PBEM AAR - Long Live the Union!

[jchastain]

Page two looks good as well.... until you get to that last line. First things first though, it appears we did well with our mustering and conscriptions. No problems to report and several new units to command. The governors lost a little swagger, but that was expected and can deal with it later.

The reb raiders are stealing weapons. That's not that big of a deal really. A few new generals and typical reinforcements. Again, nothing worth worrying about.

DISEASE! The scourge of the army. Let's see how bad it is on the next page.

[jchastain]

Just Black River. OK, I can handle that. While I hate to see any losses, the troop concentration isn't too bad there so the impact is limited. OK, that's a lot better than it could have been.



OK - what the HECK is going on with diplomacy?! I am investing major cash there and look at the results!



England - Support for USA went up. OK, that means my investment in England paid off. CSA increased as well. That means he invested also and his paid off too. Drat!



His went up in France too? And mine didn't. Either he is just incredibly lucky or he's investing major cash into diplomacy. The fact is though, that he doesn't have the cash to invest the same kinds of sums that I am. I put an emphasis on diplomacy and devoted a huge portion of my economy to it and he's making more progress than I am! OK, it is going to really hurt, but I can't let him continue to pull ahead in diplomacy. *sigh* Things are not going according to plan.



A couple more governors are stepping up to help. At least we pulled a rabbit out of that hat. There are no big helps there but it is certainly better than nothing.



OK... we have some thinking to do.

[jchastain]

Obviously we need to start with diplomacy. The movement restrictions lift in February so that is when I was hoping to get my armies moving. This was the turn I wanted to begin ramping supply back up, but I think that will have to wait another turn. I can't afford to lose on the diplomatic front. Time to throw some serious money into it. Especially England. I'll max that. He's at 3 already. I need to get that back down.

[jchastain]

Wheeling appears to be getting close to capitulating. Less than 1,000 troops remain. Looks like 2 more turns, tops. Time to get the 17th division over there so we can free up the Army of Kentucky to join the upcoming offensive. I'll use my rail movement to get to parkersburg.

[jchastain]

OK, now I need to do something about those terrible containers I have. Harrisburg is the only city I have that can build a corp to start. Since it doesn't take manpower to build a new container, it won't hurt my production there so I'll go ahead and get it started.

[jchastain]

Next the plan was to build a couple of divisions. All those new brigades we just raised will need to fall into divisions so we'll need some new ones (and I wish we could get even more new ones to replace the current set of poor ones). Or, I could get another artillery in process. The lead time on artillery is a lot longer than divisions. I guess I can afford to wait one more turn to get those divisions built. But that definitely means we'll be delaying the offensive by a turn. I'll need to devote my money income from next turn to building those new divisions, so I can't afford to crank up the supply levels this turn. I'll need a turn to get things organized anyway once everyone can move now that my railroad infrastructure is half crippled. OK, I'm resigned to it. Let's go ahead and put in the order for that new artillery unit.

[jchastain]

Once I get all these art units built, I'll definitely need to upgrade them with some decent cannons. I've got quite a few guns now, but there is no need to keep buying minies when I'm working on better stuff. Time to check in on our progress with research. Looks like weaponry is half way there. That won't be in time for the start of the offensive, even with the current delay but I can't delay it yet further. I'll just plan to save up some weapons inventory and upgrade when I can.

[jchastain]

I have a little extra labor right now. Iron hasn't yet become a problem but I might as well go ahead and build those mines I talked about earlier. See where it says Building Support at the top? Harrisburg can support up to 12 buildings and it currently has 10. So, I can only build 2 more here. That'll work. I'll build 2 mines. Right now the city has 3, that'll give me 2 more for a total of 5 which should feed my irons works quite well. To build anything else here, I'd need to build a mansion. Each mansion allows 4 more buildings, but costs 100 cash. If I ever really need to expand my iron production, I'll have to spend that money. But for now, I'm thinking with 2 more mines on the way I'll be fine on iron with what I already have going.

[jchastain]

With what little RR I have, I'll move some of the new troops to Springfield. That's where I'll form my new division (once I can afford my new division). The cav unit is still in process there also. Looks like 3 more turns to go.

[jchastain]

Loose brigades use extra supply, so I don't want to leave those troops just standing around waiting for the new division. I'll move them into the city for now. I can pull them back out when I am ready to form the division.



Edit: Normally I take screen caps as I go and number them so I post them in the right order. I forgot to number these so they are slightly out of sequence in case anyone is actually trying to follow the resource totals at the bottom. I actually pulled these units to a common location before I started looking at containers and buying units.

[jchastain]

OK, now that everything is in process, here's just a glamourshot of harrisburg. Just under the name you'll see the buildings with numbers of turns to go for those in progress. 21 more turns on the iron works, 6 more on each of the mines. The check boxes show I am producing cash and iron, earning 6 and 28 respectively each turn. The corp is also in progress with 2 turns to go. All 3 of the population are still there.

[jchastain]

Time to look at the army and see just how bad off it is. It could be a lot worse I suppose considering that I have cut off supplies to the majority of the troops. Heck of a way to fight a war!

Last turn I starting trickling supplies back to the isolated 4th army, yet it appears they are still at a supply level of 4. Time to take a closer look at what's going on there.

[jchastain]

Hmmmmm. The 9th Division within the 4th Army did see their supplies climb to 5. It is only the brigades attached directly to the army that made no progress. Again, that points to bad staff officers within the army itself. Obviously the logistics officers in the division are better than those in the army (bad or worse logistics offers get -1 to supply for all attached units).

[jchastain]

Sure enough, the 4th Army has a "bad" logistical staff. I'd love to replace all the containers in order to get new (and hopefully better) staff officers, but the war won't wait so I'll just have to do the best that I can with what I have. In the mean time, it would really help to get some divisions with decent officers under this army so I can get the supply lines out of the direct hands of those idiots.

[jchastain]

OK, time toi think about the 6th division in covington. They have a lot of bad guys around them and I notice the officer's name isn't above them - obvious he doesn't have a second star. I see them needing to move and could benefit from some leadership initiative. Promote him in the next round? Let's see.

Geary... initative 2. Nope. He's not the right guy. I'll just swap him out with someone in the AoP who already has a second star and a decent initative.

While I'm here though, let's give the 29th some minies. I know I said I wanted to wait until I could invest in something better, but with a quality of 2.0, that unit likely won't qualify for anything better anyway so we might as well do it while we're looking at it.

[jchastain]

OK, who to steal... Newton will do. He and geary can just swap places.

[jchastain]

Moving generals around is fairly easy because they can use railroad movement at any time without consuming RR points. I feel better seeing a name above that unit since he is currently anchoring all of kentucky.

[jchastain]

OK, it wasn't what I was hoping or planning for, but hopefully I am not dragging my feet too much. Turn over, and yet another promotion. If only I had a corp for all these 3 stars to command. Oh well, it is on its way...

[jchastain]

TURN 6

OK, we're nearing the end of the winter and should be seeing some action soon. On to the events report as always...

Looking at the casualty figured, it is obvious the siege is won.

[jchastain]

A nice short report. That's likely a good thing for me.

Second page shows their raider failed and our diplomacy succeeding in backing up their relationship with France again. Great! Nice to see that progress. We really need to see some progress with England, but at least we didn't go backwards this turn.

Delaware now opposes Impressment. OK. Whatever. Rhode Island wants a bank. Hmmmm. That's one of the most expensive buildings in the game. Rhode Island? I'm thinking they have a good chance of being disappointed. Anyway, I can definitely say it won't be a priority.