Manual errata? Or a bug?

[Searry]

2*-generals don't seem to be able to create armies.

It says this in the manual:

Procedure: To form an Army, select a 2 or 3 star leader within range
of an Army Group plus any Units (including any Corps, Divisions
and leaders) you want to include in the Armies, then select the “Create
Army” Special Order.
Note: An Army must always occupy a single region and is a single
Stack of Units. You could separate Units from their Armies to extend
your coverage, but they would become an Independent Stack in the
process, losing Armies benefits and suffering possible Out of Command
Chain penalties as a consequence.

In the 1914 East Prussia campaign as Germany Max von Gallwitz cannot create an army to negate some of the CP penalty. This is weird as all the usual and age old requirements for army/corps creation are fullfilled.

[Ace]

Only 3 star generals can create an Army. In early beta both 2 and 3 star generals could create armies, but it felt appropriate that only 3 star generals could be given such responsibility.

[Searry]

Only 3 star generals can create an Army. In early beta both 2 and 3 star generals could create armies, but it felt appropriate that only 3 star generals could be given such responsibility.

Makes sense. Seems like you just have to play with a lot of CP penalties.

[Respenus]

Makes sense. Seems like you just have to play with a lot of CP penalties.

As a matter of fact, you do not. At the beginning, I made the mistake of merging the different stacks to try and concentrate my troops, but after playing for quite a while, I realise that the best thing to do is to leave the OOB as it is at the beginning of the game. You can then train additional divisions to add them to the existing corps and armies and even after more than a year of war as the CP (my longest campaign so far), I still have more than enough space. Plus you can always bring in additional general from the off-map section and you get three additional generic generals per nation per year, so you should be fine. Furthermore, with all the fighting at the beginning of the war, you'll certainly have the chance to promote a couple of your generals to three stars.

In addition, don't forget that a lot of your manpower is eaten up by constant replacements, so you cannot build several armies at once, but have to spread recruitment over a longer period. So in my experience, there is not shortage of generals. Good generals, however, are more difficult to come by.