What's the story behind divisions?

[ImperatorMJ]

What logical reason is there for not being able to form them until October of '61? I read somewhere that both armies lacked the logistics and organized officer pool to form divisions early in the war. But c'mon now. The CSA I could understand. But the US Army, even though woefully unprepared for war, had a command and organizational structure already in place. I'm supposed to believe we can't find a major or two willing to polish a stool at HQ until six months have passed?

The argument for corps formation makes no sense at all to me. I could maybe understand the decision to delay division formation, but forcing the player to wait almost a year for corps is just forcing you to be as stupid as McClellan.

[Pat "Stonewall" Cleburne]

It took the pains of war for both sides to figure out what was effective. I think it's a pretty good representation of that. Neither side should be able to form fully effective armies immediately. Look at how poorly the command structure worked during early battles like Bull Run, Pea Ridge, or even Shiloh.

[Paul Roberts]

The alternative might be to have much higher command cost penalties at the beginning of the war, gradually moderating down to what we think of as normal later on (as doctrine for large forces improves). But the present system basically accomplishes that in a readily understandable way.

[caranorn]

Bull Run is a good example of brigades being sent into battle one by one regardless of the actual structure of the armies. Worse, in many cases even individual regiments or battalions separate from their brigades. So the no divisions early on reflects that...

Pea Ridge on the other hand I think is after the date for no-divisions. At that battle there were in my opinion three very distinct problems.

1) Curtis didn't trust Sigel and his other non-American (supposedly non professional, but Sigel was a German regular as much as Curtis a US regular) generals, so he tried to control every single part of the battle, sending out half regiments and half batteries in one direction and the rest in another.

2) McCullock had a functioning division though still quite rudimentary and also too large, it was extremely unfortunate that within a very short span of time that division lost it's three senior commanders (McCullock, McIntosh of the cavalry brigade and Hébert of the infantry brigade), add to that a leader outside the chain of command (Pike from the indian territory) assuming command and the actual senior remaining officer of the division (Greer) not getting informed of the demise of the other officers and you end up with 50% of a confederate division evaporating overnight.

3) Price's Missouri troops were right in the middle of reorganising, three Confederate brigades were being formed (Little, Slack and ?) while the Missouri State Guard was at an all time low in strength and leadership (as that was the main source for the new Confederate brigades), so the weak Confederate brigades carried the brunt of the battle on the Confederate left and the MSG were sent into battle in a less organised facion (didn't help that Price, Slack and Little were wounded/killed in battle and Van Dorn was down with a cold).

In the end there probably is no way to simulate that combination of effects in AACW-1 (in -2 maybe by differentiating between US born and foreign born leaders and units, by increased mortality of leaders early in the game and reducing it gradualy (as all in McCulloch's division led from the front and that practice was quite common elsewhere too))...

Ooh, that was rather a lot on a single battle. I could write a bit about Shiloh too, but that's even later in the war and certainly past the no-divisions date in AACW (and raising another issue that might be interesting in AACW-2, commanders leading by comitee early in the war with Johnston and Beauregard sharing command)...

[Gray_Lensman]

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