caranorn wrote:During testing I was workin on quite different force pools and tables of establishments from the ones that ended up in the game. Unfortunatelly my laptop had a fatal crash (literally, fell off the table while under power) and I lost some of that work and it took me weeks before I could return to it. Essentially this work didn't make it into the game...
That is too bad, I'm curious how it would look. In any case, the way the brigades works is lots of fun.
caranorn wrote:One of the differences was that indeed the 4 regiment brigade would have been the norm and not the exception. By the way, work for the Union except brigade names was complete by the time of the crash so I will mention the Union most here. One thing to consider though is that organisation of brigades varied from army to army and theater to theater.
Right now I'm testing with different sizes of brigades, to me the largest brigades seem weird. I agree that 4 infantry regiment and 0 or 1 artillery regiments seem nicer, and might not include many 5 and 6 infantry regiment brigades in my mod. I understand that infantry regiments would sometimes have cavalry companies, but that was usually very early in the war or in the far west, and doesn't have much to do with most of the battles (when these troops were either guarding trains or dismounted).
caranorn wrote:Essentially the further west you went the smaller brigades tended to be.
This isn't really true, at least not for majore battles (and brigades were made for battle, I think), except for in Missouri and Arkansas union brigades early in the war. In Nebraska/Colorado/New Mexico/California, regiments were a bit smaller and companies would be grouped into battalions sometimes, I think. Before Shiloh, Union brigades in battles in Missouri and Arkansas did have fewer regiments. But after their regiments seemed to get larger and conform in size to the rest of the army. Compare Pea Ridge in March 1862 to Prairie Grove in December of 1862 (and [URL = "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiloh_Confederate_order_of_battle"]Shiloh[/URL] in April 1862). The same is true for some brigades in the Union Army of the Mississippi, which were smaller at and before the Siege of Corinth than after. Since the same regiments are involved in both periods, I think it is ok to limit the number of small brigades since brigades were larger for most of the war and even regiments that were in 2 or 3 regiment brigades for a time spent most of the war in larger brigades.
caranorn wrote:One other thing to consider is that later in the war artillery was nominally gathered in specialist brigades at division, corps and army levels, in reality though brigades tended to have a battery more or less permanently attached. Accordingly I retained most front line brigades throughout the war with a minimum of one battery and accordingly deduced those batteries from the buildable artillery brigades (usually 4 batteries per brigade) if the later war force pool. I also tried to find a solution for the early war tendency to have specialists in brigades but ain't sure it could (have) work(ed) in game. Essentially I had planned to have most early war brigades form with an additional cavalry, sharpshooter, light battalion (note battalion) or artillery battery which would eventually upgrade into an infantry regiment (so start as for example a 4/1/1 and turn into a 5/0/1 later). Those specialists would have used infantry regiment names (not very elegant), for instance a 36th NY Infantry (just chose a random name now) which would serve as cavalry for a year or two and only then change type to infantry. Many of those specialists were indeed formed as additional companies of existing infantry regiments (L and M companies often, making 12 company regiments when only 10 were authorised), started serving with their regiment but were rapidly grouped in batalions and would eventually be separated from their original commands to form new regiments of the then correct type (cavalry companies of various infantry regiments plus a few new formed companies of the same state forming a new cavalry regiment etc.).
I'm not sure to what degree artillery and cavalry units were attached to brigades in ways that aren't reflected in orders of battle (my data comes from wikipedia, which is based on official records (The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies) and Dyer's work. I'm trying to have my conclusions well researched and I'll look at some different sources to try to understand this issue, if you or anyone has a suggestion about it, let me know.caranorn wrote:I haven't ever really gotten into testing (or playing the game) so I don't know what the current situation is in game (I only have a pretty old build on the computer, just barely after publication), so the following could not reflect AACW-II. I also had sharpshooters and all regulars as battalions instead of regiments to better reflect their use (and also state based recruitment as for instant Berdan's two regiments, also most states that eventually formed sharpshooters ended up in multiples of 3 companies which made it easy to determine force pools), most of those sharpshooters would also have been separate units (as in, not in brigades), as would some of the regulars (all at start of the game but with a number of regular brigades added by event later, generally with open slots to attach pre-war battalions to).
This is really well done! Thank you.caranorn wrote:One more thing I considered was the need for brigades on garrison duty which would be smaller and usually without artillery. That would also give the players some added choices, whether to build strong combat units for the main battles, or smaller ones for small detachments. Essentially most Union states would have ended with 2-3 different infantry brigade types (mostly 4/1/1 (remember specialists in such brigades would upgrade to infantry), 2/1/1 and 2/0/1 (the later representing heavy artillery regiments and similar formations)), 1-2 cavalry brigade types (like infantry larger ones out east than further west), 0-1 artillery brigade type, 0-1 sharpshooter battalion type, but all of that reflecting the individual states' needs etc. (for instance California having only 2/1/1 and 2/0/1 infantry brigades and later separate cavalry regiments instead of brigades, or Colorado with a 1/1/0 (where the specialist is a sharpshooter that will not upgrade) brigade etc)...
It would have been interesting to see regiments upgrade to regiments of completely different types (such as cavalry to infantry). It would have made naming a nightmare. I don't think that was included in the game. Also, there aren't any recruitable brigades in the game in Colorado and California, although they sort of exist in the units DB (I might change this in my mod).caranorn wrote:But there would have been a lot of work to do yet including brigade names (AACW ones were usually based on brigades in famous battles and did not reflect formation histories and the like (I had started work on NY brigade names and found that I would have had to rename 4/5 of existing brigades (I'd usually opt for first commander))).
I think brigades named after brigade commanders in famous battles makes since, those are the names the players will be most interested in seeing. Also, brigades named after politicians who funded their creation didn't last very long and were soon known more for their commanders.caranorn wrote:Note that all research for the confederates is much tougher in this area than the same for the union. At least these days as a few excellent internet sites that used to exist in the late 90's have dissapeared and not all data can be reconstructed via waybackmachine or other archives.
I have found a few excellent sites as well. My main sources are books in Cornell's Making of America Collection.caranorn wrote:Lastly one more thing to consider is that as the war lasted longer Union brigades tended to have more regiments, but that largely coincided with moving specialists in separate commands, which was one more reason for the 4/1/1 brigade evolving into 5/0/1...
This is partially true. Other issues exist as well: companies were veteranized, as you mentioned regiments were split to form new regiments, regiments were combined (and sometimes given a new designation), etc. I think it is ok that these things can't be modelled perfectly, and I think the choices the game make are good ones with regards to this issue.caranorn wrote:I still have most of those files of mine (not sure I handed them to other testers once I became inactive (the loss of that computer played a big role in that), so if anyone wants to continue on that work, or just use it for comparison let me know. But I'm no longer checking the forums on a regular basis, so don't expect an immediate response...
I'd love to see your research. I'll PM you my email address, if you don't mind sharing.caranorn wrote:Note, I'd go for named brigades only as I was always annoyed with the numbers once I started re-organising forces (you tend to try and keep 1/1 and 2/1 together in the same force or division, while you would not feel so restricted with say Robertson's and Trimble's (just random names)).
I agree and have renamed most of the brigades towards this goal (ie. "Sherman's I/3rd Bde").
