American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

Why cannot some one go to Hamilton or to Tiller and make this a change in Gettysburg and other games that have the supply units moving so slow on roads (other than turnpikes)?? These units would move on the roads as fast as marching infantry. As they are they are a hinderence to the game.

Thanks, Don

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Your Obediant Servant,

Donald Vandergriff
Brigadier General, CSA
Commanding 7th Brigade
Army of Mississippi

I have began to shy away from large Gettysburg scenarios because I know on a board of 300 by 300 hexes that it could potentially take two days or more to move a wagon over the board. Thats just brutal. I agree with you. Now how fast or slow real supply wagons moved is all debatable but all I know is that the HPS Gettysburg scenarios would be alot better if you didnt spend half the scenario waiting on ammo IMHO.

I just posted a request to HPS support to standardize the PDT's including increasing supply wagon movement of the older HPS releases per the later releases.

The HPS CW titles is the anchor of this club but they are really starting to show their age IMO. This inevitably will take it's toll on club membership and recruitment unless some other company comes up with a Civil War game of similar scale and improved graphics/playability. Hopefully Matrix's "Drawing of the Sword" will be embraced by our members and will shake things up for HPS and John Tiller.

I know HPS/Tiller is busy with other titles and genres, however releasing a patch that updates the CW PDT's to this effect would not take take that much resources to do. I for one would volunteer to help if they asked me.

FWIW

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Brigadier General Richard Simonitch
SIXTH BRIGADE (Artillery)
1st. Div. / V Corps
Army of the Potomac

The hard part is getting agreement on what they should be. If we could the club could issue it's own parameter file.

Unfortunately, HPS games don't have the fine control of movement you need to give the wagons realistic movement. The wagons could only keep up with the infantry on the pikes. But halving the movement on roads is overkill. The correct number should be something like three quarters. I experimented with this before. My solution was to double all unit movement then selectively change terrain costs. Some doubled making them equivalent to what was before but some slightly less or more. It worked but had the disadvantage of being very difficult to estimate how far a unit could move because of the large values.

You can't just say wagons can move at cost of one per hex on roads and pikes. There is a reason Lee didn't consider Longstreet's idea of marching around the Union left. It was lack of roads capable of moving the whole army that direction. Specifically he would have had to abandon his Army trains and leave behind troops to guard them since they couldn't keep up. Even Corps and Division trains took miles of road space. All we see is the minor drag of ammo wagons.

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

Kennon, I remember some of the studies done on the BG series where the MP's were increased to allow for the wider variations of movement effects. I believe that was the best approach, but confusing to those familiar with the smaller MP rate as you mentioned. I think we could make a few scenarios for the club that uses that approach and see how it goes.

But if HPS is going to make "official" changes they would likely want to keep it simple for the sake of purists, which means there would be no differences between Roads and Pikes, like in the later series PDT.

I'm starting a discussion with HS Support to offer my (our?) help to make some PDT changes and maybe other edits. If there is interest by Rich Hamilton and his group to receive this help, we will need to develop a team of volunteers and send HPS a project scope. If not, I think we could look into developing some custom scenarios for the club.

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Brigadier General Richard Simonitch
SIXTH BRIGADE (Artillery)
1st. Div. / V Corps
Army of the Potomac

Gettysburg is fought at the height of summer in brutal heat with little shade on many roads There are no major rivers near Gettysburg (Monocacy/Pipe Creek). The wells could not support the armies, and the poor old mules are at the tail of the line for watering. Their little butts are dragging.
The commanding generals spent a lot of their time on logistics, delegating the on-field command to a Longstreet or a Hancock, and the trains were often started early. They can be marched through the night without fatigue, so if we take each hex as 1/12 mile the trains cover 1-1/4 miles/hour on roads, or 23 miles/day. The infantry can cover 48 miles between dawn and dusk - which is unrealistic! All wargame rules involve a compromise between accuracy and playability.

Respectfully

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Ian Miller
bvt Lt Gen USV
3/XVI/AotT