Strategies for The Battle of Antietam

[Albert Sidney Johnston]

I know we've had a few discussions like this before, but Antietam just keeps getting harder and harder for The Confederacy with each patch. I'm pretty good at this game, but certainly no General Lee, like most of the people here are, and I can't help but feel like I could be doing things more efficiently.

This is mostly for tactics used by Confederate generals to win the battle, but Union tactics are welcome as well.

 

Personally, my strategy is very simple: Don't give them an inch. All your most easily defended positions to hold objectives are the positions you start out with. (The northern edge of The Cornfield for Dunker Church, the Bloody Lane itself for The Sunken Lane, and the stone bridge for the right flank.)

I simply do my best to never withdraw, no matter what the casualty rate is. Because I know that if I withdraw, I'll be giving up the best possible positions, and causing even more casualties in the long run. All that to say, besides an odd flanking movement, my main strategy at Antietam is to just stand my ground no matter what the cost.

 

What are your strategies?

 

[Wright29]

Run away. 

[Beruldsen]

Here is what I did as the CSA...

1.  I was very aggressive up north.  I had a sharpshooter brigade (with cav support) that decimated advancing units on the CSAs left flank.

2.  I placed my arty right behind my infantry which were usually in the woods.  Though I did have a few attacking brigades on the left.  By the end of the first round I had caused a lot of hurt.

3.  With the start of the second round ... I pulled back to the woods surrounding the church and once again placed my arty right behind my infantry.

4.  The sharpshooter and cav watched my left flank.

5.  I sent 2.5 brigades to the bridge along with 2 arty units ... once again placing the arty right behind the infantry.  During this round it should be a massacre as the Union tries to cross the bridge.

6.  Similarly, the northern units should be well concealed and inflicting a lot of damage on Union troops attacking in the open.

7.  I move a few brigades from Sunken road to assist with the defense of the church.  You should have a line connecting the church and the sunken road.

9.  With the start of the final round ... I abandon the bridge and take up defensive positions at the top of the hill.  It will take the Union a long time to move up that hill.

10. The Union doesn't appear to put much effort into taking Sharpsburg ... so I moved most of my final reinforcements to help defend Sunken road.

11. As long as you can keep the Union from breeching the crest of the hill (Sunken Road) you should be in good shape.

12. Defending Sunken Road was the hardest part of the battle.

13. When it was over ... I don't recall my starting numbers but my losses were around 10,000 and the Union was just shy of 30,000.

Regarding withdrawing ... I found there were a couple of times (pulling back around the church and later up the hill to Sunken Road) where it helps to better concentrate your troops.

 

 

 

[CSX4451]

I like to play the Historical Battles on BG level and I have tried every strategy I can think of and I can not win. I won in my campaign but that's it.

I did cheat once and pulled all my units into Sharpsburg except Calvary that I hid in the woods and fought a mass defense from in the city, then with a little time left I sent my Calvary to take the 3 other victory points as they were undefeated. !! Lol...not sure Lee would have approved!!! : )

[Andre Bolkonsky]

There is one historical option no one has yet discussed at Antietam: 

 

 

[Col_Kelly]

They make it sound like a joke but a retreat is truly the best option

Someone on steam posted an interesting alternative : hold dunker church but do not fight at the sunken road, let them enter the gap and use cover wherever you can to gain an advantage until you bleed them enough to be able to retake the sunken road. A costly strategy however since it includes an offensive push with tired troops.

[CSX4451]

Interesting ..... might try that 

[Albert Sidney Johnston]

9 hours ago, Col_Kelly said:

They make it sound like a joke but a retreat is truly the best option

Someone on steam posted an interesting alternative : hold dunker church but do not fight at the sunken road, let them enter the gap and use cover wherever you can to gain an advantage until you bleed them enough to be able to retake the sunken road. A costly strategy however since it includes an offensive push with tired troops.

Fascinating! I might try that one myself.

 

The main problem with my strategy is that eventually I over-stretch my lines, then the enemy breaks through and cuts off a large part of my army. This was especially a problem during a game when my troops defending Dunker Church became entirely surrounded and cut off. 

[Andre Bolkonsky]

14 hours ago, Col_Kelly said:

They make it sound like a joke but a retreat is truly the best option

Someone on steam posted an interesting alternative : hold dunker church but do not fight at the sunken road, let them enter the gap and use cover wherever you can to gain an advantage until you bleed them enough to be able to retake the sunken road. A costly strategy however since it includes an offensive push with tired troops.

Who said I was kidding? 

I'm the person advocating sitting on your butt on Day One in Chancellorsville and husband your strength till you actually need it later in the battle. Then  you merely refuse your flank and form line in the trees and let your firepower decide the matter. 

Then, when you have all your troops on the field at the end of the campaign, release the hounds. 

[Hitorishizuka]

Courtesy link to the old thread, there may still be some good info for you there

 

[Albert Sidney Johnston]

14 minutes ago, Hitorishizuka said:

Courtesy link to the old thread, there may still be some good info for you there

 

Wow, thanks so much! I didn't see that thread! 

[Albert Sidney Johnston]

16 hours ago, Col_Kelly said:

They make it sound like a joke but a retreat is truly the best option

I'm just glad to know that I'm not the only one struggling! I'm on my first Legendary playthrough, and I just keep hitting a wall at Antietam. I've tried every strategy I can think of, but I just can't quite pull out a decent victory.

[william1993]

ever since they beefed it up I can't even fight that battle any more as the CSA.  The Unions are just too wild.  They come like swarms of cockroaches out of a dark refrigerator.  I can just barely eke out a win and lose 45% of my army and it's not worth it.  I remember the last time I fought it I just retreated and took the D and got the few rewards and lost reputation. Then I went to Fredericksburg and shot them to hell.

[Albert Sidney Johnston]

1 hour ago, william1993 said:

They come like swarms of cockroaches out of a dark refrigerator. 

A refrigerator in an abandoned house used by a former cockroach farmer that left huge tubs of cockroach food lying around. 

[Andre Bolkonsky]

1 hour ago, william1993 said:

ever since they beefed it up I can't even fight that battle any more as the CSA.  The Unions are just too wild.  They come like swarms of cockroaches out of a dark refrigerator.  I can just barely eke out a win and lose 45% of my army and it's not worth it.  I remember the last time I fought it I just retreated and took the D and got the few rewards and lost reputation. Then I went to Fredericksburg and shot them to hell.

Your statement concerns me, as you are standing in front of a refrigerator. . . . . . . 

Be afraid, be very afraid. 

[Kloiste]

3 hours ago, Albert Sidney Johnston said:

I'm just glad to know that I'm not the only one struggling! I'm on my first Legendary playthrough, and I just keep hitting a wall at Antietam. I've tried every strategy I can think of, but I just can't quite pull out a decent victory.

You can hold the woods and the fortifications in the North part of the map really easily and chew them up as they come. Have your men arranged in firing arcs so that two-three brigades can always target one of theirs as they advance and reshatter them over and over. Use 24 pound howitzers as they are devastating holding the line up North (They racked up around 7,000+ kills each) Have a small force positioned on the bridge to the East to rout the first division that crosses, which should be 2 cavalry, 3 infantry, then 2 artillery brigades, then pull back to a more defensible position.

The main problem on Legendary is that when it moves to the last phase, a ton of Union troops pour across the river from the East and you don't have enough troops to fight them due to the reduced recruits and gold in Legendary as well as their silly 3,000 man brigades that take forever to shatter. I went into Antietam with 52,000 and I had 18,000 positioned to hold the east during the last phase and they just swarmed right over me. After trying to fight them for a while I pulled back to the woods near Dunker Church as well as the Sharpsburg, split their Eastern force in two then beat them by piecemeal. In retrospect, the smart thing to do would have been pull straight back to the Church and Sharpsburg right away after defeating their advance force, let them take Sunken Road, then counterattack after they have split their troops. In the screenshot around 15,000 of the losses were from facing the flanking corp to the East. As long as you manage to hold the line in the North, then it is a cakewalk until their flanking force crosses the bridge en masse.

I'll probably replay it again when I have time to see if I can give any better advice for the last part of the battle.

Edit: Added a screenshot of the minimap with how I positioned my troops. Green for the first few phases, then before the Eastern flank attacks, pull your flank back to the Church and Sharpsburg as detailed below, then after their split their troops counterattack and defeat them by pinning them against the city. If you have a large amount of cavalry you can sweep around their flank on the right and take out their batteries, but only do this if you have at least 2 brigades. It takes a long time to kill the 600 men batteries and they are always together so you keep getting grapeshotted while you do it by an adjacent battery.

 

Edited April 14, 2017 by Kloiste
Adding screenshot with positioning of troops

[Hobo]

I  just won it on BG level as CSA with about 60K troops and 3 Corps.  My strategy was to set a forward defense in the North from the isolated woods in the NE across the first first line of defense in front of the corn field and across all the way to the woods on west.  After US failed to push through my defenses I moved forward from the corn field and took all of the woods directly to its North.  At the same time I defended the first bridge with 3 arty brigades, 1 skirmisher, and 3 1-2* brigades.  I had 1 brigade of cav millee to take care of the US Cav troops that slipped through my defenses.  The AI gave everything it had at my two flanks forcing me to eventually retreat my left flank back to the woods aligned with Dunker church.  My right flank held until the second round when the map expanded so they retreated to the woods on the far right and while weak were a pain in the ass to the US for the rest of the battle.  I slipped 2 cav brigades to the US rear and stole 2-3 of their supply and hurt a number of their arty.  When the 3rd round came I had basically won the North with some tough fighting defending the woods to the right of the sunken road, but had to retreat from the first bridge to the heights to the right of the sunken road,  My reinforcements helped but it was touch and go.  I also held the last bridge for a while before eventually falling back to Sharpsburg.  On key was to sneak 1 strong brigade and a cav unit around the south most river pass and harrass the troops trying to push over the bridge and steal their supply and shake up a couple of their arty brigades.  They key principles for me were:

- Steal their ammo wagons with Cav as logistics is my weakness

- Use all of the woods as cover and force them to fight in the open.

- Retreat when you have to but use that as an opportunity to expose their flanks while resting the retreating troops.

- Use skirmishers to weaken their flanks and basically demoralize them

- Never, ever, fight a fair fight.  This most importantly.

[Col_Kelly]

8 hours ago, Albert Sidney Johnston said:

I'm just glad to know that I'm not the only one struggling! I'm on my first Legendary playthrough, and I just keep hitting a wall at Antietam. I've tried every strategy I can think of, but I just can't quite pull out a decent victory.

Lol you're on legendary XD. Run away don't try anything else. The way this mode works now makes it almost impossible without nasty exploits. I'm struggling at Shiloh currently ! Union has nothing but 3k brigades all equipped with Harper Ferrys while my boys mostly use muskets...

[william1993]

8 hours ago, Andre Bolkonsky said:

Your statement concerns me, as you are standing in front of a refrigerator. . . . . . . 

Be afraid, be very afraid. 

hey my food is in there. I make sure roaches don't get that

[Kloiste]

Okay, I replayed the battle with the new strategy I suggested just to see how it work out and provide you with more details on how to beat it on Legendary. Sorry if the screenshots are a bit ugly. It didn't work quite as well as I hoped it would as the forward woods was a bit too tough to hold so i lost a few extra thousand men for nothing, but overall it went pretty well.

You can hold the line up North pretty easily, when Burnside crosses the bridge en mass pull back to the town and Church, the Federals will pick one objective to focus on and split their forces 70/30%, which allows the smaller force to be beaten for great ratios before you push forward and pin them against the larger one. Which objective they focus on is a bit of a coin toss, first time it was Sharpsburg, second time I did it they attacked the Church. Town defense is simple just stay in the town and outflank with brigades when they commit, then repeat. The Church defense was a bit complicated so I made a more detailed picture with how I did it.

You want to hold the woods to the left of the Church with around 4-5 brigades of infantry with 3 in line, 1 as backup if you get charged, and 1 as a flanking force on the left to quickly shatter. The center was 2 mobile brigades which would dash forward and backwards depending on how the fight was going to add extra firepower when needed, but otherwise stay out of range as they didn't have cover so you wouldn't want them to get hit (Forest and 6th Brigade in the screenshot). The east woods was held by 5th and 2nd, and the would be the static defense there, with the 4th and 7th shifting back and forth from the North to the South as situation demanded. If the AI attacks that side of the wood then they would be static and the forces at the Church would be the mobile units pushing forward and backwards, and vice versa. Juggle this until around 1:30 is left on the timer and you should have whittled down a decent chunk of their forces that you have force parity or maybe like 15-20% less than them, but what you make up for is in morale. Their units have been shattered over and over again, so you can push forward and take the fight onto the field and they will shatter with a few volleys, reform, and rout again. You can use this to quickly leapfrog your units back to Sunken Road and secure it. I made the decision to cut through them and divide them by going straight for the capture point instead of encircling and pushing them to one side so I could pin one force with a few units to hold them and have the other force destroy the artillery batteries because I didn't want to get constantly shelled while waiting for my units to envelope one flank and slowly push them away from the capture point

I ended up with 2,000 less casualties than the first time I played it attempting to actually fight at Sunken Road before retreating, so it was okay. Can still probably be improved though.

Images: Green is where the troops were, and Yellow is their new position after I redeploy.

[go_rocco]

If you play C.S the best tactics is anihilation of U.S. army at 2nd Bull Run(plus capturing the last object Henry Hill?). Then their numbers at Antietam are "manageable" and after the 1st phase (nearly all your troops are in the woods) Union is weakend and you can start flanking them from the left and slowly rolling them to the right. Plus if you have enough cavalry you can really hurt U.S artillery. 

In 2nd phase i've send 3-4 inf. brigades and 2-3 art. from 2nd corp to strengten right flank up north. "North part" of U.S army was stopped there but my brigades paid for it handsomely. The good news was that with the rest of 2nd corp I could focus on Union troops("east part") coming through the bridge. I've made a raindow like line with artillery behind plus some detached skirmischers and one brigade watching that lines back. U.S. troops were routed one by one at really small price.

3rd phase is pretty easy if all went well in first two(flanking and pushing U.S to the right up north and defending the first bridge with 2nd corp) and your 3rd corp has 5-6 inf. brigades and 3-4 art. It's pretty frustrating that it is placed in Sharpsburg thou, beacause your paying with inf. for it at first. The 3rd corp are mostly rookies with farmers so it didn't cost me much after the battle.

[A. P. Hill]

The problem here is very simple.

The AI is not programed as McClellan was.  Despite the fact that "Little Napoleon" had most likely double the men at Antietam, because of his nature, he never committed more than half of his force during the whole day's fighting.  Thus making the actual historical battle more to even parity of numbers on the field, which is the only thing that saved Lee's forces. The AI on the other hand, knows it has excessive force and uses every unit it has, there is no programing in the AI to tell it not to use every last unit it has.

Though it's evident that some folks can sustain those odds, more often than not, when you're outnumbered more than 2:1 you're hard pressed to win those fights.

[michaelsmithern]

My strategy is simple.... I call it Git Gud.

No, but for real, what i do is i take Nicomedia Hill with arty and two brigades of infantry, and hold it as long as possible. with the recent updates it's concerning whether this is a good move or not considering it always leads to the Union Flanking all the way to the left side of the map and me having to constantly move forces up to fight them off. In the Sunken road i usually station all my arty adn 4 brigades on the right over by the bridge to decimate any union troops that come across, especially early on, since they just spawn on your side of the bridge and can be easily canistered and shot up without the time to react. Finally with the Burnsides bridge, it's 50/50 for me, sometimes my third corps can hold the bridge others they can't for the most part i don't focus on it too much, i just try and hold the enemy back for as long as possible.

[AJ McCully]

1 hour ago, A. P. Hill said:

The problem here is very simple.

The AI is not programed as McClellan was.  Despite the fact that "Little Napoleon" had most likely double the men at Antietam, because of his nature, he never committed more than half of his force during the whole day's fighting.  Thus making the actual historical battle more to even parity of numbers on the field, which is the only thing that saved Lee's forces. The AI on the other hand, knows it has excessive force and uses every unit it has, there is no programing in the AI to tell it not to use every last unit it has.

Though it's evident that some folks can sustain those odds, more often than not, when you're outnumbered more than 2:1 you're hard pressed to win those fights.

 

Completely agree. 

I made the same point in a steam discussion but focusing more on the way the AI behaves with what it has.  McClellan was a very cautious Union general in a war that could've been ended by one aggressive Union general very early on. At Antietam, he failed to pursue the confederate army relentlessly both during and after the battle. He never fully concentrated his forces, perhaps out of fear of high casualties that his superiors and the rest of the North wouldnt be happy about.

The AI plays it completely differently. It uses everything it has and is happy to funnel tens of thousands of men under heavy and constant fire through one lane to take the city. That doesnt speak of a cautious commander concerned about losses. My main problem with this battle is that I can cause massive casualties to the Union army, leave 40-50 thousand dead Yankees on the field at a ratio of 3:1 with my own casualties, but at the end of the day I'm the defeated one. The AI doesnt care about the war beyond the battle, it doesnt care about the commander in chief, it doesnt care about crippling itself. So in the face of a flawless enemy willing to sacrifice everything to win, exploits and luck are the only tools left to you and I ultimately feel that the wisest course it to not fight at all.

[go_rocco]

1 hour ago, AJ McCully said:

 

Completely agree. 

I made the same point in a steam discussion but focusing more on the way the AI behaves with what it has.  McClellan was a very cautious Union general in a war that could've been ended by one aggressive Union general very early on. At Antietam, he failed to pursue the confederate army relentlessly both during and after the battle. He never fully concentrated his forces, perhaps out of fear of high casualties that his superiors and the rest of the North wouldnt be happy about.

The AI plays it completely differently. It uses everything it has and is happy to funnel tens of thousands of men under heavy and constant fire through one lane to take the city. That doesnt speak of a cautious commander concerned about losses. My main problem with this battle is that I can cause massive casualties to the Union army, leave 40-50 thousand dead Yankees on the field at a ratio of 3:1 with my own casualties, but at the end of the day I'm the defeated one. The AI doesnt care about the war beyond the battle, it doesnt care about the commander in chief, it doesnt care about crippling itself. So in the face of a flawless enemy willing to sacrifice everything to win, exploits and luck are the only tools left to you and I ultimately feel that the wisest course it to not fight at all.

That's all true but there was like 9+ options in UGG when it comes to AI and there was a big difference between them . In UGCV I would gladly settle for aggressive Grant, cautios McClellan an something in between.

I don't know why but I've seen AI standing amd not engaging. C.S forces in the 3rd phase of Stones River(corp which comes from north-east) for example. So it's doable.

I also think that a little change in fortification would help a lot.