Strategic and detailed combat tips from the original cog

[Harvey Birdman]

Miscellaneous Strategic Tips:
Identify the province with your highest level of barracks and docks. Build your units here whenever possible, and improve these developments whenever you can afford it.
Build guard units as soon as you can if you do not start the scenario with any. One or two guards are invaluable in detailed
combat. Don’t build too many guards, as guards decrease
the morale level of all your other infantry units. If you build your guard units early, you can avoid the morale drain on subsequently produced infantry.
The French corps and armies can intrinsically hold larger numbers of units than the corps and armies of other nations.
Provinces have a size-limit that sets the maximum number of divisions that any nation can bring to a battle. Bad weather,
mountainous and other rough terrain, and attacks across a river are all factors that lower the size-limit for a combat. If you are outnumbered, try to fight the combat in a province with a lower size-limit, and get the invader to cross a river while attacking you, if that is possible. A low size-limit in a province can go a long way toward negating the advantage of superior numbers.
You want to be able to mass a big army: an army with three maximally stocked corps attached to it.
If you plan on capturing cities, bring some militia with your army. This way you can use them to garrison the cities you capture, rather than wasting good infantry units to do the same job. Capturing cities is a great way to increase the victory
points you acquire when an enemy finally is forced to surrender. Cities you control are worth extra victory points. Captured cities can also serve as sources of supply chains, and so can shorten your supply chain and save you money. Capturing a city also disrupts enemy production in that city: use your diplomats to spy and find cities with large production
queues, then capture the city to make your opponent waste all resources his spent trying to build those units.
Establish a role for each of your armies and corps. A large number of low-morale militia in a corps might be for besieging
cities. Turkey’s irregular cavalry are great for this: they can march a long way quickly, and their morale doesn’t matter
much as the besieger. Very high morale units can be put into a special corps that fights battles in provinces with low size-limits, such as mountainous terrain. You can also organize
badly depleted divisions into a corps that can then be sent back into friendly territory to be replenished from the draft pool.
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Strategy Guide
Don’t forget the merchants! They are an essential source of income for most nations that are aspiring to greatness. If you are being blockaded by Britain, try to build a merchant in a port not being blockaded and slip the merchant out to sea as soon as it is built. If you run to the far corners of the map, the British might not find you.
Make sure you have enough fleets to blockade any port cities you want to siege. Blockading a port for a siege only needs one ship in a fleet. And don’t forget to blockade cities you are besieging: ports under siege take much longer to besiege if they are not also blockaded at sea. Also, these small fleets can also be used to attack enemy privateers and merchants. Just don’t expect them to beat a real combat fleet! A fleet is expensive to upkeep, so don’t build them unless you’re going to use them.
Concentrate your diplomats to maximize their effect.
Try never to let high morale units die from starvation. If they do, they’ll be replaced by low-morale replacements from the draft pool.



Tips for Detailed Combat
Role of the Units
The role of the infantry is to fix the enemy in place. After the enemy is engaged, infantry fire attacks or artillery can be used to disrupt enemy formation and cause them to become
disordered. Following up with a charge attack against a disordered enemy is the best way to do significant damage; a charge by an infantry will sometimes suffice, but cavalry is best.
Try not to charge an enemy until after their formation is disrupted;
sometimes you have to, but it is less efficient.
Ideally, establish an infantry wall, in line formation, and have the enemy come to you (in column!) Have the artillery firing over their heads if you can (from a height from behind the line of infantry). When the enemy units are in disorder, have the cavalry charge them and then return the cavalry back behind your lines to rest until their fatigue is gone and to reform if they are disordered.
Infantry can be used as a poor man’s artillery, and can be used as a poor man’s cavalry. Cavalry can’t do the job of artillery
- if a cavalry charge is used to disrupt an enemy in formation, you probably won’t get any more use from that cavalry division for quite a while – though charges against the rear, or against an outflanked enemy infantry, are worthwhile
uses of cavalry. Artillery isn’t very good at doing the job of cavalry: disordered troops are harder for the artillery to hit than men formed into nice neat lines.
If you are being menaced by a lot of enemy artillery, try building riflemen units. These sharpshooters do triple damage
against artillery units in fire combat.
Your artillery can become tangled when they are involved in combat. Tangled artillery can change facing but cannot move. If you find that you have tangled artillery, you can keep on firing from the same position, or skip your turn and rally: rallying usually untangles tangled artillery.
Facing
You do the least damage if you fire at their fronts; you do the most if you fire at their backs. You do the least damage firing
behind yourself, and the most firing forwards. So ideally, fire to your front at their rear! This is also true for charging:
charges are better against the enemy’s flanks and rear. Cavalry can avoid the zones of control of enemy infantry, as can guerilla units, so use them to get to the rear of enemy infantry.
Formations
Column formation is for moving. Line formation is for firing and, to a lesser extent, for charging. You can move in line, and you can fire in column - its just not what they are best suited for. However, it is far better to fire and charge in line than to stand around in disorder. Assess your chances of the formation change, and the threat of the enemy taking advantage
of some disorder, and decide. [Hint: resting a turn may improve your chances by increasing your unit’s morale. Moving out of enemy zone of control helps too, as does moving
into a clear hex. The presence of a commander in the division also helps.]
During the pursuit phase, forget line: you need the movement
capability to catch up with them and charge.
Freshness and Fatigue
Fresh troops do the most damage. Non-fatigued troops do well. Fatigued troops do poorly. Disordered troops can’t attack.
Routed troops are done for. Keep a fresh division or two in reserve and throw them into battle where the enemy’s line starts to waver, where his units are shaken or where their morale starts to dip. A unit loses its freshness if it takes more than 25 casualties, so if you can, avoid having your fresh units engage in pointless exchanges of fire and save their damaging volleys for a flanking attack at close range.
Rest your forces: you usually do more damage attacking every second round and resting every second round rather than firing every round!
The morale and fatigue recovery (‘rallying’) improve with a general: move your general to the division that needs him the most. This is a far more important use of generals than their combat bonus.
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The Morale Goals
Your strategic goal in the battle is to kill as many enemy
soldiers as possible. Every soldier who dies won’t be fighting you in the next battle or the next war. You also want to capture their artillery so you can use it in the next battle. Your tactical goal is to win the battle,
and to do this you have to keep an eye on morale.
Try to have a safe haven where you can move units with low morale (or currently in disorder) so they can recover without being further attacked. Try to keep them save from enemy cavalry charges in particular.
Pick the enemy’s lowest morale units, and focus on them: it only takes a few units breaking for a ripple effect to cascade through the enemy. Concentrate your fire.
The enemy will be trying to have a rest and recovery area too. If you can sneak some units in there to make sure those units are routed rather than resting to come back in the battle, that is a great thing to do. (Hint: reinforcements called into battle can be particularly good at this.)
Attacking units that are already routed is only done for the strategic goal: for the tactical goal you would let them run away and focus on the next unit to break. In a close battle where you are not certain to prevail, it is best to focus on the tactical goal and allow the retreating enemy to escape.
Watch out where you place your disordered units. Your units can normally pass through other friendly units. However, your disordered units don’t allow other friendly units to pass through the hex they occupy. If one of your units on a road or in a gap becomes disordered, it can bring your whole army to a halt.
Your guard units raise the morale of all friendly adjacent units once each turn. They can provide crucial support for a flagging line.
The way the rules work, when a unit is routed all units on its team within 6 hexes take a morale loss of .5. Units that have a morale less than the unit that was routed take an additional
loss of .5. So if you manage to rout an enemy guard unit, all the other units in the area take a loss of 1 morale. If this breaks even one of those units in the area, then all units in the area take an additional morale loss, and so on. Also, all your units gain a small amount of morale when they break the morale of an enemy unit within 6 hexes. So sometimes it is worth charging a unit a few times even if it puts several of your units in disorder: you must make the judgment based on the situation.
Having low morale units in reserve can make all the difference
(by reserve, I mean not engaged in combat and far enough away not to be affected by it). However many low morale units can become a liability if the enemy can find them and turn the lot of them.
Supply
Units in supply do significantly more damage than units out of supply; units out of supply take much more morale loss in combat than units in-supply. Charging is not as affected by supply status as fire-combat, and may be a good alternative
for units who find themselves with little hope of being re-supplied.
Ideally, have a depot in or adjacent to the area before the combat occurs - that will make sure you get lots of caissons.
If you don’t get many caissons, you can: (a) capture some of your enemy’s, a good charge will capture a caisson and give it to you for the remainder of the battle; (b) ending your unit’s turn in a village or fortress adds a small amount of supply to the unit.
The enemy know how important supply is - if they get a chance, they will rout your supply caissons. Protect them! (Hint: they can make great bait!)
Skirmishers
Sometimes you should give the enemy a target. Let them fire at a particular unit. Order that division to send out skirmishers
to reduce the damage they take; use a light infantry if you have one. Don’t have them fire back when it’s their turn!: they need to rest to recover the morale they are loosing. And make sure you pull them out if their morale starts to go or they get in disorder - they aren’t their to sacrifice themselves: they are there to make the enemy waste their ammo while you are doing horrible things to them!
Skirmishers are also great for delaying an enemy in an area of the battlefield where you are outnumbered or overpowered.
Fall into rough terrain and deploy your skirmishers.
If you are outnumbered but have some divisions with high strength, consider splitting them into two groups early in the battle. This will lower their morale a bit, but if it prevents you from being flanked by the enemy, then it is well worth it.
Cavalry Tactics
Cavalry can be used to get infantry to abandon their line formation
and to form emergency squares. Do not do this too early, however, but wait till your infantry and artillery are close enough to inflict punishing damage on the squared enemy
infantry. Or consider saving your cavalry for when the enemy’s units are disordered.
Terrain
Beware of mud and swamps and ice. Units in this terrain take extra damage in combat.
The easiest terrain for changing formation is clear terrain. Units in line formation cannot enter rough terrain, nor can
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Scenario Guide
they move across rivers. So don’t deploy into line too early.
Artillery units on a height have some advantages: they can fire farther and can fire over lower units. However, artillery does much less damage against enemies not on the same height as the artillery. Your infantry can screen your artillery from charges if your infantry are in formation and adjacent to an enemy unit trying to charge your artillery. Keep your artillery
screened! If you can’t, retreat your artillery into rough terrain, where it will be more defended against charges.

[Joram]

Good tips Harvey, couple small clarifications though:
True militia can't leave 'home' provinces so you can't bring them with you.  You can however build them in anticipation of forcing surrender and getting the city but they can't actively contribute to your campaign in a foreign land. 
 
Frigates outside of fleets are the only way of combatting privateers.
 
The rifleman tip is good but not all nations can do that.  There is also an upgrade that deals additional damage to artillery which can be attached to any good morale infantry.

[terje439]

ORIGINAL: Joram

Frigates outside of fleets are the only way of combatting privateers.

They do not need to be outside a fleet, they can just as well be inside a fleet container.

[Joram]

Maybe that's true for nations you are at war with but against neutral privateers, I don't think that's true unless Eric changed the rule.

[terje439]

Then it has changed, because I sent out an entire fleet with all my frigates in it (as well as several 3grades), and they took out a neutral privateer.

[Mus]

The rule post patch is your frigates have a chance to remove any non allied privateer. And they dont have to be outside a container either.

Frigates do however now need to be outside a container to engage a merchant. I think it should be one way or the other. The rule difference doesnt make much sense to me.

I think this was just implemented to prevent the merchants pushing around Fleets of warships.