Road Marching

[KG_Soldier]

Over at the GCM, we finally had enough players with the Pipe Creek maps to play on them -- a lot of fun.

But my one problem with them, as with all standard SOW maps, is the slow road marching. Garnier has modded all the maps, sans Pipe Creek, so that road marching is faster than taking a direct cross country route. This has really made a lot of games more strategic. But playing on the big Pipe Creek maps brought home how slow road marching is on standard SOW maps: it's always faster to go cross country.

I sure wish NSD would address this in the next patch, or at least on future maps.

[Saddletank]

I don't know whether you are missing the point but road marching wasn't necessarily quicker but it was logical because it was easy to describe "take the Hagerstown road" and you know that if you needed to find that formation, to send it new orders, say, you just rode along that road until you bumped into the troops because you knew they'd be somewhere along it. Formations could easily "follow this road to Mummasburg" rather than be told to strike out across country to Mummasburg and hope they bumped into it.

Roads were used by artillery and wagons because these vehicles would get stuck in creeks and on steep hills etc, and troops would become tired as well as lost if they had to march through crops all the time.

In a tactical situation roads were used to get near the front line and then troops deployed off them to fight.

But you know all this already.

So, why roads? Roads were not necessarily about speed, they were about simplicity and functionality and the logic of not getting lost. If a quartermaster screwed up, roads could be a source of long and frustrating delays because of traffic jams, yet armies still used them. There was no alternative. Even in heavy rain when they became quagmires, armies still slogged along them.

In our games we are on a game map and know the enemy is out there nearby. In reality you might not know that. If you let your gamey mind take over from your historical mind you will do gamey things (like march across country) whereas if you played with a historical mind, you'd stick to the roads.

They are not always the best route though in a tactical situation.

A direct line across country might well have been quicker but you'd have got more stragglers and more disruption in the unit, maybe more tiredness too - and thus we get the fatigue penalty in SoW which I think represents the problems of cross-country marching well. People moan about SoW that a soldier wouldn't get tired after climbing a few fences but to me the tiredness of the unit represents perfectly an increased disruption and reduced cohesion in a unit marching in this way and a fatigued unit works perfectly in the game to represent a unit that has suffered cohesion and straggler problems on a long march.

The Pipe Creek maps have few fences and walls but going across country will still tire and slow troops because of creeks. This seems completely logical and realistic to me.

If you play the game in a historical mindset you won't have a problem - you'll use the roads for a long approach march regardless because its the right thing to do.

Oh, BTW, there are many, many road errors on the Pipe Creek maps. Lots of broken roads. MTGs Couriers & Maps mod has fixed them all. Maybe its these errors that are sending your troops off in strange directions.

[KG_Soldier]

I didn't say anything about my troops going off in strange directions.

But thanks for your enlightenment concerning the use of roads, even though it has nothing to do with my post.

In the Pipe Creek game I'm talking about, my division started well behind the rest of the army (we use a deployment feature in the GCM that deploys divisions so that armies don't start all together). In order to catch up and get on the right flank of the army, I had a very long march, so naturally, I took the road rather than march across several ridges and creeks. However, about a third of the way into the march, I realized it was going to take forever to catch up with the rest of the army by using the slow-ass SOW stock roads, so I turned off it and marched cross country over two large ridges and across two creeks in the valleys. In reality, my troops should have been exhausted by the route I took, but we arrived in time and fresh enough to make the big push which led our side to victory.

In our GCM games, like I said, someone usually starts well back, and by using the modded roads, they are able to make the long marches needed to get into the battle. Seems to me the road marching should be quicker than marching across fields and climbing fences and going through woods and such, but in stock SOW maps, the cross country route is always faster. And I think it shouldn't be.

[Marching Thru Georgia]

KG_Soldier wrote:

In our GCM games, like I said, someone usually starts well back, and by using the modded roads, they are able to make the long marches needed to get into the battle. Seems to me the road marching should be quicker than marching across fields and climbing fences and going through woods and such, but in stock SOW maps, the cross country route is always faster. And I think it shouldn't be.

Fatigue and speed while crossing various landforms, including road marching, are set in the map's csv file. If you don't like some aspect of the stock values, you are free to make it whatever you wish. This is true for SP and MP play.

[KG_Soldier]

KG_Soldier wrote:

In our GCM games, like I said, someone usually starts well back, and by using the modded roads, they are able to make the long marches needed to get into the battle. Seems to me the road marching should be quicker than marching across fields and climbing fences and going through woods and such, but in stock SOW maps, the cross country route is always faster. And I think it shouldn't be.

Fatigue and speed while crossing various landforms, including road marching, are set in the map's csv file. If you don't like some aspect of the stock values, you are free to make it whatever you wish. This is true for SP and MP play.

All the maps in the GCM are modded in that way, except for the Pipe Creek ones, which we haven't played much. But now that more players are finally buying them, when Garnier gets the time, hopefully, he'll do the same for them.

I still think the stock maps should have road marching be a little faster.

[Willard]

I am not sure where Saddletank's counterintuitive analysis that "road marching was not necessarily quicker." One of the reasons that battles took place in certain geographic areas had to do with the existence of a road and/or rail network to supply advancing/defending armies.

Battles just didn't occur in the middle of no where, they occurred because the axis of advance corresponded to important "strategic" locations which was dictated by the existence of the road/rail networks generally dictated by geographical features and terrain. That is exactly the reason the battle of Gettysburg was fought in Gettysburg - the road network allowed for a quick strategic concentration of forces. The Rebel and Union corps advanced on those very roads which were in fact much quicker to travel on instead of cross country marching. Relatively level and obstacle free roads meant that large amounts of troops and material could be moved much quicker even when the actual distance was greater than traveling as "the crow flies."

With the much larger maps in use in gameplay, there needs to be an advantage to moving units along the road network. The fatigue malus is certainly not enough to deter the ahistoric speedy movements of large troops through broken terrain. Units already move way too fast when deploying from/to different formations - that is why players DT units up quickly in front of enemy lines while under fire. If they couldn't switch formations quickly, they would certainly deploy into line formation further outside of firing range. Even more problematic is the speed of the assault column and ability to quickly deploy into line formation and overlap/stack regiments - it is one of the primary reasons that the game ahistorically favors the offensive.

[garyknowz]

Shouldn’t speed and fatigue be conjoined anyway? One should be allowed to move over open terrain a short distance without sacrificing too much speed. However, as fatigue sets in, the movement retardation should become very appreciable, especially as obstacles come into view. Roads offer the easiest, obstacle free access to a particular location, free of woods, fences, ravines, and creeks, and fewer dramatic grade rises---elements that should greatly affect fatigue. Marching a long distance over terrain would whip a unit and ultimately be much slower vis-a-vis roads. Not to mention the frequent breaks a CO would need to regain his bearings in rough terrain (see Devils Den).

I do think that road movement should have a slight speed bonus though due to the compacted soil, especially for artillery and wagons. Having done the Red River campaign years ago, it seemed the cleats on my brogans got heavier by the step while slogging through broken earth. I couldn’t wait to get back on the road, even if it meant a few extra steps.

I agree with formation changes being too quick. Even with a command such as 'by company into line' that already uses the double-quick, it would take a while for the flanking companies to get into position. On the other hand, the companies which have the least distance to cover wouldn't hold fire their fire until the entire regiment is ready either. So I'm torn here.

[Garnier]

Shouldn’t speed and fatigue be conjoined anyway?

Troops don't move slower when fatigued.

Infantry, when completely exhausted, can no longer double quick, but that's a 0/1 thing, and only marching in a river or on a fence for a long time will make infantry exhausted.

Artillery can double quick at top speed even when exhausted, and in stock they don't suffer fatigue penalties from terrain either, so in stock there is almost never a reason to not double quick artillery straight across whatever the terrain is.

@Soldier (original quote)

Pipe creek doesn't use the GCM terrain system, meaning I have no idea what the movement, fatigue and defense modifiers from the terrain are because they don't include map packs in the SDK. It's a big job to reverse engineer the terrain csv file by looking at the grayscale file. I did it for antietam but it was a lot of work and I don't plan to do that again.

[KG_Soldier]

Shouldn’t speed and fatigue be conjoined anyway?

Troops don't move slower when fatigued.

Infantry, when completely exhausted, can no longer double quick, but that's a 0/1 thing, and only marching in a river or on a fence for a long time will make infantry exhausted.

Artillery can double quick at top speed even when exhausted, and in stock they don't suffer fatigue penalties from terrain either, so in stock there is almost never a reason to not double quick artillery straight across whatever the terrain is.

@Soldier (original quote)

Pipe creek doesn't use the GCM terrain system, meaning I have no idea what the movement, fatigue and defense modifiers from the terrain are because they don't include map packs in the SDK. It's a big job to reverse engineer the terrain csv file by looking at the grayscale file. I did it for antietam but it was a lot of work and I don't plan to do that again.

Bummer.

[Marching Thru Georgia]

Garnier wrote:

Troops don't move slower when fatigued

Yes they do.

Willard wrote:

I am not sure where Saddletank's counterintuitive analysis that "road marching was not necessarily quicker." One of the reasons that battles took place in certain geographic areas had to do with the existence of a road and/or rail network to supply advancing/defending armies.

I believe what Saddletank said was that roads have strategic value for moving large formations of troops long distances but when the battle is joined they become tactically insignificant. That is a true statement. Once the battle was joined at Gettysburg, the roads lost their value. The Union 1st corps moved cross country to reach Seminary Ridge. There was no battle for possession of the Emittsburg Road.

But this discussion, though interesting, is really much ado about nothing. Since the speed and fatigue can be adjusted to suit anyone's taste, taking Norb & Co. to task for picking the 'wrong' numbers is pointless. Change them to the values you feel are correct.