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GShock -> AAR: Coming Fury, a self-learning / explanatory AAR (6/3/2008 10:06:02 PM)
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All right here we go,
First of all i wanted to apologize for the single VID produced. For an unknown reason, Fraps didn't wanna know about making more than one. I restarted it, but it didn't do the trick. Unfortunately, i can't also restart the game, else rjh will be notified i loaded his save-game twice and that's an anti-cheating safety in the PBEM game. [:)]
I'm also sorry to inform you, the max filesize for RapidShare is 100mb, so the Vids will be limited to <100MB filesize. You'll have to pause the vid and read the forum where I point out the exact min/sec the text refers to.
Follow the AAR looking at the vid/pix description to understand how WBTS works and how our game develops. Those of you who thought it a simplified version of a CW game, will be surprised at reading where the real difficulty is.
Vid: http://rapidshare.com/files/119826545/wbts_2008-06-03_18-22-14-74.avi.html
Let's start by saying i did not make use of the replay feature to have a look of what happened in the first turn. Why? I just forgot...so you don't see it, but neither did I. We do know what happened anyway: The beginning of the vid shows the "event log" i called.
The log shows how many supplies were used by the troops along with all information regarding territory loss/capture. (00:09)
Notice that Norfolk was bombarded by the ships and one of my Hvy Arty has been damaged and sent to "repair" along with one of the Union ships.
The Union activated some leaders (I will come back later on this detail) and finally (00:13)Semmes has converted his raider into a blockade runner. The final part of the event log, shows the Union "trade & supply" achievements. I obviously can't block the Union ports so, in order to hurt the Union economy, i must build raiders. Do not underestimate the "Raider factor" as more important than supplies are the political points lost by Lincoln if he can't keep the sea trade safe. I have good chances to do better next month, but with the time passing the Union Naval power will become extreme and raider successes will decrease.
(00:19)
Let's have a look at Johnston's forces in Winchester now. His stars tell us he's a **** General...big rank and he's well deservedly an Army Commander (The Grey box in which the stars are). The left tooltip shows, the information on the region. Most notably, the fact that Winchester is worth 22PP. Those 2 Resource Points (RP) will be delivered via rail to the factories just like in AWD. 1 factory + 1 RP = 1 Production point (pp) to spend on the war effort (the building phase later on).
Let's see Johnston's forces. Contrary to other CW games, the AC can't be stacked with units. His Army is composed by the other leaders and the stacked troops. Have a look at Smith (** general). Smith is stacked with 2 MIL. He has been spotted (the binoculars), he has initiative (the red arrow) and his stack has 5 Movement points (MP) while he's using 2 of his 10 Command points (CP). You can see that looking at the 8/10 text on the top left corner of his stack. Smith's leader type is INFANTRY.
Look closely to his stats now: 3-?-4. Combat Ratings go from 0 to 4 with 4 being the best and smith is one of the best INF leaders i have with 4. He attacks with 3 but defends with "?". This means i have no clue of how he is at defending until he's committed in defense. Then and only then I might find out and know. (This is an optional setting...actually 2 settings. The stats are semi-random & hidden)
JEB goes to Raid Grafton...it's cut from the VID but his raid steals and destroys Union supplies up to Gettysburgh.
Let's jump to the SS now: http://rapidshare.com/files/119853334/AAR.zip.html
(1)
The grey regions have been raided by Jeb's cavalry unit whose path i highlighted with a red arrow. A close look to Frederick shows its rail line is now damaged. This means the Union must repair it or use it as it is at 50% capacity. Strategic moves are terribly important because troops do not use up supply on the move and arrive to the front immediately. You can imagine right now then, how important are my transports and what would happen (and what will happen) if a link is broken and/or the Mississipi is lost.
I must use Cavalry raids to damage the Union infrastructures to delay the amassing of their troops on the front.
Frederick holds Meigs' group. Meigs has built a fort, shown on map, which is good choice since you can see by the "^" icon he's an administrative leader (and a very good one) and commands no less than 5 INF units. Here's another cherry: This is what i see, and what the red number by the leader's icon on map shows, but there's a ghost icon. This means the region holds more troops than i know and that if these troops attack me they will be heavily advantaged thanks to the surprise factor. More: There's no way to know how many CP Meigs is using at the moment. (more on this later)
Should i decide to attack, and by miracle win, you can see Meigs and whoever else is with him would retreat to Washington. Why? There's a depot (whose icon is pointed by the green arrow)...therefore here's another strategy tip: build depots to control your retreat point in case of defeat.
(1b)
this SS shows the detailed combat report screen. That was a risky move by the Union but even if we kept the yards at Norfolk, the Union can replace that Cruiser pretty fast while every gun we lose or have damaged is a sore loss...
(1c)
CSA's resources are very tight and I am sure they will go even tighter than that. The losses we've sustained at the beginning of the war, will cost us 4 PP this turn and 3 PP next turn. When a damaged unit is sent to repair (and it is true for combat troops too), we also need to move it back where needed. And it might not be possible in the future for the region might be lost or the rail lines /transport lines might be unavailable.
(2)
Let's focus on our strategy. Smith looks pretty good with that 4 INF rating...i want to know more as he could be the man. This ss shows you all you need to know about this leader.
Attack:3
Defense: ?
Infantry: 4
Cavalry: 1
Artillery:3
Naval:1
Political:2
Administrative: ?
Infantry Training: 4 (yes, he's da man!)
Cavalry Training: ?
I instantly unstack all MIL from the other leaders to attach them to Smith. We will relinquish the initiative because attaching-unattaching has its costs, but I didn't want to attack anyway. Smith will therefore train all the possible MIL units being there and coming from other regions up to the maximum possible. Putting the best leader at the job is one of the most challenging aspects of this game.
(3)
It's time to build some forts in the hot areas. The best selection for a fort builder is an Engineer leader, and second best, an administrative leader. The leader page allows me to filter out all other leader types, all Union Leaders, all inactive leaders (off the map) and go right there where i need to look at.
Note that since i selected Samuel (mistakenly) he's highlighted in red on the bottom of the page. This would allow me to compare his stats (combat is on left tab and administrative on the right tab) with the ones of the leader i'm looking for. Handy, eh? [:)]
Needless to say Administrative leaders have either unknown or poor combat ratings...If you're wondering what the # means, it's the CP. Cooper, the old man, can attach up to 16 troops...since he's got so many CP and a high rank, his appointment to Theater Commander must not be a coincidence... (The light grey ribbon). It's likely that Cooper has many chances to train, regardless of his rating, so I won't move him from Richmond...this leaves me with 2 leaders to build my forts: Jordan and Lawton. Jordan goes to Manassas and builds a Fort. Now it's time to explain what is the "conversion" and what is the "activation".
(4)
The ragged band in Manassas is now helped by the presence of a fort. However, this will not stop the Union, not for long, unless i can devise some stratagem to keep them busy, and as i mentioned before, Cavalry is the tool I will employ. Every turn, the player has the ability to convert MIL or INF into mounted (MTD) units. Then it's up to the CTR rating of the CAV leader to train them into regular CAV units in the future. For the moment, i convert a MIL into MTD and since Bonham was stacked with INF and MIL, I unstack these troops and pick a MIL to make it a MTD unit. This MTD unit can both Scout/Raid enemy regions and act as defense against the same actions taken by the Union. The difficult task of CSA is to lead the Union into military defeat and horse troopers will screen my troops making it harder for the Union to know how many we are in Manassas (scouting mission) while at the same time prevent the Union from raiding the region and destroy/capture my supplies and rail (raiding). If the Union attacks, my unspotted units could give me a sounding victory.
Ok let's attach this MTD unit to Bonham now...d'oh, i Can't. Why is that so? Because unstacking units (the MIL Bonham had) from a leader uses his CP. The player has to plan in advance troop stacking/unstacking and can't stack/unstack freely and then attack in the same turn. This is an optional rule. Do not worry about the MTD training. Beuregard will see to that, though most certainly he's not as good as Bonham at the job.
(4b)
Whenever a unit enters enemy territory, the player is prompted with a choice represented by those buttons, in order being:
Overrun: if your combat factors (and not the numbers!)exceed the enemy by 6 to 1 you may attack the territory with no combat phase for an instant victory. Failing to achieve these odds forces you either to abort the attack or engage in prolonged combat, which triggers a reaction phase where the defender may call for reinforcements.
Scout: Try to assess the real combat units and leaders present in a region (CAV/MTD only)
Raid: Try to disrupt supply lines, can lead to supply capture and destruction along with infrastructure damage (rail/factory).
Bombard: Bomb the enemy artillery (Ships only) in preparation for a land attack.
(5)
What is activation instead? Every turn the player has the ability to call a new Leader on the map. Some leaders will automatically enter war, be promoted, get sick etc, others can be called. The procedure is simple. Click on CAV/MTD or CAV leader to call for a CAV leader. The same you can do with INF and ARTY. Engineers and Administrators, since there's no such troop type, can only be activated by selecting a same-type leader. There's a % assigned to each leader so you do not know who will be activated but you have some sort of control on where he will spawn because leaders can either spawn in the East or in the West (ignore the units you see on the map in this SS, they come from my saved game with the AI not the match with rjh but i took this SS to show you how the activation works).
(6)
Time to look at the West. The union will come hard from Cairo IL and we'd better occupy Humbolt and build a fort there. We will be forced to retreat sooner or later but the longer we delay them, the better. The other ADM leader, Lawton, goes to Humbolt to build the fort. At the same time, a MIL unit is converted to MTD and assigned to Wade. We must prevent the Union Scouts to see our troops and get ready to raid Paducah when they come and they will come there!
(7)
The situation in the deep West is safe for the moment, however, knowing TX is a weak spot and that it's only a matter of time before they come, i moved 1 MIL from Austin to Corpus Christi. Next turn i will call for a leader to man it (ignore the Tooltip infos, my mouse was hovering on the sea-zones).
The Union doesn't have enough transports (i hope!) to mount an amphibious assault and send enough troops to build a bridgehead without being immediately thrown back to the sea. Furthenmore, the leader page shows the probabilities of an initiative gain and they look sluggish and unprepared. It is important to bring a point down now: The Union can ill afford to lose battles. Its leaders need to improve and everytime they fight they take a serious risk for the victory lies in political points and a stupid defeat now could prove fatal to Lincoln for his re-election chances later on.
The goal of CSA is survival, not conquest and the SS i will show you later will talk better than any speech.
(8)
The main goal of the Union is VA, which holds several key spots, including our capital. All regions here are highly productive, high PP values, high mobility (rails) and, for the moment appearing to be safe. Ft Monroe is an impossible target for me, but you can see it's only 1 region away from Richmond. The more the pressure comes, the harder it will be to defend the rest of our territory. Let's introduce the concept of mobile defense which, especially at the beginning where the trench warfare is not used much, is critical for CSA.
Gatlin not only is a great training leader but is also able to intervene in support in all the regions i marked with an arrow. More of these leaders will be called and made ready to support as the game goes on and this is one of the things I'll need a good activation procedure for.
Let's combine this concept with the "spotted" concept we have seen earlier and you'll see why (highlighted by the green arrow) I moved Smith back from the front. Next turn his forces will be unspotted and if the union attacks the front line and Smith can commit them in time, they might be a key factor.
(9)
What chances does the CSA have in this game? None. There's no way to achieve a military victory. simple as that. Forget about taking Washington, our goal is clear: we must struggle to survive as a confederation of seceding states. Our only chance to do so is to cause a political loss of power for the federals so that the peace talks may come in. Nothing to add, Lee is right...it's impossible to defend everywhere and with so little but if we punch the Union on the field, Lincoln will be forced to the Peace treaty...if we can't do that, we will capitulate sooner or later.
Ok, i presume i need to reboot now to see why Fraps is not recording Vids anymore and i couldn't bc of the AAR... It must have been caused an alt-tab swapping. I hope this AAR helped you understand a little better the concepts behind WBTS.
Final notes:
Rjh you're not allowed to see this AAR! [:'(]
I like the new look of rapidshare.com website... [:)]
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