The Draft

[runyan99]

There has been a lot of discussion about the manpower availability in the game. It seems to be skewed too high, allowing generally for larger armies and higher casualties than the historical war.

While it 'seems' to high for many of us, actually analysing the game and counting the beans is a little labor intensive. That is to say, confirming our suspicions is a little bit difficult. But, I think I've made a start.

First, because I am most familiar with the CSA situation, I wanted to compare manpower raised in AACW to whatever historical numbers I could find. I wanted to see how large a CSA army I could recruit.

Historical numbers differ based on source, time, and the CSA records seem to have been a bit doubtful to start with, but we can get ballpark figures at least. Wiki
gave me year end figures from the Reports from the War Department began at the end of 1861 (326,768 men), 1862 (449,439), 1863 (464,646), 1864 (400,787).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_Army

Clovis quoted me the following from Mine from the History of Military Mobilization in the United States Army 1775-1945 and Official Records

dec 61 confederate present 258,680
Janv 62 Union present 527,204
dec 62 Confederate 304,015
Janv 63 Union 698,802
dec 63 Confederate 277,970
Janv 64 Union 611,250
dec 64 Confederate 196,016
Janv 65 Union 620,924

So, that was my historical data. What about AACW?

Okay, I did the following test.

I started up an April '61 game with 1.07. I called for volunteers twice, filled up replacements as needed, raised a smattering of different VA, NC and SC brigades, then counted all the men on the map at the start of the Jan '62 turn.

I ended up with an imprecise total of........ 235,668.

Of that total, many thousands of course were immobile garrisons and militia.

So, I concluded that AACW's CSA numbers for 1861 were in the ballpark, if perhaps slightly low, as this figure does not account for any battle losses. That is, if volunteers only were allowed.

Since calling for CSA volunteers gives about 140 recriutment points, but the draft provides a much larger figure of 400+ recruitment points. Had I called for the draft in 1861 in my above example, it is obvious that I could have put many more thousands of troops under arms in 1861, and using the option again in 1862 will only increase the size of my force, minus battle losses. Going forward, using the Partial Mobilization option twice in 1862, plus calling for volunteers twice, will give me more than 1200 more conscript points to use in 1862 on top of the 235,000 men already under arms. Clearly, I will either have a much larger army at the end of 1862 than I had at the end of 1861 (while historically, the army grew by no more than 40% using the most optimistic numbers from the War Department), or I can incur some massive casualties during 1862. Probably a lot more than the historical figures.

It seems clear to me then that the pivotal issue in the game then is the draft, and how it is implemented. It's easy use twice a year seems to be the source of the 'extra' manpower in the game. So, this leads me to a few suggestions:

1) Remove the ability to draft at the start of the game, during the April-June 1861 period. There is little reason to believe that either side could have enacted a draft at this time, even if they had wanted to.

2) Increase the penalty for using the draft in the period of June-December 1861. It should be an emergency measure of last resort at this time, which most players will not want to use. Make it cost twice as much in VP and NM as it does now.

3) Cut down the manpower the draft provides in the 1862-1865 period either by reducing the conscript points it yields in half OR by restricting it's use to once a year instead of twice a year. Of the two options, I favor cutting the points in half, because it still forces you to pay the penalty twice a year, making the draft onerous to maintain.

In any case, I think some method of reducing the number of conscript points available from the draft is probably the key to getting AACW armies down to more realistic sizes, and making players feel the 'pinch' of a manpower shortage during the war. As it is, I think losses of 6000 or 10,000 men in battles currently is a matter of little consquesnce (a sort of morning dash, as Sherman once called it) because of the ease of their replacement.

[runyan99]

I haven't done any modding, but I have installed a copy of Excel so I could look under the hood a bit.

I noticed the following line in the GameOptions.xls file

$gmaFullDraft|MaxUse|1|ResetFreq|24|ImageID|mdl_CSA_Mil2.png|Title|strFullMobilizationTitle|MsgString|strFullMobilization|ToolString|strFullMobilizationTool|VP|75|Morale|5|Param1|135

Now there are 24 turns in a year, so this line makes it look like you are only supposed to choose this option once per year, based on the ResetFreq parameter.

I know for a fact however that all the draft options reset every 6 months or 12 turns. Is something causing the draft option to reset more often than was designed, and are we getting too many conscript points as a result?