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Finally achieved CSA Antietam victory!


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After multiple attempts and campaign-ending defeats, I did it!

The advice that's floating around here has been pretty good (hold the L-shaped tree line that the Dunker Church is in, rather than the fortification lines in the open) but I also went way more aggressive. My Sunken Road reinforcements in phase II went ON THE ATTACK immediately, staunching the Union advance and eventually enveloping them. I sent one division with strong artillery support to be a bridge bottlenecking force for the bridge the Union tries to cross but everyone else went forward. My third wave reinforcements reinforced/relieved the bridge forces and held Burnside's Bridge.

I went in with 53K rebels against something like 97,000 enemies. Took 18,000 casualties and inflicted 67,000. Most of my casualties were caused by poor micro-managing of the bridge holding forces, who were especially chewed up by Union artillery before I sent cav around and ate them all. Great times!

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Sorry in advance for my poor english.

 

97000 union soldiers? OMG

My first campaign was with medium difficulty settings and Antietam was the end. The campaign didn't end because i lost reputation,  i give up because i didn't have an army after Antietam. I had 35k soldiers , with some crack units, and face around 55k union soldiers. i killed 35k soldiers and lost 25k soldiers!! it was a blood bath. I lost almost all my brigades. I should had withdraw from the battle and save my army to fight another day the moment i saw it was a desperate situation. Now i started another campaign in hard but this time i am not going to spend more money with recruiting veterans units.

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11 hours ago, no one said:

Sorry in advance for my poor english.

 

97000 union soldiers? OMG

My first campaign was with medium difficulty settings and Antietam was the end. The campaign didn't end because i lost reputation,  i give up because i didn't have an army after Antietam. I had 35k soldiers , with some crack units, and face around 55k union soldiers. i killed 35k soldiers and lost 25k soldiers!! it was a blood bath. I lost almost all my brigades. I should had withdraw from the battle and save my army to fight another day the moment i saw it was a desperate situation. Now i started another campaign in hard but this time i am not going to spend more money with recruiting veterans units.

It was BG level, and the same thing happened to me in my first campaign. I refought the battle several times and always got ground down to nothing. I was going to just give the opposition a bloody nose and withdraw everyone and take the defeat this time, but then my strategy worked.

Things I did wrong in the past were: underestimating what it takes to hold the bridges that the Union sends a flanking force over. You need a division at each one with strong artillery support. I used 1 star guys with rifles. I threw in a bunch of the random extra Napoleons and 6 pounders from my armory into new units in my third corps forces that arrive last. That probably scaled up the Union artillery, but the AI doesn't use it as well and I eventually destroyed it all. I have a lot of ordnance guns now!

Other things to consider are: your force at the Dunker Church should be your best men, with a few expendable units mixed in to stand in the most dangerous spots while the two-stars are getting all the kills. Keep to the L-shaped forest. It also helped that I sent 28 heavy howitzers and ten ordnance guns. Ration your supply wagon ammo carefully. Each of the howitzers got around 3,000 kills.

I used much more cavalry this time than I did in the past. Four smirkish cav units and three large veteran melee units I had carefully shepharded through the campaign. I micromanaged the skirmishers (carbine-armed ones) to give attacking Union troops flanking fire and break them. The melee units captured supply wagons and waited for their moment to slaughter the enemy artillery.

When your sunken road units arrive, be AGGRESSIVE. I sent one division to the bridge and everyone else attacked, not defending the road at all. I also sent a division from the Dunker Church Force flanking around from the north west (from the direction of Nicodemus Hill, that random VP you don't actually need) but only because there was an opportunity to do so. They took heavy casualties but split the enemy's attack so they never hit one spot with their whole strength.

I had four large units of cannon fodder rookies armed with farmers and springfields. I literally named them 1st Cannon Fodder, 2nd Cannon Fodder, etc. They would break cover to run out and deliver flanking fire to break attacking units. It helped that the Union attacked kind of piecemeal. 

Finally, I abused the "deploy skirmishers" exploit to break up enemy charges... :(  I'm not proud, but neither is defeat!

Save often.

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11 hours ago, no one said:

Sorry in advance for my poor english.

 

97000 union soldiers? OMG

My first campaign was with medium difficulty settings and Antietam was the end. The campaign didn't end because i lost reputation,  i give up because i didn't have an army after Antietam. I had 35k soldiers , with some crack units, and face around 55k union soldiers. i killed 35k soldiers and lost 25k soldiers!! it was a blood bath. I lost almost all my brigades. I should had withdraw from the battle and save my army to fight another day the moment i saw it was a desperate situation. Now i started another campaign in hard but this time i am not going to spend more money with recruiting veterans units.

Methinks that investing in the medical, and political avenues, of building up your Corps, and keeping your army organization, at a "manageable" level, the disbanding of badly beat up units, and dead, or injured div.leader units, would serve your cause much better, then all the investing done for "training", and all the money spent "buying" veterans.  As it "seems", through these eyeballs, anyway, that, the XP points that a soldier gains after any particular engagement, follows him, or her (LOL), until, they end up on the "casualty" list.   Admittedly, however, this may not sound like much, as there isn't a YUGE (lol) significance, when drafting them back into a unit, but, it is certainly "noticeable"!  Somewhat of an added "perk" using this strategy, is an ability of using lower ranked div. commanders, with their soldiers, losing "less" XP traits.  Which "enhances" your ability in leveling up lower ranked officers.  Of course, an "unknown", is literally, just how much XP points a veteran soldier "shares" with new recruits in betweenst "draftings".        

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7 hours ago, Bobby Fiasco said:

It was BG level, and the same thing happened to me in my first campaign. I refought the battle several times and always got ground down to nothing. I was going to just give the opposition a bloody nose and withdraw everyone and take the defeat this time, but then my strategy worked.

Things I did wrong in the past were: underestimating what it takes to hold the bridges that the Union sends a flanking force over. You need a division at each one with strong artillery support. I used 1 star guys with rifles. I threw in a bunch of the random extra Napoleons and 6 pounders from my armory into new units in my third corps forces that arrive last. That probably scaled up the Union artillery, but the AI doesn't use it as well and I eventually destroyed it all. I have a lot of ordnance guns now!

Other things to consider are: your force at the Dunker Church should be your best men, with a few expendable units mixed in to stand in the most dangerous spots while the two-stars are getting all the kills. Keep to the L-shaped forest. It also helped that I sent 28 heavy howitzers and ten ordnance guns. Ration your supply wagon ammo carefully. Each of the howitzers got around 3,000 kills.

I used much more cavalry this time than I did in the past. Four smirkish cav units and three large veteran melee units I had carefully shepharded through the campaign. I micromanaged the skirmishers (carbine-armed ones) to give attacking Union troops flanking fire and break them. The melee units captured supply wagons and waited for their moment to slaughter the enemy artillery.

When your sunken road units arrive, be AGGRESSIVE. I sent one division to the bridge and everyone else attacked, not defending the road at all. I also sent a division from the Dunker Church Force flanking around from the north west (from the direction of Nicodemus Hill, that random VP you don't actually need) but only because there was an opportunity to do so. They took heavy casualties but split the enemy's attack so they never hit one spot with their whole strength.

I had four large units of cannon fodder rookies armed with farmers and springfields. I literally named them 1st Cannon Fodder, 2nd Cannon Fodder, etc. They would break cover to run out and deliver flanking fire to break attacking units. It helped that the Union attacked kind of piecemeal. 

Finally, I abused the "deploy skirmishers" exploit to break up enemy charges... :(  I'm not proud, but neither is defeat!

Save often.

 

6 hours ago, aka Bear said:

Methinks that investing in the medical, and political avenues, of building up your Corps, and keeping your army organization, at a "manageable" level, the disbanding of badly beat up units, and dead, or injured div.leader units, would serve your cause much better, then all the investing done for "training", and all the money spent "buying" veterans.  As it "seems", through these eyeballs, anyway, that, the XP points that a soldier gains after any particular engagement, follows him, or her (LOL), until, they end up on the "casualty" list.   Admittedly, however, this may not sound like much, as there isn't a YUGE (lol) significance, when drafting them back into a unit, but, it is certainly "noticeable"!  Somewhat of an added "perk" using this strategy, is an ability of using lower ranked div. commanders, with their soldiers, losing "less" XP traits.  Which "enhances" your ability in leveling up lower ranked officers.  Of course, an "unknown", is literally, just how much XP points a veteran soldier "shares" with new recruits in betweenst "draftings".        

Thank you all for the feedback.

 

Before i started my new campaing in hard level ,  i look around here in the forum looking for tips where to build the skills points , etc. There is one member , i forgot the name ,that suggested to invest in politics until you get level 5, and then move to corps organization. This is what i am doing in my new campaign. I completely ignore for now the training and recon skills, and i have 3 logistics points skills from beginning.

I build all my divisions around the same concept. 3 inf. brigades ,1 artillery ,  no cavalry , no skirmish units. Yesterday i fought Shiloh for the second time now in hard and i won ( i had lost this battle on my previous campaign ).  I got rewarded with an elite cavalry brigade and 2 skills points that i spent to improve my corps to get 5 brigades , 2000 soldier cap each infantry brigade. And because i got now one elite cavalry unit i recruit 1 skirmish unit for the others 2 divisions.

 

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