The Different Flavors of FoF

[Steel God]

Alright, with the worldly experience of 30+ turns of FoF (all PBEM) under my belt, and just a few quibbles about some mechanics, I must confess that I enjoy the game thoroughly.

What has surprised me is the different feel/flavor of the two games I am involved in. One game is the July start (Coming Fury) and the other game is the November start (Standard Campaign). When I got into them initially I "knew" that they were different, but other than start time and initial force/economy I didn't expect there to be such a vast difference between the two. Both games are being played under the advanced rules, with only randomized stats turned off. But the Coming Fury scenario seems to have a much grander economic scale, and consequently, a much grander military scale. In Coming Fury the Union economy spits out multi-100s of resources every turn; the population is large, and taking even 10,000 casualties in a battle is just a blip on the charts as the camps will replace those losses in a turn, maybe 2. In a nutshell I would say the Coming Fury is "big". Not necessarily the Civil War as the history books would tell it, but "big" and "heavy".

The November Scenario (Standard) on the other hand plays small, and I think gives a clearer picture of the history. The population base is much smaller, as are the economies, and consequently, the Armies are much smaller too. This produces more maneuver, less bashing, and when you need to bash you feel it. Losses (at least this early in the game) are not easily replaced, necessitating a pull back after a major campaign, as happened historically in every year but 1864 in the real war. With limitations on production assigning abilities and weapons, and what to build become choices whose impacts are greatly magnified.

I don't think one is superior to the other, and not trying to advocate one over the other. Just struck by the juxtaposition of the two scenarios, when my initial impression was that it would be no different, just later in the year. Reality is they are two completely different beasts, requiring two completely different approaches.

Just thinking out loud. Thanks for listening.