Let s analyse the situation :
This campagain is not like other : In front of us an endless ocean of lands. It will allow armies to manoeuver, avoid, flank ennemy
Moscow is 40 days away, but certainly much more of it, as we will have to consider securing our supply lines, rest our troops, and hopefully fight the russians before reaching it.
It sounds so necessary to figh, and defeat the russians as soon as possible before they fade away deep in the ukrainian country, where it will be very difficult to catch them.
The Russian army, as per our first reports is made of 2 main forces :
Northern Army in Livonia blocking the road to St Petersburg, with several divisons and huge artillery : Not a piece of cake
The second One, 2nd Western Army (is there a 1st wetern army somewhere elses ? ) commanded by Bagration, with several other Corps.
Between them, several units with different size
The russian army seems not be prepared for a decive battle so early in the campaign, which made it very vulnerable to our offensive, but also very difficult to catch and to destroy.
Behind, it is the Big Question Mark ( I didn t play this camapign against the AI, and so do not know the ennemy OOB, neither if there is some events during the game)
Like I presume, ennemy will soon start a retreat, marching East, avoiding battles, with our amies chasing.
We will have then to secure our supply lines, and capture russian depots to progress eastward.
By doing this, we will also cut off supply to potential russian counter offensives, and force ennemy to fall back on new defensive positions, until he will agree, or be forced, to fight.
Our first objectives :
Kowno, Vilnius, MINSK, Brest Litovsk, RIGA, Dvinsk
South front is guarded by our austrians 'friends' with Schwarzenberg commanding the XXII Corps. In front of him, only few russian calary units, nothing serious.
His mission is to seize the Brest Litovsk fortress and its depot, and later on, if possible, reach and capture Kiev (30days away)
Our reserves : Augereau in Warsaw, and the danish corps to secure our supply lines, in case, like I presume, russians try to sneak behind our armies while marching toward Moscow
The so called French Army, which would rather be named the patchwork army, as made of multiple natinalities
Its strengh : Number
Its weakness : Number...
In fact, with so many unit,s it will require so much supply, that it would limit our oprational abilities, running for supply depot, and waiting for our ammnution carts to reach front lines.
Also, if we can't doubt about valor and fidelity of our dear allies, we are also lacking volunteers to fill in its ranks when we will experience our first losses during the campaign.
The Russian campaign can now start !
(re : I bet it will be quite difficult to capture the objective city of Donegal before end of the game....
)