North And South Chapter One · 1:31pm Jan 17th, 2023
The first official chapter! Funnily enough this blog will likely be out before the chapter (and the story, hah) is approved. Let's talk a bit about the Spring 1861 setup for Grand Tactician.
I really enjoy the pre-war setup for Grand Tactician. It has some different rules - such as not being able to raise fully sized armies, but being able to utilize that time to set up important buildings (such as hospitals), pursue important projects - things important, such as better cannons, better rifles, better ships, imported weaponry, governmental reformations, and the like. And, of course, the game goes over the events leading up to the outbreak of the Civil War itself, including the shelling of Fort Sumter (Fort Summer, in my story)
We start with Texas' (Trotsas') secession. Expect horse puns abound. I'm living vicariously through my writing because I can't edit the location or map games without decompiling the game, which runs in Unity Engine- I don't particularly have the time nor energy to do that, and can confirm from private correspondence with the Game Devs (they run a very nice and easy to talk to info e-mail on their website!) they do not have a tool built into the game to allow me to do so easily, so the map and localization stays the same. Oh well!
Game related, Texas always secedes. I basically never send troops that far southwest, because it's usually not worth it. They give the CSA a fair bit of manpower, but at the end of the day it's just too much of a nuisance to try and knock Texas out of the CSA's grasp- Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia are far, far more feasible and simple to do.
Speaking of Missouri, it's actually a fairly interesting battleground once the war kicks off properly. It nominally remains a Union State, but has a large CSA presence and if the CSA works quickly, they can feasibly capture Missouri from the Union. Obviously, I'm going to be building up a firm Army of the West to counter this, but that's going to take time and energy.
In terms of the game, Kentucky remaining Neutral means that it's regarded as CSA land for supply purposes, but both the CSA and Union can reasonably recruit from the state. Same goes for Tennessee, actually, as well as Missouri unless the CSA takes it over. West Virginia is a special case, that I will discuss when it comes up later on.
Finally, here's a look at our first infantry regiment, under our girl Belldandy. She's Horse French. The Union and CSA both start with limited stocks of specific rifles (such as the Mississippi Rifle) and cannons, and the Union begins play with a good amount of these rifles to the tune of about 3,000 of them- enough to outfit four pre-war regiments' worth of infantry (or two regular brigades once the war begins, and standard unit size bumps from 750 up to 1500). Some key notes:
1) Ha, spoilers for horses in command. These will be spoken about in later chapters, as one would expect. With a cast that is going to be as massive as this is, a lot of characters aren't going to get a lot of spotlight time, so I'll be doing my best to bring up any important things I notice during gameplay here in the blogs, even if I don't cover it in the story itself.
2) The faded out units are units that have not yet mustered into service; every unit raised in the game takes time to muster and form up (this is NOT training time. Training happens while in the field, in combat, etc.) with differening muster times depending on how far away the state they're formed from is to the army they're joining, as well as how many regiments/brigades/batteries are currently being raised from their state.
In short, a regiment raised in New York that's joining an army in New York will only have a muster time of roughly 10-15 days. A regiment raised from Illinois (re: as far from New York as you can get) will take much longer to muster to New York, looking at closer to 30-40+ days. Thus, it's better to raise units in theaters where you plan on using them. It's also faster to raise Unit One in New York, whereas there's going to be a much longer (to the tune of 30+ days!) wait to muster, say, unit ten from New York - when raised concurrently. You can raise as many units from a state as they have manpower, at reasonable times, so long as you give proper space between raised units. As a general rule of thumb, if you're not raising any units from a state, barring specific circumstances such as West Virginia, and the army is in or nearby said state, you're going to have short and reasonable muster times.
3) Final note here; The game uses NATO Symbolage; unit boxes with an [X] are Infantry Units, unit boxes with a [/] are Cavalry Units, unit boxes with a [o] are Artillery units, and Horse Artillery (which I rarely, rarely, RARELY use) are shown as [-o-]. I don't use Horse Artillery much, mostly because only very specific cannons can be used as horse artillery, and I usually have other weapon and project priorities.
Hehe horse artillery. How does horse artillery work in Equestria? Is it just like really strong ponies or like twice the normal number
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Lol. Probably Macintosh or Troubleshoes sized horses would be my guess.