AGEOD Forums

still learning the basics of the game (great job)
as a CSA player in the campaing game i struggle in 1861 to obtain sufficient tons of supplies and cash to build my army. predictable enough
in my limited experience, the major bottleneck is not war supplies but to obtain sufficient cash (once you have used the 4 schemes appearing in the 'financials' section).
in this sense i would welcome any tips of how grabbing more money for the Rebs (industrialization?, blocakede runners?)
thanx in advance


philippe i am of the ones still expecting to see a Pax Romana II sometime in the future

In my experience the CSA will always need cash!
Blockade runners sent to the blockade box will bring back a small amount of money or war supplies (depends on which you are lowest in).
Industry will possibly increase your income over the long haul but is unreliable.
Money also comes from overseas (exports) but this will decrease as the blockade % increases.

Basicaly, once you have exhausted your financial options (taxes, bonds, etc.)
you will have to bite the bullet leure:

edit:note to beginners, remember you can opposite-click on finance options
to obtain measures that offer more money at an increased cost to you

Foreign Entry give a chance to get secret subsidies too (and larger one if the British comes in the dance).

Pocus wrote:Foreign Entry give a chance to get secret subsidies too (and larger one if the British comes in the dance).

*circles Pocus' post with a big red pen*

Definitely don't be afraid to run those inflation numbers up. I usually start off using the bigger, more inflationary measures (8% bonds and such) to try to get things off to as good of a start as possible. It's a lot easier to gain an early advantage and then let your inflation lower later than it is to try and keep it in check. Generally, playing as the South, my inflation will hover between 25 and 45%. It hurts, but once you're set up in a good position, you can begin to bring that down.

Just curious, how fast does inflation decrease? Is there a monthly or yearly rate that lowers inflation?

Not sure of the exact rate, but it seems to be a point every month and a half to a couple of months. Definitely not fast.

Strangely, my main problem as CSA isn't cash ( I print, levy, issue bonds etc. ), nor men ( just avoid getting into major battle outnumbered), but those DAMN War Supplies! If your industrialisation doesn't pay off the way you want it (that is , it boosts your War Supplies production, and not just ammo/general supplies production) than you have too little war supplies to start building those ships/artillery units/supply wagons. I don't think you can win this war with infantry only.

Jacek wrote:Strangely, my main problem as CSA isn't cash ( I print, levy, issue bonds etc. ), nor men ( just avoid getting into major battle outnumbered), but those DAMN War Supplies! If your industrialisation doesn't pay off the way you want it (that is , it boosts your War Supplies production, and not just ammo/general supplies production) than you have too little war supplies to start building those ships/artillery units/supply wagons. I don't think you can win this war with infantry only.

Same impression from my point of view. Seems that industrialization makes anything grow ... but WS

in my first game I tried the april scenario and found that I had too much war supplies. I had industrialised early game and was lucky to get some war supply bonuses in Georgia and Louisiana. that payed of later during the war. But that game was with the bugged blockade runners (0% of blockade).

the problem might be that the game is going for upgrades you are low on stock with. So if you have plenty of war supplies still during the first turns - you might be unlucky.

Perhaps build a few railroad stock and then go for upgrades.

Hmm. Say I industrialise lightly two states in the South for 6 turns. Check them at turn 6 , industrialisation cost is 14 and 16 respectively , war supplies OUTPUT per state is 10 and 12. So you invest and LOSE War supplies until you are lucky with a rol and get Log message that in given state "foundry/ironworks is established", right? I noticed that sometimes I have such message each turn, sometimes it is very dry (2-3 turns without any improvemnts in war supplies). I don't say I want more WS very fast; their scarceness nicely emulates feeble technological capacity of CSA. It is just I can see, thta one game I get lots of these messages, another time it is just the opposite. It seems so random and difficulty level is set always on Normal. What gives?

Jacek wrote:Hmm. Say I industrialise lightly two states in the South for 6 turns. Check them at turn 6 , industrialisation cost is 14 and 16 respectively , war supplies OUTPUT per state is 10 and 12. So you invest and LOSE War supplies until you are lucky with a rol and get Log message that in given state "foundry/ironworks is established", right? I noticed that sometimes I have such message each turn, sometimes it is very dry (2-3 turns without any improvemnts in war supplies). I don't say I want more WS very fast; their scarceness nicely emulates feeble technological capacity of CSA. It is just I can see, thta one game I get lots of these messages, another time it is just the opposite. It seems so random and difficulty level is set always on Normal. What gives?

Remember part of the issue is that the game runs 100+ turns (or is supposed to). So the 4 WS hit you get over six turns could pay off as 400 WS over the game. Given that, the percentages have to be low.

I haven't done any industrial improvement and my CSA is drowning in war supply. I can run out of money or manpower, but no matter what I buy, I cannot reduce the war supply much below 130. It has not been a bottlneck at all. So much so in fact that I have gone out of my way to buy artillery to beef up my divisions rather than infantry, because the manpower is more scarce.

I did do some industrial improvement as union. I think I'm now stuck at 3,000 war supply in mid 1862.

Could be, Runyan. The way I play as CSA, industrialisation costs lots of war supplies i.e light industrialistion for Georgia and Virginia is total 53 WS per turn. It may pay off in a longer run, but in the beginning, those states may suck 53 WS for industrialisation while PRODUCING 4O WS. So, if you do not industrialise at all from the start, you have your whole WS pool to spend on arty/ships/wagons/ locomotives/ river transport. I just want to expand the industry for year 1862, when I will need much more WS capacity. I guess it wil take a while

are you speaking of game under 1.03, WSU pay less in such game. 3000 is defintively totally wrong

Jacek wrote:The way I play as CSA, industrialisation costs lots of war supplies i.e light industrialistion for Georgia and Virginia is total 53 WS per turn.

Seems like a foolish expenditure. At 4 WS per battery, the same 53 WS is sufficient to put 13 batteries of Napoleons into the field. That's a significant amount of firepower. Why waste the resources on an upgrade?

Jacek wrote:The way I play as CSA, industrialisation costs lots of war supplies i.e light industrialistion for Georgia and Virginia is total 53 WS per turn. It may pay off in a longer run, but in the beginning, those states may suck 53 WS for industrialisation while PRODUCING 4O WS.

Sorry, I didn't expressed myself correctly. I used Georgia and Virginia industrialisation as a generic example of incurring losses in WS. In the game both states have the highest cost of industrialistaion for CSA player, which is prohibitive from putting industry there from the get-go. Normally I would choose VA (25 WS) and some other state (10-11 WS). You then still have a small pool of WS to buy locomotives/arty/ships.

shouldn't the chance for getting a war supply depend on the industrialisation level of the state?

F.e. I can understand that states like Louisiana and Texas might build a few small ammo shops - or even general supply production (food - clothes etc).

But the real "war supplies" are more prone to come from states like Georgia ? So - given the fact that Georgia is more costly to invest in - it seems more logical to get the war supplies there - as this is more related to heavy industry - and the best Confederate state for that - seems to be Georgia.

By the way - in one of the other scenario setups Virginia gets a boost in industrialisation development - it's increased to the same level as Georgia (I think it's the 1862 scenario). Wouldn't it be better to put Virginia also higher in the other 1861 scenrio's ?

Pocus wrote:are you speaking of game under 1.03, WSU pay less in such game. 3000 is defintively totally wrong

Thats 3k in reserve, probably about 300-350 WS/turn. (And about 200 spent.) But that's with heavy buys of militia and heavy investment initially.

I suspect it may be part of the asymmetry between CSA and USA -- USA can afford to go a low-tech (militia and light guns) path early, while CSA's a bit more constrained.

I suspect a lot of the reasons the CSA is easier than it should =is because the AI/players are blocading it efectively. I'm in a CSA game right now and WS is the most precious commodity right now. With a 20-25% blocade since the start of the war (currernt turn is Sep 1861), I'm only getting 40-50 a turn, and that's including the 9-10 I get from blocade runners. Virtually all of it is being used into builing the HQ and support units (which are WS hungary, and as a result I don't even have enough to pour into railway and riverine infrastructure, which is now down to practically zero at the end of the turn (and in some cases I can't move all my units by rail/river).

Is it really smart to not print money. It seems to be a no-brainer ... for sure given the fact you can reduce inflation later in the game ...

who is not printing the money ? and why not ?

The main reason not to print money is not having enough WS to do anything useful with it. I am playing in 2 July pbem games as the south and WS is always (easily) the limiting resource. Unless you want to build only militia, money and conscripts are pretty useless w/o some WS.

Slightly OT - the inflation reduction seems to be random, as the CS I raised 6% war bonds on the first turn, resulting 1% inflation. Now 11 turns later inflation is still 1%. In other cases inflation has dropped much quicker.

Lack of TN militia is a major concern; if there is a historic reason for this I would like to hear it.

Trying to figure this stuff out is of course much of the fun....

mikee64 wrote:The main reason not to print money is not having enough WS to do anything useful with it. I am playing in 2 July pbem games as the south and WS is always (easily) the limiting resource. Unless you want to build only militia, money and conscripts are pretty useless w/o some WS.

Slightly OT - the inflation reduction seems to be random, as the CS I raised 6% war bonds on the first turn, resulting 1% inflation. Now 11 turns later inflation is still 1%. In other cases inflation has dropped much quicker.

Lack of TN militia is a major concern; if there is a historic reason for this I would like to hear it.

Trying to figure this stuff out is of course much of the fun....

Exactly my view. The lack of TN militia, especially in a PBEM, can be a major problem.

I would not print money until I run out of cash, surviving on taxes and bonds. I always check the "payoff" relative to % price increase to insure I am getting the money I need for sacrificing inflation increases. (taxes seem to be a better return than bonds)

Early on, the low VP levels keeps the payoff low, so I wait into late 61 or early 62 bfore printing money. (no WS makes it hard to spend it all effectively).

as an extra hint - I'm now in the winter of 61 and stripped of WS - stocks of general supply and ammo are growing at a considerable pace.

I decided to run a double investment program in =

- GA and NC (medium development)
- LA and SC (medium development)

I got added an extra production of somewhat 12 WS a turn - nice bonus isn't it for the CSA? Nearly all my upgrades. I think the pay back is quite nice ...

Jacek you are still using the 1.02 demo, so the figures changed in the meantime.

if the AI is still unable as the Union to blockade as it must, then it can also explains why you have too much WSU as CSA. Blockading should works now, if you have a game where the Union is still in good shape (not a game where you won as CSA) and the % blockade is 0, I would like to check it please.

Well, Pocus, I don't grumble about the fact the WS for CSA are limited in the 1.02 demo. I like it! You have to carefully plan your actions, set up priorites in reinforecments etc. You learn how to live with that after some time. Hope game version 1.03 doesn't give a player too much of them.

number is being tweaked down in each new version

Pocus wrote:number is being tweaked down in each new version

YES! The ultimate challenge! Fine with me!

Jacek wrote:Sorry, I didn't expressed myself correctly. I used Georgia and Virginia industrialisation as a generic example of incurring losses in WS. In the game both states have the highest cost of industrialistaion for CSA player, which is prohibitive from putting industry there from the get-go. Normally I would choose VA (25 WS) and some other state (10-11 WS). You then still have a small pool of WS to buy locomotives/arty/ships.

I spend the bulk of my early WS on buying 4 or 5 squadrons of blockade runners per turn (starting in the Gulf States). It seems much more cost effective than spending that 53 WS on industrialization; almost like adding two whole states to the Confederacy (economically speaking) by Fall '61. When the reinforcement pool is out of brigs, that is the time to start traditional industrializion. Unless the entire Atlantic fleet sits on the Gulf blockade box, 40 brigs can defend themselves (and each other) just fine.

Another option:
Sometimes I can pull off an amphib invasion of the del-mar-va peninsula, in which case industrializing Delaware works.