Fri Nov 15, 2013 4:49 pm
Both sides should use names, not numbers. Union divisions were indeed usually numbered, but as they moved from corps to corps, sometimes even into different armies, they changed designation, that's why tracking a Union division through the war always requires the name of the commander and not just numbering within a corps. The same by the way applies to Union brigades, which were numbered within their division and therefore changed numbering every time they moved from one force to another (which again happened quite regularly). On the other hand, Confederate divisions and brigades were at times numbered. To add some confusion, divisions and brigades were not necessarily known by their active commander (f.i. the Stonewall brigade retained it's name till after Jackson's death, but many more examples of that could be found).
As to corps, Union through numbering (that is only one Union corps with that number) only appeared relatively late in the war, before that two like numbered corps could exist in different corps, leading to the need to renumber when a corps changed commands (after the 2nd Bull Run for instance when the AoP's 11th and 12th Corps were formed from the AoV's 1st and 2nd corps when the two armies were merged (which would have led to two 1st and two 2nd corps within one army)...
In game terms the best solution is commander's names for all formations on both sides. For brigades that should be the original commander's name (someday I might work on that, or rather restart work on it as I already tracked a number of brigades' history back to determine their origin (f.ex.: AACW-I's New York brigade by the name of 'Stahel's' should actually be named 'Blenker's' as that's that formation's origin, another NY example 'Bartlett's' should be 'Heintzelmann's')...
Marc aka Caran...