Quirks in Detailed Battles

[DrewGator]

OK, I might be a little late in bringing this up - and I may not be the first to mention it - but since I've gotten heavily into detail battles I've found a couple of things that really, really annoy me:

1. Routed Units: When units rout the computer takes them over and it appears that it sends them to my end of the board (top corner if attacking, bottom corner if defending) by the most direct rout. This is find if the battle line runs pretty much east to west, but I find that more often than not my lines will tend to be North to South. This is usually because one end of the line engages first and then I swing the other end around. The problem is that if I'm attacking and the southern end of my line tends to be more advanced than the northern end and a unit routs in that area, the units run directly INTO the enemy lines.

It seems to me that the algorithm used to move routed units needs to be tweaked. Instead of running to my end of the board by the shortest possible route it should A) run AWAY from the enemy, B) run towards my supply wagons, and C) run to my side of the board - in that order.

2. Cavalry: In my opinion cavalry units really seem to be WAY too powerful in detailed battles. It seems to me like they move halfway across the map in a single turn and then inflict HUGE casuaties on Infantry units in line. I don't think this is very realistic. In the Civil War there were very, very few charges by mounted cav on inf in line in good order. The tactics I have seen employed by the AI in detailed battles seem more reminiscent of the Napoleonic period that the Civil War era.

If cav moved w/i range of an enemy inf unit while mounted they would get slaughtered! Yes - I do remember Forrest's mounted charge at Shiloh - but that was a case of the exception proving the rule. Typically on an ACW battlefield mounted cav operated on the flanks as a screen or occassionally in pursuit. Otherwise they would dismount to fight delaying actions as Buford did on the first day at Gettysburg. The effective range of rifled muskets of the Civil War era made it extremely dangerous for cav to be mounted anywhere near enemy infantry unless they were behind a screen.

So there's my .02 worth!

[ericbabe]

In an initial release of COG I had a complicated routine for routed units.  They moved to a location that maximized the distance to enemy units while maximizing distance to the nearest edge.  People were baffled by it -- they were confused whenever their units simply didn't run toward their starting area.  I maybe could have improved the COG routine to take other things into consideration, but when we just tried having units run straight to their starting side people seemed to be happy with that.  I'm a little loathe to start tinkering around with a more complicated algorithm once again, though perhaps having the AI choose a path that doesn't come too near enemy units might work alright.

We scaled cavalry charges back considerably from the COG engine, and people haven't found problems with the damage they've dealt thus far, but if a consensus forms to reduce the damage even further than I'll be more than happy to lower it beyond what it is now.  I completely agree that cavalry charges against formed infantry were nigh suicidal during the Civil War -- we tried to model this with the "charge protection" rules of weapons.  Any other people have opinions on cavalry charge damage?

[Joram]

I'd comment but I've never been able to duplicate how well the AI does in charges compared to how well I can do.  I almost always get slaughtered when I charge so I never do it unless it's in the rout phase.  Even then I don't cause a whole lot of casualties!

[cesteman]

ditto for me. I have them screen the flanks, or charge on when the time is right. Cheers.

[Gil R.]

Maybe at some point we should develop a "Charge Report" similar to the current "Attack Report," so that we can all see exactly how much damage is being dealt and why.

Programming such reports takes A LOT of time, though, so it's not something Eric can whip out quickly.