Edwin Sumner - Ball and Chain of the Union

[elxaime]

Edwin Sumner seems evilly designed to act as a drag on the Union cause. He has high seniority and mediocre talents. But as a two-star, unless you luck out and are able to promote him early to three-star army commander general, he acts as a VP and Morale black hole on three-star promotions for the rest of the game. I am finding that I have opportunities to promote some very good Union leaders up from the ranks to lead the armies. But there is Sumner with his unending anger! Slowly his seniority is being driven down, but he is still there, like a huge boulder blocking progress.

I hope in ACW 2 they find another, more elegant, way to represent seniority and promotion. Even if you want to give Sumner one of your precious army HQ and put him in Fort Laramie just to get him out of the way, you can't unless you get lucky early with a battlefield promotion for him. This seems overdoing it.

[wsatterwhite]

Sumner was the senior US Army field officer who took the field against the Confederacy and received command of the Union 2nd Corps for no reason other than his seniority, he's supposed to be "in the way" so to speak. This is supposed to be a problem for the Union cause- you can't just shelve the worthless high ranking officers you start off with in order to promote the hotshots.

That being said, I think Generals like Sumner and Heintzleman should have a training trait to represent the often understated role these men played in building units like the 2nd Corps and the 3rd Corps into top notch fighting forces early in the war. In this way those officers aren't completely useless.

[elxaime]

That's all fine and well. But you cannot promote Sumner to army command unless he is a three-star. And he won't become a three-star unless you get lucky and are able to give him a battlefield promotion. If you can't, then you are out of luck. And it is pure luck - all of this is out of the hands of the player. Same with William T. Sherman, the senior one-star. I have had him in tons of winning battles but through the roll of the dice I haven't yet been able to promote him to two-star. As a result, if I want to make anyone else a two-star before him, I take a VP hit. There is no player skill or decision making involved - again, just the luck of the random roll. You have no option to "shelve" anyone. They stay there eternally, their anger eternal, their VP and morale punishment eternal. See what I am getting at? Bad luck getting a battlefield promotion die roll for Sumner, by itself, should not hobble the Union player from promoting anyone else to three-star for the rest of the game. Same thing with Sherman.

I would be fine if I was forced to give a third star and an Army command to Sumner before anyone else. I could live with that. But I can't if he stays a two-star.

[Ol' Choctaw]

With high seniority generals, give them a command (a division or what ever and set them to work attacking what ever fixed targets you can find. Do it alone-give them a junior leader below them in the stack but do not put them in a corps or a stack with higher ranking officers. They should come round fairly quickly in this way. Chasing units or fighting in a corps is not as quick.

With Sumner I just take the hit but Sherman you want leading battles the turn he lands on the map.

[elxaime]

That is good advice. It just seems like an awkward way of doing business.

[Pat "Stonewall" Cleburne]

Having complete and omnipotent control over the Union command structure would be a-historical. You have to work to try to fix it.

[elxaime]

I am not asking for complete and omnipotent control. I am just suggesting there has to be a better way than running around doing attacks and hoping lucky promotion rolls occur in the order you wish. It is not as if this encourages historical behavior. It just encourages you to game a system.

[Captain_Orso]

Every time you promote somebody by passing-over Sumner, Sumner will lose some seniority, thus making it easier to bypass him again.

Use any of the poor Lt.Gen.s to create an army command, put him close enough to Grant to give Grant a corp command (and any other corps you might want to build, but more than likely you will try to give Grant as much power as possible) and then move the army command up north to administer a depot somewhere so that his poor strategic value doesn't hobble Grant and the other corps, give Sherman a good, full division and put him in Grant's corp along with as many other divisions as you can muster. Now let Grant and Sherman go on the war-path. If you do it right they will win some good battles and get offered up for promotion.

Once Grant has been promoted give him an army!! Remember, he will pass his strong values down the line of his chain of command to his corps, and his corps onto their divisions.

You will likely pay once for promoting Grant over the likes of McClellan, Banks, Butler, etc, but unless you are taking a huge NM hit (like 10 or more), it will be worth it, but that's not likely for promotion alone.

If you cannot afford to take a really high NM hit, keep going with Grant. He will gain seniority again. Each time he does, check what the cost will be to promote him until it's payable.

The bigger problem will be giving him an army, because there are so many lousy Lt.Gen.s clamoring for an army. You can either pay for "dummy" army commands to give to these to make them happy (you can put them in charge of some back-water locations like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Saint Louse to have some use to them by their lending their command points to the garrisons. You can wait until Grant has gains so much seniority that the penalty for passing-over cost less or you can just bite the bullet and pay the penalty.

Unless the penalty is really high, I'll bite the bullet. I find that it pays for itself in the long run.

[Narwhal]

I think the issue of the OP is that you should not pay the price if you actually cannot promote the guy that got angered.

On the other hand, if that was possible, there would be either no angering issue or an awful lot of dummy CiC around.

[Captain_Orso]

You can promote anybody who it promotable to Lt.Gen. without penalty; just not at any time you wish. You just have to raise their seniority to above that of the most senior leader at that rank. I'm not sure at the moment, but IIRC the leader you wish to promote only has to come within 4 seniority points to the most senior leader to avoid the penalty.

[MarkCSA]

Trust me, the CSA does not have it any easier, with Braxton Bragg (who is only useful several miles behind your own lines) as the ranking 1-star guy.

[DrPostman]

Having complete and omnipotent control over the Union command structure would be a-historical. You have to work to try to fix it.

I'm with you on that. Perhaps ACW2 could have an option for those who don't want
to experience that and turn off any NM hits you get when you promote over someone.
Everything I've read though tells me that this would be awfully unrealistic and I tend to
want to have to deal with at least a few of the problems the Union had to deal with.

[elxaime]

I think a more elegant approach would be to present tradeoffs. A poorly-skilled political general right now is just a ball and chain. The game doesn't show the political plus side. Give a money or recruitment boost when so and so has an army command to reflect the political support. Then, if you decide to replace them with a better but less politically important general, you are trading off one kind of benefit for another instead of it being a zero sum game.

I wonder if the ROP engagement points system is planned for ACW2? This might work even better.