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I have made some comments on the replacemetns (or the lack of them) elsewhere. Squarian and I are now into the second year of our campaign. I still havent got enough replacements, even when I buy replacements for whenever I can. But I also have another comment this time.

In July 1758 I have;
16 PRU light infantry and 20 militia replacements
11 HAN light infantry and 19 militia replacements
16 GBR light infantry replacements
8 HES light infantry and 19 militia replacements
1 BRU light inantry and 19 militia replacemetns

I have maybe 8 light infantry elements in service - in total, over all my nationalities. And about the same number of Militia - they tend to train up to infantry before they need the replacements. It is pretty frustrating havig lots of manpower, but of the wrong kind...

I would suggest:
- either make all replacements regular infantry. There is hardly any other kind needed (at least for the Prussian side). Optionally make it so that you can buy a depot btn for militia and light infantry.
- or remove all free replacements, and put the men and money in the pool, so that the player can determine what kind of replacements he needs (you would need light infantry and militia depot btn then also).

Either way, those 120 elements would go a long way to relieving the problem of not being able to make the armies recover.

To start with, we could do some events to change the input of replacement and also "convert" unused replacements of one kind into another kind. If you wish I can make those sample events and you can test them (in a new campaign) so that we can fine tune, ok ?

I nevertheless would like to point out that the key feature of this war was the extreme difficulty of all participants to recruit and replace lost men....this is something that should appear in the game

Due to randomness nature of the game Events can be a good idea that converts unused replacements to another type of units(other than we determine the place and time of replacemets.) with fine tuning, but it is discussible.
Related to replacements can a ledger be more imformative about loses about the type of units in previous turn.Maybe a small tab in the ledger.So we can have more clue about our units losses and replacements.
I agree with the promotion,it is not practical to detach leaders in the middle of the battle.

Try this one (in addition there's the Excel DB file if you want to look/tweak it)

I agree that it should be difficult to keep the armies up to strenght - but that is another discussion (though I lost 600 men in a battle last turn - it cost me 16 elements!!!! The column consisted of 10.000 men, divided in about 200 elements of, on average, 50 men each. Lots of btn were 17 men strong, I had a brigade of 16 elements, less than 500 men strong in total!!! :bonk .

The point of this post was more to complain about the fact that I could not use the replacements I actually got .

The ability to switch the men fron one kind into the other, to train the militia replacemnts up to infantry replacements as it were, should be a good interim measure.

We (I think I can speak for Squarian here) are of course willing to test that. But we are only at year two of the war - it might be better if we finish this campaign, and comment on other issues we encounter (or think we encounter, because we don't pay enough attention of don't read the rules close enough )?

(I already got one I think - prisoners of war. I'll start a new thread so as to sow as little confusion as possible).

Bertram wrote:The ability to switch the men fron one kind into the other, to train the militia replacemnts up to infantry replacements as it were, should be a good interim measure.

Well, this could be an interesting new option I guess... I'll try to make one

Similar issue on my side of our game - I've got 42 (!) Russian raider replacements and not a single unit which uses them, because the cossacks are cavalry elements.

Maybe either cossacks need to be re-defined as raiders, or else Russia should get much larger numbers of cavalry replacements and no raiders.

Fixed in upcoming 1.04 patch, all Cossacks are raiders now...

Not 1.04 but 1.0 beta 3. Now I know why I made the error myself

Re-revisiting the replacemetns... this time a question.

Last turn I noticed my manpower going up and down during the turn, so I payed attention this time.
At the end of the previous turn, my manpower was 1. At the start of the turn resolution (in the admin phase before day 1) this went up to 58. This is about the number of men I expect to get each turn (if there are no battles or other disasters).
But at the end of the turn resolution, during the admin phase of day 15 (after the resolution of the moves, during the generating of the report etc.) my manpower went down again - in this case to 37.
Where did those 21 man go? As I understand it they don't go to my on map units- those are replenished from the replacements I buy. I did not get any "free" units, did get no messages that could explain it...
As it happens every turn (I suspect, I know for the last two turns) I think it is WAD, but what is it supposed to mean, first adding a number of men, and then taking them away? Is this a % of the recruited men (21 of 57 - about 35%?) or is this a (random?) amount you lose each turn? And what are they supposed to signify?

I would need to know the exact turns concerned to answer. Manpower you get is roughly the same all the time (i.e. your 37), although it is influenced by NM (the lower the morale, the less the recruits and vice versa).

In addition, at key dates during the early months of the year, you receive extra replacements (free). In some cases, some replacement types like militia or light infrantry, when they are over-numerous already in stock, get converted into conscripts.

For instance, when you get 16+ MIL replacements with Prussia, 1 is removed and 10 conscripts added back.
On the other hand, when you reach over 200 conscripts, you lose 50 and receive 5 line replacements

All this is described in the the ROP Random Events file

This was in turn 53 and 54.

It isnt about replacement units (sas far as I know) it is only about the manpower, as displayed at the top of the screen.

In turn 53 I bought on Hessian replacement. Remaining number of men (as displayed at the top of the screen) is 1.

Running the next turn the 1 becomes 58 at the start of the turn. This is in the admin phase before the movement of turn one is done.
During the turn the number of men, as displayed at the top of the screen, stays at 58.
Only at the end of the turn resolution, at the admin phase after the movement (and battles) of day 15 are resolved, the number of available men changes to 37.

So, it looks to me the game first adds 57 men to my pool. I think this is my "draft", the result of the towns I own, multiplied by the factor due to morale (112 by the way), and modified by the return of stragglers due to battles and attrition and the recruitment of prisoners taken.
Then, at the end of the turn, 21 men are substracted. It is unclear to me why this is. It might be an outside event, but I get no message. All modifiers (which might be applied now instead of at the beginning of the turn) which I am aware of, add men to the pool. (Like the above mentioned return of stragglers due to battles and attrition, or the recruitment of prisoners).

I'll look up the ROP list of events, but with no messages, and this effect running two turns in a row, I don't xpect to find a specific event there.....

Well, looking into the logs and reports could be useful to find why. What date is turn 53 btw ?

Turn 53 is early november 1757, turn 54 is late november.
(I expected the events to be called by turn number, but I see you are using dates. Logical when chopping up the grand campaign I suppose - never thought about it).
What file is the easiest way to see the event log of a turn? And in what program can I open it for the best formatting??

You can open the ScriptReport file (in Script folder) which is a text file and look for something like this:

Line 20589: ------------------------------
Line 20591: SelectFaction, selected: Austria
Line 20592: Started processing event: evt_nam_FRA_LightInf_Replacement_Reduction
Line 20592: This event is not yet referenced, base number of allowed occurences 999
Line 20595: EvalReplacement: Austria RPL: FRA Light Infantry Current Number 6 against 6 - Operator: >= Result: True
Line 20597: Entering triggered actions for event evt_nam_FRA_LightInf_Replacement_Reduction
Line 20598: Change Remplacements Austria FactionTag: FRA Rpl type: 32 changed by: -1
Line 20599: ChangeConscriptPool Austria New Conscripts pool is 34
Line 20601: Finished processing event: evt_nam_FRA_LightInf_Replacement_Reduction
Line 20601: ------------------------------

This is typically one of the replacement(s) into conscript(s) conversion event...you should fine some of them

The only "changeconscript" text I could find was for the Austrian player.
That figures, I didnt order any units this turn, didn't use the ledger, and there were no events triggered that involved conscripts.

In the script_post_parse file I could only find negative values for changeconscript commands when the faction bought something from the ledger

(For example
022162 SelectFaction = $PRU
022163 StartEvent = evt_nam_PRU_Rep_Elite_Check|999|0|NULL|NULL|NULL|NULL
022164
022165 Conditions
022166 CheckOption = $gmaOptionMil;PRU_Rep_Elite;=;1
022167 EvalEngagementPts = >=;5
022168 EvalMoney = >=;12
022169 EvalWSU = >=;8
022170 EvalConscript = >=;4
022171
022172 Actions
022173 ChgFacEngagementPts = -5
022174 ChangeMoneyPool = -12
022175 ChangeWSUPool = -8
022176 ChangeConscriptPool = -4
022177 Remplacement = PRU;$famElite;2
022178 GenMsg
)

or when the conscriptpool was > 200 and a number of line units were added, and the changeconscript = -50.

I suspect the change of the conscript pool I see, at the beginning and the end of the turn, isn't an event, but the regular addition from the towns you own each turn (not in the event file, right?).

nb: I think it would be nice, for purposes of seeing what happened in a turn, to have a seperate post_turn_script file which only shows the events that have actually fired in the last turn.....

I think I have got it.
My problem was that it looked like the amount of man I had available changed twice during the turn. It does not. It just looks like it does.

When you buy a unit during the turn, the men you have available according to the display changes. It does not change in the database though. When the turn starts executing, the display changes back to the amount in the database, and only at the end of the turn your purchases (and addition changes due to recruitment and/or events) are processed into the database - and the number displayed changes again.

(You can see the same when you change the stance of units, for example from passive to defend. When the turn is processed you see them change to passive again, and then change to defend).

Sorry about the questions, and the time spend

No problem, this was informative anyway, and helped us find out a hidden bug in another event (patch coming). Thanks

Once agian reviving this, now for another "problem", or maybe just a remark.

It is the problem with being to good - not me, but in this case my men.

The remnants of the Prussian army are sitting in Magdenburg, and are trying to rebuild before the Austrains arrive. About half my army does, the other half does not. And this turn I actually had replacement units left over at the end of the turn

So I took a more detailed look. It seems that more then half of the infantry elements got upgraded to "elite infantry". As the number of replacements for the elite infantry is limited (one every other turn or one each turn?) it is impossible to rebuild those units, once damaged. I think this is a unintended consequence of the promotion system....

I think this is a unintended consequence of the promotion system....

I think this is in fact WAD. It is meant to model the constant drain on the well trained, experienced troops. Once lost they are gone.

So I have 160 elements of 17-34 elite soldiers sitting there (12 brigades of them!! a whole column of units), and I can't do anything with them? I can not fill those units out again, I can not disband them (that costs vp and morale), I can not use them in combat....

I really don't think Berlin was swamped with hundereds of 20 men bands of elite soldiers hanging around in the bars at the end of the war.


The system migth be working as intended, in that there are not much elite replacements, and it might be working as intended in the promoting of militia to soldiers to trained soldiers to elite soldiers, but I think the law of unintended consequences hits the combination of those two mechanisms.