Thoughts on my first game as the Union

[charlesonmission]

Hi there,

I just finished my first game as the Union against the AI (never really done one in PBEM). I was on the latest patch. The game ended with a Union NM victory in early 1863. Main points:

1. The CSA went for and captured Ft Monroe early on. However, in doing so gave up Manassas basically.
2. There were no wild CSA raids. The Army of Shenandoah did make a move on Grafton thereby evacuating the Shenandoah. However, the CSA ended up sending the army to reinforce Richmond. (So no wild Pittsburgh or Baltimore moves). Aggressiveness was set to low.
3. The CSA lost MO early, but did a good job holding Fayetteville. In fact, they defeated my force there and Price chase the Union out of Springfield, thereby recapturing it.
4. The biggest problem I noticed was that I seemed to have lots of battles where there was no general in charge of the CSA forces, despite the force being around 10,000 men. Has anyone else noticed this?
5. I used the new disembark option with effect. However, one time, I lost 2 divisions on an attempt to take back Ft Monroe, hence the risk of it as well. Playing the CSA now just became a little more interesting.
6. Grant is awesome!

Charles

[Longshanks]

What were your other AI settings? Was Fog of War set to allow the AI to see all? A low aggressiveness means a very passive AI - that's why you didn't get raids most likely. It's ok for a first game though. After that go to Hard, Full view of fog of war and middle aggressiveness for a tougher fight.

Grant (along with a few other, like Thomas on the defense for example) are about the only reason the Union can fight early on!

[charlesonmission]

Medium FOW Bonus. So no, not see all. Next time, I'll give the AI full FOW bonus and medium aggresiveness.

What were your other AI settings? Was Fog of War set to allow the AI to see all? A low aggressiveness means a very passive AI - that's why you didn't get raids most likely. It's ok for a first game though. After that go to Hard, Full view of fog of war and middle aggressiveness for a tougher fight.

Grant (along with a few other, like Thomas on the defense for example) are about the only reason the Union can fight early on!

[Citizen X]

Hi there,

4. The biggest problem I noticed was that I seemed to have lots of battles where there was no general in charge of the CSA forces, despite the force being around 10,000 men. Has anyone else noticed this?
5. I used the new disembark option with effect. However, one time, I lost 2 divisions on an attempt to take back Ft Monroe, hence the risk of it as well. Playing the CSA now just became a little more interesting.
6. Grant is awesome!

Charles

4. Not that I know but I havent played AI much recently.
5. What was it that the 2 divisions were up against?

[charlesonmission]

About 1 division+ led by Longstreet.

4. Not that I know but I havent played AI much recently.
5. What was it that the 2 divisions were up against?

[Captain_Orso]

After my last completed game, though I played the CSA, I checked what the Athena was doing with the Union, because I literally dominated the entire country in west going so far as to take Chicago basically because it was there and had supply I could take to stay in the field without having to return to St Louis for resupply, and had taken everything up through Baltimore in the east. I was playing with historical attrition (which makes it extremely difficult to get units back up to par after battle), normal FoW and AI on Sgt. (2nd of 4).

Some very major things I noted was that Athena did not put generals to there best use. She seemed to select them willy-nilly and put them anywhere. I could see no effort to 'train' good generals and then put them in charge of corps or armies. In fact, she had army HQs standing around with more than enough army generals to command them and even used them as cavalry scouts

She also built many division but never filled them out although there were more than enough units standing around in stacks just begging to be installed in those divisions. Consequently many of the stacks were under-commanded; very, very bad.

Until recently I've only ever played the Union other than a couple of tentative starts as the CSA, so I know how to leverage the Union's advantages in the economy and putting the navy to good use to strangle the south's own economy. Athena certainly never did much of this. The Union should have the blockade boxes full at the latest by the end of '61. Athena never did. In fact she was using the blockade fleets as attack and patrol fleets and even brown water blockaded Norfolk by using a mix of blockade fleets, ironclads and a sundry of other vessels. I've done this myself, actually blockading both Norfolk and Richmond with a mix of 4 blockade fleets 8 ironclads and 8 gunboat squadrons so that I could cycle them in and out of duty so that they were always battle ready, but even here Athena failed to put artillery into Norfolk to bombard these fleets while they sailed by on their regular changing of the guards. The only thing clever that I did notice was that on the day that the Virgina was allowed to put to sea, she suddenly stuffed the James Estuary full of blockade fleets, frigates and steam frigates for that one turn. I had seen no reason to put the Virgina to sea that turn and just watched the parade of ships and wondered what she was thinking, that I was just going to shove the Virgina off the pier and out to sea just because I could without plan or goal?

Also by the time the Union had lost on NM around the beginning of '64 the economy was in a shambles. I had done at least as well with the CSA. She had been investing in Wisconsin (ok) and New Jersey(!!), but with the economy doing so poorly she should have been investing NY State and maybe PA. How much of a hit the economy took when I captured Washington I don't know, but I held it a long time before I did an end run for Wilmington DE and then jumped on Annapolis while her back was turned. Before that I had taken Harrisburg in '61 and then left it when my supplies were running low. I'd sent a cavalry in a few times to wreck the rail lines north of Baltimore and in PA, but never made any effort to lunge into PA as I probably could have.

I'm now playing my second CSA game '61 April w/KY (Kentucky, not the jelly ) with AI on Lt. I lost the Shenandoah in '62 while I was still trying to consolidate a good army, but still held Manassas. Then she did her own end-run, twice, by invading Norfolk and then slipping into Fredericksburg.

I had to pull my forces out of Manassas to put up a defense in Albemarle, which she pushed back to Charlottsville by the shear weight of mass of her army. Longstreet and Jackson just stepped back and let her in.

With Manassas only garrisoned and at her mercy, which didn't last long, Fredericksburg gone, after finally ousting the invaders from Norfolk I only had one front to defend and consolidated with Lee, Longstreet and Jackson in Charlottsville while still making adjustments to finally get all the fast division into Jackson's corp to make a fast end-run to draw the huge army at my front off balance. Then she left Fredericksburg undefended(!!) in her rear with her entire army of over 100,000 in Albemarle, so I marched a single brigade in and hunkered down for the retribution, which never came(?). Culpeper was still mine as she had come in over Stafford to the south and she never tried to take Culpeper, empty as it was. Okay, she had Fredericksburg in her rear, but when I walked in to snap it away without cost she did nothing I would have been sure to take it back ASAP or run like hell were I in that position, but she stood still paralyzed while her huge army slowly starved before I decided I'd had enough of this fiasco and struck her a mighty blow that ended with the Unions Army of Northern Virgina literally destroyed to the last man; an army which stood before me with more than 100,000 men.

What that was I have no idea. Maybe Lil' Mac decided that I didn't want to get a scratch on his shiny army, but Athena should know that she could have broken at least a division out of that army to retake Fredericksburg and save the army she doomed through doing nothing

[Citizen X]

About 1 division+ led by Longstreet.

Thanks for update. No wonder I shall say.

[Captain_Orso]

8<
5. I used the new disembark option with effect. However, one time, I lost 2 divisions on an attempt to take back Ft Monroe, hence the risk of it as well. Playing the CSA now just became a little more interesting.
6. Grant is awesome!

Charles

Hi Charles,

1. do not ever, EVER, [SIZE="5"]EVERRRRR[/size] use the distant unload button to invade with. You seem to have some very bad cohesion hits when doing that. I'll have to test that again more concisely and post the results when I find the time, but when I did my preliminary testing I got similar results. Losing 2 division hurts *ouch*

2. Grant - YES

[Longshanks]

I also have noticed that the AI does not use generals well, especially as the Union. For example, I found the AI had Grant holding Salem IL as a garrison while the battle raged on in Kentucky where he was desperately needed. Not sure if the settings affect Generals use though. As I (and many others before me) have said, the only true test of the game is PBEM. But the AI is useful for learning and trying out crazy strategies.

[gotrek]

I use the latest patch and set the Ai on passive ( to avoid crazy raids) , lieutenant and give it the biggest detection advantage and every time Grant has been garrisoning some minor town near Ky....
Once he went on an invasion of Tenessee with Sherman (which spiced things up nicely) but he just had a stack it wasn't organized as an army or anything. So I crashed him easily with a couple of corps from my Tn army.
The only organisation(Army with corps) I met was on the virginia front.

[Stauffenberg]

Aggressiveness was set to low.

I still don't have a handle on the AI game differences on different settings. I tend to switch around from turn to turn, setting it to colonel, high aggression and enhanced detection and then back off to mid-range, or lower for winter turns. I prefer playing the CSA and I get the impression the AI is somewhat more of a challenge as it controls the north, even if it becomes a question of "quantity having a quality all its own" later in the game.

I'd like to hear more from others with experiences using high aggression settings with the new patch.

[dolphin]

still making adjustments to finally get all the fast division into Jackson's corp to make a fast end-run to draw the huge army at my front off balance.

Can you elaborate on what it is you mean by getting all the FAST divisions into Jackson's Corp?

The reason I ask is that Jackson has the "Fast Mover" trait and I was always under the impression that his trait bestows the Fast Move bonus to all divisions in his stack regardless of what his subordinates would normally have as a movement rate on their own; in effect making all his divisions in his stack fast movers?

I can only presume that you mean that you remove any elements in his divisions that have a lower movement coefficient (less than 100; No siege Guns, or Colombiads ?) , but I want to be sure.

[Captain_Orso]

The fast division commanders are Early, A. P. Hill, Pender and Walker.

I'm actually not sure whether having only fast movers in Jackson's corp actually makes the entire corp faster than otherwise, but since the Army of Northern Virginia's corps were always close to each other, it never took much effort to pull them together like this.

Personally I never put any slow-moving artillery in any division, corp or army. I only rarely buy Columbiads or Rodmans for point defenses and if I need siege artillery I'll ship or rail it in for a siege and then pull it out of the corp or army afterwards.

There are some nuances with regards to corp commander abilities and division commander abilities that I am not certain of. For example if you have a division commander with Dispirited Leader 'ability' but your corp commander doesn't have this, the Dispirited Leader 'ability' should be negated. But would that also apply to a division commander with the Charismatic ability? Logically it should, but I'm not sure.