<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Jon Thayer</i>
<br />We are playing turn based. My eighty men fire and get shot by 500 or their 500 shoot and my 80 fire back. Either way they lost 5 and I lose 25. Perhaps phased play would be the way to go.
Lt General Jon Thayer
III Corps
Army of Northern Virginia
jonathanthayer@bellsouth.net
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I wouldn't recommend playing this one in "Turn" format. The fact that fire triggers the AI to check for defensive fire will pentalize a large number of small units over the side with large regiments. The only thing you can do is stack everything and fire as a stack. Also because Turn based game halves the defensive fire and tends to cause it to occur as opportunity fire at longer distances, you will find it heavily the attacker over the defender. There also may be a problem with the effectiveness of Rebel fire since they are mostly armed with smooth bores making only the adjacent fire effective. The Union can avoid closing with you until they are ready to take something (staying two hexes out) reducing your defensive fire to almost nothing while maximizing their rifle fire.
The HPS system makes artillery crews and guns particularly vulnerable to casualties. If you put your guns in the front lines they will take a lot of losses particularly crews. Again Turn based works against you allowing large enemy stacks to move adjacent taking weak opportunity fire (due to distance and halving), then fire to kill the crew from adjacent hex.
Phased play allows the defender units to fire full strength at the closest units before they get to fire. This will tend to create higher casualties and, in the case of Antietam with its lower quality Yankees, more disrupts.
LG. Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
1/1/III AoM (CSA)