Managing loyalty

[seathom]

I downloaded something that crashed my computer, so I'm not as far along in my USA game (Sept 1852) that I had hoped for. That said, I noticed that the loyalty in the border states were very much in the CSA's favor. I could be mistaken, but I thought Kentucky fought for the union. I tried moving units into those areas and it seems to be slowly moving towards the Union. The manual says that only declaring martial law and capturing objective cities will move loyalty. Are my troop movements in vain or does this actually improve loyalty? Is there a better way?

A second question I have is, How many extra items should I have in my national stock? I have several items that have accumulated over 400/500 stock (especially, cotton, coal, steel) even though when I hit the "B" key, it shows I should barely be increasing my stock, if at all). Should I start dumping more stock on the markets, even if selling at low prices?

I'd appreciate any suggestions.

[loki100]

I think the US player has a lot of scripted contentment/loyalty problems up to the civil war, so it maybe there is not too much you can do beyond deployment of MP units (and cavalry) to areas with higher unrest.

Managing stockpiles is a challenge. Check if you are getting the '% lost' comment on the F4 screen, if so that means you simply have too much (represents wastage etc). If so close down any production, stop imports, you might try to sell but this usually is also an indication of a short term global over-supply. Having said that, I'd persist in stockpiling coal because you are going to need it at some stage.

So some slow accumulation is good, esp of items that may be easy to acquire early game but become very short later on. But running down your stocks if there is easy supply (domestic or by trade) is no bad idea, all you are doing is locking up cash that could be better used in a different context.

[James D Burns]

A good way to set up production early is to turn off all industries. You can use the button on the top of the f4 page to turn them all off or use the f11 page to do them one at a time. I like to turn off all industries, stop all trades (hover mouse over capital region and press T) and right click all items on the buy screen (press b) several times to make sure nothing is in the production mix except what I am building so I can see an accurate number at the bottom of the f4 screen to see if I need to turn production on to keep items at a positive growth surplus.

I then jump between the f4 and f11 screens and turn on enough industries to make sure every product is in positive territory, but only by less than 10 items if possible as there really is no need to over-produce by much early game due to a general lack of demand for most items. Any excess production capacity I keep industries turned off until if/when it’s needed by population growth or industry expansion.

You will need to run a turn or two before craftsmen are in the production mix, so plan some tweaking in the early turns as the new craftsmen production comes on line.

I then use the buy screen to get any needed items I have a lack of production for to go green, but again keep it less than 10 items over if possible. Once I have these steps set up, it’s time to figure out if I have any cash crops (stuff that sells out every turn due to a world-wide shortage) I can over-produce to place on the world trade market. For the US the best cash crops are tobacco and gold.

Your Tobacco Farms should all be built ASAP until none are available to build as this crop will be the main crop that keeps your private capital healthy until you can slowly grow your gold fields in California. The gold fields will take many years to grow a population large enough to work them all, so don’t count on them until later.

You can also build up a small surplus of winemakers and fruit growers, but your total capacity is again limited by population shortages, so focus on tobacco first. Also France will eventually dominate wine growers so the cash crop nature of that industry isn’t as reliable long term as tobacco is.

A sort of gamey tactic with tobacco is to build all the farms as far south as possible, that way when the civil war erupts you’ll be allowed to build more farms as you march south in the unused resource regions you recapture since you get to build them again when the existing ones all turn to the south’s control. You’ll find you suddenly get a bunch of farm cards again you can use to build more farms with. Once the war is over the farms will again be in your control and your ability to build more will vanish. This might feel a bit gamey, but the world needs and will use all the tobacco you can grow, so it helps everyone not just the US.

Things like goods and steel may need to be kept at surpluses higher than 10 or so, I generally keep goods at around 30 and steel at 15 or so and only bump them up higher when I plan a lot of new industrial expansion builds.

Jim

[bbmike]

Nice tips! I still have the 'accumulate as much as you can' mentality from other games.

[seathom]

If you turn off "extra production facilities" won't the unemployment that it creates make the population decrease (city level size adjustment) and/or cause unrest? In real life it would, but maybe not in game?

[seathom]

Thanks for the tips. I did notice that tobacco seemed much better than cotton for revenue raising (although the Prestige Points would be nice to have built more cotton fields, but you could buy 2 or 3 tobacco fields for the same price and eventually I'll go to war and get more PP that way, as well as concentrating on Merchant Ships and Warships to get those goals met).

I also agree on the fruit/wine tip. I've made some good money on that investment too.

I'm now in Feb 1853 and the union's loyalty has gone up noticeably in my border states. I did it with cavalry that I had originally placed out west (today's midwest) for the eventual Indian Uprisings. I didn't notice the Military Police until after purchasing several cavalry brigades, so I need to wait a bit so as not to over-invest in my army. Loyalty went up from 50% in St. Louis to 68% and Louisville/Memphis/Western Virginia areas went from 2% to 36%. And Kansas City was just founded and loyalty went up from 0% to 100! so I'm breathing a sigh of relief that maybe I can have at minimum historical starting states in the Union.

Thanks for your input; I really do appreciate it. Side note: I am REALLY loving this game. This is the first game since the original EU came out that I can't wait to play again and actually want to finish it! (I was thrilled with EU at first because I had the board game that took days to set up and had no intelligent/human opponents!)

[James D Burns]

My US game is in 1858 about to hit 1859, and strikes and riots are erupting everywhere there is any level of Dixie population. It basically becomes impossible to manage, so I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about it pre-civil war lest you forgo more important things. Instead I've focused on building up the southern economy so it can hopefully be in a position to put up a decent fight. Every single starting depot has been built out to level 5 for the entire map, and the south now has a decent rail net as well.

I’ve made sure to give them some capacity for coal, iron, ore, timber, etc. so they don’t have to spend money they don’t have buying basic stuff. I’ve then built a lot of furniture industries so they have a decent production capacity for goods without needing lots of heavy industry stuff. I built a single steel mill to give them a minimal steel capacity and I am now building all the food production facilities I can to give them as much of the basics as I can before war erupts.

Hopefully the southern economy won’t crash and the Civil War will be a long fun fight. They’ll have the main supply of tobacco in the world so they should have enough cash to buy whatever I may have overlooked if they need to off the open markets.

Also you want to try and get 20+ replacement chits for every land chit type you have before the war starts if you can. I know from past experience that Union morale will crash to 0 due to territory handovers and if you don't have the chits already built and in stock you'll lose the war as it takes years to recover the morale and conscripts will be non-existent until you get it back into the 70+ range. They might have fixed this, but I don't know so better safe than sorry. This initial pile of chits will allow your half strength army to repair so you can start to take things which will help morale recover, without them your armies are too weak to attack. These armies are built for free for both sides, but arrive half strength, so don't over-build land units until you have large chit pools first.

Jim

[vaalen]

My US game is in 1858 about to hit 1859, and strikes and riots are erupting everywhere there is any level of Dixie population. It basically becomes impossible to manage, so I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about it pre-civil war lest you forgo more important things. Instead I've focused on building up the southern economy so it can hopefully be in a position to put up a decent fight. Every single starting depot has been built out to level 5 for the entire map, and the south now has a decent rail net as well.

I’ve made sure to give them some capacity for coal, iron, ore, timber, etc. so they don’t have to spend money they don’t have buying basic stuff. I’ve then built a lot of furniture industries so they have a decent production capacity for goods without needing lots of heavy industry stuff. I built a single steel mill to give them a minimal steel capacity and I am now building all the food production facilities I can to give them as much of the basics as I can before war erupts.

Hopefully the southern economy won’t crash and the Civil War will be a long fun fight. They’ll have the main supply of tobacco in the world so they should have enough cash to buy whatever I may have overlooked if they need to off the open markets.

Also you want to try and get 20+ replacement chits for every land chit type you have before the war starts if you can. I know from past experience that Union morale will crash to 0 due to territory handovers and if you don't have the chits already built and in stock you'll lose the war as it takes years to recover the morale and conscripts will be non-existent until you get it back into the 70+ range. They might have fixed this, but I don't know so better safe than sorry. This initial pile of chits will allow your half strength army to repair so you can start to take things which will help morale recover, without them your armies are too weak to attack. These armies are built for free for both sides, but arrive half strength, so don't over-build land units until you have large chit pools first.

Jim

Thank you for sharing that fascinating strategy, Jim. I am going to try it in my next game!

[seathom]

Well, you are braver than I am. I've only built minimally in the South (tobacco, cotton, tropical fruit and wetland drainage). I don't want to get my butt handed to me on my first try (especially after putting in so much time!).

It's still a ways off, but didn't the Confederacy have a slightly larger Army than the Union at the beginning? I wonder if it shows up that way through all the militias spread throughout the country or do armies just spring up? or does it do a Vicky and just start with whatever builds you had when war erupts?

Thanks for the replacements idea, I would have skipped that and just had my 10% cushion.

Being a little more skilled at BoA and TEAW, I do expect a decent fight for my first time out.

[James D Burns]

Thank you for sharing that fascinating strategy, Jim. I am going to try it in my next game!

No problem, here's my save as of Jan 1859 if you want to pick up near the Civil War and save yourself the 200+ turns it takes to get this far.

Thus far I’ve focused diplomatic efforts on only North American tribes and have managed to sign them all to commerce agreements and a couple defensive treaties at this point. I still get an occasional Indian rebellion unit popping up, but they are pretty rare at this point.

I’ve gotten all my planned builds done in the south except tropical fruit farms in Florida. After those are built I’ll probably build two more coal mines in the south if the war hasn’t started yet.

I’m saving conscripts up to try and build another infantry corp, but I’m not sure if I can get that high with just regular conscript incomes yet. The two I have I built by saving 200+ conscripts and then playing the expansion of military event that gives 100 conscripts. So far it hasn’t returned again but I think it’s due to re-appear soon. The other two military events have never re-appeared as I failed them the first time and the events are broken and never come back if failed.

Once I get one more corps built I plan to build nothing else and will allow conscripts to accumulate. With 0 national morale you will have no conscript income upon wars start and if you have no conscripts for use with maintenance requirements each turn your armies will take massive damage every turn. So try and save up a big stock of conscripts over the last year prior to war so you have some in the pool for maintenance use while you work on getting your morale back up.

Jim

[vaalen]

No problem, here's my save as of Jan 1859 if you want to pick up near the Civil War and save yourself the 200+ turns it takes to get this far.

Thus far I’ve focused diplomatic efforts on only North American tribes and have managed to sign them all to commerce agreements and a couple defensive treaties at this point. I still get an occasional Indian rebellion unit popping up, but they are pretty rare at this point.

I’ve gotten all my planned builds done in the south except tropical fruit farms in Florida. After those are built I’ll probably build two more coal mines in the south if the war hasn’t started yet.

I’m saving conscripts up to try and build another infantry corp, but I’m not sure if I can get that high with just regular conscript incomes yet. The two I have I built by saving 200+ conscripts and then playing the expansion of military event that gives 100 conscripts. So far it hasn’t returned again but I think it’s due to re-appear soon. The other two military events have never re-appeared as I failed them the first time and the events are broken and never come back if failed.

Once I get one more corps built I plan to build nothing else and will allow conscripts to accumulate. With 0 national morale you will have no conscript income upon wars start and if you have no conscripts for use with maintenance requirements each turn your armies will take massive damage every turn. So try and save up a big stock of conscripts over the last year prior to war so you have some in the pool for maintenance use while you work on getting your morale back up.

Jim

Thanks again, Jim. It was really thoughtful of you to provide the save, as it will save me all those turns, and give others here the chance to fight a strong south. I also appreciate the excellent advice. A very nice gift to the community.

As France, I have run into that situation where you get no recruits, and it is devastating, just as you said. The Paris commune event happened, and I had foolishly built maximum fortifications in Paris, which needed to be reduced by siege before an assault could succeed. Anyway, my supply of recruits dwindled to almost zero , and my massive army and fleet began to quickly melt away. Fortunately, I had a lot of replacements stocked up, at least for line infantry, so I was able to storm Paris on the third turn, after inflicting a couple of breaches. By that time, my artillery, navy, and cavalry were almost gone, and it took me two years of intense effort to restore them. The capture of Paris did restore my recruits, but the amount of goods, steel, and money iit took to rebuild my armed forces was huge.

[James D Burns]

Once I get one more corps built I plan to build nothing else and will allow conscripts to accumulate. With 0 national morale you will have no conscript income upon wars start and if you have no conscripts for use with maintenance requirements each turn your armies will take massive damage every turn. So try and save up a big stock of conscripts over the last year prior to war so you have some in the pool for maintenance use while you work on getting your morale back up.

Turns out this is very bad advice, sorry gents. I had the civil war erupt in Nov 1859 and your entire conscript pool is zeroed out, I had almost 250 conscripts and close to 300 officers vanish. So spend every point you can on replacement chits. My starting income for conscripts was -10 per turn so I’ll be taking lots of hits every single turn.

At this point I think I’m going to re-download my save above instead of trying to fight this out and instead of building another Corps I’m going to buy nothing but replacement chits until the war starts. You get close to 100 militia chits free, so I recommend players buy infantry only and perhaps another 30 or so cavalry since all of the cavalry divisions that spawn need 2 or more elements to flesh them out.

This really needs to be addressed somehow. A simple event that bumps morale up to 100 the turn after war would suffice.

Jim

[seathom]

Thanks Jim, that is REALLY important to know. I also was planning on keeping a large reserve of conscripts/officers for the outbreak but will definitely be buying non-militia replacement chits. Thanks for this important notice (I'm only in early 1855).