Tips for Saunders Farm as CSA?

[Alex Jones]

This battle baffles me, even on easy. The Corps placement screen puts the Feds at ~60,000 while my force gets a Corps and Half totally ~30,000, which seems like a relativley easy fight, especially if I put my veteran units in. Taking a holding the first objective is easy enough, even as it denigrates into a slug fest that chew up your units, but the second phase wants me to push forward against an well entrenched enemy with over 200 artillery guns. I had some sucess on my first play through pushing my men through the woods on my left flank but eneamy reinfocemens seem to arrive from the rear of that, while pushing my right flank has not yeilded positive results in any way. I'm worried I made my army incorrectly and hsould have put more men into individula briageds as well as maxed out my army organization sooner. Thoughts?

[Aurion]

Move fast and flank to the left while holding the woods near the first point. If you push all the way to the road you can deploy a few brigades to delay the VI Corps while you deal with the troops defending the second point.

You definitely want to start pushing towards the second point before the phase change.

[RICH EVANS]

If I'm honest, I played through the other two minor battles and got really positive results, including a 4 to 1 KDR at Laurel Hill. However, on Saunder farm, I played it through once, achieved a Draw, immediately went back to the save before the battle and went to Cold Harbour ignoring it.

The reward is not worth the effort by far. You're basically looking at a guaranteed loss of >10k if you want a victory and play aggressively. For your effort you get 8k recruits, maybe a bit more, a small amount of money and a marginally easier time at Cold Harbour, but only if you win. With a draw, you'll probably still take around 10k losses and get around 5k in return, you'll lose commanders and a fair bit of reputation and that's basically it.
If you ignore the battle entirely, you're in a better position for Cold Harbour.

To win, I'd probably force-march my entire initial army aggressively into both points and hold them with reinforcments, using the tree-line on the left flank to hold of the late phase Union reinforcements. It's possible to get a foothold in the trees on either side of the Union position and squeeze in-ward, or simply distract on the left as you push through the middle or right. But again, you'll take losses that you wont get back for the battles you need them for.

(Also, as the CSA, only put enough points into Army Organisation to get 4 divisions per Corp. You dont need 4 corps, you dont need 2500 men per brigade. You do need max Politics, max Training and max Medicine.)

[Wright29]

The goal is to capture all of the woods to the left of both of the objectives and take the objectives with little time left. From the woods you can can shoot from cover with great effect. The key to the entire Union position is the woods immediately to the north of the first tobjective point. RUN there with whatever units you can muster. With the position, you'll flank the westward facing entrenchments that screw people up most of the time.

[brett.a.hankinson]

I don't think that all draws should lower your reputation. If you're clearly out numbered and you obtain a high KDR, why would you be punished so bad?

[Scottster]

really stuck on this one, like OP states its a slug fest (am CSA, BG) is it worth me trying a right flanking manover? (anyone tried it?) them woods on the right are alot closer to the second objective flag...obvs dont wanna lose too many of my boys with Cold Harbour 2battles away...

[maniacalpenny]

Originally posted by Andy:

If I'm honest, I played through the other two minor battles and got really positive results, including a 4 to 1 KDR at Laurel Hill. However, on Saunder farm, I played it through once, achieved a Draw, immediately went back to the save before the battle and went to Cold Harbour ignoring it.

The reward is not worth the effort by far. You're basically looking at a guaranteed loss of >10k if you want a victory and play aggressively. For your effort you get 8k recruits, maybe a bit more, a small amount of money and a marginally easier time at Cold Harbour, but only if you win. With a draw, you'll probably still take around 10k losses and get around 5k in return, you'll lose commanders and a fair bit of reputation and that's basically it.
If you ignore the battle entirely, you're in a better position for Cold Harbour.

To win, I'd probably force-march my entire initial army aggressively into both points and hold them with reinforcments, using the tree-line on the left flank to hold of the late phase Union reinforcements. It's possible to get a foothold in the trees on either side of the Union position and squeeze in-ward, or simply distract on the left as you push through the middle or right. But again, you'll take losses that you wont get back for the battles you need them for.

(Also, as the CSA, only put enough points into Army Organisation to get 4 divisions per Corp. You dont need 4 corps, you dont need 2500 men per brigade. You do need max Politics, max Training and max Medicine.)

I would argue that army org is the most important stat for the confeds, up to a certain point. 24 brigades corps and 2500 men brigades are both very good, and there are certain battles that can be abused with a large starting force (2nd Manassas being the big one). Training on the other hand is mediocre for the confeds due to their very powerful recruits. Its not hard at all to keep the majority of your brigades at 2*, and 3* brigades are a luxury and not a requirement.

The other parts I mostly agree with. It is possible for Saunders farm to be worth it when factoring in the rewards like looted weapons career point, and rep, but in general taking a lot of losses is unavoidable and the rewards are mediocre at best and how "worth it" the mission is also depends on the state of the enemy army and the RNG reinforcements they receive.. As for the strategy itself, I'd rather force march long the left side and avoid the victory points until the end of the battle. They are indefensible and holding the treeline is the only way to get a reasonable KD ratio (this may be what you suggested but your wording is a little ambiguous)

[limith]

I marched to the left and ambushed union reinforcements. If you manually draw walk paths on the road you don't need to run reinforcements. Also take the treeline. You can arty bombard them out of fortifications and then move forward. Have 3 lines defending the objective since union will countercharge after you grab the objective. You have to hold it for 1 hour past the end of battle timer. The important thing is to take the left and right side trees so you can crossfire the center. You will take about 10k casualties mostly defending the objective

[Prinz Eugen]

At least on easy, an attack on the right flank (in addition to the advance on the left flank) is totally doable, and it can help you to win reducing the amount of losses.

[Lu5ck]

I have a lot of troops and a lot of cash. I have destroyed my enemies with a good kill death ratio.
I am playing on normal though.

I think it is a effect of your past battles. All my battles were won with good kill death ratio, I always intentionally circling and destroying my enemies, capture whenever possible. The main point is to control union troops level so that all my upcoming battles won't have numeric disadvantage. If your enemy is having 100k troops level at that campaign, it will be a hard fight, very hard fight and so is all your future battles.

At that stage, I am pulling out similar numbers while having 2 stars to 3 stars infantries backed up by horses.

[maniacalpenny]

Originally posted by Lu5ck:

I have a lot of troops and a lot of cash. I have destroyed my enemies with a good kill death ratio.
I am playing on normal though.

I think it is a effect of your past battles. All my battles were won with good kill death ratio, I always intentionally circling and destroying my enemies, capture whenever possible. The main point is to control union troops level so that all my upcoming battles won't have numeric disadvantage. If your enemy is having 100k troops level at that campaign, it will be a hard fight, very hard fight and so is all your future battles.

At that stage, I am pulling out similar numbers while having 2 stars to 3 stars infantries backed up by horses.

By Saunders farm I think you actually want to let the feds start building up, as the minimum deployment for Washington is very high even on lower difficulties (180k on BG?).

Also, no matter how powerful your army is, Saunder's farm is a ♥♥♥♥♥. It's not so much a matter of how good of a KD you can achieve in Saunder's farm either, its the poor rewards. Even with a 3:1 or 4:1 KD at Saunders Farm taking 10k+ casualties is harsh as the monetary rewards are garbage and the recruit rewards barely make up for your losses. Unless you are relevantly depleting the Union Army at the same time (was not the case for me, the Union got something like 36k reinforcements after that battle for me) Saunder's farm is barely worth it.

[Lu5ck]

I think it has something to do on how one build up at the beginning. I amassed a lot of assets at the start, maxing politic follow by medicine. This gave me a lot of cash and reserves, then the medicines reduce my loss while myself ensure to keep my loss at minimum through environment advantage. Some people recommend army organisation, I don't, I believe in always maxing politic and medicine first. Army only come later and you only need to increase army as you progress on. I always spend all my reputation on gears and cash earlier on. I still do that at later stage but you know, it gets expensive.

I always ensure to kill every single enemy in every battle, unless the system force the ending. Likewise, I always try to kill as much people as possible before the next cut scene. I believe this build up a massive assets and kept union numbers low. I remember there are some grand battle where I killed their entire forces of 50k to 60k while only losing 10k plus. This means their reinforcement don't even cover up their losses. I kept on doing that and most of their future reinforcement, perhaps due to compounding effects, couldn't cover their losses.

[maniacalpenny]

Originally posted by Lu5ck:

I think it has something to do on how one build up at the beginning. I amassed a lot of assets at the start, maxing politic follow by medicine. This gave me a lot of cash and reserves, then the medicines reduce my loss while myself ensure to keep my loss at minimum through environment advantage. Some people recommend army organisation, I don't, I believe in always maxing politic and medicine first. Army only come later and you only need to increase army as you progress on. I always spend all my reputation on gears and cash earlier on. I still do that at later stage but you know, it gets expensive.

I always ensure to kill every single enemy in every battle, unless the system force the ending. Likewise, I always try to kill as much people as possible before the next cut scene. I believe this build up a massive assets and kept union numbers low. I remember there are some grand battle where I killed their entire forces of 50k to 60k while only losing 10k plus. This means their reinforcement don't even cover up their losses. I kept on doing that and most of their future reinforcement, perhaps due to compounding effects, couldn't cover their losses.

None of this changes whether or not Saunder's Farm is worth playing. I have no problem beating Saunder's Farm but whether or not it was worthwhile is another question.

Also, the concept of minimum force deployment limits how much depleting the enemy army matters. I don't know what difficulty you are playing at, but on higher difficulties late in the game this is often higher than the army size, which makes depleting the enemy army less and less relevant. For example, on MG the minimum force deployment of the Union army at Washington is about 280k, no matter what it says their army size is they will bring that many troops.

Also, the point of increasing army org early is to gain a larger edge in battles. Being able to deploy more units can sometimes be what you need to overwhelm the enemy and take less casualties. This can lead to building a stronger army than straight maxing politics->medicine. Of course you should never blindly rush Army Org but this is the rationale behind it.

[Lu5ck]

The OP is on easy thus what I suggest works for easy and normal. What you suggest is for hard thus is not relevant. Even then, I think it will still work for hard, I will try using the same approach one day.

[maniacalpenny]

Originally posted by Lu5ck:

The OP is on easy thus what I suggest works for easy and normal. What you suggest is for hard thus is not relevant. Even then, I think it will still work for hard, I will try using the same approach one day.

You can definitely deplete enemy army on hard. But Union will bring 60k men or so to Saunders farm regardless, so it will still be a hard fight.

While my suggestion for hard might not be relevant, so is your suggestion to depleting the enemy army. He asked for help with Saunder's farm and your suggestion is to replay the campaign and deplete the enemy army before you get to Saunder's farm, and say nothing of the best tactics to beat Saunder's farm itself. His situation is his reality: he is facing 60k Union troops at Saunder's farm and can only bring ~30000 men. So my suggestion is to either go to the left as others have suggested, or skip the battle entirely if he cannot get favorable results, as Saunder's farm is a battle that is barely worth its rewards even if well fought.

[Lu5ck]

Yes, If he was losing or drawing earlier on, it will be really hard later on and well, will just lose it later on. Even he avoid that battle, he will lose a career point. Who knows how many career points he have lost earlier on. He being snowballed down is what I felt since he only have 30k troops there.