I've counted a lot of regiments. By late 1864, the number of regiments each side will have built will be roughly accurate. The number of men per regiment is too low in the beginning and too high in the end of the war - the game doesn't allow the max number of men per regiment to vary and the player will want to keep each regiment at full strength. By the end of the war, many regiments could be treated as battalions (groups of 3-6 companies) in terms of size and maneuvers.
As I've said, the regiments involved in what I consider the early war big 3 of battles (Bull Run, Wilson's Creek, Shiloh [which was early 1862]) are nearly included by event with enough economy to build forces so that all three battles could be fought at roughly the correct strength. After this, continuing the game your regiment count usually (always?) falls behind what happened in real life for 1862 and 1863. If you want to change this, you could make a mod to add a couple events or decisions (perhaps call them 300,000 more) which give you the WS, Conscripts, and money to grow your army more in those early years (by 1865, your force pools will be exhausted even if you have the resources to recruit more men). The trick is that such changes should be applied equally to both sides. If you make this change, I'd also recommend turning down Athena's aggressiveness, as she's likely to send the extra CSA units north I think.
I've never played the 1862 start in AACW (and don't have the extension for CW2) and don't have any idea about it. To me, it sounds like a lot of work for the developers to set up the 1862 start true to size. If they did it, that sounds wonderful. If they didn't, I agree that it wouldn't be a very fun scenario when you could just play the April or July 1861 scenario (waiting for divisions isn't that bad).
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ArmChairGeneral
- AGEod Grognard
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jscott991 wrote:The one thing you shouldn't fudge in a Civil War game to make it more balanced is army size. The entire war is defined by the North's manpower and industrial advantages.
I am not sure that I agree with first sentence at all. We do not even know the actual size of any of these armies, and don't even get me started on the true ratio of payroll-to-effective fighting capacity that was actually in battle.
Because of this historical uncertainty, the game models at the element level not the man level, and the number of men is an abstraction put in for verisimilitude. You could say an element represents 10 men. You could say it represents 600 or even 10,000 men. The game doesn't recruit men, it recruits conscript points worth of brigades. I ignore all raw # of men stats in this game completely, compare their ratios to see if the balance of forces is correct. The men part is easily moddable arbitrary flavor, and the other AGEOD games use different numbers of "men" per element.
As tripax is pointing out, the relative balance of the number of elements (roughly speaking, regiments) at the beginning of the game are in line with history in the Grand Campaign. These guys at AGEOD do their homework, they didn't just pluck these OOBs out of a hat, so I would imagine that they had some solid basis for their initial set-ups in the 1862 campaign as well. It is their explicit design goal to make a game that FEELS exactly like commanding the Civil War. To that end they try to stay pretty historical, so that it FEELS as real as possible, but abstractions have to be made somewhere, and some non-historical design choices (like not making it impossible rather than just difficult for one side to win) have to be made to make a playable and enjoyable game.
You will find that in this game (especially the 1861 starts) the entire war IS defined by the North's manpower and industrial advantages. However the game does not make it a cakewalk to convert these advantages into victory, just as the CSA did not make it a cakewalk for the Union in real life. It requires a concerted and sustained effort.
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Captain_Orso
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As has been stated, the numbers of "men" is an arbitrary representation added for flavor. It was never meant to be a measure for comparing to historical numbers.
Also, one must be very careful when comparing numbers for men. Often the numbers of men published for battles are culled from the formations which actually stood on the battlefield, but often exclude auxiliary units and support formations, logistics, etc.
Much was discussed before and during beta about in-game force sizes. One of the major changes was the addition of the huge garrisons in Washington and Alexandria which spawn at no cost to the Union, but are locked in place until '64.
There was also much discussion about the Union having to maintain garrisons, even when the front has moved off a long distance. Player's generally don't do this and when given a choice will spend their money and resources to put more troops into the front line and ignore the limited threats of raids into Northern territory.
So one might add to the number of CC's the Union can generate, but once in the pool there is nothing to force the player to use any actual portion of them to garrison duties. Thus it would only skew the game by giving the Union player unproportional numbers of troops on the front and break the balance of the game.
If as a mod you'd like to modify things, you can modify the numbers of CC's generated through calls for volunteers or paying bounties; you might find a shortage of cash to actually use these to build units though. But there you could increase the amount of money given for printing money, raising taxes and selling bonds too.
It's probably also possible to mod some variables to increase in general the number of CC's generated each turn and monetary income from cities, but I've never looked into that to see how it might be modded.
About Buell's strength in early '62. I assume you are talking about the '62 Campaign. Of course, if you feel that the Army of the Ohio is understrength at setup it can be modded with a lager force. As far as setups go, there's little that you cannot mod.
Also, one must be very careful when comparing numbers for men. Often the numbers of men published for battles are culled from the formations which actually stood on the battlefield, but often exclude auxiliary units and support formations, logistics, etc.
Much was discussed before and during beta about in-game force sizes. One of the major changes was the addition of the huge garrisons in Washington and Alexandria which spawn at no cost to the Union, but are locked in place until '64.
There was also much discussion about the Union having to maintain garrisons, even when the front has moved off a long distance. Player's generally don't do this and when given a choice will spend their money and resources to put more troops into the front line and ignore the limited threats of raids into Northern territory.
So one might add to the number of CC's the Union can generate, but once in the pool there is nothing to force the player to use any actual portion of them to garrison duties. Thus it would only skew the game by giving the Union player unproportional numbers of troops on the front and break the balance of the game.
If as a mod you'd like to modify things, you can modify the numbers of CC's generated through calls for volunteers or paying bounties; you might find a shortage of cash to actually use these to build units though. But there you could increase the amount of money given for printing money, raising taxes and selling bonds too.
It's probably also possible to mod some variables to increase in general the number of CC's generated each turn and monetary income from cities, but I've never looked into that to see how it might be modded.
About Buell's strength in early '62. I assume you are talking about the '62 Campaign. Of course, if you feel that the Army of the Ohio is understrength at setup it can be modded with a lager force. As far as setups go, there's little that you cannot mod.
jscott991 wrote:If the problem is that the Union army is too small, why would you make the change to each size?
The one thing you shouldn't fudge in a Civil War game to make it more balanced is army size. The entire war is defined by the North's manpower and industrial advantages.
Both armies gain regiments more slowly than in the real war at first. By the end of 1862, in most (all?) CW2 plays, neither army has as many regiments as were in the real war. Partially this may be due to the fact that in the game depleted regiments are replenished more than they were in real life (in real life, creating new regiments gave politicians the opportunity to commission new volunteer officers as political favors while replenishing did not). It may be that the Union grew regiments more quickly - I'm not sure if this is true but I would believe it.
As for manpower, I now realize that is a question I don't really know about. I've done a lot of research for a mod I've been working on. My mod has focused on regiments not men per regiment (or men per hit, which is the relevant statistic if you wanted to change the number of soldiers in a mod). For that matter, the game doesn't model furloughs, it doesn't model injuries very much, it doesn't model 3-month enlistments early in the war (for my mod I use 3-month regiment names and full term regiment names side-by-side), etc. The impression I get from this discussion is that the balance of manpower feels appropriate to many people playing the game. Some of these people are well respected amateur historians of the war (and maybe a couple professionals, I don't know). In part, this is because the game focuses on (and seems to get right) the manpower balance in battles and the number of major battles per year. For better or worse, these two things are the main focus of many histories of the war as well and are the focus of most civil war games.
Forge of Freedom and Grigsby don't seem to suffer from this problem of forcing arbitrary parity. They are the main competitors for AACW (CW2 has the field to itself at the moment). I've never heard of a Civil War game nerfing the Union to keep the CSA more competitive as part of its default army setup. That's the strangest way to go about balancing a Civil War game.
I'll figure out how to mod this. I haven't had success modifying the script files in AACW (the xls files that are the focus of modding tutorials don't seem to exist anymore, the link is broken and changing the .ini files directly doesn't seem to do anything, but the xls files do exist for CW2), but there's always events to add more conscripts, war supplies, and money. How frustrating though. What a weird thing to do in a Civil War game, and how strange that fans of the Civil War (versus fans of a "balanced game") didn't speak up more about it.
I'll figure out how to mod this. I haven't had success modifying the script files in AACW (the xls files that are the focus of modding tutorials don't seem to exist anymore, the link is broken and changing the .ini files directly doesn't seem to do anything, but the xls files do exist for CW2), but there's always events to add more conscripts, war supplies, and money. How frustrating though. What a weird thing to do in a Civil War game, and how strange that fans of the Civil War (versus fans of a "balanced game") didn't speak up more about it.
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ArmChairGeneral
- AGEod Grognard
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If you are basing your impression of a Nerfed Union of Forge of Freedom I can see where you are coming from. I always felt like it was too easy to just roll over the south it that game. It took four long years in real life and destroyed half the country. It was probably inevitable that the North was going to win, but it took a long time and it cost them big time.
I really think you are getting hung up on the numbers here, and sorry, but you are speaking from inexperience if you think the Union is nerfed. Try playing as the CSA, the Union will NOT feel too small to you, I promise.
The Union HAS a lot more units than the South in this game. They DO have a major advantage in industry and personnel. The relative sizes of the forces is roughly historically correct and the milestone battles happen (if you choose) at roughly their historically appropriate times and locations. Turtling up and steamrolling late in the war is one of the most viable Union strategies.
FoF's basic premise was that the South shouldn't have lasted as long as it did, a valid interpretation, but not one shared by every historian and not one shared by the designers of this game. Here we are exploring the question "Considering that the Union was so much bigger and stronger than the CSA, how come it took four years to conquer them, especially considering their capitol was only 100 miles away from the border?" The Union will find it easy to not lose, but difficult to win. This is reflected in a number of mechanics in game, but not so much in the overall balance of forces. The grognards who are the target audience for these games would not have accepted that type of fudge.
The amount of tweaking of relative troop strength to keep the CSA competitive is pretty small, all things considered, they have other advantages to reflect their real-life early successes.
I think some of your perception are coming from the fact that a) you are playing a limited scenario rather than the complete game and b) that this game is a lot harder than other war games and that you are not having the immediate successes that you can get in FoF, Hearts of Iron, Avalon Hill ports, etc. THAT is definitely intentional. I am pretty good at these games, but it took me a YEAR of playing before I got good enough to consistently beat the AI in AACW. You will get there, too, and probably more quickly than I did, but it is HARD to win, even as the Union.
I really think you are getting hung up on the numbers here, and sorry, but you are speaking from inexperience if you think the Union is nerfed. Try playing as the CSA, the Union will NOT feel too small to you, I promise.
The Union HAS a lot more units than the South in this game. They DO have a major advantage in industry and personnel. The relative sizes of the forces is roughly historically correct and the milestone battles happen (if you choose) at roughly their historically appropriate times and locations. Turtling up and steamrolling late in the war is one of the most viable Union strategies.
FoF's basic premise was that the South shouldn't have lasted as long as it did, a valid interpretation, but not one shared by every historian and not one shared by the designers of this game. Here we are exploring the question "Considering that the Union was so much bigger and stronger than the CSA, how come it took four years to conquer them, especially considering their capitol was only 100 miles away from the border?" The Union will find it easy to not lose, but difficult to win. This is reflected in a number of mechanics in game, but not so much in the overall balance of forces. The grognards who are the target audience for these games would not have accepted that type of fudge.
The amount of tweaking of relative troop strength to keep the CSA competitive is pretty small, all things considered, they have other advantages to reflect their real-life early successes.
I think some of your perception are coming from the fact that a) you are playing a limited scenario rather than the complete game and b) that this game is a lot harder than other war games and that you are not having the immediate successes that you can get in FoF, Hearts of Iron, Avalon Hill ports, etc. THAT is definitely intentional. I am pretty good at these games, but it took me a YEAR of playing before I got good enough to consistently beat the AI in AACW. You will get there, too, and probably more quickly than I did, but it is HARD to win, even as the Union.
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ArmChairGeneral
- AGEod Grognard
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loki100
- AGEod Guard of Honor
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jscott991 wrote:I'll figure out how to mod this. I haven't had success modifying the script files in AACW (the xls files that are the focus of modding tutorials don't seem to exist anymore, the link is broken and changing the .ini files directly doesn't seem to do anything, but the xls files do exist for CW2), but there's always events to add more conscripts, war supplies, and money. How frustrating though. What a weird thing to do in a Civil War game, and how strange that fans of the Civil War (versus fans of a "balanced game") didn't speak up more about it.
Purely about modding. All things being equal its easier to change the specific files, eg .uni or .mdl. But, you then need to delete the 'cached' file - you'll find one of these at the bottom of each of the sub directories in 'game data' as the game itself reads that file not the individual files. If you delete, the game will reconstruct it on the next time it loads (so that will be a bit slower) and then your changes will apply in game.
More generally, as others have said, the assumption behind AACW2 is that the war lasted 4 years for a damn good reason. The representation here is that reason is it took the USA a while to bring its innate advantages to bear and to, at least, negate the early advantage the Confederacy had in operational leadership.
AJE The Hero, The Traitor and The Barbarian
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PoN Manufacturing Italy; A clear bright sun
RoP The Mightiest Empires Fall
WIA Burning down the Houses; Wars in America; The Tea Wars
loki100 wrote:The representation here is that reason is it took the USA a while to bring its innate advantages to bear and to, at least, negate the early advantage the Confederacy had in operational leadership.
But it didn't. The USA had huge armies in the field as early as March of 1862, when McClellan landed 120,000 men on the Peninsula, while leaving behind his largest corps, McDowell's 40,000 man I Corps. In AACW, the entire Army of the Potomac (inaccurately modeled as having 6 corps) is under 80,000 men.
I get that the numbers are just for fun and shouldn't be relied on (in that case, why not make them right?). But the relative strength is way off too. People have explained why they did it (to make the game more balanced), but it's probably the oddest thing I've seen done in a Civil War game.
On the modding point, there doesn't seem to be a cache for the scripts. Changing the script.ini files doesn't do anything, which I find weird. They must do something.
jscott991 wrote:But it didn't. The USA had huge armies in the field as early as March of 1862, when McClellan landed 120,000 men on the Peninsula, while leaving behind his largest corps, McDowell's 40,000 man I Corps. In AACW, the entire Army of the Potomac (inaccurately modeled as having 6 corps) is under 80,000 men.
I get that the numbers are just for fun and shouldn't be relied on (in that case, why not make them right?). But the relative strength is way off too. People have explained why they did it (to make the game more balanced), but it's probably the oddest thing I've seen done in a Civil War game.
On the modding point, there doesn't seem to be a cache for the scripts. Changing the script.ini files doesn't do anything, which I find weird. They must do something.
The flavour numbers for troop strength had been changed in ACW several times. There really is no way to satisfy everyone in that respect. To see whether strength is correct count the number of infantry, cavalry and artillery elements. Usually these reprsent a regiment of infantry or cavalry or a battery of artillery (occasionally several historically understrength units are rolled into one element, on rare occasions a smaller unit might have made it into an element in game). If you come out with roughly as many infantry/cavalry elements as historical regiments and artillery elemenst as historical batteries the game is approximating history, else numbers are indeed off (though of course how one plays the game would matter too)...
Marc aka Caran...
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ArmChairGeneral
- AGEod Grognard
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I get that the numbers are just for fun and shouldn't be relied on (in that case, why not make them right?). But the relative strength is way off too. People have explained why they did it (to make the game more balanced), but it's probably the oddest thing I've seen done in a Civil War game.
Why not make them right? Presumably there was some representational trade-off, (like single element garrisons being too large or something) I don't really know, but have always wondered myself. In the end though, I never really paid much attention to it since it didn't matter to game-play.
More importantly, I am not sure how you figure the relative strength is way off (or even much off at all). I am using the CW2 1862 scenario you will have to check the AACW version yourself, but by my count the Union starts in the East with 15 divisions under McClellan at Alexandria, two at Harper's Ferry, and just-under-division sized forces at Annapolis and Morgantown. Most of these are not full in terms of the optimum in-game size and should be combined together to form ~10 Divisions in Alexandria and one at Harper's Ferry with about a division more scattered around in smaller stacks.
The CSA starts with 1 division in the Valley, four and a half at Culpepper, one at Fredricksburg and one on the peninsula when combined to their optimum configurations.
That's about 12 divisions for the Union in that theater vs about 6 divisions for the CSA. How are the relative strengths wrong? That is just about a 2-1 advantage for the Union.
In the West, Grant has 6 divisions at Ft. Henry while Buell has 4 divisions at Bowling Green. Other side, Johnson can put together about 5 divisions, maybe six depending on exactly how they are structured by the CSA player (they do not start organized into divisions). According to wikipedia (which I think is an acceptable reference for this purpose) Grant had 6 divisions at Shiloh representing 48,000 men, while Buell had 4 Divisions of ~18000 men. Johnson had 55,000 troops, organized into four divisions, with two other forces of approximately division size that were not organized as such. Again, the scenario models this proportion almost exactly.
What are you basing your assertion about the relative sizes of the armies not being correct on?
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