The game is seige after seige after seige. How about removing seiges of cities? If you successfully beseige all forts in a province the city should fall. Most cities fell without a seige.
In addition as I pointed out in a thread a month ago, most forts in the ACW fell in a very short time, Fort Henry 4 days, Fort Donelson about 2 weeks, the forts on the Mississippi didnt put up much of a fight. What full blown sieges actually took place in the ACW, Vicksburg, Memphis, Petersburg, cant think of any others off hand. Yet the game has a large number of insignificant forts that have to be sieged, and those historically didnt really put up much of a fight.
I guess it would depend on whether those forts were reinforced or not and if you had siege artillery.A fort has to be sieged but perhaps a city could be declared an "open city" although I don't know why the retreating force would want to give the buildings away. Perhaps besieging a city could cause destruction to its buildings whereas an open city would save them .
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Interesting - there were historical city sieges. Removing these would not make the game more historical. It's up to the CSA player if he wants to garrison a city or not and he may decide to make it an open city as was done in some cases historically. However, I think part of the problem is that the "Attack the Fort" option was breaking the siege. In the current beta update, this works fine and allows attacking garrisoned forts and cities directly rather than _having to_ besiege them.
Also, in the next update is the option to (from the first siege turn) choose your siege type, so that you don't have to always start with a turn of "normal siege". You can "attack the fort" right away, "encircle", "bombard", etc.
I don't see changing the way the game works in general on this as a good idea. Try the new options in the next patch and also keep in mind that the actual sieges in the Civil War ran the gamut from "over befor it started" to "is this World War I" and the game has to be able to model all of those. It's also important to note which were a matter of the historical "CSA player" abandoning a fort and which were a matter of a truly successful siege.
Regards,
- Erik
< Message edited by Erik Rutins -- 1/16/2007 9:15:54 PM >
Did the CSA seige Chattanooga? I guess you could call it a seige but the Union attacked out of Chattanooga and defeated the South if I recall.
Not very successfully. Bragg sent part of his army to attack Knoxville and tried to besiege Chattanooga with inferior numbers. It didn't take long for the Union to open up the supply lines.
Longstreet was twice sent to besiege cities containing superior numbers of union troops. When he failed people said he wasn't good at indepentent command. I'd like to have seen the guy who could do better.
The confederates pulled out before it became a seige.
Hmmm. Well, this raises the question: What is a siege?
If Atlanta was not a siege since the city was not completely encircled, hence the defenders could march away (that's what you are getting at, right?) then Petersburg was not a siege by that definition, either.
I think perhaps the game was meant to embrace a larger definition of what a siege was.
The confederates pulled out before it became a seige.
Hmmm. Well, this raises the question: What is a siege?
If Atlanta was not a siege since the city was not completely encircled, hence the defenders could march away (that's what you are getting at, right?) then Petersburg was not a siege by that definition, either.
I think perhaps the game was meant to embrace a larger definition of what a siege was.
I do think calling Petersburg a seige is borderline since it was never cut off from resupply but historians consider it one so I'm not going to argue. In the case of Atlanta Sherman never attacked the cities defences. I can't see calling it a seige if he never attacked or invested the city, Sherman fought a mobile campaign aimed at the confederate supply lines. I'm not sure what you're talking about in regards to the game. You cannot recreate the seige of Petersburg as it was with this game.
Chattanooga was a siege hence the famous cracker line. Although a strict definition of a siege would require the city to be surrounded, there are examples where that wasn't the case. A secondary definition calls a siege a "prolonged effort to gain or overcome" something.
_____________________________
quote:
Col Saito: "Don't speak to me of rules! This is war! It is not a game of cricket!"
You cannot recreate the seige of Petersburg as it was with this game.
Well, theoretically, you can have a situation where an army lingers in a province avoiding battle...provided a friendly fort is present. The odds of pulling this off is (roughly) 50% a turn.
You cannot recreate the seige of Petersburg as it was with this game.
Well, theoretically, you can have a situation where an army lingers in a province avoiding battle...provided a friendly fort is present. The odds of pulling this off is (roughly) 50% a turn.
That's not a siege though and I don't think the odds of it happening 18 turns in a row are very high.
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ORIGINAL: chris0827
The game is seige after seige after seige. How about removing seiges of cities? If you successfully beseige all forts in a province the city should fall. Most cities fell without a seige.
I agree that there are too many sieges also (too many long sieges). In an earlier post I belive that siege attackers should have there casualties reduced by at least 50% if not more.
Sieges aren't too long if you've properly equipped your forces. Build siege artillery units. Add engineers to some brigades. As was demonstrated by JChastain in our PBEM game, he was able to wipe out Fort Donelson in just a turn or two even though I had excellent artillery and defensive attributes, since he evidently put together a force that was filled with such units.
A point others may miss as well, assuming the North is given its historical advantages sieges will act to prevent a simply walk over of the South, as well as the early walk over of Maryland for the North.
As was pointed out, you need artillery and troops with the Engineer trait. Build those and most sieges wont last long at all, even under the current rules, flaws and all.
In the beginning the Southern troops are better than the Northern troops, the forts in Annapolis and along the Potomoc ensure the South cant "get lucky" early and take those two areas because of it.
I wonder what the rationale is for some of the fortifications, particularly the one south of Nashville and the three in Fredericksburg (wouldn't two at most be more accurate?). There also seem to be an awful lot along the Mississippi, whereas in the real war, Vicksburg was about the only significant fortification between Memphis and New Orleans.
I also disagree with having to besiege every city. Playing against the AI, I have to besiege every city in the South. If an artillery piece (whatever amount of artillery that is supposed to represent) and a few brigades were sufficient to hold up an army for weeks, then places like Nashville would not have been immediately abandoned or walked-into like New Orleans.
There also seem to be two many level 3-fortifications. Arguably, Vicksburg, Richmond, Atlanta, and a few coastal forts were the only places with extensive, formidable defenses.
Having said all that, I am certainly willing to wait for the next patch and withhold suggestions until we all see how those changes work out.
We considered adding this as a game option -- it would make the Basic Game even easier to play; as it is now, sieges are one of the trickiest things to understand in the Basic rules.
It is possible to besiege forts in a single turn using the "Attack" option and fighting the fort in detailed combat. For the next update, we've even allowed players to do this on the first turn of the siege, so that sieges can be resolved even faster if you're willing to fight them out. I know this doesn't help for PBEM, but we do have the "faster sieges" game option, and maybe could add an even faster option, or else move the baseline up. Also, sieges do go much faster with a few additional siege artillery or gunboats, and engineers.
I have found that, with two seige brigades, armed with heavy cannons, plus 4-6 brigades with engineers, it still takes a number of turns to reduce a fort. I give an army only two seige brigades because I need to move in several directions simultaneously -- down and perhaps up the Mississippi, to Chattanooga and then to Knoxville and to Atlanta, not to mention the formidable Virginia defenses and possible coastal attacks. Seige brigades are expensive and slow to build, so I find it hard to build more than a half dozen or so total. Of course, maybe I should just make seige units a higher and earlier priority.
And, to be honest, I have not tried the "attack" option. I just assumed that it would cause an outrageous level of casualties, since even a normal seige tended to do this. I will try it and see how it goes.
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