Increasing the combat modifers and the number of committed troops.

[mantrain]

Why do I go in with so many troops, but many fewer yet committ to battle?
Looking at the combat report, and seeing the modifiers, how do you go about maximizing the modifiers for greater hit success before battle. I notice from the detail report, I am losing, and that my modifers were more often negative; and what's more difficult yet is I am getting fewer troops to the lines compared to my enemy! WHY?????????????????????????????????

[spruce]

is your AC joining the battle ?
do you play with CSC rule on - and didn't assign the needed division commanders to your corps ?
are your supply levels good ?

[Treefrog]

mantrain,
consider reading my explanation of combat in the War room section above.

[XLegion]

I'm getting pretty irked at this myself. Did you know that your troops might not even fight in DEFENCE! I didn't know that and found out the hard way.

I had a Union force in Biloxi Mississippi. 7 unit. The confederate player attacked with his units which also numbered 7. The battle report says I defended with ONE UNIT while he attacked with all 7. Result, my entire force was destroyed. No, this is not the way to balance the game. Sorry.

[Erik Rutins]

Guys, you need to learn what is considered in the combat/commitment system. It's all explained in the manual.

[Joel Billings]

ORIGINAL: XLegion

I'm getting pretty irked at this myself. Did you know that your troops might not even fight in DEFENCE! I didn't know that and found out the hard way.

I had a Union force in Biloxi Mississippi. 7 unit. The confederate player attacked with his units which also numbered 7. The battle report says I defended with ONE UNIT while he attacked with all 7. Result, my entire force was destroyed. No, this is not the way to balance the game. Sorry.

With those small forces, it's all about leadership, and some randomness. Basically what this represents is that the attacking force found a way to outmaneuver the defending force and catch one unit alone in combat. At that point, the defender felt himself forced to retreat. This kind of thing can happen, although I can see why it might frustrate a player. What were the various leader ratings of the leaders involved? What players of WBTS must realize is that this is not like a traditional boardgame where all units in an area get to participate in combat. They must be maneuvered and committed to battle by the leaders involved. Remember this is monthly turns and large areas of land.

[jimkehn]

   I would concur with Joel. The game abstracts the battles within that region. You may have had a brigade on the battlefield with the other 6 scattered 20 miles distant, but still in that region. They needed to march to the sound of guns, and when they got there, their comrades had already fled the field.....or more likely...not got there at all. The longer I play this game the more realistic it becomes, but I am far from proficient at the game to this point. I think..and Joel or Erik can correct me....not only leadership values, but the number of leaders on each side is important to commitment. It is harder to mobilize a division of 7 brigades than one of 2. So if your opponent has 7 Bde's with 4 leaders, and you have 7 Bde's with 1 leader, he will most likely commit more of his men than you will of yours. And sooner. The sooner you can get your men committed, the better, also. You will have 7 fire at his one rather than the reverse, until he gets all committed.
 
  I would sure encourage all of you, who have just bought the game and feeling frustration, to stay with it awhile. Learn the system...ask questions here....read the manual....go through the video tutorials. I am confident that if you persevere, that you will agree with me, that this is one powerfully, realistic and satisfying little game. So much to consider. Although, visually, at first, this looks like a simple Civil War version of Axis and Allies, I can assure you it is not. There is more detail in this game under the hood than most of the other games that have recently come out on this topic.

[GShock]

One thing is sure, he's learning the "rtfm" statement the hard way [8D]

[spruce]

In Mantrains defense I have to say for this game it's a triple "RTFM" and still new things come up. The game is not that simple you know.

[XLegion]

Guys, I respect your opinions and explanations but with combat results like that how can one possibly calculate a successful defense on small scale. Ok, one explanation was that maybe six of my brigades were 20 miles away. OK, I can live with that. But then why were they completely destroyed and thrown into the sea? They couldn't (and were not) even have been there right?

Now I know you are going to say, well maybe there was another battle and they got destroyed. No no. There was no other battle, they were simply destroyed. And that with Union naval power offshore.

You can't have it both ways. If the turn represents one month (which it does) then there is plenty of time for Union naval power to extricate the brigades.

If this was just one battle, I could just take it and be done with it. But, I'm seeing too many battles that don't appear to make any sense. Ok, you can read the potential modifiers until you are blue in the face but unless you get a detailed report on EXACTLY WHY certain results were effected how can you improve your game?

It's not enough to see die rolls.

[Joel Billings]

According to the rules, you should have been able to withdraw over one water area so if you owned Ship Island the units should not have been destroyed. If this didn't work, please send me a save if you have one just before the battle. One look at the bad leadership that led to the big Confederate defeat at Fort Donelson would show you that you don't necessarily have to have a big battle to lose a lot of troops. Yes, results with small numbers of troops are very random, and are especially influenced by the leaders involved. Forces do get out maneuvered and then surrender after little combat, but I can see your point about these troops being able to get away by sea once they decide to do so (assuming they had not moved inland and been cut off and the leader decided to surrender. Sometimes you make all the right moves and get a bad result (that can happen in life too), but more often people make the mistake of thinking that manpower is king. It is not. In the Civil War, leadership (and luck) can easily overcome bad odds.

[jimkehn]

XLegion...I agree that your situation is frustrating. But, you can see more details of the battles by hovering your mouse on top of the dice rolls. This will show you which leaders, supply levels, morale influences, etc. that caused the result you got.
 
I felt the same way with the game at first. I could NOT figure out why my defending force of 12 lost to an attacking force of 7 or 8....especially when I was in a fortress. But then I figured out the importance of scouting. Undetected units get a huge advantage. There are so many of these small nuances of the game that just takes time to learn. But if you take the time to learn them, the game is fun. Even when JEB Stuart gets killed in Nov of 1861!!!!

[mantrain]

I don't know what's going on.....   I attack w/ the best leaders avail...Grant as AC, Halleck as TC, and all Uc's w/ attack ratings of "3", all w. initiative.....Sheridan and rest of cavalry scout scout scout, they go in, and time after time get their collective asses handed to them. I know there are other nuances to the game -- Under the Hood--but where is that hood? My only consolation is knowing how the Civil War went, the Union got there asses generally handed to them until Jul '63 -- Two long years -- and then some more....so the game is hard, the war was more than a bitch too.  Still don't know what's under that hood though.  What  else can I do?????

[mantrain]

One small item is I have been playing tonight trying to take memphis and I just realized my TC (Halleck) was not in Humboldt, but in DC...... There has been no TC in the vicinity-- but Grant has been getting inititiative anyways... they had the telegraph right?

[paullus99]

Grant usually gets initiative on his own - though it helps to have a good TC in Cairo to back him up.

If McClellan is available - I usually promote him in the East (leaving him in Washington) and Halleck in the West. Of course, if Scott lives (and I'm seen him survive the war) you can either leave Mac in the East as a secondary threat or move him elsewhere.

This game has sooooo many nuances - if you try to blitz over multiple turns, you burn your troops out, lose too many division commanders & get really exposed (much like the actual Civil War).

I have noticed that if you can put enough pressure in the West - down the Mississippi & towards Chattanooga, the Rebs have a tough time putting together a decent defense after 1862 - the Atlanta campaign is almost a walkover as the AI commits troops to Mobile or New Orleans instead.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: mantrain
I know there are other nuances to the game -- Under the Hood--but where is that hood?

Have you clicked on and looked through the combat details for one of your battles?

[mantrain]

Erik my battle screen(the one at the top with the explosion icon) only keeps the most recent contest up, so if I had a battle of Mannassass, and then a port engagement somewhere else, I can only get the details on that small engagement.  I think that is a short-fall of the programming.

[jimkehn]

I agree with Mantrain. Maybe I just haven't discovered it yet, but I can't figure out a way to get a detailed report of the most recent battles....just the last one. It would be nice to review the details of the past turn's battles without having to go through the whole replay again.

[Joel Billings]

Run the turn replay, and then when it shows you the battle report, click on the detailed battle report button.

[jimkehn]

Joel, I know how to do that. My wish is that when we click on the battle report icon at the top of the screen, we could page through the past turn's battles, and not just the last battle. This would save having to run the whole replay and sit through all the activations, scoutings, raids, etc. Just analyze the data from the past battles. Maybe it isn't possible.