Game ended early

[Jim D Burns]

Turn 1 Early April

This will be a PBEM game starting in April 1861 with just a couple limited house rules. I’ll be playing the USA and Sean will play the south. Here are the house rules we will use:

Free raiding (unaccompanied elements) in border states (TX, KS, MO, KY, WV, MD, DE and the far west.) only. All other states require a leader with the stack until you gain control of a level 1 town, then raiding becomes free.

McClellan must command the eastern army for the Union until at least November 1862. No other army may operate further east than WV until after that date (McDowell’s army HQ leaves for WV when McClellan arrives in Washington). To guarantee McClellan gets promoted via event, the union will intentionally avoid attacking Manassas as dictated by event. Currently failure of that event is the only way to get him promoted to three stars, so I am going to fail on purpose by simply not attacking Manassas.

We may or may not use a house rule limiting CSA naval raiders in the shipping box. The CSA sunk huge amounts of items according to text log reports in my game as south vs. AI, so we plan to test if union combat ships have any effect in limiting CSA raiders (AI may not have had any combat ships in the box in my game). I will pull all combat vessels out of the shipping box for a few turns so we can track what the CSA sinks with no opposition. I will then add combat vessels and we will see if it has any effect on the amount of stuff the CSA is sinking each turn. If there is no effect then the CSA will be limited to 1 raider unit max in the shipping box until a patch addresses the issue.

That’s it for our house rules, though this will be a casual game and if we run into any ‘issues’ in the future we may add some to deal with it.

The plan

In my test games vs. the AI, I’ve found that by 1863 the CSA had as large or a larger army than the union did. That is with me doing everything I could to max my production abilities by playing any and all ledger options to bring in income. So it appears if I’m to have any chance at all in a game vs. a human opponent, I need to hit the south’s economy very hard and very fast.

So my plan is simple, I’m going to focus as much production as I can afford on achieving a much higher blockade percentage in both boxes as soon as I can. If I can’t significantly hurt the south’s economy, I’ll never have much chance of out-producing them in game.

I’ll also try invading the forts adjacent to his key income ports as soon as I can, but vs. a human I expect counter-attacks if I do this so I’ll need to leave large forces behind to defend any fort I take. So my brown water blockade is going to have to go slow until my main armies on map are large enough to stabilize the front lines. I’m guessing by mid to late 1862 I can start organizing the brown water blockade invasions with some chance of being able to keep what I take.

I am also going to play any and all cards I have that bring in extra income and conscripts. This is something I have avoided doing before due to the penalties associated with the cards, but I see no other way for the Union to get a leg up on the south in the production race. Historically the union enjoyed about a 9-1 advantage over the south in production capacity. In game we are basically equal, so it’s a lot tougher to achieve historical goals according to historical timelines.

So these are my thoughts going into the game, all comments/critiques are welcome as always.

Jim

[Jim D Burns]

Turn 2 Late April

Not much going on to comment on yet. Lots of events fire this turn. Sumter wasn’t reached until day 15 so no attack occurred there.

Jim

[Jim D Burns]

Turn 3 Early May

The Sam Houston event fires, and two cavalry regiments rise up in defense of Dallas. I give them hold at all cost orders and hope they are up to the task of keeping it for a while. Dallas shows an income of 86 supplies and 1 ammo, so I can stick around as long as the cavalry can hold. The Texas ranchers building there also provide some money.

Carl Schurz and his cavalry regiment appear in New York and are ordered to Baltimore.

Fort Sumter has not been attacked yet, though the weather in the region is mud so perhaps he simply hasn’t been able to get there yet. Norfolk and Harper’s Ferry are occupied by the south.

With the main Union army appearing on map, I buy a bunch of replacement chits.

I play one draft card (all I had) and four requisition cards. I played these cards in cities with no income structures so as not to cause loyalty penalties to any on map income structures. I had to build 2 militia regiments (will be merged into 1 unit) in the region I played the draft card as it states a unit must be present, I found it odd it allowed me to place the card in a region without a unit.

Jim

[Jim D Burns]

Turn 4 Late May

Fort Sumter falls this turn.

Martial law is declared in Maryland and I gain 20 conscripts and 5 war supplies.

I play defensive works cards in Saint Louis, Cairo and Cincinnati.

At Dallas about 100 CV of confederates have moved into several local regions nearby not under FOW. It appears he’s got 2 cavalry units, 1 ranger unit , 2 militia units and 1 artillery unit. I doubt I’ll be able to hold Dallas for long once he gets all his forces organized.

Unfortunately we are having issues with our PBEM game. We cannot alternate running turns in our game because as this turns screenshot shows if I try and execute a turn it isn’t recognizing his orders as having been completed, even though he already did his orders before he sent me the files. This has been happening for several turns now and we have no idea why.

We are currently exchanging the entire save game folder, so there is no chance we are missing any needed files. Oddly the game is allowing my opponent to run our turns, so at least our game can progress.

Jim

[Jim D Burns]

Turn 5 Early June

Lincoln’s first inaugural address event fires and I gain 1 NM.

The Saint Louis Massacre event occurs and Lyons appears in Saint Louis with his troops. Previously I sent Generals Asboth and Howe to Saint Louis, so they each take command of some unlocked troops. Asboth in command of 3 infantry and 1 artillery regiment has orders to march on Jefferson City. He should arrive in 12 days. Howe in command of 2 light cavalry and 1 elite infantry regiments has orders to march on Rolla. Both commanders have at all cost orders and should be able to take the city garrisons if they spawn.

With units starting to unlock, I begin to consolidate my small forces. I will have two main stacks in the east. Hamilton (2 star) will command a small force at Fredericktown and McDowell will command the main army at Alexandria. Both Washington and Baltimore will get division sized forces under 1 star generals for now.

I spend 1350 money on industrialization events this turn, which are all the options available to me in the ledger. While this is a huge early expense, I see an advantage to spending the money early in game like this. I plan to build out the entire force pool of US transport ships and send 40 of them to the shipping box.

With a lot of expensive industrialization buildings coming online early in game, it will guarantee a very high on map income of war supplies for most of the game. This will allow me to keep my stockpiled money supply far below my stockpiled war supply thus guaranteeing a very large percentage of the items brought in by my shipping box will be money (what you get each turn is weighted by on hand stockpiles). So the ledger options should pay for themselves rather quickly once the buildings are finished building.

Jim

[elmo3]

Any chance we can get your opponent to post his plans/thoughts in another thread here?

[Jim D Burns]

He should be starting up his own thread this weekend sometime.

Jim

[Jim D Burns]

Turn 6 Late June

The military balloon event fired and the balloon unit joins McDowell’s army stack.

At Dallas the CSA hasn’t made an attempt on the city yet. Instead he has me surrounded on 4 sides. The stack I have the mouse over pop-up on in the screenshot this turn is big enough that he may be ready to try an attack this turn.

In Missouri I took both Jefferson City and Rolla without a fight. My opponent lamented the fact he thought he had ordered the depots destruction at Rolla. The turn shows the rail was destroyed instead. When I mouse over the destroy depot button for my troops at Rolla, it is not selectable and the text states a depot level 2 or above cannot be razed. The depot is level 1 however so this may be a bug. Next turn after the rail is repaired I’ll check it again and see if the button is selectable then.

I built 4 militia regiments in both Rolla and Jefferson City to give my two small forces some additional strength for defense.

Jim

[jeffk3510]

how do you decide which general goes where in the first General's pool?

They all seem to have the exact same stats 3-1-1

Does someone with a higher strategic rating, but 1-1 Off/Def go to cavalry commands in the west that always need to be active?

[Q-Ball]

Jim: Good AAR so far, this is really helpful to learning the game

It's a concern that the Rebs can potentially outproduce the Union........that's like Japan producing more aircraft than the Allies!

I wonder if the options to get more money and conscripts are too liberal; the reality is both sides basically ran out of men, particularly the Rebs.

Production can be VERY tricky, because it's very tough to successfully recreate the historical constraints

PS: I really like that raiding house rule. It's too easy in game to send disposable Cav Regts all over the North and South at will. That puts a limit on it.

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: jeffk3510

how do you decide which general goes where in the first General's pool?

They all seem to have the exact same stats 3-1-1

Does someone with a higher strategic rating, but 1-1 Off/Def go to cavalry commands in the west that always need to be active?

Don’t forget leader stats can grow from combat experience, so a 3-1-1 at game start may be a 6-4-7 or something by game end.

Early in the war it doesn't matter who you send where, the main thing is to simply get leadership out there to get as many stacks as possible with leaders. My personal take is its better to be inactive and under leadership than to be active and not have a leader with you. Later in game better generals begin to appear and you can then start to pay more attention to leader ratings and who goes where.

When better leaders appear, I usually try and put the 3-1-1 guys under Corp or army command and use the lower ranked leaders with better stats in individual division sized or smaller commands. The problem with that of course is then they don’t see much action and don’t get promoted. Eventually though you’ll have enough stuff on map that division sized forces are no longer needed and any/all stacks will be large enough that they can engage in combat.

Jim

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball

Jim: Good AAR so far, this is really helpful to learning the game

It's a concern that the Rebs can potentially outproduce the Union........that's like Japan producing more aircraft than the Allies!

I wonder if the options to get more money and conscripts are too liberal; the reality is both sides basically ran out of men, particularly the Rebs.

Production can be VERY tricky, because it's very tough to successfully recreate the historical constraints

PS: I really like that raiding house rule. It's too easy in game to send disposable Cav Regts all over the North and South at will. That puts a limit on it.

Yeah historical reality vs. game balance has always been a design hurdle for game designers. Most do as this game has and simply try and balance the sides. That said I must state I was playing my game as the south when the unlimited volunteers bug was still an active bug, so it is very possible that southern conscripts are severely limited over time compared to northern conscripts. I haven’t played it out since the fix, so I simply don’t know if the southern army can be as large as the northern at the end of 1862 anymore, we will see.

I find raiding in game very annoying personally and I guess my opponent does too as it’s his house rule. If the game had a mechanic that allowed a reactionary force to identify and respond to raiders and pursue them I wouldn’t mind so much. But the fact a unit can traverse through an entire state and attack a target deep in your rear before you are allowed to react is just plain annoying. If game turns were only a week or 5 days long it probably wouldn't be as bad, two weeks simply gives them too much time to zoom around the map.

Personally I won’t be doing any real raiding vs. deep targets and I’ll also probably limit any raids I do attempt to brigade or larger forces. It just feels too gamey to me to send a regiment or two off on a suicide run to try and blow up a depot somewhere. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t pull off a Sherman’s march to the sea kind of move, but in such a case I’ll take every region I cross through along the way. No racing through and grabbing something way off in the distance.

Jim

[Q-Ball]

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

I find raiding in game very annoying personally and I guess my opponent does too as it’s his house rule. If the game had a mechanic that allowed a reactionary force to identify and respond to raiders and pursue them I wouldn’t mind so much. But the fact a unit can traverse through an entire state and attack a target deep in your rear before you are allowed to react is just plain annoying. If game turns were only a week or 5 days long it probably wouldn't be as bad, two weeks simply gives them too much time to zoom around the map.

Agreed, and in fact, I wonder if it makes sense to forbid raiding past border states for units with leaders too. I tried to think of deep cavalry raids that occurred in CW; were there any successful deep raids, deep meaning into a state where there was no friendly presence?

One was the Morgan raid into IN/OH; we know how that ended.
Another was Price's Missouri raid; that was more into Kansas too, where the Rebs did have a little presence
Last was Wilson's raid, but that was at the end of the war when the Rebs were beaten anyway

Raids into hostile territory by ANY force were historically suicidal; Price's raid worked only because it covered some friendly ground maybe

[Jim D Burns]

Turn 7 Early July

The Great Comet event fires and both sides lose 1 NM.

Northern Papers push for an offensive event fires. This is the -10 NM event mentioned in our house rules that I will intentionally fail to get McClellan promoted.

Pay for volunteers becomes available this turn in the ledger and I select no pay. I probably would have normally selected to pay a $1.00 bounty, but the huge expense of my industrialization events leaves my money coffers bare right now.

In WV the CSA becomes active and it looks like he’s going to be doing a lot of nuisance raiding. The biggest threat is John B. Floyd’s force which captured Parkersburg OH and destroyed the garrison unit there. Per our house rule this opens up Ohio to raids by units not lead by a leader.

At Cairo I order Wallace across the Mississippi with two brigades to take Charleston.

In Missouri Asboth and Howe each advance forward one region to change military control of those regions and to also get within striking distance of Springfield. Hopefully they can both be close enough to reach it next turn and take it by storm. Neither stack could reach it this turn.

At Dallas Gustavus W. Smith moves into the region commanding a stack with 80+ CV, but does not attack. He should attack me this turn. I thought about leaving, but didn’t want to leave my forts just to be caught before I left the region. I’d rather lose behind my forts and cause him as much damage as possible, I can flee next turn.

Jim

[Aurelian]

Nice AAR

[Q-Ball]

Jim: Your industrialization choices are interesting. As Union, without any builds, it seems like you have ample war supplies anyway; the limitation is always recruits and/or cash. Especially cash.

Couple questions:
1. Do those industries produce cash as well as war supplies?
2. Couldn't you keep the cash to war supply ratio low just by spending all your cash?
3. You guys have a HR against alot of ship raiders by Rebs; is using that many transports exploiting that? (BTW, I do agree the Rebel Raiders do seem overpowered)

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball
Do those industries produce cash as well as war supplies?

Yeah they all produce cash and will eventually pay for themselves just by that alone, though it would take some building types most of the game to do that. My main reason for the heavy industrialization is my intended naval focus for this game. It takes a lot of war supplies to build naval units (1 blockade unit is 110 war supplies) and I don’t want to spend very many turns in game having the shipping box bringing in more war supplies than cash.

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball
Couldn't you keep the cash to war supply ratio low just by spending all your cash?

Yes and no. I could put it all down on paper I guess and plan out all my intended builds and then spread out units a few each turn in dribs and drabs. But I’m not that organized so I tend to build things together in bunches, so saving up my cash for a big production run is how I like to do things. So keeping the per turn income of war supplies as large or larger than my cash income is preferable for my style of play. Of course this play through may prove the utter fallacy of this plan of action as it’s the first time I’ve tried this, we will see.

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball
3. You guys have a HR against alot of ship raiders by Rebs; is using that many transports exploiting that? (BTW, I do agree the Rebel Raiders do seem overpowered)

The house rule won’t be implemented unless our test proves there is a problem. I was getting reports of 60+ items being sunk every turn in my game as the south with just 2 steam frigate units and 1 brig unit in the box. That’s almost the entire shipping box income for the union being sunk by just 4 ship elements, so that kind of complete blockade is ridiculous. At best the south should maybe interdict 5% of the union shipping and that would be a good turn.

Once I’ve built some more transports for the box and my opponent has a few more raiders in the box we will do our test. I will pull out all my combat ships and we will compare the confederate sinking reports to when there are union combat escort ships in the box. If the reports are close or the same then that proves something is wrong. Only then will we implement a house rule pending a fix in a future patch.

Jim

[Jim D Burns]

As of the RC4 patch neither I nor my opponent can host a turn without getting the pop-up about needing to turn on the AI. So the game is on hold pending hopeful resolution via tech support forum at AGEOD.

Jim

[Jim D Burns]

Restart

Due to some unknown bug in our first email game that prevented me from running turns and then eventually both of us from running turns without activating the AI, we dropped this game and have just begun a new game under the new Patch (1.01). Given how short the AAR is I’m thinking about just continuing on with this thread and delete the above posts covering the first game, but wanted to ask readers first if they thought that would be too confusing.

So should I begin a new thread or continue to use this one?

It would be great if a forum mod could delete both my discontinued AAR’s, I hate cluttering up the forum with AAR’s that were both stopped due to bugs that are now fixed. That’s really the main reason I don’t like the idea of starting a third thread in here. So if a mod reads this in the next couple of days, please just delete my two AAR threads, otherwise I’ll start my new AAR however the community decides they want it done.

Jim

[Blind Sniper]

So should I begin a new thread or continue to use this one?

If you are thinking to use the same strategies you can continue here, otherwise a new one would be better (IMHO).