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Discussions Rules and Guidelines
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In campaign setup screen, from main menu, at the bottom center of the screen are the options for Auto-manage, Fog of War, Feuds, and Readiness. This is the only way to turn off readiness. Though someone might know of a way to turn it off in the save files. You could ask the devs by email or on the discord. You could also edit some lines in the campaignprefs.txt to lessen the effect of readiness.
I spent a very boring and frustrating evening yesterday watching the little 'Red' 'you can't do anything with this unit' lights on my armies twinkle whilst the AI ran rings around me and recaptured everything I'd built and achieved.
I really have no idea what 'Readiness' is supposed to represent or why it exists in the game, but it would be nice if it made sense and if the AI actually played by the same rules.
I gave up in disgust in the end and went to bed, so today I've got to try and work out WTF went wrong as nothing that happened last night made any logical sense to me at all.
I've already completed a file Verification Check on Steam and reloaded 14 corrupt or missing files. So, its possible the whole evening was wasted playing a glitched game. But it's equally possible that I'm doing something stupid that is causing this weird behaviour.
Nevertheless, I managed to move the Army of the Potomac and the Army of the Ohio along with the Department of the Ohio and my Corps of Engineers to Cincinnati to provide support for Fort Shields which was under heavy attack by 54,000 Confederate conscripts.
The Ohio River Boat squadron had already been sunk trying to guard the river crossing.
A further 24,000 Confederates were besieging Fort Trebutt outside St,Louis again but the Army of Mississippi and the Department of Illinois were already in the town and just needed to march a few miles through the muddy streets to provide it with support. So, I wasn't too worried at this stage.
The Battle of Roebling Bridge was fought in a thunderstorm on March 7 1862 and involved 35,664 Federal troops from the Army of the Potomac and 37,000 Rebel troops from Lee's Confederate Corps.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3386060412
The Army of the Potomac had gone RED on me, apparently just for being moved by train from Washington and so refused to initiate the fight which is why the battle was started by Major General Humprey of the Corps of Engineers who led his solitary brigade into the attack and dragged the Army of the Potomac into the fight as reinforcements. It was a major victory leaving a third of the Rebel Army dead on the field and sending the rest off in panicked flight.
Now I just needed to deal with the smaller force besieging Fort Trebutt at St.Louis.
Unfortunately, neither Scott commanding the Army of the Mississippi, nor Buell commanding the Department of Illinois had managed to move an inch to support Fort Trebutt in over a month, and so the fort had fallen to the much smaller confederate force.
Now both Scott and Buell went into major panic mode and ordered their forces to withdraw abandoning the Level 2 Armoury of St Louis and all the warmth and provisions stored in the town and instead wandering off into the snowy wastes of central Illinois choosing the worst and most muddy snow caked roads possible.
I checked their READINESS bars and they were both going to take over two months to recover their readiness (72 days for the Army of the Mississippi), even though it had been sitting in a nice warm city next to a fully stock arsenal and the Reb's had spent the whole winter starving in the snowy wastes of Missouri.
I immediately rushed any of my forces that showed a GREEN light to St,.Louis careful to use the train or river boats to avoid the muddy roads. The Department of Iowa arrived and immediately went into panic mode and withdrew to join Scott in the middle of a field. The Army of Ohio sent by train refused to even approach the town and had to be withdrawn.
The Rebs meanwhile had besieged and captured Quincy IL the main depot upstream from St. Louis with an army of 7,000 men which was left unguarded due to the panic of the Department of the Illinois which was now apparently scheduled to continue until June or July.
I live in England, so I'm no expert on the climate in the USA, but the weather in 1862 doesn't make much sense.
Since November 1861, North America has been stuck in a perpetual snow storm. I've fought every battle in this period in dept snow drifts and raging snow storms. Roebling Bridge was fought in a thunder storm, and it is now May 1862 and they still persist and all my corps and armies are stuck with a permanent 'Bad Weather Penalty' which I'm assuming is contributing towards their lack of Readiness.
They are also permanently 'Unhappy' even though I've sacked all their 'defamed' officers and despite having been victorious in every battle they have fought. Most will not be ready to do anything for at least another two months and in the meanwhile much smaller confederate forces are simply dancing around them capturing whatever they like.
I've completely abandoned all of last nights game play, refusing to save it, as it actually makes no sense and I'm hoping it was caused by some sort of glitch. But I'm thoroughly fed up with the whole 'Readiness' mechanism which does not appear to be based on any tangible logic that the player can control.
Likewise, I hate the random 'Withdrawal' system which basically removes the players agency in their units and moves your forces to some pointless random location which appears to be chosen deliberately by the AI to be as awkward and pointless as possible. No war game I have ever played would be that badly designed and at the very least the player should be given the choice of where to retreat his army.
Can you imagine the Waterloo campaign if after the Battle of Ligny the AI intervened and decided to retreat the entire Prussian Army into the middle of Paris?
Well, that's how stupid the withdrawal system is in this game.
Or perhaps a scenario where in the middle of Chess Masters game the umpire randomly reaches over snatches your queen off the board and flushes it down the toilet. Because that about the measure of it in my opinion.
Standard readiness recovery per year
6.8
If you were to increase this number to about 25 or 50 or so, it should speed the recovery up considerably. It won't turn it off completely but you'll have less time to wait before readiness turns green. This might speed up the AI if they actually react based on readiness.
On the plus side, you wont need to restart your campaign.
As for what it is supposed to represent, is that it is to show the time it takes to get the men into formation before and after battle... Like after battle cleanup and sending prisoners to the POW camps.
As for the reason it was added to the game is to slow the player down a lot more to give the AI a chance. This is mainly my opinion. Before the Readiness was added, the Player could bull rush the enemy taking them out before their armies could react. This made games very short, as their was no time delay between battles and you could continue to chase down the fleeing armies until they no longer existed.
Minimum retreating distance
35
Maximum retreating distance
300
Maybe change them to something like this...
Minimum retreating distance
25
Maximum retreating distance
150
It should push the armies/corps away from each other, but not nearly as far. I'm not sure on the lines that control the auto-retreat.
Test your results until you find a distance you like.
My current assumption is that yesterday was some sort of glitch. But that's just based on the observation that the weather seems to be stuck on Snow Storms even though its now May in Ohio and Illinois. That may or may not be an accurate assumption, but perhaps someone who lives in those states can confirm whether they normally get five months of snow a year, and when spring usually arrives.
Also can anyone tell me how to determine the weather on the campaign map?
I was trying to check if it had changed after the file verification but the only place I can find it reported is in the battle screen,
Three Field Armies
Unhappy, Bad Weather, Low ammunition (not sure how its supply state can be 100% if it is low on ammunition but that's what it says.
Readiness(ORANGE): LOW (No estimate given for full readiness)
Bad weather, Readiness (RED): DEFICIENT (Full Readiness in 54 days)
Bad Weather Readiness(YELLOW) : Mediocre (Full Readiness in 31 days)
The Two Key Reserve Corps
Unhappy, Bad Weather Readiness (RED): Deficient (Full readiness in 54 days
Bad Weather, Readiness(RED) : Deficient (No estimate given for full readiness)
It would be nice to see a table that documents what affects READINESS loss and recovery and by how much, and to be able to see the readiness of the AI's units.
[h1[Forced Retreats[/h1]
Yes! It might be a good idea to minimise the damage caused by the auto-retreat function.
If the maximum distance is reduced then at least the unit should reach it's destination sooner and return to player control faster.
It's tempting to just arbitrarily increase this and presumably if you increased it enough it would effectively render it irrelevant. However, I would like to understand what its supposed to represent and how it is calculated in the first place before making a decision.
I mean Napoleon, for example, allowed his men 24 hours to recover after a battle before driving them on to the next, and that presumably allowed time for looting and burying the dead, having their wounds dressed, recovering their nerves and writing home to let loved ones know you survived. British officers of the period considered this an excessive indulgence and considered it an indication of the poor qualities of the French soldier that he needed to be given time to recover.
So, figures like 54 to 71 days seem extreme overkill by any standard and I'm curious what else has been included.
The only units of the area that are actually 'Green' are the Corps of Engineers (1 Brigade) at Cincinnati, the Wisconsin State Militia at Chicago and the Iowa State Militia. So, these three units (less than 10,000 men) have been ordered to march on Quincy IL to try and secure the Illinois Depot.
The Army of the Mississippi in St.Louis is (Yellow) and so is ordered to try and support Fort Torbet, but it panics and instead of holding it withdraws into the wastes of northern Missouri and is rendered useless by the AI.
The Army of the Potomac is the only other YELLOW unit but is in Cincinnati and is supposed to be guarding Washington. Nevertheless as the only other piece on the board i order it to En'train and travel west towards St.Louis in the hope of saving the arsenal from falling into Rebel hands.
Quincy IL is now cluttered with units from all over the west and as soon as the Corps of Engineers arrive they are ordered to build a Depot to help increase supplies.
Lee's Corps pf 7,000 Rebels tries to attack the town, but finds it's path blocked by the the three green brigades of the Wisconsin and Iowa militia consisting of just under 5,000 untried recruits.
The battle took place in the now customary thunderstorm and amazingly the recruits from Wisconsin and Iowa won the day killing thousands of similarly untrained Confederate conscripts.
So, Quincy at least is safe for the time being, but nothing other than two forts are now guarding St.Louis and all the Union field armies are out of commission due to 'READINESS' issues.
Make sure important IPPs have a market, don't be scared to upgrade them in key Cities.
Use rail lines to travel whenever you can, they can also be used overnight to make up time. I don't use the rivers much, but I will cross some using boats instead of risking being intercepted.
Once I take a city or strategical important location, I build a depot or a fort. Both increase your supply, and the depot takes 7 days to build. I consider that essential for any chance of expansion success. The fort has the added benefit of actually holding the location and with a few reinforcements you can actually cause a few problems. It will however protect any depots from being 'stolen' anytime an enemy comes within 50 miles.
I would never play with Readiness off, it's an important part of the challenge.
However, in my case, as you can see most of my Armies have 100% Supply, so the issue doesn't really arise. Although, because I am allowed to move RED flagged armies to a depot location I tend to do that anyway rather than leave them in the middle of nowhere.
I'm not sure that would make much difference to READINESS RECOVERY unless it was being hampered by poor supply. But it's still good advice.
I have been doing that specifically because at the moment North America in my campaign seems to be stuck in a perpetual snowstorm that makes movement by road painfully slow.
However, i was interested to note that their is a READINESS CONSUMPTION penalty associated with train travel. Which is worth considering. Armies lose readiness when being moved by train or sea apparently. Though it doesn't say anything about movement by river movement.
Likewise. The only problem I'm finding with St.Louis is that because of their poor Readiness none of my armies are willing to help the defenders of the forts. they just standing around and watch as the forts are taken, which is very frustrating.
I am certainly reluctant to turn it off, but at the moment it makes no sense and is ruining my enjoyment of the game.
In fact, the more I look at it the more convinced I am that it 'bugged', but that nobody has actually noticed that it makes no sense.
If an army is fully supplied, well rested, confident and well-led then there is no reason for it to require 103 days to recover readiness.
Even based on the Campaignprefs data file, there is nothing listed that would prevent it marching and fighting. It is in perfect condition and yet the readiness system is still denying the player access to it as a unit. For apparently no reason whatsoever.
That can't be right, and I'm pretty sure there must be some sort of flaw in the coding.
e.g. Lack of Supply, low morale, fatigue, poor intelligence and poor leadership should all impact the ability of an army to continue to attack and carry appropriate penalties if the player tries to force the issue.
The problem as far as I can see so far is the Readiness doesn't actually take any of these thing into account at all. I have armies that are perfectly ready for battle but cannot even move because the computer says they can't. Which is actually no reason at all.
BTW:
Do you have a record of all the improvements you have made to the campaign preferences for your game to improve it's historical accuracy?
I'd be interested to see what else I should consider changing.