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Chickamauga and AI Routing Mechanics/Calvary Spawn


barrydylan

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This battle is almost unplayable in it's current form. As my title suggests, there are two reasons why:

1. The AI routing mechanic is still broken. I rout AI brigades and then they disappear in the woods, only to reappear as they take Kelly's field or one of the other objectives. With the number of troops the AI has on MG, its impossible to track them all down and destroy them in the heavy woods, because you constantly have to rush brigades to hold every single objective if you want to win the battle. By the end of the battle, there are AI brigades everywhere having "teleported" to each objective after routing them. I only won the battle because I rushed all my cav skirmshers to take back the last VPs at the last possible second. 

2. The AI magically spawns somewhere between 6 and 10 cavalry brigades in the fourth(?) phase of the battle IN THE MIDDLE OF MY BATTLE LINES. This is what really pissed me off. So I get a couple volley's off and rout them, then they disappear into the woods which brings me back to the first problem with the game/battle.

I am aware the AI routing issue is a well-known bug which appears unfixable for some reason. But the cavalry spawning at the objectives is ridiculous. It seems to me that they should have to enter at border of the map like all the other troops do in every other battle.

I fought this battle twice. The first time, I lost in the first phase but only took ~2k casualties. The second time I won, but lost 25k (out of 52k) and several elite brigades. I could have managed the battle better (now that I know the AI is going to magically spawn thousands of cavalry) but I still think the rep and money aren't worth the amount of casualties it takes to win the battle. 

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This is strange, I didn't really encounter this problem in my Chickamaga playthrough two days ago, but it could be because they reform after 10-15 seconds of routing all the time and rejoin the battle in legendary... I did have a case where a unit routed through me again and I had to divert several detached skirmishers to ward it away for the rest of the battle which was annoying, but that was the only one. Were you playing on the Union or Confederate side? I kept one long unbroken line through the entire game and everytime a unit retreating not directly away from me I would detach a brigade or 2 to ward them off. The important thing is not to have any gaps in your lines. If you have no vision, always detach skirmishers to provide the vision for you.

I do agree that the battle is extremely difficult if you are unaware of how it plays out or if its your first playthrough, however it is one of the easier battles I've played.

If you are playing the Confederate side, some tips to help is that I abandoned both Victory points instead of trying to hold them until I had both Corps fully on the field. Just let the AI take the victory points while you sit in the woods and have them deplete their forces attempting to push you out, and then counterattack once they have used up most of their units. It should be an easy victory. On the Union side its pretty much the same, There is no need to rush for the objectives if you can just sit in the woods and lure the AI into attack you. Union has an easier time of it as they are defending most of the objectives, and the ones to the Northeast are really close to the woods so a last minute push should easily secure them.

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Lately, I too have experienced the enemy routing through my lines, to end up being a pain in my ass, (no pun intended,) trying to either run them down or destroy them, or chase them back across my lines.

Happened twice in my recent campaign at Shiloh. 

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11 hours ago, Kloiste said:

This is strange, I didn't really encounter this problem in my Chickamaga playthrough two days ago...

On the Union side its pretty much the same, There is no need to rush for the objectives if you can just sit in the woods and lure the AI into attack you. Union has an easier time of it as they are defending most of the objectives, and the ones to the Northeast are really close to the woods so a last minute push should easily secure them.

Yeah I was the Union and played too aggressively, which I won't do next time. But its the cavalry spawn that kills me. Has anyone else controlled all the VP's at once, just to have a bunch of 3-Star 850 strong cav brigades spawn at directly on top of them?  

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6 hours ago, barrydylan said:

Yeah I was the Union and played too aggressively, which I won't do next time. But its the cavalry spawn that kills me. Has anyone else controlled all the VP's at once, just to have a bunch of 3-Star 850 strong cav brigades spawn at directly on top of them?  

No - mine were 1050 men. >:)

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Right out of the chute I routed two of the CSA brigades trying to come North across the bridge and they immediately routed to right behind my fortifications.  Very frustrating.  One of them even broke while on the actual bridge and moved on North rather than going South.

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Yes, yes, all of my yes.

1) Routing mechanic: Seriously, a brigade being viciously routed, routing through my lines to my hinterland so I have to detach a brigade to hunt him down? And don't get me started on the one time an enemy cavalry brigade just galloped straight through my lines. That one was most likely just a glitch since I've only seen it once, so I'll eat that one. But routing, panicked troops running in the exact opposite direction of safety?

I don't know how to fix this one since I know nothing about AI coding, so I'm not even going to pretend to be smart here. I thought about forcing routing troops to retreat towards their main force/"home map edge", but that wouldn't really work either for units flanking deep behind enemy lines, since that would force them to do the exact same thing, which is to say routing through enemy lines. Then I thought about forcing them to rout to the nearest leader, but I don't know that it would ever be possible to get the AI to understand that, not to mention that you usually aren't drowning in leaders, so spending one of them on a distraction behind enemy lines... And, again, how on Earth would you be able to code an AI to use that intelligently?

Perhaps forcing units to rout in the direction they originally came from? It would mean tracking movement of all units in the code and storing it, at least the most recent move, so I don't know if it can be done, but it would at least be realistic. "Running to where you came from" is what routed,  panicked units tend to do.

2) Enemy spawning and magical forced retreats from objectives you just took horrific losses to take (Stones River): No. No enemy unit in the next phase should ever be allowed to spawn in the middle of one of your units. I don't know if this and the forced giving up of ground you've already taken is for balancing purposes but, if it is, then the player should be advised of it. It's really not much fun to realize that your hard won gains are now for nothing and oh, by the way, the AI now has his troops engaged in melee with your tired troops because they just Star Trekked in.

This is not a huuuuuge problem since once you've played a battle once, you know where not to go because it will mess you up in the next phase, so you can always just restart. I'm not losing any sleep over it, because I am so very much loving this game, I just wish that there would be a bit more up front transparency about the different phases of big battles. Which brings me to:

3) Not mentioned, but I figured I'd just tag it on to my wall of text ;-) When you select a battle and it tells you how many brigades you can bring, but the very beginning you can't bring all of them because the rest will come in as reinforcements. That's fine. It makes for more dynamic battles and I love that. But would it be possible to have a bit more control over just exactly which units come in as reinforcements? And if there already is, then please explain to this hopeless newb how this mechanic works. I have a sneaking suspicion that you can already do that by just rearranging your divisions prior to the battle, I just don't know exactly how it works. And, at any rate, wouldn't it be easier to have several boxes during the deployment phase? One for initial forces and then however many needed for the reinforcements? Such as "I want my infantry to hit in the first phase, and then I'll bring in the cavalry and artillery in the second/third etc. phase"?

I love this game and its predecessor. It's an awesome achievement by the dev team, and I'd even go as far as to say that if, Heaven forbid, development on it at this point were to stop, I'd still say that I got my money's worth. Other War Between the States games can eat dirt, this one beats them.

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5 minutes ago, MishaTX said:

 

3) Not mentioned, but I figured I'd just tag it on to my wall of text ;-) When you select a battle and it tells you how many brigades you can bring, but the very beginning you can't bring all of them because the rest will come in as reinforcements. That's fine. It makes for more dynamic battles and I love that. But would it be possible to have a bit more control over just exactly which units come in as reinforcements? And if there already is, then please explain to this hopeless newb how this mechanic works. I have a sneaking suspicion that you can already do that by just rearranging your divisions prior to the battle, I just don't know exactly how it works. And, at any rate, wouldn't it be easier to have several boxes during the deployment phase? One for initial forces and then however many needed for the reinforcements? Such as "I want my infantry to hit in the first phase, and then I'll bring in the cavalry and artillery in the second/third etc. phase"?

They'll arrive from the first division, then from the second division, etc. So if you deploy zero brigades from your first division, your first reinforcements will have your complete first divisions if not more. So if you have a 10 brigade battle with 5 initial deployment and 5 reinforcements, you can deploy five brigades from 3rd and 4th divisions and you'll be guaranteed to get your first division troops. This allows you to customize your reinforcements to the situation at hand. 

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Finished the battle last night and I had both these problems. Fortunately, I had read this thread already and was prepared, with units left behind to guard lonely victory points. However, 950-strong three star cavalry spawned right on top of two of my artillery units and wiped them out. 

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On 4/20/2017 at 2:08 AM, MishaTX said:

Yes, yes, all of my yes.

1) Routing mechanic: Seriously, a brigade being viciously routed, routing through my lines to my hinterland so I have to detach a brigade to hunt him down? And don't get me started on the one time an enemy cavalry brigade just galloped straight through my lines. That one was most likely just a glitch since I've only seen it once, so I'll eat that one. But routing, panicked troops running in the exact opposite direction of safety?

Happened during the Union first phase of Chickamauga. Spencer-equipped units hold the bridge; attackers rout through their lines. Makes sense.

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