Super-cannons be gone!

[Ampen]

Bear with me, this might be a long post, but I hope you will find it interesting.
First things first, I'm an old school wargamer, started with boardgames ages ago (a favourite was 'Civil War' by VG [;)]). Finding a good game that covers the civil war has been hard, so I was really eager to try out Forge of Freedom.
I've done some extensive gaming now, and overall I find it a good game, with lots of aspects from the time taken in consideration. It is a massive game though, so I suppose it will take some time to master. When I play I usually try to get as close to a simulation as possible, so it's pretty much most options turned on.
I've always played the Fury scenario, but not the one with balanced economy, and I play the confederacy for the challange of it.
I seldom post in forums, but I do enjoy to read them, and I've read alot of posts here, very helpful. Those of you who read here from time to time might recognize subjects, but I think my post will give a new angle.
Now to the different issues. Subject line on this post says the first: Artillery.
Sure, artillery was effective at this time, relatively fast to load, high firepower, and shrapnelrounds for short range fire made each artillery piece a huge shotgun, literally.
But when I hunted down a US corps in Kentucky, with the goal to really disintegrate it, it was the first time I came across four batteries. Until then, it had only been one or maybe two units, this is 1862.
On this corps I converged the Army of the West and the Army of the Shenandoah, a total of 114.000 men, under command of General Polk and General Beauregaurd. The US corps was under command of General Sheridan and numbered 44.000 men. I also was able to make a surprise attack, so in the start of the battle I almost had them encirled.
The screenshot shows positions after a few rounds. So far one US cavalry unit has given up. You may also notice on the mini-map the high concentration of troops moving to complete the encirclement. A few turns later the entire US corps is closed in.

That's when they start to blast my boys away. Sure, since I was going for really destroy the entire corps, I thought there might be casualties, but when night falls, General Sheridan and his corps are victorious. 114.000 confederate troops have been routed.
Now, I'm not stupid enough to charge artillery (even though units seem to find it a good idea to on their own initiative march straight infront of a set of guns, and expose their flank to them, that's the story behind the unit infront of the guns in the upper center), instead I tried to focus on the infantry to create a rout, wich would render me a massive amount of surrendering units. It's just that while I hammer away on the infantry, the US guns really blast my brigades apart. And I don't mean that they create some damage, I'm telling you they really ripped them apart. Placing skirmishers I ended up getting three of them to surrender, but not only was a couple of my divisions routed at that time, I also noticed that the mere presence of a US artillery unit could rout one of my brigades.
All in all, even if I'm a somewhat lousy gamer and tactician, a situation like this...?
44.000 US vs 114.000 CSA, and with the positioning I achieved.
I've had my suspicions earlier, but now I'm almost certain that arty units are to powerful.
Thing is, they can be in the frontline. That's actually very stupid. An artillery unit right in the frontline would fire a few rounds, but would be overrunned by the infantry. They would after that take the guns and turn them against their opponents. Happend alot of times, even at Gettysburg, during Pickett's charge, a few guns where overrun, but instantly lost again.
My point still is that artillery units isn't a frontline unit. Some rule that would make them surrender if they don't rout an enemy unit next to them would not only be more realistic, it would also balance the power of the artillery. Further more, it would make the AI and the player to use artillery as they where used, as a range weapon.
In this battle, when I moved my units away to create some space, so they wouldn't be blasted away at point-blank range, the artillery units moved after...
I then fired upon them, got a return salvo, and when that was handled, during the next round they started blasting away again.
So, make artillery units as vulnerable to enemy close presence as they where.

Secondly, about the rout: I've read here certain reasons why there's only a three round rout and such.
While taking apart the US eastcoast army I encirled it a few times, split the forces of it a few times, and so forth. Now, this would leave me with US units surrounded, but if they don't rout completly, and after the routing is over, they just disappear.
And they still exists in the US army as it seems.
How can this be?
As one of the reasons for the limited time to pick of a routed army I read that it wasn't common in the Civil War that an army pursued a victory, and therefore...
Now, I'm not interested in standing and cheering after creating a rout, I'm interested in completing my victory. And IF I have them incirled, I really don't want them to just disappear after a certain number of turns to re-appear in the US armies.
And, during the 44.000 win over the 114.000, God knows the US did run all over the place charging into all units they could, so I'd say at least the AI does not really stand by and cheer.

A long post, but I hope you find it interesting. This is generally a good game, still, events like the one I described above really takes the joy away from playing it.

Note: don't know if I managed to get the picture up, but I'll have to come back with that if I didn't.

/Ampen

[sadja]

Looks like Shilo and Stones River all over agian. The rebs surprised the union both times, but when the union gathered it's artilery together they held of the rebs the second day both times.Whole armies never surendered except in siege conditions. Lee go away after Antiem and Gettysburge. The union army after Chickamauga and the rebs after Chattanoga.

[Ampen]

Yes, that is true, but in both Shiloh and Stones River the battling armies were approximatly the same strenght, give or take about 10.000. In what I experienced I had 114.000 men surrounding about 44.000 men. Five batteries to trash that entire force?
And I'm not saying armies didn't get away, I say if the entire force was trapped, they wouldn't.

[ericbabe]

There's no rule for the "mere presence" of an artillery unit to rout one of your units, but there are other cascading morale loss rules: for instance, if one of your other brigades breaks, it'll cause the loss of morale in surrounding units.  Also if you're in a yellow or red zone, then your units will be losing a lot of morale automatically.

As to whether artillery are too powerful, the last time I remember there was a long thread on artillery that used a lot of red "angry" faces, a lot of people were arguing that artillery damage should be higher at longer ranges, so I'm not sure what a real consensus position might be.  I tried to base casualty rates on actual battlefield data from Nosworthy and Griffith wherever I could find it, then from theoretical extrapolation from that data, then by a comparison with similar wargames.  Deploying skirmishers when fighting close-range with an enemy artillery is almost a must, and artillery damage vs skirmishers was what I assumed much of the battlefield data actually represented.

[Hard Sarge]

if I am reading the screen shot correctly, in that screen shot, you got a lot of units out of command, that is going to hurt

the 3 turn rule is one of the rules, you got to capture the enemy before they get away (yea, I know if they surrounded how did they get away) also a unit that is "shot to death" does not end up as a POW, it is a live unit and can  be rebuilt

it maybe play style and all, but early in the war, I want to run into lots of Union Guns as the South, that is where I get most of mine

I would say, depending on the player, that battle would turn out different, based on who was playing it, don't know how well the morale or supply levels of the Armies are, the unit you got highlighted, his morale is kind of low, but he is in a great spot to pick off the gunners, did you have any Sharpshooters with Withwirths in the area ?
he has long range rear, side flank shots in all of the guns, plus he has the high ground

(it has been a bit, been busy on other projects, but I can see a lot of things I would be doing based on your screen shot)

[Ampen]

Good points from both of you. Firstly, I don't really mind artillery doing damage, what I do mind is the difficulty to take them out. As I wrote above, I belive that an artillery unit that can't rout all close by standing enemies should be captured, or rout itself. Artillery was vulnerable against infantry at close encounter, and more than once guns were captured.

As for the battle itself, I knew I'd push my units for different reasons in this battle. But with my advantage in men at 3:1 and getting a surprise attack, I wanted to try to capitalize on it and completly wipe out this entire corps.
Thing is, this worked in the eastern theater, and at odds 1:1. I moved to the left, AI followed, I hit the center, and the union army was divided in two. This is why I have this kind of army operating in Kentucky, half of the force has marched down from Virginia.

Basically, if artillery was vulnerable to getting overrunned by infantry, it would be used as a ranged weapon, as it was.

[Mad Russian]

I just got this game and am about to play my first opponent my first time through. So I won't comment on your particular situation. What I will tell you is that artillery units will actually stand and fight to the end. They too know as you pointed out if they make a break for it you will cause them tremendous damage. Their best option at that point is to stay with the guns and hammer out death and destruction.

Which they did on numerous occasions.

Yes, gun batteries could and were overrun but at tremendous cost to the attackers if they had to do it frontally.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Ampen]

I don't mind taking casulties like that, if I at least can overrun the guns. Problem is they put up a fight. No infantry unit would stay there in the line of fire and try to gun it out, instead they would close in and close them down. Naturally this would take it's toll, but if the unit isn't routed, it would overrun the guns.
Difference is infantry support. An artillery unit that is in position, and has its position supported and defended by infantry, that's another issue. But, artillery troopers are just artillery troopers, their strength lies in the fast and proper loading and firing of their pieces. They are not trained in infantry combat, or close combat for that matter.

[Conny D]

What you can do is to reduce the MaxStrength of Artillery units (I consider 3000 men per unit is oversized). Neither North nor South organized Arty Bdes, and the corps and division arty, usually consisting of several battalions grouped together, hardly exceeded 1000 men in general.

[Gil R.]

You can do that, but remember that if you make artillery units too small they will be a bit too easy to beat. What number do you usually go with?

[Conny D]

At first i set max Arty strength to 2000, and since i want to come close to reflecting approx. historical unit sizes have them now at 1750 (Cavalry changed to 2500]. Hence I practically never use my precious arty in first echelon and prefer hammering the enemy from long distance, so usually deploy my cannoneers behind the Line infantry to minimize losses or ideally, to avoid losses at all.

And yes, arty units of this modified size are extremely vulnerable to enemy charges, i must avoid close quarter fighting with them at all costs

[Sabotteur]

Looking at the screen shot, I would take a guess that Ericbabe hit the nail on the head.  I know when I've tried encircling the enemy, espeacially in suprise attack situations, I run into the yellow and red zones which just kill morale.  If I get too far around to the rear or too far around the flank, I start running into these areas.  Espeacially if the enemy has some supply caissons or reinforcements that are on the same tangent as I am from the forces I'm trying to surround.  If your playing with Fog of War turned on, there is a good chance this was the problem you ran across in this scenario.  Just my two cents...
 
Sabo
 
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

[pjwheeling]

How do you go about changing the Max Artillery strength ?[&:]

Patrick

[marcbarker]

how is this even if units were oiut of command you can assault 3 brigades with artillery support and rout that art.

[Hard Sarge]

ORIGINAL: pjwheeling

How do you go about changing the Max Artillery strength ?[&:]

Patrick

in one of the unit files

[GShock]

Arty batt, 16 crew on 4 guns, typical CSA formation. Yes, in FoF they are highly oversized and i guess the real problem would not be just to resize these, but what to do when the second arty upgrade is bought and thus, the 2000 bde is converted...if the exceeding manpower is lost that's a bit of a problem, especially for CSA. 

[Randomizer]

In my opinion, few wargames model field artillery particularly well and I think that GShock has cut to the core of this issue.  FoF appears to treat artillery pieces in the same manners as small arms but that is flawed because the theoretical firepower of a battery depends on the number of guns rather than the number of men.  If the Union had almost 22 men per piece (numbers from Griffith regarding Gettysburg) than a 3000 man FoF Artillery Brigade represents some 188 Confederate (using GShock's numbers which are entirely reasonable and jive with any number of sources) or 136 Union guns something that I doubt anyone reading this would believe for a moment.

So it would seem that as far as field artillery is concerned FoF is counting the wrong things or perhaps counting the right things but in the wrong way.

However if one discounts the numbers game, do FoF artillery brigades provide a reasonable effect of a massed artillery formation on a 19th Century battlefield?  One should remember that typically a Civil War artillery commander could expect his batteries to be decentralized to division level or lower as the battle developed so their use in concentrated formations or Napoleonic style Grand Batteries was less common.

Field artillery was expensive (as it is in game) but also capable of inflicting huge losses on formed infantry and cavalry.  FoF artillery brigades are a bit too easy to use in offensively but their effects on the defensive and their ability to inflict significant casualties are, I believe, entirely reasonable overall.

To be sure, individual field guns and occasionally entire batteries often changed hands in a battle but one is hard put to find anywhere an entire artillery brigade (typically 24-36 pieces) gave up their guns unless part of a formal surrender agreement.  Perhaps what is being seen here is actually working as designed since the effect Amper seems to be looking for seldom, if ever, occured in real life.

[GShock]

All u need to see is how it ends when 2000 inf charge 16 guns. Imagine in real, and look at FoF.

Yes this is something that will most certainly be fixed in future releases, be it patch, XP or a brand new package. [;)]

[Mutation2241]

ORIGINAL: Randomizer

FoF appears to treat artillery pieces in the same manners as small arms

How come infantry units (that are incapable of indirect fire attack) manage to return fire when beeing shot at with indirect artillery fire from batteries deployed behind the friendly lines?! The cannonaded infantry has no line of sight then and no ability to make indirect fire attacks but returns fire nonetheless?!

[Mutation2241]

ORIGINAL: Mutation2241

How come infantry units (that are incapable of indirect fire attack) manage to return fire when beeing shot at with indirect artillery fire from batteries deployed behind the friendly lines?! The cannonaded infantry has no line of sight then and no ability to make indirect fire attacks but returns fire nonetheless?!

So when nobody has a clue its evidence enough for me that this is screwed. A brigade of riflemen that is under artillery fire can under no circumstance shoot back at the artillery when the said artillery is blocked from the riflemens' sight, but they do. Indirect fire is available for artillery ONLY, infantry shouldnt be able to counter-fire against it