Naval Leaders in the Blockade Boxes

[Straight Arrow]

Does a CSA naval leader add any advantage to runners within a blockade box?

[John Sedgwick]

They might give you an advantage in combat/retreat rolls if they are intercepted (especially if they have the blockade runner ability), but in terms of resources, I don't think they add anything to the amount of money and war supplies coming in. I would keep blockade runners separated, in passive posture with orders to evade combat, and use your naval leaders elsewhere.

[Gray Fox]

A CSA brig alone has a hide value of 5. With a naval commander, the hide value drops to 4. No ship has a sea detect value greater than 4. So if you don't want your blockade runners to be detected, then don't use a naval commander. A naval commander would add a slight combat advantage to a raider in the sea lanes box.

[minipol]

Interesting, didn't know that. I always kept one commander with a few brigs.
Now he can join the fight elsewhere. Thanks for the info.

[Rod Smart]

Yeah, that's really useful. I always put a commander there early in the game when I didn't have anything else for them to do.
I will correct that mistake.

[Straight Arrow]

Thanks gents,

Until the ironclads are built, it looks like I'll have some new artillery commanders.

[Gray Fox]

You're welcome! I noticed this a few days ago. It does seem counter-intuitive.

[marquo]

Well, I tried to move 2 naval commanders from a stack in the Blockade box to a stack of ships in the Shipping Box and they disappeared from the OOB; drown at sea?

[Gray Fox]

Beam me up, Scotty.

Yes you can only move from a ship in the box to another ship in the same box. You can move a commander by rail, etc on the land map.

[marquo]

Well my 2 naval commanders got beamed somewhere; they no longer exist anywhere; no mention in the forces list, and they are nowhere to be found.

[Gray Fox]

You might reload a previous turn.

[marquo]

Yes, I suppose so, and replay a 1/2 hour of my life

It appeared allowed as a legal move when I plotted it; this is a bug and needs to be squashed

[Prussia]

I simply returned the naval unit to port for regular refit and 'then' removed the leader for assignment to a River Ironclad unit. Transferring the Leader from the Atlantic Ocean Boxes to the Blockade Boxes strikes me as very risky proposition plus taking a very long time for the row boat to make it there without capsizing, much less actually finding the targetted unit.

[marquo]

I simply returned the naval unit to port for regular refit and 'then' removed the leader for assignment to a River Ironclad unit. Transferring the Leader from the Atlantic Ocean Boxes to the Blockade Boxes strikes me as very risky proposition plus taking a very long time for the row boat to make it there without capsizing, much less actually finding the targetted unit.

Many things are abstracted in this (and other games); why does it take 3 weeks to move a division from Boston to St Louis by train whereas an HQ can cover the same distance by "redeployment" in one day?

[Captain_Orso]

It takes 1 turn, not 1 day.

Some things in the game just come down to game mechanics. In reality it took about 4-5 days by train from New York City to Saint Louis, Mo. But that would break with the game's paradigm by moving multiple region in 1 day.

Leaders are allowed to use Strategic Redeployment, because they represent single persons or a person and possibly a hand full of staff personnel who would be able to ride on public, regularly scheduled trains. In the game, when using Strategic Redeployment, your leader(s) actually remains stationary until the end of the turn. Then the the game checks if there is still a valid railroad path from the starting location to the terminus location. If not, the Strategic move is canceled and your leader hasn't move an inch. If there is, the leader is basically simply picked up and dropped into the new location.

If you wanted to move more people at one time than could be put on a regularly scheduled train, you would have to arrange to have more cars hung on the train. If you exceeded the limit of what a single locomotive could pull, you would have to have a trail put together specifically for your purpose, or several trains, depending on the number of troops and their equipment.

Railroads during the era also did not pass through large cities. One rail line entered a city from one side and another excited from the other side, without rail lines ever actually meeting. In fact in some states there were actual laws against this being done, to prevent any one railroad company from monopolizing a city.

This meant that if you needed to traverse a large city with a large number of troops you would not just need to get enough trains together to move from city A to city B, but from B to C, and C to D, etc. and in each large city the troops would have to dismount and march to the next station before getting aboard again. So in the game to rail from New York to Saint Louis with troops it takes just over 2 turns, or 4 weeks, to represent these difficulties, but also to stick to the minimum of 1 region per day movement.

Historically there were some movements of corps size formations over a distance of my hundreds of miles, Longstreet's move to Chickamauga, Hooker's move to Chattanooga. Originally the game allowed for one Strategic Move per turn of non-leader force, but it was determined that event that was being abused, with entire armies disappearing from eastern Virginia to suddenly appear in western Tennessee, fight a battle and then suddenly return to eastern Virginia. So this was discontinued.