Saunders Farm

[Swiss Samurai]

Has anyone a go-to tactic for this battle to maybe keep casualties below 10;9;8;7k? The Union has 63k with ~220 guns (which are killing me); game let's me field around 55k men (BG difficulty). Last atempt I lost around 17k men (bloodiest battle so far for me in this campaign).

Or is it possible to skip this battle (win every other battle) altogether and still get the last medal? I have a reservepool of over 40k men, but I'm struggling with money and don't feel like wasting my beautiful veterans on this disgusting slaughterfest without "incentive" ...

[D-Dub]

SAUNDERS FARM is one of my favorite challenges, SS. I'm only up to BG-level, but (after experimenting miserably with several RIGHT-FLANK strategies) I now do this:

*Rush to grab the woods to RIGHT of the SAUNDERS FARM VP: use it as a hold-point for dealing out damage to rush-happy USA forces...

* Play with taking then releasing the farm-fortifications: goad the USA into charging it... smashing them... re-taking... re-leasing... smashing... etc.

* Keep sliding extra units to your LEFT Flank. Try to take the the wooded areas just north and west (left) of the farm... and then beyond...

* Bear in mind (even if it IS undeniably gamey): USA reinfs will be coming from north & northwest... so prepare a line of defense in that direction..

* Gradually press forward from the RIGHT woods & FARM & Left-of-Farm areas... while applying pressure from either flank as you can. (The standard tips apply here: get 2-4 to 1 odds: break each opposing unit at a time, with ARTY focused on behalf of the breaking and using SKMs to help...)

* Your ARTY is as close to the front as possible? Yes. You have a SHIELD-WALL against the reinfs arriving from north & northwest? Yes. keep moving forward, stage by stage, into the SAUNDERS FIELD VP...

This has worked well for me. I'm sure there are better approaches...

[Spicy Camel]

For minimizing casualties don't actually hold farm VP, it's rather exposed position. Let Union have VP and shoot at them from forests - will somewhat reduce damage you take from artillery. Retake it back in the very end of mission.

[Ninjasquirrel]

You should run as soon as the battle starts and take the woods on both sides of the farm. They're gonna attack you a lot on your right but they'll be out in the open so you should be good on that side. On the left there's a little strip of woods going down from the north that will give them some cover but it's not as much as your cover in the woods left of the farm so you will win there too.

I recommend you hold there till at least their assaults start to weaken and slow down. You don't have to wait till the next phase. When you want to attack after you should use that aforementioned little strip of woods to mask your advance. I generally don't like attacking out of the woods to the right of the farm because you have to cross open ground. Once you hold the woods in the north, you will threaten saunder's field vp from out of range of their infantry in the west woods, forcing their infantry to come out to contest the flag. That would be the time to advance with your troops on your original right flank (if they have nothing to hit you with then you can safely advance through the field north of the farm while your left is taking the north woods to catch their flank as they come out).

Oh and you should bring some cav to screen the left, if I remember right they'll send cav from the north/northwest to harrass you.

[CivWar64]

I also played it in BG mode. I agree with the others here. What I did was take my arty and a couple units to the edge of the woods in front of the first objective and waited (I think I sent some skirmishers first to help clear it out). Wait there a bit blasting away at any Union coming forward. Like D-Dub said, you can then take the objective, and retreat and that may goad some forward. The majority of my initial force moved up to the left of the objective to roll their flank.

When your reinforcements arrive, send a couple units to stabilize the first objective, and hold the woods before it (the enemy pretty much stayed in the woods to the right and didn't come out). 1/2 of the rest go to continue rolling their right flank, and the other 1/2 go up to the thin line of woods near the top to protect the units rolling the flank. The Union reinforcements will come from the top of the field.

With this, you'll come to the top objective from the left, pushing the Union to the right. Try to take it then move back a bit, since they'll have to come out of the woods to retake it and will be in the open.

Don't do like I did--I got a bit over excited and tried to then flank around from the very top to get at those Union troops in the woods to the right of the objective, and had to split my forces to hold their reinforcements to the left/top and probably took more casualties than necessary.

[Below, at this point, I had 9K casualties vs. Union of 20K casualties. You can see how I overextened here with 41 minutes to go, so I took lots more hits than I should have]
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1347338247

[Harry Flashman]

Ninja's point about rushing at the start is worth repeating: they have fortifications in those woods that actually work (it's late-war), so try to prevent occupation thereof with skirmishers up front.

[Ninjasquirrel]

Originally posted by CivWar64:

Below, at this point, I had 9K casualties vs. Union of 20K casualties. You can see how I overextened here with 41 minutes to go, so I took lots more hits than I should have]
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1347338247

Wow that is a huge corps, what is that, 45k men? that's almost 2 of my corps on csa

[Kristoph42]

Saunders' Farm is just a hard, you got to suck it up, battle. If you can walk away with breaking even or so with manpower reward. . . . It is a good day. I have gone left, gone right, gone up the middle a combination of both and all three. There is no easy way. A friend of mine played this battle almost a dozen times and the best results he got was like around 8k and some change worth of loses. D-Dub and Ninjasquirrel have some good advice, hell everyone who has posted hhave some good advice about this battle.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::EDIT:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Do what PaloAlto did. Fight the battle that way. That is possibly the best Saunder's Farm that I have ever seen. His numbers were way better then mine. I killed a few thousand more Union troops but I also lost about 11k men . . .PaloAlto only lose 6k.

[Swiss Samurai]

Ty all for your input.

I replayed the battle now and tried to implement some things: occupied the woods left and right (a little below) of the farm. Tried to goad the Union into attacking there and actually stayed defensive on my whole left flank. While doing this I tried to aggressively push into the large forest on the right. The difficulty there is that the Iron Brigade is lurking in these woods supported by at least two other brigades very early on. I was able to push them out though with flanking actions of skirmishers and using sheer numerical superiority on this flank.

With that I had ~13'300 casualties vs 23k for the Union in the end, which I deem 'good enough'. Similar to CivWar64 I was a bit too aggressive before the timer ran out and pushed too early out of the forest towards the VP (but in my case from the right). For me this is the hardest battle so far in the game - well, using my blood pressure as a benchmark anyways. ;-)

So the "8k" is good to hear in some ways.

Maybe it's not "harder" to win than some other battles, but I feel like you lose a lot of men compared to what you can do with it and the rewards are lousy. The next two battles seemed more 'efficient' (good defensive positions to hold). Maybe the last three remaining battles will be even harder than Saunders Farm (Washington seems challenging, but the losses wont be carried over, that's the good thing...). And the rewards for the two minor battles seem relatively good.

[butokujay]

Good topic Swiss Samurai. I chose to position early as described by others here, then worked the left to slowly take those central woods that are shadowed in CivWar64's screen shot. I then defended the north reinf from those woods, sending cav and skerms to distract the reinf, while my other units pushed eastward toward the field objective. Several times I saw the Union troops on the east hill pushing west, so I kept a few skerms and a sniper bg there to bring them back into their fortifications. I waited until about 10 minutes left before pushing into the open eastward toward the field objective. I took it about a minute before time expired...and didn't want to replay Saunders at all. I don't have my casualty count, though my vague recollection is that it was around 11,000.

The AI was very impressive in this battle, many units holding position while I struggled to sucker them into the open, except for the reinforcements who chose to head ESE immediately which allowed my cav and skerms to flank them.

[CivWar64]

Originally posted by Ninjasquirrel:

Originally posted by CivWar64:

Below, at this point, I had 9K casualties vs. Union of 20K casualties. You can see how I overextened here with 41 minutes to go, so I took lots more hits than I should have]
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1347338247

Wow that is a huge corps, what is that, 45k men? that's almost 2 of my corps on csa

Yes! I had played through 1 time in Colonel difficulty, and this was my second time through, now on BG difficulty, and I wanted to make sure I had enough men so I dilligently increased how many men I had. Remember this is near the final few battles of the campaign (this is battle 33 of 37).

I went back to look at my save before the battle. I was at Army Organization level 9 (so 4 divisions of 6 brigades each in a Corp with 2500 men per brigade). All my Arty I maxed at 24 guns.

2nd Corps: 43.8K men, 2,2K Arty, 450 Cav (1 unit) (So you're right!! This was my main corps)
1st Corps: 30.6K men, 2.3K Arty, 250 Cab (1 unit) (But only the first 2 division enter the battle)

The intelligence at the battle start (career intel level 4) where you pick the 2 Corps to use says I (CSA) have 53,929 soldiers and 232 guns vs. Union of 68,880 soldiers and 264 guns. But I don't know how they figure this out, as the status bar when moused over at this point in the battle shows I actually fielded way more men than that:
CSA 53084/62384 Infantry 112/112 Guns
Union 40075/60184 Infantry 194/240 Guns

[PaloAlto]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1348161528

It is possible to limit casualties on this battle.

My Main Corps Setup:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1348331745
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1348331841

My Reserve Corps:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1348331951

The initial brigades I Use:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1348332012

What you are trying to achieve:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1348332059
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1348332107
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1348332162

Goals of the battle:

1. Deny and/or push the enemy out of the forest (the whole stretch north of the Saunders Farm VP). I detached the skirmishers from my initial infantry and rush every one.
2. Get your dedicated skirmishers (or detached skirm if you don't have dedicated) to the top of the map so you can take out a lot of their artillery and flank enemy infantry.
3. Use your short range artillery (Howitzers, Napoleons, etc) to punish the enemy infantry. I had 3- 12 gun 24 Howitzers for this battle).
4. Use long range artillery (Parrots, Whitworths, etc.) to punish enemy artillery that you can see, preferably the ones that are closes to your forces. I had 1- 20 Parrot and 2- 10 Parrots for this battle. They mostly stayed around the Saunders Farm VP.
5. You may of noticed some units (2 inf and associated skirms, probably really need 3 of each) in the top left corner (NW corner) of the map. While I generally don't ambush AI units anymore, those 3 brigades of highly destructive cavalry (at least on MG) are an exception. Don't worry, they will still do decent damage to your units ambushing them.
6. Some infantry (5 or 6 brigades) and an artillery battery (2 supply wagons also) will come out a little east of the cavalry. Resist the urge to try to ambush them in the forest, let them leave the forest before engaging.
7. Bleed the enemy from the cover of the forests until near the end, then take the north VP. This battle does not have a hard set timer. However, it will be late in the day when it times out, so you may have an extra hour to take and hold the north VP point (believe it has a 30 min timer once taking it).

[Swiss Samurai]

Originally posted by butokujay:

...and didn't want to replay Saunders at all.

Yes, Saunders Farm and my new archnemesis - Hardin Pike (two blue blobs in max cover full of artillery and all entrenched and no real weak point as far as I can tell after the first layer of defenses...) - are two good reasons why I probably wont replay a campaign as CSA. Or I'll have to just skip them. Heading right to Washington seems to be more attractive; and as someone pointed out here in another thread: siege/battle of Washington should happen right after a victory at Gettysburg anyways (but I see the reason of having the same amount of battles for both campaings ofc, but doesn't make alot of sense historically).

Looking at a Let's Play of Hardin Pike on Youtube I get the feeling the game got more difficult over time, maybe through patching and ramping up the AI (he's playing on same difficulty, BG).

Edit: @PaloAlto: Simply amazing.

[CivWar64]

Awesome, @PaloAlto. The screenshots are exactly what I did. Although you're much better, doing that with a lot fewer men than I had!

[PaloAlto]

Originally posted by CivWar64:

Awesome, @PaloAlto. The screenshots are exactly what I did. Although you're much better, doing that with a lot fewer men than I had!

Thanks. One thing I learned playing this game, especially with how the game mechanics work, bigger is not necessarily better.

[CivWar64]

Originally posted by Swiss Samurai:

Originally posted by butokujay:

...and didn't want to replay Saunders at all.

Yes, Saunders Farm and my new archnemesis - Hardin Pike (two blue blobs in max cover full of artillery and all entrenched and no real weak point as far as I can tell after the first layer of defenses...) - are two good reasons why I probably wont replay a campaign as CSA. Or I'll have to just skip them. Heading right to Washington seems to be more attractive; and as someone pointed out here in another thread: siege/battle of Washington should happen right after a victory at Gettysburg anyways (but I see the reason of having the same amount of battles for both campaings ofc, but doesn't make alot of sense historically).

Looking at a Let's Play of Hardin Pike on Youtube I get the feeling the game got more difficult over time, maybe through patching and ramping up the AI (he's playing on same difficulty, BG).

Edit: @PaloAlto: Simply amazing.

Oh yeah, Hardin Pike is nasty nasty. The first time, I piled most of my forces on my right flank to break through, and second way around on the left flank. I won but lost a ton of men. The second time I did better by attacking the salent corners sticking out of the objectives. I massed folks on my left, hurled rookies at that one rounded point by the top objective, broke through and peeled left/right. Still a bloodbath even after rousting all enemies from the woods (after a long fight). Then I did the same at the bottom objective (hurl rookies at the rounded corner nearest the objective).

But I had to move forward out of the top woods to keep fighting since they kept sliding units down to the south. Here is the point where I had both objectives. You can see, although outnumbering the Union 2:1, I have about the same casualties (it looks like around 11,000 each from the top bar popup) (although I took out over 100 of their guns). I can't remember the final numbers (since I only have this one save point) but I did cut down more of them eventually. Ugh.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1348441905