Firstly, I learned the risk of launching an offensive during winter weather. As soon as the game began, I sent my massed corps straight towards Prag, ending their first turn in the mountains South of Pirna (with snow on the ground). During the subsequent turn resolution, severe weather struck the region, and my poor troops were dispersed all over the place, losing all their organisation in the process, and ending up virtually unable to move, but also cut off from supply. It was not pretty - most of my starting forces were wiped out, by lack of supply, over the ensuing turns, and I ended up having a mass of recovering officers all over the place, desparately trying to recruit new troops. But it's a long game, and Austria is quite quiet in the beginning, so I did reasonably well in setting up new force structures, but it did mean I hadn't made any early progress in the war - no objectives captured, while Austria was able to build up big time.
The second lesson I learned was the importance of supply. I was mindful from the beginning of the importance of supply, following the disaster in the mountains, but for some reason, I only applied the logic to my own forces. I don't think I really understood the simplicity of the supply map mode, until quite late in the game. So, if an Austrian force went charging up north, as long as it wasn't representing what I thought might be an immediate threat, I generally ignored it.
Now, for some reason, the Russians were very stand-offish in this campaign. I had abandoned East Prussia to it's fate early on, and so they seemed content to hang about over there, which was just as well, as their numbers were daunting. However, they did send one army out across Poland to besiege Kolberg. It was massive, and I really had nothing to counter it with, until I thought of checking the supply mode. They had a nice straight, single province width supply corridor. It was so easy to send some cavalry across to cut it off, and once I did I watched their numbers tumble until I eventually sent in the same cavalry brigade to finish them off.
Now, if only I'd applied this approach to the Austrians (and the French in the West) from the beginning, I might have been able to recover from the early setback.
I think next time out, I'll also set the option for troop replacement via depots, to really focus on the importance of those supply structures. It was a great campaign, and I can't wait to play the next (after some more PoN and AJE)
