April 1861 Union campaign

[James D Burns]

Industrial investments result in improvements in 7 cities this turn.

For this turns production, I create 1 Marine unit, 2 Sailor units, 20 new brigades (this will give me at least 1 of each type available for purchase on map), 5 irregular sharpshooter regiments, 3 cavalry regiments and 17 Artillery units. This leaves me with a surplus of $375,000 money and 179 conscripts to carry over to next turn.

6 recently released transport units are dispatched to the Atlantic Shipping box from New York. This will bring the total to 24 transport units in the shipping box when all three 6 unit transport fleets finally arrive.

One of the blockade units in the group of 3 that just arrived in the Atlantic Blockade box has a damaged ship so is detached and ordered back to port. A quick check of the sea areas traversed shows only fair weather, so something is still amiss with naval moves causing damage.

The two blockade units detached from this fleet last turn and ordered back to Atlantic City also have a damaged ship each this turn. Again only fair weather areas were traversed.

12 new Brigadier Generals arrive in Washington for the New Year. 6 are dispatched to Cincinnati via rail. 3 are dispatched to New Albany and the last 3 are dispatched to Cairo.

Intel gets a peek at some of General Joseph E. Johnston’s troops outside Harper’s Ferry this turn and it’s a grim picture. Of the 3 units seen with strengths next to them, they are all pretty much decimated with the orange numbers next to their names reading 4/78, 2/78 and 2/78.

Looks like the winter has done far more damage to the Confederacy in the past couple of turns than I could have done in 2 or 3 major battle victories. At least Jackson and his Corp appear to have gotten wise to the problem and have withdrawn to Winchester for refitting. Holmes’s and Bonham’s Corps are also spotted at Winchester with Jackson.



With the loyalties at Harper’s Ferry being 52% Rebel and 48% Union, McDowell’s and Hunter’s Corp each take another 20 or so winter hits this turn.

1 Army and 3 Division HQ’s arrive at Cincinnati this turn and I form 3 more leaderless divisions there. I now have 4 x 2 brigade leaderless divisions there and 3 brigades which await another Division HQ. I also have a medical unit with the stack now. Once my leadership shows up, I can begin my campaign to force the rebs out of Kentucky. Hopefully I’ll get a three star general soon who can form an army there. If I don’t get one by March or so I’ll probably pull Banks out of Philadelphia and send him to take command.



At Muhlenberg Albert S. Johnston’s huge Army of Tennessee is still milling about in the bad weather. Given the horrible shape of the Army of the Shenandoah I can only imagine how devastating this is to this massive confederate force. Rebuilding these two armies alone will probably cripple the Confederate war effort for the entire next year.

Given this AI’s penchant for staying out in the weather over winter, I’m debating halting this game as I doubt the AI will present me with much of a challenge after this. I’ll continue through spring, but if the AI is a complete pushover by then, I’ll probably halt this AAR.



David D Porter and the USS Cairo river ironclad appeared at Cairo this turn and have orders to merge with Foote out on the Mississippi. Next turn Porter will take command of the gunboats while Foote forms a bombardment fleet consisting of the three ironclads.

The ‘Coffee Mill’ Guns event occurred this turn resulting in the appearance of a Gatling Gun unit appearing in Washington D.C. The unit is permanently fixed in D.C. so has been merged with the large garrison at Washington.

The Simon Cameron Replaced event also occurred this turn, resulting in +20 war production per turn.

Jim

[James D Burns]

Investments in industry result in improvements in 7 cities this turn.

For production this turn I produce 3 Cavalry units (giving me at least 2 of every type), 9 Artillery units (I now have at least 1 of every type), and 2 Blockade Flotillas. This pretty much uses up my big influx of cash from a few turns ago as my carryover surplus for next turn is only $91,000 money and 193 conscript companies.



I should hopefully now have enough cavalry regiments to set up a screen of regiments in every second or third area across the front line, to help spot incoming Confederate raiders. With my massive influx of new troops, I assume the Confederates had a similar large building program and I can no longer afford to use division sized assets to try and stop incoming raids.

So my cavalry will have to do the job of screening and hunting solo from now on, while I begin to form some very large armies for my 1862 campaign season with my infantry and artillery. Hopefully I’ll have a few cavalry regiments to spare for my armies to give them good scouting abilities. If not I’ll have to build some more cavalry.

Half of Palmer’s frigates suffered cohesion damage and are ordered to return to port for refit after spending just 1 turn in the Atlantic Shipping box.

Man it’s hard to keep my navy at sea for more than a turn or two, this kind of routine damage needs to be greatly toned down. Personally I think it should be prohibited until/unless the ship unit in question is down to less than half rations aboard.

Ships in this era were able to stay at sea for months at a time and were usually only limited in their staying power by the rations they had aboard or their coal stocks. While I can see rough weather necessitating a need to return to port before supply stocks were significantly used up, fair or moderate weather should never see a need to return to port early for refits in my opinion.

I forgot to mention last turn that I had ordered James Butler’s command to move to the unoccupied city of James City VA. last turn in an attempt to capture a port on that peninsula.

James city is now in Union hands and hopefully my now greatly enhanced sea transport capacity will start unloading tons of supplies this turn to feed my starving troops. Already I lost the heavy guns at Fort Monroe this turn to starvation and the emplaced guns there are down to 25% strength. The infantry garrison is down to 75% strength as well, so they desperately need some supplies ASAP.

Just to remind readers, this game was started before the patch that fixed the Fort Monroe problem, so I will have no harbor in the fort for the rest of this game. Hence the need for a creative solution. I just wish I had done something before I started getting reports of starvation, if I had done, I probably wouldn’t have lost the heavy artillery guns and possibly the emplaced guns as well.



General George H. Thomas arrives in Louisville KY. and merges with Halleck’s command. Thomas is currently my best overall 1 star general (stats are 3, 3, 6, 1, 3) and I want him promoted to 2 stars ASAP. I’ll be making sure he sees action this spring to try and get him to become eligible for promotion.

The Columbus Patriots spontaneously appeared and captured that city in KY. this turn. With the AR division right outside I’ll be leaving them inside as garrison.

Not much else happened in KY. this turn.

I divided Foote’s fleet and sent Porter and the gunboats into harbor at Cairo for refit. Foote shall remain on station with his 3 river ironclads in the three-way river junction at Cape Girardeau for now.

John Wayne makes an appearance at Tucson, my garrison units failed to engage Chisum’s Texas Cavalry outside that city. John Wayne played John Simpson Chisum in the movie “Chisum” made in 1970. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065547/

Historically though John Simpson Chisum was exempted from military service during the civil war: http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/CC/fch33.html though he did deliver some cattle to the south.

I’m not sure if he sponsored the raising of a cavalry regiment however, so perhaps the unit is historically accurate. But either way I say leave the unit in the game, even if it does make me wish I was playing for the other side. The “Duke” (John Wayne) is one of my favorite movie heroes, I’ll be bummed if I end up destroying his unit.



Jim

[pasternakski]

Well, I wanna tell ya Jim, if ya stop postin' this here AAR, I'm dead where ya stand.

Forget Chisum. Just remember that Nelson Brittles and Col. Marlowe are fightin' fer ya. Shoot, there's Dukes comin' outta the woodwork all of a sudden!

[James D Burns]

Well, I wanna tell ya Jim, if ya stop postin' this here AAR, I'm dead where ya stand.

I don't want to quit, in fact I'd like to play on to the bitter end. But if the Confederate brigades/units are all in the 1/78 or 2/78 strength range after winter, continuing on is kind of pointless don't you think?

It cost me about $1,000,000 of the 2+ mil money I raised recently to get my replacement pools up to decent levels and that only gave me 20 or so line infantry replacements since there were so many other types of replacements I needed to buy. There's probably no chance the Confederacy can afford to rebuild such shattered armies before next winter comes along and they just get shattered again.

I hope I’m wrong, but it doesn’t look to good right now according to my Intel.

Jim

[Alan_Bernardo]

Excuse me for saying, Jim, but you seem to do more complaining and wishing that things were the way you want them to be rather than just playing the game and giving us a nice AAR. When you stay away from complaining and wishing, your AAR is very good.

I'd finish the AAR. I wouldn't be too worried about the strength of the Confederates. If they are so under-strengthed as you say they are, then you can slaughter them.

It's all up to you, of course.


Alan

[Lonster]

Hey Jim

I wanted to thank you for your AAR. Aego should be paying you for your great work (play), because this has been one of the best advertisements for the game and a continuing help with debugging.

If you have the time, I would love to see what happens with the Southern forces after their decision to do some winter camping. If you don't want to give all the details, at least let us know how it plays out

Thanks for your time and vulnerability of campaigning before the watching world.

Lonster

[James D Burns]

Industrial investments resulted in improvements in three cities this turn.

I’ve neglected my locomotive and riverine transportation pools which have dropped considerably over the past 6 months or so. I spend all available monies on 100 locomotive points and 30 riverine transport points.

I’ll continue to spend on these two pools over the next few turns until they are both well into the 3/3 column of the transportation capacity on the chalkboard.

I know I’ve had a few railroad accidents this winter, but I wasn’t paying attention to how much damage was actually being done. In the future I’ll try and calculate what kind of damage occurs to my pools.



With my merchant shipping increased to 24 ships, I only get a return of 5 money and 45 war supplies. So I haven’t even doubled what I was getting with only 6 ships present. I’m not sure all 24 ships were counted this turn however as many may have recently arrived during this turns execution and perhaps only 12 ships were counted for income purposes this turn. Next turn I’ll know for sure as no more transports are scheduled to arrive in the Atlantic Shipping box.

Starvation occurred at Fort Monroe again this turn, but this time it was the garrison unit that took the hit and my emplaced guns actually recovered a bit of strength this turn. The guns are at 50% strength now and the garrison is down to 25% strength.

I now have some naval transport ships included in Dahlgren’s fleet in the Hampton Roads sea area, so hopefully they’ll act as supply wagons for the units in the fort until my navy can manage to build up a surplus of supplies in James City which Butler recently captured. I’ve ordered 2 of the 3 naval transport units into James City to try and build a depot there with next turn. I’m not sure if they’ll be able to do it (I’m fuzzy on the depot building limitation rules) but it’s worth a try I think.

Winter begins to clear in some areas of the map this turn, but since I’ve read stories on the forums of winter lasting till April, I decide to wait until the map is 90% clear before I venture forth with my forces.

Intel observes T. Holmes’ Corp along with T. Jackson’s and M. Bonham’s Corps in the area of Clarke VA. just northwest of Manassas. All three Corps are small with just 5 units each reported. Holmes’ Corp has a division in it, so I assume both Jackson and Bonham also have reduced their commands into division HQ’s as their respective Corps were much larger the last time Intel reported on them.

This means numbers wise their combined force is about as large as my three divisions and other elements at Manassas. Leadership wise however I’m in the hurt locker (35% command penalty for my force in Manassas), so I’ll keep my units hunkered down inside the city and hope the Army of the Potomac can get to them in time to lift the siege this spring before they take any serious siege damage, should the Confederates start a siege there this turn.



Gustavus W. Smith lead another large Confederate force in a direct assault against the garrison at Fort Pickens and was bloodily repulsed. Confederate casualties were 6,021 and Union losses were 1,181. Union troops enjoyed an entrenchment level of 800 which obviously carried the day for them.

One thing I am curious about though is the individual elements experience level growth. You’d think with the thousands of Confederate troops this particular garrison has destroyed/repulsed, they’d be gaining some massive experience. But none of the infantry elements has more than 1 experience star and the two artillery units each only have 2 stars.

I guess each battle counts the same for experience gain whether a unit destroys 10 men or 10,000. Add to that experience stars lost for drawing new replacements and it seems almost impossible to grow experience levels to decent levels.

Has anyone seen a unit go over the 9 stars allotted at the top of the unit display screen to change into veteran/elite or whatever happens when they go over 9 stars? If so please enlighten us on what occurred to the unit (if anything) when it exceeded the 9 stars.

I’m not griping, I’m just curious as I’ve personally never seen a unit get more than a few stars in either BoA or AACW (thus far, the major fighting is still yet to come for me in AACW).



Intel spots a Confederate gunboat south of Cairo near Island 10 and Foote’s fleet of 3 ironclads is ordered to pursue it. Porter’s river gunboat fleet is ordered out of Cairo into the Mississippi to take over the blocking position in the area of Cape Girardeau from Foote.

The large Confederate Army of the Tennessee remains in the area of Muhlenberg in winter weather. Sibley’s command at Lexington has grown to become a rather large force. Intel observes 6 brigades and 13 other units in the command.

On a somewhat alarming note, Sherman arrived this turn in an event that was supposed to place him into Grants command. But Grant isn’t on map so Sherman was placed at Boston instead. I hope this is just a random event mix up where Sherman’s event fires before the Grant event and Grant will still arrive soon.

Without the arrival of Grant the Union will have major problems in Kentucky this spring as it is greatly outnumbered by the Confederacy there right now. Sherman has been ordered by rail to Cairo in hopeful anticipation of him being able to join Grant in the region soon.

Not much else to report. Fremont still awaits decent weather in the far west before launching his campaign.

Jim

[Alan_Bernardo]

Nice read. Keep this one going.

I'm currently playing the Union in the April '61 campaign. I haven't figured on how to put my gunboats to use most effectively, besides maybe blockading river passage.

How do you use your gunboats?

Nice job on the AAR!


Alan

[James D Burns]

Industrial investments result in improvements in 6 cities this turn.

Ugh! In my attempt to not take advantage of the AI I’ve made a critical oversight. I stopped paying close attention to the units inside Harper’s Ferry and they have now run out of supply and had some starvation this turn. Had I simply attacked several turns back when I saw the damage the Confederates had taken from winter I’d not be in this predicament today… what a bonehead move on my part.

I’ve ordered all three stacks of the Army of the Potomac outside the city and placed both McClellan and Hunter in assault posture. McDowell failed his roll but I’m hoping he’ll be included in any battles fought.

In the screenshot below I’ve highlighted the division that is in worst shape, so things aren’t too bad right now. But another turn or two of starvation and my entire army will become vaporware.



At Manassas I’ve ordered Mansfield’s 9th Division and the supply wagon to march to Stafford and begin digging in. I’ve ordered the other two divisions outside the city to prevent them becoming trapped inside should the Confederates move to siege the place.

I’ve begun ordering units that are becoming released from training to Washington, Cincinnati and Cairo. This lead me to take a closer look at my available command HQ’s and I realize I’ve allowed myself to fall too far behind in their construction. Therefore I took an unprecedented action this turn and decided to print money.

I know it’s very costly to do, but I simply do not have enough Division HQ’s on map to form two more armies with this spring (one in Cincinnati and one in Cairo). If I build just a few each turn, it’ll be late summer before all the HQ’s are trained and ready for action and I’ll lose an entire campaign season.

By printing the needed cash today, It’ll only be about 3-6 turns before all the Divisions are active and able to reach their commands. That way I’ll still have quite a bit of campaign season left.

The bill I signed raised $771,000 money and cost me 2 national morale and a 4% increase in prices. There are still 10 more turns left before I can sign other bills again, so hopefully this price increase will subside a bit before the next round of signatures.

With the hastily raised cash I purchase 9 Medical Companies, 14 Division HQ’s, 1 Army HQ and 4 Supply Wagons. I’ll finish beefing up my locomotives and riverine transports next turn.



I’ve decided to go ahead and start moving my cavalry units into positions to block potential raiders. During the turns execution 3 of my leaders traveling as a single stack were intercepted near Lycoming PA. (2 areas north of Harrisburg) and all were wounded and sent to various cities. I could have easily lost all three leaders permanently, so my cavalry are sent out into the cold to begin hunting down the intruders.

My Naval transports brought back 57 money and 2 war supplies this turn. Not bad, but given the fact that I now have 24 transports in the box, and earlier just 6 were bringing back 28 items a turn, I’ve decided it’s not worth the expenditure to build the few remaining transports to send to the box since quadrupling the number there only about doubled my income and I only have about 8 left now to be built. They’ll be built to transport troops and support invasions as/when needed.

The two naval transports I sent to James City are allowed to build a depot and are set to do so. Butler’s two supply wagons can also build a depot now (not sure why they couldn’t before) but I’ve decided to use the naval transports since they are far cheaper to rebuild than the wagons.

Ulysses S. Grant arrives as a 2 star general at Louisville and he is merged with George H Thomas and ordered to Cincinnati via rail. Both these leaders are available to be promoted, so Grant gets flagged for a 3 star promotion and Thomas is flagged for a 2 star promotion.

John Pope arrives at Cairo as a 2 star General. He’ll form a Corp command under Buell when he arrives on map.

Foote’s river ironclad fleet failed to engage the Confederate riverboat spotted last turn. Foote did however bombard Island 10 and inflicted 35 losses while suffering 7 in return. I’ve ordered Foote back to Cairo for refit.

The weather has cleared a bit around Springfield, so Fremont is ordered to march on Fayette AR. with his Army of the West. Intel spots a single unit entrenched outside the city and 8 units inside, of which 2 are identified as leaders.



Dallas, Tucson and the Creek Indian Village are all besieged by Confederate cavalry units.

Jim

[Alan_Bernardo]

McDowell failed his roll but I’m hoping he’ll be included in any battles fought.

What roll did McDowell fail and against what is it calculated? Did the failed roll mean McDowell was not active for the turn and cannot attack? And if he failed his roll to become active, how can he be included in any battles?

I have a host of generals in crucial areas that are inactive, almost all of the time. I'm not sure what I can do with them. Once I pulled some of the inactive generals out and moved them back of the front, which caused some to be active again. I'm not sure if that strategy works or not.

I'm at somewhat of a loss to understand how a general becomes inactive and what can be done to make him active.

Thanks,

Alan

[James D Burns]

The further away from the original version of the game we get the more likely bad things can happen to older games like mine. I first noticed the problem after the last patch (but it could have occurred sooner, and I just didn’t notice) and held off to see if another patch would fix it but it hasn’t.

Basically I can no longer split a division normally anymore. What happens is every single individual element gets split out into its own separate unit. So for example say I have Mansfield’s Division made up originally of two identical 3 element brigades.



When I split the division using the – button, it breaks down the division into 8 separate units. Mansfield, the HQ and 6 individual regiments. Now if I control click a few regiments and try to rebuild the brigade, it doesn’t work. The Units are destined to remain as single element regiments for the rest of the game. Which of course is a problem because HQ’s can only hold so many units.

Also of note is the fact it appears to rename each individual element, so if I break down 4 or 5 different divisions I get a bunch of identically named 8th US, 9th US, etc. units.



As this turn saw an event promoting several of my one star generals to two stars and I need to divide some of their divisions to make them available for Corp commands, I decided to stop my game for now. I’ll check things after each patch to see if this behavior stops, but my guess is things in my save game will only get more bugged as future patches make changes that simply are not compatible with older saves.

I loaded up a brand new game and tested this and it does not happen. So this problem is related to the fact this game was started under one of the earliest versions if not the release version of the game and patch changes have somehow caused this irregularity in my game.

No way I want Pocus or any of the crew at AGEOD to spend even one minute of their precious time trying to resolve this, since only older games like mine are affected and new games work just fine.

I also noticed a small problem with promoted leaders. Here you see Edwin Sumner who was recently promoted to the rank of a two star general as you see in the element display window on the right, but the unit mouse-over pop-up displayed on the top left shows him as a one star general still. Not a big deal, but it is confusing sometimes.



I haven’t checked this with a new game yet, so this too may be just related to my older save.

Jim

[James D Burns]

What roll did McDowell fail and against what is it calculated? Did the failed roll mean McDowell was not active for the turn and cannot attack? And if he failed his roll to become active, how can he be included in any battles?

Each turn every single general makes a roll against their strategic rating. A failed roll means they cannot be placed in attack or assault posture. It also affects their ability to move, but I'm not sure of the exact effect off the top of my head.

I'm not sure if a stack like McDowell's that is in defensive posture will be included in a combat initiated by other union troops in assault posture or not. The combat routines and exactly how they work are a complete mystery to me.

I would love to see an addition to the manual where combats were explained in detail.

Jim

[Spharv2]

Each turn every single general makes a roll against their strategic rating. A failed roll means they cannot be placed in attack or assault posture. It also affects their ability to move, but I'm not sure of the exact effect off the top of my head.

I'm not sure if a stack like McDowell's that is in defensive posture will be included in a combat initiated by other union troops in assault posture or not. The combat routines and exactly how they work are a complete mystery to me.

I would love to see an addition to the manual where combats were explained in detail.

Jim

I believe the inactive movement penalty is 35% if I remember correctly.

And yes, inactive generals can still join in combat initiated by other groups. I believe they would still join with the inactive combat penalties though.

[Lasse]

Sad to hear, but it's been a great read. hope you'll do a new one someday

[Rafiki]

Sorry to hear you are putting this on hold for now, but it's quite understandable too. I've enjoyed reading about your experiences and views here, and I'm looking forward to read any AAR you might be putting together in the future