Matagorda - Block Cotton selling

[BigDuke66]

Well I had hope to stop the Confederates from selling cotton when I conquered Matagorda but nothing.
If cotton selling is supposed to still work it would be nice if the Confederates need other costal regions for it.

[Citizen X]

I believe that Matagorda is just the placeholder for the trickle effect in all provinces that just cant be stopped 100%

[Captain_Orso]

Matagorda is the only location the South can use the ExportCotton RGD to get an immediate $15k. If you take Matagorda, the South can no longer use this RGD.

If the South does not use this RGD, and it still has stockpiles of cotton waiting for export, there is a chance each turn that smugglers manage to get a load of cotton out for $50k, but there is also a chance that a stockpile of cotton goes to rot and is eliminated. Both these happen per event, and other than the South exporting through Matagorda, neither player can influence it.

[Citizen X]

At least in my version of the game (1.06) the RGD to sell cotto can be used in Matagorda regardless of regional ownership. The event "cotton rotting in harbour" takes away one of those RGDs. The event that traders managed to run the blockade and sell cotton is unrelated, afaik (but could use one up also, I never counted them after that event, tbh).
This is WAD.

[Cardinal Ape]

Yup, taking Matagorda won't stop the CSA from selling cotton. Been like that for as long as I can remember.

[Captain_Orso]

So the South can play the RGD even if Matagorda is in Union hands?

I believe that could be fixed with a simple change in the RGD itself, by adding 'MustBeOwnedRegion = 1', and maybe 'MustNotBeBesieged = 1'.

There is no RGD option to check for being BrownWater Blockaded, unfortunately.

[Cardinal Ape]

It should be an easy fix. There probably are some other RGD's that could use that fix too. I think I recall some previous complaints about not being able to stop the 'sneak in blockade runner' RGD.


Forgive my ignorance here, but whats the deal with Matagorda being the sole region for the sale of CSA cotton? Is there a historical reason for this? I tried to do a quick google search for Matagorda and cotton, it didn't come up with much. At least nothing to indicate that Matagorda was a cotton smuggling powerhouse.

I'm having a hard time seeing why the Union occupation of Matagorda should stop the use of the cotton smuggling RGD.

Though, the mechanics of the game make it nearly impossible to really shut down cotton smuggling; Unplayed cotton cards still have a chance to be smuggled out for $50.

[Durk]

I am pretty sure Matagorda was selected because so much CSA trade with Europe went through Mexico. This event is different from blockade running, historically. It represents the relatively small, but important, alternative to blockade running. It is a more direct trade.
Could the Union have blocked this trade? Yes, and then, eventually they did.

Objective cities are so close, that even if the event ignores occupation of Matagorda per se, the Union still gains from this operation.

[DrPostman]

I've read that when the lower Rio Grande was occupied the Confederates resorted to smuggling further
up river from towns like Larado, Eagle Pass, Roma and others to a Mexican port called Bagdad. The
Battle of Laredo on March 19, 1864 was about protecting 5,000 bails of cotton, successfully, from a
Union attempt to capture it.

Keep in mind that Mexico was gong through it's own revolution from 1862 to 1867 so border control
was not very good, and the Rio is an international river, so it was not blockadeable except from the
lower end.

Even with the closing off of the lower Rio Grande there was still a lot of cotton that got through, and
that's why you can't shut down the RDG by taking Matagorda.

[DrPostman]

Bagdad no longer exist. The Wikipedia entry is full of info on it's role in cotton smuggling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagdad,_Tamaulipas

[Captain_Orso]

One could define an area alias with the regions Cameron (Brownsville), Hildalgo (Edinbourgh), Starr (Rio Grande City), Webb (Laredo), and maybe Kinnley (Fort Clark) and use MustBeThisAreaUID, and leave Matagorda completely out of the picture.

[Citizen X]

The system with an unblockable Matagorda on one hand and the probability to lose some RGDs by the "rotting cotton"-event on the other hand, reflects the resiliience yet unpredictibility of the second economy in a beautifully crafted manner.

[principes romanes]

I'm of the opinion that the current system is actually quite a nice representation of how cotton smuggling works. Because the card can *only* be played in Matagorda, it means that the CSA can only play one card per turn - the smuggling is a slow, gradual process and cannot happen all at once. I think the fact that the card does not rely on region ownership reflects that the card is an abstraction that represents cotton smuggling across much of Texas that was difficult to intercept.

So in summary, I actually quite like it the way it is, recognizing that it is an abstraction and does not actually mean that the CSA is smuggling through Matagorda when it is controlled by the USA.

[Captain_Orso]

I know too little about cotton being sold over the Mexican border, to be able to make any truly factual statements. But whether all, most, or just some of the cotton sold over the border was actually moved through Matagorda historically, that does not mean that if Matagorda were to fall into Union hands, which it did during the war, that cotton trade over the border would be impeded, let alone stopped.

This is what I dislike about artificial limits of the game. The whole point of playing an historic strategy game is not to recreate the entire history, step by step, but to recreate the historic situation, and allow the player to try different tactics and strategies, to allow for different results, and let the player experience the hitherto unknown results of his own decisions.

Unless there is some historical evidence that Matagorda was absolutely necessary for the trade across the border, I don't see any point in making it so in the game.

[BigDuke66]

Well maybe we can find out the true intention of what this RGD is supposed to depict.
- If it should depict smugging through a specific region/port it should obviously not work if that region/port is occupied or blocked.
- If it depicts the smuggling of cotton along the gulf coast it should obviously not be blocked by taking a single region/port. But it should be blocked if that last possible region/port for such smuggling is occupied or blocked.
- If it depicts the smuggling of cotton over the Mexican border, it should obviously not be blocked by taking a single region along the Mexican border. But it should be blocked if that last possible region for such smuggling is occupied or blocked.

It seems to me that this Matagorda RGD is another RGD that, with the appropriate amount of historical research, could be depicted in a much more detailed way. If the capabilities of smuggling operations could be researched, the single RGD could be removed and replaced by several RGD. These would depict the various possible ways of smuggling over the Mexican border and along the Gulf Coast region by region and port by port, and as these would by tied to a specific region/port the occupation or blocking of that region/port could prevent playing the specific RGD.
By setting them up this way the Union player can impact the Confederate smuggling operations, but to shut them down he would likely have to occupy most if not all the Confederate border to Mexico and the Gulf coast.

[principes romanes]

Thanks for the summary of the discussion BigDuke.

My one additional point is that the current way the card works means that it prevents the CSA from playing all the smuggling in one turn. Of course, it would be possible to maintain that feature (if it is even desirable) by only giving the CSA a card to play every turn or so - so not have them all become available Early January (as they currently do), but that would be a bit finicky to create more events that give one or two cards.

Another idea fro how to approach this could be something like the counter-intelligence cards the USA currently gets. Every time the USA captures a smuggling region (either on the Mexican border or on the coast, whatever is used), the USA gets a "counter-smuggling" card (or two) that provides a chance to counter the smuggling attempt. I don't know how easy it is to grant cards based on capturing a region, but that could have a similar effect for allowing the USA to shut down some of the smuggling by capturing key areas.

Mine are all just ideas based on the game mechanisms. Like Captain Orso, not something I actually know much about.

[Cardinal Ape]

Interesting replies all around.

The Export Cotton RGD is all about the Mexican border, the card reads, 'We will organize exports of cotton to European states through the Mexican border.'

Like others have said, it is a fairly simple and abstract system, it gets the job done, but I don't like it. My reason for disliking it was well said by Orso, "The whole point of playing an historic strategy game is not to recreate the entire history, step by step, but to recreate the historic situation, and allow the player to try different tactics and strategies, to allow for different results, and let the player experience the hitherto unknown results of his own decisions."

Currently all the choice lies in the hands of the CSA, there is nothing to be done by the Union. The CSA decides if they want to play the card for 15$ or do nothing. Being the power gamer that I am, I once did the math on this supposed choice. With the exception of the large stockpile in '61, you will on average earn much more money if you never play the card.

Not to be a total downer on the lack of choice; I do find some fun in the dice-rolling, gambling aspect of the smuggling operation.


I'd be willing to bet that the Dev's had envisioned a much more robust system about the sale/smuggling of cotton, but for whatever reason it didn't make into the game. I think there is some evidence for this in the files: There is an unused RGD called, 'harvest cotton fields'. This RGD can only be played on unpillaged regions that you own with plantations ... Imagine where that amount of detail could go.

Yeah, so, ... I could see how playing harvest RGD's on all your plantations could be too much of a pain in the ass. But still, it looks like there was some thought given on how to get those abstract cotton bale RGD's directly connected to the game board.

In some way or another, I would love to see actual cotton assets on the board that could be fought over. Maybe the amount of bales received at harvest could be based on the amount of non-pillaged plantations under your control. It looks like that might have been the intent with the harvest card.


In the game cotton will not rot during the winter months, I guess it freezes. However, all the cotton bales in game go through Texas. As I write this in the middle of winter, it is currently 71 degrees Fr in Matagorda. Too much detail? Yup.

[Captain_Orso]

First off, I'm triggered The South wasn't smuggling cotton over the border; they were trading

I think to treat the cotton trade realistically, one would have to transport loads of cotton to an owned town along the Mexican border within a reasonable range from the mouth of the Rio Grande and then sell it. But that is a concept that has never been realized in the game; physically transporting and accounting for goods. I think this is also why cotton export is dealt with on such an abstract level.

If transporting the South's entire surplus of harvested cotton to the Mexican border were a viable solution to cotton trade circumventing the blockade, I think the South would have done just that. But transporting thousands of tons of cotton from all over the South, especially from east of the Mississippi, overland to the Mexican border, I believe was simply not practical. I also doubt that any cotton would have been transported by coastal shipping, because that would be the best way to have it stopped and confiscated, cotton, crew, ship, and all.

So we have generic trade. Cotton sneaked out of the counter through blockade runners (events which are not influenced by the blockade at all), RGD's which 'directly' export cotton to Mexico, and events which destroy cotton stocks per chance. And why the cotton sold over the border is so cheap, while cotton run out past the blockade it not, I can only guess was to not make trading over the border so attractive and give the player something to play at.

So, short of actually having 'cotton loads' to physically transport to the Mexican border, the only reasonable thing I can think of would be to restrict the Export Cotton RGD to the border towns on the Rio Grande close to the mouth, and find a way to give the South only one Export Cotton RGD at a time, but up to x per year.

[BigDuke66]

Couldn't cotton be a unit?
The hits stand for the amount of the cotton, and every hit stands for 1$.
And you could adjust other values to depict certain things.
It was not viable to transport all the cotton OK, so you make the unit very slow. But to still give a way to transport some cotton another unit could be added, a transport unit, afaik the speed of a whole stack gets somehow evened out between the units and so putting cotton units with transport units together could depict overland transport of cotton.
The cotton unit could be transported by river transports or real transport ships but they could run into any union shipping that is on the river or the ocean.

Now if cotton would be depicted by a unit such a unit could be attacked or even captured, and even if just damaged the missing hits could depict lower income as some of the cotton didn't make it to be soled.

[Cardinal Ape]

So, short of actually having 'cotton loads' to physically transport to the Mexican border, the only reasonable thing I can think of would be to restrict the Export Cotton RGD to the border towns on the Rio Grande close to the mouth, and find a way to give the South only one Export Cotton RGD at a time, but up to x per year.

What if you upped the duration of the RGD to equal the number of possible playable regions? Three cards that took three turns would make the same.. you get me.


There is definitely a danger of going too deep on this topic, like Marianas Trench deep, but with how important King cotton was it would be nice to have a little more detail. At the very least the RGDs could be improved to have some on map interaction.

While doing a bit of brainstorming on this topic that unused 'harvest cotton fields' RGD keeps coming to mind. I do think there is something there. It seems like there is some framework to build off of.

Taking a guess at where the dev's might have been going with that unsed RGD; It may have been intended that the CSA player would play the harvest cards on regions with plantations, doing so successfully would award the CSA one bale card. The bale card could then be sold in Mexico.

Tying the bale cards and plantations together would be a good thing, I think. However, doing it with a harvest card is a bad idea; it is a pointless step. Best to just assume that all CSA players will use all their harvest cards all the time (absurd to think you could order a farmer to not harvest his fields anyways.)

Thinking about it more, I'm really liking the idea that each unpillaged plantation should make one bale card per year. It's not my idea, it's already there in the files. It's simple, its doable, it adds interaction without increased micromanagement.

The CSA currently receives 6 bales cards per year. There are nine plantations on the map, one for each of the Confederate states, minus Texas, Florida and Missouri. Assuming their plantations don't get captured or raided, and that their bales avoid rot, these three additional cards would mean an extra 45$ to 150$ a year increase for the CSA.

I don't think its a good idea to add in more things that only have the potential to negatively affect one faction, especially the CSA. The other side of coin should be true as well i.e. If the South did an incredible job of defending it's cotton output then they should be to reap the rewards of more money. So the three extra bale cards from plantations would not be a problem. If the Union has a problem with it then they can get off their butts and go do something about it.

All this for a 15$ card? Is that too little?

[Captain_Orso]

Couldn't cotton be a unit?
The hits stand for the amount of the cotton, and every hit stands for 1$.
And you could adjust other values to depict certain things.
It was not viable to transport all the cotton OK, so you make the unit very slow. But to still give a way to transport some cotton another unit could be added, a transport unit, afaik the speed of a whole stack gets somehow evened out between the units and so putting cotton units with transport units together could depict overland transport of cotton.
The cotton unit could be transported by river transports or real transport ships but they could run into any union shipping that is on the river or the ocean.

Now if cotton would be depicted by a unit such a unit could be attacked or even captured, and even if just damaged the missing hits could depict lower income as some of the cotton didn't make it to be soled.

The Cotton Economy as based on plantations transporting their cotton to harbors, loading it on river boats, to transport it to trade ports on the coasts, where it would be sold to exporters, who sold it to international buyers. It would then be loaded on ships and sent overseas. This is all done through private enterprise.

At the start of the war, the South was producing about 5 million bales of cotton per year; a bale weighing about 500lb, so about 2.5 billion lbs of cotton.

From what I've been able to ascertain, a mule could be used to draft just over half his own weight about about 900lbs. A wagon would carry about 2500lbs and be pulled by 6 mules.

Doing the math, 2,500,000,000lbs of cotton / 2,500lbs per wagon = 1,000,000 wagon loads with 6,000,000 mules.

Divide it up as you wish.

About transporting over the seas. The first problem is, AACW already broke with the concept of 'close blockading' in the game mechanics. All those blockade ships in the blockade boxes are not really in the middle of the ocean. The are mostly in the coastal areas around ports, often anchored there. But there were also patrols sailing around, looking for runners.

So were the South to load cotton on ships to sail down the coast, they would have run into the blockade. But this cannot be represented in the game, because the mechanics do not consider it, because it never happened.

Remember, the runners were to the greatest extent, small and fast specially built ships, built and owned by British officers on leave from the Royal Navy, with fairly small holds. Trade ships had no need to be small and fast, and were the exact opposite. The were large, fat and slow, and would have been easy pickings for the blockade. So there is no reason to even consider transporting over the seas.

[Captain_Orso]

So, short of actually having 'cotton loads' to physically transport to the Mexican border, the only reasonable thing I can think of would be to restrict the Export Cotton RGD to the border towns on the Rio Grande close to the mouth, and find a way to give the South only one Export Cotton RGD at a time, but up to x per year.

What if you upped the duration of the RGD to equal the number of possible playable regions? Three cards that took three turns would make the same.. you get me.


There is definitely a danger of going too deep on this topic, like Marianas Trench deep, but with how important King cotton was it would be nice to have a little more detail. At the very least the RGDs could be improved to have some on map interaction.

While doing a bit of brainstorming on this topic that unused 'harvest cotton fields' RGD keeps coming to mind. I do think there is something there. It seems like there is some framework to build off of.

Taking a guess at where the dev's might have been going with that unsed RGD; It may have been intended that the CSA player would play the harvest cards on regions with plantations, doing so successfully would award the CSA one bale card. The bale card could then be sold in Mexico.

Tying the bale cards and plantations together would be a good thing, I think. However, doing it with a harvest card is a bad idea; it is a pointless step. Best to just assume that all CSA players will use all their harvest cards all the time (absurd to think you could order a farmer to not harvest his fields anyways.)

Thinking about it more, I'm really liking the idea that each unpillaged plantation should make one bale card per year. It's not my idea, it's already there in the files. It's simple, its doable, it adds interaction without increased micromanagement.

The CSA currently receives 6 bales cards per year. There are nine plantations on the map, one for each of the Confederate states, minus Texas, Florida and Missouri. Assuming their plantations don't get captured or raided, and that their bales avoid rot, these three additional cards would mean an extra 45$ to 150$ a year increase for the CSA.

I don't think its a good idea to add in more things that only have the potential to negatively affect one faction, especially the CSA. The other side of coin should be true as well i.e. If the South did an incredible job of defending it's cotton output then they should be to reap the rewards of more money. So the three extra bale cards from plantations would not be a problem. If the Union has a problem with it then they can get off their butts and go do something about it.

All this for a 15$ card? Is that too little?

Harvesting should not be something the player should be concerned with.

If there are multiple locations to play the RGD's, and you want the player to only be able to play one card per turn, then you have to give him only one card at a time.

Without researching deeper into this, I think it would be possible to rewrite the replenish events so that there are 4 per year for Cotton Export, each giving the player one RGD.
- R1 (Replenish Event 1) looks each turn if the Cotten Export RGD has been played, if so it gives the player a new RGD and opens R2 to run, and turns itself off.
- R2 does the same as R1, only opening R3 to run.
- etc, etc, until 4 RGD cards were issued.

Whether a year's RGD's are all used or not, the replenish cycle is simply restarted at the start of the next year.

I think the $15 reward of the RGD is because the $50 for the random chance at sneaking a load of cotton out would have been too much, and the player would have simply always played the Export card, this making it a simple give away to the South. Now he has to guess what will be the most effective.

One could lower the prize for the random event giving the South $50 for sneaking out a load to $15, give him a lot more bales to export, but allow the event to fire a lot more often.

In the end, there should be some incentive to use the Export RGD for the South, and for preventing the South from being able to use it for the North.

[Cardinal Ape]

Harvesting should not be something the player should be concerned with.

Agreed. To clarify what I was thinking: The current event that awards six bales of cotton in November would be removed and replaced with separate events for each plantation. If the plantation is owned and unpillaged then you get one bale card via event. The game automatically harvests for you, your only concern is defending your plantations from the enemy, something you'd already want to do since they make GS, money, and men.

If there are multiple locations to play the RGD's, and you want the player to only be able to play one card per turn, then you have to give him only one card at a time.

Ya, true .. I was taking the approach that the goal was to limit the amount of money earned per turn to the fixed $15. As long as that average is maintained then you can play more than one card a turn. Though, the weakness of both our methods is that they are exposed to rot significantly less.

Without researching deeper into this, I think it would be possible to rewrite the replenish events so that there are 4 per year for Cotton Export, each giving the player one RGD.
- R1 (Replenish Event 1) looks each turn if the Cotten Export RGD has been played, if so it gives the player a new RGD and opens R2 to run, and turns itself off.
- R2 does the same as R1, only opening R3 to run.
- etc, etc, until 4 RGD cards were issued.

Did you drop the amount of bales from 6 to 4 to compensate for rot? The biggest deterrent to never playing export cards is that when rot strikes it takes out 4 bales at once. By only having one card in stock at a time your plan is rather well insulated from that drawback. If you played the card on the same turn it was received then rot would be impossible.

I think the $15 reward of the RGD is because the $50 for the random chance at sneaking a load of cotton out would have been too much, and the player would have simply always played the Export card, this making it a simple give away to the South. Now he has to guess what will be the most effective.

One could lower the prize for the random event giving the South $50 for sneaking out a load to $15, give him a lot more bales to export, but allow the event to fire a lot more often.

In the end, there should be some incentive to use the Export RGD for the South, and for preventing the South from being able to use it for the North.

If you want more incentive to fight then take heed of the ancient proverb, "'Mo money, 'mo problems."

The average output of cotton 'sneaking' per year is $200. A good year is $250, and a perfect year is $300. A bad year is $150. A horrible year is $100.

Playing all six card's earns you $90. Though, in the time it takes to play six cards chances are one will get sneaked out. Assuming that happens then intending to play all cards would earn $125.

If the export card made $25 per I'd still hold 'em. At $30 per ... maybe. Nah, I'd still roll the dice at $30. The odds are in my favor, I'm feeling lucky and daddy needs a new pair of shoes, well, really, my whole army does. So considering the $16,000+ yearly income of the opposition, I probably need to take the risk for a few extra bucks.

The main reason I said, '$15 for all this?' is that this whole cotton export strikes me as very trivial. I mean if the CS has a perfect year in cotton trading it doesn't even amount to a single turn worth of Union city income. I know that the export card is not meant to represent the entirety of CS cotton, it only represents the portion that went to Mexico or somesuch. Historically how much money was made there I have no clue, but game-play wise there should be enough money there to have an impact. However much money was really made there, there should be more in game, without it there is no potential for the CS to do better than they historically did. What if any Yankee incursion into Texas was met with a swift kick in the ass? 'mo money seems fair. The card should be worth at least 4 times as much. Enough to make it worth messing with Texas.

Apologies for the stick in the mud post. Hopefully I didn't set off any triggers this time.

[Captain_Orso]

8<

Did you drop the amount of bales from 6 to 4 to compensate for rot? The biggest deterrent to never playing export cards is that when rot strikes it takes out 4 bales at once. By only having one card in stock at a time your plan is rather well insulated from that drawback. If you played the card on the same turn it was received then rot would be impossible.

I didn't really think about how many 'bales' should be produced at all, mostly because every time I start to think about how this should be represented in the game, I run in to the brick wall of I have no freaking idea what historically happened with cotton harvested during the war, only small snippets and anecdotes.

So I come to the conclusion, that without proper historical evidence, the only reasonable think to do, is to base a solution on game-play.

8<

If you want more incentive to fight then take heed of the ancient proverb, "'Mo money, 'mo problems."

Yeaaaaaaah-no. Sounds like something the plantation owners would have said to their ni---ummm.. African-American field hands after the war, "you don't need money. Money just brings you worries and problems. Let me take care of you, and you'll have no worries and no problems".

The average output of cotton 'sneaking' per year is $200. A good year is $250, and a perfect year is $300. A bad year is $150. A horrible year is $100.

Playing all six card's earns you $90. Though, in the time it takes to play six cards chances are one will get sneaked out. Assuming that happens then intending to play all cards would earn $125.

If the export card made $25 per I'd still hold 'em. At $30 per ... maybe. Nah, I'd still roll the dice at $30. The odds are in my favor, I'm feeling lucky and daddy needs a new pair of shoes, well, really, my whole army does. So considering the $16,000+ yearly income of the opposition, I probably need to take the risk for a few extra bucks.

The main reason I said, '$15 for all this?' is that this whole cotton export strikes me as very trivial. I mean if the CS has a perfect year in cotton trading it doesn't even amount to a single turn worth of Union city income. I know that the export card is not meant to represent the entirety of CS cotton, it only represents the portion that went to Mexico or somesuch. Historically how much money was made there I have no clue, but game-play wise there should be enough money there to have an impact. However much money was really made there, there should be more in game, without it there is no potential for the CS to do better than they historically did. What if any Yankee incursion into Texas was met with a swift kick in the ass? 'mo money seems fair. The card should be worth at least 4 times as much. Enough to make it worth messing with Texas.

You know, the Union did take and hold Galveston, and Matagorda, and Corpus Christi, and I don't know how many other coastal cities and towns in Texas, and didn't get their a---hats handed to them. IIRC they abandoned Matagorda after having held it for several months, because they needed the troops elsewhere.

I cannot imagine the South sold nearly all of the cotton the produced. That would make absolutely no sense to me. So how much did get exported? 50%? 25%? 10? 5? Regardless, if the South exported exported less than 50% of the cotton harvested, then basically, in the game there should always be cotton to export per the event which currently randomly exports them for $50, unless it actually rotted in storage, which I also doubt... maybe... I have no idea

So what I am thinking is
1. The Export Cotton Event, should continue firing regardless of how much cotton has already been exported. Why? Because I assume that the South will simply never export all of its harvested cotton.

2. Exporting Cotton RGD over the Mexican Border should also not be dependent on the number of RGD in the player's hand. It should be dependent and owning one of the border towns and a viable path from plantations to that town.

Export Cotton Event
Currently this event has a 25% chance of success, if the player has any Export Cotton RGD's in his hand. Instead I would change the chance-percentage to be dependent on the blockade value. This might be simple if Wiki is incomplete and 'EvalBlockade = DICE_NOT' works, but EvalBlockade does not have DICE_NOT in its description

Export Cotton RGD
There is no way to directly evaluate a path from A to B in CW2 scripts. The only thing I can think of would be to evaluate a border location for ownership and if it has supply. If it has supply, I will assume that it is getting it from somewhere, and therefore has a supply path into the border location from a supply source. If food can get in, so can cotton

Apologies for the stick in the mud post. Hopefully I didn't set off any triggers this time.

Triggered? TRIGGERED?!? ASKING IF I'M TRIGGERED, TRIGGERS ME!!!!

[BigDuke66]

What bothers me is that the Union has no impact on the cotton things, not the cards nor the events nor the export except for the blockade.
And at best the blockade can block the cotton warehouses and lower their income and that is all.

It's a pity that the whole resource based system didn't went live, you see traces of it here and there, and I guess cotton would have been the same resources like coal or iron mines.

So what about depicting cotton as an asset like war supply?
The things that the south could do would rely on the size of the cotton pool:
- the events could be played on this pool
- any RGDs would use a certain amount of cotton to be played.
- the Union could lower the cotton production by conquering the plantations.

[Cardinal Ape]

So what I am thinking is
1. The Export Cotton Event, should continue firing regardless of how much cotton has already been exported. Why? Because I assume that the South will simply never export all of its harvested cotton.

2. Exporting Cotton RGD over the Mexican Border should also not be dependent on the number of RGD in the player's hand. It should be dependent and owning one of the border towns and a viable path from plantations to that town.

Export Cotton Event
Currently this event has a 25% chance of success, if the player has any Export Cotton RGD's in his hand. Instead I would change the chance-percentage to be dependent on the blockade value. This might be simple if Wiki is incomplete and 'EvalBlockade = DICE_NOT' works, but EvalBlockade does not have DICE_NOT in its description

Export Cotton RGD
There is no way to directly evaluate a path from A to B in CW2 scripts. The only thing I can think of would be to evaluate a border location for ownership and if it has supply. If it has supply, I will assume that it is getting it from somewhere, and therefore has a supply path into the border location from a supply source. If food can get in, so can cotton

Overall, I do like those ideas better then the previous ones.

It did occur to me to try to link the blockade percent to the $50 event, though, I was thinking it could affect the amount earned. If it affected both the amount earned and the success chance that would be great. But I figured it probably wouldn't be possible in the event system so I chucked it. I also wasn't sure if cotton in the $50 event was supposed to represent overseas shipping or if it was only about Mexican trade.

Other methods might try to count ships in the boxes to base results off of. Perhaps the amount of CS blockade runners in the boxes could affect the chance of success, and/or the amount earned as well. Evaluating Union ship counts in the boxes might work as a substitute for determining the blockade percent in events.

Lacking a check for a valid transport route in the export RGD you could do a check against the abstract river and/or rail pools. If the pools are below medium at the start of the turn then the RGD fails or sumesuch.





All in jest:

Apologies for the stick in the mud post. Hopefully I didn't set off any triggers this time.

Triggered? TRIGGERED?!? ASKING IF I'M TRIGGERED, TRIGGERS ME!!!!

I was a fool to think that a strategy of appeasement would work. Containment is the only option for one this trigger happy.

You shoulda went back to your safe space to hibernate, but instead, like a drunk Russian bear you launch nukes. As if any hit you'd land would be anything but a fluke, you stand to do more damage with a broken sling. 'Cause you know you can't touch this Fellow. I'm too Towering. Every battle with me is like Return of the King.

Know what I'm Tolkien about?

*Checks the defcon track* Yup, boys, get your shovels ready; we're about to get buried.

[Cardinal Ape]

@BigDuke66, I think that if you, Orso, and I had our way we might spend half our turns managing fodder and cotton.

You are right about the Union not being able to impact cotton, but the CS doesn't make much from it. Unless they made a ton more, sailing a force down to Texas might lose you more in attrition costs than the damage you could do. The Union generals that did go down there were dumb; they didn't check the ledger to see that the real prize of Texas is San Antonio (about 10% of CS conscripts come from there.)

I can't say I feel bad for the Union not being able to impact cotton currently. They already can do some serious damage with the blockade boxes.

The main thing that deters me from the idea of cotton being a full resource like WS is that your main goal with cotton is to turn it into the other two resources. It would be great if cotton could get you more then just money, some WS would be great. Or maybe you could undersell, or give away free cotton for foreign intervention points. You know, 'secret treaties for secret aid' like in the revolutionary war.

[principes romanes]

The main thing that deters me from the idea of cotton being a full resource like WS is that your main goal with cotton is to turn it into the other two resources. It would be great if cotton could get you more then just money, some WS would be great. Or maybe you could undersell, or give away free cotton for foreign intervention points. You know, 'secret treaties for secret aid' like in the revolutionary war.

And investing some more $ and CC (I know it was slave labour, but the South still needed some overseers etc.) into your plantations might let you produce more cotton. I love how complex we can make this!

*runs for the hills before the nukes hit*

[Cardinal Ape]

You can tell I've been playing too much Twilight Struggle this week. I blame the horrible weather. Anyhow...

@principes romanes, Your comment about investing conscripts into the plantations brought the Twenty-Slave law to mind. I wonder if it could be modeled into the game... Like the draft options it could have four choices, the CS player could set the level of exemption. I don't know enough to say what the effects might be. A guess would be that if the player chose to have no exemption then it might up NM from putting a damper on the 'fighting the rich mans war' mentality some soldiers had. You might get a few extra CC's too. The side affect might be a serious hit to the output of plantations.

Really, I just like those four choice options, wish more were like that.

[hanny1]

fwiw the cs sent abroad 1.25 million bales and the us confiscated around the same amount and sold it to northern firms.some union campaigns where motivated for the cotton gains they were expected to aquire.cs policy was to grow less cotton and more cerial crops, it also commisiond 4 uber blockade runners for cotton only out and war material only in, others were regulated to no less than 10% war material in. That state intervention may be a better way to go as a game mechanism.