Forts & the Garrisons

[GrudgeBringer]

As I get ready to start my first game on the hard setting I have been thinking of a strategy in advance (imagine that) that will at least keep me in the war until the middle of 1862.

I am thinking that keeping Forts 10 and Donalson will be VERY important to the CSA in keeping my chances to make it that far intact.

I have a question that until this point I have just assumed. However, now that I am starting to play for real I would like a validation on my assumption.

IF I put additional Artillery in these forts and add a General (generic or otherwise doesn't matter at this point) as the commander of ALL the troops and any Costal, Fort Batteries, and the additional Artillery, will that make the Forts stronger (because of his stats)?

Now, say I make this General Huger that takes command of one of these Forts fort (I'm NOT talking at this time about him being a Division Commander) will his 20% increase in Artillery Damage count and if it does will it count on the Costal batteries (if any) or the Placed Fort batteries. (I understand that they have to be under his command (IN his stack) and not just IN the fort.

I thought I had read in a post (maybe an old one before the patch) that you could NOT upgrade forts with extra Art).

Any help would be appreciated...

[Jabberwock]

Your assumption is valid. You cannot turn a Level 1 fort into a Level 2 fort, but you can certainly add artillery, leaders, and other forces both inside and outside the fort, and it will have a positive effect.

[GrudgeBringer]

Thank you very much....

You just mentioned something that I had not thought of before and I wonder WHY I would want to do it.

you said that "Any forces either inside or outside will have a positive effect".

Up until this minute I had always assumed it was best to have troops outside the town ect and have at least 1 troop INSIDE the town to start entrenching for a fallback position.

But in the case of a FORT I wonder if this isn't counter productive.

You MIGHT want to leave a troop outside the fort just so an attacking army would have to attack there first giving you an idea of the actual strength.

The way I understand it unless the invading army is in the Assault (red) stance then it ONLY attacks the outside forces and any art, troops ect INSIDE the fort are not involved.

Now, with bonus of a fort AND the huge artillery effect (especially if you would have Huger in the fort) why would you have a lot of troops outside the fort at all?

This is especially important to my strategy so any comments are welcome!!

Thanks

[Jabberwock]

Forts like Donelson and Island No. 10 are major strategic chokepoints. Against Athena, it is not as necessary to put large numbers of troops outside.

In PBEM, you will want to have at least a division outside each fort, to keep it from becoming beseiged for as long as possible. You can expect that the Union will attempt to move at least a small corps into the Donelson area. If they have to come across a river, and you have a division or more in strong entrenchments, you should be able to either repel them or counter-attack and drive them off.

In the case of Island No. 10, the swamps are your ally. Any enemy force will be severely worn down by the time it can move into the area. You want to have strong entrenched force outside to meet it and ensure an engagement.

Also if a river fleet or land force using riverine transport tries to move into or past either area, both the inside and outside stacks will bombard it. Since the land force has such a tremendous advantage in bombardment, you want to do as much bombardment as possible. There is a cap on the bombard damage from a single stack, you want multiple stacks bombarding wherever you can do it. This point definitely applies to playing solo, probably more than PBEM.

[thewick]

Jabber is correct.

In a PBEM you never defend any fort with a garrison, this also applies to cities and towns. Each are death traps for your units. They will be lost after an assault and you will lose major NM.

As a result they are more effectively defended from the outside. I generally keep a division at 10 and a good corps at henry, of course this is all up to the player however you will want them entrenched as much as possible. The enemy will have to go offensive when he enters the region. The swamps of ten will be red with their blood and an entrenched corps makes amphibious or river crossing very costly.

[GrudgeBringer]

Thank you both....

I guess I need to (sigh) rethink a number of things.

For one I need to check the surrounding terrain as I didn't even know there WAS a swamp at Fort 10.

Not to mention the part about making them go orange and not allowing them to go red.

It seems that I have posted aeound 110 times...100 of them have been questions and I STILL feel as If I am in a fog at times.

As a Strategist I feel very comfortable with coming up with a way to negate my opponents strength (especially if I am on defense).

But as they say in the restrooms of the world....no job is done until the paperwork is done.

DETAILS, DETAILS and more DETAILS!!!

I must start paying attention to the things that seem so trivial but are so important in this game.

Thank you both for pointing those things out and making me start to actually looking at the enviroment that my Stalwart Troops are mucking around in!!!

[GShock]

Grudge seek the stickied AACW 101 thread

[Brochgale]

Thank you very much....

You just mentioned something that I had not thought of before and I wonder WHY I would want to do it.

you said that "Any forces either inside or outside will have a positive effect".

Up until this minute I had always assumed it was best to have troops outside the town ect and have at least 1 troop INSIDE the town to start entrenching for a fallback position.

But in the case of a FORT I wonder if this isn't counter productive.

You MIGHT want to leave a troop outside the fort just so an attacking army would have to attack there first giving you an idea of the actual strength.

The way I understand it unless the invading army is in the Assault (red) stance then it ONLY attacks the outside forces and any art, troops ect INSIDE the fort are not involved.

Now, with bonus of a fort AND the huge artillery effect (especially if you would have Huger in the fort) why would you have a lot of troops outside the fort at all?

This is especially important to my strategy so any comments are welcome!!

Thanks

I had Huger defending Norfolk with a lot of artillery and he lost the lot - he actually got blamed for high level of CSA casualties.
So Huger is probably not a good suggestion - best to ship him out as game does not allow me to have firing squads? Also lost a blockade runner in that defeat as well though my ironclads did manage to slip away.