Oh, oh I'm playing with myself

[Johnny Slick]

I started an LP like this on another board a couple years ago during COVID but they had a per-user attachment limit so after like 6 months of game time worth of screenshots I had to abandon it. Anyway, I'm going to be more or less PBEM against myself. Once I get going, turns should look like this:

Side A makes strategies
Sim 15 days
Side A makes strategies
Side B makes strategies
Sim 15 days
Side B makes strategies
Side A, etc.

I'm cool with, like, *some* backseating here (assuming people are still reading stuff on this board), especially if I'm struggling with something like CPs. That said, since I'm playing vs myself here I'll be RPing a lot and making decisions that are either semi-historical or make sense in character, so if you're wont to come in with "OMG YOU HAVE RUINED LE GAME BY BUILDING THE TRAFALGAR IRONWORKS" then man... you do you but, like, maybe don't?

I like AARs as a way of organizing my thoughts as much as anything so I will probably have a separate topic for each theater and move west to east on it.

This is as good a place as any to list my settings...

Fog of War: On
Delayed Commitment: Medium
Foreign Entry: Normal
Historical Attrition: Historical for the player and AI (the "and the AI" part should be academic but I guess you never know)
Automated replacments: Not automated (kind of hate to micro this but the AI seems to loooove adding 5 billion miitia replacement units and nothing else)
Battle Planner: Off (this is multiplayer)
Activation Rule: Veteran (this might lead to some weirdness but again, I'm playing both sides here so this should even out, right?)
Randomized Generals: Off (although again, I'm going to try and play this with an eye to historicity/politics, so Spoons Butler probably gets to command troops early on, etc.)
Naval Boxes: the last option, that removes micro but only gives you like 50% of stuff (telling ships to come home and repair is too much micro for me, sorry)
Extended pool: Off
Easy Supply: Off (I both love and hate how supply murders armies in this game)
Traffic Penalty: the one in the middle, which I think is medium but there are two clicks above it

Turn "Zero" Abe Lincoln

There's not a hell of a lot for the Union to do in the first turn, I don't think. Mainly we're waiting for the South to be the aggressors and kick this bad boy up to FULL STEAM. I guess I can convince myself to make some regional decisions because, like, Manifest Destiny and all that. I also think the game will come in with a thing saying "DO NOT MAKE DEFENSIVE WORKS" in a couple turns. So mostly I develop land in the West and add a few telegraph lines in the East.

[deguerra]

colour me interested

I've been playing against myself for a long time, if only because other commitments and my general laziness don't really allow me to stick the a regular schedule - I think I've been playing my game for more than a year and I'm still in 1862

I'm also a bit of a semi-historical player, though I've tried to move away from that as the game progresses to let it feel more organic (whithin reason). But I'm definitely interested in learning more about how you go about things.

-deguerra