Camps. Horses?

[Jonathan Palfrey]

Sometimes the logic of the game is not immediately apparent.

I see that building a camp requires 20 Labor and 100 Horses. I suppose in the 19th century it may have been useful to have some horses when trying to do anything, but why does a camp need horses in particular? Surely one can build a camp without any horses at all?

The Confederacy's horses seem to enable it to do better in building camps. But my impression is that in reality the Union was better at this.

I quote from the first chapter of Military Memoirs of a Confederate, though it's not really relevant to the question of horses:

"The camps near the principal Northern towns were all of regiments. Those in the South were mostly of a company each. The arms of the Northern troops were generally the long-range rifled muskets. Those of the Southern troops were almost universally the old-fashioned smooth-bore muskets. The Northern troops were always neatly uniformed in blue, their camps seemed well-equipped, and there was generally some visible show of military discipline about them. The Confederate uniforms were blue, gray, or brown, and sometimes uniforms were lacking. There was, too, a noticeable contrast in the physical appearance of the men, the Northern and Western men having more flesh and better color ... But I lived to see that appearances may deceive. Indeed, it became a never-ceasing wonder, to the very end at Appomattox, to see how our lean, ill-equipped ranks would fight, all the harder, it seemed, as the men grew thinner and more ragged and hungry looking."

[Grifman]

ORIGINAL: Jonathan Palfrey

Sometimes the logic of the game is not immediately apparent.

I see that building a camp requires 20 Labor and 100 Horses. I suppose in the 19th century it may have been useful to have some horses when trying to do anything, but why does a camp need horses in particular? Surely one can build a camp without any horses at all?

Uh, how are all the supplies required for building a camp going to get there - tools, lumber, equipment, food for the men, etc. I guess the troops could be hitched to the wagons, but somehow I don't think they'd like that very much

[jchastain]

"Camps" produce reinforcements, but as mentioned in another thread think of them less about recruiting new individuals and more about finding the guys who get "lost" due to march attrition.  The key for a "camp" isn't the phyical rally point as much as it is the infrastructure to track and repatriate soliders who - individually or in groups, intentionally or by accident - have become detached from their assigned units.  That infrastructure is obviously highly dependent upon transportation and communication.  So, instead of assigning horses to troops who join the cavalty, instead they are being used by the marshals and wagon trains in the round-up exercise.  That's how I tend to think of it anyway.

[Gil R.]

I don't think that the presence of so many horses should be taken too literally. We need a "building" that, when built, raises the level of reinforcements. We can't make it too cheap, so while, say, 20 Labor and 20 Horses might be more realistic, it would be possible to make dozens of them, so the price is 100 Horses to make it more difficult to go crazy building them.

In my PBEM game, it's now Turn 11, and I've just been able to build four (and I doubt that the Union is ahead of me), so that shows that the inflated price in horses is having the desired effect.

[Queeg]

I think it's called "abstraction."

[jchastain]

Just so you know... the Super Cop story... was working....  [;)]

[Gil R.]

Actually, I prefer your explanation. I never asked why the price was what it was, and assumed that my reason was the one. But it's quite possible that Eric had that in mind. (The manual for this game is more than 200 pages, to give an idea of how much is in there. If I discussed every minute decision with him before he programmed it the game wouldn't even be in alphatesting yet...)

[Mr. Z]

It's really a combination of everything...abstraction, horses for construction labor, also the reinforcement nature of Camps...horses for hauling supplies around, etc.

[Jonathan Palfrey]

Thanks to all for the replies.

I'm not surprised that it costs something to build camps. I'm just rather surprised that it costs so many horses. If horses are needed to transport construction materials, then at least as many horses should be needed for every other kind of construction project in the game.

The most plausible explanation so far is that horses are needed to round up stray soldiers. Even so, the ratio of 20 labor to 100 horses seems to be overemphasizing the horses somewhat.

Furthermore, it seems that the CSA starts with an advantage in horses, which means that the CSA in the game has an advantage in building camps. I rather suspect that the USA had the advantage in reality.

[Hard Sarge]

if you have looked at some of the event screens that have been posted, most games the Union needs very few men to fill out it's units, while the CSA needs over 220000 men

so, while I would say yes you are right, it is still not the same thing, the CSA needs Camps to fill it's units, while the Union needs camps to replace losses

(which when I play, that changes quicky)

during testing we have gotten the numbers changed, so you get more for the cost now

plus, the Union has massive Manpower numbers compared to the CSA, so it can build many more units compared to the CSA

in none of my test games, have I been able to build enough camps that I wasn't still short of men as the CSA (still needing 100000 men to fill out my units, was my best)