Game Balance & Historical Accuracy

[Steely Glint]

Man, I haven't laughed so hard in years. Where do people get some of these ideas?

For all of your information, the National Park Service, which is viewed by many as having something of a rather pro-Yankee take on such matters, lists the following thirty-three battles as significant Confederate victories in the Main Western Theater from 1861 to 1865:

Natural Bridge
Barbourville
Richmond (Kentucky)
Munfordville
Hartsville
Jackson I
Parker’s Cross Roads
Chickasaw Bayou
Grand Gulf
Snyder’s Bluff
Thompson’s Station
Brentwood
Corydon
Chickamauga
Ringgold Gap
Bean's Station
Dandridge
Okolona
Dalton I
Paducah
Fort Pillow
New Hope Church
Pickett's Mill
Kennesaw Mountain
Lovejoy's Station
Bryce's Crossroads
Memphis
Johnsonville
Columbia
Saltville
Bull's Gap
Sabine Pass
Honey Hill

But the really amazing thing is not that there were that many. The amazing thing is that, given the disparity in forces, that there were any at all.

[Steely Glint]

ORIGINAL: chris0827
You left out the part where wikipedia calls it a strategic union victory.

And you skipped right past the part where I specifically stated that Bragg threw the tactical victory away.

That's just one too many deliberate trick on your part. I'm going to stop trying to educate you. If you want to remain in denial about the atrocious Union leadership you certainly can, but if you want to discover the truth, you can try researching the challenge that I gave you earlier.

No matter who does it - as long as they do it thoroughly - the answer always comes out the same: what held the Union back was poor leadership.

[Joram]

Why don't you all stop being so damn haughty and condescending and get back to the original issue ...

[chris0827]

ORIGINAL: Steely Glint

Man, I haven't laughed so hard in years. Where do people get some of these ideas?

For all of your information, the National Park Service, which is viewed by many as having something of a rather pro-Yankee take on such matters, lists the following thirty-three battles as significant Confederate victories in the Main Western Theater from 1861 to 1865:

Natural Bridge
Barbourville
Richmond (Kentucky)
Munfordville
Hartsville
Jackson I
Parker’s Cross Roads
Chickasaw Bayou
Grand Gulf
Snyder’s Bluff
Thompson’s Station
Brentwood
Corydon
Chickamauga
Ringgold Gap
Bean's Station
Dandridge
Okolona
Dalton I
Paducah
Fort Pillow
New Hope Church
Pickett's Mill
Kennesaw Mountain
Lovejoy's Station
Bryce's Crossroads
Memphis
Johnsonville
Columbia
Saltville
Bull's Gap
Sabine Pass
Honey Hill

But the really amazing thing is not that there were that many. The amazing thing is that, given the disparity in forces, that there were any at all.

Two victories in major battles. I would expect more from military geniuses.

[histgamer]

I think his point was with the Union having advantages in every catagory that they should have won 0 victories if the union generals were as good as you claim.

[chris0827]

ORIGINAL: flanyboy

I think his point was with the Union having advantages in every catagory that they should have won 0 victories if the union generals were as good as you claim.

The Union had greater advantages in the east yet the south won more often. There must be a reason for that.

[histgamer]

That the southern commanders in the east as a whole were even better.

However your acting like its either union better or south better with no variance.

Maybe out east the Southerners were 10X better and in the west only 2x better.

[Steely Glint]

ORIGINAL: flanyboy

I think his point was with the Union having advantages in every catagory that they should have won 0 victories if the union generals were as good as you claim.

Hurray, someone actually has been paying attention and thinking.

Thirty-three victories when the count should have been zero, zip, none, nada. Badly outnumbered, outgunned, outsupplied, the rivers and ocean in Union hands...and yet, still, thirty-three victories. What's the one remaining variable? Simple. The Union forces were being systematically outgeneraled.

And why did the CSA do far better than that in the East? Five words: Bobby Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The CSA forces in the East were being run by two of the greatest military minds this world ever produced. Had there been anything even within shouting distance of a parity of forces the Union Army would have been annihilated or forced to surrender. Even given every single advantage in the world - every single one, from manpower to money to armaments to naval power, and on a grand scale - except for better generals, it still took vastly superior Union forces an amazing four years to advance the one hundred miles from Washington to Richmond. That, my friends, is total failure on a grand and epic scale; it even manages to make the Union failure to steamroller the West given every advantage there look good.

[Steely Glint]

The bottom line: the only reason the war lasted as long as it did in spite of the massive Union superiority in manpower, armaments, money, logistics, railroads, naval/riverine power, etc. was the fact that the CSA had a massive superiority in leadership.

[Cutman]

I am a yankee, but I have to admit that there was a large leadership advantage with the South. Especially early in the war. I am not an ACW expert, but I have read quite a few of the books, so some of this may not be totally correct.

1. Use a system where the Gens gain experience through the battles and not just there staffs may be a way to address the North having to learn through experience?

2. Lincoln had to place a lot of political Gens in important positions just to keep the North in the fight as a whole and this continued throughout the war. Most of these generals where horrible and they continued to be appointed until his re-election. Maybe make it so certain bad Gens have to lead these units instead of the current ability to pick and choose? Loose as small number of victory points or number of units if not assigned to a certain size unit? Same for South?

4. Until Grant took over in 64 as LtGen. of the ARMY there was not a strategic strategy in place for the North to defeat the South. No overall plan to attack all at once. The Northern commanders attacked seperately and allowed the South to reinforce from different areas. I am planning on getting the game for Christmas and do not have it yet. Does the game take this into effect at all?

5. The South had a huge advantage because they where fighting in their own backyard. Allow them to have this advantage with the North having the same. How many Strategic attacks into the North did the South win?

6. Lower the Southern economy to more realistic level. I am not saying too change the game balance or calling for a 9-1 in reality as I saw earlier. The changes will cause some huge realistic disadvantages for the North and the Southern Economy will probobly need to be cut anyway..

Your wrong about Grant.. He made some large attacks in error, but he did not deliberately attack again and again in the same spots... Vicksburg is seen even today as one of the greatest attacks ever.. He was stopped three times.. Once by Forrest (a genius) and twice by terrain..
Sorry about the spelling errors. It is getting late. Just some ideas... What do you think?

Cutman

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: Steely Glint

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl
Baloney! Just what "usual collection of clowns" were fighting in the West?

Baloney yourself. The collection of clowns running the Union Western Theater before the rise of Grant and Sherman were led by such notable losers as Henry Halleck, Don Carlos Buell, David Hunter, John Fremont, and Ben "Spoons" Butler. After Grant and Sherman rose to prominence, yes, things changed. But prior to that rise the CSA leadership in the West was dramtically superior to the Union leadership (with Braxton Bragg, a classic example of what goes wrong when you appoint generals for political/personal reasons, being the significant exception). Given the tremendous disparity of forces and resources you only have to look at how little that the Union was able to accomplish with such vastly superior numbers, weapons, equipment, logistics, support, money, not to mention a far superior railway system and control of the rivers and the sea before the rise of Grant and Sherman and their proteges (and outside of them afterwards) compared to what they should have been able to accomplish and you get a picture of just how totally, awfully, woefully bad the Union leadership in the West really was.

Baloney and strawmen right back at you.... Henry Halleck took the field once in the West, and while his excessively massive and slow 20 mile "Corinth Campaign" was hardly Napoleonic, he did take Corinth and North Mississippi. No "rabbit from the hat" Seven Days effort from his "brilliant" Confederate Counter-parts. Don Carlos Buell had a bad case of the "slows", but he made it to Shiloh in time, and siezed much of East Tennesee. The Rebels celebrated their great "victory" over his forces at Perryville by running back south 100 miles. Nothing outstanding, but the folks he faced did no better. Hunter and Freemont basically did nothing in the west (unless you count Freemont chasing the Confederate recruiters out of St Louis) before being sent east (with Sigel) to fumble the ball against Jackson in the Valley Campaign. Ben "the beast" Butler did reveal a lack of talent when moving from his base of operations around New Orleans---but the Rebels never even threatened to take the city and south Louisiana back. Hardly a big arguement for their brilliance either. Even Pope managed to take the Mississippi River defenses before heading east to "burst into buffoonery"---his opponants must have really been "Bozo's".

So where was this "brilliant Confederate leadership" you speak of? Price and McCullah managed to "win" a "victory" in SW Missouri at Wilson's Creek, which chased the Union forces all the way back to ---SW Missouri. They celebrated by retiring to Arkansas. Van Dorn failed to join AS Johnston for Shiloh, instead wandering off to get himself beat at Pea Ridge. Johnston and "Bobo" Beauregard managed to suprise Grant at Shiloh, but their idiotic tactical plan virtually guaranteed their own failure. (They also had a case of the "slows" which delayed their approach march). Pemberton dragged out the Vicksburg Campaign for a while, then lost his nerve (and his army) by running into the city and getting besieged. Rosecrans outmanuevered Bragg from Central Tennessee all the way back to NW Georgia, Bragg losing Chattanooga in the process.

The "great leadership" you speak of was all "raids" and peripheral campaigns---lots of noise to little effect. Meanwhile the Union was eating away the guts of the Confederacy. And the Rebs could find no way to stop them. Lee faced a collection of less-than-stellar performers in the East and managed to keep the fight on the same basic ground for 2 years. For this we regard him (justifiably) as a brilliant Commander. In the west, Grant and the boys were conquering and occupying 1,000's of sq. miles of the Confederacy, siezing Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, the Mississippi, the Cumberland, the Tennessee, etc. Seems if the Confederate Leadership was so superior and brilliant they might have stopped some of this relentless progress and re-taken some of that ground. They didn't, ergo they weren't superior or brilliant.

[ezzler]

The CSA had better leadership thats why the Union took so long to win the war despite their massive superiority in all areas.
 
Hardly.. Your conclusion doesn't bear up to scrutiny
 
Why did the western allies take 4 years to conquer the pacific ..... was the japenese leadership so superior to the allies?
 
The material advantages were even larger..why did they need a nuclear bomb. was Nimitz so inferior he couldn't manage to wrap up the war in a year?
 
Why did the allies take 4 years to defeat Imperial Germany.. were the Germann and Austro Hungarian leaders so much better that they stopped the Allies.
 
Unfortunately the Civil war was a new war. Huge advances in firepower changed the nature of combat and tactics had to be learned. Old rules had to be abandoned and experience learnt from. Commanding armies larger than anyone had commanded before took new skills.
 
To say that the Union had poor leaders and therefore thats wht the war lasted so long is absurd. It MAY have been a factor but hardly the be all and end all argument that is being claimed.
 
To portray the Union leaders as all bad generals really only undermines the skill of the likes of Lee and Jackson and Johnston etc.
 
 
 
 

[keystone]

I think this thread got hijacked by the splitting hairs crowd. Give it a rest and start a another thread. Who care's about the generals, it was the men who fought and died that mattered. In regards to the ACTUAL question, I would have liked to see historical Brigade and Regimental names. The other aspects of the game can be argued over by the testers and developers. I am ok with the game if historical accuracy has to be compromised to make it playable. What's the alternative? no game at all? At least Matrix had the guts to do a strategic Civil War game, no one else has anything this good. With a few adjustments I am sure will come(what game these days doesn't have a patch?), FOF will be even better.

[Steely Glint]

Wow, talk about just not getting it.

Two sides square off for a battle. One side is much larger and very
well-off. The other side is smaller and poor. The larger side has far
more men, far better weaponry, far better logistics, far better
railroads, and control of the seas and rivers. The smaller side has far
fewer men, many of who are barefoot and many of whom are poorly armed
and poorly fed. The smaller side's logistics system is in tatters
because they have only a pathetic railroad system and because enemy
control of the rivers and the sea not only makes the use of shipping
impossible, it also strangles all imports and exports. The larger side
doesn't have a significant problem dealing with a foreign land, a
foreign language, or a different religion, either; the great majority of
the people in the major area of conflict speaks the same language, are
from the same culture and have the same religion, and some of the larger
side's units are from immediately adjacent areas.

Given this situation and any kind of parity in leadership, what results
can be expected? Clearly the smaller side will be steamrollered. When
the larger side has all the advantages and has adequate comparative
leadership, what can the smaller side do? If it goes on the offensive it
will take losses that it can't afford or sustain, and that will only
speed up the steamroller. The best that the smaller side can do is to
defend and to hope that the larger side will make a mistake that it can
jump on - but, if the leadership on the larger side is adequate in
comparison, that opportunity just won't happen. All that can be done in
the realm of civilized warfare by the smaller side is Fabian tactics;
they can harass and delay the larger side and pray that time is somehow
on their side - perhaps maybe they will be able to hold out until an
event such as an election might change the will to fight of the larger
side. The smaller side will do its best to damage the larger side's
morale. It will try to make the larger side at least work, if not bleed,
for every step. Which, leaving out the utterly uncivilized options such
as terrorism, assassinations/decapitation strikes, a scorched earth
campaign/total war, etc., is essentially that all the smaller side
really can do.

If the larger side's leadership quality is higher than the quality of
smaller side's leadership, the smaller side will be promptly blitzed.

If the larger side's leadership is comparable in quality to the smaller
side's leadership, the smaller side will be steamrollered in a timely
manner.

But, if - and only if - the larger side's leadership is significantly
poorer than that of the smaler side, then the smaller side will be able
to make the larger side really pay. Better leadership will allow the
smaller side to make effective countermoves and counterattacks, to steal
a march now and then, to strike behind the larger side's lines, to delay
and to deny. The smaller side may even win some battles. If the smaller
side's leadership is sufficiently better than the larger side's is, the
smaller side might even win thirty-three of them, where in theory it
should have won very few if any at all. The smaller side's better
leadership will certainly always delay the steamroller.

The remarkable thing about the Civil War in the West isn't just those
thirty-three amazing victories where the CSA David, instead of being
flattened, somehow not only knocked the USA Goliath down but sometimes
beat him like a dog; it wasn't that CSA forces could face five to one
odds in the open field and still triumph; it was that a campaign that
should have been long over by the end of 1863 was delayed to the point
where it was still incomplete in 1865.

There is only one variable that can account for what happened as opposed
to what should have happened given the force disparities, and that
variable is leadership. A novice looks at the Civil War in the West with
honest simplicity and falsely concludes that "The Union forces won, ergo
the Union must have had better generals." A professional looks at the
documented force disparity and the results and says, "If it took the
Union forces that long to do that little with that big an advantage in
everything then the only possible explanation is that the Union forces
were badly outgeneraled." This leaves two remaining options; either the
overall CSA generalship was above average and the overall Union
leadership was average or below average, or the CSA generalship was
average and the Union leadership was below average. An examination of
the leadership in the West makes it very clear that something along the
lines of the latter was the case. There were, of course, clearly
exceptions on both sides (Grant, Sherman, Thomas, Sheridan, Forrest,
Sidney Johnston, Joe Johnston et al as positive exceptions; Bragg,
Pemberton, Van Dorn, et al as negative exceptions) but overall the facts
demonstrate that the CSA in the West was sufficiently better led that
its leadership was able to prevent the CSA from being steamrollered by
vastly superior forces in the West. Looking at the force differentials,
that's actually quite an achievement.

When you throw in the thirty-three Union defeats - when there really
should have been very few or none - and, once you account for the few
exceptions, Union leadership in the West was clearly incompetent. This
should not come as a shock to anyone; with a few exceptions, most of
whom were already noted as exceptions above, the Union leadership in the
East was clearly incompetent as well.

[Jonathan Palfrey]

ORIGINAL: keystone
I am ok with the game if historical accuracy has to be compromised to make it playable. What's the alternative? no game at all?

I'm sorry, but I think this is nonsense. The game would be just as playable if it got its facts right. "Historical accuracy" doesn't necessarily mean changing the play mechanics at all, it just means adjusting the numbers so that they correspond to the real situation, and so that what happens in the game corresponds to what happened, or what could have happened, in reality.

ORIGINAL: keystone
At least Matrix had the guts to do a strategic Civil War game, no one else has anything this good.

I don't think it takes "guts" to see a gap in the market and decide to fill it. But yes, congratulations and thanks to Western Civ for doing so.

ORIGINAL: keystone
With a few adjustments I am sure will come (what game these days doesn't have a patch?), FOF will be even better.

You're probably right. I hope so. The game seems good enough as a game to be worth improving as a simulation.

[Mike Scholl]

"Wow, talk about just not getting it. "

You argue that Lee & company were "superior and brilliant" because they kept the "superior" forces of the Union fighting for the same ground in Northern Virginia until the Summer of 1864. But you also state that Confederate Leadership in the West must be "superior and brilliant" because they COULDN'T stop the same Yankees from taking the entire Mississippi Valley & Tennessee during the same time. You need to make up your mind... Or is your theory that just being Southern automatically makes one a superior leader? I agree..., talk about not getting it.

[chris0827]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

"Wow, talk about just not getting it. "

You argue that Lee & company were "superior and brilliant" because they kept the "superior" forces of the Union fighting for the same ground in Northern Virginia until the Summer of 1864. But you also state that Confederate Leadership in the West must be "superior and brilliant" because they COULDN'T stop the same Yankees from taking the entire Mississippi Valley & Tennessee during the same time. You need to make up your mind... Or is your theory that just being Southern automatically makes one a superior leader? I agree..., talk about not getting it.

There's obviously something in the southern water.

[von Beanie]

I don't buy the argument that southern leaders were significantly better. Both sides' principal leaders were trained in the Mexican war, fighting side by side.

To a large degree the south won in the east because it was on defense, and the defender in the Civil War had major advantages (which increased as the war proceeded). The few times that the south went on offense, like at Gettysburg, they lost too. Being on offense with lengthening and vulnerable supply lines is a much more difficult task than simply defending your homeland.

In my week of playing the game I am generally satisfied with the game. Some frustrating things happen, such as trying to separate the Army of the Potomac from the 1st US fleet when they are both in the Annapolis area. But the game forces the Union to operate in the west using the Mississippi River and Tennessee rivers as their primary supply lines, and this is good. It also does a good job showing the major battlefield advantage that most defending armies had.

At this point my main concern is getting the preliminary patch out that resolves the fort bug so that I don't have another game ruined inadvertently.

[Steely Glint]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

"Wow, talk about just not getting it. "

You argue that Lee & company were "superior and brilliant" because they kept the "superior" forces of the Union fighting for the same ground in Northern Virginia until the Summer of 1864. But you also state that Confederate Leadership in the West must be "superior and brilliant" because they COULDN'T stop the same Yankees from taking the entire Mississippi Valley & Tennessee during the same time. You need to make up your mind... Or is your theory that just being Southern automatically makes one a superior leader? I agree..., talk about not getting it.

Straw man again. Try arguing about what people wrote, not what they didn't write.

Go back and reread my last post, particularly the part about the CSA leadership in the West being most likely average in quality.

[Steely Glint]

ORIGINAL: chris0827
There's obviously something in the southern water.

Virtually every Civil War historian grants the South superior leadership. This includes the Northern ones, so there's obviously something in scholarship.