Grand Campaign - Union Strategy Question

[Viking67]

What do you do with the Northeastern Virginia Army and the 1st through 5th Divisions?

1. As I understand it, the Army Unit is one primarily of support. Is filling it with combat elements effective?
2. As I understand it, only Corps can be attached to an Army unit.
3. The Divisions are not really Divisions, but rather stacks. Is putting the stacks within the Army unit effective?

What are the most effective options?

[Ol Choctaw]

Add your strongest unit into the Army and maybe a few other elements to the max of the CP.

You have a couple of 2*s in the Generals Pool. Those and a few 1*s can bring stacks up to full CP.

If you want to bring them up to closer to full divisions you can do that with the volunteer brigades you get on the east coast until you can make real divisions in October. The thing is you are better off with stacks that have full CP than those that have a 35% penalty.

If you want to ready them as full divisions you will have to build units to do that. You will need sharpshooters and some brigades with cavalry elements. I would not put real cavalry regiments into divisions. There are just not enough of them at the end of the day. You might want some more artillery too. HQ units don’t hurt either.

[Toro12]

I usually "disband" two or three of them, consolidating them into two stronger divisions while trying to lower the efficiency penalty (that nasty 35% reduction of combat strength). As Ol C says, bring in those two stars to help out, build a couple signal corps, etc., anything to improve CP. Form real divisions as soon as you can (but that's not for a few months). I do place some of them within the Army stack. One stack will probably be 35% penalty -- try to lower that for the others.

Forget corps at the beginning of the game. You can't form them until March '62 (I believe it's March?). Until then, all your forces will be independent and sometimes non-supportive of one another (luck of the draw).