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Berkut -> RE: Victory Conditions discussion (1/9/2007 8:12:04 PM)
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Thanks for the reply Erik, I appreciate your time.
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ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
Consider what the staff actually affects in-game:
Logistical Staff affects the use of supplies. With really bad logistical staff, you use more supplies. With a really good logistical staff, you use less.
NRBH, but is it that you use more, or is it that you get less? Or both?
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The generals themselves don't have a logistical/admin type of value, so this is modeled here. If you want "Commissary Banks", this will reflect that. It's also fair to say that Southern armies tended to get by with less than Northern armies.
The problem with this model is that it is not specific to a particular unit, it is systemic. ALL Northern containers have an intrinsically inferior logistical staff. That is simply inaccurate, and untrue. If anything the Northern staffs were slightly superior to the Southern, better organized, and more capable. The Southern armies "got by" with less because their logistical network sucked.
I am not exactly sure how the historical reality of the South having less supplies than the North results in them having incredibly good logistical staff ratings, and the North poor ones! One would presume that in fact the *opposite* would occur!
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In addition, get those containers attached to higher level containers for training. Finally, McClellan spent a lot of time training the Army early on. It's not a bad idea, so as the Union don't plan on winning major engagements with the South's "A Team" in the first year at least, unless you can get them into a situation where you are on the defensive and can accrue some of those bonuses to overcome your shortcomings.
I appreciate the detailed response, but this is pretty clearly another example of an attempt to design for effect failing.
The armies in question fought in 1863, not 1861. Both had all brigades in divisions, all divisions in Corps, all Corps in Armies, for a rather long time. Presumably training.
It is not that the Southern containers start out a little better (something I could at least understand, if not agree with) early in the war, and then the Union is forced to catch up. It is that after almost two years of sitting around training, the Union has a mediocre command staff, and the South a superb command staff. This means that it is effectively out of the Unions players hands - I intentionally tried to keep the Union Army out of direct combat to let it train, and the result was that I did train, but the Southern Army became the German General Staff at the outbreak of Barabarossa. I probably would have been better off throwing them into the fray in 1861.
And I was on the defensive, btw. So, I trained, I was on the defensive, and the result was that the Union Aramy was crushed. Not just beaten, but absolutely crushed.
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In all honesty, how else would you expect something like Antietam to really be possible? Most players, given that result in a game of this level, would cry foul. The Union had twice as many troops, knew the Confederate plan, etc.
I will counter with this: In all honesty, how was Gettysburg possible, with the South having vastly superior generals, vastly superior logistical expertise, and vastly superior mid-lower level leadership?
Answer: They didn't actually have all those things, at least not as late as 1863. In reality they had some excellent generals, some very good staffs, but some very bad ones, and overall poor logistical expertise.
And like I said in the thread, my beef isn't that the Union lost - I actually expected that due to the unit quality disparity. But I am ok with losing battles in Virginia, and long as I can bleed the South in the process. 4:1 though? That just amkes me think the combat model is not well done. Hell, even my opponenet was pissed off.
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Early on, it effectively buffs up the South. As the Union containers train up, it's more about that granularity. As far as providing more info on it, that's a good suggestion. I'm sorry if you were blindsided by the current implementation.
Again, this is *after* the training up period, not before. I imagine the problem is that the South starts out better, AND trains faster, meaning that as time goes on, they actually get a LOT better.
There should be some kind of bell curve for staff rating increases. I would actually claim that on a scale of 1-10, command staff should not be able to get much over 6 or so *without* being in combat. If the Southern containers start off around 4-6, and the North around 2-4, then both train at roughly the same speed, but capped for out of combat training at "fair" or so (you could maybe get better if it randomly started that way, to represent the rare exceptional staff at creation).
Further, even with combat, it should be progressivley hard to get the ratings up into the 8-10 range. And combat in some cases should decrease it, to represent lost experts, although again, it should almost never decrease the rating below average, since replacing average officers is not hard.
This would force a decision on the Northern player. If I fight early, I will probably lose. but I will accelerate the staff training, and get that valuable combat expeience I need to close the gap. If I do not fight early, I may close the gap eventually, but it will take a long time - are we willing to let the AotP sit around for a year and a half?
And btw, the South lost MORE men at Antietam than the North did, assuming you are referring to the battle between Mclellan and Lee in Spetember of 1862. No 4:1 casualty ratio there.
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I also don't think it's a bad idea in general to perhaps tweak both sides a bit more towards the middle, so that "Terrible" is less common for the Union and "Superb" less common for the South, but I wanted to get the point across that it's working as intended and that after playing many games with this turned on, it's not impossible at all to win as the Union and it's not impossible to lose as the South. I think right now you are drawing from too small a sample to really throw the baby out with the bath water.
My issue is not whether it is possible to win, it is whether the game makes any sense. And the North getting crushed with a loss ratio unmatched in the actual war in numbers in 1863 because the South has vastly superior "command staff" that they never had should not be possible. I will grant that it is a small sample to draw a conclusion from, but I cannot see how this could result in any other result, and the knowledge that this result *could* happen makes the game unplayable, IMO. I simply will not invest the time necessary at the risk of it being relatively asted when someething like this comes up.
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This rarely ever happens to me, even with the old disease rules. First of all, disease rarely hits the same place twice in a row and it generally only knocks off one disposition level at a time. If I'm going to send my army out to do combat, I generally pump up its supply to improve its disposition before marching out.
What if it isn't marching out, but staying at home trying to train its horrendously bad command staffs? :P
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I agree. One question I have though is how many vs. AI games did you play before starting your PBEM game? In any game with this many options, it's always good to have a few practice campaigns under your belt before deciding what options you do and don't like.
True enough, and I don't really play against the AI, since I think it is
1. Boring and uninteresting, and
2. Teaches you how to exploit the system, not how to play it.
But my opponenet was similarly newb, so we could make our mistakes together. But both of us doing the exact same thing should not result in radically different outcomes. If that is happening, then the game is no longer letting you play the game, it is shoe-horning you into an outcome. Making Southern containers arbitrarily train faster, a LOT faster, is ahistorical, and poor game design to boot. It is forcing an outcome, rather than setting up the parameteres and letting the play of the players determine the outcome. There is nothing instrinsic about the South that made their command staffs superior to the North.
In reality, 1 Southerner could not REALLY whip 5 Yankees...
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