min size campaign

[Bill the Bold]

I'm trying a CSA campaign on normal difficulty using minimum army sizes, I'm up to Gaines Mills with an AO of 3.  Is there any reason to push it higher?  Will there be a point in the future when I'll need more AO?  

[Jamesk2]

At Antietam you'll be required to bring 3 corps into the battle.

[Hitorishizuka]

5 hours ago, Bill the Bold said:

I'm trying a CSA campaign on normal difficulty using minimum army sizes, I'm up to Gaines Mills with an AO of 3.  Is there any reason to push it higher?  Will there be a point in the future when I'll need more AO?  

IMO the other trick to min size is that getting a high AO to raise your Brigade caps makes it easier to level recruits, who will have Brigades of 2500 compared to enemy 1000. By Gaines Mill I'd at least want the second Corps at minimum (the first Division definitely sees the battle) and I think I was probably at AO7+ by then. Malvern you can deploy your full first Corps immediately so you want to max that too even if you only bring a couple Divisions out of the second Corps.

[Bill the Bold]

1 hour ago, Jamesk2 said:

At Antietam you'll be required to bring 3 corps into the battle.

True but you get the two additional corps as rewards, as it stands now I have two full corps with an open slot for the third.

 

1 hour ago, Hitorishizuka said:

IMO the other trick to min size is that getting a high AO to raise your Brigade caps makes it easier to level recruits, who will have Brigades of 2500 compared to enemy 1000. By Gaines Mill I'd at least want the second Corps at minimum (the first Division definitely sees the battle) and I think I was probably at AO7+ by then. Malvern you can deploy your full first Corps immediately so you want to max that too even if you only bring a couple Divisions out of the second Corps.

Interesting, I hadn't considered the leveling of recruits.  I thought that scaling kicked in when you had bigger brigades though?  I've kept it at AO3 because most of the battles you fight you're only allowed 10 or 12 brigades anyway.  I thought I might have been in trouble at Shilo with only 12 brigades in my corps but it was no tougher than when I beat it in my previous campaign with a fourth division in the battle order.  Also its been much easier to equip them, only one brigade in first corps still have Mississippi rifles.  The second brigade is all 1842s and 12pdrs though.

 

edit: i meant the second corps has all 1842s and 12pdrs

Edited January 24, 2017 by Bill the Bold

[Hitorishizuka]

5 hours ago, Bill the Bold said:

Interesting, I hadn't considered the leveling of recruits.  I thought that scaling kicked in when you had bigger brigades though?  I've kept it at AO3 because most of the battles you fight you're only allowed 10 or 12 brigades anyway.  I thought I might have been in trouble at Shilo with only 12 brigades in my corps but it was no tougher than when I beat it in my previous campaign with a fourth division in the battle order.  Also its been much easier to equip them, only one brigade in first corps still have Mississippi rifles.  The second brigade is all 1842s and 12pdrs though.

Recruit brigades get to be max size, a few regulars at 2/3 or so, then you can fill out the rest with fairly small vet brigades. That level of numbers means your regulars don't have to get overrun quite so fast and your cavalry can actually do something.

[Bill the Bold]

Thanks for your input, it was reading some of your other posts that made me try a min size campaign in the first place.  I was surprised when you said you had AO 7 by Gaines Mills, guess I didn't read your posts thoroughly enough lol.

10 hours ago, Hitorishizuka said:

Recruit brigades get to be max size, a few regulars at 2/3 or so, then you can fill out the rest with fairly small vet brigades. That level of numbers means your regulars don't have to get overrun quite so fast and your cavalry can actually do something.

This is essentially the force composition in my other campaigns.  My main guideline with this play through was to keep the army only as big as it needed to be in terms of brigades and corps (I never went into a skirmish with less than max number of brigades) and to make those units as elite as possible.  So far it seems to be working out, I fought Gaines Mills last night and pulled off a victory with just over a 3:1 loss ratio.  The initial attack corps were seven 2* inf with lorenzes or better (mostly better), a battery of eight napoleons and eight of 10pd ordnance with 350 melee cav.  I needed roughly 500 more veteran inf soldiers to fill 1st corps completely so basically full strengths of 1500 men.  That force had no trouble securing the first two VPs and were in defensive positions by the time union reinforcements arrived.  When the raw 2nd corps came into play it wasn't 2500 vs 1000, more like 1500 vs 900 but they still swept all before them. 

Observations of AO 3,

It makes for fast paced games, your guys don't last long but neither do theirs, good when you have to hit VPs before reinforcements show up bad in that if you're not paying attention your guys get mauled pretty quick.  

I'm not sure about their cav but the enemy skirmisher units were the same size (350 odd men), that sharpshooter unit the union gets at gaines mills did the devils work on one of the brigades I had parked in the woods while the other guys took the right flank VP (wasn't paying attention haha).  

Not putting points toward AO allows you spend them on other things, I had politics maxed well before Gaines mills.

Overall I'd say the scaling at the low end works pretty good, I've not felt hampered in any of the battles so far by having fewer brigades per corps than I'd normally have and 1500 vs 1500 doesn't really feel that different than 2500 vs 2500.

Its been interesting anyway, we'll see what happens at Malvern Hill.

[Hitorishizuka]

Yes, that's the general strategy, but I still recommend getting AO high enough to use around as many brigades as practically see the fight by around there, they're just all vets or so. The key is too avoid scaling up by including brigades that legitimately would never have seen combat or who would be stuck sitting around waiting for fighting for awhile because there isn't enough combat width to have them in play effectively. Run small with a couple 750 melee cav brigades and they get to run over everything, too. Run small and the 24pdr Napoleons which you can afford by not having to buy loads of grunt rifles get to blow everything up.

[Bill the Bold]

Victory at Malvern Hill with AO 3.  I was shocked by the wall of veterency that I ran into.  They had five 3* inf brigades (1200 to 1300 men each) the rest were 2*, all their cannons were one or two star vets and I don't recall the cav levels.  I only captured 1855s and sharpshooter rifles so they were all geared up.  About half my inf were 2* with good rifles the rest were 1* or raw inf with 1842s.  I'm not sure how the enemy veterans scale up so I was pretty surprised (and more than slightly annoyed) by their forces being well beyond anything I could have hoped to field.

 

Luckily Mr. Canister does not care how many stars you have.

 

So its pretty easy getting to Malvern Hill as CSA with AO 3 but if I were to do it again I would consider getting AO 4 or 5 after Gaines Mills to try and dilute their veterancy levels a bit.  I bumped up to AO 5 after Malvern so I can bring the full 14 brigades to Cedar Mountain.