Re: Confederate Fort Supply weirdness
Posted: Sat Jun 29, 2024 11:48 pm
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
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
