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Turn 26 Late April

Both Harper’s Ferry and Leesburg fall without a fight and my troops revert to defense.

I’ll be disbanding a total of 15 first line infantry regiments 6 militia regiments and 3 artillery regiments at a cost of 63 VP and 1 NM. That makes up for the stuff the Confederates lost when their Army of the Shenandoah dissolved.

From what my recon lets me see, there is now about 3500 CV of confederate forces within 1 or 2 regions of my lines. I’ll have about 4000 CV left in the area after this disbandment (more as recent militia builds arrive), so I think I can easily keep things static in the east this year. Even if the confederates have another 1000+ CV in the FOW near Richmond I should be ok.

Meagher is aboard Farragut’s fleet and is given orders to distant unload at Fort Morgan 1 day south with assault at all costs orders. I’m hoping the marine regiment in the unit helps negate the amphibious assault penalties enough to let me take it by storm from sea.

Nothing happens in Kentucky and I order my fleets to move even deeper into its territory down the Donelson Narrows and Henry Ferry river regions.

Woods’ division has recovered some of its hits so I have it rejoin Grant and order Grant to cross to Lake TN. It’s a 14 day march so an attack probably won’t occur this turn.

In Missouri Polk’s Corp has appeared just west of Jefferson City. Hurlbut’s 10th division defends behind level 4 forts with a CV of 210 vs. Polk’s CV of 276. I’m hopeful he’ll do better than Hays did this turn. McCulloch attacked Hays and defeated him, thankfully no NM was lost. The city remains in the hands of a single militia regiment that spawned, so Hays should have time to get to Rolla to refit.

With only 67 supplies and 43 ammo in stocks at Springfield right now, its capture won’t be a huge boon to the confederates. Jefferson City and Rolla however both have very large supply stocks on hand, so I decide to adjust my defenses to deal with these two new strong confederate threats.

I start by ordering Lyons to Jefferson City. He’s having little effect in stamping out the Indian raiders and there’s really nothing vital out there. Next Sumner leaves the defense of Leavenworth to Caldwell’s division and also gets moved to Jefferson City.

That’ll give me a two division stack with no command penalties there. Milroy leaves Saint Louis and goes to Rolla where he too will command a two division stack with no penalties. That leaves three under strength divisions defending Saint Louis, so I rail in Franklin from Cincinnati to give them a two star commander as well.

West of Jefferson City, Lexington and Leavenworth both have a single small division on defense.

In the Indian Territories at Fort Arbuckle, Hindman leaves my two cavalry regiments unmolested and moves northwest to Fort Cobb. A single regiment spawned on defense and he set siege.

I spend all available funds on replacement chits this turn.

Jim

Turn 27 Early May

General Keyes is promoted to two star rank via black text event. Generals Ord and Rosecrans appear this turn. Ord shall join Keyes and take over his division. Rosecrans goes to Saint Louis to command the army I will be forming there soon.

Meagher lands and captures Fort Morgan, but the fort is gone. There is no message anywhere in the battle report or text log telling me it was destroyed, it just isn’t on map anymore. I did capture its guns, so I combine them with Meagher’s stack and order them back aboard ship. I’ll land the guns at Fort Clark and use them there since I didn’t capture its guns.

Still nothing happening with Kentucky’s neutrality. I’ll leave my ships in its river zones until supplies force them to head back. At this point it looks like the Kentucky events are broken and the state will not be entering the war.

Grant is outside Island 10 and his supplies are down to 73%. I give him attack posture and also order a supply wagon to sail down from Cairo. I hope Island 10s guns don’t blow it out of the water.

In Missouri McCulloch finishes off the capture of Springfield, but Polk’s Corp disappeared into the FOW south without moving against Jefferson City.

I again spend all available cash on replacement chits. I’m really struggling with money in this game compared to the first Civil War game. I do not see myself ever being able to field an army as large as the Union historically did by mid to late war. And forget about the salt water navy, the two blockade ships I built earlier will probably be the extent of my efforts to increase the naval blockade. Unless the Union gets some sizable cash events later in the war they are going to be far weaker than they were historically.

Jim

Turn 28 Late May

For the last 6+ turns I’ve been getting an event error at the top of my events text list. All it says is “Unknown event type 27”. I’m starting to wonder if this is the Kentucky event trying to fire or something.

The Free Land event fires and I lose 20 conscripts but gain 5 NM. The confederates offer trade and land concessions and foreign entry goes up to 48. If I’m going to let foreign entry fire, I better start building a new militia army to sit on my northern border. As things stand now all I can spare are the three divisions I have around Kentucky and I have no idea how big the foreign army will be.

Grant does not attack Island 10 and the new supply wagon only brought his supply up to 85%. Unfortunately he’s inactive this turn so I can’t order an all out assault yet. I had moved Pope to Charleston last turn to try and stop all these Indian raids so I send his wagon to Grant and begin a round trip supply shuttle to Cairo for the wagons.

Porter’s river ironclad fleet finishes construction this turn and I move him down to the Reelfoot lake river zone to hopefully help supply Grants men. I’m not sure if the confederate guns inside Island 10 will disrupt that or not. Man I love the new ship art on the unit cards, it’s superb.

McCulloch shows up one region southwest of Rolla and I brace for an attack. Milroy was one region west retaking military control of Vienna MO, so only Hays division is in Rolla currently. Milroy will join him in 4 days, hopefully he beats McCulloch.

I order another large batch of replacement chits. I should be ok for a while after this I hope.

Jim

Did Grant lose any seniority from the 2 defeats earlier at Island No. 10?

Turn 29 Early June

In the East the lines have been stable, but the confederates now have a very large force at Winchester. I would guess their strength there exceeds 2000 CV. Dix’s Corp has dug into to level 3 forts and I have my engineer with him to try and get him to 5 ASAP. Were this a human opponent I would of course push south to try and keep him from consolidating so much force in one region, but I don’t want to take advantage of the AI so I’ll stay put in the east for 1862 and only react to AI moves.

I moved Farragut’s fleet to Fort Monroe last turn and Meagher goes passive to recover cohesion. I break off a small fleet and send it to distant unload at Fort Clark with the captured guns.

Even with the beta patch installed Kentucky stays neutral, so I guess it’s out of the war in my game for good. So I pull my blockade fleets out of Kentucky and place them around Cairo to help me stop all the Indian raids that have been plaguing southern Illinois.

Wallace’s 58th Division beats the Indians that captured Chester IL last turn, but his force is spent and can’t take the town back due to a spawned militia regiment. He heads back to Cairo and I send in Williams’ 59th division to finish the job.

Porter’s fleet has allowed Grants troops to resupply themselves, so I send Pope’s supply wagon back to him. I also set Porter’s fleet to bombard in order to assist Grant’s all out assault this turn. Against a human I’d simply starve out the fort and let him try and break the siege. But a human would never have put their main defensive army inside like that and I would have had to fought it to get to the fort. I want to make Grant fight for the fort to at least allow the AI to resist with the force it has there before it gets destroyed.

At Rolla McCulloch moved east across the river and is now due south of the town. A stack of Indian raiders and confederate cavalry entered Rolla but did not attack. Milroy is back and now in command so my stack should be able to hold the town if McCulloch attacks.

The first black troops arrive via event at Lawrence Kansas. An Indian unit also arrived there.

The Arsenals I built earlier are starting to come online. Without looking back in the AAR, I’d guess it was about 6 months ago that I built them, so they should pay for themselves by the end of 1863 I’m guessing. With only 7 of them being built they won’t have a huge impact on my income, but they will add 336 income a year once they are in the black, so they are almost equal to a new ledger event.

Jim

ORIGINAL: H Gilmer

Did Grant lose any seniority from the 2 defeats earlier at Island No. 10?

Nothing was noted in the text lines, so I assume whatever he lost was not enough to drop him down a point. But I'm sure he lost some incremental seniority.

Jim

With the release of the current beta patch, I’m finding the lure to start a new game is too strong to continue on with this one, so I’ll be ending the AAR. Mainly it’s due to the Kentucky issue, the thought of having a permanent dark area in the center of the map off limits for the entire game really kills immersion for me.

I also assume the AI doesn’t realize it’s off limits, so it is probably still going to defend Tennessee from a non-existent Union push through Kentucky. This of course will make it far too easy for me to take the Mississippi since all my troops are forced to bypass the darkened zone.

Jim

Thanks for the AAR! Time for me as well to start a campaign now.


Oh and Jim' check your inbox
[;)]

Thanks for your AAR [:)]

Looking forward to your new AAR.

I too am thankful for this AAR Jim. It has been of tremendous help. I will follow your next one closely.

I concur with all the rest. I was getting a lot of good information and so I hope you'll start another with the new/when the new patch is out. I know they have a beta patch out.

Great AAR Jim, thank you for your efforts.

Yep, thanks for the AAR...it has me close to pulling the trigger on this one.....

Thanks for this AAR, This looks like the next game I purchase.
Daryl