v1.9.16d Coming Fury Historical - Wow!

[Gray_Lensman]

Started a Coming Fury Historical v1.9.16d scenario, (yes, the one with the much larger Union production), at First Sergeant difficulty. I figure, ok, I'll experiment with the new beta, under historical conditions. About 5 to 6 turns into it, wham the South hits Cairo, MO, with upwards of 180,000 men. Remarkable AI behavior, but how did it assemble that huge an Army in that short of time and move it to Cairo, MO, especially with all the attrition costs associated with non-rail movement?

I like this behavior of the AI, but I still think this is not yet "historical" for the South. (re: the huge Army above), or am I wrong? Or is it a case of the AI stripping the entire Southwest to assemble this army?

[Erik Rutins]

I haven't seen it do that - are you sure it was actually 180k and that was not just a wildly inaccurate estimate due to fog of war?

[Hard Sarge]

Not sure about the above, but the AI will muster and conscispt and pull troops like mad
 
in a early run of SS, doing a nice steady build rate as the Union, I was shocked to see that the AI CSA was enlargeing itself faster then I was (of course a couple of battles settled that soon enough)
 
 

[Moltke71]

I thought  Cairo was in Illinois.

[dude]

ORIGINAL: Bismarck

I thought  Cairo was in Illinois.

I always put it in Egypt with pyramids.... [;)]


... but back on point... I've been playing the SS historical setup myself and also have been suprised at how many troops the CSA suddenly has by the begining of 1862. I was barly keeping up (playing USA) and I was buying, mustering, and constripting as much as I could. I didn't want to run the manpower out of some of my cities especially the ones with camps. But most of the small ones are bone dry of manpower if they had a mustering value of 50% or higher or unrest chance of 10%. Yet somehow the CSA had a bit larger force than I did. Luckily most of it was spread out and my individual armies were larger than his containers. He just had more containers, fewer forces per container, but more overall manpower.

The saving grace for me was that I was able to defeat his units out west piecemeal. But I HAD to fight them in detailed combat so I could surround the brigades and force them to surrender. I tried at first to use quick combat against some of the smaller forces but they just kept running away... it was a game of cat and mouse. I finally got the upper hand when I switched to detailed combat and was able to get the brigades in the smaller forces to actually surrender. Now by end of 1862 there are almost no combat effective containers in the west for the CSA. I'm hunting down the last one.

It did mean I had to let some CSA units run around unapposed for a short while. Though I was able to prevent the AI from crossing into the north by keeping strong garrisons along the rivers. Anytime the CSA would move there I would dispatch an equal sized force to help the defense. Once you add the garrisons, and defensive bonus I would usually win (though I played these out on quick battle).


Don't take the above as a complaint. I've found the AI actions much more interesting and have been enjoying this session better than any of the others so far.

Couple of questions though...
Do forces ever surrender in Quick Combat? I haven't seen any yet.
And I seem to be very short on generals even though I'm playing with the "more generals" option. I have almost no 1 stars and only about half my divisions have two stars. In previous games I always seemed to have more generals than I knew what to do with. (and it's almost Jan 1863)

[Gray_Lensman]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
I haven't seen it do that - are you sure it was actually 180k and that was not just a wildly inaccurate estimate due to fog of war?

Unless, the preliminary detailed battle screen announcement is affected by Fog of War, the numbers are accurate. Does anyone know if this is affected by Fog of War?

[ericbabe]

The number of troops the AI can build depends on the difficulty level -- at higher difficulty levels the AI gets a larger material bonus and is able to construct more units than at lower difficulty levels.

I've never seen the CSA AI put 180,000 troops in the Western theater in Southern Steel when I play on colonel level, so my guess is that on 1st sergeant this is just the fog-of-war inaccurate scouting report number.

Units don't surrender during quick combat, but there's a chance they surrender during the retreat afterward.

If anything, I think we made generals more common, and I was a little worried there'd be too many, so hopefully your lack of generals is just a fluke of the dice.  Let me know if it continues to happen in other games.

[Gray_Lensman]

Eric, this was on the preliminary battle screen where it tells how many vs. how many and asks how you want to fight it. Is that affected by the Fog of War, also? Makes sense if it does, McClellan anyone?  Cool, too.
 
Coming Fury - Historical
First Sergeant
Normal Economy
Normal Population

[ericbabe]

Oh that's in Coming Fury, sorry I hadn't noticed that first time I'd read through your post.  I'm not as familiar with that scenario, I've personally done most of my testing in Southern Steel.  I'll give the OOBs in Coming Fury another look.  Was it the Army of the Potomac that had marched all the way out West, do you know?

[Gray_Lensman]

Not sure if it was the Confed Army of the Potomac or not.