Finally there is one more thing a distant, never-on-the-battlefield e-mail commander can do for his subordinates: managing the resources and keeping C3i working. This was proved to be more important than I thought before the campaign, and the more so because the two sides behaved rather differently as to these things.
The Republican divisional CO was also a good chief of staff of himself, and an adept resource manager. Every time a brigade had just a bit more troops than it really needed, he had no qualms at all taking something away and sending it to the crisis spot of the moment. The ideal example is the use of the Republican artillery. True to the historical system, the groups were shifted around and from brigade to brigade as needed, and the artillery build-up for the attack on Castillo was a small masterpiece. On the other hand, at a certain point virtually all the Nationalist artillery was given to the Column, and never reassigned. Colonel Lopez Cardoso made a very good use of the artillery, but obviously the 2nd Brigade would have put some guns to good use if they had them.
The Republicans always had at least a small divisional reserve, usually mated with their truck column to be moved around quickly. In fact, they used their trucks very extensively, to the point that the no-rest penalties kicked in twice for the poor drivers. Arriving reinforcements were routinely moved by truck. On the contrary, the Nationalists did not use their trucks a lot.
At the end of the second day, the Republicans regrouped at divisional level those regroupable stands their brigades still had hanging around. No less than a new battalion came out of this, as a further divisional reserve. The Nationalists never did anything like that. On the contrary, at the end of the campaign they had a battery of 75L27 FGs and a section of 70L19 MtnGs with no crews, and, at the same time, enough regroupable crew stands, dispersed throughout the division, to man those guns.
Each order phase began with the Republican CinC sending out a divisional situation report, and a mission statement for the turn. The CinC routinely asked for suggestions, and, to this regard, an especially fruitful correspondence developed between him and El Campesino (although they not always agreed!). The final orders kept every brigade CO very well informed. Unfortunately for the Nationalists, their CinC could not carry out this kind of time-consuming work. Also, lack of communication led to the Nationalist air force attacking the "Valdepenas" Battalion positions. In another instance, the same (empty) farm was simultaneously bombed by the Nationalist air force and bombarded by the heaviest Nationalist artillery, overkilling the poor wooden buildings.
The Republican overall commander also came up with new creative ideas and lobbied the referee. Of course both sides benefited from these ideas, when they were accepted (for example the tank maintenance rules were drafted upon request by the Republicans, and the Nationalists could use them too, of course).
The Republicans always had clearly defined brigade boundaries; when a battalion ended up inside another brigade's area, they reassigned it. In reality this is very important because of friendly fire dangers, which in the campaign actually only happened between Nationalist air and ground units. But, in the campaign, if all battalions in an area belonged to the same brigade, the e-mail brigade CO could get a rather clear idea of what was happening in that area by piecing together the battalion reports. On the contrary, the Nationalists had most of their brigades mixed up, and did not reassign battalions. During the second afternoon turn, three battalions of three different brigades attacked a small Republican bridgehead. The info each brigade CO got was of course fragmentary. Moreover, this was the situation in which two battalions were delayed by a traffic jam, and the two brigade COs could probably do nothing to avoid it, since they weren't informed of what the other was doing.
So, this kind of issues, which aren't exactly exciting, still deserved a paragraph on their own, and in the two referees' opinion gave a significant contribution to the Republican victory.