MG Confederate Campaign *New Poster*

[Bentbake]

Hi all

 

First time poster here. Started playing UG Civil War back in February and it is up there with my favorite games of all time. Hadn't played in 6 weeks and figured I would start up a MG campaign with the Confederacy after all the updates.

The very first battle was the hardest and took me 4 times before I could even get the campaign going. IMO, it is tougher that 1st Bull Run or Shiloh. 

I never skip a battle and play every single one. I want no advantage or skip any challenge and playing every battle is the only way for me to truly feel like I won the War.

Gaines Mill resulted in ~2.5K casualties and I was very happy with that. I anticipated double that number so I was very happy. 

Malvern Hill was a challenge but with good coordination I was able to break the Yankee center and bring up my batteries to hold against numerous counter attacks. I had ~5K casualties which was once again a lower than I anticipated.

By now I had a strong Veteran 1st corps with multiple 2 star brigades that was able to hold at 2nd Bull Run. On the second day I pulled on my reinforcements to Stony Ridge and held there for the victory. I didn't send any troops to Henry Hill since the other Victory option comes at a much less cost.

Now I'm at Antietam! I've decided to go in with 46K soldiers but am going to face a Federal army of 112K!! That's right, 112K! I play to win every battle but there is no way I can imagine myself overcoming those odds! I guess I'll try to settle for a Fraw and hold in the West Woods for a good amount of time and gradually fall back to the town. I'd hate to have played a perfect campaign so far to see it all end here. MG is a whole different ballgame than BG so wish my luck.

 

Any advice?

[Titan Uranus]

I've never been outnumbered quite that badly except temporarily or in a minor battle. However, I would say that there are some basic maxims that you should follow:

1. Always keep your infantry in cover, if at all possible. Cover, especially forests is essential. By the way, the hierarchy of resilience to fire is cavalry<<<artillery<infantry<<<skirmishers

2. Always make sure that your units are not individually outflanked.

3. Always attempt to keep a local reserve, infantry to hold/charge and skirmishers/carbine cav to plug gaps/shoot flanks (snipers are especially good at this.) Very often this role can be filled by routed and recovering units.

4. Always attempt to locally outflank enemies if at all possible, if you cannot, then all you can do is stave off the inevitable.

5. Keep your artillery at or very close to the front if at all possible.

6. Use detached skirmishers.

7. Always dismount carbine cav before fighting, this can be only seconds before if you are certain of the enemy's location.

8. Keep putting pressure on a defeated unit, don't expose yourself too much, but a recently defeated unit fights poorly and as long as you can start shooting again before they get their morale up, you will have an easier time of defeating them.  This is how you cause a morale cascade that ends in the enemy army running around in a corner with several thousand men pouring lead into them from every possible angle. If you have some good melee troops, this is a good time to use them.

 

I could give you better specifics if I knew your army composition.

 

I looked at the initial map, and my immediate reaction is as follows:

Key: Arrows = possible advances, Sprayed color = skirmishers, Lines = main deployment, X = decent artillery positions, Boxes = reserves

Red denotes initial deployment (the center probably is too far forwards, but that's fine, just fall back as needed to pull the enemy as much as possible into the kill box.) The left flank should be relatively weak, it is mainly there to stave off enemy advances. The rightmost artillery position may well end up as being to exposed (or too difficult to get to), though in my experience the AI doesn't attack as broadly as it ought to.

Blue and yellow obviously denote fallback positions.

The Orange arrows denote skirmisher advances, moved up temporarily to get flanking shots, then most likely retreated. Though feel free to advance in the center if you think it worthwhile.

The pink arrows denote the advance of the left infantry/skirmishers.

Always feel free to fall back from exposed positions if you need to, though you need to have cover to run to and you should tie it to the enemy's reload cycle.

Try not to get trapped on the defensive, always look for openings for a flank shot, so you can begin rolling up the enemy, or cover a retreat if you are forced to make one.

This is how I would deal with the opening battle.

 

As for the rest, keep relatively light forces at the bridges and fords. Just tie up the enemy while you deal with the northern force, get a flank on it, and crush it. The AI (or a player, for that matter) can be greatly slowed by skirmishers in forests/cover, especially those who are performing occasional flanking shots. Once you defeat the northern force, just swing around and crush the corps attempting to cross the bridges.