Gunboats in Chicago?!

[Jerzul]

Ok, so I ordered the construction of a couple gunboat sqd's in MO and they decided not to build there (I assume it has something to do with a lack of loyalty in the state?), and one of them is now being built in Chicago ...how am I supposed to get it out of there?

Any advice would be great! Thanks!

[Durk]

I totally get your concern. For awhile I quit building gunboats because they always appeared on the Great Lakes and I couldn't figure how to get them on the Mississippi.

Under the newest patch, you need to do some industrializing to build in MO. Start a light industrial work and this should work.
With you fleets in the Great Lakes, they can trace a route to the Ohio River, just take the fleet and drop it near Cincinnati. It will find the route. If you try to find it, you will fail. Of course, do this in fair weather.

[Captain_Orso]

You guys...

Okay, first off there are two paths that lead from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. The one is labeled in-game the Ohio-Erie Canal[SUP]1)[/SUP], which runs from Erie PA down to Franklin PA where it enters the upper Ohio River. The other is labeled the Illinois Canal[SUP]2)[/SUP] and runs from Chicago IL to Lasalle Run of the Illinois River near Peoria IL. To use them they must be free of ice. To check this simply drag a boat or ship from the Great Lakes to some section of the Ohio or Mississippi or tributary river. If the move is linked, the path-way is free and can be used. If not, the waterway is iced-up and cannot be used until thaw sets in. Another good hit is if the surrounding areas are snow covered... you get the picture.

There is also the Erie Canal depicted in-game, which runs from Albany NY on the Hudson River to Buffalo NY on Lake Erie.

None of the canals can be used by deep draught ships (frigates, steam frigates, armored frigates, war ships), but they can be used by all river vessels and all transports, even ocean transports.

About industrial investment for building units. My short piece of advice, forget it[SUP]3)[/SUP]. Order the units of the state you want, let them build in a neighboring region and rail or float them to their destination. This is far more cost effective than to dump money and WS for months, often with no return, just so that your artillery or ironclads are built within the confines of the states boarders. All units restricted by the need for WS or an eligible region with at least 25% loyalty can be built anyway, but will appear in another nearby region.

[SUP]1)[/SUP] This is actually the Beaver and Erie Canal. The Ohio and Erie Canal actually runs down from Cleveland to Cincinnati, passing through a number of smaller rivers on the way.

[SUP]2)[/SUP] Actually the Illinois and Michigan Canal.

[SUP]3)[/SUP] I tried industrialization in Indian for many months just to see if I could get WS to be built in one of the Ohio River cities. Indiana starts the full campaigns building I think it was 5 WS in Indianapolis. By the time I gave up, Indiana was building 49WS(!!) and none if it on any city on the Ohio River.

[Longshanks]

I tried industrialization in Indian for many months just to see if I could get WS to be built in one of the Ohio River cities. Indiana starts the full campaigns building I think it was 5 WS in Indianapolis. By the time I gave up, Indiana was building 49WS(!!) and none if it on any city on the Ohio River.

I had a similar experience when I also tried to meet the requirements for Ironclad building in Indiana. Looks like a bug to me.

[Captain_Orso]

Hi Longshanks

It appears to me to have to do with how cities/towns are selected for building which type of factory. At the beginning of the full campaigns Indianapolis (size 5) is the largest city in Indiana and is already building 5 or 6 WS. Much later after much industrialization, even level 3 for a number of turns, Columbus IN (size 3) also had started producing WS. The other size 3 cities in IN are Fort Wayne and Evansville never did. It might be that Columbus was selected for WS production because of it's relative proximity to Indianapolis (only 2 regions away) while Fort Wayne is 3 regions away and Evansville 4. It might also simply have been random chance.

When I quit the game the largest towns/cities (size larger that 1) were producing:
[table="width: 500, class: grid"]
[tr]
[td]Town/City[/td]
[td]Size[/td]
[td]WS[/td]
[td]GS[/td]
[td]Ammo[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Indianapolis[/td]
[td]5[/td]
[td]43[/td]
[td]215[/td]
[td]50[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Columbus[/td]
[td]3[/td]
[td]6[/td]
[td]107[/td]
[td]11[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Fort Wayne[/td]
[td]3[/td]
[td]0[/td]
[td]101[/td]
[td]28[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Evansville*[/td]
[td]3[/td]
[td]0[/td]
[td]103[/td]
[td]60[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Rome*[/td]
[td]2[/td]
[td]0[/td]
[td]99[/td]
[td]26[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]New Albany*[/td]
[td]2[/td]
[td]0[/td]
[td]38[/td]
[td]17[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Madison*[/td]
[td]2[/td]
[td]0[/td]
[td]223(!!)[/td]
[td]30[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]
* Towns/Cities on the Ohio River

From what I remember seeing, if a factory producing WS was built, the increase was 3 WS, but I've seen factories built in one town/city in one turn that increased GS or Ammo output up to about +25! albeit rarely.

Barring the unveiling of the industrialization algorithm I'll not worry about it anymore.

It might be useful to industrialize in Arkansas as the South because of the lengthy transportation line to the front in '61 and '62, and because Little Rock and Madison are the only towns that will probably get the upgrade. But then again they are destine to eventually fall so that investment can only be viewed as a temporary gain, if it comes through, which is then taken over by the Union. I think the resources can be better put to use to actually build the artillery in the neighboring region and rail it up to Memphis and then send it by transports to Fort Smith or Ozark Harbor.

You don't miss out on building those artillery batteries and ironclads just because you don't build them in their commissioning state. They are simply built in their alternate region. You have to look at the actual unit_type.uni file in ..\ACW\GameData\Units\ to find that out, but for Missouri and Arkansas it's the South_West grand region which is Texas and Louisiana and since artillery is, from my experience, built in the largest towns/cities they will almost always be built in New Orleans.

The couple of ironclads that I build from Indiana were built in Detroit. It's a long ride around the Michigan lower peninsula, but you only make it once. Anyway, there's a whole slew of them to be built in Missouri, Illinois and Kentucky before I'd have to start thinking about building the Indiana ironclads. Ohio is a bit questionable. Gunboats like to be built up on Lake Erie, but most of the ironclads that I remember building landed in Cincinnati, so that's okay. I don't remember ever having build Pennsylvania ironclads, but I've built a lot of monitors in PA and they almost always land in Philadelphia, so I imagine that the ironclads would land in Pittsburgh. Just start building them in early spring so that in the worst case they have time to sail around to their actual deployment area.