South Mountain and then Antitam

[kokopeli]

[Brigadier General Level]

I'm going to fight South Mountain today and get ready for Antitam after that. I have enough Skill Points in Army Organization to field one Corps with 24 brigades, and the map says you may bring one Corps with up to 25 brigades to South Mountain.

I fought the Historical battle of Antitam to help me gage what I should bring to that battle of Antitam. I pushed the South off the map without too much fuss and pretty much won the day before the last phase started. My reinforcements at the top of the map couldn't even walk to the battle before it was over.

Two quick questions. How many brigades do you recommend for the battle of South Mountain? Does the campaign battle of Antitam fight much different than the historical version?

[wanderingthoreau1987]

It greatly depends on your army size as the ai will scale to your army. I found Antietam to be easy as the union and had divisions sitting as others finished off the CSA.

Even if you have brigades break, given the advantage you have as the union you'll be able to move the south. Be careful and make sure you have plenty of artillery on the map.

[kokopeli]

Thanks. I noticed three things about the Union OOB in the Historical battle. First, they didn't field the usual brigades of 2000+ plenty. Second, they did bring plenty of artillery, which I believe was standard doctrin for the Union. Third, they had many cavalry in those flanking units.

I don't have as many artillery or cavalry in my army ATM.

[wanderingthoreau1987]

The player hardly ever does. Scaling prevents it.

[Wright29]

While you're there, check if you can actually bring 24 units as opposed to 20. There was a past bug that made it say 24, but you could definitely only deploy 20. Not sure if it's been fixed in recent patches.

Also, I'm a bit confused. You can always shift brigades around without affecting the auto-scaling of an individual battle. So unless you literally don't have 24 units, you should always max out your brigade participation. Otherwise it completely goes to waste, you miss out of valuable experience, and the battle is harder for you.

Again, please check to see if the deployment is 20 or 24 and let us know. Thanks.

[kokopeli]

Yes, the bug is still there. The Bridge between the camp and the battle shows you are allowed 24 brigades, but when you mobilize your forces and begin to set them up, the pre-battle screen only allows you to use 20 brigades. Now I have to go back and trim my Corps down and reenter the battle. Thanks for giving me the heads up. I put all my artillery in the fourth Division and only one battery showed up.

I'll probably give y'all a post battle run down tomorrow. My plan is to put half my force in the treeline ready to advance up and across the field with two batteries of 10# Ord ** Guns. The other half of the force will advance on my left (enemy's right) and swing round to hit them first from the woods. Once that attack has some momentum, the guys from the treeline will launch up across the field to hopefully flank them quick and make them buckle.

On to preserve the Union boys!

[ohener]

Btw, despite what the timer says you actually have until dark to capture the objective on south mountain (21:00). So you can take it slow, but not too slow.

[kokopeli]

The battle turned out better than I expected. I pushed five brigades and two 10# Ord batteries forward to the edge of the woods to get the enemy's attention, while the Main effort advanced on my left to hit the enemy in the flank of their line.

The first five infantry brigades, supported by two 12# Nap batteries hit the enemy right while the following five elite brigades scooted by and went even further on the enemy's right to basically come up behind them.

With the envelopment in place, the enemy's force was caught in the open and my first and second groups were able to advance out of the trees and chase the enemy deep into the woods on the other side of the clearing where they had some robust artillery I didn't want to contend with.

[kokopeli]

Anteitam: well, I had to play it once in historical mode to remind myself of the phase breakdown. Won it NP as Union, but winning the historical vs. winning during campaign are two different things. So I played it real quick to see how my forces would arrive. With that information, I reordered my army divisions so I'd have the right mix of veterans with rookies, and artillery, cavalry & skirmisher in the right part of the map.

Tomorrow I'll give it a run. In feeling pretty good about this battle as Union. I'm planning on using $24000 supply in my first corps, and $8000 supply in each of my other two Corps. I'll have 4 twelve gun 10# Ord batteries and 4 ten gun 12# Napoleon batteries in the army. Two skirmisher regiments and two cavalry regiments will cross the bridge in the final phase, along with about six veteran infantry brigades. I'll have four brand new recruit brigades, about eight other zero star brigades, about ten one star brigades and the rest, about fourteen, two star brigades. It sure is a different feeling fielding such a large army.

[Kristoph42]

Sound strategy. Personally, I always max out supply (35,000) for each corps in a battle. I capture enemy supply wagons and still run out of ammo. Then again, I move my artillery to within canister range have my inf behind the guns and shell his troops until they break or my unit strength is twice the enemy's strength.

[kokopeli]

Forgot to add supplies to my second and third Corps first 'official' time through. Got darn good results anyway. Saved it just in case. Went back to my Battle Save and put the supplies in. Started over. Had a couple important officers killed in the first phase. Started over, three times, with similar results. Got agitated. Decided to save scum the battle. Ended up with an OK result, only 12000 Union Infantry killed, vs 24000 Confederate, but more officers KIA/WIA, so stayed with the first try.

Official results 15000+ Union Infantry killed, about 200 cavalry, about 250 artillery men vs 26000+ Confederate Infantry killed, over 1000 cavalry, well over 1000 artillery men, and thousands captured. Only 2 officers KIA, BG Raul Avarell (div cmdr) & BG Gordon Johnston (brig cmdr); & 2 officers WIA, Col Justin Beall and BG Willie Chew (brig cmdrs). 10 exp stars earned and 15 officers promoted.