Can't Win as CSA?

[zed45zed]

I've gotten to the final battle for Washington as the CSA with few defeats and draws in the rest of the campaign. I only have about 55,000 troops at the start of the battle and by the time I've seized all the forts i only have around 30,000 men left, which makes it impossible to defend the forts against the union counterattacking force of 111,000 men. Am i going to have to replay the whole campaign and be moe conservative with my losses or should i do something else?

[Didz]

Difficulty level?

[zed45zed]

brigadier general

[Didz]

Hmm! Well I'm at Brock Road in my Union BG game, which is two battles before Cold Harbour, and my three Union Corps currently contain just under 100,000 men. So, to me it sounds like your way under-strength.

Have you checked out any video playthroughs of the Washington battle at the BG level and compared the strength of their forces to yours?

[limith]

30,000 vs 111,000 sounds feasible given good terrain and lots of micro. My 10,000 corps held out against 40,000 in Fredericksburg. 30k v 120k is the same odds roughly.

You have to micro a ton though with these odds. Specifically artillery can be used to prevent AI charges if you tell them to bombard the AI units marching up from the rear preparing for a charge. The AI has a tell if you pay enough attention it gives which lets you know which unit will charge you.

Keep your infantry in fortification/trees. Have another infantry unit behind it so if the AI does manage to engage in melee you can fire into the AI which should shatter the charge. Make sure the unit in fortifications has 1000+ men and a not dead/wounded officer, switch it with the infantry behind it outside of fortifications as needed. Finally combine brigades as needed.

Bring lots of ammo.

Try to have skirmishers hitting the flanks of the enemy line to prevent charges as well.

[maniacalpenny]

Originally posted by Didz:

Hmm! Well I'm at Brock Road in my Union BG game, which is two battles before Cold Harbour, and my three Union Corps currently contain just under 100,000 men. So, to me it sounds like your way under-strength.

Have you checked out any video playthroughs of the Washington battle at the BG level and compared the strength of their forces to yours?

The Union army is much easier to amass a huge army with, so I don;t know if this is really any indication. I think on major gen my army is something like 70k going into the final campaign. The two battles leading up to Washington give ~20k recruits each so at best 110k but more realistically probably 80-90k as both missions look pretty casualty heavy.

Actually, since these two missions are so huge in rewards I would recommend OP go back 2 missions and try to beat them more efficiently. Don't worry about killing the enemy as your army is too small to trigger scaling I believe, just try to win the two battles as efficiently as possible. On BG with lvl 10 politics you can probably get 21 or 22k recruits per missions so by playing these more efficiently you may be able to bring a much bigger army to Washington.

[mazdamundi]

im playing confeds and im at cold harbor on brig iv got 35000 men currently i think im screwed i thought the game scales off what you have i did not think i was going to get hit with 100000 plus army. plus im a tidy person so i can't go back : (

[emcdunna]

The CSA campaign is hard....

[maniacalpenny]

Originally posted by Reese:

im playing confeds and im at cold harbor on brig iv got 35000 men currently i think im screwed i thought the game scales off what you have i did not think i was going to get hit with 100000 plus army. plus im a tidy person so i can't go back : (

You can win Cold Harbor on Day 1. These men, combined with some good generalship and winning the next 2 battles of the final campaign could give you enough men to tackle washington. Seeing that you only have 35k at Cold Harbor is not that promising for your generalship though =(

I am fairly sure its possible, for example I think I could probably beat the game with 35k troops from cold harbor on BG, but it certainly wouldn't be easy.

[emcdunna]

Originally posted by maniacalpenny:

Originally posted by Reese:

im playing confeds and im at cold harbor on brig iv got 35000 men currently i think im screwed i thought the game scales off what you have i did not think i was going to get hit with 100000 plus army. plus im a tidy person so i can't go back : (

You can win Cold Harbor on Day 1. These men, combined with some good generalship and winning the next 2 battles of the final campaign could give you enough men to tackle washington. Seeing that you only have 35k at Cold Harbor is not that promising for your generalship though =(

I am fairly sure its possible, for example I think I could probably beat the game with 35k troops from cold harbor on BG, but it certainly wouldn't be easy.

Recruit 20,000 men with M1842 rifles at $11 each, instead of buying 1000 veterans to refill your brigades.

Go back to an earlier save, maybe pre-gettysburg, and start from there. Go size over quality.

[zed45zed]

Originally posted by limith:

30,000 vs 111,000 sounds feasible given good terrain and lots of micro. My 10,000 corps held out against 40,000 in Fredericksburg. 30k v 120k is the same odds roughly.

You have to micro a ton though with these odds. Specifically artillery can be used to prevent AI charges if you tell them to bombard the AI units marching up from the rear preparing for a charge. The AI has a tell if you pay enough attention it gives which lets you know which unit will charge you.

Keep your infantry in fortification/trees. Have another infantry unit behind it so if the AI does manage to engage in melee you can fire into the AI which should shatter the charge. Make sure the unit in fortifications has 1000+ men and a not dead/wounded officer, switch it with the infantry behind it outside of fortifications as needed. Finally combine brigades as needed.

Bring lots of ammo.

Try to have skirmishers hitting the flanks of the enemy line to prevent charges as well.

The problem is that they split your army into 2 parts during the defense part of the battle of Washington, so i am able to hold out by staying in the forts with my stronger corps, but my weaker corps has probably like less than 4000 infantry facing tens of thousands of Union men, so there is no stopping their charges

[emcdunna]

Originally posted by zed45zed:

Originally posted by limith:

30,000 vs 111,000 sounds feasible given good terrain and lots of micro. My 10,000 corps held out against 40,000 in Fredericksburg. 30k v 120k is the same odds roughly.

You have to micro a ton though with these odds. Specifically artillery can be used to prevent AI charges if you tell them to bombard the AI units marching up from the rear preparing for a charge. The AI has a tell if you pay enough attention it gives which lets you know which unit will charge you.

Keep your infantry in fortification/trees. Have another infantry unit behind it so if the AI does manage to engage in melee you can fire into the AI which should shatter the charge. Make sure the unit in fortifications has 1000+ men and a not dead/wounded officer, switch it with the infantry behind it outside of fortifications as needed. Finally combine brigades as needed.

Bring lots of ammo.

Try to have skirmishers hitting the flanks of the enemy line to prevent charges as well.

The problem is that they split your army into 2 parts during the defense part of the battle of Washington, so i am able to hold out by staying in the forts with my stronger corps, but my weaker corps has probably like less than 4000 infantry facing tens of thousands of Union men, so there is no stopping their charges

you gotta mix up your corps before the battle i guess

[mazdamundi]

I think learning experience from this is make sure you just save renown.

[maniacalpenny]

Originally posted by Reese:

I think learning experience from this is make sure you just save renown.

If we are talking about reputation, then you shouldn't save it. The morale bonuses are worthless past the early game, especially for the Confederacy, and it caps at 100. There are certain campaigns where your reputation more or less valuable to trade in though, and you should save when the deals are ♥♥♥♥ and spend when the deals are good. It obviously also depends on what you are looking for. Typically the only things worth taking are rifles, money, and recruits though. Rare weapons are heavily overpriced, as are cannon and generals. Although I've been taking every 20lb parrot as Union just because I like them, and I already buy every single one available in the shop.

Edit: Also, I don't have access to any spreadsheet that lists all of the rewards, much less their cost efficiency, although I would really like one. If anyone has this info, I would greatly appreciate it!

If not, perhaps I could be convinced to compile the information myself.

[bigdud210]

I played on Brigadier General and had 75K to their 75K at start of Washington, but took huge casualties. My main Corps was decimated. No way I could defeat 120K the next day. This is way too hard.

[Terppi]

Just spent an afternoon fighting this battle and found out two things... if you lose 1 fort on the first phase its better to load a save because there is no point continuing the fight because the battle WILL end in defeat and you have just wasted time if you keep fighting on the last phase of the battle with one northern fort lost.

The second thing i found out in my horror was that my game save was on a bad time so its useless and if you RESTART the battle it doesnt not start from day two but day 1 so time to capture those damn forts again :] so quess what I'm doing the next two hours or so