Field Promotions

[ohms_law]

Didn't we deal with this in AACW already?

"Stonewall" Jackson is promotable:
[ATTACH]31073[/ATTACH]

However, he's in the stack with Johnston's Army of the Shenandoah, and therefore cannot be promoted without first removing him from the stack:
[ATTACH]31072[/ATTACH]


Why the hell couldn't I promote him without pulling him out of the ranks (and thereby placing my whole position at risk, since he's literally on the front line in Harper's Ferry!)?
Johnston could quite easily walk over to his field tent, shake Thomas' hand, and hand him an extra star to pin on his shoulder.

[EOOQE]

Field Promotions !!
This would be great to have indeed , like ohms_law said, it also breaks a bit the immersion of the game imo (to remove from stack etc etc) .

[ohms_law]

Here's another incident:

[ATTACH]31088[/ATTACH]

Magruder is promotable.
There's no F'n way that I'm pulling him out of that stack in order to promote him, right now.


...maybe I'll just edit the save after I run the turn, for this one. Sucks, but sometimes you've just got to work around these problems.

[Merlin]

The best solution right now is to have a spare general in the stack, and you should have a spare anyway in case someone gets killed. Change the division leader and promote your guy. I agree it's not ideal, but it works for now.

[ohms_law]

"spare" general. lol

[Eugene Carr]

Where possible I try and have a junior * in my corps, that was an AACW habit I suppose from when there were restrictions on the number of Divisions. Still they do come in handy.

S!

[Captain_Orso]

The issue is a game engine issue. The game engine deals with stacks. Give an order to a stack, and it affects all units of the stack. That's why if the leader of a stack is promotable and some other lower ranking leader(s) of the same stack too, if you issue the promotion SO to the leader of the stack, all other lower ranking leaders of the stack will also be promoted.

Changing the engine to handle sub-units of a stack independently of the stack would be a very major effort.

I'm not sure about "field promotions", whether they existed back in that era, but official promotions were acts of law issued by congress--in both governments--. I can't think of any situations of officers being other than brevetted in the field in order to fill a position his rank would otherwise prohibit, and I think those had to be approved after the fact by congress too.

One simple solution would be to maintain the "promotable" characteristic of a leader for either a much longer period of time or indefinitely. Then after "congressional approval"--when it is convenient for the player--the leader might be promoted and his force be reorganized.

[Merlin]

"spare" general. lol

Not all kidding. Keep a loose 1 star in your corps at all times. Not only does it function as a work-around to the promotion thing, it also gives you a vital means to repair a division if its commander is killed. The first time I had a division exploded that way and was forced to withdraw from a multi-turn series of battles, I learned my lesson.

I'm not sure about "field promotions", whether they existed back in that era, but official promotions were acts of law issued by congress--in both governments--. I can't think of any situations of officers being other than brevetted in the field in order to fill a position his rank would otherwise prohibit, and I think those had to be approved after the fact by congress too.

Davis did it once, on the field at First Manassas, but I don't know of any other instances.

One simple solution would be to maintain the "promotable" characteristic of a leader for either a much longer period of time or indefinitely. Then after "congressional approval"--when it is convenient for the player--the leader might be promoted and his force be reorganized.

That came up when I raised the issue, but I don't recall the solution being pointed out. I'd certainly implement one if I knew how.

[Mickey3D]

Keep a loose 1 star in your corps at all times. Not only does it function as a work-around to the promotion thing, it also gives you a vital means to repair a division if its commander is killed. The first time I had a division exploded that way and was forced to withdraw from a multi-turn series of battles, I learned my lesson.

+1. Not always possible but definitively a good idea.

[ohms_law]

Late '61, there aren't enough generals to go around as it is (for the Confederates). That's why I was rather flippant about the whole thing.
It is a good idea, but the opportunity just isn't there at the moment.

[Merlin]

I like to short the AoT in Nashville, presuming I decided not to invade KY and it hasn't seceded. Once January rolls around, you can usually fix everything.

[tripax]

The issue is a game engine issue. The game engine deals with stacks. Give an order to a stack, and it affects all units of the stack. That's why if the leader of a stack is promotable and some other lower ranking leader(s) of the same stack too, if you issue the promotion SO to the leader of the stack, all other lower ranking leaders of the stack will also be promoted.

Changing the engine to handle sub-units of a stack independently of the stack would be a very major effort.

I'm not sure about "field promotions", whether they existed back in that era, but official promotions were acts of law issued by congress--in both governments--. I can't think of any situations of officers being other than brevetted in the field in order to fill a position his rank would otherwise prohibit, and I think those had to be approved after the fact by congress too.

One simple solution would be to maintain the "promotable" characteristic of a leader for either a much longer period of time or indefinitely. Then after "congressional approval"--when it is convenient for the player--the leader might be promoted and his force be reorganized.

So there is a choice between three buttons, one to promote the highest ranking officer in a stack if he is promotable (status quo), one to promote the highest ranking promotable officer in a stack, and one to promote all promotable generals in the stack. There might not be room for all three (room could be made), but two seem possible (say, the first and the third).

A real war example of the third might be Blunt and Herron after Prairie Grove.

An option similar to the third option would be to make an RGD card that promotes every promotable general in a region at the start of a turn.

[ohms_law]

It doesn't have to be that complicated. Just make the button only work if you have a general selected, and gang it to that one "unit". The code is already there to do that sort of thing, that's how Army, Corps, and Division formation works, so it's not far fetched at all (from my perspective, at least).

[ohms_law]

I like to short the AoT in Nashville, presuming I decided not to invade KY and it hasn't seceded. Once January rolls around, you can usually fix everything.

Kentucky succeeded in my current game.
Besides, that's just a work around. Work around should be temporary (relatively, at least).

[tripax]

It doesn't have to be that complicated. Just make the button only work if you have a general selected, and gang it to that one "unit". The code is already there to do that sort of thing, that's how Army, Corps, and Division formation works, so it's not far fetched at all (from my perspective, at least).

Right now promotions are done during the inter-turn. Division (etc.) formation is done during your turn. Allowing promotions to be done during the turn would involve a bit more complicated code changes.

To be clear, I'm not sure if changing the system in this way is the best. I would vote for adding a few generals for both sides both early and late in the war for various reasons, and agree that doing so is a partial solution (this is, for now, probably a task for modders). Also, I really like the idea having promotable generals remain promotable for more than one turn (I'm not sure this can be done in a mod).

[Captain_Orso]

So there is a choice between three buttons, one to promote the highest ranking officer in a stack if he is promotable (status quo), one to promote the highest ranking promotable officer in a stack, and one to promote all promotable generals in the stack. There might not be room for all three (room could be made), but two seem possible (say, the first and the third).

A real war example of the third might be Blunt and Herron after Prairie Grove.

An option similar to the third option would be to make an RGD card that promotes every promotable general in a region at the start of a turn.

It doesn't have to be that complicated. Just make the button only work if you have a general selected, and gang it to that one "unit". The code is already there to do that sort of thing, that's how Army, Corps, and Division formation works, so it's not far fetched at all (from my perspective, at least).

I think the biggest hurdle in making the engine allow for discreetly selecting a single leader within a stack for promotion is that it would require modifying the data structure of the running game files.

Since many years ago I use to do application development I know how much of a PITA that can be. It might sound simple, but every single piece of code that addressed the save game structures would have to be modified, and that is a daunting task to say the least.

[minipol]

I agree with Captain Orse to maintain the "promotable" characteristic of a leader for a much longer period of time or indefinitely.
A few times, I had an army that was inactive or fixed (always mix those up) after a fight.
Now I don't remember but either the promote button wasn't clickable or I couldn't get the general out of the stack to promote him (it think the latter).
This problem would also be solved by keeping the general promotable longer.

[ohms_law]

I'm not even going to address the potential programming aspects, because we simply don't have the access to speak to the subject with any sort of authority. All I know is that it's certainly possible to allow for discreet selection within a stack, since other parts of the game clearly rely on that. Weather or not it's reasonable for someone to actually implement that for promotions, both time wise with the code and compatibility wise with the databases or save games and whatnot, is a question for Pocus or PhilThip to answer.

I wouldn't mind at all if the promotability of a leader were maintained for longer. I'm guessing, but I bet that may actually be tougher to implement than discreet selectivity within a stack. It all depends on how stuff is implemented.

[grimjaw]

Older thread, I know, but I agree with ohms that this is a *huge* annoyance.

Keep a loose 1 star in your corps at all times.

A workaround that doesn't work well if the loose general doesn't happen to be active at the time. Not as many loose generals in the CSA, so the workaround is a penalty in their case.

If it's going to be incredibly difficult and/or time-consuming to code the issuing of orders to sub-units of stacks, then extending the date allowed to issue the promotion order seems best. Maybe three months? Seems like a common time to match historical, from when promotions were issued or nominated to the time they were confirmed by the legislature.

[Ace]

I remember a year ago it was made possible to promote general who is not stack commander. But there was some bug in it, so it was dropped. Certainly would be good interface improvement.

Maybe the generals could be promoted before trn hosting?

[Pocus]

As a semi-temporary measure, general will only lose their promotion possibility on the first of January or first of July, this should leave some turns (most of the time...) to decide.

As for the interface not working, I would like to get a simple example of that in CW2 or EAW please.