Wargamer's Corner

Meeting engagement? Oh, wait, you said defense... So why were you maneuvering?

Robear wrote:

Meeting engagement? Oh, wait, you said defense... So why were you maneuvering?

Sorry, this was a meeting engagement. My first was a defense. My defensive maneuvering was a failed attempt to plug all the holes the Rooskies opened in my "defenses".

This game I wanted to be a duel so I could see how to move stuff and not worry about such trivialities as LOS.

Ah, I see. I bet the Saggers made the difference?

I've played a few small battles now, and finally managed a total victory in a meeting engagement. I had two platoons of M113s, their associated infantry, two mortar sections, two scout sections, and two Cobras versus a motor rifle company with a BTR-60 platoon, a BMP-2 platoon, and one platoon of T-64s. The battle consisted mainly of my troops hunkering down on the defensive while we waited for the Cobras to arrive.

One thing I learned real quick is that having your units in defensive positions (hotkey D) when they aren't moving helps enormously with keeping them alive. Although the D command looks like a movement command, it's actually a facing command like Rotate. Also, with the M113s you've got to get the infantry deployed ASAP: the vehicles themselves are super-vulnerable and have very little firepower, but most of the infantry squads have a Dragon with three reloads.

The AI doesn't seem to use smoke on the offensive much - or at least, if it does, I can't tell. I've also seen some questionable mortar deployments, where they were visible and didn't need to be. That might have been a function of the small open desert map.

I did my 1st meeting engagement this morning and I got annihilated. I picked Mech Inf builds for both my side and op for. I also bumped op for strength down 1 notch (-10 I think) in the scenario generator.

I don't have the OOB at hand, but the russians showed up with a couple of tanks for which I was unprepared. They just crushed me. Probably because my APCs didn't unload and basically got destroyed with most of my infantry on board. I did eventually notice that you can order them to unload on contact.

Anyway, I'm going to try the scenario again when I get home tonight. Maybe tweak the scenario xml to remove the op for tanks.

Super fun though...once I read the manual (like a good grognard) and get a handle on how the game works, I can see having a really great time with this one.

Yeah it is fun. I played a 1984 US v USSR defend game last night on the Fulda Gap map. I picked the cheesiest map I could - defending two large rises vs two valleys that form a V against the rises - like this: |< except there is a plain where the < joins the |. Cheesy because OPFOR either had to commit to one leg of the < or divide forces in both legs. Oh yeah, woods on the two rises in the | covering my flanks.

I also tried the round- based set up, I think I like it better than continuous. 30 sec rounds seemed a nice trade off between pausing every 2 seconds to see what is going on vs never pausing and stuff getting in trouble without me knowing about it.

I had a platoon of M1s in the center dug defiladed, an infantry section in the woods on the north, heavy weapons in the south (2 LAW rocket sections and 2 heavy mortar sections). I had a mech inf company in south central part of the map in reserve. Then 8-ish dismounted scout sections in the treelines facing the possible axis of attack. Had 2 attack helis available and 10 arty guns. OPFOR had 50% more points to spend.

I won but it was pretty close. Early on it was a turkey shoot. Targets would appear in the south and just die, the M1s were fantastic. When I finally figured out how to use the mortars, they were super effective against soft targets. The north side was a bit of a debacle however as OPFOR sent in armor on the north side and my Inf were hard pressed. I had to peel off two of my M1s to go deal with that.

Eventually I won but a couple of T64s got through my lines and led me on a merry chase through the woods until I could kill them.

Things I learned in this game:
- LOS is vital. Use the LOS tool when setting up. Get some scouts hidden with good LOS and watch stuff die.
- DPICM arty is awesome. Use that on mixed targets. Use it until you have no more. Then cuss because you want more.
- If you want something to move a long way, make sure you set waypoints to do that. Otherwise you unit(s) will stop, wait for you to notice they have stopped, you marking new waypoints, the order getting passed down and them starting to move again.
- Also, use the appropriate waypoints. IF you want the units to move somewhere but be cognizant of their surroundings, use Advance. If you want them to stop on contact, use Contact. If you don't care that much use fast.
- Defend order is a good thing to use, as Aetius pointed out.
- Pay attention to the log, can be very useful.

Things yet to be learned:
- Still need to figure out how best to use air in this game. I called my helis in, they looked around, hovered for a couple of minutes, then left. I subsequently read that they will stay low, which I guess makes sense, so I need to use the LOS tool for them as well.
- Even using the rounds system and me scanning the map between rounds, I wish there was a better indication of units that are in trouble. I lost a heavy mortar at some point, no idea why. Also an M1 - when I went to check it between rounds, it had been wiped. This is probably on me for still not being able to read the map properly.
- Everything else.

I like it a lot. It is complex but has a lot of tools for dealing with the complexity. Every time I play, the UI gets more parseable. It is similar to CMANO in depth and complexity but has better tools, IMO (of course it is also dealing with a simpler environment than CMANO).

Sorry for the wall o' text, this kind of got away from me.

Remember, helos fly low, so use them in areas where they will have good LOS but also reasonable cover to escape too. Reverse slopes are good, near the top but not right on the top of the ridge. They will take fire but they will be able to lay out the fire too. Remember too that they will turn towards, and focus on, the target area, so make sure that won't expose their flanks to the enemy approach.

As for units in trouble, keep the camera low enough to see fire and pause when you see new lines of fire popping up. Trace them back to their source and see if it's going to be an issue. That can help alert you to new firefights starting up, especially if it's long-range stuff like cannon fire or atgms.

Doing a map read, then dropping into the 3D mode for a bit, can help you decide where to position your units. It's easier to visualize with heights set at 2x or 3x, too, as it exaggerates them for you so you can see subtle changes more easily.

I had a hard time reading terrain elevation. Do you know if it's possible to get more contour lines? I turned contours on but they weren't very dense. It was a desert, but looking at the 3d view indicated hills where the contour lines didn't.

Yeah, still working on that myself. It seems like the more "stuff" in the map, like houses and roads and trees, the easier it is to read the terrain. To a point, anyway, dense forest is its own obscuring factor.

I use the 3D map to get a general idea of where to put stuff but the LOS tool for more precision, when it matters. Like for scouts or setting up a kill zone.

I did not do that for my helis, which was a mistake for sure. I assumed since they were airborne they would fly high enough to see stuff. Which, from my days playing Gunship, is a bad idea. Will set it up better next time.

PWAlessi wrote:

I had a hard time reading terrain elevation. Do you know if it's possible to get more contour lines? I turned contours on but they weren't very dense. It was a desert, but looking at the 3d view indicated hills where the contour lines didn't.

I struggled a bit with this as well, and some seemingly inexplicable LOS issues. For example, the colored elevation map on one of my skirmish maps showed a distinct ridge along my side, but placing units along the ridge had wildly varying LOS effects when checked. I don't think it's wrong, just hard to get a handle on unless you are constantly spot-checking locations.

I am trying LOS from all sorts of different spots. I find that the edges of woods can provide some cover/concealment while still having decent LOS, but go further in and LOS gets cut way down. So I intend to put my scouts near the edges of woods or behind buildings (so vehicles can scoot out and look if needed) to try to give a good LOS with survivability.

Also pay attention to optics. No need to shove a scout vehicle with great optics right into the enemy's face...

I tried Walk on Water, the first scenario. As the Soviets you start with three platoons of T-72s, two motor-rifle companies with BTR-70s, three sections of mortars, and associated scout and HQ units. You have no control over how they are deployed, and you are already engaged when the battle starts, so it's difficult to re-deploy and change the attack plan. I managed a major victory, losing about half my units.

On the left side of the map (the Soviet right flank), I fired a smoke mission from the mortars to shield the motor-rifle company as it crossed and moved up one platoon of T-72s to provide a base of fire. This was successful, destroying a few units that tried to defend the crossing from the open field and getting the motor-rifle company across intact.

From there, however, the left side of the map went downhill. Several of the BTR-70s were engaged by units they could not see. Eventually it turned out to be infantry in the creek bed to the south of the crossing. I attempted to deploy my infantry and take them out ... which ended up getting one of my infantry squads routed even though the enemy infantry was taking fire from several BTR-70s at less than 200 meters. I finally dug those guys out with a mortar fire mission.

At this point, I discovered a problem - I couldn't find a way to re-mount my infantry. So instead, I set up the BTRs and infantry in defensive positions and brought the tanks across. The tanks then covered the BTRs while they took the first objective, and the infantry was left far behind. A leapfrog advance resulted in taking the second objective with only a couple of losses.

The right side of the map was a different story - it was almost a complete disaster. I set up two platoons of tanks on overwatch and moved the motor-rifle company forward to make the crossing and secure the immediate area on the other side, which was forested. The mortars laid down an HE barrage onto the opposite bank. I immediately lost two BTRs and their infantry squads to fire from the center of the map without a source (this turned out to be an AT gun of some kind - more on this in a minute). I then had two more BTRs immobilized while crossing the river. The mortars had driven off some infantry and an enemy BMP had been destroyed, so the BTRs took up defensive positions and I pushed one of the tank platoons across.

The lead tank, for some reason, got way ahead of everyone else ... and immediately died to invisible units. I unloaded infantry and started forward. My infantry started taking fire from invisible units and a couple of squads were routed. BTRs that were moved up in support suffered the same fate. Keep in mind this is in the middle of heavy woods, along the road leading south from the ford. Finally, a BTR I sent to flank out to the right spotted one enemy unit right before it died - a T55 that was apparently dug in at the intersection. I sent up the remaining two T-72s, and they were able to finally take out the T-55 ... and then another T-72 was lost to invisible units. My remaining units moved forward, taking fire the entire time from invisible units, and were eventually able to reach the edge of the woods ... without ever seeing another enemy unit.

The last tank platoon was still on overwatch with no targets, so I ordered them to move across and sent them towards the middle of the map. One of them was destroyed as soon as they started to move, presumably by the hidden AT gun. They then puttered around in the woods for approximately half the battle doing nothing, despite orders to move up. Finally they moved towards the middle of the map, and spotted the AT gun at about 200 meters and destroyed it.

That was the end of organized resistance. There were a few infantry squads on the second objective that had to be dug out. Inexplicably, there was a one enemy infantry squad in the extreme bottom left of the map who accomplished nothing, and a handful of squads in the bottom right of the map that were left over from the vehicles I destroyed at long range.

I had several issues with this game. Spotting seemed not only difficult, but random. I had several instances where BTRs were taking rifle and machine-gun fire from infantry at very short range. It did no damage, but they were completely unable to determine even the general direction the fire was coming from for minutes at a time (muzzle flash indicators with HUGE radii was the best they could do). In other instances, the infantry was immediately spotted from hundreds of meters away as soon as they fired. It seems like there was one roll to see them when they started firing, and if that failed then ... you just never saw them.

This happened again with the T-55 at the intersection. I had multiple infantry squads a hundred meters away taking tank main gun fire and machine-gun fire, and they couldn't see the T-55. I had to drive a T-72 up the road to within 30 meters just to spot him. I went back and looked, and apparently ruins are concealment 80 and this hides an MBT while repeatedly firing its main gun at point-blank range.

The "show hidden units in AAR" option doesn't work. The AAR was almost completely devoid of enemy units the entire time, as they tended to die as soon as they were spotted. Since you can't play the Finnish side of this scenario, you actually have no idea what the enemy forces were, and there's no way to find out (at least, without digging into the editor). One of the reasons you do AARs in military training is so that you can see what both sides actually did versus what was seen, and the game doesn't allow that. I'd also like the AARs to permit an actual replay instead of just a rapid top-level overview.

I would really, really like to have ammunition for mortars displayed by type instead of a single number (maybe there's a way to do this?). The ammo count includes all types, so you don't know how many smoke or illumination rounds you have. The off-map artillery makes the distinction, so it seems like the on-map artillery should as well.

The AI makes some really questionable pathfinding decisions, I think because each unit does its own pathfinding. This permits you do things like order a tank platoon forward in line formation, and one of them will inexplicably turn around and take a long detour through some woods while another will race ahead. The tactical effect of this issue is that the units tend to trickle in one-by-one when ordered to attack instead of moving forward together. Ironically, you can fix this by micro-managing them and giving them individual movement orders.

When unloading infantry, you apparently can't tell them to just get out - you have to give the APC an unload order, which appears to be an order with a destination that can't be your current square. This is problematic when you're in cover and under fire, and don't want to move just to unload your infantry. Also, as I noted above, there doesn't seem to be a way to remount infantry. This means they become almost useless if they jump out far from any objective. This bears more looking into.

The battle went on for way too long. Resistance had effectively ended at about the 30 minute mark and I owned both objectives, but a few damaged infantry squads were still scattered around and that was apparently enough to keep the battle going for another 15 minutes. This is probably a function of the victory points, but it seems like one of the pre-built scenarios would take this into account.

The enemy AI is suicidally brave. I think a big part of this is that the AI is also struggling with spotting and threat analysis. It is far too willing to expose vehicles at long range, and far too willing to move into known killzones even after taking multiple losses. I think this is because the shooters are either unspotted or don't remain spotted when a unit is destroyed, and the AI "forgets" that they are there.

The AI is too willing to fight in open fields. In fact, it seems to prefer them, particularly for deploying infantry. I can't tell whether this has to do with it liking good LoS or if they are just getting dropped by APCs on contact and left to fend for themselves.

Despite these issues, though, I'm really enjoying the game. It felt good to pull off a successful attack.

Matrix has announced a new strategic Ancients game, "Field of Glory: Empires". As the name implies, it not only has you trying to build a powerful empire, but if you like, every battle can be imported into Field of Glory 2, and the results exported back into the strategic level. Could be interesting. At least one of the pics seems to show some form of worker management in the cities...

I tried my generated AB scenario again last night and once again, I got crushed. I think that I'm going to try it from the other side tonight and see if I can win...if not, I'm going to generate another scenario and try to find some good Youtube tutorial videos.

The game isn't very good about onboarding new players.

EDIT: So, I played the mission again from the Russian side and obliterated the Americans. I guess the scenario generator just generated a one sided scenario? Next one I generate, I'll hand pick the units I suppose. (I think I saw that as an option in the manual) Or, I wonder if I should try one of the scenarios that comes with the game.

Armored Brigade sounds pretty neat -- getting a bit of a Command Ops vibe with the pausable realtime and orders delay mechanic.

How large of the units you issue orders to? Is it individual tanks or more like platoons?

You can issue orders individually to units, or via a sort of command icon for a higher level unit like a platoon or company. The intended level, or default, is platoon, I think. When you have a platoon or infantry company, you can select it and there is a ghost icon with lines to each unit member, letting you know which units will be affected.

This is to me somewhat different from Command Ops 2 because you have to put together your own units, with more or less doctrinal accuracy as you wish. In that sense, it's a wider focus than CO2. You'll spend a lot of time before the game thinking about your force composition. This can also enable interesting stuff like "last stand" scenarios with depleted or ad hoc units, or "challenge" scenarios where you compete with a friend to see who can hold out the longest, or crush the enemy the fastest. CO2 has all sorts of historical data to use for battles. I think AB goes free-form because that is lacking. (And even if it covered, what, the Gulf Wars, the battles are usually not balanced on a Brigade scale.)

I've downgraded the pathfinding in AB to "atrocious". I attempted the second scenario, Winter Desolation. In this scenario you have to move several mechanized platoons several kilometers to reinforce an isolated tank platoon.

Giving each mechanized platoon simple Fast move orders to the position of the tanks results in a fiasco. Vehicles balk at the bridges because another unit is moving across, self-canceling their orders. Once one vehicle stops, it triggers a chain reaction of stopped vehicles who all cancel their orders. Ordering them to move again results in order delays, further scattering your units. Identical vehicles move at different speeds on the roads, so faster vehicles will move into the trees to go around slower vehicles, bogging themselves down in the process. Vehicles will stop at waypoints for no apparent reason, further snarling up the march order. Units make no attempt to stay together or move together. Vehicles only travel to one waypoint at a time, which results in extensive circular pathfinding as units try to reach waypoints that are temporarily blocked. Apparently, the movement algorithms have no concept of "wait until the unit in front of me moves out of the way, then move forward."

The end result is that your units end up strung out all along the route, scattered all to hell and unable to focus their combat power. I suspect this is one reason defensive scenarios are easier than they should be - the AI attackers get strung out just trying to get to the battle, allowing you to pick them off piecemeal.

I also had some units make some VERY questionable movement decisions. I had two undamaged and unsuppressed infantry squads decide that instead of following my orders, they were going to move across a road completely exposed to enemy fire at point blank range. Once they decide to move, you cannot delete their waypoints, and of course they were immediately pinned down and destroyed. I had an APC do the same thing a little bit later. Several units also decided that the "best" route to travel two squares was to travel four squares along a road in nearly the opposite direction, even though I had changed their SOP to "cover" and given them Advance orders. This again resulted in units getting pinned down and destroyed.

I think a lot of the movement issues result from the "one unit per square" rule. Since the units are small and the squares are big, a lot of seemingly nonsensical things happen with units that are adjacent. I think they need to loosen those rules up for movement, allowing multiple units to be in a square while moving as long as they don't stop in the same square.

I did figure out how to load infantry - it's Ctrl+Z. This is only mentioned in the shortcut screen (the keyboard icon in the upper left), and nowhere else that I could find. Shift+Z is how you just drop infantry, instead of giving them unload movement orders. Finally, you can check to see how much ammo of which type you have for all units by selecting the unit and hitting Enter - this is only way I know of to see what mortar loadout you have.

Great post, you should post it to the official forums too.

you can also get to the load command by clicking the orders button on the lower left part of the screen next to the SOP button.

Aetius wrote:

I've downgraded the pathfinding in AB to "atrocious". I attempted the second scenario, Winter Desolation. In this scenario you have to move several mechanized platoons several kilometers to reinforce an isolated tank platoon.

Giving each mechanized platoon simple Fast move orders to the position of the tanks results in a fiasco. Vehicles balk at the bridges because another unit is moving across, self-canceling their orders. Once one vehicle stops, it triggers a chain reaction of stopped vehicles who all cancel their orders. Ordering them to move again results in order delays, further scattering your units. Identical vehicles move at different speeds on the roads, so faster vehicles will move into the trees to go around slower vehicles, bogging themselves down in the process. Vehicles will stop at waypoints for no apparent reason, further snarling up the march order. Units make no attempt to stay together or move together. Vehicles only travel to one waypoint at a time, which results in extensive circular pathfinding as units try to reach waypoints that are temporarily blocked. Apparently, the movement algorithms have no concept of "wait until the unit in front of me moves out of the way, then move forward."

The end result is that your units end up strung out all along the route, scattered all to hell and unable to focus their combat power. I suspect this is one reason defensive scenarios are easier than they should be - the AI attackers get strung out just trying to get to the battle, allowing you to pick them off piecemeal.

I also had some units make some VERY questionable movement decisions. I had two undamaged and unsuppressed infantry squads decide that instead of following my orders, they were going to move across a road completely exposed to enemy fire at point blank range. Once they decide to move, you cannot delete their waypoints, and of course they were immediately pinned down and destroyed. I had an APC do the same thing a little bit later. Several units also decided that the "best" route to travel two squares was to travel four squares along a road in nearly the opposite direction, even though I had changed their SOP to "cover" and given them Advance orders. This again resulted in units getting pinned down and destroyed.

I think a lot of the movement issues result from the "one unit per square" rule. Since the units are small and the squares are big, a lot of seemingly nonsensical things happen with units that are adjacent. I think they need to loosen those rules up for movement, allowing multiple units to be in a square while moving as long as they don't stop in the same square.

I did figure out how to load infantry - it's Ctrl+Z. This is only mentioned in the shortcut screen (the keyboard icon in the upper left), and nowhere else that I could find. Shift+Z is how you just drop infantry, instead of giving them unload movement orders. Finally, you can check to see how much ammo of which type you have for all units by selecting the unit and hitting Enter - this is only way I know of to see what mortar loadout you have.

Using the "March" formation/behavior is supposed to alleviate some of the issues with moving a formation across a bottleneck. I have not tried it out yet to see if it helps.

An Armored Brigade Dev wrote:

If you want to cross a chokepoint with a formation, use the 'march' formation type. Place a few waypoints along the road, and they should follow it nicely.

By the way, many of the pathfinding issues are caused by the one-unit-per-cell limitation. I'll try to increase the limit in the game patches. If two vehicles are allowed to enter a map cell then there should be much more space for movement.


Thread

Picked up Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm in the current Steam sale. My only regret is that I waited this long to get it. Really good once you get used to where everything is in the UI.

Armored Brigade is frustrating me a bit with this path finding mess. Really hope they can adjust this "1 unit per square" thing, and hopefully that helps the path finding. Seems like an odd design decision, but I suppose they had their reasons?

I've been playing the heck out of Strategic Command: WWII World at War. If you like games like Panzer General, Panzer Corps, or HoI4 you'll want to give this one a look. It's pretty easy to pick up and play, although playing well requires some knowledge of the supply system, the C2 system, and the vision system (naval battles are critically important and hinge entirely on spotting).

It's less free-wheeling than HoI4, so the war mostly follows the historical path unless you make a focused effort to alter it. There are numerous scripted historical events that provide various bonuses (and maluses) as well as some nice flavor. Scale is corps/armies, with the occasional division or brigade. The AI has some weak points, particularly in isolated battles like East Africa, but it can surprise you if you're not careful. It also has hotseat and PBEM for multiplayer.

Paradog has the best videos I've seen so far - he has a pretty good idea of what he's doing, though some crazy things happen pretty quickly:

John Tiller Software put out a surprise release today, the Gold Edition remake of Panzer Campaigns: France 1940. 25 original scenarios and campaigns plus 68 new ones, including a Free Play Allied full campaign (no Belgium deployment required) or an Historical campaign that starts with the Allied player with historical deployments. 212,000 hex map, new sounds, new graphics (2D and 3D). Better disruption movement rules and a "Place All Reinforcements" option taken from the WWI Campaign game. (Apparently the map will be used for other games coming up, so it's really state of the art for Tiller.)

I have frequently complained of the antique graphics and controls of Tiller's games, but I'm impressed with the Gold Series remakes in that regard, and the updating of rules and algorithms as well make these games relevant again for the trad wargamer. I'm having fun with them again and I'm sure this will be no exception.

IMAGE(http://www.johntillersoftware.com/PanzerCampaigns/France40/f40_ss10.png)

IMAGE(http://www.johntillersoftware.com/PanzerCampaigns/France40/f40_ss4.png)

Oh, and if you own the original JTS or HPS versions, it's FREE. Just email support if you have the HPS one, or download the update if you have the JTS one.

Turns out no less than five Tiller games are newly updated to Gold:

Panzer Campaigns: France '40
Panzer Campaigns: Bulge '44
Panzer Campaigns: Normandy '44
Civil War Battles: Campaign Gettysburg
Civil War Battles: Campaign Franklin

Normandy is my absolute favorite. Hope I can get it for free.

Aetius wrote:

I've been playing the heck out of Strategic Command: WWII World at War. If you like games like Panzer General, Panzer Corps, or HoI4 you'll want to give this one a look. It's pretty easy to pick up and play, although playing well requires some knowledge of the supply system, the C2 system, and the vision system (naval battles are critically important and hinge entirely on spotting).

Thanks for the tip, Aetius!

I picked it up and decided to give it a run as France in the 1939 start. That... did not end well. I'll have to try another country next. China if I want a challenge, the US or UK/Commonwealth if I want something easier

I've read plenty of memoirs and biographies of Generals and ... I can't think of a single wargame that captured the same feeling as reading a memoirs or biography of a General.

Question for the group: What wargame comes the closest (not close, just the closest) to the lived reality of being a war-time General?

At a strategic level, I'd say Decisive Campaigns: Barbarossa. It is really interesting in that it's the only wargame that I've played that has that real push and pull of the highest echelon trying to get you to promote their agenda. It's pretty slick that way.

At a tactical level, Armored brigade feels like what I'd imagine a Brigadier General felt like in the 80s.

So, I'm still considering grabbing Ultimate General: Civil War in the Steam sale for $8. I've read some reviews on Steam and people complain that your actions in the missions in the campaign don't really carry over from one mission to the next. Is this a valid complaint? Do you have control over the strategic layer in the game like a Total War game, or is it just a series of pre-built scenarios?

PWAlessi wrote:

So, I'm still considering grabbing Ultimate General: Civil War in the Steam sale for $8. I've read some reviews on Steam and people complain that your actions in the missions in the campaign don't really carry over from one mission to the next. Is this a valid complaint? Do you have control over the strategic layer in the game like a Total War game, or is it just a series of pre-built scenarios?

There's no geographic strategic layer, it's a series of scenarios. However, there is a strategic layer focused on building and developing your army that I find very fun. Also, success in battle generally means that future battles will be easier - the enemy will have fewer troops and less effective weapons. At the higher difficulty levels, you must have a well-designed army and you have to thread the needle between inflicting casualties on the enemy and avoiding casualties of your own. It's a very good game - there's nothing that captures Civil War tactics better in my opinion.