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ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

The reason for making the scenario start as historically accurate as possible is to present the player with the same choices his historical counterparts faced..., not to force them to make the exact same choices. Making a different choice of how to use your assets is a valid course of action (wouldn't be much point in playing otherwise). Starting with assets your side never had --- or starting without assets your side did have --- that's the problem. Under those conditions ALL player choices are baloney..., because the scenario itself is a bunch of baloney.

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ORIGINAL: Queeg

quote:

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

The reason for making the scenario start as historically accurate as possible is to present the player with the same choices his historical counterparts faced..., not to force them to make the exact same choices. Making a different choice of how to use your assets is a valid course of action (wouldn't be much point in playing otherwise). Starting with assets your side never had --- or starting without assets your side did have --- that's the problem. Under those conditions ALL player choices are baloney..., because the scenario itself is a bunch of baloney.

I agree with you...up to a point. Depends on what you mean by "assets." While the North clearly had the advantage on paper, there was no human being alive in 1861 who could have actually utilized more than a fraction of them. For example, in mid-1861, the CSA had more than 12% of its white, male population in arms; the North had less than 2%. And Lincoln had virtually zero chance of changing that - he faced too many political, economic and cultural obstacles. So while I agree with you that an historical game should present the player with the same choices his historical counterpart faced, I would disagree with any suggestion that giving the player God-like powers is, in any sense, either realistic or historical.

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ORIGINAL: chris0827

That's not right. I made a typo in te strengths thread. The CSA had the 12% under arms in mid 1862, not mid 1861.

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ORIGINAL: Queeg

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ORIGINAL: chris0827

That's not right. I made a typo in te strengths thread. The CSA had the 12% under arms in mid 1862, not mid 1861.

Thanks. I corrected my post above. The fact that the CSA commitment, as a percentage of available manpower, was more than twice that of the Union, even in 1862, makes my point. Should the North have more assets than the South? Of course. But not nearly to the extent that the mere paper numbers would suggest.

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ORIGINAL: chris0827

I haven't seen anyone suggest that the north receive a 4 to 1 advantage in troops since they had a 4 to 1 advantage in population but currently the game gives the union a 1.17 to 1 advantage at the start with a 2 to 1 advantage in manpower to recruit more men. That's way short of the historical 2.75 to 1 advantage the union had.

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ORIGINAL: Jonathan Palfrey

A game should allow you to make your own decisions within the historical contraints of what was possible. These constraints could well be political, economic, or even cultural.

Ideally, the game should give you both the historical assets and whatever historical constraints there were on using them.

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In some cases I can understand the argument for simplifying the game by cutting the assets in order to omit some tedious constraints. Simplifying the game is a worthwhile objective. The trouble is that the justification for cutting the assets may not be readily apparent to players, some of whom are inclined to whinge about such things.

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It is actually fairly simple to say, look, you have these assets, but you can use only x% of them per year (or something of the sort). I think this is easier for people to accept than to deny that the assets existed.