General Strategy for the War Between The States
The player should have a general idea of what they want to accomplish and how they want to accomplish it
in order to properly plan their campaigns and economy. Decisions you make at the start will determine what
kinds of forces you want to build, where you want to attack or defend, and how agressive you will be. Keep
in mind that in order for the Union to win the game they must have more than 1000 PP during Nov 1864 so that
Lincoln will be reelected. Any other result will lead to the Union's defeat. The degree of victory may
vary depending on your PP level but it is usually impossible for the Union to win if Lincoln isn't reelected.
USA
The Union player is of course the player on the Strategic Offensive. You have four Army Commanders to work with.
Where you place them and the size force they have control of will determine where your main effort will be and
how strong it will be. Theatre Commanders will be placed so that they can best support the AC's with initiative
bonuses. Production will be tailored to provide them with the best mix of units to accomplish their goals. You
will always be watching your PP levels. You must have it above 1000 in order for a Strategic Victory to trigger
Emancipation and you must be above 1000 in Nov 1864 to reelect Lincoln.
Production
The Union has more production capacity than they will have the ability to use. But at the start they do have some
bottlenecks to overcome until enough time has passed to overcome them. The primary one is their navy. They start
with to few of everything to support their offensives and blockade the South. Most of your early production will be
tied up building ironclads to counter the South's, cruisers to blockade the coast, riverboats to support and control
the Misssissippi and Tennessee Rivers, and transports to give you amphibious capacity. Once you have reach the levels
of these types of ships you need you can switch over to concentrating on artillery production.
The secondary but also critical objective of production is to make sure you always have enough supply on had to keep
armies in full supply. Never let it fall so low that you don't have excess supply. At the beginning of the war your
accumulated supply is relatively low. In order to sustain the large armies you will be recruiting over the coming two years
you must set asside enough production for supply to steadily increase your total supply until you get it to around 3000.
The thing that usually catches the Union player unaware is that his Depots draw off significant amount of his total supply.
The number to watch is the much smaller one shown on the first button on the right side toolbar that opens when you select
a unit. This number is the excess supply not tied up in depots or used up to supply your armies. It is the one that makes
building fortifications possible. If you are showing high total supply but this number is low you have to many depots in
play. Destroy some of them.
Strategically the Union objective is to crush the South's production capacity. They will not win until the South loses the
ability to supply their armies and raise replacements.
The West
The War is won or lost in the west. Util you have taken the vast source of resources away from the South you cannot win.
And, it is the most vulnerable area to attack. The reason is the river system is easily controled by the Union. Once the
South loses control of the Mississippi and Tennesssee Rivers it cannot adquately defend these areas. This will tend to
channel your main thrust between the Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers while a secondary thrust is made through Kentucky and
central Tennessee.
Why so? Just look at the map. The area between the two rivers are a natural bottleneck. The the Rebel armies can keep
you have breaking out of this area they can hold the West. Memphis holds the key to the Mississippi River. The Tennessee
River to the east separates your twin drives south so they can't support each other. When the Tennessee River reaches
Corinth it turns east forming a natural barrier to any attacks into the deep South. And mountain in the far eastern part of
Kentucky and Tennessee complete the natural defenses of the West.
Unfortunately for the South those rivers act as natural highways from the north for your armies and their supply lines.
Seizing this area is your first objective and you should throw all your resources into it. All other operations are just
indirect support of this one. They are intended to draw off Southern strength or serverely punish them if they don't.
The secondary operation in the West is taking Nashville. This doesn't usually require a large force but does need
sufficient commitment to keep the pressure on. And even lesser supported is a a campaign to take the far west.
Once you have taken the critical Memphis, Shiloh and Corinth area, all of the vulnerable parts of the deep south are
exposed to your for taking. You will be driving out in all directions taking advantage of whatever weakness you see.
Offensives will be aimed south along the Mississippi and southeast toward Mobile. From there you can turn east to take
Atlanta and Georgia. If Southern forces are still in Tennessee you can move to cut them off. Once you have the
Mississippi River under your control you can move against Little Rock and other far Western regions.
The East
They have given some bonuses to encourage an "On To Richmond" campaign reducing the PP cost of attacking and losing
battles for regions adjacent to Richmond. But it still tends to be a secondary theatre of operations. Mostly because
the resources necessary for success are to large and the room for maneuver to small. A smaller Southern force can
keep a very large one occupied for a long time.
My strategy is to keep pressure on this area but mostly use Ft. Monroe and Washington, D.C. as jumping off points
for amphibious invasions all along the coast. During 1861 and 1862 you can tie more enemy forces down by these
highly mobile strikes. After 1862 the South has usually well fortified the untaken regions and has supporting
mobile formatoins to counter landings. I usually switch to an offensive in Virginia supported by any coastal regions
I might have. Here again a look at the map will show that the South is vulnerable in the Shenandorh valley regions.
The roads don't allow forces around Richmond to easily move against invasions of those regions without putting
themselves out of supporting distance of the coastal areas. You can exploit this to drive deep into the western part
of Virginia before turning back eastward to cut the rail lines to Richmond. Your long term objective is to isolate
Richmond and invade North Carolina in time to link up with the Western armies that are driving eastward.
CSA
The Confederate player will be on the Startegic Defensive. Your four Army Commanders will be place so that they
can best counter the Union AC's and their armies. You will be looking for the best way to foil the enemies plans.
You will be trying to maximize what regions you can react to in order to stop them. You have limited resources to
work with so you will have to make hard decisions about what to allocate your resources and supply too.
Production
The Rebel player has quite a different problem from the Union player. They are going to have supply problems both in ability
to feed their armies and build fortifications to protect their territories. Part of their strategy is to try to hold on to
major production centers like Memphis and Nashville as long as possible because when the South loses a region they take a
trible hit for it. They lose Political Points (I will refer to these as PP from now on) for the loss but they also lose the
population of the region for recruiting new units and the production capacity for creating more supply.
The South has serious conflicting objectives regarding their use of production. Early in the war they need supply points to
build fortifications. Fortifications that will allow them to use garrisons elsewhere. Fortifications that will prevent Union
forces from overruning weakly defended regions. But at the same time they need to build up supply to keep their armies feed.
And they must look to the future when the west will be overrun by the Union. They must build new factories in the East to
compensate for this.
Production is actually made up of three components; Resources, Population and Factories. Population is somewhat independent of
the other two in that it determines how many points are available for recruiting new militia and repairing units. As long as
supply is available this will occur. Factories are used to produce special units like ships and artillery, repair of units,
and creating supply. You must balance how many factories are allocated to unit production versus supply. Resources are an oddity. Factories
use resources for their production but since they can draw from any connected region they rarely have a problem with this.
Except when the region gets cut off, like Richmond will. Then only the local resources can be used and these are limited.
The most important thing to keep in mind is the South will start dying the turn they run out of supplies for all their armies.
The West
For the same reason the Union wants to drive south in the west taking the Mississippi valley, you want to prevent them.
The South's problem is they are vastly out numbered so they must slow the advance down without losing major battles.
Remember on of the Union's objectives is to get a Major Strategic victory so they can get Emancipation and Black troops.
My strategy hinges around placing my largest army and best general in the area between the Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers.
I will try to bog down their offensive in this area with the aim of containing them into 1862 or longer. Kentucky and
central Tennessee are defended mostly by small forces creating delaying actions. If I am lucky enough to hold Memphis long
enough to make an Ironclad I will use it to cork the upper Mississippi River. In the far west I try for spoiling offensives
aimed at Springfield. This will force the Union to garrison heavily.
Once the Union breaches the defenses and enters the deep South all you can do is trade space for time. Keep an eye on the
Union PP levels. They must be greater than 1000 in order for Lincoln to be elected. Anything you can do to wear this number
down will help win the war.
The East
The Eastern strategy for the South consists of two parts. The first is Virginia and Richmond. You must hold
Richmond and thaw any Union plans for a quick knockout. But you must do it with the minimum force posible so you
can properly man the Western armies. Give up on the idea of great invasions you will get cut off and destroyed in
detail. Concentrate on spoiling Union plans and forcing them to keep significant forces in the area. But never
lose sight of you primary objective; protecting Richmond.
Protecting Richmond is more complex than dropping a big army there. The army in the Richmond area must be highly
mobile so that it can react not only to "On To Richmond" campaigns but secondary attacks into the Valley and even
further south along the North Carolina coast.
And, speaking of the North Carolina coast, the second part of the Eastern strategy is protecting the long coastline
of the South including the Gulf of Mexaco. It starts with quickly fortifying these coastal regions but eventually
you will have to assign an AC with mobile forces to effectively keep the Union out.
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