Battle of Crampton Gap - ahistorical forces

[mainiac]

The size of forces is crazy at Crampton gap.  Wikipedia says that in the historical battle, the Confederates fielded 2100 men with one battery of guns and a small cavalry force.  In game I'm now staring at 9 confederate brigades with 42 cannon and detachment of dismounted scouts, about 20,000 men in all.  So the confederates have 10 times their historical strength in infantry and cannon.  And I need to attack.  Against a force of nothing but 3 star elites.  Uphill.  In 3 hours.

As I see it, there are three problems here.

1) I'm not saying that this mission is currently impossible (I have won it) but it should be borderline impossible.  If the game is balanced around absurd missions like this being a challenge then realistic balance of forces are going to be absurdly easy.

2) While it can be fun to play "what-if" and imagine Crampton gap as a larger battle, I would enjoy having some smaller scale engagements in the game as well. Not every battle needs to be huge!  I would much prefer if instead of making the confederate forces 10 times larger, the Union forces were limited to create a smaller engagement.  As a Union player I have regiments of 2000 or 2500 by this point.  I think that the Union regiments at Crampton gap were about 1000 men in size based on the number of regiments shown in this map here: http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/southmountain/maps/cramptonsgapmap.html .  For a side battle I think it would make a lot of sense to reduce a regiment down to it's historical side, the extra troops would be left behind.

Reducing the number of troops would be a very straightforward way towards creating a more historical feeling and balanced battle.  Give the Confederates five 300 man regiments and one 600 man regiment (Cobb's legion) and reduce their artillery down to 6 guns.  Limit the Union to 1,000 men in a regiment or 4 guns in a battery.  It would be possible but not easy to take the high ground with the starting four units, especially if they start out exhausted.  When the Union get's it's additional 5 units it has overwhelming force but not much time to apply it (especially if they start out exhausted).

3) If this is a huge battle with 20k troops on each side, the objectives and rewards should be changed to reflect that the battle is different.  When the Confederates deployed 2000 men to Crampton's gap it was a delaying action.  By taking enough time they gave Jackson's forces sufficient time to capture Harper's Ferry.  As such the Union suffered a strategic defeat for not taking the gap quickly enough.

If the Confederates had deployed 20,000 men to Crampton gap they wouldn't have had 20,000 men to besiege Harpers Ferry.  It's wouldn't be a delaying action anymore.  It wouldn't matter if the Union forces sat there for three weeks let alone three hours, Harpers Ferry wouldn't have fallen without a force to besiege it.  The strategic situation would be a lot more like Antietam in fact, a draw would probably force Lee to retreat back into Virginia while a Union victory would imperil the Army of Virginia.  So if Crampton's Gap is going to be made into an ahistorical major engagement make the victory conditions reflect that situation.

 

Thanks for reading.  I'm sure that there are other battles where the balance is a work in progress it's just this one really jumps out at me.

Edited January 16, 2017 by mainiac

[CaptainKanundrum]

+1

I believe that one of the earlier minor engagements actually does reduce the number of men fighting by giving you units cut down into regiments instead of brigades and only allowing you to bring in a few of your actual brigades.

Edited January 16, 2017 by CaptainKanundrum

[GeneralPITA]

Deploying a corps for a side mission should negate it's ability to deploy until the next grand battle.

I'd like the ability to split brigades or transfer troops directly between brigades without loss of experience.

Side missions should scale based upon the size of the corps you're deploying, not your entire army. Scaling side missions based upon the size of all five corps is very problematic as you get further into the campaign. 

[sonnypemberton]

8 hours ago, GeneralPITA said:

Side missions should scale based upon the size of the corps you're deploying, not your entire army. Scaling side missions based upon the size of all five corps is very problematic as you get further into the campaign. 

Is this the case? I thought enemy forces scaled to what was deployed, including unit sizes - if I deploy 8 1200 men brigades, vs 8 2500 men brigades, does it not scale with what is deployed?

[A. P. Hill]

9 hours ago, GeneralPITA said:

Side missions should scale based upon the size of the corps you're deploying, not your entire army. Scaling side missions based upon the size of all five corps is very problematic as you get further into the campaign. 

^^^  THIS ^^^

 

Or at least limit numbers to historical limits.

Edited January 19, 2017 by A. P. Hill

[waldopbarnstormer]

I agree that the numbers fielded in the minor battles should be closer to the historical. There are lots of other smaller battles the devs could choose to include. The way I play at the moment is to use a different corps to fight each minor battle as I feel it is more in keeping with history as the corps spread out across the campaign they could not fight battles that are geographically far apart.

[Fred Sanford]

I'd like it if the map was divided into "departments" and "theaters" where you could assign corps from your army or other commands.  There would be a 'Camp' for each department where you assign troops etc. Then say have an 'offensive' or 'defensive' posture set, and the game would generate a battle based upon that.  If you assign too few units to a department, and the other side chooses to go on the offensive, you could end up with a bad mismatch battle where you are heavily outnumbered.  Assign a bunch of troops to a defensive posture in a department, and you may get a battle that's easy to win, but doesn't provide much Rep/Recruits/Money, either. There would be several Departments in a Theater, and your character could only participate in battles in your Theater.  The other Theaters would be AI-controlled, with results generated automatically, but dependent broadly on number and quality of troops assigned.  So if you starve a Theater/department, your side could lose battles there, and you would lose Rep and be forced to divert forces there to save the situation.

Tons of replayability, but pretty much a different game. I'm not asking for much...

[dsfgsdfgsdfgdsfgsdf3q4]

On 1/16/2017 at 9:03 PM, mainiac said:

1) I'm not saying that this mission is currently impossible (I have won it) but it should be borderline impossible.

Why should any battle be borderline impossible? Especially if historically it wasn't.

[Andre Bolkonsky]

On 1/19/2017 at 0:28 AM, GeneralPITA said:

Deploying a corps for a side mission should negate it's ability to deploy until the next grand battle.

I'd like the ability to split brigades or transfer troops directly between brigades without loss of experience.

Side missions should scale based upon the size of the corps you're deploying, not your entire army. Scaling side missions based upon the size of all five corps is very problematic as you get further into the campaign. 

Yes. 

Yes. 

And Yes. 

Introduce the concept of the 'Campaign'. A Campaign is the subset of minor battles and the major battle they proceed. You would need the ability to build light corps of one or two divisions, or allow the player to assign X number of divisions into the attack. 

Then, when everything is deployed, you pull the trigger and execute them one at a time until the final battle; at which time you go to Camp, and start the process all over again. 

The rebuild of Camp is becoming quite . . . complicated. But it solves most of the outstanding problems in the game. 

[mainiac]

On 2/1/2017 at 8:00 PM, Acika011 said:

Why should any battle be borderline impossible? Especially if historically it wasn't.

Because the mission is far harder then historical.  The enemy has 10 times the troops but I'm expected to attack at reckless speed.

I'm not saying I want the mission to be borderline impossible.  I neither want such ridiculous feats to be possible in the game mechanics nor do I want the game to expect such ridiculous feats.

[Buster65]

On 2/1/2017 at 8:18 PM, Andre Bolkonsky said:

Yes. 

Yes. 

And Yes. 

Introduce the concept of the 'Campaign'. A Campaign is the subset of minor battles and the major battle they proceed. You would need the ability to build light corps of one or two divisions, or allow the player to assign X number of divisions into the attack. 

Then, when everything is deployed, you pull the trigger and execute them one at a time until the final battle; at which time you go to Camp, and start the process all over again. 

The rebuild of Camp is becoming quite . . . complicated. But it solves most of the outstanding problems in the game. 

+1. A few of the ideas in this thread are awesome. I would love it if the whole Shenandoah Valley battle set were presented in this suggested "campaign" mode. Also, would love some battles where you bring a division instead of a corps or a brigade instead of a division, and your brigades are cut into smaller chunks (5ish for the brigade level, and maybe 2-3 for the division level battles). Could have randomly generated sub commanders, and the brigade commander could appear like the corp commander in bigger fight (or the division commander could appear, if applicable). I do expect that this would be a lot of work, but personally, I would pay for this (as an expansion, maybe?). To be clear, I would want this integrated into the main game, not as a standalone or separate expansion.

Would also be great if battles were included as part of the Western theatre, with us having the ability to detach some of our Corps and be able to participate with rewards being scaled for the amount of troops we detach. This would mean those troops might not be available for some Eastern theatre battles, so it would be a balancing act with risk/reward (travel time figured, etc.). This would really bump the AO stat in importance. Again, would be willing to pay for improvements like this.