Matrix Games Forums

Hi. I reinstalled this great game last week and decided to give it another whirl and am having just a great time. I've always thought this was one of the most under-rated games Matrix has.

I'm playing as the South starting in 1861. It is now April 1862. Fairly standard start but with a twist. I took Harper's Ferry and Jackson got wounded. Next month Longstreet got sick. Never had that happen. Just got Longstreet back. Jackson is out for a year. The Union has total control of the Mississippi, though I have an ironclad coming on line this turn and another next turn that I hope will reverse that. Union main thrust in the East is coming from Ft. Monroe. They have attempted two offensives and been beaten back both times, once by Joe Johnston, then by Lee. In the West, there are Union forces sitting at Paducah and Louisville, but they are not showing any inclination to move yet. I have forces confronting those two forces. In Missouri I control Springfield and will hold it as long as I can.

But the thing I had never seen before is this -- mass amphibious landings all along my coastline. Never seen that many this soon. It is now April 62 and I am facing these amphibious incursions:
New Bern, looks like 18 strength points. That is a large force All sp are what is showing on the map right now, could be more.
Savannah, 3 sp with a mobile force in Valdosta with 5 sp.
Jacksonville 2 sp with 1 sp working into south Florida.
Panama City 3 sp.
Austin 6 sp. They also own Corpus Christi.

I sent Joe Johnston to GA and am trying to form a force to start picking off some of these incursions and defeating them in detail, starting I think with Savannah. I am trying to form a force in TX to stave off the largest and earliest Union incursion I have ever seen there.

Anyway, I started a new game and got a big surprise. Maybe the AI does this a lot, but I have never seen the AI get so active amphibiously so soon.

So now I have Sherman with 27 strength points advancing into the interior of North Carolina, Goldsboro. It is July 1862. I'm going to have to bring Lee and a couple of my elite corps commanders from Virginia to meet this threat, along with Stuart, add them to the troops I already have in the area. Send Joe Johnston to VA to keep the Union in check. I can see they have thinned out their ranks a little and will probably not go on the offensive there unless I pull too many men away from Virginia.

Just in case anyone wondered what happened, I won as the CSA against the AI. Lincoln was not re-elected, and after that it was a matter of time. Okay, I know that is not a tremendous accomplishment. Just to nail things down, the Union never fully exploited their amphibious landings. They made a push in NC, and then Sherman showed up in GA, where he made a push nearly to Atlanta. I stopped that and he went back to NC. He bounced back and forth. But he never pushed into the key interior areas of NC or GA. The Union staged amphibious landings all along the TX and LA coasts, and I finally ran out of men to counter them. In MO, the Union never attacked my position there. It held till the end. Along the Mississippi, Grant took Memphis and Vicksburg and was approaching Baton Rouge and New Orleans when the war ended. I had no troops left to oppose him. I regained control of the river for a while with a small fleet of gunboats build in AR. But I finally ran afoul of a large Union fleet north of New Orleans and got decimated. Lyons took Nashville and my army opposing him finally disintegrated. The only substantial forces I had left outside VA were a few thousand men near Atlanta and a couple of cavalry forces hounding Lyons as he pushed into Alabama. In VA, Lee, Jackson, and Longstreet held off a couple more Union offensives and even managed a counterthrust into Maryland, just for the fun of it, though I withdrew back to VA. I was playing on normal, btw, since I had not played in some time. I know upping the difficulty would probably have led to a different outcome. The major amphibious landings really threw me off, and if they had been accompanied by a major offensive into the interior from central TN, I would have been in real trouble. But the Union just lacked the energy and moved very slowly and methodically. It would be interesting to play as the Union and see what I could do with a major amphibious thrust into NC or GA.