PBEM AAR - Long Live the Union!

[jchastain]

No battles. darn. The siege is goin... wait. Does that say eleven THOUSAND casualties? choke. I figured he has upgraded that fort... but 11,000! OK, ummm... that'll need some attention or else I won't have an army left.

2 more tech advances for him. Hmmm... he seems to be surpassing me in the tech race. Got to keep up with the Jones.

[jchastain]

Those arsenals from a few turns back showed up. That'll be nice. Reinforcements keep trickling in and more continue to be needed. Looks like we are both investing in England and both managed to reduce the other. Guess the brits are tiring of both of us. That's OK by me.

[jchastain]

Let's start by looking at this siege. The current approach clearly isn't going to work. I think we'll try an encirclement. It'll slow things down a bit, but it will keep us out of the range of those big guns.

[jchastain]

Once again I'll try to get the 4th Army out of the gravitational pull of that fort. There is just so much free land for the taking, it is a shame not to go grab some of it. Thanks Goodness Keyes didn't get caught up in that mess.

[jchastain]

Speaking of Keyes, let's take a look at his Illinois Army and make sure supply is still OK. They have been busy recently. Generally looks fine, but the 8th Division is down a bit and that is where I have some of my best troops. I'll kick them up to high priority. That will not only get them more supplies but it will also help ensure they get first crack at the replacements.

[jchastain]

While I'm here I notice that my artillery piece with the big gun doesn't have any attributes. Let's go all out and load it up with Zouaves and a Baggage Train for good measure. Ooops. I also see that my 2nd cavalry unit never got a decent weapon. Cav uses different weapons that infantry and the best I have available for them is the Musketoon (QC3). So the oversight isn't all that big, but let's go ahead and get them what I can while I'm here.

[jchastain]

OK, with that done we can look at the situation. Sibley and Hindman ducked down south to Tuscaloosa. They obviously didn't want to concede the entire west and are trying to duck down? And the Bragg came up to support. Planning a combined attack on me? I guess they haven't yet figured out that this is my best fighting army. But I'm willing to teach them that lesson.

[jchastain]

I'm the agressor and I don't want to just sit back and HOPE they attack me. Time to be bold. If I go south and Bragg comes west, I'll lose my supply lines. I suppose there is some risk of that in both directions actually.

While I think I could take them together, let's take a shot at interrupting their plan and picking them off one at a time. First, I'll go east to Huntsville. With any luck, I'll catch Bragg sitting on his heels.

[jchastain]

And then, I'll double back and hopefully catch Sibley and Hindman expecting support that will never come.

So, ideally they are planning a joint attack and I'll catch Bragg alone before he can begin and then get back to here where I will be the defender against the other two. I have no idea if I can move this army between two provinces and fight two engagements in that short span of time, but I'm going to give it a try and see what happens. If they are coming after me and get here before I get there, then so be it. If they are planning to sit still, then I'll at least bag one of them. And if they are running.... well... then I'll just have to deal with that if it happens. My gut tells me that they still think they're better than me and that they're coming. I hope I'm right.

[jchastain]

2 turns before a new Cav and a new Inf show up. I ought to build a Corp now to house them (and hopefully a new division next turn). My containers still aren't at the quality level I'd like. In fact, I need to build some academies so that I can get better containers and more promotions. But they cost heavy cash and that's been a problem for the entirety of the war. Maybe this fall I can figure something out so that I'll have better leadership in place in time for the '63 campaigns.

[jchastain]

In fact, cash is short again while other resources have small surpluses. Time to swtich New York back to making Cash instead of Labor.

[jchastain]

In fact, I ought to go ahead and spend some of those surpluses and see if I can get anything useful. Let's face it, cash isn't going to suddenly become plentiful any time soon. Hmmmm. Gov wants a signal tower. Kind of silly to put one so far north, but since I have the excess resources, why not?

[jchastain]

The rest of it, we'll try to spend more rationally. A couple of RR stations wouldn't be bad. And a few more arsenals. Those new cannons just require a ton of guns.

[jchastain]

I haven't checked stats since the start of the war. I really haven't thought about it. Most of them don't show much honestly. there haven't been a lot of big fights that radically shanged anything. But I did find the strength graph to be interesting. I was thinking I was just dominating him. But instead it shows that despite starting with a reasonable lead, I have now allowed him to pretty much catch me. I can't let myself get too cocky. He's got a lot of troops out there somewhere. Just thank goodness they don't seem to be where the fighting is. If he wants to come at me in drips and drops, I'm all for that. But we need to get his trend line going in the proper direction.

[jchastain]

Since we may have a troop issue, now might be a good time to muster some men in areas where the Govs aren't very friendly. Elections are coming up before too long so I don't want to hurt my friends. Looking at it though, the only one I see where I can:
(a) Not hurt a friendly governor, and
(b) not hurt my economy (ie little is produced there)
is Delaware. And they only have a manpower of 1, so I can't muster there. Infantry takes 2. Oh well, it was worth a shot. I'll try again after the elections and right before we have the next refresh.

[jchastain]

One thing I can do is use my garrisons more effectively. Let's keep moving some of the underutilized ones from the Northeast down towards where we're building that new corp. That will kill 2 birds with one stone - getting more troops to the front and making sure I don't leave another corp open and lose it again.

[jchastain]

AoP will eventually have to become a reasonable fighting force. The Eastern standoff won't last forever. So I might as well use some of my available gund to upgrade a few more of the key units there. There actually are a couple of darn good units there.

[jchastain]

And with the end of my turn comes another upgrade. I'm finally getting Target Practice I. The turn AFTER he received Target Practice 2. I didn't do anything to catch up with the Jones this turn, but I still need to take care of that.

[Grotius]

What a great AAR!

[jchastain]

ORIGINAL: Grotius

What a great AAR!

Thanks! I love hearing the feedback. And I can't wait to get home from work later and continue with it. Online system architectures seem so trivial compared with saving the union and preserving freedom for all posterity.