Option to hide the activation status of leaders and other improvements

[veji1]

Hi all, a few potential improvements and ideas, Ace1 prodded me to post them in here :

1/ Have an optional toggle at the beginning of the game to either hide completely the activation status of a leader (extreme) or only display it AFTER the turn. I fully understand and support this being an option because I could see how this "hardcore" rule could frustrate many many players. But for immersion's sake it really should be a possibility :
- If I don't know if my leader is active or not, I give him the orders (ie the computer calculates how long movement should take based on the strategic rating, etc, as if active) but I can't be sure he we will carry them out. I order leader x from province A to B with assaut posture because a weakish ennemyr force defends this interesting province. Computer says 10 days to arrive. But darn, turn is played and turns out the leader was inactive and didn't arrive on time or arrived but stayed defensive and didn't attack. Opportunity wasted.
- This would give the player the real historical feeling : On average you know you can trust Jackson or Sherman to carry the orders, but Burnside or Ewell ? Less so.. This would reflect the early CSA advantage in leadership that is today largely negated by the plethora of leaders.
- This would prevent several "inactivity avoiders" strategy used by players that really put the AI at a disadvantage and take away some of the flavor : Leader shopping for conducting of offensive operations on that given turn (ie I empty the corps of the inactive leader in the active one), or separating the troops from an inactive leader to go faster.
- Players would have to make interesting new choices : do I order this offensive move with 3 corps , less punch per corps but I better spread the chances of having at least one reaching destination in time or put everything in a very strong corps but if the leader ends up inactive I have missed a big opportunity...
- This would also allow more troops for the Union at the beginning of the game (problem in 62 today) without risking a big snowball effect : Having often inactive leaders and not being able to know which and when, the Union player would have to be more conservative in his approach : A deep penetration would be catastrophic if one of the 2 corps stays behind because the leader is inactive and you end up with a spread out "Antietam" style position prone to counterattack.
- Quite a few players separate their stacks to make them march quicker, particularly when the leader is inactive, or when there are various units type, to get to a destination quicker. I find this robs part of the feeling of the game : a force is commanded by its leader, the fact that he could screw up his orders etc is part of the flavour ! Not knowing when a leader is inactive would take away a big bit of information upon which players based them selves to do it, making this other element of game play more historical.

EDIT : It would also make the use of the "coordinate movement" an important choice : I don't want my troops to be left dispersed in this offensive, so I will use the coordinate movement toggle, but then it means I move at the speed of the slowest corps, which might take all the steam out of the offensive... OR i take the chance and don't use it, but if god forbid 2 out of the 3/4 corps and up inactive and left behind, I am stuck in a precarious position or could give battle at a disadvantage.

Again I support this being only an option, but I really think it would tremendously add to the game, and would be a must for PBEM and grognards.

2/ Entrenchment spam.
Just like in AACW we have a big problem of entrenchment spam in PBEM, or from the human player at least versus computer. To see that in 64 virginia, fair enough, but all over the map in early 62 doesn't make sense. There should be a way of entrenchments being capped per elements (combat power could have been good, but a large stack of dispirited troops could have too low a combat number). Say trenches are dug by a 1 element unit : they only offer protection for less than 3 elements, so a cavalry reg could come and hide in the entrenchements of a militia reg, but not much more. Find out a scale that works : entrenchments dug by 1 element protect up to 3, by 4 up to 10, by 11 up to 30, by 31 up to unlimited. It would make entrenchment spamming impossible or require lots more troops allocated to the job if you want to be able to retreat in those with your big corps. such a rule would give their interest to either engeneering units because either corps would use them to dig on their own.

[Jim-NC]

On # 2, what would you do with 1864/1865? For example, Johnston in the Atlanta Campaign had units digging in for his entire army all the way through northern Georgia.

[veji1]

On # 2, what would you do with 1864/1865? For example, Johnston in the Atlanta Campaign had units digging in for his entire army all the way through northern Georgia.

One could imagine bringing the digging capacities of units up, like entrenchment levels, ie in 61/62, one elements digs for 3, in 63 one element digs for 6, in 64 and 65 one element digs for 10 ? If you give pioneer or engineering unit a trait that makes them count say triple for that calculation, it could in 64 dig for 30 elements just by itself..

with such rules (different from my first post, but it was just an idea), a player wanting to be able to have a whole ~40 elements corps use preprepared position would have to use in 61/62 either 15 digging elements or 5 engineers (not realistic either way), but it would get easier and a CSA player wanting to plan a retreating campaign that way could prepare positions for 40 elements with 4 militia regiments, or 1 militia and 1 engineer for example, would still be a realistic drain on manpower.

My main beef is with the early game anyway, but of course this is just an idea, might be very stupid !