Regarding fatigue: was reducing the fatigue accumulation factor for battalions to 1 ever considered for the FWWC series? One of the things that amazes me about the First World War (and about Soviet and Chinese infantry tactics in WWII and the Korean war for that matter) is that units could take serious losses and keep functioning after short periods of rest.
In the game, if your unit loses a hundred men or more, it's likely to need a day or so of rest in order to be at a green fatigue level where it won't go back into yellow in one turn. A situation like with the Orenburg regiment losing most of its strength on one day and still repulsing a German attack a few days later, whilst also advancing at the same time, is difficult to recreate.
Maybe an increase in fatigue recovery would already help, as you're "missing" two turns compared to other summer campaign games due to there being no dusk and dawn turns, whilst nighttime fatigue recovery is only at the two times instead of three times normal two hour recovery level. Maybe something like 25 instead of 15 fatigue recovery could be an option? It's fairly high, but units gain much more fatigue than they do in most PzC games due to the high losses on the attack.
As to the flexibility of the engine: it's indeed a very flexible engine, with mechanics that work well individually. It's the mechanics usually also having an effect on something else that causes problems in some situations.
The elegance of the system is that it's easy to understand and easy to use, most mechanics being centered on doing something to the most important stat for determining how well a unit can use its abilities: quality. It's a mathematician's dream made by a mathematician: a system where numbers all work together to make a single value work in a way that it represents what you want.
That is its greatest strength when it works, but also its greatest flaw when it doesn't as everything being related to something else means it's difficult to isolate a particular problem as there's usually an "and..." tied to a certain event. As Volcano Man mentioned: it's a careful balance in a scenario like Clash of Empires. Low Ammo makes your fire less effective AND it reduces your quality level. Fatigue makes your fire less effect AND it reduces your quality level. That can result in situations that quickly spiral out of control where troops quickly become useless in a way that can feel random or artificial as all it can take are a couple of failed checks, like a unit disrupting after losing 10 men and then becoming Low Ammo next turn on its first engagement, making it a weak E quality unit.
Luckily, the system works well most of the time and the majority of the issues with a particular scenario can be resolved through the scenario, database or parameter data editors. As I've stated before: as much as I might criticize parts of a scenario or a mechanic, I keep playing as the system itself, and the idea behind it do appeal to me. A little more consistency and less variability would be nice, though
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