Divisions

[Mynok]

I would agree. I've had no trouble having enough conscript points to recruit troops, which seems wrong. I also have way more leaders than can be used for any purpose. They end up sitting in Richmond visiting brothels and drinking bad wine.

[Jabberwock]

But the cost would be proportional to the number of divisions ... why would it increase, per division, with their number?

I would argue that it could be from a difficulty in finding or training all those staff officers, except that from the reading I've done lately, it appears most staff was on the corps level, with line officers doubling as divisional staff.

Please note - I didn't post the mini-mod thinking that totally removing the cap is a great idea. It just shows some possibilities, and hopefully will increase the enjoyment of gamers who want to play with that option.

[Rafiki]

It just shows some possibilities, and hopefully will increase the enjoyment of gamers who want to play with that option.

Indeed; IMHO, more important than anything else is the players' enjoyment of the game, and when they can tweak it ever so slightly to increase that enjoyment, I'm very much in favor of doing so

(My 2 cents)

[Heldenkaiser]

I would argue that it could be from a difficulty in finding or training all those staff officers, except that from the reading I've done lately, it appears most staff was on the corps level, with line officers doubling as divisional staff.

In fact, trained staff personnel was virtually unavailable during this era. In an army that had no higher command levels in peacetime, it was considered unnecessary. So in the end, even army commanders ended up having mostly a personal staff, i.e. trusted subordinates, to improvise the staff work as best they could.
(Good book on the subject: R. Steven Jones, The Right Hand of Command: Use & Disuse of Personal Staffs in the Civil War, Mechanicsville, PA, 2000 (Stackpole).

Please note - I didn't post the mini-mod thinking that totally removing the cap is a great idea. It just shows some possibilities, and hopefully will increase the enjoyment of gamers who want to play with that option.

I absolutely agree that the game should allow players to explore any possibility they consider interesting. However, I believe such changes should have a historical justification if they are to become part of an official patch.

[Brochgale]

I would agree. I've had no trouble having enough conscript points to recruit troops, which seems wrong. I also have way more leaders than can be used for any purpose. They end up sitting in Richmond visiting brothels and drinking bad wine.

Where in Richmond?

I always run out of conscript points but then inflation is a little out of control when I play CSA!

[Mynok]

Where in Richmond?

I always run out of conscript points but then inflation is a little out of control when I play CSA!

Everywhere! There are gobs of them.

This was my first game, so take my experiences with a huge bag of salt, but I only had a couple times where I used up all my conscript points. I built a lot of ships, artillery and cavalry....and militia. They seem to train up to regulars pretty well, which then are fed into my mainline divs.

I'm getting ready to start a new campaign with the division mod above. We'll see how that goes. I only had about 13% inflation in my first game. That was due to just a couple uses of the special taxes to fund my fleet.

[Mynok]

I'm still stuck at 30 divisions, despite extracting the mod.

[Jabberwock]

Same game or new game? Mod should work for a new game, unless I need to edit the scenario files as well.

[Mynok]

It was a brand new game. I double checked and the files had the appropriate changes in them. Looks like the scenario may require changing too. How I don't know.

[Jabberwock]

OK - got a new one for you to try. I think the problem was in the ScriptPreParse and ScriptPostParse text files. Looks like those reset the division limits on certain dates. I set it to 90 for all dates. Let me know if this works or not.

Looks like a lot of the smaller scenarios have a cap at 24 divisions set in their .scn files. I didn't mess with any of those. As far as I can tell, the major scenarios just use the .inc and .txt files. (The .uni files don't affect the actual cap, they provide names for all the new divisions.)

[Primasprit]

Hi!

The changes made in the [font="Courier New"]EarlyForcePool.inc[/font] will not affect the game unless you recompile the scenario. It is easier to search in the event files for the events containing the command SetCombiUnits ([font="Courier New"]1861 April Campaign.sct[/font]) and change it to your likening.
Even if you change [font="Courier New"]EarlyForcePool.inc[/font] and recompile the scenario, the events would reset the division limit. So these need to be changed in all cases.
The [font="Courier New"]ScriptPreParse.txt[/font] and [font="Courier New"]ScriptPostParse.txt[/font] don't need to be changed, these are log files only.

Cheers
Norbert

[Shabaka]

I agree the 30 division limit is a problem for the south.....a HUGE problem!!

However, as previously stated if the conscription companies are made available in the current game then the ability to convert these into divisions should be in place as well. This is an historical simulation and if the northern simulator is a McClellan clone then there will be plenty of conscripts available and the south should be able to be convert these to divisions.

If, for example Grant had decided to continue his drinking binge and resigned they liklely would have had this problem and Im sure Jeff Davis, RE Lee, et al would have found a way to convert these into divisions. The 20K plus troops from Ft, Doneldson would have been a nice start on having too many divisions. Sorry boys go back home we dont have the ability to make you into a functioning division....hmmmm I dont think so.

The issue of poor staffing would be resolved with current game because the 6th Corps will have a poorly rated Corps commander and 3-1-1 or worse division commanders.

This should be an option at game start up because the computer challenged people like me will definitely screw up the files if we try to manually fix it ourselves (at least I am confident I would screw it up).

[Gray_Lensman]

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[Jabberwock]

OK - this should do it then, at least for April '61.

Thanks, Norbert.

[Banks6060]

the 30 division cap for the south is more than enough IMHO. The only time you may run into a problem is with creating cavalry divisions...

Actually...I didn't know if there could be a feature in the game that would allow you to combine a number of cavalry units (i.e. regiments) and make them into a brigade and simply Brigade a leader with them....

As it is now....you're forced to smash a whole bunch of cavalry regiments into a makeshift "Division" to create a brigade sized raiding force. I certainly think it could use a little attention.

[W.Barksdale]

Anyone know what the rationale is for having a division cap in first place?

[Heldenkaiser]

It's May 1862 and I am at 34 divisions or so as the Union. A small handful of them may be smaller, but the vast majority is 18 elements. It's my first game, so I don't know, but I don't think it's impossible I'll run out of slots before the war is over ...

[Gray_Lensman]

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[Shabaka]

"More divisions - drool!!!! I could have one Army to invade Mexico. Another Army to invade Canada. 2 Armies just to play about with the Feds. Might even give Jackson an Army. A Confederate Empire then I could attack the Brits/French whilst I am about it?"

This is a simple matter of a complete map of Mexico, Western United States and Canada....probably a 30 minute job (hehe).

Seriously this does seem like a nice scenario. France invades Mexico. Britain declares on France in support of Mexico. Britain and Canada decide they want the NW USA.

USA plus France
vs
CSA, Britain and Canada

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[Primasprit]

It's May 1862 and I am at 34 divisions or so as the Union. A small handful of them may be smaller, but the vast majority is 18 elements. It's my first game, so I don't know, but I don't think it's impossible I'll run out of slots before the war is over ...

Well, but isn't this the sense of such an an artificial cap? That you can run out of slots?

[Shabaka]

It is Spring of 1863 in one of my pbem games. I have 30 divisions as CSA..one has 2 or 3 elements. about 4 or 5 are at 9-12 elements, the other 25 or so are at full complement of 18 elements. I have zero inflation so have not been maxing conscription out with $$. I am playing against an aggressive Union player so that is not the reason for my available elements. I have elements in strategic reserve to replace low cohesion in line troops. I have a lot (For security reasons i dont wish to divulge details on this hehe) conscripts in the bank waiting to be built and placed on the map.
I have had to drop leaders from divisions to reform at other places on the map for the last 2 months or so.

Even with the battle losses in the coming campaign season my guess is I will have 29 divisions fleshed out by mid-summer '63. The 30th will be a "floater"...maybe I will have several ad-hoc divisions at strategic locations on the map.

This just seems un-historical in that the leadership of the south would have developed a plan to address this happy problem if it had happened to them in the "real world". The arbitrary 30 division limit to me doesnt make sense and it causes unnecessary, unwieldy workarounds in-game. I would suggest lowering the draft / conscription rate for north and south or remove this pain in the derriere artificial cap.

[Mynok]

I simply ran out of divisions. Once I realized the limit was permanent, I spent some turns reorganizing into maxed out divisions, but I was still way short of divs in which to put my troops.

Not too mention the gobs of leaders with nothing to do. Putting them into garrisions didn't seem to do much for their effectiveness, but perhaps I'm reading the signs wrong.

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[Shabaka]

As a fellow historical grognard, I agree with you that in absolute historical terms the divisional cap is not arbitrary. The issue is the game does not generate "real world" historical manpower levels. The current game system yields significantly more manpower than was historically the case. As such, in relativistic terms the cap on divisions is arbitrary. One suggestion I had was to reduce the manpower generation for union and confederacy to be more in line with historical reality.

If that doesnt happen then I come back to the point that Jeff Davis and Bobby Lee would have figured out a way to get all these extra boys in gray uniforms asap. I suggest that present day Bobby Lee's be allowed the same latitude.

[Mynok]

First, I'm still stuck at 30 divisions with the latest mod. Just FYI.

Also, I would agree that it appears the game provides a lot more CSA manpower than was available historically. In that first game that brought up the issue, I had built the vast majority of the available ocean-going CSA fleet...in addition to maxing out 30 divisions. Part of it is money as well, because with it pegged to victory points, I had little trouble generating tons of money with which to build things. That was without ever using printing paper money and only a couple max taxes. My inflation was only 13%.

Either the manpower levels are too high, or the manpower costs of units are too low. Anothe possibility is that the available reinforcement builds are overstated.

[Mynok]

I think some of this would be moot in a PvP, as there would be more coastal invasions by the north and better use of the USAs massive advantages to attain victories. I just don't have any problems defeating the AI in battle as it tends to attack in a very uncoordinated manner.

The point is that I'm not suggesting making changes that would hurt PvP, as that is the best version of any game.

[Jabberwock]

Could another modder please look over the files and tell me what redundancy I'm missing?

thank you in advance

EDIT: Nevermind, I inadvertantly saved the .sct file with a .txt extension.

Apologies, Mynok.

[Rafiki]

Those who bump their heads against the division limit: are you playing with historical attrition enabled?

[Heldenkaiser]

Those who bump their heads against the division limit: are you playing with historical attrition enabled?

If you mean me (I said I couldn't rule out I *might* bump, later in the war), no. It's my first PBEM, and my opponent told me, basically, that "historical" attrition was unhistorically hard.

So you are saying that my total manpower is too high because my attrition is too low?

I asked in an earlier thread if there was a roughly historical upper limit to manpower, i.e. based on the actual mobilization, or a percentage of the total population, and I believe the reply was NO. Rather, I was told, with maxing out the available options, whose manpower yield is dependent on NM and/or VP, the total menpower for both sides in the game is basically unlimited. If that is so, then I wonder if a division cap is not a rather cumbersome and not easy to justify substitute for a manpower cap?