Container Movement Rates (Full Version)

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MadMike -> Container Movement Rates (3/27/2007 4:25:03 AM)

Greetings gents!

Longtime lurker, 1st time poster on this forum.

WCS: I'm having a great (read frustrating) time playing and trying to master this incredibly deep game, well done!

My comment/question is in regards to the CSA AI's post-beta penchant for running sprints between James River and Paducah with large army-sized (110k+) formations with little or no cost and distressing regularity. If the transportation infrastructure and logistics of the day allowed this, why didn't the AoNV head off to relieve Vicksburg in a quick 3-4 month round-trip operation?

This issue has only really come to my attention post-beta, and I wondered if it had come to anyone else's attention.

My immediate reaction is to suggest that movement rates be additionally affected by container size, if not even by actual unit size. It would seem to be realistic to expect that a large army-sized formation would find it hard to keep pace with a more nimble corps-sized unit, and the same for a corps and a division.

If I recall correctly; the ACW consisted of many, many smaller engagements than large pitched battles ala Gettysburg. In fact, wasn't the ACW noted for having the most battles of any American war ever?

Possibly a simple 1-2-3 structure would suffice to reflect this dynamic, with Army units moving 1 province, Corps units moving up to 2, and Division units capable of up to 3 provinces. (this could all be affected by command, generals, supply, quality, disposition, terrain, and weather of course)

The drama and fluidity of the game would certainly be increased with the incentive to use smaller sized units for more rapid-tempo operations, while the big armies ground against each other in their wars of attrition.

How do the grognards on board feel about this idea?

Cheers,
MadMike



Gil R. -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/27/2007 4:36:44 AM)

It's in another thread, but this issue has come up, and of course you're right that the ANV shouldn't be heading west all the time. Eric's got a plan to make it so that both sides' largest armies must stay within a certain radius of their capitals, which would probably solve this. This and other changes to the AI will probably be in a new version of the beta-patch that will be released not "soon," but at whatever point comes right after "soon."



MadMike -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/27/2007 4:42:22 AM)

Thanks for the reply Gil, and I apologize for not posting in the original thread.

What's your feeling concerning the movement rates overall, beyond restricting certain size armies within a set radius of the capitals?



Gil R. -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/27/2007 5:04:07 AM)

I think they're about right. They rarely can go more than three provinces, and if you think of it, that's about right: a two-week turn with men averaging 20 miles a day would get them about 300 miles per turn. I've never thought this was a problem, and don't recall anyone raising the issue.




tevans6220 -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/27/2007 5:50:06 AM)

I wonder how feasible it is to keep the largest armies close to the capital. It all works great if your largest army happens to be in the east where Richmond and Washington is but what if your largest army is in the west? I suggest that the rule be that the largest eastern army be kept close to the capital and the largest western army be kept close to a major western city. You'll have the opposite effect if the largest army is in the west. The western army will move east to be close to the capital and the eastern army could still move west. By having cities in both theaters that armies must defend you prevent that.

It might be wise to even have a rule preventing movement in either direction as long as major enemy forces are in their vicinity. There's no way that the ANV should ever march west with the AOP in their front. Lee did send Longstreet's Corps west in 1863 but still had the ANV in position to counter any move by the AOP. Sherman never would have marched through Georgia and north if Hood's AOT had not been covered and destroyed as a fighting force. At no time was a front left completely uncovered. Maybe a rule should be implemented to reflect that. Something along the line of each major enemy force must be countered if at all possible.



Gil R. -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/27/2007 6:05:40 AM)

That's not too likely to happen -- the biggest armies start the game in VA/MD, and the AI would have trouble creating a larger army out west.



Ironclad -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/27/2007 4:31:49 PM)

I think there is an issue about movement through some mountainous terrain for armies or even corps. Despite the existing penalties the Union AI in Southern Steel seems to find it comparatively easy to reach Lynchburg from Abingdon via Knoxville or Kenawa. Admittedly its usually one province (sometimes two) at a time. Surely this route was never a runner for large forces in the real event.



MadMike -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/28/2007 12:20:45 AM)

The idea that large military formations traveling over dirt roads, with horse or mule drawn artillery and supply trains, could make a steady 20 miles per day for 14 straight days isn't realistic.

Even further; that this military formation could march, then maneouver in the face of the enemy, fight a battle lasting 1-7 days, and then continue on with the march and attain the same distance as if a battle hadn't taken place defies logic.

Jackson's famous "foot cavalry" of the Valley campaign sometimes covered up to 35 miles per day, but he never commanded more than 17k men, and it was not a sustained rate of travel.

Leading up to Gettysburg, Lee took 27 days (June 3-July 1) to cover the ground from Culpeper to Gettysburg. (roughly Shenandoah-Cumberland-York) In game terms that's 2 provinces of movement in 1/2 the time it took Lee and the AoV. The Federal forces took 18 days (June 13-July 1) to go from in front of Fredericksburg to Gettysburg. (roughly Annapolis-York)

This line of thought and research has led me to the conclusion that combat with a like-size force (greater than 2/3 your own, maybe) should seriously impact a formations ability to continue it's planned movement. The deployment for, and conduct of, a battle, not to mention it's aftermath of casualty and straggler collection, is not free in terms of time.



Drex -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/28/2007 1:24:19 AM)

Traveling by foot would be slower but by train the rates would stay the same?



MadMike -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/28/2007 3:02:16 AM)

Interesting question, Drex, I'm not sure why they couldn't stay the same.

I'm not familiar enough with the actual capabilities of ACW era railroad infrastructure to comment.

What do you think?



Drex -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/28/2007 3:10:28 AM)

deleted



Drex -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/28/2007 3:13:05 AM)

Leave the RR movement as is but decrease the movement by foot. I think RR troop movemnt worked fairly well back then even if the infrastructure wasn't fully developed.



kentul -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/28/2007 3:48:17 AM)

please let us know if you folks are going to add something like limiting how far an army can go from its capital. thats a really dumb solution.



Erik Rutins -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/28/2007 4:00:18 AM)

No one's discussing that and any changes are only to affect the AI's behavior, not to limit human players.



kentul -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/28/2007 4:05:23 AM)

ok, well thats different and makes more sense.



MadMike -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/28/2007 3:33:17 PM)

Thanks for the clarification Erik, that had me a bit worried. [:)]

FoF is already the best strategic simulation of the ACW I've ever played in 20+ years of gaming, and it is on the razor's edge of being definitive, imho.

Have you had any thoughts on the general direction of this thread regarding strategic movement rates of various sizes of military formations, and the effect of enroute combat?

Thanks,
Mike




f15eagle -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/29/2007 6:12:40 PM)

It does seem a bit outside the constraints of the time allotted for a game turn to allow a large force to travel almost 300 miles and engage in multiple battles. If an army's (using that term for simplicity) primary tasking is to move to a given point, it should be set to avoid combat and should be forced to stop if it is engaged. Likewise, if an army's tasking is to engage the enemy at a certain location or capture a particular province, it should stop and fight when it successfully arrives, but shouldn't be allowed to bring all of its force to bear in defeating an interdicting force, then continue on to its destination. If two armies are ordered to engage two different provinces simultaneously, they shouldn't be allowed to simultaneously reinforce each other if they happen to be adjacent after they reach their destinations.

In terms of what is happening in the game, it appears to be in a little bit of danger of drifting towards a "killer stack" issue simply because there is no suitable counterbalance to the advantages of stuffing as many units as possible into the largest containers possible. I will confess that there are so many things to learn about the game that I might be overlooking something, however.

I suspect adapting the game's mechanics to accommodate a higher level of granularity in strategic movement and combat is a bit impractical at this point, but it might be something to consider for a later version, or even in another game system. In my opinion, it would be good to present a player with some interesting and difficult decisions when he encounters the reality of "no battle plan survives contact with enemy." For example, it might be necessary to detach a force to deal with enemy harassment of a flank or rear area, with the consequence being that you might not arrive at the planned engagement with enough force to win. It would also be nice to see a more detailed strategic reserve and reinforcement system.

I agree with the sentiments of everyone else that this is a wonderfully deep and challenging ACW game and commend you on the accomplishment. Few games succeed at bringing together so many elements at all of the levels that FoF does.



ericbabe -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/29/2007 7:23:40 PM)

Well, we could have a chance of cancelling any further movement orders for any military group that wins a battle.  We could make this a check against the group's Logistics Rating perhaps.



Kingnothinb -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/29/2007 8:49:28 PM)

In my current game the AI (CSA) has 3 army groups that travel together between Richmond and Memphis attacking my 3 seperate armies (1 in VA, 1 in Kentucky and 1 west of the Mississippi) as I advance south. It's an interesting strategy where they never lose a battle but are slowly losing ground as I replace my losses and creep south faster than the 3 armies can travel east-west. If it weren't for their massive garrisons in every city the AI's strategy wouldn't work at all though.



dude -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/29/2007 9:50:39 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: ericbabe

Well, we could have a chance of cancelling any further movement orders for any military group that wins a battle.  We could make this a check against the group's Logistics Rating perhaps.



I would make this check against the Group's Commading officer's Init rating... if no commanding officer then use the logisitics rating. It would put a little more emphisis on having a good Init Rated officer in charge.




MadMike -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/29/2007 10:28:19 PM)

Great post, f15eagle, well said.

Eric, is there no chance that any consideration would be given to the idea that smaller forces are more nimble and better able to move longer distances than larger ones?

The Init rating of CO's would be a very good rating to base the chance of moving further than the average comparably sized unit, which would pose some very interesting command challenges. (do you want your best Init rated general with your big army facing down the opponents big army, or do you want him running a lightning campaign with a corps or division elsewhere)

Thanks for WCS's commitment to communication with the fans, I'm confident that FoF will continue to improve in dramatic fashion.



Miserere -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/29/2007 10:42:10 PM)

There are already systems in place within the game that reduce the chance of a container making a successful march into a province (weather and time of year being a couple). What if this chance were further reduced proportional to the size of the container - larger containers have a reduced chance of completing the march? That would be an elegant, simple, and intuitive way of representing the relative slothfullness of large groups.

The only thing it doesn't do is address the obvious sidestep to that problem - breaking up the army into corps or even divisions prior to a march and ordering each separately to travel the same path. This would become a tedious but necessary excercise. So a further addition to the whole march routine would require some programming - the more containers that attempt to cross the same border in any given turn the more they interfere with each other's chance to actually carry out the maneuver. If it was actually more likely with a single container (e.g. the whole Army as a single container) than the same army broken up into individual containers, that would not only make sense (under a single command the movements can be better coordinated) but would be an incentive to keep units organized in as few containers as possible, which is good from a playability perspective.

On a related note, I know that commander Initiative influences the order in which containers march on the strategic map, but does it influence the *chance* of actually carrying out the march at all? It seems to me that most times my ordered marches are all carried out. You devs must have discussed the possibility of modeling a commander simply not carrying out an ordered march (McClellan's painful timidity in the Peninsular Campaign comes to mind, where it was very clear that Lincoln desperately wanted an offensive that McClellan simply was not willing to risk) - any thoughts on that? I know it's always risky to take control away from the player, as it can lead to excessive frustration, but the slothfullness of the Union campaign in the East seems to have been a major factor in the war.



MadMike -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/29/2007 11:16:10 PM)

Misere, good points and a very interesting train of thought.

My understanding is that every move by every container is influenced by the Init rating of it's commander, or the Command Staff rating of the container itself.

With that in mind, let's consider the positive and negative effects of the command decisions of the proposed force-size/movement rate relationship.

1) What I propose is not that larger size units have a lesser chance to successfully execute any particular movement between provinces, but that the size of the container limit it's maximum 1-turn operational range. The Init/Command Staff ratings, plus the terrain/weather factors, already sufficiently affect this factor.

2) Someone correct me if I'm wrong (no rulebook with me), but doesn't the size of the container a unit is in affect it's supply? If not, it might be interesting to add a supply efficiency bonus to units within a army container (representing a larger staff and logistics operation), with a degradation of supply efficiency within corps containers, and a further hit to division containers. (your supply service is hard pressed to run all over creation supplying individual division staff, when they could much more easily deliver the bulk of supplies to a corps or army level logistics staff and let them worry about it)

3) The Init system is a very efficient way to model the tendency for seperate units marching towards the same destination to get out of sync with each other when operating under different command staffs, with the result being that if the player decided he absolutely must have his entire 3-corps army in a province that is 2 away from their origination province, he would be forced to break it up into corps units (assuming a 2 province max for corps-sized units). The consequence would be that he is trusting his corps commanders to get their units to the destination on their own, and is assuming the risk that one or more may fail an Init check on the way and not make it.

4) This setup {assuming a 1(army)-2(corps)-3(division) max province movement rate} would lead to operational possibilities like a single well lead division able to flank the enemy army and raid rear areas, and the enemy having to dispatch similar-sized formations to run it down and stop it. (very realistic)

5) The Init system appears again in the ability of a high-Init commander being capable of leading his army unit in a more vigorous manner than a low-Init enemy corps commander, and pinning him down to fight at long odds because he couldn't get his corps out of the way fast enough.

6) With the addition of another general ability, like "force marching", you might consider that all the units led by that commander could exceed the province movement limitation by one province, while taking double or triple march attrition, ala Jackson and his "foot cavalry" during the Valley Campaign.

A question for Eric and the gang is whether any of this is possible within the current programming structure or is it simply impossible without breaking the whole game code?

Sorry for the long post, but I was really running with all the possibilities that this would open up for the players.

Cheers,
MadMike

Edit for clarification: when I use the division/corps/army designation for unit size, I'm not limiting the designation to the container unit only, rather I'm referencing the number of brigades within the container. So, an army container with 3-5 brigades is not restricted to army 1-province movement, but may move as nimbly as any division. In my mind, it is the number of individual brigades that must be coordinated that limits the largest units operational radius, not the size of the staff or the rank of the CG.



Gil R. -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/29/2007 11:24:32 PM)

quote:

A question for Eric and the gang is whether any of this is possible within the current programming structure or is it simply impossible without breaking the whole game code?


"The gang" will defer to Eric on this since, as he often likes to point out to us, we don't know how to program.

More than fifteen years ago I did make a pretty nifty database for pitching stats using BASICA, but he's rather unimpressed by that.



MadMike -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/31/2007 3:16:19 PM)

Thanks Gil, although we've gotten no answer to that question just yet.

The reason I ask is that if it is impossible, I'll stop being excited about the further strategic and operational challenges the idea could pose, and move on with my life. As it is, I'm constantly imagining the gameplay possibilities and wondering if it could even be modded for a trial run.

WCS, can I beta-test this idea with somebody? [&o] Please?

Cheers,
MadMike



Mike13z50 -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/31/2007 4:46:46 PM)

There is another thing that has troubled me about container movement, the inabillity to construct Cavalry Divisions or Corps. Shouldn't a container with only Cavalry brigades have the three province movement rate of cav, and for that matter have a better chance of actually moving, then a mixed or pure infantry force?



Drex -> RE: Container Movement Rates (3/31/2007 6:26:46 PM)

They could I suppose but they still have baggage trains.



ericbabe -> RE: Container Movement Rates (4/1/2007 4:52:06 PM)

The initiative rating of a military group is the average of the brigades in the group (averaged with the rate of the group itself) -- so a cavalry division will move at a higher initiative than an infantry division.

EDIT: And divisions with a lot of artillery should move slower than infantry divisions without.



ericbabe -> RE: Container Movement Rates (4/1/2007 4:57:32 PM)

Lowering the movement rates of larger groups wouldn't be too hard to do -- actually it's a simple mod to the AcwUnits file, and if I get a chance later today I'll rig up a version for you to test out.  The AI isn't optimized for this movement system and my guess is that it would be put at a disadvantage... it would still be thinking in terms of the old system.  It would not be easy to change this.  The AI may still be a challenge -- only testing can really tell.

Adding new abilities to generals is significantly more work -- though if we make an expansion pack for FOF this is something we will consider for that.



MadMike -> RE: Container Movement Rates (4/1/2007 7:52:33 PM)

Eric,

Wow, that is fantastic news!

My pbem opponent and I would love to try out this change, and I'll talk to him about doing an AAR for this mod-version, so you guys can see how the changes affect the game.

I'm very appreciative of the fact that you're open-minded enough to consider the idea, then even make the change for me, that is true fan-support.

BTW, FoF prompted me to buy CoG, I'm just not sure how I'm supposed to fit both into my family-work-game schedule. (what a terrible position to be in) Also, I wanted to let you know that FoF completely quenched my fire for a very commercially high-profile game that I was playing until my first look at the FoF manual. (Company of Heroes)

Thanks, WCS!



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