Some counsel, please...First time AGEod game, but long time gamer....

[LCcmdr]

1. Why do Northern General (appear) to perform better when under AI control than when I control them?

E.g., I just assaulted 1100 Union troops (lvl 4 trenches) at Alexandria, with Beauregarde (1400) on one turn, then followed next turn with T. Jackson and friends (another 1250). With McDowell in charge of the Union side, my CSA suffered (about 1/3 losses) but only inflicted about 20% first battle losses and approx 40% in the second battle. Even with fresh, 100% cohesion troops, I could not route half the force (left over from the first battle) that should have been reeling with cohesion issues. IS THIS NORMAL?

2. Since I play both sides (to learn better), Athena just grinds me down despite the fact that I've taken most forts in the vertical corridor west of St. Louis, along with Jefferson City and Springfield. Also, I've got three stacking (totaling about 1000) that are wrecking havoc on all the Union forces in MO and KS. Yet, the Union Cairo forces have grown from 300s to nearly 1100 (vs. my 600) across the river. And, Athena has amassed all the blockade ships and invaded a Port guarding the MS river, along with landing a brigade to attack Baton Rouge (near where I live-- ). I'm handling the land forces okay but have no deployable forces to counter the port assault.


3. I've attacked Washington, itself from the rear. Burned down Gettysburg, got scouts around Baltimore, and have nearly 4,500 troops (in essentially 3 stacks) with steady reinforcement and replenishment chits in the que. I've got Copper Heads wrecking havoc in nearly every MD region and have even taken a few (but without the means to resupply or reinforce).

With all this positive sounding strategy, why am I unable to hand Athena a severe loss when I'm cutting supply lines, attacking with fresh armies, and raising CSA sympathy in the major cities of the north.


I don't know if I'm on the verge of victory or about to take a butt kicking, the latter being my expectation.


4. How do you manage to track all your builds and make sure they get moved to critical regions once built. Is there a special club that I need to join?

I've started reading the line items, but that's very tedious. Any suggestions?


Thanks

[ArmChairGeneral]

All of these things sound pretty normal. Since you managed to win a game already, it sounds like you are getting a decent handle on things; the frustrations you are facing are because you are now past your beginning experience level and are starting to understand the real challenges the game presents you with. The simple fact is that in AGEOD games winning is hard. It is hard to pin the enemy down, hard to deliver a knockout blow, and all to easy to break your own teeth against their defenses when attacking. If you are the CSA, those 1000 PWR Union stacks keep coming at you no matter how many of them you surround and destroy, and as the Union your early leaders are terrible and are lucky to be able to move at all, much less fight winning battles.

1. It is possible that their generals are actually better than yours, at least in their Strategic rating. Check your game settings, under the Activation bonus. Each setting on the slider grants the AI a +1 to their Strategic rating for the purposes of activation checks. This only indirectly affects their troops' fighting ability, but a 3-1-1 will be active almost every turn if you give the AI a +2 bonus. If you adjust this setting to no bonus the AI will have to deal with the same inactivity you had to deal with as the Union. I play with +2 mostly, but you should at least give them a +1 or the Union will become incredibly passive. If you really want to tie the Union AI's hands behind its back give it no Activation Bonus and choose the Activation Rule (on a different screen than the Activation Bonus slider) that gives inactive leaders a chance to be fixed in place. She will barely be able to move. Strategic rating is by far the most important stat for 2 and 3 star generals.

2. I'm gonna beat Fox to this one and tell you that KS and MO are not important once you have locked down Springfield/Jeff. City/St. Louis (and maybe not even then). For that matter neither is anything going on around Baton Rouge, as long as you keep New Orleans (it is good to keep the river open so supplies flow upstream to Memphis, but it isn't vital). As a general rule do not let yourself get distracted playing whack-a-mole and scurrying after every Union stack threatening a size 2 city. The only cities that matter have stars on them or have depots critical to your operational plans, and even these can be ignored in favor of taking the enemy capital. My last game the Union took almost all of Texas and Oklahoma unopposed while I cruised to victory in Virginia and Maryland.

3. If you already have more than 130 NM when you take the capital, it should put you over the top for a win with the +50 NM (and -50 NM for your opponent) you get from taking the capital. Almost all that 130 NM will come from winning battles rather than from taking strategic cities, which aren't worth that much. A NM buffer is needed when you first march on Washington, since you may lose several NM in the first battle, as you will have to attack a large heavily entrenched force and will suffer a lot of casualties. Don't bother to attack it if you do not think you can win or stalemate the initial battle. Once you have successfully moved in and held the region, wait several turns to recover before assaulting the city itself. During this time the Union AI will likely throw anything it can scrape together into fruitless attacks to drive you out of the DC region, but now you are on defense and are entrenched, and she is just tossing divisions and NM down the drain in a desperate attempt not to lose the game. Nothing in Maryland or Delaware is worth wasting men on, the only thing that is important is DC (you could say that about the entire map actually).

Are you winning these battles decisively? If you are regularly handing her 2:1 or 3:1 losses, rest assured that you are grinding her down plenty and that you will have the short term advantage you need to get a win at DC. I usually have 3 2000+ PWR stacks under Lee, Jackson and Longstreet to take DC. That is 5 or 6 divisions in each stack, with a maxed out (15 element) artillery division in each stack, along with a cav officer, an artillerist and probably an HQ unit and possibly a Pontoon in there somewhere. This usually happens for me in late 62 or 63, but it is definitely possible to win even earlier if you are totally committed, even at the hardest settings. (Look up Gray Fox posts about the All East strategy. I usually like to play aggressively in the mid-west because it is fun, but could be getting wins earlier if I went All East.)

You will not be able to cut off supplies and starve out DC, (or St. Louis, or Atlanta, or Richmond, etc.) they are sitting on a pile of 2000+ supplies and produce a huge amount each turn.

4. I tend to only build in a few places, and in places like New England where I can't build everything I want in one spot I have a rally point like DC or Baltimore that I use to marshall all my new guys into division and distribute to where I need them. I also like to think in terms of building a division or most of a division at a time. Do I need another division in Tennessee? That's 17 elements, so I pick and choose among the units I can build there and order as close as I can to the whole thing. This way I just put all the building units into one stack and know exactly what to do with them when they are ready. This is definitely a management task that you get better at over time, but remains one of the more tedious parts of the game. It would be really nice if you could jump to the unit when you click the icon in the War Production screen. Using the E and R keys to cycle through units without orders will prevent you from forgetting about brigades that you bought several turns ago.

[LCcmdr]

Thanks, AMG, for these constructive words. I've been going back through earlier posts in the forum: amazing how some experienced perspective can make bland comments come to life. The levels of complexity in this game are great; I truly am enjoying it--hate that the end of my vacation is so near.

So, I'm on the right track; getting beat is normal, too. Learning from mistakes is still healthy--Good,

And thanks

[ArmChairGeneral]

Once you get the hang of Corps vs. Corps battles, using MTSG in your favor, and how and when to synchronized moves (only a couple of times a game, but when you need it you need it) you start feeling like you are in the driver's seat rather than a passenger. Sounds to me like you are on the brink of that. One of the problems with the Grand Campaigns is that you can't win without getting good at that type of combat but you are 10 hours into a game before they start happening.

You should really, really try the 1862 West Scenario. It is a crash course in exactly this type of battle from the second turn on. The Shiloh scenario is very similar to the first few turns of the West Scenario, but is too short to really be satisfying. That said, you could play Shiloh in less than two hours and get some valuable Corps combat experience with the few hours remaining in your vacation!

Edit:
I'm sure I speak for all of us, "You're Welcome!" It is always fun to see people discover and enjoy a thing you think is cool, and all of us are rooting for you. It is nice to have newbies on the board, a lot of the stuff that is conventional wisdom around here happened in posts a year or more ago and it is good to have it dusted off and re-examined.