How do you best use your cavalry? What I mean is, is it best to place them in independent divisions/groups led by a cavalry commander (i.e. Forrest, Sheridan, etc.) and send them off on raiding missions behind enemy lines, or set them up under the army/corps structure and fight within those structures? Or both?!
I have had some single units attached directly to the army or corps outside of any divisions I have formed, but also (more frequently with the CSA) formed independent divisions and raided behind enemy lines. However I have been caught out when these units have suffered supply attrition despite their commanders often having the 'Deep/Adept Raider', 'Supply Ranger' and such traits. I guess they still need attached supply carts or need to hit enemy depots?
Both
There are advantages to having cavalry in your main stacks and there is certainly no harm in having brigade or division strength in a corps or army stack.
Raiding is very important when the CSA to try to disrupt the USA supply lines. As you have seen your raiders can't hang out there for more than a few turns without supply carts, unfortunately supply carts will slow them down. Fast mover and raider abilities do help there.
One tactic is hit and run back to your lines with a raid lasting no more than 3 turns (you can destroy rail or depots and move in the same turn).
Another is to target depots, capture a depot and you capture the supply. Military Control of a region is very important when trying to draw supply so be aware of your supply chains too.
There are advantages to having cavalry in your main stacks and there is certainly no harm in having brigade or division strength in a corps or army stack.
Raiding is very important when the CSA to try to disrupt the USA supply lines. As you have seen your raiders can't hang out there for more than a few turns without supply carts, unfortunately supply carts will slow them down. Fast mover and raider abilities do help there.
One tactic is hit and run back to your lines with a raid lasting no more than 3 turns (you can destroy rail or depots and move in the same turn).
Another is to target depots, capture a depot and you capture the supply. Military Control of a region is very important when trying to draw supply so be aware of your supply chains too.
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ArmChairGeneral
- AGEod Grognard
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I would tend to disagree and say that raiding is not that important in the conventional sense of "go and burn down a depot and/or rip up tracks." You don't have that great of range or staying power, you can't capture cities with early cavalry, even the AI is competent enough to guard vulnerable depots, and backline Union depots aren't individually important in the first place since the Union supply network is very robust. You might get one or two depots in a game this way but will probably lose several cav elements doing it, especially if you get caught out in the weather (mud is your enemy) and all for little to no payoff.
My overall cavalry approach is to be very active during the first half of the game, with small groups constantly buzzing around the map getting vision, gaining MC and generally trying to make the map the most favorable for me, always ready to circle behind wounded enemy forces to cut off supply or block retreat paths in the hopes that I can trap the wounded stack and destroy it. It's a swarm of bees, constantly moving and doing something; if I come across one of my cav sitting in town with full COH and Supply then it is not pulling its weight.
Once the early cav get upgraded to late cav (roughly the second half of the game) their scouting stats get nerfed while their combat stats get a bump. Since they are no longer as effective as scouts they are good mixed into front-line divisions. I like to have 2-4 cav in each division of my main battle stacks, sometimes more if I think I can win an upcoming battle and want to pile on the pursuit hits. With a cav officer in the stack and enough infantry meatshields in their division late-cav more than pull their weight in corps vs corps battles. I regularly deal 20-40 and sometimes even more pursuit hits when I have 12-15 cav in a Corps or Army stack.
Cav in 100% Cav/Cav Artillery divisions are suboptimal in large-scale combat: they just won't stand up to the firepower of a division with lots of infantry and they take needless and expensive to replace casualties. Even in MO where I do like to put together a relatively powerful cav division that sees a lot of combat I mix in the mounted volunteers (who are technically militia, i.e. infanatry) to give them the staying power they need.
Tactics for cav also depend on the theater. Cav go from a continuum of strong in the west to weak in the east as the average stack size gets bigger. In the Far West and the Great Plains they are powerful combat units even in small stacks, while in the East a small stack of cav would be wiped out by just about any enemy stack they came in contact with. You will need to size your scout stacks to be survivable in the theater they are in but bear in mind that command penalties affect their movement and stealth as well as combat stats; 10% penalty is acceptable anything worse can cause problems. For the most part in the Far West and the Plains cav are the most powerful elements. IN MO you need to build artillery and infantry to win the day, but cav play an important combat role because they make up a lot of the forces you have available. TN, KY IN, OH are perfect conditions for the swarm of bees approach, while in the east independent cav have a limited role because there aren't that many safe/useful things to do with them and because vision isn't as important since lines tend to be static and close.
I use two or three of my cav officers in whichever large front-line stacks have the most cav in them (especially the guys with only 4 Strat). A couple, like Forrest I use as scouts in two-stacks until I need to beef them up into divisions. Bear in mind when you have cav divisions that Cav officers mostly have low seniority and won't benefit from their 6 Strats if a lesser general is in command of the stack. If you do not have a 5 or 6 strat cav general for them it is best to leave scout stacks uncommanded so they don't become inactive or fixed in place.
My overall cavalry approach is to be very active during the first half of the game, with small groups constantly buzzing around the map getting vision, gaining MC and generally trying to make the map the most favorable for me, always ready to circle behind wounded enemy forces to cut off supply or block retreat paths in the hopes that I can trap the wounded stack and destroy it. It's a swarm of bees, constantly moving and doing something; if I come across one of my cav sitting in town with full COH and Supply then it is not pulling its weight.
Once the early cav get upgraded to late cav (roughly the second half of the game) their scouting stats get nerfed while their combat stats get a bump. Since they are no longer as effective as scouts they are good mixed into front-line divisions. I like to have 2-4 cav in each division of my main battle stacks, sometimes more if I think I can win an upcoming battle and want to pile on the pursuit hits. With a cav officer in the stack and enough infantry meatshields in their division late-cav more than pull their weight in corps vs corps battles. I regularly deal 20-40 and sometimes even more pursuit hits when I have 12-15 cav in a Corps or Army stack.
Cav in 100% Cav/Cav Artillery divisions are suboptimal in large-scale combat: they just won't stand up to the firepower of a division with lots of infantry and they take needless and expensive to replace casualties. Even in MO where I do like to put together a relatively powerful cav division that sees a lot of combat I mix in the mounted volunteers (who are technically militia, i.e. infanatry) to give them the staying power they need.
Tactics for cav also depend on the theater. Cav go from a continuum of strong in the west to weak in the east as the average stack size gets bigger. In the Far West and the Great Plains they are powerful combat units even in small stacks, while in the East a small stack of cav would be wiped out by just about any enemy stack they came in contact with. You will need to size your scout stacks to be survivable in the theater they are in but bear in mind that command penalties affect their movement and stealth as well as combat stats; 10% penalty is acceptable anything worse can cause problems. For the most part in the Far West and the Plains cav are the most powerful elements. IN MO you need to build artillery and infantry to win the day, but cav play an important combat role because they make up a lot of the forces you have available. TN, KY IN, OH are perfect conditions for the swarm of bees approach, while in the east independent cav have a limited role because there aren't that many safe/useful things to do with them and because vision isn't as important since lines tend to be static and close.
I use two or three of my cav officers in whichever large front-line stacks have the most cav in them (especially the guys with only 4 Strat). A couple, like Forrest I use as scouts in two-stacks until I need to beef them up into divisions. Bear in mind when you have cav divisions that Cav officers mostly have low seniority and won't benefit from their 6 Strats if a lesser general is in command of the stack. If you do not have a 5 or 6 strat cav general for them it is best to leave scout stacks uncommanded so they don't become inactive or fixed in place.
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Captain_Orso
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First off, you should have cavalry in nearly every stack close to the front lines; especially 'larger' stacks, be it a corps or corps-like. They increase your detection rating and decrease the enemies detection. More than 2 per division is far too much, and takes greatly away from the combat power of a division. 1 or 2 is more than enough.
In game terms, it is sometimes difficult to wrap your head around the time you can viably sent cavalry out into the field away from friendly supply sources. Remember, turns are 2 weeks. Sending a cavalry regiment out as far as they can move (2 week march), and them returning them to their own forces (another 2 weeks march) means they are away from supplies for a total of 4 weeks, and horses eat a hell of a lot of oats every day, all of which must be carried. Cavalry could not depend on finding graze for their mounts on the march, and they certainly had no time to graze their mounts, so what you carried is what they ate. Never try to depend on foraging, unless your leader has the Forager, or some such ability.
ACG has already noted that early war cavalry cannot capture cities. That is actually dependent on the loyalty in the region. If you have >50% loyalty, you will capture any ungarrisoned cities. For the Confederate player, this means much of the map nearly all of the time, especially early in the war. Just be sure of what the loyalty is in your target city before you start a march with cavalry on it. These small cities will often give your cavalry a few GS points, which--if your not marching in a large force--can sustain them for an extra turn in the field. But be aware, you cannot count on these small cities to sustain you for more than one turn. They may be isolated from CS supplies, and only produce a very small amount of supply per turn, so once you've liberated them, it's time to move on.
The usefulness of independent cavalry stacks is in how they affect other aspects of the game. They can and will destroy unguarded depots, which they come across, but it is highly unlikely that will happen. They can also destroy industry in an ungarrisoned city, but it is also unlikely you will come across such cities: these are generally larger than level 1, and will nearly always be garrisoned by a locked unit.
You can use them in conjunction with the Raid RGD to reduce the size of a depot by 1, which can be useful, but you don't get that many Raid RGD's, and they only regenerate at the beginning of the year.
There are 2 things independent cavalry can always do, destroy railroads and block supplies.
Any unopposed unit blocks enemy supplies from passing through the region in which they start the a turn, even if their is a railroad in the region. Cavalry, being very mobile is excellent for doing this. Of course, supply is 'smart' and will attempt to go around your blockage, so to affectively block supply from going from city A to city B, you need to not only block the directest route, but the regions left an right of that route. Since supply moves at the start of each turn, before any player actions take place, there is nothing your opponent can do against this once your cavalry is in place. Then it is too late.
Destroying, actually damaging, railroads is not so simple. To damage a railroad in the region where your force starts, you select the 'Destroy Railroad' SO for that stack. During turn execution, the game roles a 100d (100 sided die). If the results is =< the power of your force, the railroad in the region is damaged. Remember, lowered cohesion lowers the power of your cavalry, so force-marching them to far behind enemy lines will reduce their affectiveness at damaging railroads, but not at blocking supplies. Units with the Raider ability--some leaders and all partisans, for example--receive a 50 point bonus at damaging railroads, IIRC.
The idea of sending a supply train along with cavalry is simply not viable. It would remove a key characteristic of cavalry; their speed. It also greatly endangers a very expensive unit to capture or destruction; not a good idea.
One thing you should be aware of though, is that units in a stack share supplies. If the return route of your cavalry gets blocked, and you cannot get them back to a supply source by the end of the turn--so that at the start of the next turn they can take on supplies and not get hit by out-of-supply penalties--, you can send a rescue force to meet-up with your escaping cavalry, which is skirting around the blocking force. This can save you a lot of hits and cohesion loss, and keep your expensive cavalry fit and ready for deployment.
In game terms, it is sometimes difficult to wrap your head around the time you can viably sent cavalry out into the field away from friendly supply sources. Remember, turns are 2 weeks. Sending a cavalry regiment out as far as they can move (2 week march), and them returning them to their own forces (another 2 weeks march) means they are away from supplies for a total of 4 weeks, and horses eat a hell of a lot of oats every day, all of which must be carried. Cavalry could not depend on finding graze for their mounts on the march, and they certainly had no time to graze their mounts, so what you carried is what they ate. Never try to depend on foraging, unless your leader has the Forager, or some such ability.
ACG has already noted that early war cavalry cannot capture cities. That is actually dependent on the loyalty in the region. If you have >50% loyalty, you will capture any ungarrisoned cities. For the Confederate player, this means much of the map nearly all of the time, especially early in the war. Just be sure of what the loyalty is in your target city before you start a march with cavalry on it. These small cities will often give your cavalry a few GS points, which--if your not marching in a large force--can sustain them for an extra turn in the field. But be aware, you cannot count on these small cities to sustain you for more than one turn. They may be isolated from CS supplies, and only produce a very small amount of supply per turn, so once you've liberated them, it's time to move on.
The usefulness of independent cavalry stacks is in how they affect other aspects of the game. They can and will destroy unguarded depots, which they come across, but it is highly unlikely that will happen. They can also destroy industry in an ungarrisoned city, but it is also unlikely you will come across such cities: these are generally larger than level 1, and will nearly always be garrisoned by a locked unit.
You can use them in conjunction with the Raid RGD to reduce the size of a depot by 1, which can be useful, but you don't get that many Raid RGD's, and they only regenerate at the beginning of the year.
There are 2 things independent cavalry can always do, destroy railroads and block supplies.
Any unopposed unit blocks enemy supplies from passing through the region in which they start the a turn, even if their is a railroad in the region. Cavalry, being very mobile is excellent for doing this. Of course, supply is 'smart' and will attempt to go around your blockage, so to affectively block supply from going from city A to city B, you need to not only block the directest route, but the regions left an right of that route. Since supply moves at the start of each turn, before any player actions take place, there is nothing your opponent can do against this once your cavalry is in place. Then it is too late.
Destroying, actually damaging, railroads is not so simple. To damage a railroad in the region where your force starts, you select the 'Destroy Railroad' SO for that stack. During turn execution, the game roles a 100d (100 sided die). If the results is =< the power of your force, the railroad in the region is damaged. Remember, lowered cohesion lowers the power of your cavalry, so force-marching them to far behind enemy lines will reduce their affectiveness at damaging railroads, but not at blocking supplies. Units with the Raider ability--some leaders and all partisans, for example--receive a 50 point bonus at damaging railroads, IIRC.
The idea of sending a supply train along with cavalry is simply not viable. It would remove a key characteristic of cavalry; their speed. It also greatly endangers a very expensive unit to capture or destruction; not a good idea.
One thing you should be aware of though, is that units in a stack share supplies. If the return route of your cavalry gets blocked, and you cannot get them back to a supply source by the end of the turn--so that at the start of the next turn they can take on supplies and not get hit by out-of-supply penalties--, you can send a rescue force to meet-up with your escaping cavalry, which is skirting around the blocking force. This can save you a lot of hits and cohesion loss, and keep your expensive cavalry fit and ready for deployment.
Many players have lots of fun with sweeping cavalry raids deep in enemy territory. Generals like Forrest and Stuart seem made for such operations. The acid test is, will these help you win the war? If the answer is not a resounding "Yes", then perhaps your cavalry should not be employed toward that effort.
The primary use for cavalry is recon. Ample cavalry in a stack give you info on enemy stacks nearby. A cavalry element set to Green/Green and Evade Combat can slip through enemy lines and find out where troop concentrations are forming for future attacks. Four cav in one small Division are still able to evade detection well and can also effectively twist up RR tracks if their strength is over 100. Just give them a Division commander with a high Strat rating so that they stay active. If you form full cavalry Divisions, then you can chase down these enemy intruders. This is what actually happened in the CW. Small cavalry units became ever larger as the info war progressed. I'm a pragmatist and keep my cav on a short leash. It has to be a real opportunity for me to risk a slaughter of my "eyes and ears". Good luck!
The primary use for cavalry is recon. Ample cavalry in a stack give you info on enemy stacks nearby. A cavalry element set to Green/Green and Evade Combat can slip through enemy lines and find out where troop concentrations are forming for future attacks. Four cav in one small Division are still able to evade detection well and can also effectively twist up RR tracks if their strength is over 100. Just give them a Division commander with a high Strat rating so that they stay active. If you form full cavalry Divisions, then you can chase down these enemy intruders. This is what actually happened in the CW. Small cavalry units became ever larger as the info war progressed. I'm a pragmatist and keep my cav on a short leash. It has to be a real opportunity for me to risk a slaughter of my "eyes and ears". Good luck!
I'm the 51st shade of gray. Eat, pray, Charge!
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ArmChairGeneral
- AGEod Grognard
- Posts: 997
- Joined: Thu Nov 21, 2013 9:00 am
- Location: Austin, TX, USA
Yeah, scout stacks need to get bigger from west to east and early to late. By about mid-game/Mid-west scout stacks pretty much need to be in pocket divisions led by cav leaders with 5 or 6 strat rating to be viable, say 4-6 elements, enough so they have enough hits to be able to survive long enough to flee from inadvertent contact. The 4 strat cav leaders guys do not stay active enough for scouting purposes, so they go into corps/army stacks where they can pass their +25% combat bonus to as many elements as possible.
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ArmChairGeneral
- AGEod Grognard
- Posts: 997
- Joined: Thu Nov 21, 2013 9:00 am
- Location: Austin, TX, USA
Some tangential thoughts on Horse Artillery:
HA are mostly bogus in scout stacks because they drag down the various stealth stats your scouts use to go undetected and to evade contact. HA make scout stacks a little more robust in combat, especially when facing other light stacks, but a scout stack that gets into a battle has failed anyway, so might as well optimize for stealth to minimize the chances of combart in the first place. I tend to migrate my HA generally westward where they are more likely to meet meet small enemy stacks that do not have any artillery and can provide a decisive edge in combat. Stand Waite is strong with HA and can wreak havoc as far west as the Ft. Arbuckle stockade complex; taking those out early denies the Union the ability to harass and pressure north Texas and western Arkansas from the plains.
HA are mostly bogus in scout stacks because they drag down the various stealth stats your scouts use to go undetected and to evade contact. HA make scout stacks a little more robust in combat, especially when facing other light stacks, but a scout stack that gets into a battle has failed anyway, so might as well optimize for stealth to minimize the chances of combart in the first place. I tend to migrate my HA generally westward where they are more likely to meet meet small enemy stacks that do not have any artillery and can provide a decisive edge in combat. Stand Waite is strong with HA and can wreak havoc as far west as the Ft. Arbuckle stockade complex; taking those out early denies the Union the ability to harass and pressure north Texas and western Arkansas from the plains.
If you have a big stack next to an enemy's big stack, and you can't see their stats, you need more cavalry.
Cavalry are expensive, so I use them sparingly on their own. I rarely purchase them, since there are a large number of brigades that come with a cavalry element already in them.
There's some discussion about using cavalry raiders to lead cavalry division for cavalry purposes. I would NEVER waste Forrest or Sheridan commanding 7 elements going raiding. That's a waste of talent. Those guys should be leading armies. The lesser 4-1-1 guys with cavalry attributes shouldn't be used either, use their attributes in large stacks just like you would with the generals with artillery attributes.
I don't use cavalry to chase raiders either. As the south, I like having a 1,000 power mega-division with a fast mover general available, in order to quickly respond to coastal invasions. That division can chase raiders around. As the north, I'm garrisoned enough that I can use my militia and small brigades to chase partisans and repair rail lines.
Cavalry are expensive, so I use them sparingly on their own. I rarely purchase them, since there are a large number of brigades that come with a cavalry element already in them.
There's some discussion about using cavalry raiders to lead cavalry division for cavalry purposes. I would NEVER waste Forrest or Sheridan commanding 7 elements going raiding. That's a waste of talent. Those guys should be leading armies. The lesser 4-1-1 guys with cavalry attributes shouldn't be used either, use their attributes in large stacks just like you would with the generals with artillery attributes.
I don't use cavalry to chase raiders either. As the south, I like having a 1,000 power mega-division with a fast mover general available, in order to quickly respond to coastal invasions. That division can chase raiders around. As the north, I'm garrisoned enough that I can use my militia and small brigades to chase partisans and repair rail lines.
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ArmChairGeneral
- AGEod Grognard
- Posts: 997
- Joined: Thu Nov 21, 2013 9:00 am
- Location: Austin, TX, USA
Wraith wrote:Would then, late game, the ideal be a "cavalry corps" in the Army Command for a MTSG benefit? In that they're wicked fast to get into the field?
No. 100% cav divisions perform suboptimally in Corps and Army scale battles. (You will have to take my word that this is something I have sandboxed and tested extensively, so this claim is both empirically grounded as well as wiki-based). Cav participating in large battles really do best when mixed into majority or at least partial infantry divisions.
A cav-Corps' speed would allow it to MTSG slightly more often, but even stacks with slow moving units have a high chance of MTSGing if the travel time is less than 10 days. An all-cav Corps WOULD be highly likely to MTSG but would perform poorly once it got there. If you take care with how you position your Corps and Armies you can give yourself a pretty high chance to MTSG with heavy forces as-is, so it's not worth it to trade increased MTSG chance at the cost of poor performance on arrival.
Because of the way cav elements are treated by the engine, they do not take hits until all the infantry elements in their unit (divisions are units) have received at least one hit. Cavalry replacements are more expensive than line infantry replacements, and you have fewer of them in your replacement pool. A 100% cav division will begin costing you expensive-to-buy cav replacements from the very first hit it receives, while a mixed unit (divisions are units) has a meat shield of cheaper and more available infantry to soak up the initial batch of hits. Assuming you have a cav officer in the Corps/Army stack then cav, especially late-cav, are equal or better than conscript infantry, and slightly weaker than regular line infantry, so a division with 2-4 cav mixed in does not suffer a detrimental loss in combat effectiveness. Additionally, all-cav divisions fare poorly in the assault phase compared to line-infantry or mixed divisions; having infantry in the unit to stand strong during assault phase (not to be confused with assault posture) makes a big difference in relative divisional performance.
The underlying MTSG mechanics also work against all-cav MTSGers, or any other underpowered MTSGing stack for that matter. When MTSGers enter the battle, the friendlies who were already present will mostly sit out for a round and the MTSGers have to do all the fighting (and MTSGers don't benefit from entrenchments, even if the battle is defensive). If the MTSGing stack is small relative to the opponent's force (which is likely if you are trying to use MTSG to cover a broad front) or has suboptimal composition, it will take a lot of hits and not do adequate damage to opposing divisions, risking failed shaken and morale rolls, which then have a cascading effect across the rest of your troops. Forget the idea of a small reserve Army force of any kind MTSGing to save the day, be it cav, artillery or what-have-you. The manual is just plain wrong when it implies that this is how you should use Armies. Any stack that MTSGs into a battle needs to be able to hold its own for at least one round against the (probably) corps sized stack it will be facing on its first round of combat. As a rule of thumb, assume that at least two full divisions will fit into the frontage of any large battle, so a MTSG stack needs to be at least that size and with an appropriate composition to not get pawned when it shows up to battle.
I have seen many battles where the total forces available should have been good enough to win but a too-small MTSGing stack cost the battle.
Later in the game I often put together "finisher" stacks consisting of 8-10 infantry, the rest cav and some rifled artillery either in the division or at the stack level as CPs permit that lurk just far enough int he back that they do not MTSG to battles they can't handle. I give them a Cav leader (JEB Stuart is perfect for this, and I organize him as a Corps so he gets bonuses but I don't make it "corps sized") and use it to lay into retreating stacks that have overcommitted and lost at their point of attack. The Cav give them extra patrol to increase the likelihood they can actually bring retreaters (who are usually in passive posture) to battle, and the infantry and artillery deal enough damage to seriously harm the enemy and force them to withdraw without incurring excessive cavalry losses. (You have to be in orange/attack posture, hence the rifled guns). These, along with scouting or other small stacks to block retreat paths can herd retreaters to progressively worse positions while continuing to deal damage until the retreaters either evaporate on their own or I can execute a stack-wipe. The number of cav gives the opportunity for a fair amount of pursuit damge (the enemy will tend to retreat since they are in passive posture).
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ArmChairGeneral
- AGEod Grognard
- Posts: 997
- Joined: Thu Nov 21, 2013 9:00 am
- Location: Austin, TX, USA
Grrr, I just wrote a long step by step guide to finishing off retreating stacks, but I got logged out and lost the whole thing when I went to post it.
The gist was this:
Take advantage of the retreat algorithm. The algorithm forces them to go to particular regions, and you can block off their best ones by establishing 100% MC or positioning troops in them to force them to retreat elsewhere, preferably away from safety and into bad terrain. Cut off their supplies, keep hitting them so their cohesion stays down (although careful not to attack with too small a force, they can still deal a lot of damage to an inferior force) and keep them retreating so you can control their movements. Let weather, terrain and starvation do their work while you envelop them and then bring in a normal large combat stack to finish them off. Try to keep them away from rivers so they can't swim away. A lot of times if the weather cooperates they will just evaporate on their own through starvation and attrition.
It rarely works out exactly as planned, it is a complicated operation with a lot of moving parts and they tend to eventually escape (passive posture and Evade combat special order make them hard to bring to battle) but it is not uncommon for them to lose half their hits along the way, which can amount to a division or more of losses, setting them back substantially.
Opportunities to do this are more common in the West or after the Union has begun to push south into Virginia. In northern Virginia safety is close by, there isn't enough space to manuever behind them, you probably won't be able to cut off supply, and there are large enemy stacks waiting to pounce if you leave your entrenchments.
The gist was this:
Take advantage of the retreat algorithm. The algorithm forces them to go to particular regions, and you can block off their best ones by establishing 100% MC or positioning troops in them to force them to retreat elsewhere, preferably away from safety and into bad terrain. Cut off their supplies, keep hitting them so their cohesion stays down (although careful not to attack with too small a force, they can still deal a lot of damage to an inferior force) and keep them retreating so you can control their movements. Let weather, terrain and starvation do their work while you envelop them and then bring in a normal large combat stack to finish them off. Try to keep them away from rivers so they can't swim away. A lot of times if the weather cooperates they will just evaporate on their own through starvation and attrition.
It rarely works out exactly as planned, it is a complicated operation with a lot of moving parts and they tend to eventually escape (passive posture and Evade combat special order make them hard to bring to battle) but it is not uncommon for them to lose half their hits along the way, which can amount to a division or more of losses, setting them back substantially.
Opportunities to do this are more common in the West or after the Union has begun to push south into Virginia. In northern Virginia safety is close by, there isn't enough space to manuever behind them, you probably won't be able to cut off supply, and there are large enemy stacks waiting to pounce if you leave your entrenchments.
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