AAR II

[Hard Sarge]

later that night, General Von Dorn is surprised to find Generals Lee camp on the Kentucky side of the river

General, my reguards, I have the honor to report, the Corps now has a new Battery of Hows to use, as you commanded

Outstanding, I know you would be in postion to take them, I hope the cost was not too bad

No, they were more then willing to leave, but some of there fellows, did not see eye to eye with the idea, much to there regret

by the way, General, why do we dine on this side of the River, after all the work it took to take the Northern side ?

ahh, it smells on that side, and besides, where better to enjoy Fried Chicken then in Kentucky, I swear, my cook, Col Sanders is a master

[Hard Sarge]

ORIGINAL: marecone

Nice. Keep those screens coming. One q. What level is union AI? Why they didn't counter your flanking?

sorry, did not see the question

they do try to counter, but once in place, it is HARD to do, as you turn or move to the flank, you opening yourself up to the other flank

which over all, would say, that is one of the hassles of setting yourself to the defence, you lose being able to reaction

[Andy Mac]

I notice from the battle reports that Divisons and Corps seem to gain experience as units have you noticed any difference as a result of these upgrades or is it still to early ?
 
Also how many Bdes can a Divison operate ? Some of the big Confederate Divs had more than 3 I think
 
Andy

[Viking67]

It seems that you are, on average, inflicting 5-6 times the number of dead on the Union than you are suffering.

Are you always able to kick the AI's behind?

Does this ratio hold if you play the Union versus Confederate AI?

How far into the war have you played and does this ratio change over the course of the war?

[Hard Sarge]

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

I notice from the battle reports that Divisons and Corps seem to gain experience as units have you noticed any difference as a result of these upgrades or is it still to early ?

Also how many Bdes can a Divison operate ? Some of the big Confederate Divs had more than 3 I think

Andy

Union Divs can hold 5 Bdes, the CSA can hold 6

those gains in skills making the Divs/Corps better at getting passing out supplies and helping with Attriction and stuff like that, the Bde itself has it own level of skills, morale and exp

[Andy Mac]

Thanks HS another question if I may how many Divs can a Corps have is it like COG 6 Divs per Corps and is there a limit on the Bdes in a Corps ?
 
I guess then same question for armies ?
 
Assuming I wanted my whole AONV under Lees command what would be my theoretical max in terms of Divs/Bdes ?
 
last question I assume one reason (apart from you generalship of course !!!) for the Union defeats so far is lower xp/morale in Bdes - i.e. does the confeds start with an advantage in this area ?
 
Thanks
 
Andy

[Hard Sarge]

ORIGINAL: Viking67

It seems that you are, on average, inflicting 5-6 times the number of dead on the Union than you are suffering.

Are you always able to kick the AI's behind?

Does this ratio hold if you play the Union versus Confederate AI?

How far into the war have you played and does this ratio change over the course of the war?

well, on one side, you are not seeing every battle, but as you start winning, you tend to do more damage then if the battles are going back and forth

and on defence, it is easier to do major damage on the foe as they come in

since I am testing, I tend to only stick to one side, but as the Union, I was able to win and I was able to lose, sometimes big and sometimes badly

plus I may have a little advantage of a few hundred battles under my belt

the later into the war, the bigger the numbers will be

also, dug in fights, are easier then meeting engagements, and I have not run into any Fort yet

overall, I think for fighting, the CSA is better, but the Union has the resources and manpower

[Hard Sarge]

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

Thanks HS another question if I may how many Divs can a Corps have is it like COG 6 Divs per Corps and is there a limit on the Bdes in a Corps ?

I guess then same question for armies ?

Assuming I wanted my whole AONV under Lees command what would be my theoretical max in terms of Divs/Bdes ?

last question I assume one reason (apart from you generalship of course !!!) for the Union defeats so far is lower xp/morale in Bdes - i.e. does the confeds start with an advantage in this area ?

Thanks

Andy

from the rules, it states that Armys can hold up 35 Bdes (Union) or 42 (CSA)
Corps 15 (Union) 18 (CSA)
Divs 5 (Union) 6 (CSA)

which also remember, you do not really want to over stack too many troops, there is sickness


the CSA does have better troops with in reason, but there is also a big bonus to being on the defence early on

and as I was trying to say above, the Army of Kentucky has had a number of defeats, not getting all the replacements it should, and getting weaker each battle

if you are fighting 10 Bdes with 3000 men each, it is going to be HARDer to do major numbers, but if it is 20 Bdes with 1500 men each, it gets easier, even more so if it is 30

but yea, the Union starts with lower morale and lower Exp

[Viking67]

I assume that Fog-of-War affects the Strategic Map and the Battle Map. Correct?

Does Fog-of-War affect the Battle Reports, Training Reports, and any other reports?

[Joram]

ORIGINAL: Viking67

It seems that you are, on average, inflicting 5-6 times the number of dead on the Union than you are suffering.

Are you always able to kick the AI's behind?

Does this ratio hold if you play the Union versus Confederate AI?

How far into the war have you played and does this ratio change over the course of the war?

Interesting observation. This is what made CoG old after awhile. Unless outnumbered 3-1, it was rarely a challenge to fight against the computer. [:(]

[Viking67]

Yes, Joram, that is where I am going. Even when giving the AI every advantage in CoG, it was still easy to beat.

My first CoG game, I played as Sweden in the grand campaign, and I ended as the victor, which was somewhat disappointing.

AI is never as good as a human, we all know this. However, the games that hold my interest longest, are the ones where I can not beat the AI, right out of the box playing my first game. It takes some learning and fine tuning on my part to be able to win. Additionally, that are some games where you can tilt things in favor of the AI enough, so the AI can be beat you, even when you are seasoned. These are the games I end up coming back to play, even years later.

My hope is that the AI in FoF is better than CoG, but I am certain it will be the same. So the next question, can you give the AI enough advantage to be able to beat a human, without the AI grossly cheating?

[spruce]

ORIGINAL: Hard Sarge

ORIGINAL: spruce

I have a pratical question. It seems the divisions are broken down in their brigades (when you look at the map, you'll see 3 units in 3 different hexes from the 15'th division). Now, that's cool to see how the cohesion is within your division - how it's scattered ... is that the meaning ?

sorry, not sure I follow the question

the Div is the smallest container, and it can hold a number of Bdes, in the pictures, you are seeing the Bdes that are part of the Div, now Divs can be attached to a Corps, and Corps can be attached to a Army

is that the answer you are looking for ?

yes,

yeah, sorry for that weird sentence. I was refering to fact that different brigades are displayed on the map and might display the "cohesion" or "in command / out of command" of your units ...

[Hard Sarge]

ORIGINAL: Viking67

I assume that Fog-of-War affects the Strategic Map and the Battle Map. Correct?

Does Fog-of-War affect the Battle Reports, Training Reports, and any other reports?

I can only say, I think so, I have had FoW off during all my testing, so do not really know how it shows with it on

[Hard Sarge]

ORIGINAL: Viking67

Yes, Joram, that is where I am going. Even when giving the AI every advantage in CoG, it was still easy to beat.

My first CoG game, I played as Sweden in the grand campaign, and I ended as the victor, which was somewhat disappointing.

AI is never as good as a human, we all know this. However, the games that hold my interest longest, are the ones where I can not beat the AI, right out of the box playing my first game. It takes some learning and fine tuning on my part to be able to win. Additionally, that are some games where you can tilt things in favor of the AI enough, so the AI can be beat you, even when you are seasoned. These are the games I end up coming back to play, even years later.

My hope is that the AI in FoF is better than CoG, but I am certain it will be the same. So the next question, can you give the AI enough advantage to be able to beat a human, without the AI grossly cheating?

well, one thing to remember, I have been playing this for a while now, so, I know when to stop and when to move forward

I think the AI is good enough to surprise you

I would counter, that when you get to play the game, play as the CSA and move on Washington on the first turn, if the ANV can win on the first turn, I think it may be seen as being weak, but for what I have seen, I do not even try

but you can always try different settings, and power rateings, and I am playing on First Sgt, and have richer production turned on (both of those would make major changes to how the game plays)

and, to be fair, I pulled a Corps out of the ANV and sent it north, that has made a big change to letting me get onto the Off, with out those 40,000 men, I do not think I could of done what I have done

[Hard Sarge]

I like the Honor sheet

[Gil R.]

ORIGINAL: Viking67

Yes, Joram, that is where I am going. Even when giving the AI every advantage in CoG, it was still easy to beat.

My first CoG game, I played as Sweden in the grand campaign, and I ended as the victor, which was somewhat disappointing.

AI is never as good as a human, we all know this. However, the games that hold my interest longest, are the ones where I can not beat the AI, right out of the box playing my first game. It takes some learning and fine tuning on my part to be able to win. Additionally, that are some games where you can tilt things in favor of the AI enough, so the AI can be beat you, even when you are seasoned. These are the games I end up coming back to play, even years later.

My hope is that the AI in FoF is better than CoG, but I am certain it will be the same. So the next question, can you give the AI enough advantage to be able to beat a human, without the AI grossly cheating?

Vikin67, were you playing Sweden on one of the easier settings that first time? Eric tells me that the easiest settings are very difficult to lose -- they're really meant for people to play around with for experience, before trying the toughest settings.

If you won as Sweden on the highest difficulty I'd be impressed.

[Gil R.]

Just to comment on Hard Sarge's Orphan Brigade screenshot, every brigade has a record of "honors" like that. It's one of our features.

And now, someone is almost certainly about to ask if we have a running turn-by-turn log of the entire game, so I'll preemptively state that we do not have that. It's something we might consider for a patch (it's actually quite complicated to program), but that's not in the initial release.

[spruce]

hello, I really like this game and look forward to get it ...
 
but isn't the casualty ratio CSA/Union a bit too high if you take into account that Confederate victories in this AAR are a ratio 4 to 5 times lower then the Union casualty figure ?

[kmb]

I was uninterested in this era this aar got me jonesing for it,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,thks

[Joram]

ORIGINAL: Gil R.

ORIGINAL: Viking67

Yes, Joram, that is where I am going. Even when giving the AI every advantage in CoG, it was still easy to beat.

My first CoG game, I played as Sweden in the grand campaign, and I ended as the victor, which was somewhat disappointing.

AI is never as good as a human, we all know this. However, the games that hold my interest longest, are the ones where I can not beat the AI, right out of the box playing my first game. It takes some learning and fine tuning on my part to be able to win. Additionally, that are some games where you can tilt things in favor of the AI enough, so the AI can be beat you, even when you are seasoned. These are the games I end up coming back to play, even years later.

My hope is that the AI in FoF is better than CoG, but I am certain it will be the same. So the next question, can you give the AI enough advantage to be able to beat a human, without the AI grossly cheating?

Vikin67, were you playing Sweden on one of the easier settings that first time? Eric tells me that the easiest settings are very difficult to lose -- they're really meant for people to play around with for experience, before trying the toughest settings.

If you won as Sweden on the highest difficulty I'd be impressed.

While I have a similar experience with Sweden not on the easiest but also not on the hardest, I was under the impression all that increasing the settings did was increase opponent morale and make them less likely to rout. (On the strategic map there are other affects of course) That's not really improving AI any through the settings. I'm really not trying to be overly critical, just raise a concern I had with CoG AI that I hope is addressed in FoF. To Hard Sarge's point, it does take a little while to learn but based on how used to these types of games you are, it can come quicker for some than others.

Also, please keep the previews coming, they are very good and fun to read!