Are these changes Historical?

[Marching Thru Georgia]

I'm afraid I do disagree. Rifled muskets by any measure were only an incremental change. Whether you measure that by average engagement range, number of rounds fired per casualty, or the fraction of casualties in a battle, those numbers are not significantly different than Napoleon's battles. The breechloader was the big innovation in small arms. But it did not begin to see wide service until the end of the war. The real game changer in the ACW was rifled artillery. It nearly doubled the depth of the battlefield.

[MikeCK]

Casualty rates and engagement ranges did not increase from napoleonic rates until.the widespread use of high velocity breech loading rifles....primarily in the Franco prussian war. This is because the higher velocity round followed a flatter trajectory compared to low velocity muzzle loading rifles. Soldiers could then use less elevation on distant targets so as to not have to "drop" the round on target. The more the paraboloc trajectory of a round, the less room for error down range.

Statistically, combat casualties in ratio to the number of combatants were no different in the civil war than an any previous was 100 years prior. The large casualties were a result of the large armies, prolonged engagements numbering days and the frequency of the battles. The rifled musket played little role in it. As a matter of fact,many confederate units used smoothbore muskets , not due to necessity so much as because the battle was less.suseptible to fouling and they were faster to load.

[Nick]

Thanks guys, but I am not talking exactly about casualty to combatant ratio. The battle of Borodino in the Napoleonic wars had a higher casualty rate then the battle of Gettysburg. I am talking about the tactical change that the use of rifled musketry helped bring. And I feel that those tactical changes are underrepresented in the game; this allows some unhistorical actions such as bayonet charges to be considerably effective during gameplay. The regiments need to break up into swarms of men, refuse to charge, take morale shock that will prevent them from being effective in a line formation.
Again thanks everyone for answering my question and for pointing out my mistakes. I think SOW is a great game and I am looking forward for patches that will hopefully make the gameplay more realistic.

[Garnier]

The reason napoleonic charging is possible is that musket effectiveness: does not take into account the density of the target, nor whether the target is moving or stopped.

In reality, a dense target is easier to hit than a single line -- whether it's one regiment in column, or a bunch of regiments packed together in any formation.
In reality, a line moving at you, whether in the open or in the woods, is MUCH easier to shoot at than a line where all the men are crouching/hiding behind cover shooting at you.

So you can drastically increase kill rates to make charges realistically ineffective, but then all firefights end in a few minutes, because these things can't be taken into account.

(I don't factor artillery into this post because these mechanics are missing, and could be fixed, even if there was no artillery in the game.)

[Marching Thru Georgia]

Infantry charges/advances were not unusual in either the Napoleonic or ACW eras. What was rare was hand to hand fighting in either period. In nearly all cases one side or the other fell back, or the attacker would stop part way and begin firing. That is the feature that is not modeled in the game. The circumstances where the AI charges a position is for the most part very believable. It is the physical contact that is fantasy. When Norb gets around to addressing this issue, it will give the game a new tactical depth that will make battle management very challenging.

[con20or]

In nearly all cases one side or the other fell back, or the attacker would stop part way and begin firing. That is the feature that is not modeled in the game.

I would argue that both of those are already modelled, and very well. There is no way you can advance a un-TC'd unit up to another regiment without it stopping and firing. Also , when two units are firing at each other for a long time, one of those units will fall back.

As I understood this debate up to now, the issue is when players march units right up to each other (unrealistically close) and autocharge kicks in. IMO, that's realistic too, as if you march two regiments that close to each other they're going to come to blows.

[Marching Thru Georgia]

Con20or wrote:

As I understood this debate up to now, the issue is when players march units right up to each other (unrealistically close) and autocharge kicks in. IMO, that's realistic too, as if you march two regiments that close to each other they're going to come to blows.

No, it is very unrealistic. In a division size battle, it is not unusual for there to be 3 or 4 melees. This is with one side being the AI. That did not happen in 19th century warfare. I have asked this before; if melees are as common as we see them in the game please provide the historic references.

[Hancock the Superb]

I've got to agree with MTG on this one. With the sometimes-crazy pathing, the AI seems to have a TC button that puts regiments right on top of enemy ones. In any given battle I can count on at least 3 melees with the AI.

My hope: if the moral is high enough, and unTC'd, the regiment should use the advance manoever, and when the moral drops, it will stop, and when it drops low enough, it will fall back.

With better pathing, perhaps more focused on moving well behind a firing line, the AI melees will be less common.

[Saddletank]

I am talking about the tactical change that the use of rifled musketry helped bring.

What were these changes specifically? I do not know of any great change the rifled musket brought to warfare. In 1866 at Konniggratz the two armies used wholly Napoleonic tactics despite one side being armed with rifled muskets and the other with a breech loader. At Solferino in 1859 with both sides using rifled muskets, again a Napoleonic set of tactics was in use. By 1870 more dispersed skirmish lines were in evidence but generally troops still fought shoulder to shoulder in dressed lines and cavalry charged in Napoleonic style.

The same is true of almost all ACW battles. There was no significant change brought about by the rifled musket in either tactics, weapon ranges or casualty rates.

Napoleon or even Frederick the Great could have risen from the grave, taken command of the Army of the Potomac and done as creditable a job as any of the men Lincoln appointed.

In 1879 in Zululand, the British were still conceptually approaching their battles with the same mindset Wellington did. There really wasn't a major, drastic change in land warfare until barbed wire and the machine gun came along.

[Nick]

To Saddletank, I am more talking about the changes during the ACW. The main change was that light infantry tactics became considerably more important. Most of the infantry fights became disorganized with regiments breaking into swarms of men; this open order formation prevented them from taking unnecessary casualties. Later during the war the thick skirmish line was used. Also the use of rifled muskets and other rifled infantry weapons made defense much more effective. And finally to illustrate the change in tactics worldwide, charging cavalry became less important example; “tin red line” of the Crimean war.
About the European warfare tactics of the period if the europeans cared to analyze the ACW they would have cared to adjust their tactics and avoid the unnecessary casualties they took. What makes their mistakes worse is that they continued to use Napoleonic tactics in the single shot breech loading infantry weapon era. This led to the wasteful and unnecessary casualties in Franco-Prussian war and the Russo-Turkish war, and many other wars during that time period.