American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

Sure,

I'm a club member, so register the game and send your battle file to

richardw@multipro.com

I will no mercy, no quarter, only the black flag!

I play one turn per day



Lt. Col. Richard Walker
I Corps
Army of the Mississippi
2nd Brigade, 3rd Division
"Defenders of Tennessee"

I sympathize Jon as "Antietam" is one difficult fight to win as the Confederates.

As others have pointed out, this battle is difficult to simulate in a computer game or board game given that Lee's army is outnumbered 2:1, no entrenchments, clear fields of fire for superior Union Artillery, no forestation to hide his own movements and 'free' command control for the Union with no restriction.

But having said that "Antietam" is one of my favourite scenarios. I am glad you brought this discussion up however because it underlines the problems with the 'single turn play' aspect of the HPS series. I for one always play "phased turns" now. The single turn play just drives me crazy.

For one thing, by it's very nature it goes against the grain of everything I have read about Civil War tactics. The American Civil War was the great turning point in tactics for open field manouver with the new rifled musket. It demonstrated once and for all that the battlefield now favoured the defender, not the attacker.

Thus, I would expect to see the defender ALWAYS being able to fire with full defensive fire and the moving player (as attacker) having his fire cut in half. The tactics of the period favour the defence and the single turn HPS system is exactly opposite to this.

I don't care if the defender gets to fire three or four times at half value. It's just not realistic. And I have seen time and time again where the defender fires at range four and 'hits' one man, maybe fires again and hits 'two more' and maybe even a third time fire at a completely different unit than the one that is attacking and maybe even hit another man. Total casualties inflicted ''four men". Then the single attacker who has been moving on my units now fires and kills '38' men. I am so tired of seeing this I have completely abandoned single turn play.

Yes, the previous paragraph is only one illustration, but it is so representative of single turn play that it demonstrates my point.

For "Antietam" the only way to play is via phased play. Heck, look a the odds. If you are outnumbered 2:1 and most of the time you will be defending, and your defense will be halved, it's like your defense is knocked down to 1/4.

No, here I agree with most of the veteran players. Phased Play is the only way to go. I think single turn play CAN be fixed. The embedded melee is a good start but with the firing the way it is, in my opinion it has nothing to do with Civil War tactics.



Bg. General Gilbert Collins
Army of Alabama
III/I/2nd Brigade

I would like to state that my recent posts are not criticisms of the HPS games. I really enjoy them and will continue. My issue is simply with Antietam and the problems I am having in a current game.

And Rich, I would like to play a manouver against you in order to learn how the Rebs should play that battle. If you are up for that let me know.



Lt General Jon Thayer
III Corps
Army of Northern Virginia

jonathanthayer@bellsouth.net

One reason for so many return fires from defending units is the ability to see so well on the battlefield. Smoke on a real battlefield would obscure about 90% of the op-fires we see in our games.

The weather feature of the pdt file gives us an opportunity to bring smoke into the game. It would be interesting to see how op-fire would develop if the los range was set to 6 or even 3 hexes. Yes, it would be somewhat unrealistic when no one is firing, but since we players are allowed to see what everyone of our units see, all the time, then the restricted vision wouldn't be as drastic as it sounds.

As battles develop units would not be able to fire at everything on the field, but only local events. This may help. For those long range artillery battles that would no longer happen, players could consider that the local battery commanders had decided to conserve ammo.

The generic 'smoke' visibility range could be set to allow arty duels such as at G-burg, but I think a shorter range would be better, and then give all guns the ability to fire INDIRECT so that units could conduct long range area fire bombardments.

Just some thoughts that may lead to more 'realistic' play.

al

MajGen Al 'Ambushed' Amos
3rd "Amos' Ambushers" Bde, Cavalry Division, XX Corps, AoC
The Union Forever! Huzzah!

I just played a turn. during the Union turn the Rebs lost a total of 486 men to 134 for the Yanks. During my move I fired all stacks combined and any unit that was less than 100 men facing more than one enemy unit did not fire. All guns fired combined. The Rebs lost 85 men and the Yanks lost 424. So I learned something.

Lt General Jon Thayer
III Corps
Army of Northern Virginia

jonathanthayer@bellsouth.net

Jon,

my tuff fighting Rebel. When You are doing numbers. My operations are catching speed. Who said. " Marching saves blood "? [:D]

2nd Lt.
Ola Berli
XX/1/5
"Artillery of Death"
AOC

THIS IS THE END REBEL!

Sure, send me a file.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Jon Thayer</i>
<br />I would like to state that my recent posts are not criticisms of the HPS games. I really enjoy them and will continue. My issue is simply with Antietam and the problems I am having in a current game.

And Rich, I would like to play a manouver against you in order to learn how the Rebs should play that battle. If you are up for that let me know.



Lt General Jon Thayer
III Corps
Army of Northern Virginia

jonathanthayer@bellsouth.net
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Lt. Col. Richard Walker
I Corps
Army of the Mississippi
2nd Brigade, 3rd Division
"Defenders of Tennessee"

Al, brings up a good point. Smoke obscuring the battlefield is an important factor to take into consideration for a good simulation of the period.

But is there a way of having the 'smoke effects' without the weather rules which I find presently are too restrictive?

Bg. General Gilbert Collins
Army of Alabama
III/I/2nd Brigade

I have done some playing around with the weather feature of the pdt file and it is possible to set up weather that affects visibility only. I have created a pdt file that results in a gradual increase in visibility at dawn from 1 hex to 70 over a period of 3 hours instead of the current 4 hexes at dawn and 70 an hour later with no movement or combat modifiers and the reverse at night with visibility starting to decrease gradually about 3 hours before sundown. It is fairly simple to do, taking a weather line

1 1862 10 8 5 0 80 2 150 75 -20 0 Medium Rain

It breaks down like this
1 = I think this indicates a weather line, a 0 means the weather lines are finished.
1862 – Year
10 – Month
8 – Day
5 – Hour
0 – Minutes
80 - % Chance of weather - set in multiples of 5%. Note if the weather does not change then you remain in the same weather condition as the previous turn.
2 – Visibility
150 – Movement Penalty - multiples of 25%, can be set to 0
75 – Artillery Modifier - multiples of 5%, can be set to 0
-20 – Attack Modifier - multiples of 5%, can be set to 0
0 – Flags - currently not used, keep it a 0

Medium Rain – Condition description, you can make this anything you want, strictly a text for display.

If the engine rolls 1-80% the weather will be Medium Rain with 2 hex visibility, 1.5 x normal MP costs, Artillery will fire at 75% normal effectiveness and all other combat has a -20% modifier.

Since you can set the modifiers to 0 in the pdt line you can set up the weather to affect just visibility, however the problem is it is related to time, so if you write one to create reduced visibility it is strictly dependent on time and there may not be any combat for the times you have reduced visibility so this really wouldn't allow you to do what you want.


Gen. Ken Miller
1/2/VI
AoS

Ken,

You are correct about most of the weather line. The last digit is a flag to prevent cavalry charges in the NAP engine, so no effect in this engine.

The reduced visibility without any firing can still represent the average sight range of men without any optical devices. After a few hundred yards or so many details disappear preventing the local unit commander from having his men react to far away units, and concentrate on the ones close enough to make out a fair amount of details.

Most of the percentages can be set to any number, not just multiples of 5. At least that's my understanding.

Haze, fog, smoke, heat they all distract from clear LOS, and they can all occur in small local areas which the engine currently can't represent.

I think the weather line is the best method for modeling poor visibiliy, it just takes a creative view and an open mind.

MajGen Al 'Ambushed' Amos
3rd "Amos' Ambushers" Bde, Cavalry Division, XX Corps, AoC
The Union Forever! Huzzah!

Al,

Thanks for the info on the flag, I new it wasn't used in the ACW games, wasn't aware it was in the Nappy but then I haven't played them much and know little about the ins and outs of that engine.


Gen. Ken Miller
1/2/VI
AoS

I have always contended that halving the defensive fire gave a huge advantage to the attacker even though we all know that it should be the defender that should hold the advantage in fire exchanges. After all, the attacker is moving and the defender is steady and probably concealed as much as possible.

I know that J.T. disagrees but I still maintain that even though the defender will fire more times than the attacker, it is still more realistic (IMHO) for this to be the case.

BG Ken 'Muddy' Jones
1/1/XXIII Army of Ohio
USA

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Bill Peters</i>
<br />I only play this series now in turn based format. The reason is that the casualties can easily be compared with the other format and found to be much more in line with HISTORICAL results. The Turn based system allows for far too much defensive fire by the non-phasing player.

Yes, its a bit of the panzer bush again but I would much rather deal with that than the incredible amount of return fire that results from your guys scratching their crotch or a leader moving into a hex.

I believe that vets like Dierk and others agree with me on this as well. The Turn based format while historically correct in areas is becoming the least favorite way to play for various reasons. Even with the new melee rule actions like this one favor the side that has larger regiments.

It would be interesting to compare a BG Antietam with HPS Campaign Antietam to see how the casualties compare vs. real history. I have often wanted to do the same for NRC vs. NIR for the Napoleonic system.

If we had BATTERIES instead of SECTIONS this series would be more interesting for me to play with the Turn based play. That way there wouldn't be all of these shots you have to deal with.

Counter battery fire is not the issue Rich H. When the Rebs fire at a Union INFANTRY unit the engine allows ANYONE to counterfire at the guy that fired. For me the only unit that should be able to respond to a shot by the offensive player's units are the ones that were FIRED AT. I have seen units that had an attacker one hex away fire at units that were 20 hexes distant in the ACW series. I dont think that ever happened. When the enemy was that close they became the prominent target (talking about a non-routed enemy).

Anyway, I probably will try this one out with an opponent eventually but it will be with the proviso that we use the Phase based play.

Col. Bill Peters, The Boise Rifles, II Corps Artillery, AoA
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

So, are you saying that PHASED based play better represents historical results? I could not tell from your post.

I am just returning to the game and do not really like Turn based play, preferring Phased based play more.

CE Trog
CPT, USA
5th Bde/II Div/XV Corps
Army of the Tennessee

E-Mail cetrog@comcast.net

"My aim was to whip the rebels. To humble their pride. To follow them to their innermost recesses and to make them fear and dread us. War is cruelty! There is no use in trying to reform it. The crueler it is the sooner it will be over."

-<i>William Tecumseh Sherman</i>-

I do agree with Ken that defensive fire should be more effective for the reasons he stated. Obviously where this is a problem is when the offensive unit gets hit multiple times at full strenght with opportunity fire. I don't have any idea how the game engine works so sometimes the ideas I propose are impossible or too much trouble but I do like to throw out possible solutions. In this case, what if opportunity fire stays the same against moving units up to the point when they move adjacent to a defender. At that point the defender would fire at full strength at any offensive unit that fired at the defending unit. I guess in other words, fire would trigger fire, unit to unit. And if a unit attempts to melee all the defending units in the hex would fire. Something like this may be unfeasable but...

Lt General Jon Thayer
III Corps
Army of Northern Virginia

jonathanthayer@bellsouth.net

I <u><i><b>totally</b></i></u> disagree about phased play being more realistic.[:(!] Nothing could be more untrue. IMHHHHO!!!!!!

But this subject has been beat into the ground.

Lt. Col. Richard Walker
I Corps
Army of the Mississippi
2nd Brigade, 3rd Division
"Defenders of Tennessee"