Just My Suggestions, and a little ranting on the side

[Captain Orso]

[rant] Sometimes this game just makes me want to throw my computer against the wall!!!!

I started a new campaign and I'm in Shiloh. I've held the onslaught of Rebs back so well that they haven't captured a single target by the time Pittsburgh Landing opens. And then a lone CS cavalry captures the Pittsburgh Landing flag and the battle is over!!!! WTF!!!!  [/rant]

Observation: If I have to attack and have a certain amount of time to take several flags and don't manage to do that, game over, too bad for me. If the AI doesn't manage, ah, well that doesn't matter, because... no reason, unless the AI needs special help.

BTW something I've been meaning to mention, cavalry ranging around the battlefield is one thing, but lone brigades miles from the next friendly unit, where I have seen this happen in reality?... Oh, yeah, nowhere. Because the best way to have a small formation destroyed is for it to be all alone on the battlefield. A small formation all alone has no lines of communication, no way to ask for support, and no way for it to get there if anything where to encounter the enemy. There's something called mutual support. It's a thing because it works, and without it, you're just asking to be destroyed. Men understand this. If you actually did this in reality, even before seeing any enemy men will start to get nervous, because they can hear the roar of the nearby battle and know the enemy is about. At the first sighting of an enemy formation you'll see your formation start to falter, because men don't want to die for nothing. I'm not talking about being holed up in a fortified position. I'M talking about out in the field far from any supporting units, something I see all the time in this game.

This should not be a thing. If a brigade makes a breach in the line, it should be attacking the flanks of the enemy, and not running for the flag. This isn't American Football. There's no touchdown in war.

Suggestion: In a multi-part battle, unless ALL the AI has captured ALL the flags, the scenario should not end, the same way, if I don't capture all the flags, I can't win.

[A. P. Hill]

Solution to rant? ...

Being as how many have commented previously on that "phantom rebel cavalry force", I don't understand why folks playing this don't leave a brigade on each of the vital points of concern.  It would be much more difficult for that "phantom cavalry" to take the VP if they had to contend with a full 2500 man brigade.

 

[Captain Orso]

20 minutes ago, A. P. Hill said:

Solution to rant? ...

Dang, was it so difficult to differentiate the rant from the suggestion? 

Quote

Being as how many have commented previously on that "phantom rebel cavalry force", I don't understand why folks playing this don't leave a brigade on each of the vital points of concern.  It would be much more difficult for that "phantom cavalry" to take the VP if they had to contend with a full 2500 man brigade. 

The flags are arbitrary measures of success used by the game. They ought to reflect that success. 

So instead of fixing the issue, the player has to do some strange things, like although the CS were still trying to get to the first set of flags, I should be sending brigades all the way back to Pittsburgh Landing just in case the "phantom rebel cavalry force" should appear. 

In this case, after holding left and right flanks, the Hornet's Nest section opened. Because one Reb infantry brigade had broken through my lines and simply left the rest of his forces behind to dash for the Hornet's Nest, the 3 reinforcement brigades I got had to defend the Hornet's Nest from this lone rouge brigade. This wasn't really difficult, because since the rouge brigade had to melee its way through my lines and then ran all the way to the Hornet's Nest to try to get their on time, they must have been completely spent by the time they nearly got there. But they didn't even have a chance to get one foot into the nest when my reinforcements arrived there, and after a single volley, it went skedaddling off.

So I left one brigade in the nest and sent the other two to confront the rouge brigade and push him out of the way for the rest of my force, which I was currently trying to disengage from the first 4 flags in some semblance of order, when suddenly Pittsburgh Landing opened.

So in this situation, I'm supposed to be thinking of withdrawing troops from my middle position, where only one rouge brigade in very poor condition is near by--and that really only per chance--to back to the last flag.

I'm sorry, one has to do a lot of mental gymnastics to try to defend that logic.

If this is such a know issue that it actually has it's own name ("phantom rebel cavalry force"), it's pretty sad that it hasn't been fixed.

[Hitorishizuka]

VPs also represent lines of control/supply. You may not have any forces there in-game but the magical supply wagon is a simplification for forces and supply coming in from the rear.

[Captain Orso]

Not really. Even if there were a an actual supply line, and that were blocked for the time being, that should only mean that my units would not be getting more supplies while the line is blocked. I would still have time to open the supply line again and/or fight on with limited supplies. Otherwise it says, no supplies coming in, you lose. Then if my supply unit runs out, same thing, and that is by far not the case. Either or.

I've been thinking about what would work better with Shiloh. The big picture is, at the end of the first day, the Union must hold Pittsburgh Landing so that the AoO can land and reinforce the AoT. Anything else that happens is ultimately unimportant. The VP's ought to simply be a measure of the Union player's ability to hold the Confederates back until the AoO arrives in during the night. One might simply leave all the VP's out of the battle except for Pittsburgh Landing and still represent the battle historically, but it is a game, so I guess there's nothing wrong with having interim goals.

But the sudden death at Pittsburgh Landing is simply not a given and makes for a bad scenario. The Union must hold it at the end of the day. Nothing else matters. How long or often the South might control Pittsburgh Land before the end of the day means nothing, as long as the Union has it at the end of the day.

[A. P. Hill]

Part of the concept with this game, I opine is, that it is somewhat simulating actual events and tries to drive the player to follow those events via the various VPs.   In this case the Shiloh Church area did hold for a while, as did the Hornets nest, before all the forces ended up 

Ultimately you are correct however, the best possible strategy, because of game mechanics, is to fall back and set your defenses  protecting the landing, on the first day, knowing that the game is going to give you day 2 to overwhelm the confederate forces if you play union.

[Captain Orso]

I'm actually okay with VP's being used to give the player an insensitive  to hold certain areas for a given amount of time, but using those correctly can be very tricky.

From the defender's perspective, if for example all the flank VP's have to be take for the battle to progress, the defender could simply pile all his forces around a single VP of his choosing. This would be unhistorical, because no VP actually had any more importance than any other. The defender should be simply trying to resist the attacker's advance.

If the attacker leaves defenders in his hinterland--on his lines of communication--there is no penalty to the attacker, because there is simply no game mechanics to represent this, other than simple battlefield tactics, such as the defender turning about and attaching the attacker from the rear. In reality the dangers are far more reaching, beginning with the battlefield commander's ability to guide his forces being greatly hampered. Imagine that suddenly a large section of your forces are taken over by the AI for as long as there is not line of communication between your battlefield commander and that section of the battlefield. They would simply have to act on the last commands they were given, which the game doesn't actually represent--such as 'hold-at-all-cost', 'retreat', 'fighting-withdraw-to-location-x', 'counter-attack-if practical', 'counter-attack-at-all-cost', etc.--, so the entire concept is not available. The player is omniscient and omnipotent. He always see everything any unit can see immediately, and can issue orders which arrive and are carried out immediately.

So it's to the attacker's advantage to bypass pockets of determined resistance, because most of the penalty of doing so is not given. If the defender comes out to counter attack, he's outside his chosen defensive position where he is possibly now disadvantaged.

So, setting up the way VP's work optimally is not so easy, and certainly not simply going by a time table.