IheardITthruTHEgrapeshot

This is exactly what I'd envision, actually. Lower the number of casualties but make rifles and artillery have a much bigger impact on morale. This way battles would become even more tactical and would require and additional layer of thinking by the player.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. In UG:G (which I own) and in UG:CW again (which I don't own yet) the casualties seem to be more or less inevitably around 50% every time one plays a battle or a part of it, as in UG:G. This is way more of what happened in real life, and it applies not just to the ACW.

Well, it is also a matter of volume (I think everybody would agree that ca. 50% in game vs ca. 16% in real life is too big a difference). However, having different types of casualties i.e. dead, severely wounded and lightly wounded, with the latter coming back to active duty after a while (just like it was in the old Close Combat series) would be a very welcome addition and another step into reaching a better level of realism and immersion, IMHO.

Only by a slight margin. In the battles I've seen the forces ranged between 20.000 and 21.500 troops on each side. In real life, both armies committed about 18.000 soldiers each. So, the RL battle had about 18.000 troops engaged and 2-3.000 casualties (not meaning by that dead men; those were about 4-500 on each side). The UG battle sees some more men but around 11.000 casualties on each side. A quick math shows us that, while in the real battle there had been a casualty rate of about 16%, in the game that value skyrockets to a whopping 50% or more. TL,DR: no, it has nothing to do with that. I can't access the link, Ambrose - however, I agree that something should be done to at least come closer to more realistic casualtiy rates (16% vs 50% is a bit extreme).

Hi all, as the title says. I haven't purchased UG:CW yet but I've watched some YT videos of it and it seems to me like the casualty rates are way off. For example, in a couple of 1st Bull Run battles the casualties for each side (player and AI) ranged from 10k to 12k (circa). The historical battle saw some 2k casualties for the CSA and less than 3k for the USA, so 20-25% of what one can achieve in UG:CW. It would also be cool if a percentage of those casualties were actually able to get to fight again on the next battle (i.e. being considered just as light wounded). I'm overall loving what I'm seeing so far, though. Keep up the great work, guys!

I unfortunately can't give you any pieces of advice right now re: the new patch strategies, as I find myself struggling a lot with it, too. Still, in order to gather more reads and thus more replies, I can advise you to switch from an almost white colour to black. Your current font colour makes what you typed almost undistinguishable from the background (ok, one can highlight it with the mouse by dragging the pointer over it, but it's still rather annoying. I purposedly coloured the central part of my sentence with the same hue to let you judge by yourself).

Which AI were you fighting against?

Sounds good! Among others, I especially like these two elements: Keep up the good work! ### EDIT : I really think the 66% casualties threshold to abandon the battlefield was a much better one; maybe it could be restored? 80% might be better gameplay-wise but makes very little sense from a realistical and historical point of view (also, if it's just gameplay related, it could well be increased to 100%... i.e. total annihilation. No?).

Well, in that spirit even Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville wouldn't have been bad ones

Then why not the 18th Century? Think about directly commanding Frederick the Great's armies on the battlefields of central Europe... ah

...and what if your carefully placed artillery harassed and routed enemy advancing brigades (especially when hitting them on the flank)...? Wouldn't that give you some sense of tactical fulfillment? Besides, no one said artillery should not cause any casualties at all: it should, but mainly with canister fire. The other two types of ammunition should be much less effective than they are now (well, even canister should be toned down a little, probably). Otherwise, if we're not interested in history, we might as well be playing some random Assassin's Creed title.

Muskets and rifles would keep doing the same damage they do now (if not more). Artillery casualties, on the other hand, would be "converted" mainly into morale drops, as it should be. That would help balance the game and make it more faithful to RL history. I see no "impossibilities" in that - quite the contrary.

Yup, it's most probably what you were looking for. Try it and report back, though!

Have you tried pressing the TAB key and moving the mouse cursor around while you have a unit selected? That will rotate the unit without the need to drag an arrow and thus cause it to move from its position.

Well, as I was typing in that other post, and as Nick confirmed, it's UG:Antietam