Officers -separating skill from rank

[waldopbarnstormer]

One feature of this game that is annoying me is the inability to promote officers to positions like having your character be major General to command a corps rather than start as a brigade, or when short of officers and having a major command a brigade. It also bugs me that later in the game I have major generals commanding brigades. I think the officer feature could be improved by separating the skill level from rank. During the civil war many officers gained high rank from their political connections and not because of their skill at leading and managing an army.

I propose giving officers a set of skills like the unit skills which increase through experience such as leadership or inspirational. Maybe one or two skills. This skill then goes towards affecting the command and morale and efficiency skills of the brigade or division they are assigned to. The officer would automatically be given the rank appropriate to command of the unit e.g. colonel or brigadier or could be purchased for gold/rep as is currently the case. Officers could also be given special traits like for corps commanders but which affect their brigade/div to increase the rpg element. You could also have negative traits that appear either for historical characters or officers who get wounded in battle or if demoted like the system used in total war series.

I would also like to see corps commanders be killed or wounded. For your game character maybe just wounded which means they miss a few battles. I would also like to be able to pick his portrait.

Edited January 24, 2017 by waldopbarnstormer

[A. P. Hill]

Good Points.

However, during the actual conflict due to officer attrition, later in the war, late 1862/early 1863, the officer corps of the Southern States started reaching critical states whereby many times a Major was the highest available rank to lead a brigade, sometimes a division.

But along your lines of reasoning, since we have the ability to make corps, divisions, and brigades, all officers of appropriate rank should be immediately available and not come as a reward.  At least a beginning pool of sufficiently ranked officers.

[Andre Bolkonsky]

I understand the points you are trying to make, but I have reservations it can be done.

There are many great examples of people with marginal ability being given senior command positions because of political considerations. Nathaniel P. Banks is the shining example of a man placed over men with greater ability; much to Stonewall Jackson's delight as he came to nickame his opponent 'Commisary Banks' because his foot cavalry were living on Union supplies at will for a while. So High Rank / Low Ability is definitely a thing. 

When the 54th Massachussetts Regiment was formed, they chose two captains to be the colonel and executive officer because of their attitudes toward their troops, not their ability to command men in the field. So a 'captain' commanding a 'brigade' is also a thing. 

But, reality says it's a simplicity and play balance issue. The game will only succeed if it remains simple, and if competitive balance is out of whack who will want to play? 

It's times like this I have a lot of sympathy for Nick, everyone on this forum has the perfect idea for how to fix his game; sometimes they are right, but you can't please everyone. 

 

BUT . . . the solution would be political points. You would have to burn political points, not gold, to move people up and down the command foodchain. There are repercussions to putting your most high-ranking commanders in charge of brigades rather than divisions so your most able commanders can influence the greatest numbers of men. 

Edited January 25, 2017 by Andre Bolkonsky

[Wandering1]

58 minutes ago, Andre Bolkonsky said:

I understand the points you are trying to make, but I have reservations it can be done.

There are many great examples of people with marginal ability being given senior command positions because of political considerations. Nathaniel P. Banks is the shining example of a man placed over men with greater ability; much to Stonewall Jackson's delight as he came to nickame his opponent 'Commisary Banks' because his foot cavalry were living on Union supplies at will for a while. So High Rank / Low Ability is definitely a thing. 

When the 54th Massachussetts Regiment was formed, they chose two captains to be the colonel and executive officer because of their attitudes toward their troops, not their ability to command men in the field. So a 'captain' commanding a 'brigade' is also a thing. 

But, reality says it's a simplicity and play balance issue. The game will only succeed if it remains simple, and if competitive balance is out of whack who will want to play? 

It's times like this I have a lot of sympathy for Nick, everyone on this forum has the perfect idea for how to fix his game; sometimes they are right, but you can't please everyone. 

 

BUT . . . the solution would be political points. You would have to burn political points, not gold, to move people up and down the command foodchain. There are repercussions to putting your most high-ranking commanders in charge of brigades rather than divisions so your most able commanders can influence the greatest numbers of men. 

One other little thing that breaks the example between this and Total War.

Total War, you maybe only have anywhere between 10-20 armies if you were steam rolling the board in Rome 2, and therefore somewhere in the range of 10-20 army leaders to work with.

If we have individual officer skills, we're talking about managing up to 100-120 officers if you're running all 5 corps at max AO. Not before you start managing a bench because of inevitable casualties. Which, I tend to think people would not want to have to spend 2 hours juggling officers over skills.

[GeneralPITA]

16 minutes ago, Wandering1 said:

One other little thing that breaks the example between this and Total War.

Total War, you maybe only have anywhere between 10-20 armies if you were steam rolling the board in Rome 2, and therefore somewhere in the range of 10-20 army leaders to work with.

If we have individual officer skills, we're talking about managing up to 100-120 officers if you're running all 5 corps at max AO. Not before you start managing a bench because of inevitable casualties. Which, I tend to think people would not want to have to spend 2 hours juggling officers over skills.

My OCD would go nuts optimizing 200 personalities, but it would add an awesome amount of depth. 

[Andre Bolkonsky]

20 minutes ago, Wandering1 said:

One other little thing that breaks the example between this and Total War.

Total War, you maybe only have anywhere between 10-20 armies if you were steam rolling the board in Rome 2, and therefore somewhere in the range of 10-20 army leaders to work with.

If we have individual officer skills, we're talking about managing up to 100-120 officers if you're running all 5 corps at max AO. Not before you start managing a bench because of inevitable casualties. Which, I tend to think people would not want to have to spend 2 hours juggling officers over skills.

 

2 minutes ago, GeneralPITA said:

My OCD would go nuts optimizing 200 personalities, but it would add an awesome amount of depth. 

 

Personally, I LOVE scraping the barnacles off my brigades every couple of battles and optimizing my OOB; I'm playing closet historian role making the decisions to field the most effective army possible given resource limitations. I leave it to our able testers to figure out how to break the game. I love the process of taking a raw brigade and making it both elite and large. And I like to take my time doing it because its simple. It's easy to take what I know and build what I want. It's fun.. Make the camp hard and you'll kill what makes this game special. The elegance of simplicity should be the primary goal. 

I wouldn't presume to get into the mathematical disputes of the physics of the battlefield; outside of making a historical argument. However, I might be kind of valuable when Nick wants to start reorganizing camp. I've spent a lot of time in camp from the gamer's perspective; I love it, and know where its weaknesses lie. I have a few insights I'd love to share.

[waldopbarnstormer]

I like the counter suggestion of having to expend political points to say move a high skilled low rank officer up to  brigadier general.

At the start of the war the armies on both sides expanded so quickly that there was a lack of suitable officers at command level so captains were becoming brigadiers overnight and not everyone had the skills to command and were exposed when tested in battle. The csa is different because they didn't have the resource pool of officers to go about dismissing them like the union and so they had to put up with the likes of Polk staying in command. I think joe Johnston was a brigadier in the pre war army and Lee was a colonel.

My reference to using a feature from the total war series was iirc in medieval 2 where after a battle a general could automatically gain a trait like sanguine if it had been a bloody battle, or scarred if they had been injured which boosted or reduced their command stat or gave +1 to morale.

In it simplest form my proposal would have one officer skill, command, and this increases with experience but can start at a random level. The higher it is the better the effect on units under their command just like we have at the moment, but under the proposal rank has now been Removed from the equation.

To answer Andre your point about the captains being promoted to command the 54th makes my point; they were promoted. Currently the game would leave them as a captain with a negative penalty to command, I suggested that it changes to make one a colonel but keep the negative penalty then as he gains experience the penalty is reduced and when more suitable officer becomes available you replace them. At the moment when I have to put a major in brigade command I just try to imagine them getting a brevet promotion to colonel and their true rank remains major.

Edited January 25, 2017 by waldopbarnstormer

[waldopbarnstormer]

I just had a thought characters like stonewall jackson could inspire troops within their command radius with a boost to morale or instill fear in feds because of his reputation.

Edited January 25, 2017 by waldopbarnstormer
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[Sir Texas Sir]

Would be nice if there was some more variety in the officers.  Kinda like some of the things said.  There is no reason to really have a captian in your units if you can buy something higher. Though I noticed I used them a lot early on Confed side cause I was broke.   Right now I doing some Union play and I have way to many troops and pretty much every officer is lt Col and above and I'm not even that far in.   Though I sure get a lot of wounded officers, but than I do push a bit more than I should, but that is cause of the clock in batttles.  I'm still figuring out which ones I have to beat the clock to the objective or I can keep fighting until I reach it.  There was one mission I never even got close to the objective and time ran out and the mission was over.    Sorry back to topic.   Would be nice if you had some true die hard officers that made rank through combat and it showed over some politician that never fired a shot in there skills.  Like the one that rosed in ranks has a few extra perks for his fighting men, the ones that are politicians have perks for there gear/money.  Maybe that unit can get cheaper guns to replace it while a unit with a battle hero gets bonus to moral.

Not to mention some officers where really good at lower rank and dealing with small units, but where terrible when dealing with a whole brigade.   

[MikeK]

Command assignments and ranks in the Civil War can't be understood nor discussed in historical context without an understanding of regular army vs. volunteer ranks, seniority, brevet ranks, and a number of other considerations that can both add great flavor and (appropriate) frustration for players.There is a fine Civil War grand strategy game that does this well, and bittersweet are the memories of trying to get Butler and Banks to perform badly enough, and to try to protect other capable rising men, so as to get the former to commands appropriate to their position but not at risk of any disasters and bring the stars up as quickly as possible.

I think the game handles this well without cluttering things with types of ranks - nothing odd about a captain commanding a division by brevet there.  Commanders can have some special skills that have an effect.  Kept it simple.

There is something to be said for not equating skill and command level , but they are highly correlated where promotions above regimental rank depended a great deal on performance.   How many rep points would YOU pay if stuck with Banks as Div/Corps commander by event to get him kicked upstairs?.  Soem few events like that would add flavor.

Edited January 25, 2017 by MikeK

[James Cornelius]

I think there does need to be a function where officers have more "skills" or characteristics than what come from rank. This has been discussed elsewhere, along with the suggestions I added at that time. To briefly recap, they should develop both positive and negative characteristics that you must balance in your placement of them. For example, your division commander might raise the morale of his troops, but habitually be late arriving to the battle or his troops will suffer a movement penalty in battle.

 

You must therefore be strategic in who you place where, and officers should be promoted by the player, not automatically based on experience. Experience will still matter, however, as they will gain traits accordingly, and they must reach a level of XP before you are able to promote them. You might also find that an excellent brigade commander ends up being a poor division commander, or an officer with negative attributes but sufficient XP (or perhaps the "political connections" trait forces a promotion for himself or causes a hit to your reputation if you do not promote him - all to simulate historic considerations at the time.

 

The inclusion of specific officer traits is doubly important when you consider the inclusion of many historic generals as rewards or purchases through the reputation system. These officers should have traits corresponding to their historic characteristics. Getting as rewards should therefore be more important, and they should be serious considerations for urging people to spend reputation on them apart from just playing the name game. You should *want* officers like Grant, Sherman, Gibbon, Hancock, Reynolds, Meade, Jackson, Longstreet, Stuart, etc since they would often have almost universally positive traits.

[Andre Bolkonsky]

12 hours ago, waldopbarnstormer said:

I just had a thought characters like stonewall jackson could inspire troops within their command radius with a boost to morale or instill fear in feds because of his reputation.

Not that you're wrong, but you make him sound like the King of Angmar. 

[waldopbarnstormer]

I have read accounts of union commanders changing their plans to attack just because Jackson was on his way.

[James Cornelius]

2 hours ago, Andre Bolkonsky said:

Not that you're wrong, but you make him sound like the King of Angmar. 

Not just the King...the WITCH-KING!

 

"All mortals tremble for the dread Witch-King of Angmar, Stonewall Jackson!"