War of Northern Agression and CM engine.....

[Lurker]

As a Yanky, I too would love to see the Combat Mission engine adapted to the American Civil War. Call it what you would, I'd buy it.

Combat Mission: Rebel Yell?

Combat Mission: Sumter to Appommatox Court House?

-Lurker

[Guest Ol' Blood & Guts]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Gespenster:

Blood & Guts: To say the Union kicked their asses is a very bad assesment as well ... although they did win (overwhelming supplies of men and materials will do that)They certainly did not "Kick their asses" ... the War was 4 long bloody years of hell, where the Union Army suffered more than her share of casualties at places like Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and Cold Harbor. Just a thought ... <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Oh, I know. Just hoped no one would bring that up. Yeah the first few years of the struggle really showed how insuperior the Union's leadership was. It wasn't until the likes of Grant and Sherman (ring a bell anybody?) that the Union finally got on track. I guess that's why you don't see any WWII tanks named after McClellan and Burnside.

I agree with "smbutler" that the CM engine would be great to adapt to 18th and 19th Century warfare. It would also be cool to adapt it to WWI as well.

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"Why don't we say that we took this one chance, and fought!"

"Stupid humans. Hahahahahahaha!"

--from the film Battlefield Earth

[This message has been edited by Ol' Blood & Guts (edited 05-15-2000).]

[Zamo]

In reply to Babra,

Yes, I think if the South had won, it would indeed have come to be known as "the Second American Revolution", and been classed as a war of independence (at least in Southern schools!) Once again we see that history is always written by the victors! And thus the Confederate solders are still "rebels" and not "revolutionaries" or "freedom fighters".

Zamo

[von Lucke]

The CM engine used to re-create ACW battles?!? My God, no! Do you realise the scale you're talking about? Do you really want to move individual platoons / cannon / squadrons numbering in the thousands?!?

As somebody already said, ACW battles consisted of tens of thousands of men lining up to shoot at each other, followed by an insane charge and desperate hand-to-hand fighting --- way too much point-&-click going on there!

Now if somebody would just re-do Empire's old American Civil War with a decent AI and Sid Meier's Gettysburg engine tacked on for the Tactical battles, that would be sweet...

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"War is the continuation of politics by other means"

--- Karl von Clausewitz

"It is good that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it"

--- Robt. E. Lee

[This message has been edited by von Lucke (edited 05-16-2000).]

[Guest smbutler]

But Herr Von Lucke,

What if they kept the same 3-d, simultanious turn resolution format, but made some fundamental changes to geographical and chronological scale? Let's say each turn rep'd @ 15 minutes, and let's have squads transformed to regiments (the icons would have to change). Also, we would not HAVE to model entire battles, but parts of battles

(i.e. Hugomont, Little Round Top, Culp's Hill, the Great Redoubt) as both Sid M and TS have done. Wouldn't this be do-able?

[Zamo]

I disagree Herr Von Lucke. The ability to "Drag and Drop" entire company sized elements makes it all work well enough. Just because you "Can" give each squad individual orders doesn't mean you need to. Perhaps the engine could be tweaked to only allow company sized movements....

I don't think anyone is saying simply replace the Garands with Springfields and have at it...changes would certainly need to be implemented.

[pford]

<QUOTE>Originally posted by Gespenster:

I tend to agree with Zamo's assessment of the Epic Struggle that was the Civil War. It wasn't all about Slavery, there were many other things that divided the states as well. In fact, nearly 75% of all Southern Troops didn't own Slaves at all (could not afford them), including many Officers such as Robert E. Lee, who set all his his slaves free long before the first shots were fired at Ft. Sumter. In fact, Lee was offered the job of commanding the entire Union Army by President Lincoln in 1860 but waited to give his answer until he found out where his home state of Virginia would stand on the issue of succession. At that time, where you were from actually meant something being a Virginia Gentleman or a South Carolina Farmer commanded respect. Now a days, no one really cares where you are from, so people don't understand the fanatical pride that people had in their states in 19th century America. Once Virginia succeded from the Union, Lee stated that he "could never bare arms against his home state of Virginia" and turned down the position offered to him. So don't think the South fought merely to keep slaves, that is a very narrow minded assumption </QUOTE>

To be picky and also support your point, I believe Lee did not use the word "state" for Virginia but "country." While persons such as Lee may not have fought for slavery, the underlying cause for the discord was slavery.

[This message has been edited by Gespenster (edited 05-15-2000).]

[This message has been edited by Gespenster (edited 05-15-2000).]

[Guest Germanboy]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by pford:

To be picky and also support your point, I believe Lee did not use the word "state" for Virginia but "country." <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Time to get out the books... From MacPherson's 'Battlecry of Freedom', (Oxford 1988) p.281-2, and he is drawing on theJ.Ford Rhodes 'History of the United States' (NY 1893-1906 7 Vols) 'Lee: A Biography' by D.Southall Freeman (NY, 1934-35 4 Vols):

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>

General-in-Chief Winfield Scott considered Lee the best officer in the army. In April, Scott urged Lincoln to offer Lee field command of the newly levied Union army. As a fellow Virginian Scott hoped that Lee, like himself, would remain loyal to the service to which he had devoted his life. Lee had made clear his dislike of slavery, which he described in 1856 as "a moral and political evil. "Until the day Virginia left the Union he had also spoken against secession. "The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor,

wisdom, and forbearance in its formation," he wrote in January 1861, "if it was intended to be broken up by every member of the [union] at will…It is idle to talk of secession."

But with Virginia's decision, everything changed. "I must side either with or against my section," Lee told a northern friend. His choice was foreordained by birth and blood: "l cannot raise my hand against my birthplace, my home, my children." On the very day he learned of Virginia's secession, April 18, Lee also received the offer of Union command. He told his friend General Scott regretfully that he must not only decline, but must also resign from the army. "Save in defense of my native State," said Lee, "I never desire again to draw my sword." Scott replied sadly: "You have made the greatest mistake of your life, but I feared it would be so." Five days later Lee accepted appointment as commander in chief of Virginia's military forces; three weeks after that he became a brigadier-general in the Confederate army. Most officers from the upper South made a similar decision to go with their states, some without hesitation, others with the same bodeful presentiments that Lee expressed on May 5: "I foresee that the country will have to pass through a terrible ordeal, a necessary expiation perhaps for our national sins."<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I would say that he seemed to have used state or section, and the mention of 'Nation' on May 5th may well alude to the whole of the United States. Or it could be referring to the then seceded Confederate States. Lee certainly was a tragic case, looking at this. I always wondered how he must have felt after he surrendered to Grant.

BTW, J. MacPherson is considered to have written the authoritative one-volume treatment of the Civil War years, and I really enjoyed reading it. Anybody interested in the period who has not had a look at this book should definitely do so.

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Andreas

[Guest Babra]

I'm an avid 18th and 19th century gamer and I tell you the CM style of game engine is just the very thing we've been waiting for.

Scale is the thing. Of course we don't want to click on 10 man increments. That would take forever. Regiments/battalions are the basic maneuver element for 18th and 19th century battles. Companies could of course be detached for whatever purpose (skirmishers, flankers, train guards, whatever).

The things about CM that would translate so well are the 3D environment, smoke, simultaneous plotting followed by movie &c. Scale is an easy thing to change. I look forward to the day it gets done by someone.

[Charlie63]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Greg Scurlock:

As I fly above the terrain of VT I couldn't help but notice how much it resembles land north of Atlanta or even in the Shenandoah Valley or Gettysburg. Noone has ever really gotten the Civil War right in gaming. I wonder what the tallent at Big Time Software could do with that genre. I can see Gen. Thomas Jackson now, with his troops "standing on that ridge like a stone wall." Wow.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Didn't I read in another post somewhere that you were from Illinois?

[Gespenster]

Some say he lost the War and won immortality ...

What about Robert E. Lee? What kind of man was he who nearly split the history of the United States down the middle and made two separate books of it?

They say you had to see him to believe that a man so fine could exist. He was handsome. He was clever. He was brave. He was gentle. He was generous and charming, noble and modst, admired and beloved. He had never failed at anything in his upright soldier's life. He was a born winner, this Robert E. Lee. Except for once. In the greatest contest of his life, in the war beween the South and the North, Robert E. Lee lost.

Now (after the Surrender) there were men who came with smouldering eyes to Lee and said: "Let's not accept this result as final. Let's keep our anger alive. Let's be grim and unconvinced, and wear our bitterness like a medal. You can be our leader in this."

But Lee shook his head at those men. "Abandon your animosities," he said, "and make your sons Americans."

This is one of my favorite quotes of all time, and it signifies just what kind of man Lee was ... I have admired Robert E. Lee since I was a child, to me he represented all that was good and pure in 19th Century America. Growing up in Virginia, my Great Grandfather used to tell me stories about his Grandfathers experiences in the great Civil War, he had his Grandfathers journal (which I still have today). And every week he would read me a passage from it ... it makes many, many mentions of General Lee ... and how his men loved and respected him. I cannot think of another leader in U.S. History so beloved as Gen. Lee was.

Germanboy, I think after the surrender he felt more for the souls lost than he did about losing the War ... That would be more in tune to what type of man he actually was.

Anyway, sorry to bore all of you with the long post ... But I still would like to see BS do a Civil War game with this engine ...

~G

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"It is well that War is so terrible, lest we grow to fond of it"

Robert E. Lee

[Greg Scurlock]

to Charlie63: nope, born in Birmingham, Ala. went to school in Columbia, S.C., and live in Augusta, Georgia.

[Major Tom]

Just to jump on the bandwagon!

I have taken many courses of African history, throughout the world. Just because a poor individual in a slave society doesn't own slaves does not mean that they do not benefit from slavery. Many nations that had a war over slavery represented this. You would assume that the non-slave owning poor white individuals in a nation would support abolishon, eh? Actually, they liked slavery as it removed a great bulk of the population as competators for land and jobs. Plantations took up more manpower per acre than a 'regular' farm. If slaves were freed they would require the use of more land. Also, in the cities and towns there would be competition between trade workers and freed slave trade workers. The poor non-slaveholding individual in any slave society does benefit, indirectly, from the procession of slavery.

To say slavery was the sole cause for the American Civil War is just like saying that the invasion of Poland was the cause for the Second World War. Indeed, directly and indirectly Slavery was a high issue, but, most soldiers for the Union didn't join up to save the slaves, nor did most Southerners join up to keep the slaves in their place. It is a matter of nationalism. People joined up for adventure, glory, and peer pressure.

From my research into the era, I don't see that England or any other European nation was reasonably considering actually going to war against the United States in support of the Confederate States. The Union wasn't going to be utterly defeated (ie. no Confederate occupation of the North), so, why would they risk another war with an industrial powerhouse? Canada bolstered our defensive formations during and after the war for fear of an American invasion (after the war there was an extremely large and enemyless Union army which many Canadians feared would turn North). England's support was merely token, and I doubt that even had the South been victorious at Gettysburg or Antietam they would have sent a military expedition. Trading with the victor of the war would have been much more economic than re-occupying the remnants of a nation.

CM would probably be a good model for any type of warfare, as, it is supposed to adequately represent the real world. The Physics would be similar, however, the scale would have to be changed. Instead of individual Squads, it would possibly be companies. World War One would be interesting, especially the Operations. Having a Battalion sized unit attack an entrenched company, then is counterattacked. Think of the massive firepower that was availible to each side! It would be possible for any other war to be represented by the CM model, however, it all comes down to the desires of the producers of the game. Steve and Charles are experts of the European War of 1939-45, there are PLENTY of theatres of war to take care of there.