Two Questions

[colonel hurst]

In playing a recent game I ran across a couple of things that I am not quite clear on. The first has to do with creating a corps. I has Bory defending Norfolk and had two armies within range of him, one commanded by Lee and the other by J. Johnston. Is there a way to choose what army to place a corps under if there are multiple army commands nearby?

Secondly, how does the training officer trait work? I built a division with 10 militia units under R. Taylor and only two of the militia have become line infantry after 5 turns or so. I built another division of militia with no training officer and at least 5 of those militia units have progressed into line infantry. Is that progression just random?

[charlesonmission]

If you have 2 armies around, you can make the army you don't want to command any corps no longer in charge by using the deselect army button". Not sure what it is called, but take the HQ element out of the general. That will leave 1 active army, then click on all the corps commanders in the area and make then connected to the active army. Then, you need to put the non-active army back with the same general. The issue may be though if there is another general with higher seniority he would want the army, so you would pay a NM hit. Be careful here.

With regards to training officer, I'm pretty sure that the general with the trait has to be in charge of the stack, not just in the stack. Not sure the the mechanics of it though. There's a thread on it somewhere.....

Charles

In playing a recent game I ran across a couple of things that I am not quite clear on. The first has to do with creating a corps. I has Bory defending Norfolk and had two armies within range of him, one commanded by Lee and the other by J. Johnston. Is there a way to choose what army to place a corps under if there are multiple army commands nearby?

Secondly, how does the training officer trait work? I built a division with 10 militia units under R. Taylor and only two of the militia have become line infantry after 5 turns or so. I built another division of militia with no training officer and at least 5 of those militia units have progressed into line infantry. Is that progression just random?

[W.Barksdale]

1. No. All I can say is to make better use of your headquarters. It sounds like you are much to spread out.

2. Training officer upgrades conscript infantry into regular infantry. Volunteers/militia are not affected. Your volunteers will upgrade into conscript infantry which will upgrade into regular infantry.

Good luck

[Longshanks]

1. Whichever HQ is closer will be the one he can join as a corps, so move the other one away. Disassembling the Army is possible, as Charles mentioned, but beware the NM and VP hit!
2. as per Barksdale

[Captain_Orso]

My short answer : I don't think the game records such in-between steps, it just looks at what the status is when the turn is executed. IE no penalty for temporarily separating and combining a Lt.Gen. from an army HQ; but it's on my list of things to test.

Long drawn-out, bag-of-hot-wind answer : I think 'disbanding' an army temporarily within a planning phase doesn't actually have any affect on the game, because the when you are finished with the planning phase the army still exists. I don't think that the game takes steps within planning such as this into account.

An example is with division commanders. I've often put new generals in command of a division-stack by first separating the stack with <Ctrl><D>, removing the general from the stack and decommissioning him as a division commander, putting a new general in the stack, commsioning the new general a division commander and lastly recombining the stack. If in the same planning phase, I then decided that I want the first general to remain a division commander I recommission him, giving him one of more units and combine them into a division again. After this is done the new/old division commander does not take a hit in strategic/offensive/defensive values as if he were a new division commander even though he had been decommissioned.

[lodilefty]

My short answer : I don't think the game records such in-between steps, it just looks at what the status is when the turn is executed. IE no penalty for temporarily separating and combining a Lt.Gen. from an army HQ; but it's on my list of things to test.

Long drawn-out, bag-of-hot-wind answer : I think 'disbanding' an army temporarily within a planning phase doesn't actually have any affect on the game, because the when you are finished with the planning phase the army still exists. I don't think that the game takes steps within planning such as this into account.

An example is with division commanders. I've often put new generals in command of a division-stack by first separating the stack with <Ctrl><D>, removing the general from the stack and decommissioning him as a division commander, putting a new general in the stack, commsioning the new general a division commander and lastly recombining the stack. If in the same planning phase, I then decided that I want the first general to remain a division commander I recommission him, giving him one of more units and combine them into a division again. After this is done the new/old division commander does not take a hit in strategic/offensive/defensive values as if he were a new division commander even though he had been decommissioned.

AFAIK, you are correct: the penalty/costs are implemented during hosting [aka Turn Execution] so you can fiddle around a lot with Armies, divisions, etc. as you say without penalty/cost.

[Stauffenberg]

AFAIK, you are correct: the penalty/costs are implemented during hosting [aka Turn Execution] so you can fiddle around a lot with Armies, divisions, etc. as you say without penalty/cost.

But even so, and using the house rule about only teleporting from your capital with generals and units, could one then disband an Army command, tp the general and HQ, say from Richmond to Springfield MO, and reform with no cost? Even if it is only checked by the program at the Turn Execution, the army in question would end up with a different name. Not to mention the fact that in real life a general like Borey would not be pleased to lose command of a 12-division army in Virginia to end up commanding the Army of the West with just 3 divisions.

[Longshanks]

Captain_Orso: My short answer : I don't think the game records such in-between steps, it just looks at what the status is when the turn is executed. IE no penalty for temporarily separating and combining a Lt.Gen. from an army HQ; but it's on my list of things to test.

Long drawn-out, bag-of-hot-wind answer : I think 'disbanding' an army temporarily within a planning phase doesn't actually have any affect on the game, because the when you are finished with the planning phase the army still exists. I don't think that the game takes steps within planning such as this into account.

Ah, but see the Thread "An Unfortunate Series of General Swaps" for more details! (Also, hee, hee: "Long drawn-out, bag-of-hot-wind answer" )

[Captain_Orso]

Ah, but see the Thread "An Unfortunate Series of General Swaps" for more details! (Also, hee, hee: "Long drawn-out, bag-of-hot-wind answer" )

You should have seen how much I edited out of the hurricane-force part of my post

I tested this out with two armies (Army of the Ohio under ****Sherman, Army of the Tennessee under ***Hancock -seniority 28) and the 10th Corp belonging to the Army of the Tennessee, all in New Orleans and ***McClellan -seniority 4/politic 100(!!) sitting pretty in Washington.

Detaching the 10th from the AoTN an then hitting Declare this force a corp only offered the AoT, but not the AoOH. So I hit the Dismiss Army Commander button, on the AoTN, hit the Detach button on the 10th attaching it and formed it up on the AoOH and then hit formed the army with Hancock and the HQ again. The army was now called the Army of the South West. All the bells and whistles about McClellan and his shiny-seniority went off (20MN and 120VP), but after executing the turn, no VP or NM loss.

In the next turn I Dismissed Hancock from the SouCom and teleported him and the HQ to St Louis and formed the army up again; now known as the Western Command. Again, all the bells and whistles went off, again 20MN and 120VP, but after the turn was executed, no MN or VP were lost.

Also in both cases there were no messages in the Message Log.

So, as far as I can see, there should be no danger in using this method to assign Corp to the army of choice. It also allows you to rename an army to the local historical name

[Longshanks]

nice test. As much as I like the name of "Army of Northern Virginia," it seems wrong when used in Texas. Now we can all get something more appropriate!