Manassas to Appomattox".
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1 hour ago, Von Birnstock said:
So I purchase an officer, assign him to a unit, he fights in a few battles, gains some attributes, gets wounded, heals up and then is sent back to the academy and if I want him not only do I have to pay for him again but I have to pay even more because he ranked up.
After he recovers shouldn't he be in my reserve officers list? When a soldier recovers from his wounds he goes back to his unit. In this case the officer would return to the corps and either take over his old brigade or used to form a new one at the corps commanders discretion.
When the officer recovers, he will be available "in reserve" under the Barracks tab. You must reassign him, but you do not need to "buy" him again.
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I'm going to assume that it is a known issue that there are numerous grammatical errors in the text during the Battle of Fredericksburg.
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I also will boot it up occasionally, but the resolution is killer now. I hate having to go back to the 640x480 or whatever it is.
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2 hours ago, General Hancock said:
James, didn't know that. Thank you for enlightening me. However, as others have questioned then why does it seem we only command a Corp or an Army?
Well that's the question at hand. Initially when I started playing, and the first couple battles including Bull Run talked about "your division" I assumed that you only commanded a portion of the army directly, even if you had full control for some battles. That proved to not be the case, though it would be interesting if some early battles featured only your troops under your command, and the rest of the battle AI on both sides so that while you couldn't do everything to win the battle, it better simulated what a division or corps commander was supposed to do. Then, you would work your way up to army command.
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Those are valid concerns. Of course, at the start of the war you DID have colonels commanding divisions (such as Bull Run) and "armies" were the size of large corps of the late war. Until the Peninsula Campaign, Brigadier Generals were still commanding Union Corps, and it wasn't until October '62 that the Confederate Army created the rank of lieutenant general, even though they had brigadier, major, and full general ranks since just after Bull Run (the exact dates elude me at the moment). The Confederates were, from Oct 62 onwards, much more formal about ensuring brigades were commanded by brigadier generals, divisions by major generals, and corps by lieutenant generals. Until the end of the war the Union, on the other hand, often had colonels commanding brigades and brigadier generals commanding divisions because, of course, with the exception of Grant there was no one higher than major general.
But, the issue you mention in the game where a brigadier general can command a corps or division while you have a major general commanding a brigade under him is ahistorical. While I like the Barracks feature where you have a group of officers and you need to "purchase" more when needed, I think the system needs reworking.
I would propose the following:
Officers develop characteristics independent of rank, but related to how they perform in battle with some randomness. Examples could be things like:
"Cautious": 5% movement penalty
"Quick": 5% movement increase
"Inspiring": 5% morale boost
"Lackluster": 5% morale penalty
etc (I would hope for many others)
Officers could develop new traits throughout a campaign, and thus an officer who was an excellent division commander might end up as a poor corps commander.
Then, as officers are in battle they will develop a sense of "seniority" based at least partly upon performance, similar to the method used in the game "Civil War II". Thus, you try to promote your best officers, but that's not always possible because your senior most officer might not be your best. Then, as their rank increases, you can assign additional traits/specializations using the same system as now when an officer reaches general rank. For added realism/challenge, if you pass over an officer for promotion too many times then he might resign and you lose him completely.
This would also allow the historical officers to be given their historical traits and therefore make them more valuable since, in cases like Longstreet, Jackson, Sherman, etc they would have almost universally positive traits.
This would of course mean you would have whatever number of senior officers you decide is necessary for your army, and not too many major generals or higher ranking officers commanding brigades under lower ranking officers and things like that.
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21 minutes ago, General Hancock said:
Kale,There is no title in the military as general in chief. Where did you see that? All I have found I should on the game page that says that "you are the general".
AP, that's why I asked. If you are only the commander of an army then the game makes more sense to me as you are being given orders.
As Kale pointed out in the above screenshot, the game calls you General-in-Chief. While there is no current rank as such in the military, there was in 1861. Indeed, there was from roughly 1789 until 1903, though for the first decade or so it was known as "Senior Officer of the Army". Then, it was either the "Commanding General", or "General-in-Chief". In 1903, the General Staff system was adopted in the US and the Commanding General became the Army Chief of Staff. Winfield Scott was the longest serving, before being replaced by McClellan in late 1861.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commanding_General_of_the_United_States_Army
and
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5 hours ago, Koro said:
Burnside should have gone home.
Burnside was a terrible general, that is true. But I will give the man credit for one thing: he knew he was in over his head and protested upon being given command of the army. The only reason he took it, was because Hooker was next in line and the two hated each other; Burnside did not want Hooker to take command, let alone serve under him.
I'm sure when we get to Chancellorsville we'll have a further discussion about the merits of, as Robert E. Lee sarcastically called him, "Mr. F.J. Hooker". However, I would point out that Hooker was a better general than he is remembered and, with the exception of Chancellorsville (a notable exception, to be sure), he gave quite good service. Even at Chancellorsville, I think the Army of the Potomac could have given has good as it got if Hooker hadn't lost his nerve (which was possibly due to the shell blast which incapacitated him).
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I tried playing the historical battle for the first time as the Confederates, and while it did go better for me I noticed something and I'm curious if others have seen the same.
As long as Dunker Church is held by the Confederates, the Union ignores the Sunken Road. The entire northern attack focused entirely on the woods. In this playthrough, I lost Dunker Church about an hour (game time) before the end, and even when the battle finished the Union was still adjusting their lines and holding the church - they never even attempted to assault the road.
I also noted that in the historical battle, few of the Union brigades were more than one-star of experience. In my campaign, nearly all were three-star.
Elsewhere, things went as normal, though I while I was more successful in holding ground at the church, I was less so at holding Burnside's Bridge, which I completely lost.
Apart from the oddity of ignoring the road, I guess it's back to the drawing board.
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Just now, Koro said:
You usually want to try and copy Lee by having a strong force to the north and a taken force in the South.
That way you can destroy the offensive capability of the northern union forces and then shift troops south towards the sunken road ans eventually to Sharpsburg
Indeed. I had already done that in my initial dispositions, putting my weakest corps in the south that only had about 5 brigades in it. The two corps in the north - the one in the Sunken Road and the one around Dunker's Church were equal in numerical strength but the center troops were the most elite. I will definitely try a couple different things to juggle it and see if I can do a little better.
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I didn't know about the box up in the corner to check the requirements. I played through again and while I did better, it was still the same result - unable to hold Dunker's Church but held every where else (barely). Perhaps I might try one more time and rearrange the corps on the left to be slightly stronger than currently. Casualties were higher this last time too by about 2000 on each side.
As I stated elsewhere, this is the first battle I haven't been able to win on the first try since the first time I reached Shiloh in my union campaign. I might just need to restart the Confederate campaign and husband my resources a little better.
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1 hour ago, Koro said:
You are pretty much free to do whatever you want. Do make sure to bring 4 corps though so you can deploy troops as you see fit. 4th corps only needs to be 1 brigade but 3 is required and then you'll be able to place your army entirely where you see fit. The reserves will participate right away in the phase for Marye's Heights.
That might help, but perhaps not enough. I am of the belief that there are certain defensive positions you simply do not attack - Marye's Heights would be one. If you are given it as an objective, how do you get around that regardless of deployment? Hope that if you put everything on the Union left flank you can roll up Jackson and come at Longstreet on the heights from the south?
Without the ability to successfully flank the Confederates - an opportunity that was lost before the "battle" began - an assault through Fredericksburg is almost guaranteed to fail.
Once the Confederates were entrenched at Fredericksburg, the only viable option was to do what General Hooker did in the Chancellorsville campaign and execute another wide flanking maneuver. Of course, that failed for unrelated reasons but I stand by my supposition that regardless of deployment I have a hard time seeing how the Union can win a historical Fredericksburg.
But, since you are one of the testers and have likely seen this you would know better than I do, so perhaps there is a way in the construction of the game.
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Fredericksburg has me wondering just if it truly will be possible to beat as the Union without horrific casualties. If you are locked in to Burnside's plan in any way, then I don't see a way to avoid it even if you do manage to seize Marye's Heights or the woods to the south. I can't help but wonder if a player might be better off to sit under the guns of Stafford Heights, incur few if any casualties, and simply take the defeat for not contesting the map. You lose the prestige points, but if your army is not damaged in any way, the reward would still allow one to strengthen further for Chancellorsville and Gettysburg.
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16 hours ago, RobWheat61 said:
When you click on the icon on the right upper corner, you can see the victory condition of the specific battle. At Antietam you have to hold Dunker Church, Sunken Road and Sharpsburg, so basically, your left flank, centre and Sharpsburg, which covers (historically) your only route of retreat. For a draw, you have to hold Sharpsburg and lose less than half your army.
I get that. My point is that shouldn't what I did accomplish result in a draw? I did not hold the entirety of my left flank but did hold the right and the center as well as my escape route.
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Hello all,
I am curious as to what seems to be the community experience with victory and defeat and what seems to be the catalyst in each scenario. It seems like it might be somewhat arbitrary. I played the Union campaign first. I found Shiloh unbeatable, but it was due to not realizing that Army Organization needed to be maxed as much as possible - I had assumed until that point that like First Bull Run, my corps would make up just a part of the army. When I restarted, and put points towards organization and went to Shiloh with two small corps, I was able to win. From then on, despite what I considered close calls, I did not lose a battle. By the time I reached Antietam, I had eight divisions in three corps and by the end of the battle was able to completely rout the Confederate Army.
I did the same for the Confederate campaign, but found by the time I reached Antietam I had clearly not done as well in minimizing casualties, as I had only six divisions in the three corps. I hoped this would be adequate (especially since while I had fewer divisions than historically, I did have more total men (41k vs 38k, and the North had slightly fewer (81k vs 87k).
In the battle, I did not even attempt to hold Nicodemus Hill, and was forced to abandon Dunker Church because I was being flanked as long as I held it. You can see from the final results of the battle in the attached screenshot I held all other objectives and inflicted just shy of twice as many casualties as I sustained. So, I was surprised when I was defeated. I could have at least understood a draw.
So it would seem that my failure to hold Dunker Church caused me to be defeated. What would have happened had I held it? A draw or a victory? Holding three out of four of the strategic points on the final map would, in my view, count as a victory taken with the lopsided casualty count, but even if it did not, should it not then be a draw rather than outright defeat?
Has anyone else experienced this? I welcome other thoughts.
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2 minutes ago, Alavaria said:
I think the one that gives you just more cash and recruits and the one that gives you cheaper veterans is probably better by far than the medicine one, really.
That is part of my point, but not really the issue I was addressing.
Replacement of Officers during battle
in General Discussions
Posted
Is that so? I didn't realize you could go back to the camp screen. I guess my suggestion is moot then.