There is no fancy mobile tanks with their encirclements, or planes with strategic bombing. It might seem "boring", but this setting is perfect way to represent the economic aspect of war compared to other titles, and thats the problem, it fails at it. For example, Military production is VERY easy to set up, few levels of factories can sustain massive army and improved PMs help even further along the game. Then stuff like infrastructure, I never felt that building up railways have improved my capability to wage war much. Lets say If I am Argentina and I am invading Chile, I would imagine constructing railways to and along their border be one most of crucial parts in winning the war, considering how massive, remote and inaccessible that region is, I mean that area would be larger than the entire Eastern Front of WW2, yet I can just walk in.
i feel this is a far more functional form of critique and feedback than the endless discussions regarding design philosophy that would result in red x wars, like this "bring back unit stacks" is about. Its not like bringing back unit stacks would fix the issues you touch.
It is afcourse somewhat relative to the situation how easy it is. For populous and backward countries that would like to make use of a large mobilization pool it can be more tricky than for your average western nation, especially if said western nation can just easily import guns and ammo. Well in fact even 3rd rate asian powers can import guns and ammo with good trade allies, though not if you have isolationism which some have.
If i'm playing japan for example, then i find it functional that i would be able to call up say 150 units of line infantry just in case some European aggressor comes knocking on my door. I wont be able to trade for them with isolationism, so the count can be made for what i need at minimum and at optimal rate. A basic gun factory at basic pm produces 30 guns, a unit of line infantry uses 1 gun per 1000 so i'm looking at a max consumption of 150. So 3 factories will do if i dont mind paying extra but as Japan i will mind, but lets say half is standing army and half is conscripts then those 3 factories and its feeding iron mine are fine and whenever someone starts a diplo play against me i just add 2 factories and an iron mine and that will cover the conscripts. If i get to those 5 factories in time of war trick will be to spread them out in size 1 factories over provinces that contain troops which is functional with MAPI in mind and which will prevent them from devolving in size when demand drops afterwards. And those 3 factories would be functional throughout the game, better troops will demand more guns but better production methods will proportionally add relatively as much extra guns. So the thing is its not a lot that you need early on to set it up but setting it up early on is when the price is the highest vs what other things you could build instead, still if it was double or even triple the need it wouldnt feel off that i would actually need to build at minimum 9 factories and 3 feeding iron mines to feed such an army. Easy to mod, might be interesting to play an Asiatic power with gun and ammo demand tripled for unit types.
Still, i guess its not only a arguable issue of "not enough demand", i certainly see my arms industries depleted of workforce more often than not, but from another perspective it also takes a fair time to actually build barracks in comparison to factories (lest to speak about the time required to get ships up versus a factory)which perhaps should be reduced in time in comparison and otoh perhaps production methods should not add proportionally as much as new unit types would demand so that as game progresses your arms industry and the amount of workforce that goes into it actually has to grow and your not ready by building a few factories at start.
it would perhaps also be good to double or triple the needs for mobilization options, and then double or triple its effect too so that such options become rather important. If it's about industrial warfare then you do want players to be weary of just how much extra demand an option would add especially if they lack that good.
So yeah, even with having some knowledge of gun types that were around in the ACW and how the progression of arming troops went, there is reason to argue that the required amount of factories to feed your troops should be higher, even though granted the union had mobilized a huge army even in game terms. Granted that on a matter of trade there was a serious volume of arms imports and plenty of naval action to try interdict such things. The union had the Spencer repeater rifle for example, which was pretty advanced for its time but was not chosen to be put in mass production as the ammo requirements to feed an army with such rifles would be way to high. That latter contemplation is something you want players to make regarding their own armies in the game i would think when its about industrial warfare.
