TinCow

If you don't mind using modern photographs, there's probably no better resource available than Google Maps. Google Streetview is available for all of the major roads in the area (all of which still follow their historical routes), there are also numerous user-submitted photographs mapped out with their precise locations marked. While the photographs are modern, a major effort has been made to return the Gettysburg battlefield to as close to its original state at the time of the battle as possible. The terrain itself is largely preserved intact, and I think you could get most of the necessary details from Google Maps, and then supplement them with historical photographs. For historical photographs, I'm sure you can find tons with google, but to get you started here are Mathew Brady's: http://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/sets/72157624252346972/ The National Archives also has some digital copies of historical photographs that are worth looking at, as some are of very high resolution. Here is a high-res example. To find these, just go here: http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/action/BasicMultimediaSearchForm Then enter "gettysburg" as your search term and bump the max results up a bit. Most of the photos are not of the battlefield, but it's easy to find the ones you're looking for.

So the game is focusing exclusively on the Gettysburg battlefield, I agree that the main campaign should remain historical with no chance of Stuart showing up prior to his historical time. However, I would love to play with Stuart arriving early, so long as the option for that to possibly happen was user-selected or if it was an independent scenario. In such a scenario, Stuart should become available no earlier than the afternoon of July 1st, likely entering along the Hanover Road. Any time from the afternoon of July 1st until his historical arrival time would be perfectly fine. hat said, he should not be of much use as a combat unit for at least a few hours after he arrives. His command would have been very tired by the time they arrived and would likely have needed at least a moderate rest before they could have engaged in significant combat actions. However, Stuart's biggest contribution wouldn't even be combat, it would be intelligence. What Lee lost from Stuart's absence was information about the location and disposition of the Union army. While it was already too late for Stuart to do the job Lee wanted him to do by July 1st, he still could have made a huge difference by scouting the Union lines and informing Lee of precisely where the enemy was located and in what strength. This information would likely have resulted in a different battle plan on July 2nd, most optimistically with Longstreet's Corps attacking from even further south than it did and aiming to get around Round Top to reach the Taneytown Road and drive north. Such a flanking move would likely have been far harder on the Union, and might have succeeded. Having Stuart's cavalry on that flank to screen the move and to provide intelligence for Longstreet would have been significant as well.

If you are going to add in ammunition depletion, IMO you also have to add in capturing small arms and ammunition from the enemy. A significant proportion of all CSA arms and ammunition (from small arms right up to artillery and naval vessels) throughout the entire war were captured from the Union, not only through raids but also picked up directly on the battlefield itself. It was very common for CSA soldiers to pick up higher quality Union weapons right in the middle of battle and use them. It even got to extreme levels, such as at Petersburg, where CSA soldiers would run out and dig up (under fire) fallen Union shot and unexploded shells to use in their own artillery pieces. The lesson to this is that soldiers are inventive and will find a way to kill each other. Ammunition shortages are certainly realistic, but there were many methods of avoiding it or getting around a shortage other than simply getting a supplies from your baggage train. If you ignore things like that then you're just adding on another layer of fiction under a disguise of historical accuracy. If you're going to go for realism on ammunition, you might as well go all the way. Ammunition should stay with fallen soldiers, and that ammunition should be available to any unit, Union or Confederate, that moves over the spot where the soldiers fell. The same should apply to captured artillery. At the same time, it's stuff like this that makes me urge caution in going too far towards realism. You can make this a very realistic game, but doing so might make it a pain in the ass to play and might make the AI completely incompetent. Please remember that one of the reasons we all loved your TW mods so much was because CA consistently did a poor job on its AI. I would far prefer a challenging and interesting game with less realism than a realistic game that is not challenging. If you can achieve both, that would be superb, but make sure you can actually do that.

I'd love to see ammo as an option to increase realism, but I also see the risk of having it cause problems with the gameplay. Ammo and supply depletion in general are of massive importance to campaign movements and multi-battle chains. However, the reality is that lack of ammo was a less significant issue in any individual battle, and it did not play any significant part at Gettysburg. People can cite Little Round Top all they want, but it was still the exception to the rule and, at the end of the day, even there they didn't actually run out. Plus, the hilarious part of that example is that, by modern gameplay-supply standards, the units on Little Round Top should have had a perfectly intact supply line with ammo flowing to them. In order to properly simulate Little Round Top, you'd have to have units run out of ammo simply due to being involved in heavy combat, even though there is a protected supply line from their rear to the army's supply dump. I think that adding in a system like that would actually result in units running low on ammo far more often than actually occurred historically. Is it possible to add in ammo, but then have a gameplay settings checkbox where people can turn it off if they prefer to play with unlimited?

For a single-volume standard, yes. However, if is someone is seriously interested in the topic I would recommend Shelby Foote's series. It has far more depth than McPherson's at pretty much every level. Every single battle of significance is chronicled and he manages to give a logical, flowing narrative to a war that was fought in thousands of places, often simultaneously. It's one of the better histories of anything that I've read, period.

The Gettysburg battlefield is littered with monuments to an extent that is almost unmatched anywhere else in the world; at least I've never seen anything like it anywhere else in either the US or Europe. These monuments contain a wealth of information if you are looking for the names of commanding officers as well as precise casualty reports. The information is particularly detailed for Union regimental positions, actions, and casualties on July 2nd/3rd. Here is a site that has complete transcript of all the monuments at the battlefield: http://www.gettysburg.stonesentinels.com/index.php The Union units at Gettysburg also did something rather unusual and many of them placed markers showing their exact positions on July 2/3, often very precisely. I haven't been able to find a site that has an easy to use map of these markers, but there are several that use google maps to chart their locations, such as this one: http://markerhunter.wordpress.com/battlefields-by-markers/gettysburg/gettysburg-markers-by-location/ If you're looking for incredibly precise unit locations, you could gain a wealth of information from these markers.

Hey, I'm a Total War guy and fan of Darthmod. I also happen to be a big history buff and am, coincidentally, just finishing up volume three of Shelby Foote's history. I loved Sid Meier's Gettysburg back in the day and even tried to play it again recently, but its UI is pretty bad by modern standards which was enough to put me off. I'm very happy to see another game that could replace it, thank you! I'm not sure whether this question is for the History section or the general section, but since the history section is pretty empty I decided to post it here. My question is: What are the limits of the battle going to be? Are you going to stick to ONLY to the battle itself (that is, Gettysburg from July 1 to July 3) or will you include a broader aspect of the Gettysburg Campaign as well? Gettysburg itself is very interesting, but IMO it has limited historical what-if value without including action outside of that specific battlefield. In particular, Hanover prevented Stuart from linking up with Lee early on, which definitely had a major impact on the entire course of the battle. In addition, the simple defeat of Lee's army at Gettysburg was important, but not as important as the opportunity it gave Meade to destroy the Army of Northern Virginia when it became trapped at Williamsport. A second victory there would have dramatically altered the course of the entire war in a way that Gettysburg did not. I have a feeling that these additional scenarios are probably outside the scope of your game due to the fact that they do not involve the Gettysburg battlefield itself (and would thus require independent maps), but if it's possible I'd like to encourage you to add in some way to include at least some kind of what-if option to the game, particularly when it comes to Hanover. Maybe some kind of toggle to determine the result of Hanover; Confederate victory means that Stuart starts the battle with the Army of Northern Virginia, while a Union victory keeps the setup historically accurate. Regardless, many thanks for making this game; I very much look forward to it!