Naval strategies from 1861?

[truth is life]

As a new player who's only played through 1861 so far, I was kind of wondering what kind of naval builds you generally employ, especially as the Union, and what the purpose of those builds are. Do you try to enlarge the navy to enhance the blue-water blockade and go after Confederate commerce raiders, focus on close blockades and amphibious assaults against coastal forts, riverine control, some combination, or something else? Do you prefer gunboats, riverine ironclads, monitors, armored frigates, steam frigates, plain frigates, etc.?

Since you can't form corps until March 1862, I was thinking of giving a more naval-oriented strategy a try. Build up enough of an army to defend against the Confederates and take a few important locations, but mostly focus on building up a navy and some expeditionary forces, then go around and take the coastal forts (improving them to depots in some cases maybe), maybe use those as a springboard for other invasions (Mobile, New Orleans, Charleston..), and some of the less important ports (Galveston, Pensacola). That way, I can force the AI to divide some of its forces to defend against my naval attacks, strangle their imports, increase my own trade, and take important locations (giving me VP and NM bonuses). Has anyone tried anything like that, and if so how did it work?

[rattler01]

Well, as the CSA I build brigs when I can, and as the game progresses and you have a huge stockpile of war supplies and printing money gives over 1,000,000 I'll start doing Ironclads to protect some of my ports.

For the USA I build about 6 gunboat units immediately to gain river dominence and for later river blocking. Before 61' is over I like having about 5 Ironclads to secure my MS control. After that I just build Ironclads to keep the CSA boats in port and gunboats for where I wanna block rivers.

For the deep water fleet, I max out transports as soon as I can. Having an extra 60k a turn turns nice for raising money for volunteers.

I don't build any warships because what u have should be more than enough to guard any Invasion you want. Unless FI is getting close, then I build Monitors and Armoured frigates like there is no tomorrow.

[Jim-NC]

It depends on what you want to do. For example, fort running can get expensive (50 hits), so you need lots of ships to absorb the damage.

Personnally, I increase my blue water blockade, then take the coastal forts. They are an easy way for a general to move up the ranks quickly (like Hooker for example), and are easily captured by a couple of brigades. The CSA standard garrison is 1 infantry element, 1 cannon, and 1 coastal artillery.

Afterwards, I use the coastal forts as staging for assualting various underdefended CSA citites. There is almost nothing the CSA player can do to stop 2 full strength divisions (under a good 2 star general) from capturing a city. If they place 2 divisions in each important city, then they have left their front line armies very understrength. There are just too many of them (New Orleans, Mobile, Charleston). And as the attacker, the union has the advantage of knowing where the attack will happen, what is a diversion, etc. There is nothing worse for the CSA player than seeing 2-3 divisions sitting in the Gulf threatening both Mobile and New Orleans. Which to defend? and how well? And if the union has captured the forts already, then they can just sail in and put men on the ground.