Gen. McClellan and what are you suppose to do with him?

[kwhitehead]

As the game goes through it's first few months of the war I keep getting messages saying McClellan is sent east to command the army, McClellan has been promoted to General in Chief, etc. but nothing changes. McClellan is still out west heading up a few brigades. Scott is still in Washington.

Are these just Historic footnotes? Or am I suspose to be carrying out these changes some way? Is there any penality for letting little Mac rot in Kentucky?

[tagwyn]

Send Little Mac to Cleveland or Buffalo to command the Fire Department. apy:

[denisonh]

The effect comes when you create your next Army headquarters and form an Army. If you pick a general other than lil Mac, you will get a big penalty if you do not appoint mac as the next Army commander.

Once he is appointed as an Army commander, then send him to Buffalo or Cleveland........

[kwhitehead]

Is he that big a negative that its better to lose a HQ than have him affect troops?

[denisonh]

As a 0-0-1, he is useless in conducting any kind of operations involving movement, as he does not activate except by event. Also, as an Army commander, his ratings are so low he will detract from any COrps commander making them less capable.

He is good for training conscripts, and that is about it.

[kwhitehead]

How about sending him on a scouting mission with one cavalry element to say Atlanta or Savannah? Or maybe even a tour of every Southern state before he comes back to claim his HQ.

[Maqver]

Send him to Washington to build forts. He was good at fortifications. Before Bull Run it had one fort. Following the battle Washington became the most fortified city in the world with a string of 30(?) forts....it is on the park service page don't remember how many exactly.

[Rafiki]

As a 0-0-1, he is useless in conducting any kind of operations involving movement, as he does not activate except by event.

Hehe, he's a lousy commander, but even he rates a 1-1-2

[denisonh]

Hehe, he's a lousy commander, but even he rates a 1-1-2

I beleive that what he is in Clovis' mod........

[Rafiki]

OK, my numbers are vanilla

[Banks6060]

Oh cmon you guys. I know...I've been saying it forever...but hell. Try using the guy. Just see what happens . He's pretty useless, but if you gather enough strength in one place and are able to hit hard with it....you can force some major battles and cause the rebs some major casualties that, as is historically fact, they cannot afford.

Just keep the army together and fight. The more you fight, the more casualties you cause the rebs...the better off you are in the long run....plus you're having fun in the process.

[Redeemer]

You can't fight if he ain't active, which happens once a year maybe. He is good from training militia, if you have the luxury of letting units sit with him.

[Banks6060]

So don't attack...just lumber over to a region that you know would be valuable and then let Lee come get you .

What you lack in activation with McClellan...you always have in sheer manpower.

PLUS

like I've said...NOT using him just makes the game really boring. If you like to be bored playing in what could easily be considered the more important theater of the war...(Richmond and Washington are worth a ton of NM.)...then that's fine. If you're my opponent and you don't move with your eastern army...I'll find a way to force it.

[Coffee Sergeant]

You can't fight if he ain't active, which happens once a year maybe. He is good from training militia, if you have the luxury of letting units sit with him.

Sure you can. Just don't give him any troops. Send out corps indepedently.

[AndrewKurtz]

You can't fight if he ain't active, which happens once a year maybe. He is good from training militia, if you have the luxury of letting units sit with him.

Sounds like a good historical description of Little Mac.

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[denisonh]

Gray,

It could be I happened to observe him on a turn after I had redeployed him him. My bad.

Excuse my impertinance, but aren't there more pressing issues for you to expend your efforts on?

denisonh:

Where are you coming up with McClellan stats as 0-0-1 ?

In the vanilla models his stats are 1-1-2 for all the different models for him.

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[Moff Jerjerrod]

So don't attack...just lumber over to a region that you know would be valuable and then let Lee come get you .

What you lack in activation with McClellan...you always have in sheer manpower.

PLUS

like I've said...NOT using him just makes the game really boring. If you like to be bored playing in what could easily be considered the more important theater of the war...(Richmond and Washington are worth a ton of NM.)...then that's fine. If you're my opponent and you don't move with your eastern army...I'll find a way to force it.

Agreed. Every asset, no matter how strong or weak it is, must be used in war to achieve victory. I've never played AACW against a human, and I'm afraid too, but if I had to play someone I'd chose those who relegate Mclellan to waste removal rather that try to use him in some creative way against the enemy.

[kwhitehead]

I still like my idea of sending him on out scouting mission to the deep South and hope he never returns.

[denisonh]

Hmmm, it could be that I was very interested in a leader with stats that low and how he could ever be activated if he really did have permanent stats as low as 0-0-1. Had they actually been that low permanently, it would possibly have required some beta thought.

Since you think there might be more pressing issues for me to expend my efforts on however, I don't think I'll bother with any more of your trivial and for the most part, incorrect and misleading posts.

Ever make a mistake Gray? My guess is yes, but hardly a basis for making someone to discount your body of posts because of a mistake.

Maybe I take exception to your comment about my posts being "for the most part, incorrect or misleading". While I applaud your efforts to improve this game, I do not think it gives you a license to be a horses ass.

[Heldenkaiser]

As the game goes through it's first few months of the war I keep getting messages saying McClellan is sent east to command the army, McClellan has been promoted to General in Chief, etc. but nothing changes. McClellan is still out west heading up a few brigades. Scott is still in Washington.

Are these just Historic footnotes?

From scanning through the thread, it seems nobody ever answered the original question ... the answer is YES. If you don't appoint him commander of the AoP, he isn't. The rest is historical headlines. It confused me too in my first game.

[kwhitehead]

I assume if he isn't appointed to head an army that there will be political costs whenever you appoint someone else. I haven't done it yet so I don't know how severe they are. But from what I have read in the rules it does look like you could promote him to army commander and send him to California or Alaska (Russians might invade) and be rid of him at the cost of a HQ.

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[Redeemer]

There was a CW Game from the early 90's, I am thinking that kinda, addressed this. You had to appoint the most prestigous general at the time to the top spot. It worked out that if McDowell lost a battle, then McClellan had the most prestige, he got command of the army, then if he lost or another general gained popularity from another battle, the leader switched again and so on. I'm not saying to do that in this game, just that with the current system, there is no incentive to replace any army general unless you want to or an event makes you. This old game forced you to. It made it interesting, but was also very frustrating if you had Grant or Lee in command and then another general superseeded them.

Edit: Since I started going down memory lane, I had to figure out what it was. It was 1991's No Greater Glory. My first Civil War game. Ah, the memories.

And again, I am just going down memory lane here, not really a comment about this game.

[Heldenkaiser]

The original design intent of the game is to reproduce the historical/political constraints at the time, not provide a sandbox, anything goes, type of game.

Yet there was nothing inevitable about Lincoln putting McClellan in command the first time. He could have chosen somebody else, left McClellan in his western backwater and never given him the prestige he ultimately enjoyed. It was a political decision, and political decisions are the proper realm of the player in AACW. And this is addressed by the political cost / NM hit mechanism of the game. The philosophy of the game, as I always understood it, is to indeed allow the player to try and find his own way of running a war, leave him the options open, but attach a political cost to each. (Which is btw why I think conscription should remain an option for the player long before its historical introduction. If it's considered that the policical repercussions of an early introduction would have been near suicidal, then make them near suicidal in the game. But don't just disallow conscription, or the game ceases to be a simulation and becomes a re-enactment of historical events.)

Now of course once McClellan is an important figure by virtue of commanding the army and radiating his enormous sense of self-importance, firing him rightly should come at a high political cost. Still, even though Lincoln may have thought (correctly? who can prove that?) that he would be ill advised to just sack McClellan, it was still his constitutional right to do so. So the player in AACW must have that option. As he must have the option of sending McClellan to the Indian Territory, if necessary, to get rid of him, because that too was the president's constitutional right as commander-in-chief in wartime. And if McClellan loses one battle after another, that should mean (as it does, I understand, in the game) that he loses seniority and can be superseded by somebody who gets the job done.

Just because history took a particular course, that doesn't mean that was the only course possible. And had Lincoln given the army to some military non-entity other than McClellan (who had no particular credentials to his name to make him the only possible commanding general), this guy may well have become the guy who can't be dismissed except at enormous political cost. So the game should provide the mechanism to make a general, once appointed, hard to remove, but not tie that mechanism to one particular general. Or it could as well demand that I use U. S. Grant in Tennessee instead of being free to send him to Florida if I so desire.

Just my 2 cents, no offense to anyone, great game.

[soundoff]

<snip> There's a lot of tendency to take the game in that direction such as assigning McClellan to an army and sending him to Timbuktu, but gamers are really losing out on the historical context of the game design when they do so. By exploiting the game in such a manner, you overbalance the USA side much more than it's already overbalanced in regards to the abundance of USA resources. <snip>

I'd take issue with this Gray. Not from the fact that the North is overbalanced in terms of resources. It is. But then so is the South and by just as much if not more. For example just look at Lees 62 campaign into Maryland. Many of his troops were shoeless. His forces lacked ammunition and supplies. Even Lee's 'Proclamation to the People of Maryland' was met by only sympathy given that the 50,000 or so troops that he led were ragged, underfed and poorly supplied.......and that was on the 12th September 62. Now in the AACW game I doubt if any confederate force of significance would be ragged, poorly supplied and underfed if it marched to Frederick......unless of course it were down to player error.

Oh I should have added I am with you whole heartedly against consigning Little Mac to some obscure post....now that is 'gamey'

[Brochgale]

So don't attack...just lumber over to a region that you know would be valuable and then let Lee come get you .

What you lack in activation with McClellan...you always have in sheer manpower.

PLUS

like I've said...NOT using him just makes the game really boring. If you like to be bored playing in what could easily be considered the more important theater of the war...(Richmond and Washington are worth a ton of NM.)...then that's fine. If you're my opponent and you don't move with your eastern army...I'll find a way to force it.

I am back after taking a long break from game and I see Mac is stil causing headaches and arguments - nothing it seems has changed.
Pleased to see that the game is still being updated though. I am now going to investigate what if any the patches mean for Mac. It is in my view absurd not to use a general if you have one available even if you dont like him?
In effect use him or lose him - i.e if an available General is not used then perhaps there should be a program to remove him from lists or am I being malicious?

[Daniel_Morgan]

First of sorry to resurect an old thread.

I agree having Mac is a bit of a pain in the arse but he does have his uses. He both trains and provides that 15% extra boost to recovery after battle.

So go ahead and promote him, and then move him to the stacks that just got out of battle and are sitting and reconstituting.

Not only does he help them get back into battle faster but he trains them at the same time, a great boost for those early militia divisons that you are converting over after they get some experience and are now conscripts.

[George McClellan]

I agree having Mac is a bit of a pain in the arse but he does have his uses.

You redeemed yourself with that last line, cause I was about to tear your lungs out.