Grand Campaigns of the American Civil War - adjustments

Saphroneth

Lt. Colonel
Joined
Feb 18, 2017
I've been playing around a bit with the GCACW games (via their Vassal modules) and in particular trying to reverse engineer them to work out where things like the strength numbers come from. In some cases it looks like the information they're using is a bit outdated, and I'm kind of interested in looking into them to see whether it would be possible to adjust them (and what knock on effects that would have).
 
As far as I can tell (based on looking at Burnside Takes Command, Grant Takes Command and to a lesser extent Here Come The Rebels) the intent is that:

Each point of artillery represents one battery, usually meaning 5-6 guns where appropriate
Each point of strength represents 500 PFD or 600 Aggregate Present (which are equivalent if you use Regulation PFD).

However, it looks like in some cases the numbers used by the game designers do not treat Union and Confederate troops in the same way.


I've got an example relating to Antietam to discuss, but for now I'll avoid that one and instead look at Burnside Takes Command. This game is set during the November 10 - December 20 period (in fact the game turns go November 15-December 15 inclusive) and for this period we have returns reflecting the two sides in terms of Aggregate Present.

Here is the breakdown of the unit strengths in the game.


BTC units - Union
9th Corps 24
Sturgis 11
Getty 5
Burns 8
3rd Corps 26
Whipple 6
Birney 10
Sickles 10
5th Corps 42
Humphreys 10
Sykes 15
Griffin 17
1st Corps 36
Meade 10
Gibbon 10
Doubleday 16
2nd Corps 31
Howard 9
Hancock 12
French 10
6th Corps 48
Newton 17
Howe 17
Brooks 14
US Cav 7
Farnsworth 2
Gregg 2
Bayard 3



Confederacy
Longstreet's corps 64-65
Pickett 15
Anderson 15
McLaws 15
Hood 12 (but disorg)
Ransom 7
61st VA 1
Cav 10-11
WH Lee 3
F Lee 2
Hampton 2
Jones 3
15th VA 1

Jackson's corps 61
Taliaferro 10
AP Hill 20
Early 14
DH Hill 17







Actual 10th November figures of the units making up the Army of the Potomac in aggregate present, to nearest 500
Union
1st Corps 20,500 (36 str points)
2nd Corps 18,000 (31 str points)
5th Corps 21,500 (42 str points)
6th Corps 29,000 (48 str points)
9th Corps 16,000 (24 str points)
12th Corps 15,000 (no str measure)
Whipple's division 4,500 (6 str points)
Stoneman's division 10,500 (no direct str measure as Stoneman becomes leader of 3rd Corps; see rest of post)
Cav 7,000 (7 str points)

Sum of all Union infantry formations with str measure
109,500 (187 str points) for 585 Present per str point
But 12th Corps has no str measure and Stoneman's division has no str measure. Sickles and Birney are on the map as 10 strength points each, however.


Confederacy
Anderson 8,500 (15 str points)
McLaws 9,000 (15 str points)
Pickett 7,000 (15 str points)
Hood 8,000 (12 str points, but is disorganized at scenario start)
Ransom 5,000 (7 str points)
Cavalry 8,000 (10-11 str points depending on whether 15th Va is included)
Taliaferro/Jones 6,000 (10 str points)
Ewell/Early 9,000 (14 str points)
AP Hill 12,000 (20 str points)
DH Hill 9,500 (17 str points)

Sum of all Confederate infantry formations with str measure
74,000 (125 str points) for 592 Present per str point


This seems to support the idea that the intent is 600 AP per strength point.


3rd Corps is the main problem on the Union side, though not the only one.

Burnside's Center Grand Division is 5th and 3rd Corps, and on December 10 (next field return I could find) it has
48,000 AP (representing 68 str points in game)
Deduct off 5th Corps and you get that 3rd Corps is
26,500 AP representing 26 str points.
Clearly 3rd Corps' strength is incorrect.

The cause of this error seems to be that the game designers missed that as of November 10 3rd Corps was composed of three divisions but only two of them are on the records of the Army of the Potomac:
Whipple's division (which is in the game and which is on the records of the Army of the Potomac)
Birney's division (which is Stoneman's division on the records of the Army of the Potomac)
and Sickles' division (which as of November 10 was carried on the returns of the Washington Defences).

As far as I can tell the way to fix this would be to take the December 10 strength of 3rd Corps as the "budget" and assign part of it to Whipple, part of it to Birney and part of it to Sickles, thus:


26,500 AP means 44 strength points
Whipple's division is 4,500 AP, so is either 7 or 8 strength points
"Stoneman's Division" means Birney and is 10,500 AP, so is either 17 or 18 strength points
Therefore
Sickles' division is 11,500 AP, and is 19 strength points

The only problem this presents is that the game actually only comes with strength tokens up to 18 for Union units; this means that to correct 3rd Corps it should be

Whipple 8
Birney 18
Sickles 18

Which more correctly reflects the strength of this corps, which was not engaged at Antietam and as such had suffered less from that very bloody battle. Interestingly it's also very close to the number of regiments in each division (it was Whipple 7 Birney 19 Sickles 18).


The other interesting issue for now is the Union cavalry. It doesn't make much sense that the Confederate cavalry is about 50% stronger on the board than the Union cavalry when in fact the two are almost the same in strength.
It would make more sense as far as I'm concerned to make the three Union cavalry brigades all be 3 strength points.




The knock on effects this would have on the gameplay are interesting, as it means that the Union commander has two strong Grand Divisions (with about 85 strength points) and one weaker one (with about 55 strength points). It becomes more feasible for the Union commander to have the Centre Grand Division operate independently.
 
Now for Here Come The Rebels. This one's more contentious but I would argue it's also a more interesting argument from a game design perspective.


The total strength of the Union army in the Maryland Campaign module is broadly what you would expect to see at 500 PFD per strength point - for example 1st Corps was given in McClellan's report as 14,856 PFD and has 28 strength points at the start of the campaign, while 2nd Corps is given in McClellan's report as 18,813 PFD and has 36 strength points at the start of the campaign. The match is not quite exact, but it is close enough that we can reasonably say that the designers were going for 500 PFD per strength point.

The Confederate Army, however, is very low. The order of battle in the "long campaign" before any fighting has taken place is:


DH Hill 12
JR Jones 8
AP Hill 10
Lawton 7
Walker 5
Anderson 4
McLaws 13
Evans 2
Hood 4
DR Jones 12

Cav
Hampton 3
F Lee 2
Munford 2

Total 84

This would indicate a PFD of 42,000 men - crucially this is before the Potomac has been crossed. There is a game event which gives another few strength points to the Confederates, but it's not nearly enough.
(In this light it's amusing that Burnside Takes Command gives the Confederates a total of 125 strength points! It seems that the GCACW version of Antietam caused negative 20,000 Confederate casualties.)


According to Joseph Harsh (in Sounding the Shallows) the PFD strength of the Confederate Army on September 2nd (after Second Bull Run and after the reinforcements that arrived after that battle) was about 75,500.
Taking the post-Antietam returns and adding back the known Confederate casualties also produces an estimated Confederate PFD strength of about 75,000 (actually about 77,000)
This would imply a total strength points of ~150 before crossing the Potomac.


Adjusting the strengths of the Confederate units to reflect the individual divisional (or brigade) strengths before crossing the Potomac would be a difficult project... which is why I've done it.

Converting PFD strengths into manpower point strengths:

(before)
DR Jones 8 -
Wilcox 11 (floating increase)
Kemper 10 (floating increase)
Evans/Hood 10 -

Stonewall 11 -
Ewell 13 (= Lawton) -
AP Hill 17 -
RH Anderson 11 -
Cav 8 (not counting Hampton) -

McLaws 15 -
DH Hill 20 -
Walker 10 -
(and +2-3 floating increase) -
Hampton 3 -

for ~150

(after and add-back)

Anderson 18
McLaws 18
Pickett 10
Hood 14
Walker 10
Evans 3
(artillery +2 floating increase)
Jackson/Stonewall 10 (= JR Jones)
Ewell 16 (= Lawton)
DH Hill 21
AP Hill 19
(artillery +1 floating increase)
Cav 11
(res art +1 floating increase)

For ~154


Meaning:

Corrected ORBAT
DH Hill 20
JR Jones 11
AP Hill 17
Lawton 16
running total 64
Walker 12
Anderson 18
running total 94
McLaws 15
Evans 3
running total 112
Hood 14
DR Jones 10
running total 136


Cav
Hampton 3
F Lee 4
Munford 4

for 147 total

but strength tokens don't go higher than 18 so change DH Hill to 18, AP Hill to 18 and JR Jones to 12 .


The interesting thing about this is the implications it has for the game. There are a number of mechanics in Here Come The Rebels which are intended to disadvantage the Union army and give the Confederates the advantage (such as the gradual commitment of Union resources, a 50% chance of the event Union Command Paralysis in the early game and of course the way the Victory Points are calculated) to make the game roughly balanced - that is, to make it so there is a roughly even chance for each side to win if the two players are equally skilled.

However, if in reality the Confederate army was significantly larger than portrayed, these mechanics actually mean that the Union is at a significant disadvantage with the "correct" numbers.


There are these ways that this could be addressed if someone wanted a more historical game.

The first would be to ignore the above information and simply say that the strength counts represent the Confederate army after shedding very large numbers of troops crossing the Potomac. This is the low effort approach, but frankly I find it unsatisfying - there's nothing to really indicate that over 30,000 Confederate soldiers were wandering around northern Virginia for two weeks with no active supply lines to feed them, and it's not as if anyone could have possibly failed to notice them - and even if that's what the rules are meant to represent then this is something that a Confederate player should be able to work around. (For example he could send troops to siege Harpers Ferry from the south directly, instead of crossing them over the Potomac and suffering strength loss.)

The second would be to say that Confederate units have the true-history strength at the start of the campaign, but suffer attrition rapidly in Maryland - for example, if they always count as Exhausted they have a higher chance of suffering strength loss from marching. This does however have the disadvantage that it heavily incentivizes the Confederate commander to fight a battle as soon as possible, which doesn't reflect the actual course of the campaign.

The third would be to just accept it - this is now Hard Mode for the Union - and perhaps rebalance the victory points to reflect it.

And the fourth would be to strip out most of the Union Command Paralysis effects, or (more interestingly) make Union Command Paralysis and Confederate Command Paralysis just as likely as one another. To my mind this is the most realistic option; it could also be enlivened by a Plans Discovered event which lets the Union move all their units after the Confederate player no longer can on the turn it happens.
 
The other thing I want to mention is actually about the maps. This is mostly interesting for places where the generally very good maps have some issues.


Firstly, on the Burnside Takes Command map (and others that show that area), there are no bridges at Waterloo VA or at Rapidan Station. In reality there was a bridge at Waterloo VA and another at Rapidan Station; the latter was only destroyed in 1863.

The first has only minor effects on the course of the fighting (it means that if it rains in the first couple of turns of the first Burnside Takes Command scenario then it's possible for Burnside's forces to cross the upper Rappahanock and ready themselves north of the Hazel).

The second has a more major impact because the lack of rail bridge means that the rail line is "broken" - since Longstreet's forces in the first Burnside scenario start at Culpeper then it might be important for them to be able to rail down towards Gordonsville, and in addition to that the time taken for the Confederates to burn the bridge might be significant. If the Confederate player leaves a division behind to burn the bridge and it doesn't rain the next turn, they're vulnerable, but if he doesn't burn the bridge and it does rain the next turn the Union player has a way to cross the Rapidan.


The second map to highlight is on the On To Richmond map. I'm going to show a bit of the map:


warwick.png


The problem is those bridges over the Warwick. Not all of them actually exist, in fact only one of them unambiguously does.

There is a bridge at Lee's Mill.
There is a dam at the Garrow Ridge, which could arguably be represented by a bridge since this dam was actually destroyed at one point (and dams in GCACW are indestructible). Historically however it was considered that Garrow Ridge and Wynn's Mill could be defended by one brigade early in the siege, and I would say that it might be more correct to put the "bridge" (dam) one hex further northeast.
And at Wynn's Mill there is simply no bridge or dam crossing at all; the area was inundated and it was a ford during good weather and impassable during heavy rain. This should be a ford.


This all has a significant gameplay effect in terms of how much the Union commander can make progress during rain turns, as rain turns are especially frequent in On To Richmond. In fact during April it's more likely that a Minor River will be unfordable than not, and it gets worse in May.
 
Confederate strengths in Stonewall Jackson's Way II

Using Scenario 6, which starts on August 28

Units on turn track

Ripley 7
Hampton (cav) 3

Units on board
Jackson's command
Stonewall division 14
Ewell 14
AP Hill 18
Robertson (cav) 2
2nd VA (cav) 1
F. Lee (cav) 2
Total 51 for Jackson

Longstreet's command

Anderson 14
Evans 5
Kemper 10
Wilcox 9
Hood 8
DR Jones 14
Total 60 for Longstreet


Strengths PFD in Confederate Tide Rising for August 27, with conversion to GCACW strength points in brackets

Stonewall Division 6,800 (14)
Ewell 7,900 (16)
AP Hill 10,000 (20)
Cavalry 3,500 (7)
Total 28,200 (56)


Kemper 5,700 (9)
Wilcox 5,700 (9)
Art 600 (so a "floating" extra point or two; makes the above two into "10".)
DR Jones 4,800 (10)
Evans + Hood 6,900 (14)
Anderson 6,100 (12)
Total 29,800 (60)

Hampton is correct; Ripley can't be disambiguated.

So it's much closer than the other two examples I've highlighted, but a few points could stand to be moved around or added.
 
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Now for Here Come The Rebels. This one's more contentious but I would argue it's also a more interesting argument from a game design perspective.

The total strength of the Union army in the Maryland Campaign module is broadly what you would expect to see at 500 PFD per strength point - for example 1st Corps was given in McClellan's report as 14,856 PFD and has 28 strength points at the start of the campaign, while 2nd Corps is given in McClellan's report as 18,813 PFD and has 36 strength points at the start of the campaign. The match is not quite exact, but it is close enough that we can reasonably say that the designers were going for 500 PFD per strength point.

The Confederate Army, however, is very low. The order of battle in the "long campaign" before any fighting has taken place is:


DH Hill 12
JR Jones 8
AP Hill 10
Lawton 7
Walker 5
Anderson 4
McLaws 13
Evans 2
Hood 4
DR Jones 12

Cav
Hampton 3
F Lee 2
Munford 2

Total 84

This would indicate a PFD of 42,000 men - crucially this is before the Potomac has been crossed. There is a game event which gives another few strength points to the Confederates, but it's not nearly enough.

I believe there is either an error in your transcription of the strengths, or an error in your version of the playbook for Here Come the Rebels. My playbook for The Maryland Campaign (Scenario 8), which comes in the Roads to Gettysburg II (RtG II) release (hence the most up to date version of the scenario), agrees with yours except for Anderson. Where you have 4, my playbook shows 14. Which would give the Confederates a total of 94 strength points, rather than 84 strength points. Easy error for anyone to make.

I did some OOB research (down to the regiment level where possible) for this campaign myself a while ago, and came up with the following unit strengths (assuming 500 PFD men = 1 strength point, and note that I do not include men who are manning the cannons, i.e. artillery) at the start of the campaign:

DR Jones 8 (*)
Kemper 10 (*)
Wilcox 11 (**)
Evans/Hood 9 (***)

JR Jones 10
Lawton 12
Branch/AP Hill 16

RH Anderson 10 (**)
DH Hill 19
McLaws 15
Walker 10

Cavalry 11

(*) Merged on Sep 4
(**) Merged on Sep 10
(***) Split on Sep 14

(With the usual disclaimer of quoted troop numbers not being consistent in what they are claiming to count, and hence there is always uncertainty).

So in terms of comparison, mine vs the game, the latter assumes the merges and splits had already occurred, and so:

DR Jones/Kemper: 18 vs 12
RH Anderson/Wilcox: 21 vs 14
Evans: 2 vs 2
Hood: 7 vs 4

JR Jones: 10 vs 8
Lawton: 12 vs 7
AP Hill: 16 vs 10
DH Hill: 19 vs 12
McLaws: 15 vs 13
Walker: 10 vs 5

Cavalry: 11 vs 7

It is stated in the RtG II playbook that 1 strength point = 500 men for infantry, and 600 men for cavalry (so I should multiply my cavalry 11 by 5/6 which gives approx. 9). Looking at this comparison, it's possible that the GCACW numbers are baking in 1/3 stragglers right from the start. I haven't played the game yet, so I don't know if it has straggler rules. Or maybe they are converting PFD into something like combat effectives, since PFD can include cooks and guards and message runners (forgot the exact term). Tomorrow I'll make the same comparison using the Federal troops.
 
I believe they probably are baking in stragglers, or rather that the commonly quoted numbers for the Maryland Campaign bake in stragglers for the Confederates (but not for the Union).

Anderson is given as 4 in the Vassal module for the original Here Come The Rebels, but 14 in the more recent module. So possibly it's an error on the part of whoever made the Vassal module?


The strength of 1st Corps in the more recent module is 9+10+9 (28) for 14,856 PFD at Sharpsburg (and more before South Mountain)
The strength of 2nd Corps in the more recent module is 13(S)+13(R)+10 (French) (36) for 18,813 PFD at Sharpsburg.
The strength of 6th Corps in the more recent module is 13+10 (Smith and Slocum only) for 23, for 12,300 at Sharpsburg (and more before South Mountain)
The strength of 9th Corps in the more recent module is 7+6+7+6 (26) for 13,819 at Sharpsburg (and more before South Mountain)
The strength of 12th Corps in the more recent module is 9+10 (19) for 10,126 at Sharpsburg.

So it looks like some small number of stragglers are baked in but certainly not 1/3. Based on this either the Confederate strengths should be increased (significantly) to reflect campaign-start PFD, or the Union strengths should be dropped down to about 2/3 of their campaign-start PFD (to factor in straggling). I'd be inclined to go with the first option because dropping down to 2/3 normal strength from straggling is literally what it means to become disorganized from an extended march!
 
Here's the same comparison for the Federals (mine vs the game):

Hatch: 12 vs 10
Ricketts: 11 vs 9
Meade: 11 vs 9

Richardson: 9 vs 13
Sedgewick: 13 vs 13
French: 11 vs 10

Morell: 15 vs 13
Sykes: 6 vs 8
Humphreys: 13 vs 14

Slocum: 12 vs 10
Smith: 14 vs 13
Couch: 14 vs 12

Christ/Willcox: 8 vs 7
Sturgis: 8 vs 7
Rodman: 6 vs 6

Williams: 13 vs 10
Greene: 11 vs 9

I can't do a fair comparison of cavalry because the game is missing about 8 Union regiments! Anyway, if we just keep it focused to infantry, then in total for the Confederates we have (mine vs game):

130 vs 87 (a reduction of 33.1%)

And for the Federals we have:

187 vs 173 (a reduction of 7.5%)

So the game seems to be saying that the Rebels had 4 to 5 times worse straggling than the Union. Given the uncertainties in these kinds of things, it's entirely possible that the game designers baked in 1/3 straggling for the Confederates and no straggling at all for the Federals! Based on what I've read I could accept 50% more straggling on one side, maybe even twice as much if I was being generous, but this game seems to skew it way too far.
 
The most directly comparable data we have seems to indicate that straggling was about the same on both sides - 1st Corps had 14,865 PFD, but only carried about 9,000 men into battle (per Meade) and Carman estimated 8,219 infantry (plus artillery) got into the fight. This is about 1/3 straggling.
 
@Saphroneth I have very limited knowledge on what you reference, but aren't these games given warnings that won't allow messing with them. If you can, wouldn't they be considered open source software, or can you actually contact the engineers and designers with ideas of your own? Thanks,
Lubliner.
 
@Saphroneth I have very limited knowledge on what you reference, but aren't these games given warnings that won't allow messing with them. If you can, wouldn't they be considered open source software, or can you actually contact the engineers and designers with ideas of your own? Thanks,
Lubliner.
They're not actually digital wargames in any real sense. Vassal is a way of playing board games on a program on the computer, but that program basically amounts to a "digital board" where you can move tokens around. You still need to do most of the work, you just don't need to have the physical board and counters set up.

Effectively what I'm doing is saying that if you want realism then you'd be better off adjusting the values to XYZ rather than using the scenarios that come in the box.
 
That's some interesting data you have about Union straggling, Saphroneth. Regarding playing around with the game's strength points, there's always a danger that this will make the game unbalanced. For example, for the full campaign scenario, the designers have added the possibility of "Union Command Paralysis" (subject to a die roll), which has quite deleterious effects on the Federals. If you lessen their strength points to match the Confederate rate of straggling, then I think they would be significantly disadvantaged in this scenario.

Having said that, it is wargaming tradition to tinker with combat values, scenario victory points, and game rules. So have at it! :smile:
 
I think that's actually an interesting thing about the scenario, as - while I do agree that the existing scenario is likely balanced - what that indicates is a bit of un-examined bias.

Let's simplify it like this:


You are a game designer.
You start by assigning the forces (Union has 173, Confederates have 87).
You then say "oh, but we want this to have an outcome that's a bit realistic"
so you add rules which disadvantage the Federal side (Union Command Paralysis).

These rules are effectively reflecting part of what you feel the quality of the Union command team in the battle to be.

But since the reality is more like
Union has 187, Confederates have 150 (I'm using here the 75,000 man PFD strength that the Confederates appear to have had upon entering Maryland at the high level)

then the issue is that the rules which disadvantage the Federal side are an "unneeded correction". They've piled onto an already difficult Union situation and made it harder (unbalancing) rather than balancing it out.

Now, there's nothing actually wrong with a game where the Federal side has things harder, in theory you just need to adjust the victory point awards to make it work out.

Personally I'd be kind of inclined to have the following changes:

- Correct strengths for the units.
- The Confederates use Union straggling rules for this scenario. (This scenario saw a lot of Confederate straggling.)
- After September 8 (when McClellan marched out), the rate of Union Command Paralysis drops and the rate of Confederate Command Paralysis increases. This one's partly already represented in the random roll table changing on September 12, but I'd make it so that results of Rain that go to No Effect instead become Confederate Command Paralysis.
- If the turn might end early from a double 1, the Union player may instead on one occasion opt to conduct a night march. A night march means no attacking may take place and no Confederate activations may take place, but the Union player may make any amount of activations at -1 to normal distance rolls for infantry and -2 for cavalry (with the normal fatigue and straggling rules applying).

The result of this - and I would agree it'd need testing - is that the Union player can burn their "night march" on pulling off a strategic surprise, which is the equivalent of the movements after SO 191's discovery (lots of night marching to get through the Catoctin gaps). This gives them an advantage which lets them punish the Confederates splitting their forces, which is the quid pro quo for how the Confederates can more safely split their forces compared to the original scenario (since they have more men).
 
Just a quick correction (I can't edit my own posts!). I left out Cox from Reno's IX corps. I have Cox as strength 7, the game as 6, so the full Union comparison, mine vs game, is 194 vs 179, which is a reduction of 7.7%.
 
Just a quick correction (I can't edit my own posts!). I left out Cox from Reno's IX corps. I have Cox as strength 7, the game as 6, so the full Union comparison, mine vs game, is 194 vs 179, which is a reduction of 7.7%.
I think the edit only works for the first 24 hours after a post.
Lubliner.
 
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