American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

I know the lack of defensive fire effectiveness has been discussed before but I had an idea that I thought I post and see where it goes. I am playing an Atlanta scenario and i find my Rebs are now on the defensive. I am constantly suffering the familiar, Yank stack moves adjacent to Reb stack, one reb unit of 200 men fires and hit 5 yanks, entire stack of 700 yanks fire and hit 25 rebs. Next turn i step back a hex or two and suffer the same. I think a possible solution would be if infantry was handled like the Naopleonic games where only the top unit in line formation can shoot. Other units in the stack can be rotated to the top to fire but this rotation can trigger defensive fire. Is that something that could be easily done? comments?

Lt General Jon Thayer
2/3/III
Army of Northern Virginia

jonathanthayer@bellsouth.net

Hi, General,

That is a good idea, but even better might be that the max firepower out of a hex would be about 300 men. So 1000 men firing would be no more effective than 300 firing, which is the max you could have in a 120 yd line anyhow. Conversely, you would still have the density modifier, so actually the 1000 man stack would be at a disadvantage, except to melee. The problem with your idea is if you have six 25-man units in a stack, only 25 of them could fire.

MG Mike Mihalik
2/4/I/AoMiss/CSA

LG Thayer . . . Try playing in phases. You'll be amazed at the difference; logic will be back.

Your Obedient Servant,
Lt Gen Dwight McBride
Ist Division/1st Brigade
V Corps/AOP/USA

Mike, with the napoleonic system you can rotate units the top of the stack and then fire them.

Lt General Jon Thayer
2/3/III
Army of Northern Virginia

jonathanthayer@bellsouth.net

This is a test

Lt General Jon Thayer
2/3/III
Army of Northern Virginia

jonathanthayer@bellsouth.net

We actually did try moving units to the top of the stacks but found it never triggered defensive fire. We only tried it about 20 times but we figured that was enough. The constant clicking and mouse moving made the game slow too much. Still, it was a decent idea.

Col. Blake L. Strickler
Army of the Mississippi
Chief of Staff
6th Bd/4th Div/IV Corps

I think that a possible solution that would make it better would be if player would just agree to fire units individually instead of as a stack.

Lt General Jon Thayer
2/3/III
Army of Northern Virginia

jonathanthayer@bellsouth.net

That could be another item on a checklist of issues to agree upon prior to a battle.

Maj.Gen. Drex Ringbloom,
AotS Chief-of -Staff,
2nd Division Cmdr, "Corcoran's Legion", VIII Corps
Army of the Shenandoah

I think you are talking about two completely separate problems requiring different solutions.

One is the poor handling of defensive fire in Turn play. I am not sure it can be fixed other than not playing Turn mode, use Phased play. The reason is the defensive fire is halved based on the assumption that the defender gets to fire multiple times. Unfortunately, two things undo this logic. One is that only certain actions can trigger defensive fire so the attacker can minimize the chance of defensive fire by avoiding things that might trigger multiple fires. The other is that the AI logic is to poor to make the system work.

The second problem is stacking and the number of units that can fire out of a stack. I like the idea of a cap on the number who can fire but that might be asking for some major changes to the game system. Also, when you fool with stacking you have side issues like melee and handling large regiments versus small regiments.

General Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
2/3/IV AoM (CSA)

At least if the units of a stack fire individually there is the chance that each firing unit may trigger defensive fire.

Lt General Jon Thayer
2/3/III
Army of Northern Virginia

jonathanthayer@bellsouth.net