I would just like to see the Union reach historical 1862 levels of troops without the draft...

While command was certainly an issue... Sheer manpower in itself rarely results in victory. There are countless examples and quotes reflecting this. The discipline required to advance on a fortified position, in hostile territory is not gained overnight. The men in the field, their commanders and n...

Perhaps calling it conscription is part of the problem. Without using it, there is no way the Union can mobilize a historical number of men by 1862. Looking at the campaigns of 1862 one is struck by the sheer number of men the Union had by that time - and how poorly the command was to not simply ste...

One thing to recall from a "large victory at Gettysburg" scenario is that even given the loss of 1/3 of the Union army, there were plenty of reserves available - looking at the Washington garrison in 1863 shows this. Lincoln had sequestered a reserve there, in part response to the previous year's pr...

If you can find it, try A Military History and Atlas of the Napoleonic Wars by Esposito and Elting - I remember finding this at the university library 25 years ago and being enthralled with the maps and the descriptions of movements/battles. I do not know if it is in print again (I bout my copy in 2...

A grand campaign of the Napoleonic wars would be rough - what to do with the "down time" between wars/campaigns, the potentially ahistoric alliances or abuses, and many other things. However, I for one would like to see longer, perhaps "linked" scenarios, much like what was done in the classic board...

:) My point was not that a game cannot model a leader - ACW clearly can - but that the argument itself about what a leader was, how they should be rated, is the crux of the problem. Getting to the point of modeling is where the bloodshed lies. The passion that is still there about some leaders, Less...

Sigel is an excellent example of just how hard it is to mod leader statistics well. To some he has been unfairly maligned (especially when leading smaller sized forces), to others he was always an incompetant hack. As mentioned before, others also get this treatment - A.S. Johnston for instance - an...

Well, the South did have a fair number of political generals as well, they were just less often in charge of critical fronts. Henry Wise (my great-great-great-great-grandfather) springs to mind. A poor leader most times, apt to screw up, but too politically important to dismiss. The Union had a grea...

There are many myths about leaders in the Civil War, many of these come from the fighting of the war in the decades following the war. Longstreet joined the Republicans, and so his memory gets tarnished - Jackson dies accidently at about the high water mark in the East, and so (well, along with his ...

Not a critique, but an observation. Perhaps the hardest thing to do properly is model the statistics of leaders - especially in a (still) emotional context like the US Civil War. I personally have seen Buell rated highly in some games (and his contemporaries rated him so), and others rate him more i...

McPherson is an important read for the very fact that he does cover so much of the political and social elements that preceded the Civil War. Too often such factors end up forgotten or trivialized, when the reasons why leaders of both sides ended up so intransingent in 1860 needs to be explained. At...

Forgive me if this has been asked before... When a "flavor brigade" is split - for instance the Iron Brigade in the 1862 scenario, instead of the componants listed I get the 1st US, 2nd US, etc. Perhaps I am missing something here, but I would like to (for instance) remove a leader like Rufus King f...