Enhancement Suggestions

[Bigjku]

Overall I really enjoy the game and see a ton of potential as it moves towards final release and presumably continued expansion and improvement.  I have organized my thoughts by area and tried to distinguish what I would say are improvements/expansions of scope from fixes that should happen.

 

Combat Fixes

1. The biggest thing left in my mind after the latest patch is sorting out the whole balance between the woods/terrain cover and fortifications.  The cover/firepower balance still seems a bit off even though it seems improved.  In general fortifications except for the relatively compact breastworks seem like deathtraps as near as I can tell.
2. Units in heavy contact need to flee away from your line rather than through them.  If they can't find a safe way back towards the mass of their own army they should be much quicker to surrender.

Combat Enhancements

1. It would be really helpful if in general units came onto the field as whole divisions, of if parts of divisions at least grouped together.  Not being able to organize in this manner is frustrating.  Maybe in some battles it is intended but generally I suspect it isn't.
2. I would love to be able to have a couple of divisional formation options, particularly the ability to order a whole division to form column for a march and use the route drag function to move it in that manner.

Equipment Fixes

1. At least in the Union campaign things don't add up quite right.  You simply can't buy enough high end rifles to equip your troops as they mostly should be towards the middle/end of the war.  There is really no option to vary your equipment strategy.  I think the solution to this is that the price of weapons should change drastically as the war goes on, for the Union in particular.  In reality once production spins up 1861 Springfield Rifles are going to be cheaper than anything you could import.  The CSA side probably needs to work a bit differently but I will address some thoughts on that later.
2. There is the same problem with the Union and Cavalry carbines.  I can never get more than handfuls of things like the Burnside Carbine, let alone the Spencer, but these things were around in pretty large numbers.  It is frustrating in particular with carbines to have the option to buy 2-300 of 3 or 4 different models of the things.

Strategy/Economy/Reputation Enhancements

 

I think there is a huge opportunity to relatively simply address both some of the issues raised across these forums by making some changes here and to expand the scope of the game quite a bit for the player.

1. As you add more battles I feel like you should make some decisions on the minor battles and even over each campaign season more crucial and difficult overall.  Lets just say that eventually developers were to add enough battles to have a more fleshed out Western and Tennessee segment to the campaign.  In my opinion the player should be given the option and suffer the consequences of making decisions on where to send some of their best troops.  As an example of what I am talking about lets say in 1863 you open the year given the choice of assigning forces to the Army of the Potomac or to Grant in the west.  First any forces sent to one place aren't going to be able to be recalled in short order to the other theaters so these decisions would have consequences.  Secondly it would allow players to some extent to gamble.  Do you concentrate all your strength in the East playing for a knockout blow at Chancellorsville?  You could program things so that certain victories in the East by each side lead straight to a battle of Washington/Richmond and the chance to end the war.  Or do you play the long game and send forces west knowing the a victory there hurts CSA moral, manpower and supplies over the long term.  I just feel like having things like this both makes the game much more dynamic (each campaign would evolve differently) and it actually gives value to certain career traits like recon capability in that you would really want some insight on where your opponent was deploying.  As a development issue its not minor but isn't as bad as it might first appear either.  You would need to add some western battles and Tennessee battles to do it well.  Everything else is done basically at the camp level.  I think in the end it would more than pay for itself as it would make the game feel suitably grand in scale.  Finally it solves the issues that many players are basically creating one "super corps" to handle almost every minor battle situation.  This would give having balanced corps much more value.
2. I think there should be more granularity in how you "recruit" soldiers as I again think this would add a lot of variety to the game and can be done simply as a function of the camp screen.  I would give the player the option of setting recruiting at four levels.  Militia/90-days, 1-year volunteers, duration volunteers, conscripts.  These would each give you a distinct flavor of troops in both numbers and experience.  Militia would be able to be raised in huge numbers but would be very low efficiency troops that would not gain experience as they would shortly muster out of service.  1-year volunteers would be around in large numbers and would essentially be zero star troops with average efficiency gains.  If you elected for duration volunteers they would be available in lesser numbers but would start as 1-star troops and would gain efficiency at an elevated pace.  Once you hit the conscription option you would be able to raise huge number of troops of average efficiency (equal to 1-year guys) but your army takes an overall moral hit that never really goes away.  I know it sounds a bit complicated but I think it can all be accomplished within the settings already in the game and it would add a ton of granularity to the experience of the players.  You could go for that professional, lavishly equipped army of volunteers if you wanted.  Or you could with masses of conscripts from day one and try to swamp the enemy in bodies.  It would also give the campaign more urgency in that if you lose tons of guys or can inflict tons of losses on the opposition they may have to change their recruiting methods to fill the ranks.  Finally it would be a great way to make reputation points more important.  Higher reputation should allow you to get significantly more volunteers than you might otherwise get keeping that a viable option.  Defeat means you may have to go to conscription.  Each play through would be a bit different if you implemented something like this.
3. I think number 2 above being implemented for the AI may actually solve a lot of issues players have with the AI magically regenerating its capability no matter what kind of losses you inflict in the previous battle on it.  I for one don't really care if the AI has tons of new troops so long as the war goes on.  I just want to feel like if I decimated a veteran opponent that they at least have to replace them with green soldiers.  As commander I would have the option to match such a strategy by going for conscription or militia myself.  Or I could stick with my strategy of a smaller more elite force knowing that the enemy has been forced to call into service huge masses of largely untrained men.  It would at least feel like there are consequences.  In short I am saying I would rather see the odds evened out (which I acknowledge needs to be done for game enjoyment purposes) in subsequent battles by increased numbers of green troops than in historically proportionate numbers of highly experienced troops.  It just makes more logical sense.  There should eventually be an overall manpower limit for each side but I think this makes more sense than ever replenishing veteran brigades for the AI.