Union woes, CSA throes - Turn 1

[BossGnome]

Hi,

Well, I have some time on my hands at the moment, so I thought I would write a little something on these forums for a change. I do not think I am by any means a master at this game; yet, having so far never lost, I do suspect that I might be doing something right, or at least, that I understand the basic mechanics that make success possible. The intent of this post is simply to share a few points, musings, and thoughts about the first turn of this game and how to play it, as well as possibly to start a discussion along the broad and narrow lines of strategy.

I will begin with the union.

The first turn is, sadly for this game; somewhat scripted. That is: there is definitely one (you could argue maybe two) BEST ways to do it. I will explain what this "best" way is, and why.

Union Objectives: 1) Align W. Virginia and Missouri, 2) Prepare for possible amphibious operations on turn 2, 3) Set up troop training camps. 4) Build.

Objective 1: This is relatively easy to do, and yet it always surprises me how many players do not do it. Turn 1 activation is crucial for both these states, as it will not only give the union player better access to their population, but, more importantly, to their factories which, combined, number 4. The cavalry already present in Missouri should move to Joplin, and another cavalry should be activated, moved down to springfield (pref. with a cavalry gen. coming from Kentucky). There. Missouri aligned.

Now for W. Virginia. This one is a little trickier to get, but oh so simple when you think about it. Begin with McClellan's force. One of his corp commanders has two infantry under him (hint: it's not Rosecrans). Move that guy to capture Charleston. Now, take one of the infantry in Parkersburg, turn it into a cavalry, get a cav. Gen. from Kentucky, and move to capture Franklin. Now poor Garnett is surrounded. Rosecrans will make quick work of him, although you can no longer overrun. W. Virginia is now firmly in Union hands.

Objective 2: Many people have pointed this fact out already, but the Union will most likely not be strong enough to attack the confederacy in Virginia until March-April 1862. So, in the early turns, the Union player should concentrate on amphibious operations to chip away at the confederacy and to prevent themselves slipping below the magic line of 950. To maximize the chances that at least some troops activate so that you can send them overseas, attach at least 1 infantry to every single general you can; good, bad, horrendous, even administrative generals or, if you have some left over, admirals. Even an admiral can invade an undefended island successfully. Of course, good training generals like Buell should be filled at least halfway. Finally, make Butler an army commander. Sure, he's very bad, but his political rating is 4, and his presence at Fort. Monroe can give you two generals on the atlantic coast who can potentially activate your troops for amphib. operations. I would recommend against a massive buildup of troops at monroe (I remember losing 10+ infantry to disease in those swamps in one game), but five or six bad generals with one infantry each can do for a nice island invasion force.

Oh, and about those islands: they only help your blockade if you build a depot on them! I repeat: when you invade the island, build a depot on it. Otherwise, it's useless.

Objective 3: Pretty straightforward. At this time, the union cares more about training troops than about getting untrained militias moving across the border into southron lands. Fill up your best training generals halfway, then move down the "training skill ladder", and fill your less-good generals halfway, until you have no unattached infantry left. Why halfway? Because each general has two chances to train an infantry, but has to expend a point to use that chance. Thus, a rating 6 general with 3 infantry will get to expend two chances per infantry, while a rating 6 general with 4 infantry will get to expend two chances for two infantry, and one chance for both others. Notice how your overall chances of training those infantry DO NOT INCREASE. Thus, there is no real point, at least unless the general is a good fighter, like Grant, to fill up training generals to full capacity.

Last point: Why I like first Manassas: Many good players do not like to do first manassas. I can understand why: it's humiliating, losses can be heavy, and the south invariably wins. (Damn southerners). However, I like it, and here's why: not only does it save you 10 pps, but, more importantly, it interferes with early southern troop movements. Many people do not seem to think about this; by launching first Manassas, the Union player forces the confederates to react with their forces. Stonewall Jackson, Stuart, Bee, all will be in one precise location: in MANASSAS, not able to go anywhere else. An opening play that I like to do as the south involves leaving the Tennessee front bare for a turn, and massing up around twenty units in Winchester, to make a play for Harper's Ferry or Franklin, assuming AS Johnston can get activation. This gets harder to do with 6+ southern units stuck in Manssas. Another play I like is massing units in Arkansas and moving to Springfield. My point is that, by launching first Manassas, the union ensures that at least 6-7 confed. units are stuck there for a turn - which is important, because then they can't be causing mischief anywhere else. The last thing the union needs in the opening turns is an offensive confederacy. The rebs should be put on the defensive as soon as possible.

Objective 4: Ok, there are a few specific things the union needs. Hint: Supplies aren't one of them. Take every single factory you have that can build things except supplies and build stuff with them. There are a few exceptions: The border states suffer from a relative lack of population, so don't try to go building artillery in Charleston. It won't work. Usually, I build 9-10 cruisers, 2-3-4 ironclads, max gunboats on the rivers, maybe 2 gunboats for the atlantic, 2-3 transports every turn (you'll need them for amphibious operations!), and 6-7 artillery. You don't really need heavy artillery as the union, unless somehow you lose what you already have. Finally, declare a draft.

This is, so far as I can tell, the best way to accomplish turn one, with the possible exception of first manassas, which I feel is up to the player's preference.

Whew, that turned out a bit longer than I intended. Now for the Confederacy:

Objectives: 1) Consolidate fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip. 2) Keep the union player off his toes. 3)Dig in - but smartly.

1) These forts are a pain, but necessary. To be honest, I cannot say with 100% certainty how far you should attempt to defend them - any infantry or militia stuck in them will cost you a bunch to resupply, and will be sorely missed somewhere else. In any case, minimum manning for the forts should be two heavy artillery in each of them, although at that level if the union still decides to make a play for one of them, it will probably fall. Do not underestimate the importance of these forts, though. Their fall will deprive you of some 50+ supplies, EVERY TURN, which you could have gotten by keeping the Mississippi open. My personal recommendation is 3 HA in each.

2) There are a few ways to do this, but none are surefire. The only places to attack on turn two really are W. Virginia or Missouri. Unless you yourself want to take Kentucky first, it is acceptable to leave the front at minimum manning (a few cavalry to react in London and Bowling Greene, for example), and mass units in Arkansas (I try for 8-9), and Winchester (no more than twenty - wouldn't want to accidentally give the Yankees a strategic victory this early!) Another way to annoy the union is with Stuart. I try to fill him up as fast as I can: the Union has no comparable cavalry commander and, from Manassas, he can wreck havoc on Maryland for the better part of 1861 and 1862, causing hundreds of supplies of damage.

3) Dig in. Build forts in order of urgency. Virginia can wait - but all coastal level two forts should be built as soon as possible. Galveston and Jacksonville should not be far behind. In one game, I was able to take Mobile solely because my opponent hadn't yet gotten around to building a level 2 fort in the area. The cost in supplies hurts, but the confederacy is not as cash-starved in the first 6-12 months of the war as some people seem to think. As long as confederate factories consistently produce around 150 supplies a month, even with a fairly effective union blockade it is possible for the south to make a surplus. Jacksonville is a favourite target for early union invasion. To prevent this, always try to keep 5-6 units there, but watch out against being cut off by landings in Tallahassee or Waycross.

Also, always keep a few units at the border with Kentucky, ready to react when the union invades. The best situation for the south would be to have an activated infantry to take Glasgow, with a cavalry ready to zoom past and take Lexington.


Alright, that's it for me. Feel free to respond with your own thoughts, comments, criticisms. When I feel like it at some later date, I will most likely expand on these thoughts, hopefully moving past turn 1.

Cheers,

BossGnome

[Joel Billings]

Excellent analysis of the game. All first time players should read this.

[Tempest_slith]

[font=arial]These are all good and true points (I should have read this before the Fort St Philip debacle in our game) but I see you have the same misconception about training as I did.[/font][/align][font=arial][/font] [/align][font=arial]You said:[/font][/align][font=arial]Objective 3: Pretty straightforward. At this time, the union cares more about training troops than about getting untrained militias moving across the border into southron lands. Fill up your best training generals halfway, then move down the "training skill ladder", and fill your less-good generals halfway, until you have no unattached infantry left. Why halfway? Because each general has two chances to train an infantry, but has to expend a point to use that chance. Thus, a rating 6 general with 3 infantry will get to expend two chances per infantry, while a rating 6 general with 4 infantry will get to expend two chances for two infantry, and one chance for both others. Notice how your overall chances of training those infantry DO NOT INCREASE. Thus, there is no real point, at least unless the general is a good fighter, like Grant, to fill up training generals to full capacity. [/font][/align][font=arial][/font] [/align][font=arial]The above is true in regards to unattached troops i.e. an 8 command rating leader with no attached militia will expend a command rating point for each unattached militia in his region during each of 2 training phases in a full game turn, so to ensure a double training, the max militia in his region could be 4.[/font][/align][font=arial][/font] [/align][font=arial]However (and this doesn't jump out at you in the rules), the game mechanic is a leader will train each attached militia in each of the 2 full game turn training phases, so our 8 command rating leader with 8 attached militia and so with zero command rating points remaining will train all 8 militia in each training phase for (assuming no militia trained up to regulars in the first training phase) 16 training attempts in a full game turn. Try a quick test and see.[/align][/font]

[BossGnome]

Aha! Well, I shall certainly put this new knowledge to use! It puts me somewhat to shame that after so many months of playing, I still didn't get the training system in this game.

There is, after reflection, a point that I would like to add to the first union turn, a naval strategy which I have only recently begun to consider but which, so far, seems to work surprisingly well. It was first tried on me by Doc O War, playing the Union, with initial success, but in my opinion he did not push it far, or fast enough. In my subsequent game against Tempest, in which I played the Union, I imitated the Doctor's strategy (imitation is the highest form of flattery Doc!), with a few twists to increase, at least in my view, its effectiveness. The results so far have been very satisfying, although my game with Tempest is still very much in its infancy. Here it is:

As was mentioned in my lenghty discourse on turn 1, one of the main Confederate objectives is keeping Fts Jackson and St. Philip in friendly hands. It thus follows that one of the main Union objectives is to have those same forts taken. The best time for the Union to do this is early; IE: BEFORE OCTOBER 1861. Why? Because after October 1861 the first batch of Confederate HA comes roaring out of the southern factories. Until he is able to build more, the southern player is extremely restricted in the HA he has availible to him. He has a total of 9 to start. Assuming he puts 4 of those in Fts Jackson and St. Philip (2 per fort), that only leaves 5 to cover the rest of the Confederacy. After october, then all bets are off. The rebels could have the forts bristling with 4 or more artillery each, rendering any attempt at blocking the mississippi near suicide. Now, how can a skillfull union player exploit this early advantage to the maximum? The answer is the same as the one given for many military problems: concentration of forces.

The Union's cruisers, split as they are at 1-2 per zone at the beginning of turn 1, are almost useless, and the confederates knew this (this is why they laughed when Lincoln said he would impose a blockade of the south). Until the islands are taken and depot-ed, your ships' blockading power is minimal (around 12-15% per ship). Instead of having them just sit around on the atlantic coast doing nothing, much better to have them rampaging throughout the gulf! Here's what I do:

1) Take Dupont and move him and his cruiser to the mouth of the Mississippi; going to go bombard some forts on turn 2.
2) Take Bell's cruiser and give it to Dupont; Dupont is a much better commander.
3) Take MacCauley's cruiser and move it in front of Mobile bay and Pensacola. give it to Bell. Bell is a better commander than MacCauley.
4) Take Stringham's cruiser and move it as far in the Gulf as possible (believe the sea zone is 359). Stringham, I use for riverine combat with gunboats in the Mississippi. Take Stringham and move him to his new command near Paducah.
5) Take Craven and move him and his cruiser as far in the Gulf as possible. (believe it is 361).
6)Take Goldsborough and his navy and do the same. Unattach the gunboat so the cruisers can move at their max speed, but make it follow along. It should be able to just round the tip of Florida. Goldsborough is a pathetic commander, but you can switch most of his command on turn 2, probably to Bell.

Now, you have 8 cruisers and 1 gunboat in the gulf of mississippi by turn 2. The atlantic seaboard is bare, but, honestly, who cares? The few supplies your cruisers could have prevented are not worth it compared to the blows (both real and psychological) that you are about to deliver to your opponent.

Turn 2.

Now, you have 8 cruisers ready to attack confederate batteries. Slight problem is, only 4 of them have enough movement to reach the mouth of the mississippi and bombard the forts, and only 3 of those have enough movement for double bombardement. The way to thus maximize your cruiser potential is like this:

1) Take Dupont, and give him 3 cruisers (those with 2 remaining MPs). The last cruiser can go to Craven. Although a horrendous defender, Craven is quite good at bombarding things that are ashore.

2) Move into the first mississippi river hex. At this point, you will be able to tell if your opponent has strenghtened the forts, by seeing whether or not there are transports there for you to sink. More than 1 transport will mean that your opponent has stashed 3 or more HA in each fort. In this case, it might be better to not bombard, and just wait until you are fired at. This is the worst case scenario, but you will still block the mississippi for 1 turn, most likely cause him some casualties, and have sunk 2+ confederate transports (when you consider that he only has around 16 in the entire Mississippi, this isn't such a small deal!) More likely though, there will only be 1 transport there for you to sink. That means there are 2 or less HA in each fort. If there are no transports, even better; the forts are bare, with 1HA each. In either case, fire away!

3) Bombard. Concentrate on 1 fort, if you knock its guns out, move to the other. Concentrate on one fort though, that is all that is really necessary to take to block the river.

4) If you have a decent amphibious invasion force (decent = 6 units or more, with a competent general), attempt to take over one of the cleared forts immediately. If not, hold out for a turn. Although the forts might very well be vacant of infantry, you don't wanna take that chance. If all you have are single unit amphibious assault forces, take the islands first.

5) What to do with the 5 other cruisers? The answer: Mobile. Get Bell on the case, and move in. If your opponent did not put any HA there, fine, you can blockade the harbour, denying any supplies to the city. If there is HA there, blow it from the shore - chances are, your opponent hasn't upgraded Mobile to a lvl 2 fort yet. Remember, it's only turn 2.
6) Remember the lonely gunboat we left after it had just rounded the tip of florida? Bring it into Mobile bay. It will be ready to advance up the Alabama on turn 3, wrecking more rebel transports and preventing movement from Mobile to Baldwin.

So, what should the results of your gulf operations be at the end of turn 2? 1-3 cruisers damaged, 3-5 confederate HA damaged, forts Jackson or St Philip about to be taken, or, at least, rendered incapable of causing mischief to your ships, the Mississippi should be closed, Mobile should be closed, with the Alabama river open to gunboat invasion, and the confederate player should be wondering what the hell just hit him.

From there, you have a few options: New Orleans? Pensacola? Baldwin?(keep the gunboat in the Alabama to prevent reinforcements from moving in from Mobile, and Baldwin becomes a very viable target for early invasion), hell, Biloxi?? The choices are yours. Keeping control of the Alabama as long as possible is a very nice perk for the union; it will force the confederates to divide their forces defending the Mobile-Baldwin-Pensacola tripod, accordingly reducing their efficiency, or forcing him to station more troops, meaning they won't be stationed elsewhere. The biggest objective of this operation though is to close the Mississippi. If the personal qualms of your generals prevent you from sending an amphibious force immediately, at least keep 2 cruisers in the mouth of the mississippi to ensure Tatnall and his gunboat can't make a breakout (which I did with him in my game against Doc). As soon as one of the forts is taken, you can move the fleet and use it for other purposes; return it to the atlantic seaboard; try to cruise further up the mississippi, see how far you can go - once again, the choices are yours.

That goes for the union part of the turn 1 naval strategy. Now for the confederate navy...wait, there is no confederate navy.

Alright, then off to bed for me!

[henri51]

Great tutorials, and very useful to fillin for the insufficient hands-on tutorials that come with the game. However I did have a few problems due to my lack of understanding of some things that may be obvious to you.

I did manage (after a few tries) to take Missouri and West Virginia as you proposed. Missouri couldn't be simpler, but I still don't understand why I need cavalry to move infantry into an adjacent region and capture it. I had to restart a few times for the WV case because I didn't realize that the first territoru must be TAKEN before I am able to move units into Franklin, due to shortened distances.

The naval movements to take a Mississipi fort is quite clear and not tooo hard to follow, but I failed to take the port after I moved into the first river slot. Maybe because I failed to have the exact number of cruisers indicated (the instructions on where and what to move are somewhat spotty and require some guessing), and I coudn't figure out how to bombard and probably missed a bombard opportunity.Anyway when I DID bombard I lost the battle and had to retreat, although the Confederates had only one transport in the port.

And oh yes, I put some generals on some islands on the East Coast, but they were both captured at the end of the first move, so I presume that I sould have moved some infantry along with them...[8|]

Anyway I found this tutorial very useful to get a handle on the game. I still have not played any game further than the second move, and am looking forward to making it to move 3 during the next week.[:D]

Henri

[GShock]

Try the more advanced rules and you'll have some surprises a little later on. [:)]

[avgard]

Nice breakdown for the Union first turn. I feel vindicated as I have been doing most of it including the doomed attack on Manassas to save the points. First turn is really pretty much set. Thereafter, its jump into the fire. What I would like to see is a good second move.