Reinforcements vs Replacements

[1stvermont]

I was just wondering what everyone's opinion on purchasing replacements vs reinforcements was. I play on auto 15% and historical attrition. To me it seems better to keep up as much as possible on replacements as you would be less likely to lose units to being destroyed and loss of morale. What do you guys think?

[Captain_Orso]

Generally one can expect elements which have lost hits also have gained Experience Ponts (XP) and possibly Experience Levels (EL), because they have been in the field long enough to lose those XP or have been in battle, which may also have given them XP. Such an element receiving replacement points could drop their XP--IIRC if a 20 hit-point element missing 10 HP with 10 XP gets 10 replacement points, its XP will drop by 50%--, which in turn could is some few case also drop their EL, because EL is a function of the total XP.

So why would anybody ever want to add replacements to such an element, if it might lower their quality? There are two reasons I can think of:

1. Command Points count elements, not hit points. Consider a brigade comprised of 4 elements, each of which is missing half of their hit points, but with a lots of XP. This brigade still costs 4 CP's to command, but might not bring the same fire-power to the table as the same brigade at full strength, but with lower XP. Having such brigades in divisions will alleviate that situation somewhat, but if all of your divisions look about the same it could result in a corps which fights hard, but is simply weak from a lack of man-power.
2. Elements missing hit points become vulnerable to elimination, which means that all of the experience is lost and the enemy will probably gain an NM for eliminating an element.

I try to keep my field units up to strength an let them share their XP with fresh replacements and keeping the CP's to fire-power ration as high a possible.

I don't advocate using auto-replacement, because you lose too much control over your expenditures. The replacement page gives you enough information--although it could be better--to assess how man replacements you need. It's one of the first things I do when budgeting expenditures.

[Durk]

Because I sometime enjoy letting history be my guide, I play often with the Confederacy emphasizing replacements while the Union favors reinforcements. From a game play standpoint, keeping units up to strength with replacements makes the most sense. But the Union had many political favors to repay and one way to do this was by allowing prominent politicians to raise regiments they could then command. This did mean at many battles the Union continued to field new units. The South preferred to send new recruits into existing units.
Paying attention to the elements of a unit is an excellent way to think about force management, but it is ok to play history and not simply play a game.