American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

I have been in the club a few years now and have seen a lot of different play. I'm sure most experienced players often save the turn they are playing in PBM games so if they make a stupid mistake in movement they can go back and correct it, I confess to doing this myself to a degree, and of course you can tell when this is taken to an unethical degree when some one never loses an melee for instance. None of this bothers me too much I take it as part of the play and if you play a good game these things can be overcome. However I have noticed in a least a couple players they seem to always get hits causing way above the expected amount of damage its like they are supermen. It's as if they have a way of changing the play balance advantage during their turn. I check the play balance in setting even during their reply and it is always set at even. What's up? Of course if it's an individual you just avoid playing this club member. But I love to play team games what about when your team keeps getting hit by one of the commanders on the other side who seem to have a super corps? Given all the hours and long time put into team games this can be very discouraging. The other members of the opponents team don't see this because they don't see the replays and the amount of damage caused by their team mates fire during reply, they just think he is a great player!
I do understand about units with superior quality and other fire modifiers, Maybe this is sour grapes for inferior play on my part. Has any one else had these experiences? Is their a way to cheat like this with a patch or something and if so is their a way to find out if an opponent is doing so. Of course the thought that some one would bother to cheat like this in the club boggles the mind. If true, what a hollow victory they get.

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Lieutenant General Ernie Fantini

Ernie,

This is a bit of a concern to me as the CSA CoA & also a Club administrator. I expect the officers of the CSA to always conduct themselves in good manner and not to manipulate the games, which sadly, yes, there are ways to do it.

I will send you an email on this as soon as I am done posting here. If you don't see it for some reason let me know.

Thanks!

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General Scott Ludwig
Ludwig's Light Division
Isgro's Corps
Army of Northern Virginia (ANV)

I have played these games for years and have noticed the same thing that Ernie has. I thought it was me missing something and being stupid by leaving myself open to my opponents fire. Now I see that you say this can be done It would be nice to know how, but I suppose by telling everyone it may increase the use of such actions.

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General
Frank (Old Banshee) Mullins,
2nd Brigade, 1st Division, XVI Corps.
Army of the Tennessee.

As I don't want to talk about how the game can be manipulated, and it can, I would like to mention one thing that some may not know. If you say that you cannot achieve the same hitting power as another, have you considered the difference in single unit firing and stacked unit firing? In theory, firing one unit at a time and stack firing should equal about the same result, but I always firing as a stack as I like to save time and see how many I can kill in a single shot.

Just a thought!

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Brigadier General Richard Walker
II Corps, 4th Division, 6th Brigade
Army of Tennessee
(JTS/WDS Scenario Designer)

I heard their was a paper on the effects of single fire and stack fire to the effect that firing guns one at a time was better. Dose any one know about this?

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Lieutenant General Ernie Fantini

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=18423&hilit=stack+firing&start=45

Or just search for "stack firing". There are other threads.

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General Ernie Sands
President ACWGC -Sept 2015- Dec 2020
7th Brigade, 1st Division, XVI Corps, AoT
ACWGC Records Site Admin

"If you do not know where you are going, any road will take you there."

That is also a reason why I prefer the phased gameplay, it gives the defender the hitting power he historically had.

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Lieutenant General Christian Hecht
Commander I Corps, Army of the Potomac

"Where to stop? I don't know. At Hell, I expect."

In the game individual fire usually results in higher casualties than stack fire. It has been a long time since I saw a full evaluation of the two means of firing so I can give the actual numbers. It basically has to do with how the game creates a minimum and maximum kill numbers and generates the random casualty number. It has mostly to do with the minimum number. It can't be negative. So if a stack of units say five generates a 0-25 possible kill if fired as stack, the individual fire might cause more casualties because they might have individually 0-10 range. The reason being that the minimum got cut off at 0.

Here I am going to say "trust me" because I am to lazy to run all the math to prove it.

With large fire stack, large in that they produce fire ranges of say 100-200 range it statistically doesn't matter but my random rolls then to be snake eyes so I usually fire individually anyway to average out the bad luck.

There is one big exception. Artillery. Because when you fire at artillery it is all or nothing, you either hit or miss entirely, you want to maximize the fire against it for each roll of the die.

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

I played a guy a few years ago in this club who was always killing at least 1 one of my guns with almost every shot of his artillery. By turn 10 he had 27 gun kills to my 4. It turns out he was altering the .PDT file on his side. He was caught in another club and asked to leave. If the results are consistently well above what they aught to be then there may be some file altering going on. I just stay away from guys like that.

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MG Ed Blackburn
2nd Corps, 1st Division, 6th Brigade
AoT

To be clear, from the Club Leadership's position, anytime you have concerns about someone committing such actions, you have the right to discreetly have it looked into by the administrators and if need be & there is a desire by you, actions can be taken. If you don't wish to do so, the best course of action is to simply & politely decline battle with the person again. The person will either correct their ways or they will go play games elsewhere.

As the leader of the CSA, I have a zero (0) tolerance policy for any of the officers in the CSA manipulating game files. If you are caught doing so & it is proven, you're out of the Club. It is hard enough for many of us (myself included) to be able to master the games, without being taken advantage of in this way. I expect all CSA Officers to conduct themselves as proper gentlemen & as the pinnacle of honesty & fair gamesmanship in the Club. The fact that a Union officer started this conversation and another former one commented on a similar experience makes me a bit angry that there are folks in the CSA ranks who do this. I am aware of a few names out there & believe me, you're being watched.

Just play the games for fun, that's what it is all about!

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General Scott Ludwig
Ludwig's Light Division
Isgro's Corps
Army of Northern Virginia (ANV)