American Civil War Unit Names

[K-1stPennaRes]

This, I suppose, is no big deal, but I had thought that a previous patch had fixed it, too.

As the American player in an MP game, I have once again gotten to the American Civil War. But just as was the case before, some of the Federal troops seem to have the wrong designations.

For example, the capital is being defended by militia from Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina.
Baltimore is garrisoned by a militia brigade from Florida.
Kansas City is protected by a brigade of Texas militia.
The "Atlanta Garrison" and "Augusta (presumably Georgia) Garrison" are both in Eastern Maryland.
The "Austin (Texas?) Garrison is in Northern Missouri.
The Bowling Greene (sic) Garrison is merely misspelled -- who hasn't done that?
The Charlotte Garrison is defending the capital -- for some reason, this does not fill me with confidence.
The Mississippi River Squadron is also at New York City. Needless to say, it won't be easy getting this riverine force to the upper Mississippi, which is where I would assume it would have started.

Etc. I know that this may not make any real difference to people other than myself, who like their historical games to be, well, as historical as possible, and I am certainly enjoying the game. But maybe the next time a patch is done, someone can research which states normally sent brigades to fight for the North, and which fought mostly for the South, just to add a bit to the historical veneer.

So far, no Confederate generals have been activated on the Federal side yet, but this is just the first turn of the war.

Thanks!

B.C. Milligan

[K-1stPennaRes]

And, as I scroll around the map, it just gets sillier. The garrison for "Fort Pulaski" (which is in Georgia) is in Ohio, or something like that, and many northern cities have "garrisons" that shouldn't even be part of the Federal army (for example, I have the Richmond and Petersburg Garrison). Finally, just in Virginia, D.C., and Baltimore, my Federal army has at least 200,000 troops at the beginning of the war, whiich is more than the entire Union army had when it started. About 12 times more, in fact.

I have to assume that my "Civil War" is not really supposed to be anything historical (maybe that's where I am making my own mistake), but just that the game has a "Civil War" where units randomly join one side or the other. I guess.... maybe I will just go back to AACW.

[Jim-NC]

One issue is that as the player, you have 10 years to build an army. So your army may be smaller or larger than what was historical. As to the unit names, they are in a database that probably wasn't changed for the war, and I think it gives random names to units (thus the issue). The units could have been created by the US, and thus are in the database as usable names, the issue is that you want the units to be created with the correct names. That would have made the script much longer, as currently random names are much easier to implement.

[K-1stPennaRes]

Jim --

Thanks for your reply. Having done some game scripting myself, I understand. I deliberately avoiding increasing the size of the U.S. Army over the first ten years of the game, mostly just to make it more fun, so those 200,000 troops near Washington (already in corps, which was not the case in AACW, of course) were not recruited by myself.

Anyway, if it is a big nuisance to fix these things, I won't really expect them to be fixed. I do hope that in this Civil War, Union generals are with the Union army (last time, I had virtually no generals at all, and my best ones were people like Joe Johnston whom I would have expected to fight for the south, and now that I think of it, I believe I had Lee, too).

Thanks again for your reply. P.S. I like to say the morale will continue until the beatings improve.

[StephenT]

Bear in mind that when the Civil War starts, any of your units that were in territory that is now Confederate are moved automatically to the North. So yes, if you built a 'Richmond garrison' in 1855, that unit will be moved to Maryland or DC when war starts.

[Jim-NC]

There was a bug with the civil war events (pre- 1.03) where the general pools weren't increased. And as to the confederate generals joining the union, it would be plausible (some generals from the south did join the union). They (the designers) made the decision to instantly start the union with armies in corps (which is simpler) instead of starting them in blobs, then moving to corps as the game progresses. If you look, you will see that the European armies in the game have corps available in 1860. Also the game allows marching to the sound of the guns and calls any unit led by a 2 * as a corps.

[K-1stPennaRes]

Bear in mind that when the Civil War starts, any of your units that were in territory that is now Confederate are moved automatically to the North. So yes, if you built a 'Richmond garrison' in 1855, that unit will be moved to Maryland or DC when war starts.

Thanks. I did not have a garrison in any of those places I referenced, and there were more. I pretty much had troops in the Far West, D.C., and Norfolk/Fortress Monroe, and that was it. Per what I wrote above, I was doing my best to pretend I didn't know the war was coming, just to make it more of a challenge. And I certainly did not have a U .S. Army that exceeded 300,000, and probably more (I haven't counted any other than those in the capital region) before the war began. I don't mean to complain about this; I just wanted to suggest that if there is a future patch, perhaps some minor tweaks might be made.

In AACW, one of the things that are fun to do is to raise your army when the war begins. Here you start with a very large army, and a very large navy, at the very outset.

[K-1stPennaRes]

There was a bug with the civil war events (pre- 1.03) where the general pools weren't increased. And as to the confederate generals joining the union, it would be plausible (some generals from the south did join the union). They (the designers) made the decision to instantly start the union with armies in corps (which is simpler) instead of starting them in blobs, then moving to corps as the game progresses. If you look, you will see that the European armies in the game have corps available in 1860. Also the game allows marching to the sound of the guns and calls any unit led by a 2 * as a corps.

Thanks for the explanation. I knew about that bug, and the fix was one reason we restarted the game. But what was not plausible to me was that, other than 2-3 historically Confederate generals, except for the doddering Scott and a couple of nonentities I never heard of, I didn't get any Federal generals at all, until very late in the war. The more I write, the more it seems as if I am complaining, so I will try to avoid any more such.

[Fouche]

OK in reading these postings...the assumption is with the 1.03 patch there should not be any issue in regards to the lack of generals for the south and north when the American Civil War breaks out. In the case of my game vs my friend (we are both patched to 1.03), who has the USA it is now February 1860...(the war started in December of 1859), he has reported to me there has been no other generals for the Union except for the 3 that the north gets at the beginning. When should these additional generals start appearing? Thanks...

[K-1stPennaRes]

OK in reading these postings...the assumption is with the 1.03 patch there should not be any issue in regards to the lack of generals for the south and north when the American Civil War breaks out. In the case of my game vs my friend (we are both patched to 1.03), who has the USA it is now February 1860...(the war started in December of 1859), he has reported to me there has been no other generals for the Union except for the 3 that the north gets at the beginning. When should these additional generals start appearing? Thanks...

M. Fouche is too polite to note that his friend is, in fact, myself. And just in case there is any thought of another fix for the Civil War event, I also find it somewhat odd that, as soon as the war began, I (the Union) had an army of about 455,000 men. That is an awful lot for the first week of the war, and it takes some of the fun out of the whole war. Anyway, rant over; back to playing. But as he notes above, despite our both having 1.03, I have seen no generals appear yet, after 3-4 turns of war, to command this vast host, and so far, I have not seen any Confederate generals, either.

[Jim-NC]

Perhaps it is not fixed yet. It was supposed to be in 1.03.