Union NM queston

[ArmChairGeneral]

I am 109 to their 90 and am besieging Richmond and can probably take it any turn I choose. How much more NM do I need to swing in my favor before taking Richmond becomes decisive? What is the CSA's sudden death threshold? It is June '62. I want to make sure Richmond is decisive so I don't have to hurriedly chase down rebel stacks before NM leveling lets them squirm their way out and forces me to grind them for another year.

[Gray Fox]

IIRC sudden death NM is 25. It's a good idea to go for it all. It's my experience that after losing her capital Athena no longer has an algorythm for what to do next. Her forces just kind of mill around without a real purpose. Once, I had loaded her side and moved her doomed capital for her and the result was still the same. After a head shot she just bleeds out.

[Cromagnonman]

It sort of depends on where her capital moves to - often she falls back precipitously and gives up a lot of ground (that you have to garrison, of course). In my current game I took Richmond about the same time I took Vicksburg, and her capital moved to Atlanta. She pretty quickly fell back to Georgia, as well as running all her troops from the TransMississippi down through Baton Rouge towards Mobile. All that said, Richmond has a large portion of the South's ability to produce supplies, men, and money

[Rod Smart]

I am 109 to their 90 and am besieging Richmond and can probably take it any turn I choose. How much more NM do I need to swing in my favor before taking Richmond becomes decisive? What is the CSA's sudden death threshold? It is June '62. I want to make sure Richmond is decisive so I don't have to hurriedly chase down rebel stacks before NM leveling lets them squirm their way out and forces me to grind them for another year.

As Grayfox noted, its extremely low. 25.

Take it. The sooner you start the death spiral, the sooner the death spiral starts.



Removing that bottleneck will also allow you to start taking all those lightly garrisoned towns in the hinterland. That's 1NM every time someone surrenders, or 1NM every time your large stack beats the crap out of a defending brigade. 2NM a turn from taking level 2 towns > 0.5 NM a turn from leveling.

[ArmChairGeneral]

Athena ended up suiciding a couple of 1000 Pwr stacks against me to lift the siege at Richmond and I won a big battle outside Bowling Green. I got another few chasing down the remnants around Richmond, took the city and then had to isolate and destroy the remainder of her Virginia forces to get over the top. It took about three months, but that was mostly maneuvering around to catch her; with NM in the 30s and 40s troops fight VERY poorly. The AI seemd to shut down in the East with some big stacks just sitting in place doing nothing. She was still pretty active in Kentucky though. The leveling was tough, on one turn she got back 5 NM, but I was gaining NM from battles on just about every turn, so it didn't take as long as I had feared. I probably would have just counted it as a win and started a new game if I had needed to grind my way down to Atlanta.

Thanks for the help guys!