Thanks for the feedback everbody! My mind is still open, but I had some notions pop in my mind and thought I'd add them to the debate.
I considered why the Real Life countries in DD have the tech trees they do, and came up with:
1) USSR=Movement Focus/Human Wave, because it has huge amounts of manpower.
2) USA=Firepower Focus/Superior Firepower, because it has huge amounts of industry.
3) Germany=Movement Focus/Spearhead, because it lost WWI and had to come up with something better than "run at the entrenched machine guns" the second time around.
4) UK, France, & Italy=Firepower Focus/Grand Battle Plan because they won WWI and got complacent. They were also traumatized by their losses in the Great War, and got cautious the second time around.
Looking at the CSA in SRTDD's alt-history, #1 and #2 are right out, because it has an abundance of neither MP or IC. It is assumed that Dixie got into WWI fairly early (if not right at the start) because of its close ties to the UK and France, and went through the Somme (or its own national equivalent).
Considering that, it seems a little odd the CSA would be the one country on the winning side who lost a ton of men and then decided to be bold and innovative in its war plans. Seems like the alt-history points the way to FF/GBP.
I was also looking at the CSA's land doctrine tech teams. Three out of four have the Individual Courage specialty--something not a single tech in MF/SH tree ever calls for. So the Southern military academies and training centers are getting its soldiers ready for battle with skills they'll never actually use.
From a game-y perspective, it's also fairly easy to change from FF/GBP to MF/SH. If you want to simulate, say, George Patton pulling his ivory-handled pistols on the Confederate General Staff and demanding a switch, it's very easy to Abandon Doctrine on FF/GBP in 1936 and quickly catch up on the MF/SH tree.
(Quantico matches all 5 components on the basic MF starting tech, and the next tech on the tree has a historical date of 1937. So you have a whole year to catch up with history.)
All that said, again, my mind is still open. Let's face it: it's really freakin' cool to play with the German land doctrines, and it does seem plausible the South would try to rely on Movement over Firepower given its cavalier history.
Still, it's worth pointing out that while Nathan Bedford Forrest is solidly in the MF/SH camp, Lee and Jackson seem to be from the FF/GBP school; the Infiltration (Japanese) branch in particular. Their masterpiece at Chancellorsville was made possible by the type of bold nocturnal moves that branch specializes in. Lest we forget, Lee tried to win the war at Gettysburg with an artillery barrage (Firepower Focus) and a charge at the enemy's center (Grand Battle Plan).
Forrest and Jackson/Lee were all authentic military geniuses, but who would have more cred in a South which won the war at Sharpsburg? Lee and Jackson would be national heroes, and Forrest's best moments would never occur.
OK, seriously, my mind really is still open, so please continue the discussion. Feel free to tell me where I'm wrong!
