Hold at all Cost order

[Bam8311]

So I have been playing the game for 6 months or so and have played 5 PBEM. What I am finding that defeating the hold at all cost order is near impossible even when you are attacking 2 or 3 to 1 with an experinced and Strong Commander.

So my Questions are

1. What is the best way to attack and Army like this with the attack at all Cost order?

2. What command order do you use for an attacking army when facing this?

3. What odds should you be going with against the order as it seems that even when you have 80 or 90 k vs 25 and 30 k you still lose and taake a big NM hit and forget it if they are maxed entrenched I know normal is 3 to 1 against an entrenched enemey but with the hold at all cost it is more than that

4. Any PBEM House rules that you find effective like no hold at all cost order unless you are defending a City of Importance or anything like that?


I Would like any best practices or advice would be great and Any discussion that would like to be opened on it in this thread feel free I am sure I am not the only one Fustrated with this. Yes I know there were occasions that AArmies did Defend at all cost but the If you inflect 10k Casutlties on a force of 30-35k men(you lose less than 3K) thy are not going to stick around and if they do the other army would hit them again(yes sometimes armies do in the game hit the next day but this nornally turns into a National morale massacre) and not end up at the start of next turn 20% to Cohesion.

Thank you to all of you in Forum you are a great help and love reading your answers AND Discussions


Brian

[anjou]

Not sure what department you are talking about but this strategy works well for me.

Stretch them, starve them, blockade them, and raid them. All at once if possible. Eventually they will have to attack,retreat or be destroyed.

[smarmet]

The hold at all cost order is very effective at holding a single region, yes. Defensive fire is much stronger than offensive in this game. The offensive answer of course is just to go around that region, either by circling around the defensive position or opening an entirely new front to play in. Naval offensives are great for this, the union can move much faster by ship than the rebs can on their limited rail system. Take Tallahasse, Mobile , New Orleans etc. and you can make your own abuse of the hold at all costs order. Just make sure to have forces available to reinforce wherever the counterattack does come. Within a theater, try to spread him out defending 4 or more regions, and then converge your entire force wherever he looks weakest. If you attack the end of a 4 region line, only 2 of the corps will be available to defend. It is possible to breakthrough and rout the enemy if you have both overwhelming force and the frontage to use it. The difference between 300 and 100 is way bigger than the difference between 3000 and 1000, due to frontage limits. Therefore the attacker almost always wants thing as spread out as possible. Get out of VA and open some more fronts. Good things might happen.