North and South Chapter Four

Hoo boy, this is going to be a large one. The War has begun.

Or will, anyways! Firstly we see more ponies show up to Twilight's main corps:

Braeburn begins our roster of new ponies, running the 2nd Appaloosa Dragoons. (Even if in-game they are from Connecticut. It's a game feature, the closer a state is to your army, the faster they muster up. I will be taking creative liberties with this for narrative reasonings.)

Stylus arrives second, running my 10lber Parrott battery. That rounds out Twilight's artillery complement for now, until I start ordering some more modern cannons. The rest of my small stash of non 6-lber guns will go towards my other army corps.

Military Policy I means that I get more funding for military projects, which is going to be very helpful for getting good quality weapons - like sharps rifles, or our own modern cannons.

More fluff building up towards the start of the civil war! Not much else to say aside from that about it.

The CSA, meanwhile, finishes Diplo I. This gives them, as you'd expect, more diplomatic projects, which means better relations with Europe. We will have to keep an eye on that, as it develops.

More intel. It's pretty boring. King Cotton is the Confederate Economic policy (union gets Corn is King).

Our final boy for Twilights' corps arrives! It's Soarin', running the Cloudsdale Royal Guard.

We also get the Sharps Rifles unlocked; includes the carbine variant, but I'm not gonna purchase those yet, I need to save some cash for when the extra starting armies drop at war's start. Those are raised immediately, which is great. But they're raised on only three month billets. Which is not great. Ouch.

Here's a good example of purchase pricing in action. Yeah, it's going to take twice as long for me to get all my Sharps rifles as it will my Whitworths, but I'm also getting 25,000 of them for a similar price to the Whitworths, which I only got 10,000 of. Not a bad trade at all.

The siege of Fort Sumter actually officially begins on April 6th, but that didn't really suit the narrative, so I edited it slightly. I personally think it makes more sense as I have it set up now, but feel free to correct that if you feel so.

The Bombardment of Ft. Sumter begins on 12th April.

In between the Bombardment, we finish the regulars act. This was actually the first time I'd done so in a campaign (I usually keep my military experience, as taking the act lowers your exp by 5). I was happy to do so though, for reasons we'll cover shortly.

Ft. Sumter folds the next day, April 13th.

And now we cover why the Regulars act is GREAT. Here's Lightning Charm, and her Regulars. Each of these units being mustered takes roughly a month, but they ALL start at rank 1 experience, which is crazy this early into the campaign. Shimmer (yes, Sunset Shimmer) fields a full 3000 man brigade, whereas the other infantry regiments are sized at 1500 men. My Cavalry brigade sits at a solid 1250, and the artillery batteries are both eight gun batteries.

9000 well trained soldiers at the start of the war? Absolutely, yes please.

Shining's Corps, name pending. I'll probably end up naming this the Crystal Corps, or something similarly snappy. Very small to start with, but we'll change that a little later.

Here's Big Mac's starting Corps too, the Department of the West. Yeah, he needed to take care of the Missouri State Guard (with Shining's help!) fast, before the M-S-G started mustering more men and overwhelmed them. I'd rather not immediately lose Missouri to the CSA, that'd suck.

Hey look! It's me!

Yeah I'll be real sad if I die.

I immediately add a couple cannon batteries to Tempests' Corps, as the Dept. of Pennsylvania is a good early army to attack towards Winchester, VA with.

And then here's Trixie's Corps, the Army of Northeastern Virginia. Historically, this is Mcdowell's Corps, and the main force that fought at 1st Manassas/1st Bull Run. I have faith in Trixie to hold her army together better than Mcdowell did.

Here's where Shining and Mac engaged Sterling Price's Guard. If two armies meet and one is entrenched, or in this case, when neither force has enough readiness to force a field engagement, the armies fall into siege and skirmishing combat. With Shining backing him up, Mac can easily deal with Price, and see the State Guard off before they become a serious problem.

The Confederates also finished up King Cotton I, giving them better relations with Europe. Seeing a theme here, for the CSA?

We'll counter this at some point, but Britain and France won't do anything for a fair bit.

I completely and entirely sunk a CSA Fleet for the first time in a few campaigns, woo. This was five ships strong, I'll take every bit I can get.

We finish our siege fight with the Missouri Guard, winning with light casualties on both sides as we easily crack their morale.

We also acquire the Legacy Rifles project. I forgot to take a picture of it, but I went ahead and ordered 10k Mississippi Rifles to help shore up the stock of equipment my army will need. They're a far sight better than Rifle-Muskets, and at 500 yard range, they outrange the majority of weapons the Confederate Army fields with it's infantry. With a matching sword bayonet making them deadly in melee, Mississippi rifles are just excellent infantry weapons in general.

I think the CSA got mad that I sunk their boats.

Our first actual battle happens shortly after the end of Mac and Shining's siege fight!

This actually showcases why having a Corps Command is really important in this game. With Both Tempest's Corps and Charm's Corps being mustered into the same army, they have a much longer range of reinforcement to help each other out in a battle. Sure, Lightning Charm is going to be ten hours late to the party, but that's not that long at the end of the day.

Technically I was forced to attack here, because game nuance. I'm still not exactly sure what decides who attacks or defends, because they definitely moved towards me on the campaign map. Oh well.

Lightning Charm shows up ten hours later as expected, now that I've set up on Bushong hill and have taken the strategic ground in the area.

A little hard to make out, but my artillery (with support from Charm's heavy-ass 30lber Parrott guns! yes, THIRTY POUNDERS!) can be seen on the top middle of the image near the road. They and the CSA artillery duked it out for a couple hours before Infantry did infantry things.

I advanced Breeze and Air's brigades up a bit here to keep the CSA off my cannons (and my hill, dammit), using the split-rail fences for effective enough cover from enemy rifle fire and the left side defilade for similar effect.

End result of my little skirmish. I'll take 1:2 casualties as well as their whole cannon train for sure. 400 men is a drop in the bucket of 11k, whereas 800 CSA casualties is just under 20% of this army.

I find it funny though that the Regulars showed up late and took all the Volunteers' credit. That's hilarious. Definitely something to write into the story, and I wonder how long before a legitimate feud develops over this. That's everything for today, folks. Get ready for more tomorrow!