You are also always going to need a large number of naval officers anyway, just to crew all your ships.   

But if you're intentionally going for a significantly small military fielding empire then this isn't the case, and a small number of military academies would be more than sufficient for ship crew purposes in such a scenario but not sufficient enough to manage the rest of the civilian aspects of the empire.     

The presentation of choice in managing such things is always better than just assuming everyone will play one set routine.   

You can assign the academy an administrator or scientist as commandant, which will produce more of that type.   

That's great for a more 'hack around' solution to an design limitation, but it would be nice to see some proper separation and control over the different civilian and military branches rather than just having everyone trained by the same military academies.     If there are some potential restrictions in the existing codebase making it a nightmare to handle separate branches of training between military and civilian, even some kind of looser % break-up between civilian and military that the system tries to maintain within that can be adjusted in the empire details window would be a vast improvement over having dozens of leaders being generated for a branch your empire has absolutely no need in for the next 80-100 years or more.   

This is kind of becoming a suggestion more than a question at this point so apologies on that, but if the direct approach of the direct separation of military and civilian academy training is a code management headache then a alternative approach could be something like the player could set a % for graduates the system attempts to adhere to when deciding if a new leader belongs in either a military or civilian branch, so if the player has set their empire training to 80% civilian focus and 20% military focus, then each new leader when generated would have a 80% chance of belonging to a random civilian branch, and a 20% chance to belong to the military branch.   

There would clearly need to be some lower and upper caps to stop just setting one to some absurdly high % but heck maybe the limits of control could even be a civilian research tier if someone wanted to make it be one.   So there's still no direct assignment or absolute control, it would still be possible to have a year where nothing but military leaders or nothing but civilian leaders are generated despite because that's just how RNG decided, but at least the player could properly represent things in a direct and clean manner and influence the inner workings of the empire they're meant to be in control of without using less intuitive quirky workarounds to a design issue.   

By the end of May Heiko Zenz completes the next level of weapons and tactics research (Ground Unit Strength 14) and start to look into further improving it, expected completion by April 1877. GUS16 still is cheaper than Assault Units (4k vs. 5k) and will provide more benefits in the medium term. While German High Command is fairly confident that the war against the British Empire can be one it is much more doubtful about the next war which might have to be started as early as the end of 1876. The British Empire is despised by most nations on Earth due to their large colonial empire, but it seems very likely the once Germany attacks any other nation that the other nations will support it in order to contain German aggression.

At dawn of July, 1st 1874 Germany starts its attack. And it seems like the High Command might have been a bit optimistic, I have not played Aurora for some time and was surprised by the British defensive strength of 99, I expected something about 75 (26 x 3). It seems there is a defensive bonus I forgot about.


Both nations start to mobilize their reserves, which Germany having the advantage to to having been able to prepare. Germany sends 10 replacement battalions to the front while the UK is only able to send one. Both expect to be able to send 1 additional replacement battalion every 15 days. I SM’d the tech in since replacements should be common knowledge, even thought about HQs, but decided that those might involve TN tech and refrained. But the replacement battalions themselves will be SM’d as well, with a maximum number of initial ground force units – 42 for Germany, 26 for the UK. 1 mine and 2 conventional industries were destroyed in the initial fighting.

At July, 16th the first replacement battalion reaches the British lines.

On August, 16th French spies successfully acquired TN technology from Germany. Julie Amyot (LG 15%) starts to look into Mobile Infantry Battalions whos power can currently be observed in the fighting between Germany and the British Empire. The overall battle is pretty much a stalemate, but Germany managed to destroy 1 enemy division during the fighting. On September, 16th the British manage to destroy the first German combat division in return. By the start of October it is getting harder for both nations to find volunteers and capable soldiers for the meat-grinder the fighting had become, reducing the rate of reinforcements to 1 battalion each month.

On October, 26th Alfie Kirk has completed research into new weapons and tactics for the British and continues his research into it.

On September, 26th the badly mauled (but fairly experienced) 22nd German Infantry Division is withdrawn from the frontlines and turned into the cadre of a new Mobile Infantry Battalion. And despite the improved British weapons and tactics the German offensive is gaining momentum (combat strength getting close to 2:1). At the same time German intelligence is starting to hear rumors about France having acquired TN tech and an investigation is ordered.

1875
By mid-January the German advantage is 3:1. Information gathered by German intelligence strongly indicates that Frances does posses knowledge of TN materials and it was acquired from Germany.

On February, 1st, with 5:1 odds against them and neither new troops, new technology nor allies on the horizon the British Empire capitulates and starts to be integrated into the German Kaiserreich. All remaining military units are dissolved and for the common people not much is expected to change. The capitulation of the British Empire to the German Kaiserreich is signed on February, 6th. Overall about 5 million people, more than 30 TN factories and mines were lost in the fighting in addition to more than 60 conventional factories.



All units and officers who participated in the fighting are awarded campaign ribbons and combat medals with a couple of leaders who distinguished themselves being awarded the Iron Cross for exceptional bravery or leadership in combat. Any idea how I can display the medals in the commander screen, or has this been removed for version 7.1?

In joined sessions between German High Command and leading scientists there are heated discussions what should be done about France. It is expected that they will need at least until the summer of next year before being able to complete any applicable research and field TN weapons, later for TN units. But even with just counting conventional units German would be outnumbered by 41 (3 of those ARM and 5 Mobile Infantry) vs. 147 low tech infantry divisions. Even with 2 Training Centers under control and better units, weapons and tactics those odds seem fairly bad. High Command assume that the other nations will be able to reinforce the defender (most likely France) with 10 divisions every 5 days with the first wave of reinforcements taking about 1 month to mobilize and arrive. Or maybe attack in the east and open up a second front. Mesons can not be used against ground units, correct?

That’s it for today…

Wouldn't it be possible to have an AI that starts with similar issues to a player race roleplaying the trial and error situation of getting into a space military? Make it have progressively more optimized designs as it encounters other player and non player races? Maybe have it start deploying specialized counter designs after encountering sets of situations? Like the AI using more AAM escorts after losing a fight to missiles?

Or just have settings to let players pick how much they want the AI to optimize.

You are also always going to need a large number of naval officers anyway, just to crew all your ships.

With the C# version might we see a better split between civilian and military leader training?

So rather than having all leaders come from military academies and a singular training grade level, could there be a civilian leadership training complex and then a separate complex for military leadership training with the option to different grade of training between Civilian and Military. 

It can be quite annoying at times playing a more pacifist or military light empire and wanting a strong science/civilian sector in your empire and having to build military academies that spew out countless dozens upon dozens of military officers just to generate some scientists and civilian administrators.