Civil War Battles - Optional Rules Guide 1.3(4.04.1)

[BigDuke66]

"Favored" is maybe the wrong term, the attacker usually has full control of everything in his hands, where to attack, with how many, how long preparation by artillery etc., and so can get the optimum out of it while the defender gives away his best tool to stop the attacker to the AI.
And under AI control the opportunity defensive fire is very uneven and outcomes can be extreme with unimportant attackers receiving a lot defensive fire while critical attackers can get to a melee even unopposed.
While defensive fire in phased play with the Automated optional rule is still done by the AI and still not smart at all you can at least depend on a full volley on the closest enemy and that gives a good chance to make a lot casualties and raises the chances for a Moral Check, if that leads to disrupting him his offensive fire is considerably lowered and he can't even do a melee.

While everything looks fine in fair situations, turn play simply doesn't work out when having special situation for the defender, I just played Carthage a 51 turn battle were I should retire south with about 100 men hunted by 4000 Confederates, that didn't go past turn 21 when my force was down to 65 men because my own defensive fire was always worth a crap that simply didn't lead to him being forced to make moral checks so his overall very low Moral values could have impact.
Another situation was Wilson's Creek where Sigel's force tried to hold the ground but got overrun again because the defensive fire didn't trigger when it was crucial but even when triggered the 50% volley didn't lead to disrupting him because 1/2 casualties also lead to considerably lower chances of forcing a moral check.
And now comes the best part, as he had overrun my supplies and artillery he switched to defend them and what did I do? Go offensive and melee him, got all my stuff back and send his units running because defense again did simply not work out.

Another thing to consider is the fact that the in opportunity fire can easily be "gamed", first you can do stack movements and so lower the number of opportunities where there could be defensive fire at all, then on the attack you can easily switch out units that get disrupted while on their way to the target and end up with units able to melee although the defender might even disrupted some units before.
All this doesn't work in phased play.

This leads to the conclusion that in turn play almost all the time the only hope is being offensive, if you have to switch to a defensive stance your basically done because if your offensive didn't push the enemy back how should your troops now hold on the defense.
All this makes a rather strange gameplay that not really mirrors the historical battles.

I guess like Gettysburg also Fredericksburg could show this, with he 50% opportunity defensive fire the Union would surely be able to get to the Stone Wall and beyond it.

We can be thankful that phased play can be done easily in the CW series, in Napoleonic there is no automation and phased play has to be done completely manual what takes a lot time.