AGEOD Forums

One cool feature of AACW is that most of your conscript points (meaning any men sent into service including volunteers) are not generated from a given income by your cities.

As most of you know, men enlisting in American Civil War regiments fluctuated wildly. Volunteers responded to the calls, massively at first (On to Richmond!) and when the true horror of the war (simulated by a fall of your National Morale) became apparent, the Union and Confederate governements had to switch to more drastic measures such as paying a bounty to people and even introducing conscription.

This is simulated (but abstracted a bit as you act at the national level, not state by state) by the Drafting Options page of the Ledger. You have several sets of choices.

First, the volunteers. You can get conscripts for free by issuing a call to arms, every 6 months. You can only expect to have a significant number of men if your morale is very high. The good thing is that it costs you nothing.

An alternate solution is that you can give a bounty to incentivise men to join the ranks. You have here 3 levels of bounty possible, costing more and more money but bringing more conscripts into your army. These solutions don't appeal much to people but are still bearable for most of them so you will suffer a light penalty in National Morale.

Finally, conscription. Full or partial. Here you will get a massive number of men (depending on historical census), and don't have to pay anything in money. But in introducing conscription you are basically saying to the population that the war is not exactly going as you expected. Therefore you will have to pay a cost in National Morale!

This is great stuff. I really like the last, desperate measure for the South of arming the slaves. I think if a point comes when a Confederate player seriously considers this drastic option, the situation will have become nearly hopeless, as it historicly was when this option was being discussed.

Bah...volunteers will be enough...we will get rid of those yanks long before we need conscriptions...

I'm curious, does your opponent get a news event that lets him know what kind of draft/conscription callup you did?

Also is there a quality difference of any kind between volunteers and conscripts or is it just a number added to one all encompassing pool?

Jim

No event but this can be an idea yes. If time allows no problem. Remind me of that in february

There is no difference between volunteers and conscripts, the difference exists when they are drafted into a unit on map though, as a low National Morale will mean that the unit will be trained slowly, and conscripts regiments will take a long time to switch to the regular infantry type.

How many conscription points for a regiment, brigade etc.. ? Just to have an idea. Historically the 2 sides chose call of volunteers at first, it will be nice to choose differently. Many possibilities... I will love this game !!!

Very nice features and I like the historical feel to all this! Keep it up! And the daily updates are welcome indeed.

Very good ... I just hope the AI will make an adequate (ismart ...) use of all those possibilities.

James D Burns wrote:I'm curious, does your opponent get a news event that lets him know what kind of draft/conscription callup you did?

Cela me fait penser, une des particularités de la guerre entre les États fut l'importance de la presse. Le sud, bénéficiant de la liberté de la presse au nord, était plus rapidement au courant des déplacements des armées adverses que les Yankees.
C'est un élément important pour le fog of war. En tenez vous compte?

one specificities of the war between the States was Press. The south, because of more freedom in the north, was often able to know more quickly the movement of the opposing armies than the Yankees. It’s a important element for fog of war. Did you think about it ?

bill wrote:one specificities of the war between the States was Press. The south, because of more freedom in the north, was often able to know more quickly the movement of the opposing armies than the Yankees. It’s a important element for fog of war. Did you think about it ?

Yeah, but something as big as forced conscriptions was not going to go unnoticed by either the north or south. Also the fact there is a six month gap between callups in game means if the Union holds a draft and gets a huge manpower boost and the South continues to call for the dwindling number of volunteers available, there will be a huge difference in the size of armies on the map which would probably unbalance the game.

I believe the actual number of conscription points you get fluctuates based on national morale levels, so I don’t think a news event will give players exact Intel on numbers. But at least it’ll keep things relatively balanced if the player can make a more informed decision based on news leaking in from the other side.

Here’s a good overview of the conscription issues faced by both sides:

http://www.etymonline.com/cw/conscript.htm

It’s interesting to note that the Unions 90 day volunteer system actually worked in their favor due to the first Bull Run battle leaving those 90 day men with something to prove. Most of them immediately re-enlisted for three years while the south’s 1 year boys had had some hard times by the time their re-enlistments rolled around and they were less inclined to re-enlist for longer terms.

Jim

Florent wrote:How many conscription points for a regiment, brigade etc.. ? Just to have an idea. Historically the 2 sides chose call of volunteers at first, it will be nice to choose differently. Many possibilities... I will love this game !!!

an infantry regiment cost 10 conscription points, a brigade... it depends of what is in the brigade, as a brigade contains regiments (the smallest brigade contains 2 elements, the biggest, a South one, 7).

About events telling the otherside which option the opponent choose, we will add that to our list (in the 'do that when the rest is finished' list more specifically ).

Thanks for your answers Pocus. In the third screen the Hood division have the 3rd Arkansas alone. Is this an exception to the rules because of an historical scenario ( i took notice that his famous Texan brigade is there with his 3 regiments). I suppose that the peninsular campaign is about to start. I also like the photo integrated in the ledger!

Yes this is a scenario setup, so PhilThib, chief commander of all things OOB gathered several regiments in one element, surely because they were already half depleted. In the big campaign you will mostly have One regiment = One element.

By elements I refer to the NATO symbols you see at the bottom right panel. Hood division on the screen is thus made of Hood, Divisional HQ and 8 infantry elements, most being 1-2 regiments.

A division can contains up to 18 elements, including artillery and cavalry and provide significant bonuses over detached brigades... so basically if you have a divisional HQ around, it is better to merge 2-4 brigades with the HQ to form up a division (and you can always split it later if you need the extra versatility offered by 3-4 units instead of one).

Thanks for these new informations about chain of command. Any day feature on saturday and sunday ?

no update on sunday, but saturday one is up

Anguille wrote:Bah...volunteers will be enough...we will get rid of those yanks long before we need conscriptions...

Unlike the real Confederacy, which enacted a draft well before the Union.

DickH