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 Post subject: Gamesmanship?
PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 3:37 am 
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Joined: Tue Jul 31, 2007 1:48 am
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Location: United Kingdom
Opinions on this please Gentlemen, is my behaviour acceptable or not?

Playing as Union in a HPS Gettysburg scenario. I have 3 dismounted Cavalry Regiments moving into position to assault a single Reb Infantry Regiment (in line) defending a stream hexside. The Reb is disrupted and stacked with a leader. It has been under ranged fire for a number of turns to weaken and disrupt it. I go to move my 3 Regiments to a single hex for the melee (playing turn based with auto defensive fire on) but I have a total of 1009 men, 9 more than the 1000 man per hex limit. I cancel the melee and set the melee again and draw another volley of defensive fire, I do this a couple of times, each time drawing fire from the enemy unit. The net result is a further 9 casualties to me, meaning I am now able to fit all 3 units into the one hex and carry out the melee (successfully).

Am I cheating? Is there any way I can justify this as a realistic tactic? I've been very interested in the thread about embedded melee that has been on the forum lately. Just 'cos something is possible in the game engine, doesn't that make it acceptable. I'm not sure my opponent noticed and I haven't mentioned it yet. A couple of things have happened in this scenario that make me confused over the pro's & con's of turn and phase based play.

Capt. Jim Wilkes.
2nd Brigade, Cavalry Division, XX Corps.
AoC. U.S.A.


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PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 4:42 am 
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Hi, Captain,

I think it depends on whether you view these games more as games or more as an attempt to simulate the Civil War battle. If it is just a game and the object is to win, I don't have a problem with it. If the goal is to try to simulate the battle, that is a gamey tactic. With an imperfect game system, these are going to crop up. Another is limbering your artillery and sending them into the battleline on the last turn to draw infantry ADF. Any infantry fire directed at the artillery won't cost you any points. The best way to handle these things is make agreements with your opponent ahead of time.

MG Mike Mihalik
1/III/AoMiss/CSA


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PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 7:17 am 
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Mike, I normally agree with you but you can't realistically include everything in a pregame agreement that you might disagree with. Who would ever think of someone doing what the good Captain said that he did? And if you did think of it and include it in a five page list of things for me to agree to before a game, I would have to say "No thank you" and move on just because of the complexity of it. I have a game going now where I agreed to about two or three conditions and I hope that I remember them and don't violate his trust. If I had more than one game going where I had agreed to different conditions, I know that I would be in trouble.

This is where we all find that opponent that we click with, liking their style of play and their manner of conversation. I've run across hand fulls of them but every now and then I find the opponent that I would prefer to play only once in a lifetime (no, its not just the ones that whipped me from head to toe).

With the good Captain, some club members will take the attitude that a rule has been broken because in real life (150 years ago) no commander would send his troops forward just to get 9 of them killed, but others would say that if 9 men is all that made the difference then the commander would have left them behind to watch the camp or something anyway. You have to admit, the good Captain showed some ingenuity, but the question will always be - does his opponent agree with it? Only his opponent can answer that and if he didn't like it, then I would offer to replay the turn.


Lt Gen Ned Simms
1/1/VIII/AoS/USA
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.


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PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 9:33 am 
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Of course, in my defence, there is the consideration that each time you take fire and suffer casualties, you undergo a morale check. So my attacking units could have ended up getting disrupted. Also, I had enough movement points to get the 'offending' unit to the target hex anyway, I could have melee'd with just 2 units and taken the hex and then moved the last unit in. Because I'm English I do like a 'tidy' battlefield and I was just getting irritated with the problem of organising my stacks neatly!
I think the point of my question is really less to do with the cheating nature of the issue, more to do with the quirky aspects of turn based games.

My only other experience of anything like this is from some of the old BG scenarios. In the early war battles, some forces feature a lot of large Regiments where it is almost impossible to melee with more than 1 unit because the average strength is 525 men! A brigade made up of 4x600 man Regiments is a much different beast to one made up of 12x200 man Regiments? The nominal strengths are the same, but within the game system, real questions about realism arise...

Capt. Jim Wilkes.
2nd Brigade, Cavalry Division, XX Corps.
AoC. U.S.A.


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PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 1:31 pm 
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My personal view is never play Single Phase, it has endless exploits.

As to the particular problem you are using a minor "gamey" tactic to get around a monster of a "gamey" flaw, the fact that a regiment can't join a melee because it will exceed some artificial stacking limit. HPS should have handled it like most board games did. No matter how many regiments are sent in only 1000 count but you can still send the regiment in.

Wait until you see what happens when you accidentally overstack by recrewing an artillery battery you just retook. Took me a while to realize I had a 900 man stack not firing because they had become overstacked.[xx(]

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


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PostPosted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 2:08 am 
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<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Digglyda</i>
<br />Because I'm English I do like a 'tidy' battlefield and I was just getting irritated with the problem of organising my stacks neatly!<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I can relate to that Jim. Oh yes[:D]

Image
[url="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/a.r.barlow/acw/acw.htm"]General Antony Barlow[/url]
[url="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/a.r.barlow/aoc/Western_Theater.htm"]Commander, Western Theater, Union Army[/url]


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PostPosted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 2:09 am 
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<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Digglyda</i>
<br />Because I'm English I do like a 'tidy' battlefield and I was just getting irritated with the problem of organising my stacks neatly!<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I can relate to that Jim. Oh yes[:D]

Image
[url="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/a.r.barlow/acw/acw.htm"]General Antony Barlow[/url]
[url="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/a.r.barlow/aoc/Western_Theater.htm"]Commander, Western Theater, Union Army[/url]


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