Producing supplies
The following table shows monthly production of supplies and cotton in the first year of the game, with minimum recruitment: zero volunteer bounties and no drafts. The more men you recruit over the course of time, the less production you'll get.
It assumes Kentucky is neutral and there are no territorial changes. If you lose cities, you'll lose some production. If you gain Kentucky, or if you as the Confederacy gain Missouri, you can gain some extra production.
Specifically, if the Confederacy starts the game with Kentucky, it gains an extra 552 supplies (+16%) and 828 cotton units (+10%) on the 1st of July 1861.
| Union | Confederate | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Date | recruits | supplies | recruits | supplies+cotton=total |
| 1 July | 11300 | 14136 | 6150 | 3411+8148=11559 |
| 1 August | 11200 | 13991 | 5900 | 3324+8100=11424 |
| 1 September | 11200 | 13974 | 5900 | 3314+8076=11390 |
| 1 October | 11200 | 13974 | 5900 | 3314+8076=11390 |
| 1 November | 11200 | 13957 | 5900 | 3314+8076=11390 |
| 1 December | 11200 | 4639 | 5900 | 1118+2686=3804 |
| 1 January | 11200 | 4628 | 5900 | 1098+2686=3784 |
| 1 February | 11200 | 4628 | 5900 | 1098+2686=3784 |
| 1 March | 11200 | 6949 | 5900 | 1643+4020=5663 |
| 1 April | 11150 | 6949 | 5900 | 1643+4020=5663 |
| 1 May | 11150 | 6941 | 5900 | 1643+4020=5663 |
| 1 June | 11150 | 13892 | 5850 | 3290+8040=11330 |
As you can see, the Confederacy can almost match Union supplies if its cotton shipments are unmolested, but it's under a heavy disadvantage if all its transports are sunk.
Here are the regional contributions to these figures, again with Kentucky neutral:
| Mississippi | Western | Seaboard | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Union supplies | 11% | 32% | 57% |
| Confederate supplies | 21% | 43% | 36% |
| Confederate cotton | 15% | 47% | 38% |
Frank Hunter posted the following message on the Adanac forum on the 18th of February, 2002.
If you recruit all the manpower from a state, that state won't produce any supplies. So let's say you recruit 40% of the available manpower, your supply production would drop by 40%. However, the game increases the supplies able to be produced by a single manpower point slowly over the length of the game. So eventually you could have 60% of the manpower in the army and still be producing more supplies than at the start.”
Here's the same table of production figures as above, but with recruitment bounty=6 for both sides. These figures are after payment of bounties.
| Union | Confederate | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Date | recruits | supplies | recruits | supplies+cotton=total |
| 1 July | 63500 | 11013 | 43050 | 828+8148=8976 |
| 1 August | 62750 | 10840 | 40950 | 867+8100=8967 |
| 1 September | 62550 | 10804 | 40600 | 843+8016=8859 |
| 1 October | 62150 | 10753 | 40350 | 849+7986=8835 |
| 1 November | 62050 | 10724 | 40050 | 858+7902=8760 |
| 1 December | 61700 | 1525 | 39500 | -1299+2622=1323 |
| 1 January | 61350 | 1532 | 39000 | -1282+2586=1304 |
| 1 February | 61100 | 1519 | 38700 | -1272+2574=1302 |
| 1 March | 60750 | 3764 | 38250 | -734+3825=3091 |
| 1 April | 60450 | 3738 | 37300 | -682+3810=3128 |
| 1 May | 60200 | 3726 | 37050 | -684+3780=3096 |
| 1 June | 59900 | 10375 | 36450 | 885+7536=8421 |
Notice that this level of recruitment has relatively little effect on the capacity of either nation for further recruitment, and has relatively little effect on the production of cotton. It does, however, have a significant impact on the production of supplies, in addition to the fact that some of the supplies are spent on bounties.
If you're desperate for supplies, you can get more by reducing a city's fortifications or shipbuilding capacity. This seems unrealistic to me — demolition would probably cost more than could be salvaged in materials — but it works in the game.
Spending supplies
Supplies are the effective currency of the game. You will regularly spend them in various ways; these are the main ones:
- On volunteer bounties, first turn of every month
- On new weapons, first turn of every month
- On supplying men already in the field, every turn
- On city fortifications and guns, whenever you feel you can afford to
Spending on bounties
The amount you spend is calculated very simply: number of men recruited times the bounty, divided by 500. This is according to the manual and to the Manpower Settings dialog box. In practice, Joe Schweikert found by experiment, and I've confirmed, that the true figure seems to be approximately men recruited times the bounty, divided by 100.
In addition, for non-infantry there are supplemental costs for equipment and training: cavalry (60 per 500 men), navy (20 per 500 men), and artillery (5 per gun).
Spending on weapons
Here are the production costs of new weapons:
| Weapon | Production cost | To arm one brigade |
|---|---|---|
| Infantry | ||
| Musket | 20/1000 | 80 |
| Springfield | 60/1000 | 240 |
| Sharp | 240/1000 | 960 |
| Cavalry | ||
| Shotgun | 60/1000 | 150 |
| Spencer | 400/1000 | 1000 |
| Artillery | ||
| Smoothbore | 90 | 2880 |
| Parrott | 140 | 4480 |
| Whitworth | 220 | 7040 |
To increase weapons production has a one-off cost for factory building, and you recover only a small part of it by decreasing production again, so be careful not to increase unless you really mean it.
Note that weapons production (and increasing weapons production) seems to cost more on the first turn of the game than on subsequent turns.
Spending on units in the field
Each brigade in a division or corps costs you something, every turn. Here are the supply costs per Confederate brigade; Union brigades require twice as many supplies in all cases. The number of men in the brigade doesn't seem to matter. Oddly, foraging — which should cost nothing — seems to cost 1 per Confederate brigade (2 per Union brigade).
| Supply status | Encamped | Depot |
|---|---|---|
| Subsistence | 1 | 2 |
| Standard | 2 | 4 |
| High | 3 | 6 |
You can check the number of supplies being used by any particular unit in the list given by Overviews, Army Overview.
I've verified by experiment that brigades in garrisons don't use any supplies.
Spending on city fortifications, guns, and shipyards
Fortifications are useful for any city you want to defend: they improve the defensive ability of both garrisons and mobile units. The cost of one level of fortifications is 175 supplies in 1861, 138 supplies in 1862, 101 supplies in 1863, and 64 supplies in 1864 (I haven't tested in 1865).
Rather unrealistically, you can sell fortifications for exactly the current cost of buying them. This means you can make a little money by selling them in the last turn of the year and buying them back on the first turn of next year (when they're cheaper).
You can buy a maximum of nine levels of fortifications, but only one level per turn (unless you exploit a bug in the game and hold down the up arrow, by which method you can buy multiple levels in a turn). If you reach level nine, the option to sell disappears along with the option to buy. So, if you want to retain the option to sell, don't go beyond eight.
City guns cost 100 supplies each and you can buy up to nine per city. There's no one-per-turn restriction as with fortifications. As far as I know, they fire only on ships, so they're useful only at sea and river ports. You can sell guns for 50 supplies each.
A port's shipbuilding capacity can be increased at a cost of 250 supplies per wooden ship (warship or transport), 500 per ironclad. But if you decrease capacity, you get back only 100 per wooden ship, 200 per ironclad.
Fortifications, guns, and shipyards cost nothing to maintain, once built.