Strategic Command American Civil War

[joesbills]

Best Strategy when playing the Confederates against the union ?

[BiteNibbleChomp]

The game's strategy guide includes a large section on strategies for each side, the Confederate section starts on page 37 of the Blue and Gray guide

- BNC

[gremlok]

I played the Confederacy a few times, both PvP and vs AI and this is my take:

First you need to make some major strategic decisions that’ll decide how you play out the war.

1. Naval or no naval focus?
2. Do you want to secure European intervention?

Both of these will greatly guide your decisions in terms of research, diplomacy, building of units and when and where to push or defend.

Naval focus - will you decide to invest in your naval capabilities, researching ironclad and naval techs and also fort modernisation and later on amphibious tech? This will allow you to fight back on the rivers and make the Mississippi theatre much more vibrant and opens up possibilities of pushing back. The Cairo junction is the most critical point as your riverine fleets are separated into a Cumberland river fleet and your Mississippi fleet. If you build several monitors you can contest the blockades and keep convoys going longer. And you can opt to have a strong force ready to deny the Union the possibility to flood the levees outside New Orleans, which pretty much guarantees seizing New Orleans. However this choice means that you’ll have considerably less resources available for building and upgrading your terrestrial forces as well as diplomacy. A successful war at sea will frustrate the Union but an unsuccessful war on land will lose you the game.

2. Getting help from Europe is a combination of your choices (e.g. King Cotton) well as the Union (e.g. Garibaldi) but you can actively pursue a strategy of increasing your chances of securing help from the old continent. Invest your chits in diplomacy. Build fleets to deny or resist the blockade, move aggressive towards Washington DC to prevent the Emmancipation from taking place, defend Nashville and Memphis at all cost and launch an invasion north of the Potomac river. If you fail to get help, you’ll have spent precious MPP for nothing and potentially incurred losses you cannot replaced and gained no strategic advantage at all. You’ll need some success on the battlefield but it’s a viable strategy.

Tech-wise I recommend always investing 2 chits in each category to get faster results, rather than 1 in many. Infantry equipment and Corp is critical. Industry and R&D is important. Everything else is down to your plan and what you want achieve.

Balloons are really useful, but can wait until mid-1862.

Never invest or build submarines, they suck.

Think ahead of where you want to have choke points as engineers take forever to make fortifications. I actually usually use them to garrison ports on the eastern seaboard.

Finally, regardless of what overarching plan you choose to follow, always keep in mind you MUST make the Union pay a higher price when they advance. Most of the time play defensive but elastic. Mao’s civil war strategy applies very much - Keep men, lose land; land can be taken again. Keep land, loose men; land and men are both lost.

I usually try to defend at (almost) all cost Nashville, Memphis and NO. Losing 1 of the 3 is ok, 2 is a major blow and 3 you’re as good as dead. Vicksburg is also key as it acts as a junction between the confederate states on either side of the Mississippi. A unit will spawn here if NO falls, not sure if Memphis also triggers this unit.

The New Mexico theatre is a side show and really without strategic importance. I usually deploy Van Dorn, attack the Apache (will fall in 2 turns) but will send back a few units back to Texas and redeploy elsewhere.

Some final thoughts, playing the rebel side is a game of losing slowly. You’ll be pushed back and lose land, on the rivers and at sea you’ll most likely be mauled time and time again. But the desig of the game is to delay, frustrate, push forward and pull back when given the opportunity. But time is on your side and by being flexible and adaptive you can win despite being outnumbered, outgunned, outteched. And a victory on these terms is even sweeter.

Hope this helps

[Tanaka]

I played the Confederacy a few times, both PvP and vs AI and this is my take:

First you need to make some major strategic decisions that’ll decide how you play out the war.

1. Naval or no naval focus?
2. Do you want to secure European intervention?

Both of these will greatly guide your decisions in terms of research, diplomacy, building of units and when and where to push or defend.

Naval focus - will you decide to invest in your naval capabilities, researching ironclad and naval techs and also fort modernisation and later on amphibious tech? This will allow you to fight back on the rivers and make the Mississippi theatre much more vibrant and opens up possibilities of pushing back. The Cairo junction is the most critical point as your riverine fleets are separated into a Cumberland river fleet and your Mississippi fleet. If you build several monitors you can contest the blockades and keep convoys going longer. And you can opt to have a strong force ready to deny the Union the possibility to flood the levees outside New Orleans, which pretty much guarantees seizing New Orleans. However this choice means that you’ll have considerably less resources available for building and upgrading your terrestrial forces as well as diplomacy. A successful war at sea will frustrate the Union but an unsuccessful war on land will lose you the game.

2. Getting help from Europe is a combination of your choices (e.g. King Cotton) well as the Union (e.g. Garibaldi) but you can actively pursue a strategy of increasing your chances of securing help from the old continent. Invest your chits in diplomacy. Build fleets to deny or resist the blockade, move aggressive towards Washington DC to prevent the Emmancipation from taking place, defend Nashville and Memphis at all cost and launch an invasion north of the Potomac river. If you fail to get help, you’ll have spent precious MPP for nothing and potentially incurred losses you cannot replaced and gained no strategic advantage at all. You’ll need some success on the battlefield but it’s a viable strategy.

Tech-wise I recommend always investing 2 chits in each category to get faster results, rather than 1 in many. Infantry equipment and Corp is critical. Industry and R&D is important. Everything else is down to your plan and what you want achieve.

Balloons are really useful, but can wait until mid-1862.

Never invest or build submarines, they suck.

Think ahead of where you want to have choke points as engineers take forever to make fortifications. I actually usually use them to garrison ports on the eastern seaboard.

Finally, regardless of what overarching plan you choose to follow, always keep in mind you MUST make the Union pay a higher price when they advance. Most of the time play defensive but elastic. Mao’s civil war strategy applies very much - Keep men, lose land; land can be taken again. Keep land, loose men; land and men are both lost.

I usually try to defend at (almost) all cost Nashville, Memphis and NO. Losing 1 of the 3 is ok, 2 is a major blow and 3 you’re as good as dead. Vicksburg is also key as it acts as a junction between the confederate states on either side of the Mississippi. A unit will spawn here if NO falls, not sure if Memphis also triggers this unit.

The New Mexico theatre is a side show and really without strategic importance. I usually deploy Van Dorn, attack the Apache (will fall in 2 turns) but will send back a few units back to Texas and redeploy elsewhere.

Some final thoughts, playing the rebel side is a game of losing slowly. You’ll be pushed back and lose land, on the rivers and at sea you’ll most likely be mauled time and time again. But the desig of the game is to delay, frustrate, push forward and pull back when given the opportunity. But time is on your side and by being flexible and adaptive you can win despite being outnumbered, outgunned, outteched. And a victory on these terms is even sweeter.

Hope this helps

Very nice well thought out strategy guide. This game plays very differently than most of the SC series as the Confederates you are trying to win defensively and most people want to steamroll. I think that lends to a lot of people complaining the game is unbalanced and you cannot win as Confederates...

[gremlok]

Exactly, As CSA you can win - by not losing