American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

I've always thought a neat optional rule would allow units to be "forced marched" during play.

Say a unit "force marching" would receive something like an additional 25% added to their movement but the unit would also have it's fatigue raised by a certain amount based on the Quality Rating of the unit.

There would also be a limit of some sort on how many turns (whether a set amount or how many turns in a row again based on unit Quality) a unit could use the feature.

Thoughts?

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Lt Col Chuck Paul
2/2/VI
Army of the Shenandoah

Yeah, I've long wished we could have something to represent physical fatigue for our men. You can start marching Infantry along a road at just under 3 mph on turn #1 and still have them going at the end of the day having marched 40+ miles with no effect on them at all.
Unfortunate limitation of the game engine. I don't think there would be much benefit to a forced march rule without something covering basic physical fatigue effects.

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

worse than that are the night rules..........

units can march all through the night without much effect to their ability to fight the next day.

there is some fatigue, but hardly the amount if units really did trudge througout the night.

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Lt. Gen. C. N. Matthews
Pickett's Infantry Division, I Corps,
Army of Northern Virginia, CSA

Most of the games now susport night fatigue but it isn't implemented in many scenarios and usually the number is to low to stop the practice.

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

A force march option would be great. But it would have to be at hight fatigue than the current night movement. Also with force marching there would have to be manpower losses representing stragglers.

Most of the game I play we have a house rule where everyone has to get at least 6 hours of "sleep". It works well.

Doug Burke

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Other hobby: Running 30-40 miles per week. Several races a year from 5K to marathon. Boston marathon 2007.

I suppose that there is a reason that the Night Movement Fatigue option isn't supported in every scenario, but I am not certain why that is. And while I have not examined every HPS game within the line, I do know that the NMF option is tied to the PDT file, where the night movement penalty seems to be a standard 10 fatigue points per 20-minute turn moved.

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General Jos. C. Meyer, ACWGC
Union Army Chief of Staff
Commander, Army of the Shenandoah
Commander, Army of the Tennessee
(2011-2014 UA CoA/GinC)

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MG Mike Mihalik
Forrest's Cavalry Corps
AoWest/CSA

I just took a quick look at Overland 1 pdt. Night attack penalty is 300; Night movement penalty is 50. I would think they are all similar in Overland.
We had trouble getting the darn thing to work during testing. Supposedly they tweaked the engine, but I never checked back.
J Ferry
2lt 2/20th corps

I have brought up the old Civil War Generals 2 before in regards to this.

If anyone remembers that game it was brilliant in it's idea of marches and organization.

WHENEVER you marched you lost men as stragglers. Say you have 500 and you march a mile or so - you'd arrive with 485 maybe. Then if you rested for a turn the men would straggle back and you'd be back up to 500. In continuous battle and moving you'd lose men to casualties and others to straggling. Thus the regiment had 500 men on paper, 100 casualties, and 100 MIA, thus you were down to 300. After you pulled them out and rested the strength would go back to 400 in an hour or two.

At night it was really bad. If you moved at night with 500 you would quickly shed stragglers at such a rate as to make night movement almost impossible. Your men would also fatigue quickly and would be less effective the next day.

Why the HPS games never mirrored this is beyond me. It really made that game unique.

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Lt. Gen. C. N. Matthews
Pickett's Infantry Division, I Corps,
Army of Northern Virginia, CSA

Something I've noticed recently in a couple of games is that the night movement fatigue didn't assess during the night - but when the sun came up, suddenly units had fatigue. Hadn't seen that before...

I also liked the old SSI ACW games. These remind me of Avalon Hill's Gettysburg, where one thing I really liked about the system was taking casualties caused fatigue at a pretty fast rate. IIRC, they had a force march rule as well, but don't remember how it worked...

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Brigadier General Sean Turner
Union Reserves
The Bishop's Men

I think there are plenty of historical precedents for night movement, to the extent that having a house rule against night moves would not be realistic and would eliminate movements which could and should be made. Cases in point, the night march of just about the entire Army of the Potomac on the night of 7-8 May, the concealed movement of Hancock's Corps to positions from which to assault the Mule Shoe, movement of Fifth and Sixth Corps to Myers Hill to outflank Lee at Spotsylvania. That 2 out of 3 turned into debacles due to exhaustion is well known, but Grant thought the gamble was worth the risk.
If the fatigue penalties are working, they are more than enough to warrant NOT making night moves. The only night rules I like to see used is that there be no intentional combat at night.
Please let me know specifically if any games are not assessing the night time penalties, and I will kick it upstairs.
Happy St Pats!
"Faugh a ballagh!"
J Ferry
2lt 2/20th Corps

Perhaps a house rule is called for where units could only move at night if they are in column and start the night turn on or adjacent to a road/trail.

I also agree with some sort of rule severely limiting any form of night combat.

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Lt Col Chuck Paul
2/2/VI
Army of the Shenandoah

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Lt. Gen. C. N. Matthews
Pickett's Infantry Division, I Corps,
Army of Northern Virginia, CSA

I agree with John that there were many instances of night movement in the Civil War. I think that a 50 fatigue penalty for movement at night and a 300 fatigue penalty for melee at night are adequate. What I have never understood, although I believe it has been with the system since the inception of Talonsoft, is the night morale penalty. It squares with no historical data that I know of.

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MG Mike Mihalik
Forrest's Cavalry Corps
AoWest/CSA