Just a little more background. Battle did an excellent job of preventing me from grabbing Fts Henry, Donelson, OR Island 10 before Kentucky became involved. So my plan was to wait for Kentucky to join and then large Union forces would crash through Kentucky and eventually use that state as my invasion route. Well, that didn't work out so well and Grant's stack got absolutely blasted by a corps and army stack commanded by none other than Lee and I want to say Polk. We're talking 7 NM swing from one battle, Battle just took the heart out of one of my two massive Union stacks in Kentucky.
Meanwhile, I'd also been stalled out in Virginia. Battle prevented me from meeting the criteria of getting 40 elements within two spaces of Richmond by having Jackson's corps kick out my attempt out of Williamsburg before I could stay there for two turns. My NM fell 17 points in the space of about 2 turns from the 10 NM hit from failing to threaten Richmond and the -7NM from the battle in Bowling Green. The extent of my gains in Virginia was HF, Leesburg, and Falmouth. So here we were late summer of '62 and I'd gone nowhere fast and my NM was sitting in the low 80s while Battle's was up in the 120s range.
Facing the prospects of a long and bloody game, I decided to go for the win. My corps on the peninsula fell back to Ft Monroe and I kept a decent sized fleet there and then I just left them there hoping it'd be a case of out of sight out of mind. And I sent a handful of monitors up to Richmond were I watched and waited. Meanwhile, I abandoned my forward positions in Kentucky and and started garrisoning StLo, Cairo, Evansville, and Mumfordville while starting to build forces up to also put a decent garrison at Louisville and Cincy. Then I took Grant's mega stack of 35K of the best troops under the best leadership the West had to offer at the time and sent them East. I had to skirt Lake Erie as Battle had some partisans operating near Cincy as well as Pittsburgh and Wheeling. But I was able to avoid detection even if it added another couple weeks to my travel time. By the time they got in range to form a corps under McDowell, I had already changed the name to remove Grant's name from the stack and used General Buell as a front to hide Grant's portrait (Grant being the lowest 3* after his bloody loss in Kentucky).
At one point my monitors spotted a corps in Richmond, but they turned out to be a corps falling back from Williamsburg that were responding to a limited offensive I kind of fell into in the Shenandoah Valley. I meant only to kick out an independent division in Morgan and accidentally started a ruckus that pushed out a CSA corps that had been sitting in HF. That led to me taking Winchester and pulled a substantial portion of Battle's strength to the valley. Like I said, that small offensive wasn't really intended but it did fit into the strategy I'd settled on by causing Battle to shift his forces.
The stage was set and all my forces were in place for my attempt at Richmond. The problem was my very average general at Ft Monroe was inactive on the crucial turn so I couldn't assault Richmond in one fell swoop. But the pieces were all in place and Richmond was open and thanks to my monitors I knew it had been for a couple turns. I also knew that his forces at Suffolk and Norfolk didn't have orders to bombard. Not wanting to miss the chance and not knowing how long I could keep Battle in the dark I kicked off the campaign. I landed a full corps in Richmond which was able to defeat the locked forces there and left Richmond held solely by an auto garrison and a pontoon unit. At the same time I bypassed Fredericksburg to the East and pushed 2 corps and McDowell's army stack down and on to Richmond. I also landed all the sailors I could in order to add to the confusion and also help secure a supply source as I planned on moving all four stacks involved down to Richmond and its surrounding regions and cutting them off of the rest of my army.
The turn ended with one corps in Richmond, another corps already in MTSG range just north of Richmond, and two additional stacks that would continue marching the next turn. So I had 4 corps/army stacks within 2 spaces of Richmond to Battle's single corps. And if he wanted to contest Richmond, he'd have to shift a lot of bodies by rail and also possibly attack over a small river. Lacking the rail to move enough troops Battle instead chose to try for my capital. Had the evade combat orders worked out for him, it could have gotten real interesting.
I'm including a link to the game file the turn I landed in Richmond in case anyone wants to take a gander.
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=09399397923627346913