A few notes from the patch in testing...

[Queeg]

ORIGINAL: General Quarters

To avoid uberstacks, there are lots of ways besides disease you could do that -- limitations on supply into any single province, or declining effectiveness of armies above a certain size, or weakening command effectiveness, just for beginners.

Agreed. But all games employ abstractions and I'm willing accept disease as a surrogate for the other varied and complex factors.

[balto]

#110.  Why change that?  The rules for the combat have enough variables.., did someone complain about this?   

[Queeg]

110) CHANGE V1.3.0: Infantry attacking other infantry in quick combat now have their damage adjusted closer to the average damage dealt by both units.

Math, and thinking about math, isn't my strong suit, but I assume this means that infantry results should be less lopsided - a result I strongly favor.

[Jonathan Palfrey]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
The Union can't build plantations.

Thanks, Erik. I couldn't remember, so I checked through the manual, but couldn't find anything saying so. Maybe I missed it.

[Twotribes]

I dont think the manual mentions it specifically but if you have ever looked through the files, it is set so only the Confederacy can build plantations. ( one could modify that, but I wouldnt).

And from experience when you take a southern city, emancipation or no, the Union can not build plantations there. I do believe that the game manual does state that if the Union emancipates then any plantations it controls will change to mansions. I will look later to see if this is true. Generally byt he time I have started capturing southern cities I have already emancipated.

[Berkut]

ORIGINAL: Queeg

ORIGINAL: Berkut

What is this uber stack you are speaking of?

Because each area in this game encompasses hundreds and hundreds of square miles. This is an area based game, not hex.

So the "uber" stacks youa re talking about? They actually existed. While sometimes armies were broken up do to foraging/supply issues (Longstreets Corps being sent away in 1864, IIRC, for example) the idea that the game needs some mechanism to force the players to spread out is simply fallacious. Preumably, they ARE spread out, all within the area they occupy.

I don't ahve any real problem with the winter dispersion, but disease hits in the summer as well. I would REALLY like to see the historical evidence that suggests that Armies at the time were not concentrated at the scale the game represents.

In a perfect world, the game would have more provinces. But it doesn't. Hence, much of the maneuver that occurred in real life isn't possible at this scale. Without the disease model, the game would devolve to my perpetual stack on my front line versus your perpetual stack on your front line. I like the fact that the game forces more fluidity, even if it doesn't perfectly match the scale.

Fluidity = good. Stagnation = bad. Scale, I can live with. Again, an abstraction of the literal that, I think, produces a better result overall.

Have you played the game against a human?

There is some inevitable concentration, but the game hardly devolves into a "perpetual stack" standoff. And it isn't disease that causes that. There is plenty of space for maneuver, and plenty of reason not to just pour everything into one spot. Indeed, that is a recipe for losing, since your opponenet can simply attack where your uber stack isn't.

The game disease model forces ahistorical activity, namely because the effects are ahistorical.

[soeren01]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

83) CHANGE V1.2.7: A brigade with a Medical Attribute now lowers disease losses by 20% for all units directly attached to the same military group or fort; brigades with two Medical Attributes lower disease losses by 40%. This supercedes the old rule under which the Medical Attribute reduced disease losses by 50% only for the brigade with the attribute.

Rule clarification question:

If you have 2 brigades where each has one medical attribute, do you get 40% disease loss lowering or only 20 %.

[Erik Rutins]

I believe the number of Medical attributes is what matters, but I'll double check.

[freeboy]

what about sieges? is there some odd thing about fort and city seiges?