Fort Pickens??

[Capt Cliff]

Ok, I just lost Fort Pickens to a land attack!! Again this is an impossibility due to the bottle neck assaulting troops would have to go through.

http://filmnorthflorida.com/photos/location/Gulf-Islands-National-Seashore:-Fort-Pickens:-Aerial

This is another Fortress Monroe problem. No way in hell can land troops assault these two forts from the land side. Why they were never taken by the CSA. I assume a house rule about these two forts are in order in any PBEM PvP game. Didn't anybody look at a map when they designed this game?

[GraniteStater]

AFAIK, Wikipedia has a discussion of the Confederate attack that took place.

There's reality and then there's the model. "The map is not the territory." The game designers could have made Monroe and Pickens invulnerable to attack - then you have a game where you put 150 divisions into either and walk up to Richmond or have D-Day in the Gulf 80 years before the fact.

IOW, an invulnerable or inaccessible Fort at either point affects game play - too much. When designing a game that mirrors historical milieus, you have to balance between faithfulness to the reality being modelled and playability or game balance.

AACW strikes a pretty good balance, IMO, between historical events and playability. There's plenty of room for creativity by a player and also a reasonable constraint by the historical abilities. It ain't perfect, I have an issue or two myself, but I think it's purty darn good.

The moral is - stick some brigades in both, enough to discourage attacks; that usually tells the AI to settle down and hunt somewhere else.