How to build up your army?

[Zequera]

I have started several games by now both as federal and confederate but I always end up struggling because I lack either troops or money.
Being new to the game I just recognized that the more brigades I field the stronger is the enemy in the respective battle. While I do not see the sense in that (why should I be penalized when spending more of my resources now than later on) I was thinking that it may be more beneficial to maintain a small elite army than fielding a massive one?

Some guidance or links to topics that describe how to set-up the army size and composition would be highly appreciated.
Thanks!

[Imbezile]

The scaling is currently almost intolerable. Its not just the numbers but equipment too. You give withworths to your sharpshooters, the enemy gets scoped version for his. You happen to come across enough repeaters to outfit skirmishers -> enemy gets some for ALL of his etc. You pick colts for the cavalry and the enemy gets remingtons. Always one step ahead and usually winning 1v1 melee.

The low numbers game works for quite long as the Union. I think I´ve gone as far as Fredricksburg without fielding larger than 1,25k brigades and been successful (brigadier difficulty). CSA campaign however forces you to get three corps at Antietam and after that the scaling really goes on overdrive unless you disband most of your army.

Instead of focusing on the numbers and weapons focus on tactics and especially using cover. Since it really doesn´t matter how large the regiment firing at you is while you sit in the comfort of a 100% cover. This however is being broken by the enemy going completely zerg on you if you do not have enough brigades behind your frontline shooting at the ensuing melee.

There should be adequate army composition guides in the steam community pages. Personally I field three infantry divisions with an artillery brigade and a cavalry division as my first corps. rest of the corps get adjusted by the battle. Usually infantry heavy as well.

[[TFM]bobcat]

There is something to be said for gaming the system and maintaining a small army but I find this it is generally not the best approach. Sure, if you dont have enough men, maintaining a small army makes sense but if you are having trouble finding men to keep your army up to strength that is telling me that you are losing too many men in battles as for both the Union and CSA campaigns you are very likely to have an over abundance of troops until about Antietam when the recruit rewards start dropping. For instance, in most of my playthroughs I tend to have as much as 20-30,000 fresh recruits for the CSA and 60,000 for the Union prior to the battle of Antietam:
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/85970162639170469/4D4977197991FAB51179A7D0D60A291D2FABB47F/
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/85970162639170222/3D4FB4E2E9EBFEF014BC43FE7CDF94C5E10D273B/

And this is with most of my 3 corps filled out. Even on hard difficulty, I've generally been more likely to have more recruits than I can find units to put them in.

Which is where my next point comes in. In a way, you are rewarded for facing bigger enemies as the larger the enemy army is, the higher the enemy body count is if you know what you are doing, which in turn means more weapons dropped by the enemy. After Antietam as the CSA with a 70k army against a 130k union force, it is not unusual for me to inflict as many as 80-90,000 union casualties for about 8,000 losses to me (lessened by a high medicine skill) which means that I will usually get something like 20k worth of captured 1855 rifles which will be nearly enough to fully equip most of my army by that point with this superlative weapon. This can save you a lot of money on weapon costs, not to mention if you capture any weapons that you dont want you can sell them to make more money.

[Metal Lord]

This makes me wonder how small an army you can get through the game with. Challenge Accepted!

[m4rt14n]

Originally posted by TFMbobcat:

There is something to be said for gaming the system and maintaining a small army but I find this it is generally not the best approach. Sure, if you dont have enough men, maintaining a small army makes sense but if you are having trouble finding men to keep your army up to strength that is telling me that you are losing too many men in battles as for both the Union and CSA campaigns you are very likely to have an over abundance of troops until about Antietam when the recruit rewards start dropping. For instance, in most of my playthroughs I tend to have as much as 20-30,000 fresh recruits for the CSA and 60,000 for the Union prior to the battle of Antietam:
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/85970162639170469/4D4977197991FAB51179A7D0D60A291D2FABB47F/
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/85970162639170222/3D4FB4E2E9EBFEF014BC43FE7CDF94C5E10D273B/

And this is with most of my 3 corps filled out. Even on hard difficulty, I've generally been more likely to have more recruits than I can find units to put them in.

Which is where my next point comes in. In a way, you are rewarded for facing bigger enemies as the larger the enemy army is, the higher the enemy body count is if you know what you are doing, which in turn means more weapons dropped by the enemy. After Antietam as the CSA with a 70k army against a 130k union force, it is not unusual for me to inflict as many as 80-90,000 union casualties for about 8,000 losses to me (lessened by a high medicine skill) which means that I will usually get something like 20k worth of captured 1855 rifles which will be nearly enough to fully equip most of my army by that point with this superlative weapon. This can save you a lot of money on weapon costs, not to mention if you capture any weapons that you dont want you can sell them to make more money.

Any tips for antietam as csa? I'm getting above 24k attrition here...

[Vulkan]

I've also noticed there is an upper limit when it comes to enemy army size scaling. For instance, in my Union campaign I have had over 100,000 men (including artillery/cavalry) Since 2nd Bull Run, with mostly 1 and 2 star brigades and a handful of 3 stars. Often I'm finding in the larger battles especially I heavily outnumber the CSA forces. Due to this, Antietam, Fredricksburg, and chancellorsville have so far been a joke, with me having a 30,000 to 40,000 or more manpower advantage. At the final phase of Chancellorsville I was down to about 70,000 and the enemy had only 1,800 left.

[Imbezile]

Use a lot of artillery especially by the bridges. Keep infantry and artillery brigades behind your main line to fill the gaps and fire on melee.

Maintain your left flank in the treeline north of the church and agressively flank left (and right if you do not lose the center bridge) once their entire northern army is focused on sunken road and the church. It is fairly simple to encircle them completely.

If you want to go for the jugular and kill ´em all: once the northern army is gone flank the enemy on the opposite bank via the northern bridge while holding the two others. Using the southern shallows to mount another flanking manouver helps.

Best way to bring the pain to the enemy is by flanking their line as it expands sideways and pulling back to the treeline once the enemy starts turning towards you.

Managed to drop the casualties down to 10k at best when fielding 60k. Destroyed the enemy completely. otherwise the casualties might have been less.

[[TFM]bobcat]

Originally posted by m4rt14n:

Any tips for antietam as csa? I'm getting above 24k attrition here...

Do not defend behind any of the fence areas near the dunker church, put all of your forces in the woods to the left near the Dunker Church. From there, they have great cover and if properly equiped and well trained enough they will absolutely mow down any enemy attack as if they all had machineguns. Make this the baseline for your defense.

The sunken road is pretty much an indefensible position (crazy as that may sound considering the history of the battle) but necessary to hold if you want to win the battle which means you have to ty to make up for its deficiencies. Drawing enemy attention to the woods are of the Dunker Church is a good way to keep the enemy away from the sunken road while keeping men in the road itself will provide units in good cover to act as bullet magnets while flanking the units attacking the road itself.

Another good method is using a diversion to the north. place some units and sniper skirms and cav if you have them in the small wooden area in front of the hill that is initially an objective in the opening part of the battle. This draws union forces to this area and you can use skirms and cav to wear them down for minimal losses.

at the bridge to the right of the sunken road, the union will spawn cav, infantry and artillery in the area to attack the road from that direction. If you camp there with units of your 2nd corps, 4 infantry brigades ish and any cav your second corps may have, you can catch these units by suprise and wipe them out before they become a threat but then withdraw these units back to gaurd the flank of the road as more Union forces will be coming from that direction and the CSA side of the river is indefensible.

Burnside's attack along the bridge is the easiest and will only require a small 3rd corp to hold. Have one unit hold the barricade in front of the bridge to intercept melee charges by the union and have at least 3-4 more brigades within firing range of the unit in the barricade, they can fire on Union forces trying to attack the barricade and route them. You will need to keep an eye on this as eventually the unit in the barricades will route and then its just a matter of rotating a fresh unit into the position.

Perhaps most importantly of all, make sure you have plenty od supplies in your wagons as your units will be out of ammo about 1/3-1/2 of the way through the battle and their lower rate of fire will increase their rate of losses vs fresher union units

[kokopeli]

First, emphasize Politics as an attribute for both the money and the manpower.

I run my early rookie brigades at 1200 and my early 2 stars at 1500.

I recruit rookie brigades led by Majors often and shuffle them around in the early skirmishes to get them all to 1 star. I try to get my first 4 infantry brigades to 2 stars before the third major battle. I usually replace my first division commander with a low level Colonel and assign the division commander to lead an infantry brigade so he can reach Brigadier General and then I swap him with the other Colonel and raise him up to BG.

I don't use much advanced equipment unless I get it as loot from the battlefield so I save money. After 1st Bull Run and Shiloh you have lots of muskets.

As Confederates you can take 3 brigades and 1 battery to the first major battle. Then you build up to 3 Divisions for Shiloh during the intervening 2 skirmishes. Then you build up to five or six Divisions before Gaines Mill. I don't fight with my established divisions in the skirmishes. I train my rookies. I'm also looking to get BGs cheap by training officers up to that level instead of buying them. That is one of the hardest parts.

I buy 12 artillery guns per battery early so they get kills and exp. When a battery commander reaches LtC, I switch him to a brigade or skirmisher regiment, and hire a new Major or Captain. This is part of my effort to get the BGs.

Good Luck!

[Down with Orrix]

1 - spend your reputation. Unless the morale is really helping you out, its better to have slightly less morale and more high end equipment. its true that enemy troops scale, but you'll notice no difference when one of your troops has 2000 lorenz rifles for example. The difference usually comes in when large percentage of your army has better equipment.

2 - Two most important categories for early campaign are Politics and Army organisation. Politics gives the money and manpower, army org is very important for 2000 and 2500 brigades and more brigade slots

3 - Fight the long war, not the short one. the AI will never be meaningfully impacted by any loss of its troops, but if you get your elite brigade cannistered and volleyed into breaking and they lose 800 men, that will be incredibly expensive to recover from. Fight using cover, skirmishers, flanking, and minimise losses. If you have situations where a brigade is going to have to pay a high price, its usually desirable to put rookies into that position rather than veterans, the veterans can hang around the flank / the reserves to plug the gaps.

4 - use specialist brigades often and effectively. my best campaign so far has had an abundance of melee cav, some skirm cav, and a dedicated skirmisher sniper unit. Once you get in the practice of using those brigades in concert with the standard line infantry (and detached skirms from line infantry) it becomes possible to inflict very serious losses but not lose many yourself

5- some battles are incredibly expensive to win. Antietam comes to mind. it only becomes a problem if you don't get time to recover your forces, but w/ antietam which is the most notorious one, you get the next major battle being laughably easy

on a side note, if you're worried about skirmisher scaling -- create dummy brigades in spare slots in your second corps. 100-150 men brigades with captains who are only using hunter rifles will ensure te entire enemy skirm force doesnt simultaneously upgrade to scoped weapons.

[englebertfistybuns]

The bottom line is that it's just really too damn hard, at least on the CSA side, to create an army that is as large as the historical armies. This is the third go for me on medium from the CSA side and I thought I was doing well because I had 60k by Antietam. But then Fredericksburg, Stones River and Chancellorsville hit and I'm going to be around 48k for Gettysburg and that's with using points to buy 5000 troops.

Casualties are too high, especially on the smaller engagements, and replacements don't come in large enough packages.

However, when creating the campaign I usually focus on the perks that give economy and politics bumps. I don't worry about Army Organization early and I just keep it small until Shiloh. Most points go into Politics and Medicine and I gradually add to training, economy and organization.

But the most I've ever had is about 60k so maybe I'm not the best one to be taking advice from.

[Suleo]

Currently (and apparently due to a bug), troop scaling in minor battles is effected by your WHOLE army, not just the (partial) corps that you're allowed to deploy in a minor battle.

As such, reinforcing all your troops immediately after a major battle is suboptimal. The enemy will scale accordingly in the minor battles ahead, but you won't be able to use all those new recruits, and you'll accrue more casualties as a result of scaling. Instead, it's best to only reinforce what you know you'll be using for the minor battles, and leave the remaining brigades un-reinforced, right until the next major battle.

Most minor battles allow between 10-15 brigades. So what you need to do is shuffle your largest brigades around and assign them to a single corps, then reinforce them to the limit you want, then go ahead & fight the minor battle with those brigades.

Also, a point about army organization. An AO of 9 is actually very useful if used correctly. One thing to keep in mind is that officers gain experience by their presence in battles, and you want lots of generals, since they help with efficiency AND they give extra xp to the unit (you want those 2-star units asap). By deploying the max number of allowed units per corps, and as many corps as you can, in major battles, you can get a lot of experience for your officers. Moreover, a high AO makes it easier to shuffle units around for the subsequent minor battle engagements. And, the most important point: you can take advantage of the 'combine division' trick more easily if you have high AO.

The 'combine division' trick (exploit basically) works as follows: you let ONE infantry unit per division deplete on purpose. The ideal number you're looking for is 500 men. As they fight battles and take losses, they deplete but they also gain experience. By the time they hit 500 men (if they started from say, 1500), they will also have 2, and perhaps even 3 stars. But, most importantly. you never actually fight with just those 500 guys; instead, you combine them with a brigade of rookies, making sure that the numbers add up to 2500 (max brigade size for confederacy). And (and here is where the exploit comes along), you give those 500 guys the best guns you can get. When you do that, the entire combined brigade gets that gun. So you end up fielding a crazy amount of fayettevilles that way, and dominate the fire exchange.

Each of my division in my two main corps has one of the 500-men specialized unit, one 2000-man 'fill' unit of rookies, a regular infantry brigade of ~1600 men (those were ex-rookies that, after some battles got 2 stars so they are no longer 'fill'), one unit of cavalry (1-1 ratio of melee to skirmisher), and one artillery. The last slot is usually empty, and is filled appropriately depending on the major battle (e.g. extra artillery for Fredericksburg, extra cavalry for Stone's River). Finally, all my artillery brigades have 6 guns. Enemy artillery scales with # of guns, so it pays to keep yours small; they're pretty darn effective even with 6 guns and they're easier to equip. I usually keep a 1-1 ratio of 24pdr howitzers to 10pdr ordnances.

Using this strategy, and playing on medium difficulty, I've been able to keep casualties down (~7k at Antietam out of 42k fielded, 2.5k at Fredericksburg, 5k at Stone's river). I am now just after Stone's River and have 92k recruits available, 14k Springfield 1863s looted (yes, 1863, lol silly weapon scaling), 14k harpers ferry 1855s, around 20k+ combined regular 1855s and enfields (i bought some enfields), about 5k richmonds and ~2.5k fayettevilles (always buy those).

Apparently this strategy also works on hard. See this video here which basically inspired me to do this: https://youtu.be/ry_jnN3X1mY.

[Zequera]

Thanks a lot for tips and guides.

I took them into account as far as possible in my ongoing confederate campaign but it looks like that too many things are already messed up.
Anyhow, I got still to improve a lot regarding tactics and adequate unit set-up and usage.

When getting to Antietam it was 12k vs. 27k and after several tries it always ended up in a bloody mess. Remembering that the pyrrhic victory at 2nd Manassas killed 60% of my troops and caused the total loss of 3 of my best brigades, I found it better to re-treat from the fight without firing a single bullet. Still got me 190k gold and 8k recruits while I could afford the lost prestige.
However, does have a loss at a major battle any long-term effect?

[Suleo]

As long as you don't get fired (i.e. have < 0 prestige points), there are no long-term effects. One downside is that you probably didn't get the 2 career points for winning? (Not sure about that one).

Honestly though, your troop count is too low for what's ahead. Granted, the game will scale down to your smaller army, but there is a minimum amount to the scaling. It might be worthwhile to restart and try to do better. The results I posted above were on my 4th campaign (and the first one where I actually tried Antietam).

You should definitely not take a lot of losses at 2nd Manassas (Bull run). A tip for that battle: ignore the fortifications in the north & center, and instead establish your defensive line at the forest. This will force the union to come at you through vast open ground, while making you imprevious to flanking. If you choose to fight it at the fortifications instead, you're prone to flanking at the northenrmost point.