Upper Arkansas river non-navigable?

[runyan99]

This may be a bug, but I cannot get riverboats up the Arkansas river, to the port city of Ft. Smith. If you try to give a riverboat unit orders to move there, you will find you cannot do it. The river spaces between Little Rock and Ft. Smith seem not to allow river traffic.

[gbs]

True dat.

[Pocus]

right, this will be fixed for today. Thanks for the report.

[Aragos]

Fellows,
The Arkansas River was too shallow to move riverboats past Russellville (approx Ozark on the map) until the lock and dam system was built in the 20th century. Shallow draft riverboats could make it up the river in some times of the year (spring and fall, when it rains a lot), but could not in summer and winter. That was one of the reasons that Grant nearly ordered the evacuation of Ft Smith in 1864-65 after he took command of all the Union armies--it was too hard to supply.

In reality, to reflect the sort of 'naval control' used in AACW, I'd recommend no ships past Little Rock.

[jimwinsor]

The Red River campaign in 1864 was also plagued by seasonably navagable river becoming inconveniently unnavagable due to weather conditions.

Rivers that change from major to minor (and vice versa) based on rainfall totals upstream would be a great wish list addition for the game system someday!