Confederate Fort Supply weirdness

[BiteNibbleChomp]

The TLDR of all of this is that it's all intentional.

Forts can reinforce only up to strength 5, doing this requires a minimum supply of 2. So all of the 3s and 4s that have been quoted in this thread do reflect the historical ability to resupply the forts. And quite frankly, a fort on a little swamp-covered island in the middle of a river is never going to be a pleasant place for a soldier to be stationed (certainly when compared to a fort on dry land much closer to the city market), so the resulting low morale &c makes sense.

Re Pulaski and the land connection specifically:
1/ Pulaski was on an island. Which implies that if the Union has naval supremacy, the Confederates shouldn't be able to reinforce it significantly (yes, using some canoes at night will get some supplies across, which is why it has native supply of 3).
2/ If there's a land connection, the CS player can walk a unit from say Savannah into Pulaski's spot, delete the fort unit and station a brigade or something in that spot instead. Historically, doesn't make too much sense, as again it's an island and resupplying it would be difficult in face of Union warships.
3/ Fort units are supposed to be weak. There's numerous examples throughout the ACW of forts not being up to facing modern weapons (eg rifled artillery), at least at the scale the game takes place at (as was noted on the first post, a two day artillery battle reduced Pulaski: one Union turn to the next is 14 days in the summer and longer in other seasons - even the 50 day siege is only about 3 turns max). More to the point, brigades are not so weak - as historically Pulaski was taken fairly early in the war, it needs to be relatively easy for the Union to do so (and given the importance of the Savannah convoy, if there's a straightforward way for CS players to prevent them from doing so, they will very often). So from a gameplay perspective, having a fort that can't be easily replaced there is desirable too.

Fort Pickens is a slightly different situation, as its reason for being on the map is primarily to provide the Union with a port to resupply gunboats, rather than a position to be captured. Resupply bases, for obvious reasons, need a more substantial supply source.

Making rivers function similar to railroads... I don't think that would be possible now - certainly it would involve re-engineering a very substantial part of the game. Interesting idea though!

- BNC

[DarkHorse2]

Even with "normal" supply levels, Forts are incredibly impotent in ACW.

Fort Pulaski fell after several batteries of "rifled" cannons were landed on Tybee Island. Not due to a random love-tap from a marauding gunboat, as is routinely done in the game.

The United States once again took possession of the fort after a fifty [100?] day siege and two day artillery battle that saw the first use of rifled artillery in combat.

The last Confederate supply ship to Fort Pulaski was the small workhorse steamboat Ida. On February 13, it was on a routine run to the fort down the North Channel. The new battery of Federal heavy guns on the north bank opened up for the first time.

By late February 1862, no supplies or reinforcements could get in.

It did not fall until April 11th, 1862

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Fort_Pulaski

It is like you have just read the "cliff note" version of the battle.

[BiteNibbleChomp]

Fort Pulaski fell after several batteries of "rifled" cannons were landed on Tybee Island. Not due to a random love-tap from a marauding gunboat, as is routinely done in the game.

Tybee Island is only about 8 square km, whereas a hex on the map is closer to 200 square km. To have a unit actually land on the island to attack it in the way you describe would require the island to be at least two hexes (one for the unit to land in, the other with the fort in it). At the game's scale, this just doesn't make sense.

The last Confederate supply ship to Fort Pulaski was the small workhorse steamboat Ida. On February 13, it was on a routine run to the fort down the North Channel. The new battery of Federal heavy guns on the north bank opened up for the first time.
...
It did not fall until April 11th, 1862

The Union has a turn on February 25th, 1862. The next Union turn is April 8th. If we assume that "the last Confederate supply ship" is the last time that the fort could be reinforced in the game, then the fort survived just one game turn before being captured.

I've had to abstract a fair number of things in the game - that's the nature of designing a game at this sort of scale. This is one of them.

- BNC