American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

Trying to figure out artillery is tough one to do. HPS/Tiller never really put much in writing about how it works. Other than when I fire artillery at enemy guns I always miss. When someone fires at me they hit. Even if I am entrenched. I am getting a little paranoid about this.

I have a better "feel" for how things work in Phased play. Also, it is easier to isolate cause and effect in Phased play. Turn play tried to merge movement and combat, and in my opinion very poorly, resulting in some odd behavior of the game. Apparently, fatigue is one of those things that didn't survive the translation in tact.

Originally fatigue was a result of casualties. A random modifier was applied to the actual casualties the Unit took to calculate the fatigue. For Fire combat it was 1 to 3 times the casualties. For melee combat the loser used a higher factor than the winner. For artillery a completely different method was used and I am not sure what it is. I know it has undergone changes because the artillery defense factor is now in the parameter table.

But the big difference between Phased and Turn play is fatigue recovery. In Phased play it takes place at the beginning of the Turn and only applies to Units that have not expended movement point, flagged as doing some action like breastworks or bridges, or having been fired on during the previous turn. Apparently Turn play lost this check or doesn't properly track it during the previous turn.

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General Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
AoT II/1/3 (CSA)

I think the fatigue set up is backwards. Getting from 700 to 500 should be a whole lot easier then getting from 100 to zero. Fatigue also represents the degrading of fighting ability by the loss of officers/leaders under the brigade leader level and those guys are not going to be replaced overnight by individuals who have been in that role for a while. In these battles, once a unit gets fatigue points it should never go back to zero.

Also, the night movement fatigue is WAY to low. In some of these battles a unit can march all night and be basically ready to fight pretty good the next day. I know when I spent an all nighter in school, come morning, I was pretty beat up and I hadn't been marching! In some of these three day battles a unit can go without sleep and be active for 60 hours straight and still stand up pretty good to combat! I know I know, some of the more learned here than me will point out an exception somewhere but the game engine should be built on "norms".


We've had a house rule where all units have to rest for 4 hours, probably typical when in proximity to the enemy (which I've actually run into resistance to! "No, we don't want the night fatigue optional rule at all!") but better to just make night movement (and entrenching for that matter) a much steeper FA accumilition.

Doug Burke

Edit: Just looked at GB. 8 hours of night with only 50 fatigue points per turn of night movement. That would be only 400 come dawn for a units that's presumably been up for 24 straight hours at that point. And we all know a 400 FA unit is still a very good fighting unit. The night FA is just another thing that needs to be fixed in this aging game engine.

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Other hobby: Running 30-40 miles per week. Several races a year from 5K to marathon. Boston marathon 2007.

John F., thanks for your recent post.

The strangest thing I have ever experienced in playing these games occurred in a Turn-based Gettysburg battle a number of years ago against Kennon. It was the night of July 1st and Wadsworth and Reynolds were stacked together behind the Union lines. They had survived the maelstrom of the first day, but they would not be so lucky against the vagaries of the game engine. At the stroke of midnight, they disappeared. They were not listed as killed, wounded or captured, simply vanished. I floated the Alien Abduction theme, but Kennon opined that we were more likely to find them in a bar back in Baltimore.

Well, they never returned, and neither did my confidence in the Turn-based game engine.

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MG Robert Frost

To the starting post, basically a unit is not allowed to do anything(moving for example) or anything done to it(fire upon it for example), if that is so the unit recovers fatigue at the start of the next turn.

Now I posted it already on a different thread but here the problem with recovery of fatigue in turn based gameplay is often enough said to be bugged and that may be true but it's a bit different:
The recovery of units in turn based gameplay WITH the optional rule "Optional Melee Resolution" seems to work not the way the manual describes it.
If you do nothing with a unit in this Melee Resolution it will recover fatigue even when it moved in the the same turn, almost like the Melee Resolution is regarded is another turn.
If you DO NOT use the optional rule it works like intended, you need one full turn of doing nothing and it will have recovered fatigue at the start of the next turn.

I just tested this in the 1st Bull Run scenario of Antietam.
With this optional rule I moved the units at night and instead of having a fatigue of 50 the units had fatigue below 50 and that on turn 2 although I moved them on turn 1.
Now without the optional rule it works like it should, moved on turn 1, start of turn 2 they have 50 fatigue, now I don't do anything with them and at the start of turn 3 they have recovered fatigue.

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Lieutenant General Christian Hecht
Commander I Corps, Army of the Potomac

"Where to stop? I don't know. At Hell, I expect."

I've never checked it with and without the Optional rule on. If it is changing due to having the rule turned on then it does sound like a software bug. The Optional Rule should change how fatigue is resolved just how much recovery takes place.

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General Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
AoT II/1/3 (CSA)