Transferring Union Forces West

[Mick M]

What is the quickest/best route for Union forces moving from the East coast to the West. Sometimes my transferred units get bogged down on route through lack of supplies.

[Gray Fox]

If by West you mean west of MO, then you are dealing with a tenuous supply line. If you send too many units at once, the local supplies will be instantly exhausted and your troops will take hits. You could build a line of depots along the route and then garrison them against attack. You can also use sealift to move units to CA. However, strategically, you could capture everything west of the Mississippi and still lose, so the West is not the Best for military action.

[Captain_Orso]

Yes, GF is right, it really depends on what you mean.

Please state from which city, to which city, and what type of unit(s) you which to move.

[tripax]

What is the quickest/best route for Union forces moving from the East coast to the West. Sometimes my transferred units get bogged down on route through lack of supplies.

Let us say you want to go from Boston to El Paso. I see three choices.

One is via Tierra del Fuego/Cape Horn to California and then through boxes - just load troops on transports and drag to SoCal. If your troops have enough command points and the weather is ok, you might be able to travel between boxes in two turns each and the water way takes about four turns, so this route should take at least a dozen turns. I build a flatboat -> depot in LA to provide an extra supply push and another in Tuscon - if you have those ready and still have the stockades at Fort Yuma and Pima Villages/Fort Whipple plus these depots, you'll be fine. The opposite of this is more common, sailing troops from California to the eastern theater - as was done in the real war.

The second follows the Sante Fe Trail from St. Joseph West. This route is obvious and requires you have a few extra supply wagons or a path of depots. I'm not sure how long this will take, but at best I guess it will take 18 turns.

The third is the most counter-intuitive and is something I've experimented with against Athena. This route is via Brownsville (or maybe King Ranch if you want to avoid Fort Brown). That will take two days by sail. Then if you have good weather (no mud), you can get to Sante Fe in three days (so short, you can do this with no wagons if you are a little crazy and if you already have a depot in Mesilla/have lots of supplies in forts nearby)! The Confederacy will likely consider Brownsville of little value, so it won't really be defended and there might not be a defense force raised, even if you have to wait in Brownsville for the weather to turn. Since you might be waiting for weather to turn in any of the cases, this isn't really much of a downside, I think. In this option, once you march your force West of San Antonio, anything more than a very token force in El Paso will likely flee - unless the Confederacy is willing to fight another Alamo in El Paso. There are a number of interesting pros and cons to this option, but I think it should be considered given how fast troops can march through hard packed dust in Texas (note that the Guadalupe Mountains don't exist in game).

[Mick M]

Thank you. I usually use your option 2 - rail 2-3 brigades, a supply wagon and a commander out to St Joseph, river movement to Omaha and then walk. It takes a long time with a lot of attrition. I didn't realise the sea movement was an option so will try this from now on. Thanks again.

[Captain_Orso]

Well, yes, you can use transports to carry troops from the East Coast to the West Coast. The only problem with that is that they arrive in fairly poor condition, because they lose a lot of cohesion while embarked and can take hits from poor weather on the way, especially while sailing around the Horn.

But then again, recovering from cohesion loss costs nothing, and getting replacements works just as quickly in California as in New York, if the unit is on a depot.

I'm not sure how realistic the weather is emulated, but if you know when to sail to around Cape Horn, you should have the least damage.

About marching over long distances, if your troops are in an area where there is little chance of them encountering the enemy, march them in PP (Passive Posture) at all times. This will reduce cohesion lose greatly. Also, don't stack any units; move them all in their own stacks, and if you can, give them leaders, because have too few CP's will slow them down, especially larger units with a large number of sub-units (elements). But this will also require you to pay close attention to each stack, because when your leader(s) is inactive, you will have to unstack them from their unit so that each can move without having a detrimental affect on the other.