Robustness of caisons.

[aprezto]

I would have thought supply caisons would be of a very brittle nature. I have charged a supply caison with 2 light cavalry divisions and still not had it rout, disappear, convert or anything else I was expecting of it.

I would have thought they would be quite easily broken?

I understand you would have a component of fighting men to guard supplies - they are vital after all - but they didn't guard them to the detriment of the quality of their fighting units did they?

[Anthropoid]

I agree they are just a wee bit too robust, but I have actually noticed them getting captured or routed fairly frequently.

[ptan54]

Definitely too robust. I am France in 1815 fighting the Brits in Champagne. I have the Brits in a trap, 2 of my cav and several infantry are in his rear repeatedly assaulting their wagons and they're just sitting there, not routing. Only one of them has become disordered. Even though my plan is great on paper, the British militia are all supermen, inflicting hundreds of casualties on my arty in line while taking 50 casualties only. The only thing that saved me this battle was the defensive bonus, on day 4 the Brits retreated. An extremely costly battle for me (40,000 dead, Brits lost 50,000). Probably going to have to replay the campaign at this rate.

[Joram]

Well, Eric or Gil would have to comment on the exact design decision but considering the AI's propensity to zoom to your caissons like a magnet just be glad it goes both ways as how would you like to lose your caissons within 5 minutes.  I think that it is a reasonable compromise the way it is. 
 
Think of it this way, if you did have them being super weak, you would have to dedicate a large portion of your army guarding them to prevent charges and even then a few shots would likely drive them off leaving yours (and presumably the opponents too) in a supply-less battle.  This would result in a very very slow game.
 
If you can think of another way of improving this within the parameters of the game engine, I would imagine WCS would appreciate the feedback. 

[ptan54]

Perhaps reducing their starting morale a wee bit would do the trick...

[Joram]

I'm not the mod expert but wonder if that's moddable.  I think it should be. 

[terje439]

Actually I find that INF(close range fire attack) and Arty are the best way to deal with supply wagons. One attack should kill 50% of its strength and a second attack 50% of its remaining health at which point it is gone.

[Mus]

Should be easier to overrun and capture caissons.  I believe it was made harder to capture guns and caissons in EE over original COG.  Could a beta tester or developer confirm or deny that impression/belief?

[ericbabe]

I can't recall offhand whether we modified the overrun calculations, but I made hundreds and hundreds of small tweaks like this in response to tester feedback, so it may just be that I am not remembering whether we changed the caisson capture chances.

So would you'all like to see an increase in the chance of capture, a greater chance of disorder, lower caisson morale, higher casualties against caissons, or some combination of these?

[Anthropoid]

To me, I am not confident that changes are necessary, so I would encourage you to spend a little time testing it or having testers test it to see if it really does seem a bit off. Here are my observations:

In FoF, caissons seemed like they were tanks. I'm talking about several patches ago, I have not updated or played FoF for probably a year.

Never played COG. In first version of CoGEE I played only France. Caissons of GB, Prussia, and Austria seemed pretty stout, Spain less so, smaller countries even less so. Any routings I remember were primarily with the weaker nations. I don't remember any "capturing" of caissons ever in eitehr FoF or COGEE up to that point.

New patch of CoG playing as Russia on Difficult difficulty (both), I captured a couple Polish caissons, and had one that proved resistant to one or two charges but lost maybe 1500 casualties.

Anecdotally, that is pretty much the sum total of my experience on this topic and my general conclusion is: it seems to be working okay, but then I have very limited observation with the latest patch of CoGEE.

In one way you could argue it might be better to error on the side of more vulnerable caissons (after all, getting into the baggage train was a common goal that would seriously harm the enemy), but then that very well may disadvantage the AI, who may not be able to properly defend his caissons.

I think it is pretty cool you can at least some times capture them, though it would be neat if you saw some sort of strategic level benefit from doing so, and not just the ephemeral benefit of having another caisson on the detailed battle map. Capturing part of the baggage train maybe should evoke greater glory, or higher surrender cost against enemy, or something? Maybe demoralize all enemy units in the area on the next turn by a small amount (0.05 to 0.1 maybe?)

[Russian Guard]

ORIGINAL: Joram

Well, Eric or Gil would have to comment on the exact design decision but considering the AI's propensity to zoom to your caissons like a magnet just be glad it goes both ways as how would you like to lose your caissons within 5 minutes.  I think that it is a reasonable compromise the way it is. 

Think of it this way, if you did have them being super weak, you would have to dedicate a large portion of your army guarding them to prevent charges and even then a few shots would likely drive them off leaving yours (and presumably the opponents too) in a supply-less battle.  This would result in a very very slow game.

If you can think of another way of improving this within the parameters of the game engine, I would imagine WCS would appreciate the feedback. 

Yes when caissons werre easier to rout/capture, there were plenty of complaints about that. My suspicion is that some players are not very good at protecting their flanks, and enemy units (especially enemy Cavalry) get through and start mauling their caissons.

I think I remember (been a long time) that caissons were made more stout for this reason, but they can definitely still be routed - I still see it fairly frequently, usually by direct fire, not Cavalry over-runs, although I've seen that too, especially if the caisson is already shaken.

My view is, no changes necessary.

[ptan54]

Perhaps as a general rule of thumb, caissons should not be able to withstand more than 3 charges by decent cavalry or close range fire? I haven't played long enough to make any definitive statements, admittedly.