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I am playing my first game as CSA (I have already completed two as the Yanks) and I have a few naval questions from the CSA perspective:

1) How does the CSA "run" the blockade versus trying to actually sink blockading ships and reduce its impact on the CSA economy? Is "running the blockade" simply a matter of setting ships to evade posture and placing them in the blockade box? What ships make the best blockade runners .. I assume these ships must have also have transport capacity? Is it worthwhile to attempt reducing the number of blockading ships by sinking some of them?

2) In a similar vein, is all "raiding" done in the shipping lanes? What ships make the best raiders? Is raiding worth the cost to build the ships .. is the return worth the potential losses in materiel ?

Submariner wrote:I am playing my first game as CSA (I have already completed two as the Yanks) and I have a few naval questions from the CSA perspective:

1) How does the CSA "run" the blockade versus trying to actually sink blockading ships and reduce its impact on the CSA economy? Is "running the blockade" simply a matter of setting ships to evade posture and placing them in the blockade box? What ships make the best blockade runners .. I assume these ships must have also have transport capacity? Is it worthwhile to attempt reducing the number of blockading ships by sinking some of them?

2) In a similar vein, is all "raiding" done in the shipping lanes? What ships make the best raiders? Is raiding worth the cost to build the ships .. is the return worth the potential losses in materiel ?

first: its allways a difference if you play vs AI or vs a human player, to make it simple, its worthwile to build ships vs the AI and its rather not worthwile vs a human opponent.

you have three options of sea-actions:
-blockade running, you place ships with transport capabilities into the BLOCKADE box, use Brigs and Transport ships, if you want cover, use frigates as protection.
these ships now grant you Warsupplies and money each turn.
Use evade posture.

-commerce raiding, you place battleships in the US SHIPPING BOX, now your ships will "destroy" US War Supplies and Money, which is futile since he has more than enough of those, so its absolutely no point in commerce raiding vs a human opponent (and probably vs the AI too), i never ever bother with it.

-"brown water warfare", this simply means you use your ironclads/frigates to attack enemy fleets at the coast and try to stop "US brown water blockade" and to intercept the ships which hunt your blockade raiders.
This option has the immense drawback of using simply too much of your precious warsupplies for building ships, which you cant afford.

in a simple conclusion ANY investment in ships is throwing out money to the window, since the US forces will be overwhelming.

What i actually do is build a couple of transports in 1861, they are cheap and are usefull as blockade raiders (lesser evasion value tho, that means if they are found they are destroyed, while brigs maybe can "stay alive" , allways depending on the size of the enemy force) and in the beginning of the game the US hasnt that much ships yet, to hunt down all your blockade raiders.
Transports will grant you a ROI which is larger than their costs usually.

later on, the only thing you can do, in which is more worth, is industrialization.

DirkX wrote:first: its allways a difference if you play vs AI or vs a human player, to make it simple, its worthwile to build ships vs the AI and its rather not worthwile vs a human opponent.

DirkX wrote:-commerce raiding, you place battleships in the US SHIPPING BOX, now your ships will "destroy" US War Supplies and Money, which is futile since he has more than enough of those, so its absolutely no point in commerce raiding vs a human opponent (and probably vs the AI too), i never ever bother with it.

Against the AI (only), commerce raiding does have value if used in conjunction with strategic deep raiding.

"first: its allways a difference if you play vs AI or vs a human player, to make it simple, its worthwile to build ships vs the AI and its rather not worthwile vs a human opponent."

I imagine this is generally true but in my PBEM as CSA I built many Brigs early on and they have been very successful at bringing in much needed supplies so far (1864). Also 5 CSA Ironclads at New Orleans chased off a Union invasion force.

Cheers, Chris