How do you prevent a game of 'Whack-a-mole'?

[Gunner98]

I'm learning the game by playing as the Nationalists against the AI. As expected, I'm doing pretty well on the ground, but I've got annoying little (and I mean tiny) Republican units popping up in my rear areas, cutting rail lines and generally being a PITA.

I'm not saying that this is unrealistic; it is probably exactly how this type of warfare unfolded in the early stages. But how do you clear the rear area once your main force has moved on?

Things I've noted:

• Having small Cavalry companies seems to work OK, but combat ends up with a ratio of 1000/1 in many cases, and the bad guys just retreat

• I've tried units on Ambush but that has mixed results. Any tips on this mode?

• I need to keep recon AC searching the rear areas or there is a good chance you lose track of these guys

• How can you be certain of your intelligence - a unit is reporting something like 40 pers and you kill 300 and the next turn the same unit has 150 pers

• Is move mode better than combat mode to get ahead of these guys or does it matter?

• Approaching from multiple hexsides helps a little - would it be best to leave a target alone until you can attack from all six hexsides at once? Difficult and time-consuming.

• How are these guys getting supplies? Or are they?

Looking for ideas on this

[Q-Ball]

Whenever you knock over a static garrison unit, the survivors will form a new, mobile unit of a few squads, whatever survived. You can expect to spawn "guerillas" whenever you knock over a garrison, which is, I agree, annoying.

Most of the "Garrison Guerllias" disband in Sept and October, so there's that

Before then, not much you can do but run them down with Cav and small units

They have to be on a friendly village to draw supplies