North and South Chapter Two

Spring continues everyone, as we hit MARCH!

March sees me finishing a couple minor projects to improve my economy and research time, but most importantly, sees our first IMPORTANT subsidy fill.

But we'll get to that in a bit. First, let's look at the intelligence report. At the start of every month in game, you get an economy report as well as an intelligence report. While I won't be sharing economy reports unless something major happens (they tend to be very samey, unfortunately), I will make an effort to show every intelligence report unless literally nothing new happens.

Let's begin with March.

Nothing much of note yet - we want to keep a VERY close eye on their foreign relations throughout the game, if that hits 100 for either the British or French we could have some major trouble - but we do see that the Confederates have begun work on Militia Act 1. This gives them a lot of new volunteer troops to raise, on 3 month billets (meaning that after 3 months in game, they're given the choice of whether to re-enlist on new enlistments, or return to civilian life. You want to extend these billets where possible, because generally re-enlistment for a highly motivated unit sits somewhere between 50% and 70%. Not bad, not great. Thankfully, all our current regiments as pre-war reservists, are enlisted on one year billets, which simplifies the issue - for now.

Fort Sumner begins being blockaded, but Ft. Pickens down in Florida is still going strong.

Here's our first major project completion, and why projects are super important to fund and complete. We now have the ability to import British Guns; specifically rifles of Enfield 1853, Musketoon 1856, and Whitworth rifle patterns. If we want English Cannons (namely the Wiard Rifle and the Whitworth Breechloading Guns) we'll have to fund the British Cannons project - same for the British Warships project, though as the Union, we have the ability to make our own large gun warships and ironclads that the Confederates don't really have.

And then here's the rifle purchase itself. Since my economy was sitting at roughly 21 Million when I bought these, everything is A-OK. Our credit rating of AAA remains the same, no bonds or debt is added to the economy, and we begin ordering 10,000 Whitworth rifles for army use. Note on here, the estimated delivery time - 130 or so days. Importing weapons from Europe is basically always twice as fast as manufacturing home-built rifles (for example, a similarly sized run of say, Springfield 1855 Rifles would be nearer to 300 days) but is also usually much more expensive. There's a balance to be struck when ordering rifles and cannons, you just sort of have to figure out what you need, when you need it, and make that work out for you.

At an effective range of 600 yards with an EXCELLENT accuracy rating, however, both of which being the highest in the game for infantry equipment, the Whitworth Rifle is well worth the price and effort to acquire.

Our new girl Alesia, and The Old Guard. Her Whitecoats are likely to be a linchpin unit due to Alesia's two stars of experience (the highest in the army currently!) meaning that she's one of my best officers for carrying out orders and not breaking under strain). It also means her troops will gain experience faster, which is also nice.

Our First Division Commander, Ditzy Doo (or Derpy, whatever folks prefer to call her). She doesn't need the eyepatch, but it's a lot easier to respect your commanding officer when they're not staring off in two directions, and it makes her look like a grizzled veteran, which almost always helps with the whole command aspect.

I really could NOT think of a good horse pun for Virginia. If anyone has any ideas, feel free to throw them at me.

Applejack and her Ponyville Militia. Trying to put together some uniform variety, I'll likely let her keep her rusty browns for a while until I have good narrative reason (re: winter) to change it out.

And then finally for today, the CSA begins raising an army. Yeah, they will absolutely hit that 100,000 in forces from my experience with this game. Like I said, this is going to be an uphill battle the whole way.

The only good thing about the CSA's start this campaign is that they took the "Old Dominion" Pre-war policy, meaning that their capital is in Virginia as opposed to all the way down in Alabama. This will be important, eventually.