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State Replacements

Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2007 4:29 am
by McNaughton
I was thinking about replacements, and how 'generic' they seem to be. Recruit some troops for replacements, and they can be deployed to Missouri, or end up in Virginia, depending on your immediate need. I replacement is technically a virginia, a south carolinian or a texan, as they can replace any single state unit.

How about if each state 'regiment' was a specific unit type (i.e., Missouri Cavalry, instead of just Cavalry), meaning that your replacements will only be useful for that state's forces (you buy Missouri Infantry Replacmeents, which are only usefull to fill the ranks of Missouri Infantry Brigades).

However, this would create the need to have multiple models for each state designation of a 'regiment' (i.e., instead of 5 Militia Models, there has to be one for each state).

Possibly it could be divided into regions, western, and eastern, meaning that you buy replacements only usable in Eastern Brigades, or those only in Western Brigades.

This would result in a more realistic form of replacement production and deployment, as maybe your Eastern forces recieved more punishment than your western ones, and you just don't have the Eastern replacements to cover the losses.

This way, an infantry replacement couldn't be immediately deployed anywhere given the need, but is limited to geographic region.

your New York regiments would only take New York replacements, wouldn't they?

Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2007 5:55 am
by Rafiki
While it would perhaps be historical that units from a given state would only take replacements raised in that state, I think this would complicate things without adding to the game (at least not to my games). You'd risk having large pools of replacements sitting idle which might or might not be used, and I imagine it would be quite expensive (compared to today) to achieve a level of replacements that you're comfortable with.

BTW, by your reasoning, you should need to have separate manpower pools for each state as well?

Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2007 11:42 am
by McNaughton
Yeah, each state, as it seemed too easy to train a replacement, and for them almost immediately to appear anywhere a unit has supply (the instant transporter). I was just thinking how 'state specific' units were, and how complicated replacements must have been, given that you simply did not supply replacement 1 to unit 2, since they came from different states (in some cases, different counties).

I don't know how the AI would handle it, nor how much of an issue it may be for players, but I have found that it is very easy to keep your regiments at 100%, something that was not possible due to the very complex state-systems in place (if you run out of replacements for your South Carolina forces, then their regiments will be understrength).

Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2007 2:01 pm
by Pocus
We wanted to simplify things true. The speed of replacing men into existing units has been done so that it simulates abstractly that it was difficult to resplenish units as you rightly say. If you find the system too easy, you can reduce the %.