CSA Campaign Chanclorville

[Zayne]

Why is Chancellorsville for the CSA so bloody impossible to win ? the learning curve goes from 1-100 in a second any suggestions ?

[Byzantium]

Well, there's the historical answer that the objective military situation at Chancellorsville was pretty horrid for the Confederates, something well described by Edward Porter Alexander in his memoirs. 

But game-wise, there's probably some detail of what you're trying to do/how you're going about it that would be helpful in giving advice: i.e. what difficulty, are you trying to win on Day 1, or going through the historical progression and executing the flanking attack/dawn follow-up? What is your Corps composition like, how much has the union been able to progress beyond the minimum army size in the campaign so far, etc?

My experience is that winning on day 1, once you know how it flows, is much less taxing, but if you don't know that's what you're planning to do right off the bat it's not particularly easy - both because you're attempting to hold an objective in the middle of the open with all of the Union reinforcements spawned basically on top of you, and because you need to secure the farm until the end of the ~1-hour 'contested' period, so if you lose control of the farm for 1 minute after the mission timer is over, that puts you instantly into the next day, which thus doubly sucks because of the extra attrition taken trying to hold the farm in the first place. 

Regardless of which phase, I've found that the Union position is best approached from Hazel Grove, as you can flank the one fortified building within the wheatfields from that direction and that avoids the fences and woods everywhere else. That does require staying out in the relatively open ground, though, so I usually accompany that with a nearly exclusive focus on counter-battery fire from my own artillery from the get-go - Usually of the 48 brigades available, I'm bringing at least a dozen batteries of 10-pounder parrots along with 5 or 6 other artillery batteries and 2 or 3 sniper detachments with TS Whitworths which can sometimes knock out a battery or two but are mostly for spotting duty.

Edited January 18, 2019 by Byzantium
Fixed Alexander's name

[pandakraut]

Which difficulty are you on? How large is your army currently?

General advice is to only advance into defensive positions on day 1. Try to get the Union units to charge you so you can fight them while they are in the open. If you can start picking off any of their artillery with counter battery or snipers it will help you out later.

On day 2 return to your defensive positions with your first corps and continue to pick off anything you can with them. With your flanking corps you want to approach to the edge of the camp and inflict as much damage as you can while in cover and limiting your own casualties. Don't try to actually take the VP.

Day 3, more of the same, setup on the edges of the camp in the west and slowly advance your southern force to push back the union until you can take the camp. If the timer gets tight save up 5-6 brigades in decent shape, rest them to full condition and then charge the point.

Here are two examples of how it can be played:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YKe2jIdPlE&t=3s&list=PL6-2WZCqywMWNyI4imucF1tSJjyaqs2qx&index=28

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFpbexOOCTY