Temgesic
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Noticed many leaders cant be promoted?

Sun Aug 12, 2018 11:13 pm

I have noticed as of late after much playing that several of the leaders in the game and now im referring to both sides cannot be promoted as they where historically McCulloch for example, only a 1-star when he at least should be able to be promoted 2-star. I could really go on forever.

Why is that? Lack of knowledge, stress to put the game out or are they thinking "nah, the players fix that themselves"

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Durk
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Re: Noticed many leaders cant be promoted?

Sun Aug 12, 2018 11:43 pm

Any military game will have controversy when generals have ratings and ranks and their historical position can be a bit vague. For the most part, this game allows promotions for leaders who had both positional (ie - appointed) leadership as well as functional leadership positions. McCulloch is a bit of an odd duck. He was a two star leader in the Mexican-American War, but in the Civil War he was only a one star leader even though he held a post of great responsibility and even led a wing of the Confederate Army.
As all CSA leaders were one star leaders initially, had McCulloch survived Wilson's Creek he may, indeed, have been promoted, but historically he was not.

When I play a game I am not looking to see if the designers 'got it right.' Instead, as when reading a book of history, I am looking for the designers interpretation of battles and leaders.

Temgesic
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Re: Noticed many leaders cant be promoted?

Tue Aug 14, 2018 1:48 am

I understand what you mean. And Mcculloch was just an example, and if he personally lead a whole wing, why not keep him "promotable" if he is still alive. There are others both CSA & Union commanders that died early in the war that can be promoted to a 2-star or in some cases even 3-star generals.
Sure Bernard Bee was posthumonsly promoted but in the game you can manage to keep him alive and make him a corps commander. Even Stonewall Jackson can be promoted to 3-star army command.

These little things make up so much for me personally in the big run when you play.

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Captain_Orso
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Re: Noticed many leaders cant be promoted?

Wed Aug 15, 2018 9:35 am

In AACW McCulloch was promotable, up to Maj. Gen.

IIRC I read, this was not carried over to CW2, bc he had never lead a formation larger than about the size of a division at the time of his death. BTW he was killed during the battle of Pea Ridge, not Wilson's Creak.

First off, AGEod is not directly representing Real-World™ ranks, but positions. For example, Jackson was promoted to Lt. Gen. before Chancellorsville, but he never lead an army. Also, in the Real-World™ seniority was a function of the date of promotion, and not an ordered list, but an ordered list could be generated through this. In some cases, dates of promotion were altered after the fact, to put one general in front of others; in some cases long after the fact. So the concept of gaining seniority is based on historical fact. But leaders who historically never reached higher positions during the war, and those who were killed before they might have, but who showed no reason to believe they might have excelled at a higher position, are excluded from promotion.

AGEod does however consider promising leaders, who were killed in the Real-World™ before they could attain the positions of the ranks they can reach in the game; for example Kearney, Reynolds, and Lyon.

We might review leaders, such as McCulloch, whether they actually ought to be promotable above the ranks currently represented in the game.

Since the game-values of leaders, who who never reached the positions in the Real-World™, which they can in the game, are speculative, one might argue, that they could have actually been better than the values at these hypothetical ranks give them in the game might actually have been better than the game values; for example Longstreet, Cleburne, and many others. Often their values take a detrimental turn for the worse, because of some incidents, which historically occurred. For example, there are some arguments, that Longstreet became somewhat dejected after his participation at the Battles of Gettysburg, Chickamauga, and Knoxville, thus his poorer values later in the game as Lt. Gen., when he might lead an army. But what if in the game he did not have such experiences? Ought he be a better leader?

It would be practically impossible to take such in-game experiences of leaders into account, simply from the standpoint of not having such a mechanism in the game engine. But one might address the situation in another way, albeit a not really historically based solution. We might have alternative leader models for some of these leaders in these hypothetical positions, implemented through RGD's.

So, let me backup a little to explain where this concept comes. In some board gaming tournaments, to lessen the affects of chance occurrences of single die roles, which are radically outside the average, which might occur at a point in the game, which would have an extreme affect on the outcome of a game, there is a special re-roll rule. Starting with one or either player, the player is given the opportunity to request a re-roll. If a player uses the re-roll, the opportunity is passed exclusively to his opponent. If the opponent used the re-roll rule after this initial re-roll, the opportunity is passed back to his opponent. In this fashion, no player can make a second re-roll, before his opponent has made a re-roll. This lessens the chance of a game being lost to a single key die roll.

In CW2 instead of a re-roll, one might allow for using alternate (better) leader values on promoting one of a set of specific leaders, who attain an hypothetical rank with poorer (purely speculative) leader values than their previous lower-rank values. I'm specifically thinking of Confederate leaders primarily, but of course there are some Union leaders as well, who might benefit from such a rule.

This would be a purely house rule specifically aimed at P-v-P games, because the game engine has no understanding of this concept, but the player might be able to use this, with some manual effort, vs Athena as well.

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Blood and Thunder Brigade
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Re: Noticed many leaders cant be promoted?

Thu Aug 16, 2018 6:40 am

Every general should be promotable. Absolutely. Perhaps the parameters of promotion should be different for certain generals but they should all be promotable nonetheless. It is, after all, just a game ;)

RebelYell
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Re: Noticed many leaders cant be promoted?

Thu Nov 29, 2018 1:05 pm

Agree that the leaders should be revised, McCulloch is just one but there are many more.

In the orginal AACW game CSA could promote for example Stuart and Forrest to *** rank, this was removed from CW2.
Was the reason to prevent using them as infantry commanders?
Both showed potential to infantry command also in RL and in comparison Union gets a *** Sheridan. :dada:

Cleburne was also removed from that list of potential army commanders yet he had an strategic mind and sound judgement for the job.

Strategic rating is the key for army command and CSA was culled for CW2 in this regard, those that remain promotable are the ones that get negative traits.

Jackson gets the quickly angered trait, Bragg gets the dispirited leader and arrogant traits and Hood gets dispirited leader and hothead traits.

In comparison Union gets for example these potential *** commanders ported over from AACW:

(None of them have negative traits; many have positive)

Sherman 6/4/3
Sheridan 6/5/2
Meade 5/4/4
Reynolds 4/4/4
McPherson 5/3/3
Hancock 5/4/5
Logan 4/3/3

Jackson, Bragg and Hood might deserve negative traits bur arguments can be made to their effects and their overall rating compared to the Union leaders above.

Here on Hood for example.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?435557-3/ ... -bell-hood


In current state the leadership is unbalanced in favor of the Union.

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