American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

NOTE: If you haven’t already read the post Total Casualties in the ACW series games – Thesis, you might want to do that, as it provides background for this discussion.

One of the happiest gaming moments in my life was in 1997, when I watched Heth’s attack on Wadsworth evaporate as the Rebel’s routed en mass back across Willoughby Run in the opening fight in BG2: Gettysburg. I felt I had finally found a game that did a pretty good job of modeling morale and the unpredictable nature of human behavior in the crucible of combat.

Since then, as the Battleground system morphed into the Campaign system I am not convinced the games have moved in the right direction. In the beginning (not to sound too Biblical), when strength points were 25 men and a unit either took 0 losses or 25 losses, there was either a 0% chance of making a morale check (0 casualties) or 100% chance of making a morale check (25+ casualties). To be honest, I thought this system worked very well.

The Campaign system increased the fidelity for unit strength, and hence casualties, to individual men. A new system had to be developed to determine when a morale check had to be made. Leaving it as it was (ie 24 casualties resulted in 0% morale check, where 25 casualties resulted in 100% morale check) was surely going to bring complaints from players. It is my opinion that the current method (# of casualties/# of casualties +25), results in far too few morale checks, at least in comparison to how the system originally worked.

The current system generates a morale check only 50% of the time at 25 casualties, which is a substantial decrease from 100% of the time in the original Battleground system. To even get to an 80% chance of a morale check, a unit has to take 100 casualties. IMHO, that’s too high of a bar.

I think that it should be a low rate of morale checks for low casualties, just like the current system. But the current curve increases too slowly and tapers off above 25 casualties, instead of increasing rapidly towards 100%.

I would propose ditching the current formula and just going with something like this.
1 casualty=3% morale check (just about what it is now)
5 casualties= 10% morale check
10 casualties= 30% morale check
15 casualties= 50% morale check
20 casualties= 66% morale check
25 casualties= 80% morale check
30+ casualties= 99% morale check.
(NOTE: In between the above numbers the chance should increase in a mostly linear fashion, eg 17 casualties would drive a 57% chance of making a morale check.)

More morale checks mean less fighting overall, or less effective fighting, as more units get disrupted throughout the fighting. Less fighting overall will bring the overall casualties down. However, increased morale checks should increase the dynamic nature of the battle, with attacks either routing the defender or the attacker falling back after a historically accurate amount of time (ie not 3 hours of toe-to-toe fighting).

I suspect this will be an unpopular opinion, since the Rout Limiting optional rules seems popular and the Flank Morale Modifier works to make the center of a line stronger, when IMHO it should work to make the flank weaker (ie a -1 morale penalty to the unit hanging on the end of the line, rather than a +1 morale bonus for those units in the middle of the line).

None the less, I look forward to hearing what people think, as well as getting any insights from those who may have been in the room when decisions were made regarding the current morale check calculations.

Lt Col Matt Clausen
1st Brigade
3d Division
V Corps
Army of the Potomac

Maybe the number of casualties is not what should be used. In reality a loss of 5 personnel would have different effects on a 50 man unit versus a 500 man unit and that difference should be reflected in the chances of a morale check. A percentage of strength lost would be more accurate.

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Gen Ned Simms
2/XVI Corps/AotT
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00