Hopefully a fairly small thing as far as coding that I think would add a GREAT deal to game play.
I think the way Independent Units are treated is unnecessarily complicated. Independent Units should be able to move where you need them whenever: having them have to wait until very last move, and then only be able to move into a hex with an active army is a major impediment that I think is not very realistic.
At present with the 1.06a patch, when you detach an "independent" unit type from an Army, there seems to be a random chance that it will either: (a) retain its assignment to the army, or (b) become unassigned to the army, irrespective of whether it is an independent unit or not.
As an example, I attach a .sav. Here I have just activated Bulgarian 1 Army. There was one Cav unit in there "1c Cav." I wanted to detach that Cav so it could rush down to Pristina to assist the VIII Infantry, but as soon as I detach the Cav unit it becomes unassigned to the I Army.
Now look over there in Cluj where a detached "independent" III Army Corps continues to retain its assignment to III Austro-Hung Army for months and months, or in Medias where a detached "independent" VII AH Army Corp continues to retain its assignment to VIII AH Army for months and months . . .
In short, there appears to be no rhyme or reason to why sometimes a detached independent unit retains its assignment to the Army from which it detaches and other times it immediately loses this assignment and becomes a non-assigned unit.
When you combine this with the fact that you cannot move Independent units into tiles containing armies (but strangely you CAN move armies into tiles containing detached independent units??) in army-by-army mode, and the fact that a detached independent unit that retains its assignment cannot move into a tile with a new army to which you want to attach it UNLESS (a) that new army is the very last one to be activated, and just happens to be (b) in range for the detached independent unit . . . in short, it is way too complicated and restrictive.
I suggest the following changes to game mechanics:
(I) Detached independent units should be able to be activated individually and moved at any time anywhere within their movement radius and which is not an invalid move for geographic or political reasons. If there is a concern about that affording too much flexibility and not reflecting limited command and control, then maybe independent detached units cannot ever coordinate. This would allow a player to use independent detached units the way they are intended to be used: they are reserve units that can be reassigned to other armies when need be. Given the turns are weeks and months long, I do nnot think it is necessary for the player to have to expend two or three turns getting the original "parent" Army, the target army and the independent unit positioned just-so so that the independent can be detached and transferred.
(II) When a unit is detached, it retains its assigned Army until either (a), the HQ for the assigned army has been one full turn 'out of range' (whatever distance that should be) or (b) the player clicks a little button immediately after detaching the unit that says "Unassign.'
ADDIT: a related point, try reattaching that 1c Cav to the Bulg I Army. The message that comes up in the Chat window is that the "destination army has the maximum number of assigned Corps."
The values on the Bulg I Army say 2 Reserve, and 7 Command. My understanding of that is that it can have a total of 9 assigned (2 in reserve 7 in non-reserve). At the beginning of the turn, before I detached 1c Cav, there were a total of twelve (1d) corps "assigned" to that army:
I, II, III, IV, V, VI, and XII Infantry and 1c Cav, all attached with the HQ in Krushevac, plus VIII Inf detachment in Leskovic, a detachment with X & XI Inf in Vratza, IX Inf detachment in Rustchuk, and VII detachment in Varna!?
Why can the dang thing have 12 corps assigned to it until I try to detach some to use them, and then all the sudden it cannot even handle eight being attached in with the HQ?
Is this as random and inexplicable as I think it is, or does it all make sense in terms of the rules that I simply have not read? This is not the only instance where I've noted armies 'absorbing' excess numbers of corps when detached corps are left in the same tile. Is it supposed to work that way? It seems like detached corps more often than not automatically merge into the HQ in teh same tile if they end their turn there.