Beta AAR: A house divided -Comments thread

[Darkrenown]

Found here.

I'll only be covering the ACW here, not the entire game.

 

[Darkrenown]

It's probably as you now have V2 registered. I don't really mind wher eyou post, although it's probably easier to keep it in one place.

 

[Darkrenown]

Yeah remember to lock the AAR after you update it.

By the way- if you pick the dixie option, does it change you to play as the south without having to reload?

Yes. Also guess who I choose

 

[Darkrenown]

Never!

 

[Darkrenown]

Probably where the POP's were located that made up the brigades.

Yeah. If you want to be a big cheat you could just recruit from the areas of your chosen side, but that doesn't give you much troops to fight MEX with.

 

[Darkrenown]

What makes the war trigger earlier?

Liberals taking over the UH and high CON.

 

[Darkrenown]

Does that mean you will continue the AAR as long as the North is conquered, the South cores are taken or was that the end of the AAR

It's over. Love 'em and leave 'em, that's my motto!

 

[Darkrenown]

Things actually seemed to go opposite of history. In the AAR, the Union won the initial battles and then the Confederates turned it around and won. I think the main flaw of the AI here was sending its conscripted armies into battle too fast.

Couldn't it be my great skill?

 

[Darkrenown]

Of course not It's because the game is entirely broken You? Skill? You can't even make smooth borders

It's true, this was my first game

 

[Darkrenown]

Did the civil war start with union troops in southern territory? That wouldn't make much sense since the standing armies that did exist at the time were all state militia's except for a few tiny garrisons and armies of little importance. At the start of the war, troop divisions in enemy territory should be sent home.

You understand this was a game I started as the USA in 1836, right? As such I was free to build a standing army and to march them wheverever I liked. As it happened they were mostly in the south when the war started as I was keeping an eye on Mexico.

 

[Darkrenown]

The first battle shown was a battle for the province of Charleston.

Prize question for US History 101 students: What is the name of the fort that guards the port of Charleston, and what was its significance in the US Civil War?

Huh. That was actually entirely coincidental o

Just so I understand what happened, the US intervened in the Texan War of independence, and then smashed Mexico?

Yes.

Also, it wasn't that easy to win, people, there was 2 years of hard fighting. Since the war was early armies on both sides were quite small and it turned into more of a "decisive battles" war than the historical "national slugging match".

 

[Darkrenown]

Does the AI usually wait that long to mobilize reserves? And did the South ever mobilize theirs?

Didn't have one worth mentioning. I'd almost finished researching one of the techs that increases the size when the ACW struck, so the USA got it almost right away while the CSA didn't. Plus they have a lot larger population.

 

[Darkrenown]

USA didnt mobilize until after its capital fell?:wacko: That doesnt seem right

Their capital right on my border? In other words they mobilised right as their first province fell.

 

[Darkrenown]

Just a quick question for Darkrenown - When you were in the early stages of the game before, the Civil War, did you make an effort to recruit divisions mainly from the southern states? So that when war did come you would have the early advantage? I don't mean to accuse you of being gamey, so please don't take offense. It just seemed like the Union didn't have much of a standing, professional army when compared against your own.

Nope. In fact, I didn't plan to make this an AAR or play the CSA until the war started. I said something like "maybe I should do a ACW AAR" on IRC and Peekee suggested I go the CSA.

Anyway, in the first pic you can see I have 34 brigades out of a possible 35 and 15 defecedt to me when the war started. I lost 2 in the inital battles and the USA lost 3, so they were left with 16 to my 13.

I'm assuming the fact that the AI had a larger army and won the inital battles, plus I wasn't mobilised, was why it didnt mobilise right away. Someone said they should just mobilise on day1, but that doesn't really make sense, there's no point taking the economic hit if it seems like you don't need the extra troops.

 

[Darkrenown]

If you're looking at the first pic in the AAR the 12 really is their score. The 9 to the right of that indicates they are ranked 9th.

 

[Darkrenown]

How did you manage to increase your available/possible/supportable divisions so quickly? It looks like it went up about 175% in three years. Is this a function of your mobilization? Maybe a very high jingoism or military NF?

High military spending, Promote soldiers NF, and the Irish brigade decision turned 2-3 brigades worth of pops into soldiers too.

 

[Darkrenown]

Those states didn't side with the CSA in my game, so I had no cores there. I suppose I could have taken them, but I didn't really want to take the BB hit and I'd have needed to take more provinces for the war score. And yeah, my original war goal was Status Quo.

Seriously though. I'm just curious how the AI handled the war. Was his 30K conscript army at full ORG when they attacked Washington? Or were there other factors that caused their defeat? Perhaps leaders, terrain and/or a river crossing?

And how would you describe the overall military AI?

No, it wasn't at full org. The coloured box under an army shows its average org levels, and IIRC his was red or yellow when he attacked me. The AI probably shoud have pulled them back and let org levels regain more, although to be fair, he was only after my 9k stack, which would have lost that battle if I hadn't gathered up the other half of the army to join them in the battle. Mosby was a good leader too, I don't remember what the US leader was, but he wasn't as good. Overall the AI seems decent, about the same as in HttT.

 

[Darkrenown]

I would like to see more of the playing details in some of the AARs, like we did with OHGamer's and Singleton Mosby's. It's hard to say what really happened with just the "propaganda" history version, as someone put it.

Thing is, that takes so much longer. Some of us went for detail in the AARs, which means multiple updates per year, every year like OHgamer was going, while others did more of an overview of a game to show less detail over a longer period. Aside from just the personal time it takes, you also have to consider doing some actual testing and how much you can play before a new beta patch comes along.