AGEOD Forums

A southern comedian from MS used to quip: "Shoot up here amongst us (referring to men climbing trees while fighting with critters), one of needs some relief!"

Playing this game, as either side, is much like that. I get so close to doing well; and, then, as if from heaven, Athena plops down a 3600 fresh force to polish off my worn out remnants. Oh, and, no, my setting are not on the hardest. Guess that just makes me dumb - or very slow. Maybe, but I'm persistent.


Seriously, I'm really enjoying the game. But where can I go to get some advanced tutoring?

I've read a few AARs, but the battle result differences make those hard to emulate.

Other Ideas?

Good thread, I am interested as well. I love the game and US History. Ageod is now my favourite developer they just struck into my taste of war grand strategy games.
If they would do in addition an awesome WW2 stuff like hearts of iron 3, I think I would give my son a french name =)

You can try to look after youtube vids - from time to time you find very good stuff there

Yes, I've gone through a number of Charles' YouTube presentations.

Point One. You're the Union, man. You have more money, more resources, and more time than the South will ever have. Fill the Shipping Box with transports and let even more money role in. First, build! Second, build some more. Third, buil... well, you get the idea .

Annie, Get You Gunnnnn-boats. Build them, put them in stacks of 4 boats to block crossings on all the river locations you don't want him to cross, which is nearly everywhere. When you get a chance (enough conscripts and money), build a transport for every other blocking gunboat stack. Gunboat stacks can draw supplies from neighboring transports in fair weather.

Have reserves stacks. When one stack on patrol is getting close to the end of its supplies or has lost some cohesion, send a reserve stack to take its place and send the tired, hungry patrol back to port from R&R. You should be doing every couple of turns, if not more often than that.

Put your ironclads at the far end of your gunboats, toward from where the enemy is coming--down the Mississippi. These are your Spartans, your Phalanx, your spear point. They must be in OP so that an enemy fleet trying to sneak up river will get run through. If they are in DP and the enemy fleet is in DP, they will simply sail on by and wave friendly. Ideally, you should have two ironclad fleets, because being in OP, they lose cohesion quickly. Cycle them through about every 2 or three turns. DON'T let their cohesion drop below 75% of full, or else they will do poorly in battle.

Keeping the South blocked at the major rivers reduces the forces you need to keep in reserve behind those rivers. If he does manage to get across, use rail to oppose him quickly. Deny him supplies and don't let him escape across the river. Once you've gotten him cornered, he's a dead duck.

If Davis has sent hist huge killer stack out to smack you around, get the heck out of the way. He can only have his killer stack in one place at a time, which leaves 10 others weakly held. Take advantage of that.

If you get your troops out of the way until you can concentrate your forces, what's the worst he can do? So he sits in Louisville, or even Saint Louis, or even Indianapolis or Cincinnati; so what? The further he is away from the the Deep South, the more vulnerable his supply lines are.

Once you've pulled your defenses together, let him hit you a few time. Defending with a good force on good terrain is the best way to bleed an enemy; and let him bleed . oops, wrong era

If you did a good job of cutting his supplies, once you start really fighting, he will be in trouble trying to get more supplies. Then it's time for you to do this: . Hound him, dog him, don't let up for as long as you can, because now he's weaker that he was and only getting weaker all the time.

Point Two. Know your best commanders, and know them well. Protegee them. Give them the best troops and lots of them. Let them fight weaker forces to gain experience and get promoted. Grant, Sherman, Lyon, and Kearney are your first Protegees. Use them well. Grant in charge of a good army is unstoppable. Sherman almost equally as deadly.

In '62 you get a couple of 4-1-1 leaders. These are good as small army commanders for places line West Virginia and Missouri-Arkansas. If you give them two good divisions each, they are very effective. They are active most of the time, and are equal to a small army or average corps.

Don't forget to take New Orleans as soon as you can. In the winter of 61-62, while Virginia is settling down under the poor weather, you can pull a couple of divisions from the AoP and sail them down to NO, take it quickly and leave one division to garrison. If you have enough forces, you can leave more than one division as a force to strike out into neighboring areas, Baton Rouge for example. This forces the South to pull troops from the front to guard against you riding rough-shod over Mississippi and Louisiana.

Get these tips down and practiced and you'll be well on he way to putting Davis into a dress

Outstanding response, and so needed and appreciated.


Plaguing the enemy by harassing and attacking port flanks continues to be my downfall. I'm always "needing" that new stack to plug a new hole (Blasted Athena).

Loving the game, spent a ton of vacation time to play and learn, and getting better--all because you grognard vets keep providing me tidbits of gold for game play!

Thanks

Captain_Orso wrote:Hound him, dog him, don't let up for as long as you can, because now he's weaker that he was and only getting weaker all the time.

The only thing you hold is the enemy. Hold him by the nose and kick him in the ass!

Patton.

Orso,

Totally psyched to hear from you, there has been a lot of substantive discussion here lately!

LCcmdr,
Orso's strategy for controlling the rivers and bottling up the CSA is almost completely opposite from some of the things I've said in recent posts, where I advised skipping the navy entirely and focusing on ground combat units. This illustrates an important design feature in AGEOD games, that there is no one way to win. Once you master the mechanics of the game you will discover many paths to victory, and Orso's idea above is a winning one.

The AI is often "optimistic" about its logistics. CSA Athena is quite likely to launch misbegotten invasions north of the Ohio, especially if you are not advancing on her high interest regions (starred cities and to a lesser extent depots) and forcing her onto the defensive. It is a simple thing to rail in enough defenders to repel these adventurers at the point of their attack. Keep them from getting their hands on any of your big supply stocks, stop them from retreating back across the river with gunboats swooping in behind, and bleed them with harassment tactics until you can hammer them with a big stack to deliver a multiple element destroying, NM winning victory. Since they cannot escape south you may be able to wipe out the entire stack with minimal casualties of your own. Do this two or three times in a single game year and the AI will have a very hard time recovering.

One thing I really like about this particular technique is that the enemy stack is not able to engage with the gunboats to fight their way through, like they could if you were trying to block them with cav stacks or something, the path is simply closed (well, 90% closed).

I've had an enjoyable time learning how to form corps for this almost last day of vacation play. Ah, back to work so soon--I'll have withdrawal jitters....but evenings should be fun. I'm loving the CP benefit of corps but not yet experiencing the coordinated marching effects. Still working on it.

However, though I'm playing for stalemate in the FW, W, and MS river valley, I'm pound away at Richmond (in general). I've got Lee bottled up there and have surrounded Richmond nearly on every side. Most importantly, all territories (but one being taken now) surrounding Richmond below to the Union. I"ve destroyed rail lines down to Chattanooga and from Lynchburg, VA, across to Norfolk.

How long do I need to starve Lee?

This is fun!!!!

I actually beseiged Richmond for perhaps 18 months; I didn't want the game to end before Emancipation and the AI refused to move its capital. There are a lot of supplies there. The AI actually sent a relief column within the first month, at which time Lee's beseiged stack sortied and, to quote Willem Dafoe, there was a firefight. Lee was either wounded or forced to retreat out of the region; I think he was captured within a month more in a siege near the Carolina line. That is one of the big problems with trying to take out the CSA; their strength is in good leaders, and those guys can survive multiple stack annihilations.

Don't forget to blockade the Richmond harbor! Without the harbor blockaded (you should probably need 12 naval combat elements), Richmond will produce what it always does. With it blockaded, Richmond's production will be halved.

Richmond is a large city for the South with a large depot and lot's of supplies. It will be hard to starve. If you can implement an actual siege, by having one or more stacks in the region, without the South having a stack in the field (their stacks are all only inside the city), each hit you can score through the siege will also reduce supplies. So fill your siege-stacks with Siege Artillery and other strongly offensive artillery such as 10 and 20lb and Rodman Artillery. Use you best defensive corps leaders to run the siege (eg. George Thomas), because you can expect Lee to come out and attack at least once, but leave on corps stack with a good offensive leader in OP in case Lee tries to sneak out in DP.

Basic Sun Tzu, if you surround an enemy, then they will fight like tigers. Leave the army in Richmond a path out. The army isn't worth 50 NM, the capital is. If you attack from the eastern side, IIRC the region is called Kent, then your force doesn't have to cross a river to get to Richmond, so no combat penalty. Use overwhelming nimbers and any force in the region may retreat. As McClane said in all the "Die Hard" movies, "Yippy ky yay..."

soon to find out about long sieges....

George Thomas is still a division commander, fighting over in the Nashville area. Grant is a Corp commander, at Memphis. I've got Butler and McDowell as the two Armies surrounding Lee & co. at Richmond. So, Union leadership, at the moment, is a tad passive--but I'm working on it.

Cheers

When your short of ships as the CSA stack them in the box, the fleet, then drop one ship out and send it to resupply back at port, and allow it to be a supply carrier for the fleet in being, as when it returns to the stack it will add its full supply to the fleet increasing it. You should be able to keep in the box a fleet with enough supply.

ArmChairGeneral wrote:....
LCcmdr,
Orso's strategy for controlling the rivers and bottling up the CSA is almost completely opposite from some of the things I've said in recent posts, where I advised skipping the navy entirely and focusing on ground combat units. This illustrates an important design feature in AGEOD games, that there is no one way to win. Once you master the mechanics of the game you will discover many paths to victory, and Orso's idea above is a winning one.

The AI is often "optimistic" about its logistics. CSA Athena is quite likely to launch misbegotten invasions north of the Ohio, especially if you are not advancing on her high interest regions (starred cities and to a lesser extent depots) and forcing her onto the defensive. It is a simple thing to rail in enough defenders to repel these adventurers at the point of their attack. Keep them from getting their hands on any of your big supply stocks, stop them from retreating back across the river with gunboats swooping in behind, and bleed them with harassment tactics until you can hammer them with a big stack to deliver a multiple element destroying, NM winning victory. Since they cannot escape south you may be able to wipe out the entire stack with minimal casualties of your own. Do this two or three times in a single game year and the AI will have a very hard time recovering.

One thing I really like about this particular technique is that the enemy stack is not able to engage with the gunboats to fight their way through, like they could if you were trying to block them with cav stacks or something, the path is simply closed (well, 90% closed).

To borrow a phrase from the Revolutionary War- Philadelphia captured the enemies army.



If Stonewall takes an army north and captures Cleveland, that's great news! You have an enemy army away from his supplies, and he can be finished at your leisure.
Its much easier to defeat a 3,600 power stack like that then one entrenched in good terrain with Longstreet's 3,600 power stack next door.

LCcmdr wrote:A southern comedian from MS used to quip: "Shoot up here amongst us (referring to men climbing trees while fighting with critters), one of needs some relief!"

Playing this game, as either side, is much like that. I get so close to doing well; and, then, as if from heaven, Athena plops down a 3600 fresh force to polish off my worn out remnants. Oh, and, no, my setting are not on the hardest. Guess that just makes me dumb - or very slow. Maybe, but I'm persistent.


Seriously, I'm really enjoying the game. But where can I go to get some advanced tutoring?

I've read a few AARs, but the battle result differences make those hard to emulate.

Other Ideas?

The north has all the resources, but starts in a weak position. Know that, and adjust your strategy accordingly.

In '61, you will lose.
In '62, you won't be able to regain what you lost in '61.
In '63, you are finally in a position to take on the armies head to head.
In '64, you can do whatever you want. Keep beating the crap out of the south's remaining armies, drive south, take Richmond, capture and hold all the ports, paint the map blue, etc etc.





As for the South, you're not supposed to win. Either you take Washington in '61, or you lose slowly and gracefully. If you make it to '65, but lost Kentucky and Maryland and New Mexico and Missouri and half of Tennessee and a bunch of your ports- congratulations, you won the war and are now an independent nation.

Too funny!

But I get it, after my first CSA win. I threw everything I had against DC. Having torn up RR lines and having small raiders slowing Athena's rush to bail out DC, I persistently attacked for 3 rounds, shuffling in fresh troops (keeping my chits replenished) and won! But, I had lost NO and several other significant forts, and had a number of invading fronts all over the southern infrastructure. I just wish I could mount such genius with the nail-biting survival crises that I face already. This game is addicting!!