Suggestions for FOF2

[jakethesnake]

After a 18 month of play here are some suggestions for game improvement.
- Have each individual fort have an adjustable maintenance slider to allow players to "mothball" forts preserving the facility while reducing the amount of upkeep cost with a corresponding drop in fort strength.
- Armies that are static should have the engineer option to construct a Fort at no cost. The size of the army should dictate the time required to complete the fortification. Upgrades to the fort such as rifle pits, and cannons and maintenance for the completed fort would function as normal.
-RR maintenance slider. Historically one of the main reasons why the Confederate RR system failed is due the large demands on it labor force required to keep-up its existing RR infrastructure. As either side exspands its RR capacity, they should be forced to either pay labor and iron as up-keep or based on amount of used of RR points that side is "taxed" a up-keep from that turns income of the RR points available on the following turn are reduced.
-CSA population in Richmond and New Orleans is too low. In 1861 New Orleans had a population twice that of St Louis but in the FOF its population points are 7 compared to St. Louis' 16. New Orleans starting population should be around 24. Also Richmond begins the game with a paltry 6. Based on historical population census from 1861/62 Richmonds population points should start at least 12.
-Camps vs Recruitment- Camps provide way to many replacements. All the USA player has to do is build 40 camps and thier armies will replace combat losses with ease without ever having to resort to conscription. I would due away with unless it built as an upgrade to allow conscription or upgrade the quality of recruits. All new Troops should either be mustered, conscripted or recruited. Move the new brigades to the vicinity of an existing force and have an option to disperse a unit. By disperse that Brigade would dissapear and its strength would be divided equally into units in that division / corps. Or a new brigade could be moved to the location of a camp and then dispersed, and the camp would parcell those troops out to that countries armies as a whole. Getting rid of camps would cause both side to have real manpower shortages by 1863 (historical) and should create a real hesitation on the part of the player (AI) that tends to throw away troops in repetitive reckless assaults because all casualties are being replaced every turn.

[2ndACR]

I show St Louis at 160,773 in 1860 and New Orleans at 168,675.........link here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_ci ... ecade#1860

I agree the populations are not quite right. Would like to see them adjusted.

Of course, Chicago will see a large bump in population, along with alot of northern cities. 33 million in US and on 9.5 mil are in the south. And alot of them are slaves.

[Gil R.]

Oops, I guess I missed these when they were posted, since I rarely check the modding sub-forum. Thanks for the feedback.

[bugwar]

Couldn't a person just change the values in the text file?

[Gil R.]

Yes, I think population is one of the things one can change. I checked the files, and see that in the main DATA folder and each scenario subfolder there is a AcwProvinces.txt file, and the "max.pop." column shows how large a city can grow. I couldn't, however, find a place to set starting populations, which makes me think that the code probably calculates this as a percentage of the maximum. (It's always possible I missed something. I haven't had to think about this in three years or so.) So, changing those figures should help. Certainly worth a try.

Note that the "max.pop." column is technically for provinces rather than cities, as cities are assigned to provinces in the AcwStart.txt file. Thus the highest population (18) for Delaware River is really for Philadelphia.