American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

Most (all?) of the HPS games are now patched so that the A.I handles both it's offensive & Defensive fire phases by Stack rather than indvidual Units. This change was implemented to speed up the pace of game play.

Is there any widely held sentiment that the game benefits or suffers as a result of this?

How do Human players conduct their fire control during games?

Personally, I always watch my opponent replay in 2D zoom-in and with "on map results selected" or by holding down the return key! ...can quickly get through even the most long-winded A.I fire phase.
It just seemed to me that from a tactical side of things I would rather see more units being fired at by individual enemy units than fewer units being massively hit by big enemy stacks.
I realise that individual unit size can have a bearing on fire results.

One tactic I employ during training games versus the computer A.I and sometimes suggest for Human PBEM is that ALL Units ALWAYS be fired individually. Big stacks of Artillery firing en masse almost guarantee a Kill against enemy Artillery which could be viewed as problematic.
Another house rule I sometimes utilise is for the Largest unit in a stack to fire at the nearest/largest enemy unit and so on down the list.

Any thoughts on fire control habits and their effect (if any) on game results?

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Brigadier-General Jim Wilkes.
2nd Brigade, Cavalry Division, XX Corps.
AoC. U.S.A.

As far as artillery goes, Quoting from Paddy Griffith's "Battle Tactics of the Civil War"(pg 166 Yale Univ Press paperback):
"Correct artillery tactics demanded that several batteries should be concentrated together on key terrain features, to mass their fire against selected targets". So firing by stack would be historically correct and should exhibit the best results rather than firing by gun or single battery.
As far as infantry goes, wouldn't it be difficult if not impossible for a brigade to have all of its regiments fire at one time, rather each regiment would fire in unison depending upon the approach of the enemy and then revert to fire-at-will.

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Gen. Drex Ringbloom,
AotS ,Commanding

Artillery I tend to fire individually or in small groups but rarely as an entire stack.
They usually will inflict some decent casualties and increase the chance for disruption,
fatigue, and routing by spreading out their fires, rather than one massed barrage.
Infantry I like to fire as stacks, especially against large Union units, but again depends
on the situation on a particular part of the battlefield. Initial attacks I would like to inflict
as many casualties as possible to break their will at the beginning of a battle, but as units
get worn down in battle I would rather fire individually to increase fatigue and the chance
for disruption and rout. This may seem gamey and not historical, but from the Napoleonic
times, units were drilled to fire in many different manners, platoon, rolling echelon, single
massed volleys, by rank etc, etc. So I would suggest what you are trying to achieve at a particular
point on the battlefield, inflict massed casualties to discourage the enemy, or incur fatigue to increase chances of disruption and routing to halt attacks or cause the enemy to break to be followed by immediate pursuit.
In conclusion, I do not like to limit myself to individual or massed fires, and have the ability to fire according
to the tactical situation, as the individual regimental unit commanders had the same leeway in their training and drills.
I used to own the printed version of "The Bloody Crucible of Courage: Figthing Methods and Combat Experiences of the Civil War" 2003 by Brent Nosworthy, a good primer, now only on Kindle, from Amazon anyway. Covered many aspects of infantry, artillery and cavalry tactics of the times.
Opportunity fire is a whole 'nother can of worms, but PLEASE, a commander moving to a unit triggers an entire
enemy hexes's opportunity fire, or a commander changing from mounted to dismounted, or vise-versa triggers
opportunity fire, never against the commander, always against the unit, LOGIC please that a hex full of units
is triggered by a handful of command and his staff moving in the heat of battle, there were sharpshooters in the
war, but they were limited by weapons, training and certainly did not trigger a salvo by an entire hex full of soldiers over a movement of a few men on horse.
Yes, I am aware of the death of Gen Leonidas Polk while scouting positions at Pine Mountain during the Atlana Campaign, that was certainly an anomoly, I do not see why command movement triggers massive salvos,
I guess a attempt to duplicate Stonwall Jackson but he was well in front of the lines, deaths such as AS Johnston
at Shiloh in the heat of battle are of course historical, but any movement by any commander triggering fires
doesn't make much sense, as especially there are plenty of leaders killed logically in battle leading their troops.
And then we get into phased play versus turn play, evidently there are many subjects up for discussion and
many more possible optional rules, unless we get to the point where we overwhelm the game with optional rules trying to please everyone and every view.

I do not like ADF by stack. Rich Walker assured me that stack firing causes more casualties than individual fire, but I am very skeptical. I suppose I ought to do a test to see if there is in fact a difference. I don't see why there should be.

I have had an enemy march a ten-man unit in range of a stack of sixteen guns and cost me sixteen rounds, whereas it would only cost me 2 rounds previously. Rich said that was an anomalie, but my experience says otherwise. It is a real disadvantage for the Rebs, who are usually hurting for artillery ammo. I think ADF stack firing ought to be an option, which I would never select, but when I tried to make that suggestion at Tillercon, it received no support.

On offense, I will often position units to get flank shots. Then I have each unit in my stack fire flank fire at each unit in my opponent's stack. This reduces morale two levels for each unit hit, whether casualties are produced or not. If one of the units takes a morale check and routs, chances are each unit stacked with it that got hit in the flank will rout. But a lot of times I will stack fire on a unit, particularly if I am adjacent and can tell which unit has the poorest morale. If you can rout one unit, it will cause morale checks in all adjacent units and cause them to at least disorder. If rout limiting is off, it can get much worse; but I haven't played without rout limiting in many years.

As I said in a different thread, I think the best way to play the game is phase with manual defensive fire on offense and defense, even though it requires twice as many emails. My opponents don't want to mess with the extra emails, though so the only time I do that is hot seat or direct play.
Which is almost never.

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MG Mike Mihalik
Forrest's Cavalry Corps
AoWest/CSA

If I remember correctly the change to stack fire was pushed for because of problems with small units not being strong enough to cause casualties (particularly in Turn play where their fire is halved) but still firing away wasting ammo. The equation used to calculate casualties used a Low and High Range factor based on the strength of the unit and the fire factor of its weapon at the range fired plus any modifiers. If the Low Range number fell below one after corrections then the unit would cause less casualties than if it was combined with other units to raise the range numbers to an all positive range. For example if you had two equal size units that both generated a factor range from 0 to 5 the maximum casualties from both firing would be 10 with average around 5. However, combined the range might change to 5 to 10. The maximum is stil 10 but the average is now 7.5.

This oddity only happens with smaller units or at long distances but it can reduce sectional guns and regiments under 100 men to uselessness during defensive fire and waste quite a bit of artillery ammo. The problem with sectional guns was the main driver behind adopting this rule. The Rebels particularly had this problem. Stacks of one and two guns units would blast away at near by Union artillery without even causing a fatigue. The Union, usually having the battery size units, would then fire taking out gun after gun.

Now the problem the fix introduces. Because the whole stack fires together the kill range jumps way up when units are adjacent or have other modifiers making them good targets. Since all the fire is direct toward on unit a couple of bad things happen. First you might get more casualties than the target contains resulting in the extra kills being lost. This I see quite often when the AI picks the weakest target in an enemy stack to shoot at. The second is that one target takes all the damage and is subject to the morale check while everything else in the hex is protected from having any consequences from the fire.

The solution would be a smarter AI. When I am firing my own units I always make a rough estimate of my fire factors. If I think my individual units are weak or the defender position to strong for their size I combined the units for fire. If they are strong enough to get reasonable hits I fire them individually usually at different targets to maximize the number of morale checks caused. This also helps average out bad "die" rolls. You don't want so much fire directed at a single unit that it will suffer high, 50+, number of casualties. Something below 50 has the best chance of causing a morale check and spreading the casualties (and fatigue) around more. Likewise when your chance of kills drops well below 25 you aren't causing enough casualties to have a reasonable chance of a morale check. For artillery you chance of causing a gun hit drops off dramatically.

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General Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
AoT II/1/3 (CSA)

Hi, General,

This is the first time I have ever heard of this. Where did you find it? I always thought that anything less than one became a probability based on the fraction of one represented by the value. And that was for killing crews.

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MG Mike Mihalik
Forrest's Cavalry Corps
AoWest/CSA