PBEM AAR - Long Live the Union!

[jchastain]

Sending it back to Gil.  That turn was a bit of a disappointment.  It actually didn't turn out that badly, but I was expecting SO much more.

[Hard Sarge]

ORIGINAL: jchastain

ORIGINAL: madflava13

I'm curious about your decision not to upgrade weapons and attributes of your units knowing an offensive is coming soon. Also, if it's not too much trouble, I'd love to hear more about the specific upgrades and specialized traits available.... How you choose which units to give traits to, and why. I know you've touched on it some already.
Thanks in advance!

What I've been trying to do is upgrade the weapons of the highest quality units. In combat, quality becomes morale. So low quality units route quickly. It isn't worth spending a lot of resources giving good weapons to troops that will only fire them once. I pretty much NEVER upgrade the weapon of any unit with a quality of less than 2.0. I pretty much ALWAYS upgrade the weapons of any unit with quality level of 3.0+. The area in between is the gray area. Improvised weapons are just awful. Shotguns and muskets are slight better. Minies and springfields are slight better than those. Other than VERY VERY high quality troops, I won't pay to upgrade one level. So anyone who has shotguns or muskets, I leave alone (until I get something better). Decent troops with improvides weapons I tend to upgrade to minies.

I also wasn't anticipating the offense in the east so I was holding off on upgrades there. Why do interim step upgrades for units that won't be fighting - just upgrade to something decent once it gets close for time to engage them. Then at the last minute, I've decided I need to commit them. That decision was made based on the overwhealming troop levels so I think I'll still be fine. Last turn I could and likely should have given them some attention as it become obvious they'd be deployed. More than anything my failure to do that was laziness and not strategy.

The specific upgrades are much more defined in detailed combat. The devs have said they apply to quick/instant combat as well roughly in proportion to their cost, but none of us know exactly how those formulas work under the covers (except the devs themselves). But again, the investment makes the most sense for high quality troops that won't turn and run with the first shot. I thought about buying more attributes in the last few turns, but they all cost money and money has been tight. I basically made the decision to focus on diplomacy, supplies and building out key containers instead of improving the current units. Over the next few turns, we'll see if that was the right decision or not.

for me (and I am playing the AI and I got more money to try and spend in my games) I try to at least get most troops armmed with Muskets, point blank fire is good with them (and is also about all you can do with muskets) if I am going to have shock troops, I also try for Richmound Muskets and a Med add on

Lorenz's are worth there weight in gold (but I don't think JC or Gil are going to have many of them, other then what they start with)

[Hard Sarge]

ORIGINAL: jchastain


Great questions. Let's step through them...

ORIGINAL: Grotius

I'm enjoying this AAR a great deal. This game is already a must-buy for me, but I do have a few questions.

Great! That's why we're doing it. It really is good to hear people are enjoying it and getting something out of it.

First, I'm surprised how expensive diplomacy is. What is this expense intended to simulate? Don't get me wrong, I like it; it adds depth to the game, and it's forcing you to make some hard choices.

I think the expense really is more for game balance than to model anything specific. The CSA gets benefits with every level of relationship they build. If they get to level 6, England or France will enter the war in support of them and that's a pretty big deal. If it were too cheap, both sides would just max it out and leave it there making it irrelevant. The USA has the economic advantage, but they are playing defense. They don't know where the CSA is investing and therefore have to cover the board or take their chances. With modest focused investment, the CSA can achieve some real gains by nudging a pwer their way. With modest spread investment and a little luck, they can get the USA to spend a lot trying to cover it all (which is close to where I am right now).

okay just to be a pain here , you need a level of 7 to get either France or England to join the war on the side of the CSA, Europe will never join the war, but will keep sending goodies

Also, I notice that your screenshots sometimes show more than one unit in a province per turn. Do they all occupy the same location, or are they presumed to be in different parts of that province?

All units are assuming to be in the same place within a province. You have have independent units in a province. One of the game options is whether you want them "stacked" with one icon representing them all or whether you want to see separate icons. I prefer to keep them separate. Within a province, you can also choose to combine or divide units. The "container" concept allows a lot of flexibility in reorganizing units, though I am sure some will find that flexibility to be a management burden. I tend to like it.

Finally, I'm interested that you can pull garrisons from, say, Wisconsin and send them to the front. Do you pay any political penalty with the Wisc. governor for doing so? Or any other kind of penalty?

There is no immediate penalty. You'll see that governors make occasional demands. The governors of Virginia and Tennessee have both demanded a certain number of brigades within their borders already in this game (both players see demands from governors on both sides - politicians aren't very secretive). If Wisconsin makes a similar demand, I'll have to decide what to do about it. But for now, I can empty the state and not worry about it.

[jchastain]

Just for the record, Hard Sarge is the premier general in the play test.  Whenever he and I differ on strategy, you are probably safe going to Vegas and betting on whatever he says.
 
So, please keep asking strategy questions.  If he is paying attention to all of this and is willing to share his lessons learned, then I might also learn a few things from this little exercise.
 
Thanks Sarge.

[jchastain]

Finally a battle... though not much of one. Still, the union is undefeated!

Looks like the CSA beat me to the first upgrade and they got a good one. Target Practice gives you more firepower. I don't like seeing that in their ledger right before the main battles start.

But I won the first fight. A small battle in Bowling Green.

[jchastain]

Looking through the rest of the report...

Looks like they took out more RR infrastructure. They are a little late with that. Most of my troops are already at the front. It will hurt a little as those artillery come on line, but overall his timing is a little off.

Reinforcements are barely denting the need. I still need more camps. So many needs. So few resources. And I'm the rich one. [;)]

England and France keep growing. It is costing me a lot, but it is likely good that I am staying focused on diplomacy. Looks like my England diplomacy is finally beginning to pay, but they are making some progress with France yet again. Every time I think I can start reducing my spend their, they prove me wrong. Luckily it looks like Vermont wants to help out, so it is time once again to make hay while the sun shines. I don't know where the money will come from, but I need to spend a little more on France yet again.

[jchastain]

The battle was small, but let's take a look at the battle report just in case anything interesting happened. Sometimes fleeing troops will drop their weapons on the field and leave you some goodies, so it's always a good idea to peak at the battle report and get up to speed on what happened.

In this case, it was as dull as it first appeared. One turn's reinforcements will replace what he lost. But the loss will weaken his retreating army none the less.

[jchastain]

OK, let's see what happened in the east. Damn that Gregg! This is what gets generals fired. He is still just sitting in Fredericksburg. In all fairness, enemy forts can prevent a unit from departing, but it really is time to get out of here. The enemy division escaped from Shenandoah, but luckily the rebs have no spine and didn't close in on me. Time to just fall back to Washington. With any luck, my faint out into this valley will keep all those troops in Virginia while the real fighting happens out west.

[jchastain]

Thw west is stilla bit of a mess, but it is a LOT better than before. Looks like they tried to converge two units on me in Bowling Green and I beat the first one back and then escaped before the second one got there. That was fortunate and it leaves both of his units his slightly weakened and using their supply.

[jchastain]

OK, time to look at the French situation. I really want to get some money focused on France while I have governor support, but I don't really want to lessen my investment in England - it still isn't as stable as I would like and they sell some very nice weapons if you can get enough of a relationship - the only real carrott for the USA. And Other Europe still favors him rather heavily, so I don't want to give that effort too much of a haircut either. I just need to find some more money to cover this from somewhere. I'll leave diplomacy like I want it for now and see what I can find elsewhere and then adjust it at the end of the turn if I absolutely have to.

[jchastain]

I just need to get the AoP back to Washington. Someone needs to give Gregg a kick in the butt and get him to move that army.

[jchastain]

The AoP is likely a good place to save some money. As I think through it, there are two possibilities. 1 - he doesn't move yet again in which case he won't use any supplies. Or 2 - he does move in which case he is safely tucked away out of the fight and doesn't need any. In either case, I think I can lower his supply back down this turn. Looking at it in detail, the 11th division is the only one with a supply problem. I'll leave him at normal supply levels and cut everyone else off entirely since they are pretty well topped off.

[jchastain]

We'll go back now and see how much of our deficit that covers. Hmmmmm... that's good news. Spending problem solved. I can afford my aggressive diplomacy after all, though I really need to free up that money soon and get back to working on building up the quality of my army.

[jchastain]

I'll combine the units in Wheeling. They took the long route to get there and looking at them I can see they took some march attrition along the way. I need to see just how depleted they are before I do anything more with them. They might need a rest. Also, not much leadership there. They aren't my priority right now, but that's pretty pathetic.

[jchastain]

Looking at the detail, they're fine. Brigade strengths are down a few hundred, but that's not a big deal. They can go ahead and continue on. Supply is uneven but I really don't want to spend more on this unit right now so we'll let it slide for now since they aren't in any real danger. I'll come back and decide what to do with them in a minute.

[jchastain]

OK, let's deal with this mess in the west. Here's what we've got now.

[jchastain]

OK, they've been restructured now. The Army of Illinois is my main force, with the new corp inserted. The 4th Army has mostly left overs, but cannon fodder has its value too.

[jchastain]

And with the units properly organized, the map looks a whole lot neater. There's my two armies (plus the one next door that didn't quite make it to the party).

[jchastain]

Now we can finally begin our western attack. I'm not sure what Sibley and Hindman will do. With my forces collecting north of paducah, they may fall back to their forts on the mississippi. Or he might be smart enough to see me consolidating and be rushing to nashville to do the same. Either way, I have a huge numerical advantage and some fairly decent troops in Keyes' army. The Bowling Green forces will likely fall back to Nashville, but I'll try to catch them while they're divided. I'll throw my lesser armies that way and move Keyes to Nashville. Those lesser armies will later be used to siege a city while the main army pursues. If he brings everything to meet me in Nashville, it might get interesting but I think I can still take him. And if he allows me to march on a subset of his forces, he's toast.

[jchastain]

OK, at appears I am in good shape in the west, so let's use the Army of Maryland in Wheeling to give him a new threat to worry about. I know that this army is a paper tiger with junk troops, but he doesn't. I'll move them down to the Tennessee border and threaten Knoxville.