CSA Manpower

[Levnekaethian]

How early did CSA run into manpower issues in the war? My army is slowly dimininshing and its almost impossible to replace despite delivering 2-3 times the casualties I suffer to the Union. I'm well aware that at least after Gettysburg, historically, that there just weren't enough men to replace the losses but I noticed that after Antietam (30k CSA casualties / 65k Union Casualties) that I just don't have the men to replace. I barely held at Fredericksburg due to just not having the brigades needed - though again dealing 3x the casualties I suffered to the Union. I'm now at Chancellorsville and the Union army is 2x my size - I have 40k soldiers in total compared to the Unions 100k+. I don't see myself making it much farther in the game unless the manpower gains increase. Even the smaller battles I end up losing thousands of men and while I generally have a net gain in manpower aftewards - it isn't enough to make up for the losses in the major engagements.

I maxed politics first and medicine third so I'm getting the maximum amount of manpower rewards possible and restoring the most casualties possible after battles. I've won every battle including the smaller ones. I've spent influence twice on 3500 additional men.

Are you just not supposed to try to be victorious in every scenario? Accept that some major battles you just need to lose or draw to maintain your manpower reserves? Also I'm generally going in to battle with 2500 strong brigades - should I be reducing the men per brigade to spread things out? That seems foolish though because I've had several frontline brigades reduced to below 1000 during intense battles. I don't actually have reserve brigades anymore due to needing practically every one on the front line. Mind you, I'm not mindlesslly throwing my soldiers into battle - trying to outflank and utilize cavalry charges on wavering or broken units to capture or eliminate.

At least part of the problem has been with the way the game introduces battles that take place over days. On the Battle of Stone's River I captured the final encampent and had the enemy forces surrounded completely - moving in to eliminate all fo them as they ran in circles - and I saw the finish button and I should have NEVER hit that button. They reset to the next day, I lost all the ground I'd gained and had to lose another 5000 retaking that damn hilltop.

[Kristoph42]

When you say 40k total is that just your INF or are you counting everything??? 2,500 men brigades are nice but they are very hard to maintain. Most of my CSA INF brigades were around 1700-1900 during the whole war. You could have almost 3 brigades of 1700 instead of 2 at 2500. Those casualties would get divided between those 3 units instead of just the one or two. At Chancellorsville my, I had about 65k total troops. Once you play the game through the first time, you will learn how to game the game such as certain battles that you don't click finish, when these troops show up, what objectives are important and which are not. Losing 30k at Antietam hurts and it will take a while to recover from that. Perhaps your best bet would be to start over oe maybe reload Antietam and try to lose 20k. Your career points were good choices. Spending Reputation for more men is normal, I do it on the regular. Good luck

[Levnekaethian]

40k total units - including 4 artillery brigades at 24 guns and 5 cavalry brigades (had 7). When I had two full divions of units and an additional 5 infantry brigades those artillry and cav brigades were useful.

[[TFM]bobcat]

suffering 20k or more casualties in any major battles as the CSA is simply an unsustainable rate of loss and pretty much all the battles as the CSA can be won at well below that even on MG, Kristoph offers some good advice and I'd recommend either playing the game more and getting better used to it on your own or watching some lets plays on youtube to see how others play

for instance, these were the results of my most recent playthrough of antietam as the CSA on MG

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/923670204751321832/E683CFEA85FCD53BF0BD9559473B4F782EF243B7/?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-format=jpeg&output-quality=95&fit=inside%7C2048%3A1152&composite-to=*,*%7C2048%3A1152&background-color=black

[LtlMacMcG]

#1: One of the of the few truly frustrating things about the game is Union infantry will route....come back and shoot....route...come back and shoot. Often into your flanks as you push an assault. It is fore this reason more brigages are better than large brigades......One of my techniques is to use my elite BDE's to break the enemy and then tie the enemy tie with a novice BDE.

#2: 5 Calvary Brigades is way too many in my opinion. Two....TOPS in my opinion. My goal is to have between 25-35 BDES of INF by Gaines MIll.

#3: Are you spending rep to aquire the latest and greates rifles? I field captured spingfield 82's early to essentally create 'free' bdes....but upgrade to rifies as soon as feasible. the 2000 missisipi rifes are MONEY early in the game.

#4: I feel your pain. Melville, espesially, is a real kick in the teeth early in the game... The problem is that not enough casualties carry over even with the new system.

[Levnekaethian]

I generally have 3-4 cavalry brigades for charges and cleaing up routing infantry while I have 2-3 that are equipped with excellent rifles that I use to respond to any problems within my lines. Also the mainstay of my army is currently the Harper's Ferry and Pattern Enfields, also have Lorenz and the best Mississipi rifle (can't remember the name). All my artillery are 12 PDR Napoleans. I won Chancelloresville pretty easily, only sustained 11k casualties while inflicting around 30k but its too late I think. I don't quite have two full corps of men and its time for Gettysburg. I'll have to split them up and see how it goes.

I really wouldn't mind going down into smaller brigades at this point but if I disband my larger ones I lose all the experience that comes with having them in numerous battles. It'd be nice to have the option to split up a current brigade without losing veteran units :/

[[TFM]bobcat]

Originally posted by Levnekaethian:

I generally have 3-4 cavalry brigades for charges and cleaing up routing infantry while I have 2-3 that are equipped with excellent rifles that I use to respond to any problems within my lines. Also the mainstay of my army is currently the Harper's Ferry and Pattern Enfields, also have Lorenz and the best Mississipi rifle (can't remember the name). All my artillery are 12 PDR Napoleans. I won Chancelloresville pretty easily, only sustained 11k casualties while inflicting around 30k but its too late I think. I don't quite have two full corps of men and its time for Gettysburg. I'll have to split them up and see how it goes.

I really wouldn't mind going down into smaller brigades at this point but if I disband my larger ones I lose all the experience that comes with having them in numerous battles. It'd be nice to have the option to split up a current brigade without losing veteran units :/

someone correct me if I'm wrong but the recruits retain their veterancy once they are disbanded although their veterancy will be diluted if there are raw recruits in the pool as well or if less experienced units are also disbanded. IDK if that helps but just something to consider

[Kristoph42]

To build upon what Bobcat is sayiing . . . Drain your man power pool down to zero. Make a few INF brigades of 1,000 men each until it is zero. Then disband your large 2,500 brigades, this way your replacement pool will be full of all your veteran men from your disbanded units. Make a few more new INF brigades of about 1,700. Add about 600-800 (rookies) men to your newly made 1,000 man INF and watch their abilities go up. Also with your ART units, you should disband them and make 12 gun batteries instead of 24. You can get 8 @12, instead of the 4 @ 24. Oh yea, save it before you play around with disbanding and rebuilding, just in case you make a mistake. Good job a Chancellorsville, that is how most of your battles should be. Try to only lose about 10k men or less

[D-Dub]

More brigades of smaller size -- this is (so far) probably the biggest game-changer for me. More brigades means more chances in-battle (i) to flank enemy units, and (ii) to hit a single enemy unit at a time with multiple friendly units.

(Among other advantages that others can speak to better.)

[Ninjasquirrel]

One of the things I am learning playing thru confederates campaign is, there will be very many tempting moments where you have put yourself in a commanding position to attack and wipe out the union army, but you just have to restrain yourself. Causing higher casualties at the expense of more troops lost along with their weapons is just not worth it for the south.

Chancellorsville is sorta half-defense/half-offense map, and the union army is not all on the field at once so you can still win by doing the flanking maneuver on day 2, but if you let it go to day 3 you're probably gonna be screwed with a 40k army.

However, the manpower rewards get so small with the south in the later battles that you literally have to start saving up manpower from the beginning of the game (like buy manpower with your political points everytime that is an option), because even the minor battles later on involve 1 or 2 entire corps vs. 50-70k union. Even the defensive battles where you might kill 4-5 times more men but you take maybe 10k casualties and the reward is like 4500 men.

[Operation Iraqi Freikorps]

One thing that might save manpower is to get a couple batteries of rifled guns for counter battery fire to kill enemy cannons. Efficient artillery usage has enough punch to change your casualties. Remember, during Pickett's charge, the Confederates had used up supplies that limited the duration and size of the barrage before the attack and reduce the amount the guns could support the attack. Efficient artillery has saved me many men, from reducing casualties from enemy artillery and the size of enemy infantry. If you keep your Napoleons right behind your infantry, you can rack up massive kill counts and inflict morale damage. But get a battery or two of rifled guns (20PDR Parrots work best if you only want one rifled gun battery) as the ability to kill enemy cannons, generals, and supply wagons is very useful.

[allthatjazz44]

CSA does have manpower issues, but it sounds like you are losing way too many. 30k at Antietam is huge. You must not be using cover effectively or you are not finding ways to flank the enemy. If you are using a lot of cavalry or carbine skirmishers, don't. If you are using bayonet charges often, stop. You may be a bit too far now, but always destroy the enemy as thoroughly as possible, reducing their numbers and making it that much easier to keep doing so. I couldn't win at Washington my first playthrough, but on my 2nd, I have been slaughtering the opposition every time, and its payed off huge. I influcted about 80% casualties at Antietam and 90% casualties at Fredericksburg while taking only 18000 total in return. Remember to always use the landscape to your advantage and don't be afraid to spend your reputation points for good commanders/weapons. You actually do want to attack and wipe them out, but you have to find ways to do it safely. This means attacking brigades with no escape options, like pinning them against ariver with crossfire. Once they are routed, they cannot attack and you can safely pour into them. You also want to prioritize supplies and cannons early to make them run low on ammo and stop from using canister to deal big damage when your attack pushes them back. 1 carbine cavalry brigade per corps should assist in this very nicely. Inflicting huge casualties means more spoils and its very easy to capture 1000 men per battle to get the extra recruits when you are cleaning up.

[Bramborough]

Originally posted by Levnekaethian:

I generally have 3-4 cavalry brigades for charges and cleaing up routing infantry while I have 2-3 that are equipped with excellent rifles that I use to respond to any problems within my lines.

That sounds like a lot of slots dedicated to cavalry to me. Two things to consider.

First, cavalry tends to require a lot of micromanagement. Are you having to spend too much time managing all that cavalry, which may be taking too much attention away from the infantry? If not, perhaps it's because some of your cav spend a lot of time not doing much?

Second, while filling some of those slots with infantry instead would initially require even more manpower, the infantry overall is stronger. You'll be better able to do things like rotate out units which have taken a lot of fire, flank, etc.

I don't know your playstyle or difficulty level. But I suspect that dropping 2-3 cav units and replacing them with more infantry brigades can't help but make your battle management more efficient and bring down casualties to some degree.

I dunno, maybe just my playstyle is exceedingly cavalry-light and I don't realize it (I tend to go with one unit per Corps...and then not until I reach the AO level for 5 units per division). Shrug.

[Levnekaethian]

I'll use cavalry to go behind enemy lines and take artillery positions, the AI generally leaves them undefended or very lightly defended. They almost always have to pull off brigades from the front to come back and defend which they do quickly, but they'll often recall two brigades of infantry and that puts things greatly in my favor - I use that opportunity to push or flank while I outnumber the enemy on the front. 750 to 1500 cavalry pull 3000+ infantry away so that tends to work out. Then I just retreat the cavalry as the infantry arrive, rinse, repeat.

I'll have to split into smaller brigades on this playthrough - for now I'm not exceeding 1500 max brigade strength and I'll go up to 2000 once I have three full corps of units.

[Kristoph42]

Levekaethian. . . It is good to have a few "fat" (2000 men or so) brigades of INF just in case you need a large unit to take or hold something. Those numbers I gave you are an average. If you have 5 INF brigades in a division, make one like 1500-1700-1900-2100-1800 or something like that. As goofy as it sounds, I try to make it so that any one of my divisions is sort of a self sufficent kampfgrouppe complete with ART. So that way it take take or hold any position that needs to be taken or held.

[D-Dub]

This is a great thread. I made changes recently in my Army/Corps Org once I noticed that I had CAV units sitting around in the major battles doing nothing -- as Bramborough mentioned. It's another "detail" that this game seems designed to make us pay attention to. I think that I had too many CAV units in each corps simply because... well, I don't know. Maybe I thought for some unknown reason that every Civil War corps needs to have (i.e., had) 3 or 4 CAV brigades? But once I realized that they were just mostly sitting back and waching the action -- well, I'm doing just fine with 1 or 2 per corps now. (Still studying this, though.)

K42, good tip on having a few "fat" brigades ready for special action. I was doing this here and there without thinking about it, but I'll focus on that clearly now and see how it goes...