American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

In the HPS series how many casualties does a unit have to take before it is forced to do a moral check? Is it as low as "1" man or "10" men? I have always wondered. In the Battleground series with increments of "25" men it was logical to understand, but with single man casualties this isn't clear to me.


BG. Collins
III/I/2nd Br.
Army of Mississippi

Unless I read it wrong, any casualty can cause a morale check. The formula, if I remember correctly, is x/x+25. So if a unit suffers 25 casualties it would be 25/25+25 or a 50% chance of a morale check. One casualty would be 1/1+25, or a little less than a 4% chance. If you lose a melee, automatic morale check. I imagine the casualties are cumulative. If I am wrong, someone please correct me.

MG Mike Mihalik
1/III/AoMiss/CSA

<font color="beige"><b>BG Collins,

One casualty will do it, a fatigue loss to a unit with a fatigue level of 900 will also take a morale check.
There are multiple plus and minus modifiers for the chances of disruption or routing.

An "A" rated unit with an attached leader should pass with flying colors.

An "F" rated unit, out of ammo, fired on in enfilade, without a leader and with a high level of fatigue is probably going to fail the morale check.

Take a look in the users manual located in the game folder (it's listed as "user") for more info.</b></font id="beige">

<center><font color="blue"><b>Maj.Gen. R.A.Weir</b></font id="blue">
<font color="yellow">THE CALVERT LINE</font id="yellow">

<b>First--III--AoA CSA</b></center>

For my understanding, General Mihalik is correct. The check is not automatically triggered; but there is no minimum level either; the chance for a check increases with the percentage of casualties taken.

Gen. Walter, USA
<i>The Blue Blitz</i>
3/2/VIII AoS

Robert: I can't find this folder called "user" you are describing.

In the Windows startup menu folder there is a shortcut to "Users Manual". You then click on "Main Features" and select "Combat Results" to find this section. You can also access the user manual in the game by pressing the F1 key and selecting "Civil War Battles".

Lt. General Dirk Gross
XIV Corps/AoC

<font color="beige"><b>Gilbert,

I found it by opening the game folder (HPS Shiloh was the one I looked in) on my hard drive, my folders view alphabetically so it's at the bottom, a round icon with a "?" mark named "user"</b></font id="beige">

<center><font color="blue"><b>Maj.Gen. R.A.Weir</b></font id="blue">
<font color="yellow">THE CALVERT LINE</font id="yellow">

<b>First--III--AoA CSA</b></center>

HPS User's Manual is also in the CSA Reference Library,
dark blue books.

Gen. J. Cuneo, CSA
Army of Alabama, Commanding


"I have seen the faces of men, who had dared death so often, it lost its' terror." -J.S. Mosby

In the install folder, usually named "Campaign xxx" there is a file "user.doc" which is in Word format and usually more complete and easier to read. But the basic rule used is:

For Fire combat the game determines whether a morale check will be made on a unit by the formula x/(x+25) where x is the total number of casualties. When you see a dialog box that say something like "5 units out of 10 checked were disrupted" the 10 is referring only to the ones that were selected first by the formula. The actual number of units that were potentially eligiable for the morale check was much higher but not reported. Once a unit is selected for a morale check the normal morale check rules are applied.

The "x" is the total casualties at the time of the morale check function but this time varies depending on what phase of the game you are in. For the attacker it occurs at the end of the non-phasing player's Defensive Fire phase. For the Defender or non-phasing player it occurs at the end of the turn I believe. For games being played in the non-phase or Turn mode I believe the check occurs when the casualties occur.


LG. Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
III Corps, AoM (CSA)

Man, I don't know where you guys are finding these .docs. I have seven different installations of the HPS Civil War series and not one has a folder called "user" nor one with a file with a .doc extension.

Does it all depend on the way you install it? I always have to look for rules in the help files once I'm inside the game and that is a nightmare to look up something specific.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by gcollins</i>
<br />Man, I don't know where you guys are finding these .docs. I have seven different installations of the HPS Civil War series and not one has a folder called "user" nor one with a file with a .doc extension.

Does it all depend on the way you install it? I always have to look for rules in the help files once I'm inside the game and that is a nightmare to look up something specific.

<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

ALL of these files are in the main FOLDER of every HPS game. There are .doc files and .hlp files in there.

In the later games, you might find PDF files, but so far only in the Panzer games.

If you do the TYPICAL install, you will find them in the main game folders. Also, make sure you download and install all THREE files for any updates, as there are frequently modifications to the help files.

<b><font color="gold">Ernie Sands
General, Commanding, Army of Ohio

ACWGC Cabinet member
</b></font id="gold">