Ace wrote:Sheik Yerbuti, welcome to the forums, your first post, and it's a long one.
You have made your point rather well, but I do not agree with all of it. Lee was fixated on Virginia, So you would restrict him from moving outside of state. When you strive to get historic result, you could achieve total opposite. If you fix him in Virginia, Union player could just circumvent Virginia alltogether, and start his campaign in North Carolina. Where is the fun in that? Also, imagine, Union pushing CSA through Virginia to NC. Would you leave Lee without troops leading gueriila units IN NV while the main army is south of Petersburg.
Also, many people, me included are a fan of what ifs scenario. What if Lee went west to relieve Viscksburg, and the game is a perfect setting for the fun of trying it. It is not good to over regulate it.
I am not a fan of it, but if mayority of the people on the forum agree, Lee could be made Eastern theater leader, having command penalties when leaving East. The concept is already included in other Ageod titles. I wouldn't make those penalties high (-1/-1/-1 is enough). It would streamline to use him in the East, but not forbid to use him in the west.
After re-reading my post, I was afraid that someone would misunderstand. I didn't mean limit Lee to just the state of Virginia. I said "Virginia theater" and basically, that means the east.
When Lee invaded Maryland & PA he obviously prevented McClellan & Hooker from invading VA because the Union army had to protect D.C. So, he could operate in NC, VA, MD, PA -- whatever needed to defend VA.
In pure strategic terms this was a mistake because the Union could have simply marched part of its army south and seized Richmond while Lee was ravaging PA. The Union could have held Richmond because of easy water access for supply, but the South could NOT have held any northern city. Hence it would be an unequal trade.
However, of course, this is ahistorical because Lincoln, the Congress and the War Department would have gone bonkers at being left undefended -- even for as long as it took to seize Richmond (at least until Grant takes command in 1864, when they learned to trust him a bit and not demand he march back to defend the capitol), let alone the public and newspaper reaction.
I was given this idea by AJE where lots of allied leaders to Rome (like Ptolemy) suffer huge penalties if you try to embark them and bring them back to Italy to fight outside their theater. This is a great idea because it prevents "gamey" ideas that would never have happened historically.
Same thing here. The NM penalty for moving Lee out of the eastern theater after the Peninsular Campaign would have been an enormous blow to morale. Lee was their hero who had saved Richmond from McClellan's huge army. He was more than a "political general" he was viewed as their savior. The legislature even authorized the raising of negro troops late in the war much against their will because "we cannot deny to Gen. Lee anything he might ask."
Removing him from the east and replacing him with Beauregard would never have been understood by the public.
Hence the NM hit would have been even greater than sacking McClellan and appointing Grant to command the Army of the Potomac in 1862 -- 15 NM and 75 victory points is quite realistic at a minimum. If the Confederate player can afford the huge morale hit, they can re-deploy Lee. (Even that is probably unrealistic). Lee had so much political clout that he could have refused to be transferred. And he would have been extremely angry about it because his loyalty was really to VA rather than the Confederacy as a whole.
If he threatened to retire for instance, what could Davis have done? (Remember Lee did offer to resign after Gettysburg and was refused; they had no-one better). But, Davis would never have considered for one instant permitting Lee to command out west and trusting the defense of Richmond to someone like Beauregard, Johnston, AS Johnston. Had Jackson lived he MIGHT have done in Lee's stead because he had his own cult among the public. MAYBE. But probably not.
The penalty for removing Jackson from Lee's command would have been smaller, but still a couple of morale points. Lee didn't have a real command structure like the Union did with Corps HQs. As long as Jackson was alive he had "wings" of his army. And all during the war he didn't have a large professional staff of senior officers like Union army & corps HQs (or modern armies) but used young gentlemen junior officers as aides who were mostly couriers.
He also had a very loose command grip over his army wings -- which worked great when he had Jackson, but much less well later in the war when his corps commanders were men like Jubal Early.
These ideas are discussed at great length in
Uncertain Glory: Lee's Generalship Re-Examined, by John D. McKenzie.