Part 1: Intro
I'm going to write this guide focusing on the South and from a more macro perspective. I don't play detailed battles, hardly at all, so this guide is geared towards those who play quick or instant battle. It makes things a fair bit harder for the South. People that do detailed combat will still be able to glean nuggets of information from the guide, although being able to micro battles much more in detailed combat may shift the focus some for buildings and upgrades. I have pushed the difficulty so far to Captain/Neutral Power levels, on both Southern Steel and Standard Campaign. I'm going to try Major next. The picture below is my usual options.
So let's first start with the main menu. I am not going to explain what each of these options do, but rather comment on their impact to the game. Especially as the southern player. My focus on the south is generally because the north can be so overpowering, that in order to lose, you pretty much have to gimp yourself pretty hardcore. Maybe one of these days, I'll crank the difficulty all the way to 11 and give the USA a go and see how tough it is. I imagine it could get to the point of absurdity, but that would be a different guide. Another point that will come up often, and that is the law of diminishing returns or scale. Most of the game options will impact both North and South uniformly, but not necessarily equally. While both sides will play by the same rules, these rules can hit one side harder. The easiest way to explain this would be upkeep costs. Both sides upkeep will scale at the same rate with their army. But even though North and South may be paying 50% of their cash supply to maintain their armies, for the North that may mean dropping to 150 cash excess a turn, whereas for the South, that would mean dropping to 20 excess cash a turn. In this game, the difference between 150 cash a turn and 20 is 3 camps per turn versus .4 camps per turn.
Advance Supply - This will make it harder on the South. It is tough to have enough units to be able to simultaneously push on an offensive AND not have to worry about maintaining lines of supply. Pushing through Kansas and Missouri can be perilous if you have to maintain supply lines. Ditto for Kentucky.
Upkeep Costs- This will make it harder on the South. Having to use your already meager cash resources to pay upkeep, especially as you advance your tech, will take a toll.
Governors - This option will help the South early game and punish you late game. This is mostly because the war will be fought on your soil. Which means eventually the governors of just about every state will hate you. While we don't really care what their personal opinions are, they can influence our war effort. Governors that like us will do nifty things like give a bonus to money production or logistical research. Governors that hate us will do things like oppose money production, oppose volunteer musters, and oppose impressments. But UG, you ask, if the North doesn't decide to invade New Orleans, how will the governor of Louisiana ever not like me??? Well, my young Padawan, he will believe me. Partly because governors also do annoying things like ask you to build improvements in their state that will not help your war effort. In addition to providing no tangible benefit, these improvements will suck critical resources to build. But more importantly, at high difficulty levels you will be mustering, impressing, and even occasionally conscripting early and often. Every time you do this, you will be whacking the governors opinion of you, unless he supports the measures. But they hardly ever do when you need them to, so by 1863, you can expect about every governor to have at least a mild dislike of you, and be contributing things like negative labor production and weapons research to the cause. Demoting generals is also something they hate.
Population modifiers - This option definitely makes it harder on the South. You will be slowly draining your man power pools in your cities at the higher difficulty levels. This means that the resources you don't have enough of, will just deplete even further. Take into account that several of your major cities have camps that deplete population AFTER the April pop refresh, then you will begin to attrition out your resource production. This also forces you to consolidate your camps into as few provinces as possible, which can have disasterous consequences, especially in multiplayer.
Research Upgrades - This can be a blessing and a curse, but is critical to the South. Why is it critical? One tech. Invalid Corps. Without the Invalid Corps as the South, you are sunk against the harder AIs. You have to have this, period. Deep six your logistical tech choices the first time it pops until you draw this one. One of the best starts you can have is an early logistical research boost from a governor or a bulk logistical tech gift from a foreign power. I would say this is even more critical than Kentucky for a successful game at hard levels.
Advance Buildings - Absolutely a must to have for the South. Camps camps camps. 4k replacements every two weeks is equivalent to death.
Greater Population - This option will make it easier on the South. Your pop pool bonus will mean more to you than it will the North.
Richer Economy - See Greater Population
Poorer Economy - There are easier ways to hate yourself. Just don't. I am convinced this option exists to limit army sizes and play a more micro oriented game.
Impressment - Absolutely critical to the South. The higher the difficulty, the more you will be hitting the impressment button just to stay afloat. This button also allows muster and conscripting of units. You will be mustering every March as the South, and depending on your desperation, sometimes in the middle of the year. Conscripting will be used much less, but does have it's purposes as I will describe later.
European Diplomacy - Doesn't matter. You won't have any money to spend here, and if you do, you will be wasting it.
No European War - Doesn't matter. See above. Option for a Union player game.
Unit Attrition - This makes it harder on the South. Your army groups will only be so big in game, and the Unions won't be much bigger (he will just have more of them). So marching your guys around on internal defense lines will rack up casualties.
Total Victory - This will make it tougher on the South in harder difficulties, but probably not noticeable.
No Time Limit - On harder difficulties, Nov 1864 is your best friend. The bonus VPs you get on Nov of 1864 may be your only hope of winning. Your strategy is essentially slowly trading land for time and hope the 1864 VP boost is enough to win you the game.
Staff Ratings - This one advantages the South, but only really when you do not randomize general's stats. Using historic general's ratings means you can use your better generals to improve your staff ratings, helping you with supply consumption and rally checks in Quick Combat.
Special Abilities - These can be taught by your generals and can help you eek out more damage from your meager manpower. In quickcombat, most of these just come down to increasing your salvos or counter-salvos.
Unit Disposition - Think of it as how organized/hungry for blood your units are. I believe this one favors the South as well, given a lot of your early combat will be in range of hospitals, and your propensity to win a lot of the early battles. Disposition can help slow the casualty grind early on while you try to build your camp count.
Upgrade Weapons - This one is a mixed bag. Most of your starting weapons are garbage, and when you recruit units they will have garabge weapons (most of the time). Weapons can get expensive to upgrade, especially if you are able to expand your division counts. Most of the time you get cut off from the Euro weapons, so you are forced to make due primarily with Muskets and Minie rifles, at least until you start scavaging the dead Yankee corpses for Springfields. Overall I think the South wants this option, as you can gain weapons for free from blockade runners, while the north has to buy with guns and money. You can gain an early combat advantage from this.
Fog of War - Not sure if the computer cheats or not. Obviously perfect information will make your job as CiC easier, but this is up to you. It's not often I get surprised by the AI.
Hide Enemy Strength - This falls in the same category as Fog of War. You can usually get a good idea of the army size over time, and being surprised is just a lack of observation.
Unit Attributes - This is mandatory for success at the harder difficulty levels, for mainly one reason. Brigade artillery. And to a lesser extent, scouts. I will elaborate more on this later.
Initiative Checks - Benefits the South with historical generals. At least early game.
Slow winter movement - Critical for the South. This in most cases will give you a four turn respite in which to stock up on reinforcements. It will also allow you to be strategic with your sieges.
Allow CSA Emancipation - Not sure why the South would do this, unless you wanted to keep the Union from destroying your relations with the European powers. Else let the Union do it and enjoy the free brigades.
No Starting Legendaries - Starting legendaries are great for the South. You can even have duplicates of the same legendaries over time! But under the standard of marginal returns, the extra quality units are good early on.
Use Generals - This option is needed for the South. Especially if you play historical stats. The early general quality skew to the South will buy you much needed time.
Randomized Stats - This evens the field between the North and the South, as your early bonus in general quality is negated.
Randomized Start Dates - This is more for flavor than anything. I haven't studied the start dates of generals enough to see if it matters.
Hidden Stats - Not for the faint of heart, but very much fun to play but only in conjunction with randomized stats. Hiding historical stats that you already know is pointless. But randomized hidden stats with Quickcombat can be a lesson in self-hatred. But it is a very fun way to play.
More Generals - This will benefit the South as it gives you a chance to give more brigades bonuses in combat with will help you out more.
Fewer Generals - Opposite of above, but probably necessary if you choose poorer economy to not have a bunch of generals being assigned to city/fort command duty.
Always Quick Combat - The only way to play for a truly masochistic Southern experience, but will probably keep you from winning on General difficulty with Southern power at -3.
Always Instant Combat - For when quickbattles take too long.
Always Detail Battles - For when you want your game to last as long as the real Civil War did.
Near Start - Only applicable to detail combat.
Far Start - See above.
Victory Locations/Out of Command/Attacker Time Limit - See above.
Faster Sieges - This will generally favor the Union as they will do more sieging than you and you generally will want the time to mount a counter-attack if you get pushed out of Memphis/Nashivlle/Fredericksburg/Random costal fort/city.
Slower Sieges - Will benefit the South as it is the opposite of above.
Next up: Scenarios and Power Levels
