jchastain
Posts: 2164
Joined: 8/8/2003
From: Marietta, GA
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The Intermediate game is where the economy really comes into play.
Upkeep costs require you to dedicate resource to supporting your existing armies and navies. The vast majority of the support required is money to pay their salaries and with this option turned on, cash becomes your most important resource. No other single option changes the feel of the strategic game as much as this one. Early in the beta, I suggested scaling the income when this was turned off so you wouldn’t reduce expense and leave income in place. But over time, I found that I really liked leaving income alone as it did provide for a different gaming experience and the game design is pretty smart in that it really does allow you to spend those extra resource (though as discussed above, you really derive marginal strategic value from doing so – in my mind, that’s a really good design).
Research Upgrades turn on research and your ability to learn new warfare tactics. One of the interesting aspects of this feature is that you pay a research “maintenance” cost for each advance you obtain. As you progress, it reduces your level of forward research. So even though you start with some research facilities, that will only take you so far. Eventually research will stop progressing (maintenance would consume all the research points) unless you build more facilities or have governors supporting your research endeavors. So, once enabled, research does require some attention and investment. And research facilities cost significant amounts of cash and as discussed above, cash soon becomes a very critical resource.
Let’s discuss resources a bit more for a moment because when I say that money is the most important I don’t want to give the impression that the others do not matter because they do. In my mind, cash does become the most important. It is used in high amounts when paying your soldiers (upkeep), when increasing your supply levels (which is a whole ‘nuther topic worth discussing but for now let’s just confirm that doing so can be pretty important), when expanding cities, and when “purchasing” new units (unless you muster/conscript – which still drains your manpower but produces lower quality units – see the strategic tradeoffs you are constantly having to make in this game). Cash is important. Labor is used for many things, but especially for constructing the majority of the new buildings (Gil posted a screenshot of the building cost list if you want to review it). One of the economic decisions is whether to produce cash or labor in each province. Generally speaking, you want to produce whatever you get the most of. But there are times you are desperate for cash and willing to produce less overall just to get your hands on that scarce resource.
Iron and horses go largely to artillery and cavalry. But another of the brilliant design features is that you can build mints to create more money. Mints take lots of iron to build (along with some labor). So, if you want to relieve your biggest resource issue you can invest in building mints. But to do so, you are “spending” your iron. So you can’t build much artillery if your iron is going to mints instead. And, oh by the way, you also need some labor to build your mint so that potentially will draw production from money to produce that labor instead (though doing so is especially efficient when you are so low on money that you are producing cash instead of iron at a bad ratio in some cities to make up the cash deficiency). At the end of the day, there are two key results. The first is that you can invest in the future but that there is a very real cost to what you are able to produce in the near term. You can build mints to relieve the money shortage, but that means you get less artillery now. And since the second choice is whether to produce iron or horses, you very well might find yourself having to shift production from horses to iron to compensate so that you’ll be building fewer cavalry as well. You also have to spend labor to build your economy so that you’ll have less money now in order to produce more money later. You really are having to make a very real investment – and if you are having to cut your supply levels and not build CAV and ART (which are very rare at the start of the war), your army will be pretty vulnerable. The second result is that the money/labor and iron/horses silos are linked. You have to spend resources from the first silo to expand capacity in the second and vice versa. So unlike some games where you are short on one thing but have huge excesses in others and can’t do anything about it, this game naturally absorbs excesses because you can spend what you have the most of to help produce excess capacity in the things you are short of.
One last thought on the economy – like the real civil war economy, it doesn’t change fast. I once tried a game where I focused almost solely on building out the economy thinking that I would build up my base and then use that strength to steamroll – a strategy that serves me well in most 4X titles. I am happy to report that it failed miserably here. Building your economy relieves some pressures and you do need to make some investments – but at its heart this game is about the war itself.
OK, back to the options… European diplomacy is a bit of a chess match. Essentially, you can invest at various levels in diplomacy with Britain, France, or continental Europe. As one might expect, that investment drains your most important resource – cash. With that investment they may decide they like you more or that they like your opponent less. Your opponent is likely investing as well. For the CSA, they can get material assistance from any of the European powers but they likely don’t have the resources to approach all of them. For the USA, they need to invest primarily as a defensive maneuver. If a European power gets too friendly with the CSA, they will donate resource, technology, and eventually troops if you let things get too far out of hand. So what you have is a grand game of Where’s Waldo. The south is attempting to see if they can get any traction with one or more powers. The North is either trying to prevent that across the board or more likely is watching for the south to get traction and hoping that they can counter in time. Unless someone is really asleep at the wheel, European involvement will occur at or near historical levels with them providing some assistance to the south but not getting involved in a material way.
Unit options obviously focus on the troops themselves. Staff ratings turn on the support staff for armies, corps and divisions, which impacts their performance in various ways. The South starts with better support officers, so this option really benefits the boys in grey.
Special Abilities allow units to learn and use… well… special abilities. It just allows units such as the Iron Brigade to have abilities that make them stand out so that on the battlefield, some units really are special.
Unit Disposition is a quasi form of morale that will impact the performance of your troops and make your general’s leadership more important.
Fog of War hides information about enemies until they are close to you. It applies to both the strategic map and detailed combat.
Initiative Checks use your general’s initiative to determine the pace at which they follow orders. This is one of those options that make the generals and their stats more important to the game.
Slow Winter Movement makes it very difficult to move during the winter, except by rail which in unaffected by this. While it takes some getting used to (in the winter – units largely just ignore your movement orders) it adds a strategic element to the game in that winter becomes the time to regroup. You can also lower supply levels in the knowledge that attacks are unlikely – as long as you remember to get them back up in time.
Detailed Combat is the default for large battles in the intermediate game, but Hard Sarge is discussing combat in detail and this is already long enough so I won’t go into those options here. But ask him about the “out of command” rule. It does have an impact. 
EDIT: Minor edits to clean up some language errors.
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