American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

A new update is out.

The big change is that guns now have a maximum stacking limit of 12 guns per hex. A good improvement, although still not historically accurate.

The new User Manual shows how this was achieved:
"When a hex contains guns, then each gun counts as 80 men for the purpose of stacking. Thus, if the Max Stacking value is 1000 men, then a hex can contain no more than 12 guns. So, the total number of guns can vary from scenario to scenario."

Why 80 men? I suspect that was chosen to reflect that some scenarios have a stacking limit of 800 men (rather than 1,000). In those scenarios the maximum stacking would be 10 guns.

Other changes in this new version seem mainly concerned with AI issues.

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Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia

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Gen. Blake Strickler
Confederate General-in-Chief
El Presidente 2010 - 2012

I don't think that's quite right. I don't want to blab about it here so I'll send you a separate email.

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Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia

Sorry, there's a slight delay. The artillery change seems to work for stacking but not melees.

Further details to MDT later.

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Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia

I tested it out a bit more.

The stacking limit definitely works.

Artillery attacked in melees doesn't exactly align with Manual specifications. The Manual says:
"Each defending Artillery gun counts as one third Stacking Point (this depends on Parameter Data Strength Point setting but would normally work out to 8 men per gun)."
The Defend Force number (the guns) works in an odd way.
Example
I had three guns (a one-gun and a two-gun battery) in a hex. Game said: "Defend force of 19 (actual 60)". The 'actual' was correct as the Strength Point was 20 for that scenario. The Defend Force should have been 20 (one-third of 60) on an overall calculation.
If guns are considered individually and fractions are kept it should still be 20. If guns are considered individually and fractions are lost it should be 18 (3X6).
If guns are considered on a battery basis and fractions are kept it should again be 20.
The only way I could get to 19 was to consider guns on a battery basis and lose all fractions. Thus:
1/3 X 20 = 6.67;
1/3 X 40 = 13.33.
Lose all battery fractions so 6 + 13 = 19.
That seems to be the way it works as I tried it elsewhere.

I can't see that WDS explained why they changed the stacking limit to 12. It's a step in the right direction in the interests of better simulation but I'm sorry that they didn't go further and reduce the number to 8 (the maximum possible in real life, under ideal conditions).

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Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia

Having 8 as a "hard" number -- historically correct or not -- would work against the 6-gun Union batteries. The CSA could stack 8 with their organizationally smaller units. Don't know if this was part of WDS thinking, but to be "fair" would require reworking Union OOBs. Their chosen approach allows flexibility in design.

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MG Robert Frost

8 is the absolute maximum possible in 125 yards under ideal conditions in real life. A couple of Union opponents proposed a six-gun limit for our games which is more 'normal' (and was fine with me). Should we encounter an eight-gun battery (a rarity) they were just treated as the oddity they were and allowed to exist and operate as such.

Of course, guns occupied a lot more linear space when limbered. You're only going to get two complete limbered gun teams in each 125-yard stretch of road. Still, for some simplicity (and to aid playability) we would say eight, or six, guns per hex at all times.

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Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia

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Gen. Blake Strickler
Confederate General-in-Chief
El Presidente 2010 - 2012

_________________
Gen. Blake Strickler
Confederate General-in-Chief
El Presidente 2010 - 2012

LOL.
Anything that aids better simulation I am in favour of; anything that departs from it I oppose.

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Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia

I suggest we have had this discussion previously and it did not end well, as I recall. Therefore as Blake says, let us eat donuts instead, and drink coffee of course too, and let all be right in the world

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Karl McEntegart
Major General
Officer Commanding
Army of Tennessee





Make my enemy brave and strong, so that if defeated, I will not be ashamed.

The last time artillery stacking was raised as a topic was almost five years ago in June 2020 when JTS still owned the games (https://wargame.ch/board/acwgc/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=21705&hilit). It was raised by a Union Member who opinioned that: "It would seem that a good new optional rule would be to limit artillery in a stack to six-to-eight guns (to take into account 4 gun batteries) instead of allowing death stacks."
The discussion appears to have been conducted in a civil and informative manner.

I do agree that Americans should eat up and drink up as things like sugar, coffee and hamburgers are going to get more expensive there real soon.

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Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia

Hadn't thought of this before, but this change will adversely affect density as well!

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MG Mike Mihalik
Forrest's Cavalry Corps
AoWest/CSA

A good argument for using guns in sections instead of batteries.
Historically they were often deployed in this manner, a lot of times batteries would be divided to support several defensive positions.
Many of the ACW/Nappy miniature systems I play mount guns as 2 gun sections.

Players complain about too many units with 2 gun sections but it allows both sides to deploy the same number of guns in a hex regardless of battery size.

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Gen. Ken Miller



The McKeesport Union Guard

3/1/II
Chief of Staff
AotP