Scourge of War Boards

I wanted to share this with you and don't want to be too lengthy. New players might find this interesting.

I mostly play Sandbox "Hunt Them Down" with no courier. I micro manage the Confederate Army . I disregard when the game determines victory or defeat. I determine a Major Victory when I reach 20000 Points, a Minor Victory at 15000 points, 10000 points is a draw, 5000 is a minor defeat and anything less than that is a major defeat. I'm too the point that I gain major Victories most of the time so that will need to change.

I recently played Gettysburg where the South entered the map from the NW Quadrant and the North entered from the SE Quadrant. Game objective was to take Gettysburg, Cemetery Hill Area. The game gave me enough time to organize my Corps (as you know Sandbox just splatter the troops on the maps ) and I approached Gettysburg somewhat to historical entries, except cavalry.

After about 12-14 hours (I didn't exactly note this) I finally took Gettysburg and Cemetery Hill. South had about 20000 Losses against 27000 Union Losses. The South formed a solid line with no threat of any Union attack. I spent an hour or two making my line even solider then it was waiting on any Union threat.
But no threats came....

Then it hit me again.....Where is the rest of the Union Troops? Union Strength to begin game was 90000, where is the other 63000 troops not counting routing troops? So as before as in other Sandbox Scenarios, I sent out my cavalry. Well I found Meades 2nd and 3rd Corp camping way down the Baltimore Pike.

So I used my cavalry to wake up those Yankees, which I did and was I surprised. I recalled my cavalry back to my lines and in about an hour, I had Meades 2nd and 3rd Corps attacking up the East Side of Cemetery Hill. Those Union attacks lasted another 10-12 hours and even though I held the hill, one "hell" of a fight took place.

So after 24 hours it was evident that all Union Troops were accounted for, there was no Union threat and I called the battle over. Confederate Losses was about 36590 and Union Losses was 47107. Total points scored was 34000 plus....

So did I win, I don't know, but being inside because of good weather and not golfing, I had fun. alot of fun. Was the battle realistic? Probably no, did our boys ever fight to last man standing?

My point....When you play "Hunt Them Down" as the South, you need to scout the entire map because opposing troops may remain stagnant unless the AI is triggered....and as the South, and with any game out there (TalonSoft, HPS, Etc) we are always outnumbered, so to get your victory, you need to fight all those Yankees... :S

the reb....

Thanks Reb for this post, it inspired me to start messing around in sandbox mode, which then took me to some mods and oobs and has opened up a whole new world of really intense, large to very large battles.

Hunt Them Down option really makes the sandbox shine and includes quite a tense and fascinating (to me at least) advance to contact maneuver phase at the beginning of the game.

jozk,

One thing I have been doing is after I start a Sandbox Battle and I get my troops somewhat organized, I save the battle under some name. Then I reopen the game and rename it again thus maintaining the original battle with the starting positions of the battle. This way you won't have to fool around organizing the troops should you ever want to play that particular map and OOB.

Now, when I learn how to write a scenario, I should be able to save the battle as a User Scenario also maintaining the original start positions. I have loads of these saved Sandbox battles just waiting to be converted into User Scenarios...

the reb

I have been making a ton of scenarios as I am running a rather large PBEM campaign using SOW as the engine. Start by using Leffe's Scenario generator. (Ensure you have something like MS Office as excel is required) It comes with documentation to explain everything. Also download the SDK.

Once you get the forces in the scenario you want and you save the base battle, you turn of AI and turn on ALphaOmega (in the SowGB.ini...explained in the SDK documentation)too allow you to march forces around where you want, press L to dump start locations to a file and then past those coordinates and formations into your scenario.csv. Now you can start the game with everything they way you want. BTW Leffe's scenario generator can also randomize start locations which is nice as well.

Hi Los,

I understand Leffes Scenario Generator and it's great. The only thing I wished was that more Corps could be added to both sides. At this point my scenarios would be "what ifs" but I wanted more Corps. Saddletank then introduced me to a way to make scenarios without the generator and I have been working to understand that. We have nice weather right now so its off to the golf course and then home for a nap so I have not been continuing my learning process.

Because of real time, I never knew you could play this game by PBEM? Are any scenarios suitable for single play and can these be shared?

thanks,
the reb

Uncle Billy over at kriegsspiel released his own scenario generator as an executable. Iirc it handles more than three but check it out. Works w Waterloo and Gettysburg.

Uncle Billy's Scenario Generator