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Walkthrough for No Greater Glory.

By Don Waugamann (edited by RIP)

I've always had a soft spot for No Greater Glory, even though the game gets rather tedious after a while with the amount of supply and strategic movement micromanagement (probably 3/4 of the time in a long game.)

However, I've never had *that* much trouble winning as the Union!

Here's my recipe for success as the Union player:

In general:

Finances: In general, in the finance phase, try to set your taxes to one level higher than they already are, until you get them to the "Crisis" level. Once they are at the "Heavy" level, you can usually pull your bond interest down to 7%.

Mobilization: Always build as many naval transports as possible in this phase. Ditto with riverboats, until you have taken the entire western river system. If Confederate cruisers give you a major morale problem, build the rest of your ocean-going craft in frigates for one turn - if you have about 60 or so of them, that usually keeps cruisers at bay. Otherwise, having about 40 or so will work in most circumstances. Use all the rest to build blockaders.

Build up to twice as many supplies as you need for troops in a typical turn, if you have the money.

Don't forget to build up infrastructure - as high as it will go, and remember that increasing it to its highest level costs a *lot* of $$$. Recruitment policy will be dealt with turn-by-turn.

Diplomacy: as long as the Union keeps France/England from recognizing the Confederacy, you will be able to will. (I've won against a
recognized CSA but it's much harder - inflation doesn't cause the CSA morale to go down as fast). As long as you put moderately competent men in these positions, they should be able to keep England & France out of it. The USA/CSA position is good for lending some geographic/ factional balance to your cabinet/diplomatic positions - I usually throw Washburn in there for the duration of the war and forget about it.

First turn:

Cabinet phase: Start with a cabinet of Blair (atty gen), Cameron (war), Chase (treasury), Stanton (state) and Welles (navy). 2 moderates, 3 radicals, and a good geographic distribution.

Turn off music. (OK, not necessary, but it gets on my nerves.)

Civil Affairs phase: Tidewater should be put under martial law (of course, this only affects Charleston SC) and each of the border regions should be set to suspend habeas corpus. Northwest (NW), Mid Atlantic (MA) and New England (NE) should be set to Respect Civil Rights.

Typically, the computer will represent the Confederate border state areas in its cabinet, and so NC, VA, TN and AR will all secede, and Springfield will go Confederate. (If NC/VA or TN/AR didn't secede - which happens maybe 5% of the time - things are a little different, which I'm won't address in this post.)

Don't move your capital or change your slavery settings yet. Also, don't try to recruit in Kentucky, or you will lose it (as near as I can tell, it's automatic).

Finance: see above.

Mobilization: you should be able to get 100 supplies, 4% infrastructure change, and a full naval build with a little left over. I usually build 4 frigates, as many transports as possible, and the rest blockaders. No riverboats yet, of course.

You should have gotten the intelligence that the CSA couldn't recruit in Grafton.

Strategic movement: with your two naval movement points, pull the garrison out of Charleston SC (CSC) and move them to Norfolk (NOR). (NOR starts with four supplies, so they should be supplied.)

Move two troops (unsupplied) from Fort Wayne (FTW) to Cairo. Move the troops in St. Louis (STL) to Chicago (CHI). Move what is now in Cairo to STL, then move six troops from CHI down to Cairo. Distribute the twelve supplies in Cairo, STL, and CHI among the troops in STL and Cairo.

Move two troops by river from Cincinnati (CIN) to Evansville (EVN). Move two troops from FTW to EVN, and two more from FTW to CIN. EVN should now have six troops at 6/0 (morale/experience). Move the eight 8/2 troops from CHI through FTW to EVN. The 14 troops in EVN should now be at 7/1.

Move four troops from Cleveland (CLV) down to CIN, the latter should now be at 8/0. Move four troops from Pittsburgh (PIT) to CLV, then the six troops now in CLV down to CIN - CIN should now have 14 troops at 8/0.

Move two troops from Philadelphia (PHI) to PIT, then four troops from Albany to PHI and all the troops in PHI to PIT. PIT should now have 12 troops at 8/0. The Northwest should have a deficit of about
8 supplies - move those from PIT to CLV, then down to CIN and distribute them between CIN and EVN via river movement. Move the supplies in Trenton (TRN) and Newark through PHI to PIT.

Move two troops (unsupplied) from Connecticut (CON) to Massachussetts (MAS). Move two troops from MAS to Albany, then move all of Albany down to PHI. Move four troops from New York City (NYC) to CON, then move all of MAS to NYC, and move the supplies in CON to NYC. Move all of MAS to NYC, then move two troops from CON to MAS. Move all of NYC to PHI, and move all of Albany to PHI, then move two troops (unsupplied to PIT).

You should have: 2 5/0 in each of CON and MAS, 22 8/0 in PHI, 14 8/0 in PIT and CIN, 14 7/1 in EVN, 6 8/2 in Cairo, 6 7/0 in STL, 4 2/3 in NOR and 4 5/3 in Washington DC (WAS).

Whew.

Note that you should have only 20 supplies in PHI, and none in CON or MAS. It won't hurt you.

Campaign Phase: the first year, it's pretty hard for the Union to attack. What you need to use this year for is to identify your good generals and get them into your top 5 prestige (so they can command your biggest armies). The identification phase is easy, if you are playing with historical leaders - you want to get Grant and Sherman into that top 5 ASAP!

If you are playing with historical leaders, have Rosecrans defend in NOR. If he wins, he will leapfrog Buell towards the top 5, and if he loses (about 3/4 of the time) then he will drop below Grant and Sherman, moving each of them up one. With random leaders, put Buell in NOR - he will either win (and be proved at least a passing good leader) and move into the top 5, or lose and you haven't lost much anyway.

Attack out of WAS into Northern Virginia (NVA) with Buell (historical) or Rosecrans (random). This attack won't work - in fact, I've never seen it carried out - but will prevent the Confederates in NVA from gang- tackling your troops in NOR, which will give them a chance against the insurrectionists that will rise against them there.

Other attacks: Butler 6 (PHI -> The Valley (VAL)), McDowell 6 (PIT -> VAL), Banks 6 (PIT -> Grafton (GRA)), McClellan 6 (CIN -> Charleston WV (CWV)), Halleck (everything else in PHI -> WAS).
Halleck should keep WAS safe, McDowell and Butler should do the same for VAL, and the attacks on GRA and CWV will at least freeze CSA troops in CWV.

In the west: Grant 6 (EVN -> Louisville (LOU)), Hooker 6 (CIN -> LOU). This will cause Kentucky to secede, however, you will take possession of LOU. We'll cope with the morale lost in the Northwest later.

Another key location is STL. Send Sherman to defend there. He should be able to hold it the first turn with no trouble. Defend Cairo and EVN with Meade and Thomas - they won't be subject to attack this turn anyway.

In New England, have Pope and Burnside each move the troops from MAS and CON into NYC. NYC has low morale anyway, and you don't want them spoiling the high-morale troops that will be recruited in MAS/CON next turn.

After all the combats have been played out, you should be in possession of STL, LOU, WAS, and VAL. If you are lucky, your troops held in NOR, and your loyalty hasn't gone down at all. If the CSA managed to attack STL, Sherman almost certainly held it and has had his prestige nose up, ditto whoever was in NOR if it held.

Diplomacy: Here's where I do a couple controversial things the first turn. I assign Andrew Johnson to England, Wade to France, and Washburn to USA/CSA relations. This means that New England's morale will drop (only 1 representative among 8 cabinet/diplomatic positions) but you will recover morale in the Northwest (3 reps) that you lost due to the invasion of Kentucky. Your diplomats won't prevent England and France from giving covert aid to the CSA but that's generally OK.

Turn 2 (Mid 1861)

Don't change your cabinet this turn. (We will make a change next turn after we've had a chance to change our diplomatic assignments to give us a more regionally-balanced set of assignments.)

In the civil affairs phase, go to the main menu and take a look at the area info for Grafton (GRA). You should see significant pro-Union sentiment, and low pro-CSA morale. Since the Confederacy should have no garrison therein, it should be possible to "flip" the area to Union control via the civil affairs phase.

Let's give it a shot, and set the subversion level in the East Border region to "Organize." You should keep the suspension of habeas corpus across the border, and you will probably want to convert the Northwest region to "Censorship" since you probably have 6 Union / 4 Confederate morale in that region.

In the results phase, you should see GRA go over to Union control. The rest of the region will grow more hostile to you (typically 3->2) but the positional advantage associated with taking GRA is more than worth it - see my comments about the strategic movement phase later.

If you won the battle of Norfolk last turn, you may observe that Charleston SC (CSC) is still Union-controlled. If that is the case, you may want to skip down to the end of this post where I detail a possible course of action under "If You Won in Norfolk Last Turn."

During the capital relocation phase, you will probably see the CSA move its capital to Richmond (RIC), though occasionally it will move to Atlanta (ATL).

Don't change the government's slavery policy yet.

Continue trying to bring up the tax level in the finance phase. You should get "Moderate Taxes" this turn.

You may get a bit strapped for cash this turn in the mobilization phase. For now, keep your mobilization policy on "Call Volunteers" and buy as many supplies as you can. Then, buy as many riverboats and transports as possible. If there were more than 4 CSA cruisers active after the naval affairs section, you'll probably want to build the rest of your naval production in frigates; otherwise, 6-8 frigates and the remainder (up to your financial limit) of blockaders is probably suitable.

I'll take a brief opportunity before the strategic movement phase to discuss training garrisons. During a typical game of No Greater Glory, I'll usually keep two troops (the minimum garrison) in all areas of my territory, even those that have no loyalty problems. The reason for this is that the presence of troops in those areas will cause the new troops recruited there to have a minimum experience level of 1, no matter what the experience of the garrison was or how many troops are recruited. This is a quick and easy way to get better troops, and to relieve your supply problems, as moving troops to the front takes a lot of rail and sea resources, which tend to disappear quickly during strategic movement. In addition, if you suffer through a bad combat turn, troops in your rear areas can keep those areas from going over to CSA control.

Looking at the position at the start of the strategic movement phase, we can see that a front line is beginning to form separating the USA from the CSA. After taking GRA, CWV is isolated from the rest of the South, and we have a rail line that can allow us to move troops quickly between eastern and western theaters. Note that GRA is particularly important because it means that PIT is only one rail move away from the Ohio-Tennessee-Mississippi-Missouri-Arkansas river system, which is your best way to get troops into the deep south since you have free strategic movement along rivers. GRA is *crucial* because of this.

Our goals this turn will be to hold on to all areas that we have and to destroy the small CSA force in CWV. Also, we will make a spoiling attack on NVA in the east - largely to keep the CSA from attacking into VAL this turn. We will also keep a training garrison in every area not near the front lines, so that our average exprerience will stay up (particularly after next turn, when recruitment will be high.)

Another thing to note - generally, you won't have too much trouble with the amount of rail required this turn, as you haven't recruited enough troops or gotten enough supplies to need all the rail.

My descriptions for movement here will get a bit more general, as a lot could have happened to change your morale levels. The general principle should be OK, though.

We want about 24 good troops in LOU. LOU will usually hold 8 7/4 troops, and typically you will have 16 7/3 troops in CIN. If this is the case, I'll just move the CIN troops via river into LOU. This should be a substantial enough force to hold LOU, particularly once you've gotten help from the local militia (usually about +8 troops when an attack happens).

Farther west, we want to be assured of holding on to STL. Generally, this won't be a problem for a while yet - STL probably has as many troops as Springfield (SPR) and Little Rock (LRK) put together, and with the militia help it should be safe. You may use STL to combine with Cairo, but as long as you have about 10 troops in STL (and two riverboats) then STL should be safe, barring a totally incompetent leader. Remeber, the CSA has as much trouble getting their attacks to be made in the early turn as you do.

Just to the east, we will want to do a demonstration - an attack that hopefully will not be made - against Paducah (PAD). Move troops from CHI and FTW to Cairo, trying to keep the resulting morale at 7 or higher. Don't worry overmuch about their experience - remember, we don't want them to attack!

To reduce CWV, rail-transport the troops in VAL (they should be 8/3's - good troops) over to GRA, then combine some of these with some of the troops in EVN. I will typically keep 8 8/3 in GRA, and combine 4 8/3 with 4 6/4 from EVN in CIN, and add two riverboats from LOU to CIN. We will try to use these two armies to squash CWV later this turn.

You'll have a bit of deficiency of supplies in the west, most likely. You can drag some down from PIT to make up for it. You should make sure to fully supply all areas in the west. Also, use CLE to put training garrisons in FTW and CHI. If there are two troops left, leave them in CLE - they will march down to be the garrison of CIN during the campaign phase.

Most of the rest of the spare troops will end up in WAS. Typically, eastern cities will have this breakdown of forces:
WAS 18 6/3 (18 troops at 6 morale / 3 experience)
PHI 6 8/0
PIT 12 7/2
NYC 12 5/2
Albany 6 6/0
CON 2 8/0
MAS 10 8/0
What I do in this situation is move 6 from WAS to VAL, all 6 from PHI to Newark, then 6 from Albany through PHI to WAS. This should give you 18 troops at 6/2 in WAS. Then, move all of PIT to PHI, and all of NYC to PHI, which should give you 24 6/2 in PHI, which you can then move down to WAS, giving it a total of 42 6/2. Not huge, but not bad for this stage of the game, and it should compare well with the CSA force in NVA.

The remaining 8/0 troops in the east will be used as training garrisons in all of the New England and Mid-Atlantic states. Any extra (beyond the basic 2 per area) should go into PIT, where they will be used to move into CIN and GRA later as their garrisons. If you end up with more than 8 of your 8/0 troops in PIT (though it's never happened to me), build up to 4 troops in PHI - their use will become clear later.

Use sea transport to move supplies down from the New England states and New York into WAS. If you don't have enough supplies to fully supply WAS, then reduce the supply level in Albany, Newark and Trenton to zero - you will pay a premium for the supplies, but it shouldn't cause any morale problems.

In the campaign phase, things really start to get tight for the first time in this game if you're playing the random leader option. I'll give specifics on what to do with historical leaders first, then a slightly more general treatment of what to do with random leaders later.

Start by satisfying the calls of "On To Richmond!" by sending Butler to attack NVA from WAS with all but 8 of WAS's troops. This attack *wiil* fail if you are playing with historical leaders - however, it will move Butler's prestige down, thereby moving better generals up towards his place. This is a good thing, despite the troop losses it will incur.

Our next vital spot to keep is LOU - I'll discuss why in my treatment of the Early 1862 turn. Sending Halleck to hold LOU is your best bet - his ability should keep it safe for the Union. However, you'll still have to make a demonstration against PAD to keep LOU safe - otherwise, PAD, Memphis (MEM) and Chattanooga (CHA) will all gang up against LOU and have a good shot at taking it. The best general you have - bar none - for making demonstrations is McClellan. Put him in charge of all but 4 of the troops in Cairo and send them against PAD. The odds of him actually making the attack are miniscule, but he should tie up enough troops to keep LOU safe.

We also want to keep ahold of STL in the far west. Send McDowell out to defend there. Barring some utter collapse, he should be able to hold onto the area - I've never seen him fail there on this turn.

Four of the top five generals have been assigned to the four largest commands. You have three commands of 8 troops each left, so you will have to put your last top-5 general (Banks) in charge of one of them. This is unfortunate, as Banks is incompetent (Ability = 1). Putting Banks in the WAS garrison gets him out of involvement in the CWV attack, but makes WAS vulnerable if the CSA manages to forestall Butler's attack and instead attack WAS itself. If you would prefer to guard against that possibility, put Rosecrans in the WAS garrison. Alternately, if you have 4 troops in PHI, you can have Banks command in WAS and move 2 troops from PHI down to WAS with Rosecrans in command. If Butler's attack is forestalled, give Rosecrans command of the defense over Banks' objections - you want a high-ability general if you have to defend WAS and neither Banks nor Butler will do the job, despite the home-front troubles they will cause you.

After you've figured out uour WAS dispositions, put Grant and either Banks (if he's not being used in WAS) or Sherman (if Banks is in WAS) to make the attacks from GRA and CIN to CWV. I generally give Grant the attack from CIN with the two riverboats in support. Now, you should assign some of the other prestige 6-14 generals to moving troops from CLE and PIT down to CIN and GRE - those troops will function as
garrisons for CIN and GRE, assuming that all the troops assigned to the attacks on CWV will move. You can put good generals into EVN and Cairo to hold them against a possible CSA attack or an insurrection - usually Meade, Thomas or Rosecrans (if the latter is not in the WAS defenses) are good choices. Other generals in the 6-14 prestige range can be given any garrison - I'll typically assign leftover generals to the garrisons in CON, MAS, Newark, Trenton or NYC. (The reason for this is that generals help to train garrisons - they can actually make a difference in the experience level of the troops.)

All of the above works pretty well with historical leaders. With random leaders, things change - at least early on, there's no really good way to way to know how good the general that you're putting in an area is. This is why random leaders makes the game harder. I will often make the same assignments with random leaders that I would with regular leaders, and see how the turn goes. With luck, I would have done almost as well as with historical leaders, and gotten somewhat of an idea of how good my generals are. I'll address the question of how to work with the random generals option later in this series of posts. If you put a turkey of a general in command of WAS - my sympathies, I've done it many a time myself, and it does usually lead to a loss.

After your dispositions are made, see how the turn went. Butler will get beaten badly in NVA if his attack is not forestalled. However, don't give him "Raid" orders - make it a full-scale "Conquer." The latter option will make his prestige go down even faster - which was the purpose of this attack in the first place!

With luck, Grant will make the attack into CWV. If Sherman is making the other half of the attack, his prestige is probably higher than Grant's, and you should give Sherman command of the combined attack. If Banks made the other half of the attack, it would probably be best to bite the morale-loss bullet and give command to Grant - for starters, Banks might screw the attack up (he is *that* bad) and secondly you need to give Grant the prestige boost that a win here (basically certain, what with Grant having better than 3-1 odds) will bring.

Have all the other front-line generals (Halleck, McDowell, Meade/Thomas) hold with their troops. Cross your fingers that McClellan doesn't attack PAD, though that's a pretty good bet.

Best case, at the end of this turn - Grant is one of your top 5 prestige generals, Butler's prestige is about 9, you've taken CWV, held onto LOU and STL, and McClellan didn't attack PAD. On the other hand, if you lost WAS, you will probably not be able to win the game. I have won after losing LOU on this turn in a random-leader game, though, so don't give up the fight if things start out a little bad. At this stage of the game, only losing WAS means that the Union has pretty much lost.

There's another case I should mention: If the CSA attacked LOU, and your attacks on CWV didn't happen, it's possible that the troops that attacked LOU will retreat to CWV! If this happens, it is a *good* thing - those troops have gone into a trap that they will find it nearly impossible to escape.

See the diplomacy section at the end of this post for some more comments.

If You Won in Norfolk Last Turn

If you won the battle in NOR the previous turn, you can pursue a rather different strategy against the Confederacy. You should still have control over CSC, and you'll have four pretty good troops in NOR. Use sea movement to move those troops and all of NOR's supplies down to CSC, and follow up with some troops from WAS and MAS. I've typically been able to build up to 18-20 troops with pretty good morale in CSC when this has happened to me. Since ATL does not connect by rail to Columbia (COL), your position in CSC, puts you astride the only Confederate rail line that can move troops from the Deep South to the east coast, except for the line from CHA to RIC. You are also occupying one of the South's major cities (you need to hold them all to force an eventual surrender) and are adjacent to another one (ATL). It is *dangerous* to keep troops in a single isolated coastal area - if you are defending there and lose a battle, your entire army disappears. Thus, if you pursue this strategy, you must keep CSC supplied and strongly reinforced. This will strain your sealift capacity to the limit until the end of 1862 - you won't be able to make any other amphibious landings - but a position in CSC is too good to give up.

If you pursue that strategy, your general assignments will have to change a bit as well. In a historical generals game, when I get the CSC position I generally send Halleck down to defend. This means shuffling generals so that McDowell holds in LOU, and I usually end up with Meade in STL. McDowell isn't a sure thing to hold LOU, which can make this strategy somewhat risky, but it's a good thing if Meade's prestige goes up a bit if the CSA attacks STL from SPR and/or LRK. The other thing that makes this strategy a bit risky is that you end up with either only enough troops for one attack on CWV or a weaker WAS. I try to keep WAS beefed up when this happens, and have Grant make a slighly riskier attack on CWV.

Diplomacy phase:

The first order of business in the diplomacy phase here is to do a diplomat shuffle. Wade was assigned as the ambassador to France last turn, largely so that we could get a temporary morale boost from having 3 Northwesterners in positions. However, that time is past, and we now want to get competent people - such as Adams - into the important positions. Send Adams to be the ambassador to England, and Johnson to France.

You may have to do some fancy diplomatic footwork this time out if you didn't do so well militarily. If the loss in NVA was not countered by a win somewhere else - particularly in LOU or CWV - then the CSA has a good shot at getting both English and French recognition this turn. Recognition is something you very much want to avoid. If you didn't win in LOU or CWV this turn, you should probably bump the diplomacy policy towards both France and England up to "bribe" to keep their involvement at the "covert" level.

OK, that's it for the Mid 1862 turn. Any feedback on this would be welcomed. Has anyone been trying some of this? Has the advice worked well for you?

Limited Intelligence

Playing a game with limited intelligence basically means that your view of the number of units in an opposing area is exaggerated or minimized by a factor of up to 2. In other words, the number of opposing units you see in an area could be anywhere from double to half what the actual units are. One way to guess what the multiplier is for a given turn is to keep an eye on the results of battles, which tells you the actual number of troops fighting in an area. If you keep track of where they retreat to, you will have a good idea of the number of troops in that area, and thus will be able to figure out the multiplier when you look at that area during the next turn's strategic movement phase (but don't forget that the CSA may have recruited troops in that area as well!)

Combining Troops in Strategic Movement

A key issue in the strategic movement phase is deciding which troops to combine together to build the armies to fulfill your combat needs for the coming campaign phase. Relying on your front-line armies to continue the attack or defense will result in their being attrited away by disease and combat over time. You will have to bring new recruits and rear garrisons to the front to bolster the troops that are already there, but preferably helping or at least not hurting the morale and experience levels that those front-line troops have already built up.

The key issue in combining together troops is to match troops up so that there is little "wastage" of either group's unit experience or morale. For example, matching 10 units at 4/4 with 20 troops at 7/1 yields 30 troops at 6/2. Where the original 30 troops had
4 * 10 + 7 * 20 = 180 unit-points of morale, so do the resulting 30 troops (30 * 6 = 180). Similarly, the original troops had
10 * 4 + 20 * 1 = 60 unit-points of experience, which are matched by the 30 * 2 = 60 unit-points of experience of the resulting troops. This is an example of a situation where none of the morale or experience of either of the constituent bodies of troops is wasted.

There are more possibilities for no- or low-wastage combinations than one might think. It's often best to find a "target" to shoot for - for example, "put together 50 troops at 6/5 in LOU" and then try to create combinations with this in mind. If you have a substantial number of troops at 6/6, you could combine each 4 of them with 1 troop of 6/1 to create that 6/5, or 3 for 1 with 6/2, 2 for 1 with 6/3, or equally with 6/4 to create those 6/5 troops. This shows the benefit of keeping small training garrisons in the rear so that recruits begin with an experience level of 1 - they can be fed into the front lines in greater quantity without reducing the quality of those more experienced troops.

In general, to find what the resulting morale and experience level of troops will be after combination, multiply the number of troops by their quality level for each group of troops being combined, add both of those numbers together, then divide by the total number of troops involved. In figures,
Mc = (Ma * #a + Mm * #m) / (#a + #m)
where
Ma => morale of troops already in an area
#a => number of troops already in an area
Mm => morale of troops moving into that area
#m => number of troops moving into that area
Mc => resulting morale of the combined troops (the morale of the area once the combination is done).
A similar calculation holds for experience. Note that the division is integral - that is, the remainder is thrown away - and if the remainder of the division is nonzero then there will be some degree of "wastage."

Some troops - often low-quality troops - cannot be combined without some degree of wastage. These are often best used for garrisons in formerly enemy areas, such as CWV or (later) PAD and MEM. During a turn, it is often best to combine troops with little wastage and then later throw together those troops with larger wastage.

Also note that it is sometimes necessary to combine low-quality troops with substantial wastage to free up an empty area on a river, which will allow you to combine troops with lower wastage freely since you have unlimited river movement. Don't begrudge this, but try to find some more compatible matches before resorting to this type of move.

One side effect of trying to put together good combinations of troops is that your strategic movement phase will take a long time. I'd guess that in long games, I'll take anywhere from 2/3rds to 3/4 of the total time playing the game in the strategic movement phase. It's rather a drag, but it is the way to victory. The program provides an "AI move" capability in the strategic movement phase that generally supplies your troops well, but combines them rather poorly, yielding lower-quality troops.

Keeping your troops at good quality levels is the single best way that you as the Union can do well in combat. I played a game once where I used the AI to move every single turn, and the combat losses and amount of time to finish the game made it utterly excruciating. It may take a long time to put together the right combinations, but I think in the end it actually makes the game shorter than throwing together troops willy- nilly without regard to their experience.

If there is some demand for it, I'll discuss some "shortcuts" or "rules of thumb" that I use from time to time in deciding how to make compatible matches.

Generals

The Union has 14 generals that can command troops. The "historical" setting ratings and a short discussion of the usefulness of each general is in the section "Historical Generals and Missions" below.

Generals can be used for two basic missions - attacking and defending. A general is needed to lead an attack. No general is needed to defend an area, but any general (even a poor one) can help in defending an area.

Generals have two ratings - ability and initiatve - that are fixed for the course of the game. The historical settings of these ratings are discussed below. Ability is the primary determinant of how good a general is in combat. A high initiative makes it more likely that a general will execute an order to attack into Confederate territory.

Both high- and low-initiative generals can be useful in different contexts. A low-initiative general such as McClellan can be sent to make a "demonstration attack" with inexperienced troops. His low initiative makes it unlikely that he will make this attack, however the AI will still move troops and defend to thwart the possible attack. This can keep the targetted area from attacking other areas which may be vulnerable.

High-initiative generals, even those with low ability, can be used as "attacking subordinates", particularly when they have low prestige and come early in alphabetical order. Assign the high-initiative general to attack an area along with another (higher-prestige) general who moves in from a different area. The moves are resolved in alphabetical order by the general's last name. Assuming that both generals move in to the target area, their commands are combined and the higher-prestige (and, presumably, higher-ability) general gets the command. If the attacking subordinate was first in alphabetical order, you can give "raid" orders which you can then convert to "conquer" orders if the better general moves in later.

In a "random leaders" game, each general used in the game (USA and CSA) will have the same ratings as one of the Union generals. This can give the USA a slight advantage in a game with random leaders, as US generals tend to not be as good as Confederate generals, which evens out leadership ability somewhat. If you are interested in seeing what the ratings of leaders in the random leader game, save the game as "save 1", quit the game, and type 'type gen.sv1 | more' in the directory where the game is installed. This will show you the general database, which includes your leader ratings. (I recommend you do this only as a last resort, if you have lost a game and would like to see why. I played a game recently where I only had two Union generals with ability greater than four, which makes it very difficult to win!) Also, it usually works out for some reason that Burnside is a pretty good general in most of the random leader games that I play. If you see the same thing, you might want to give him a shot at a command early on and advance him quickly if he does well.

The Prestige System and Assigning Generals

The Union player has 14 generals in the game, each with a unique prestige rating from 1 to 14. The generals rated 1-5 in prestige (hereafter called "top-5" generals) must be given the 5 largest commands. Note that this provides some flexibility - the top prestige general can be assigned to the fifth-largest command, for example. Also, a non-top-5 general can have a command as large as the smallest command led by a top-5 general with no penalty. (See the Union first turn command phase recipe where Halleck commands 12 units and each of the other top-5 generals command 6 units, as do five of the non-top-5 generals, all with no prestige- related loss of political support.)

A command consists of a number of units or troops either moving from one area to another or defending in an area. This means that it is possible to combine two or more commands in an area under a lower-prestige general and yet have the combined command be larger than the smallest command of a top-5 general. This is a way to build large armies (particularly for defending) which can be commanded by better
low-prestige generals.

Prestige also comes into play with non-top-5 generals. A general of higher prestige must be given a command if another general of lower prestige also has a command. For example, if a general of 9 prestige has a command, all generals of 1-8 prestige must also have commands, while if the 14 prestige general has a command all generals must have some kind of command. This is not a problem if the Union has training garrisons - since a command of any size will satisfy a non-top-5 general, you can assign even bad generals to out-of-the-way posts far in the rear.

All of this can give you a great deal of flexibility in getting around the prestige system and allow you to appoint the generals that you need in the places you need them. It does take a great deal of planning in the strategic movement phase, particularly when you are trying to guarantee that a poor top-5 general can be consigned to a position in the rear. See the recipe for the late-1862 turn campaign phase for an example of how it is possible to get good generals where they are needed and keep bad generals from wrecking your plans.

The prestige of generals mostly goes up and down by winning and losing battles. It is important to realize that when a general loses and his prestige declines by some amount, each of the generals below that general will gain one rating in prestige. Similarly, generals ahead of a winning general will find their prestige declining. Since these gains or losses happen in the same order that the combats are resolved, it is possible for two generals to "leapfrog" one another in prestige during the course of turn. For example, Grant at prestige 8 and Sherman at prestige 7 both attack in the same turn. Grant wins first and he moves up to prestige 5. Then, Sherman wins and moves up to prestige 4, at the same time bumping Grant's prestige down to 6. If Sherman had attacked first and Grant second, they would be 4/5 in prestige rather than 4/6. Since attacks are resolved by region, in the order GC-TW- EB-CB-WB-NW-MA_NE, you can ensure that *some* generals will attack in roughly the order that would bring the most benefits, though coordinating attacks within a region is impossible without knowing the program's algorithm for ordering attacks.

Historical Generals and Missions

I list each general in the game with their historical ability and initiative, and discuss how each one can be useful.

Banks (1/5) - Useless. Starting with a prestige of 3, one of the Union goals for the first year is to get him out of the top 5 prestige slots.

Buell (4/3) - Can be useful in the later stages of the game for leading experienced troops against heavily outnumbered opponents. With his starting prestige of 6, he's one of the generals that Rosecrans, Sherman and Grant will have to leapfrog to get into the top 5, so an early loss by him can be a blessing, albeit mixed.

Burnside (2/5) - Another general that needs long odds in his favor to succeed. His prestige starts at 12, so he probably won't threaten to enter the top 5 any time soon. (Historically, Burnside was fairly competent in smaller commands - it's a shame the game doesn't reflect this, as he could be quite useful for small armies.)

Butler (1/4) - Useless. Try to reduce him to lowest prestige as soon as possible. Starts at 5, which means he will move better generals up in prestige if he loses an early battle.

Grant (8/8) - The Union's best general. Starts with a prestige of 9, and your goal for 1861 is to get him into the top 5. Best used in the toughest or most vital attack you make in a given turn.

Halleck (7/2) - Great for defense, and starts in the top 5. Generally useful for the first two years, but slips more and more into the background as the Union goes on the offensive. Can also be good for demonstration-type attacks, but has a nasty knack of making the attack when you least expect him. Also is a good general for amphibious invasions.

Hooker (3/8) - An agressive if not always able general. He is often best used as an subordinate attacker, but will have a reasonable change of success in an independent command with a substantial manpower advantage.

McClellan (4/1) - Best in the world for demonstration-type attacks - he sometimes fails to move even with high-experience troops. He can also be good on the defensive - his low initiative practically guarantees he will use defensive tactics, which will cause substantial losses for an attacker even if the latter prevails. Useful, but not a great attacker.

McDowell (3/7) - Pretty much like Hooker, except that McDowell starts with high prestige. As the third-best general of the initial top 5, he still gets a lot of key assignments. Try to replace him in the top 5 by a better general by mid-1862 or so.

Meade (6/4) - A solid general with a slight case of the slows. Starts with low prestige, and often stays that way for quite a while.

Pope (2/6) - Irvin McDowell Lite. Keep him out of the top 5 as much as possible.

Rosecrans (6/3) - George Meade Lite. Better used on defense, his low initiative can mess up an attack plan when you least expect it. Good for 1862, since he starts with high prestige, but generally eclipsed by Meade and Thomas later in the war when possible. Still better for attacking than Halleck.

Sherman (7/6) - Probably overrated a bit by the game, but still the second-best Union general. Should be used in much the same way as Grant. Try to get him into your top 5 by the start of 1862.

Thomas (5/5) - Starts with lowest possible prestige, but you will want to move him up rapidly once 1862 rolls around. A good all-around general - U.S. Grant Lite, perhaps.

Now, back to the turn-by-turn tips...

Turn 3 (Late 1861)

This turn is generally a slow one, the way I usually play it. Both sides get a lot of new units this turn, and the difficulties of attacking with green troops makes it better to use this as a largely defensive turn, good for training and building up the armies that will make for a successful 1862.

The first thing that will typically happen this turn is that you will get news about the lack of competence of one or more of your cabinet members. You should make sure to change your cabinet assignments - even if you don't get such news. The only change you will really want to make is to put Seward in as Secretary of State and change Stanton to Secretary of War. This gets Simon Cameron out of your cabinet, which is important since his lack of ability in posts can kill you over a protracted war.

This is typically the last change I make to my cabinet setup. Even if I hear rumors of incompetence about any cabinet members in this or subsequent turns, I'll always stick with the setup I have. It hasn't seemed to hurt me yet. Note that this puts all the Union leaders with highest possible administrative abilities in posts with the exception of Washburn as the USA/CSA commissioner, but since I generally regard battle not negotiation as the way to win the game I have no problem with this.

In the civil affairs phase, I'll go to my usual algorithm for deciding what policies to select in a region:
Respect Civil Rights and Precipitate if my support is more than double the Confederate support level
Censorship and Organize if my support is higher than the CSA
support level, but less than double that level
Suspend Habeas Corpus and Encourage Activity if my support is
lower than the CSA's, but more than half their support
Declare Martial Law and Discourage Activity if my support is
less than half the CSA support
If the USA and CSA support levels are even, I'll usually go with Censorship and Encourage. This is pretty much how the computer assigns things as well, and seems to work OK. Occasionally (as in the previous turn's example with GRA) I might change things somewhat to try to take possession of an area, but the opportunity does not often present itself- remember that such an area must be pretty much devoid of CSA troops for this to be successful.

If you won in CWV last turn, you should get an indication that GRA and CWV will form the new state of West Virginia.

This turn, you will also get the news that you will need to set a policy for your army to deal with escaped slaves. Assuming that the overall level of support for your administration remains high, you should move the slavery policy to "recognize de facto" free slaves. This generally works well and helps your support in the main northern regions, but decreases your support level in the border states and the deep south. However, since you will be getting proportionally very little manpower support from the border state areas, you don't need to worry too much just yet about their loss of support.

If for some reason - possibly if you had the war go extremely poorly last turn - you do not make any move towards emancipation this turn, you will lose some support among the radicals, an outcome bad enough to reduce your support in New England. This is something to be avoided when possible - as long as your military hasn't gone completely into the tank, make the policy switch. Don't try to move to a higher policy; a gradualist progression from one abolition level to the next works best by allowing the populace to get sufficiently used to the idea.

See previous posts for how to make the finance phase work. You probably won't get "heavy" taxes yet.

In the mobilization phase, Stanton should report that popular support for the war is high and enlistments will be up this turn. This would reduce the amount of incremental benefit you would get by changing your recruitment policy up to "mobilize militia", and since it is still rather early for such a proposal to work it would be best to leave the section alone and continue calling volunteers.

Depending upon how much money our bonds brought in during the finance phase, we may have plenty of money to pay for infrastructure and supplies. If you can build the limit on supplies, do so - not only does this mean you'll have plenty of supplies, but it also means you will have them nearer to your front-line troops.

In the strategic movement phase, we have a bit of a situation in the east. The fairly large army (30 or so?) in WAS which was beaten in NVA last turn should have fairly low morale but some experience - 4/5 is typical. Since we want to keep WAS safe, the first priority is to find some good troops to reinforce with. Reinforcing 4/5 troops with an equal number of 6/1 troops will yield a large host at 5/3, which should be enough (with a decent general) to hold WAS. The idea here is to make WAS invulnerable to a direct attack, and 70-80 troops at 5/3 should do the trick. As long your troops in WAS outnumber the troops in NVA by a factor of 2:1 or so, WAS should be safe even with a mediocre general.

There should still be a lot of troops left in the east, assuming that recruitment occurred in all areas this turn. In such a situation, you can amass these troops in two locations - higher-morale troops in New England to train and prepare for an amphibious invasion next turn, and lower-morale troops in PHI where they will be vital in implementing the eastern theater "judo" strategy. Remember that the safety of WAS is of paramount importance - the troops in PHI can be used to reinforce WAS if that should become necessary.

If you are still holding CSC, then you will probably want to reinforce that area with troops from New England. This is for two reasons - first, you need to be able to hold on to CSC and you need the troops to do it, and secondly since you have to supply and reinforce the army in CSC you won't have enough transports to both do that and make an amphibious invasion next turn. Rest assured that your presence in CSC makes things even more difficult for the Confederacy than the threat of an amphibious invasion would.

In the west I'll talk about three different likely scenarios:

Union took CWV last turn: In situations such as these, there is usually a small but pretty good army in CWV by virtue of their morale and experience boost. These can typically be combined with high-morale troops from VAL, CLE, or possibly FTW and used to reinforce LOU. Lower-morale troops such as were recruited in CIN can be used for garrison duty in CWV, GRA, and VAL. You will probably want to keep 8 units in CWV to eliminate the possibility of a pro-Confederate uprising.

Once CWV is taken, the Union should start to experience some flexibility in combining armies. If the Union has one area on the river that has no troops in it, then in general it should be possible to match up any two groups of units on the river. The issue then becomes finding compatible matches, as discussed above.

Union didn't take CWV last turn, but holds LOU: In this scenario, you will be doing pretty much a replay of last turn - attack CWV with an army large enough to win, and keep holding on to LOU. There are actually a couple of sub-scenarios here - one if the army in CWV was reinforced by the CSA army that attacked LOU last turn, and the other if they are just the troops that had been recruited there over the past turns. If the army in CWV is still unreinforced, you should be able to eliminate it with a fairly small army - say 14 to 16 units, plus 2 to 4 riverboats. You may be able to build up two suitable armies, one each in CIN and GRA, which would *probably* allow you to make the attack with two lesser generals in the campaign phase. In this case, you'll probably also want about 50-60 units in LOU. If the troops in CWV have been reinforced, you will probably have to attack them with a single army moving from CIN or GRA, eventually commanded by a top-5 general, so build up a single army of about 30-36 units plus some riverboats. On the plus side, you will probably be able to get by with only 40-50 units in LOU since CHA will have fewer troops than if the LOU attackers had retreated there after last turn.

Union lost LOU last turn (either taking or not taking CWV): Well, we're in the soup a bit here, but all is not lost. For starters, we've identified at least one and possibly two or three generals that you can't trust with combat commands - keep them away from the front for the rest of the war. In this situation, we'll probably want to bolster the group in CIN in preparation for a strike back down into LOU in the campaign phase (with a different general, of course!)

Along the Mississippi, things are pretty much as before. We want to make another strike down at PAD this turn, preferably from a general (such as McClellan) that you are pretty sure won't make the attack. As such, we want to build up Cairo to 50-60 units or so, with tolerably high morale but low experience (so that they will be less likely to attack). Most of the troops we will need for the buildup should be available from CHI or FTW. Across the river in STL, as long as we have the same number of troops as are in SPR and LRK, we should be secure.

In this phase, we need to start planning where you will assign generals during the campaign phase. There are three posts that you definitely want to keep - WAS, LOU, and STL (and a fourth - CSC - if you retain it). Also, we want to keep Banks as far away as possible from any vital area along the front. Consider Banks as the commander of your buildup in PHI, which will keep him out of trouble. McClellan will still command the demonstration attack from Cairo to PAD. The rest of your top-5 generals should go into WAS, CSC (if applicable) and LOU in that order, along with (possibly) the attack into CWV if necessary. Also, make sure that the commander in WAS has a higher prestige than Banks, so that the latter will not be in charge of the city's defenses if the Confederacy attacks.

Another thing to consider during this phase is splitting the troops in STL, placing half of them in CHI, and moving 4 garrison units into FTW for the moment. (You can assign a low-prestige general to move two of FTW's units into CHI during the campaign phase as CHI's troops move to STL, thus CHI will still have a training garrison.) This arrangement will allow us to put a good lower-prestige general to defend STL this turn without prestige problems. This is a good spot for Sherman or Grant if one of them has not yet made it into the top-5.

If you built a lot of extra supplies this turn, consider using any excess rail capacity to move excess supplies from the upper west (PIT, CLE, FTW) to the Ohio Valley (CIN or GRA). Some of the excess will go to waste, but the rest of it will be ready to supply troops for next turn. Use excess similarly in the east to stockpile supplies in WAS or PHI, and remember that you can use your sealift capability, which is particularly effective when moving supplies from the NE states and NYC into WAS to save rail movement allotment.

During the campaign phase, it's time to make the assignments as planned above. Send Butler to hold onto VAL with the few troops we left there and keep the good general in WAS on defensive orders. The object of this is to attract a CSA attack into VAL, which I call the "judo" strategy. It has a twofold purpose - drive down Butler's prestige even more (moving other better generals up) and get the CSA overextended in the eastern theater. Move some troops down from PHI to WAS if that is necessary, and move all the rest into PIT. Continue the attack into CWV if that has not yet been taken, send McClellan from Cairo to PAD and hold everywhere else as planned in the strategic movement phase.

At the end of this phase, you should have lost in VAL (I typically have the survivors retreat to GRA) and won anywhere else there was combat, unless McClellan actually attacked PAD. If he did, I usually retreat the troops involved to EVN at the end of the turn, for ease of supply and improved coordination with LOU. Beyond that, this should be a fairly slow turn - the calm before the storm.

Barring total military collapse, nothing will happen on the diplomatic front this turn.