Wright29

should've been around before the dynamic campaign patch change....

swing your units way to the south of Mcpherson's Ridge and occupy the lower part of Seminary Ridge. You can use that as a launching point to attack the town or attack Cemetery Hill quickly. It's quite defensible and the Union will turn into the attackers for a part of the battle. Don't repeat history's mistakes! Also it's definitely winnable after the 1st day- Pickett's Charge scenario is quite easy to win by attacking the southern objective. Rather anti-climactic if you ask me.

Why make a literal cloud between the player and his troops?

No more smoke. It would be awful.

Well everyone was complaining about suicidal AI so they made smarter AI that saves its forces for later battles via the dynamic campaign function. Not quite perfect yet but it's getting there.

Those are the only complete units you get. After all, this game is about creating your own army with unique unit histories.

.91 patch enemy skirmishers were equipped with Spencer Carbines by 1st Winchester before Gaines' Mill. I have some sniper units and am still not sure if scaling is sort of a thing anymore. .92 patch is in testing anyway, so testing might prove moot anyway.

The stars are definitely there and always have been, unless you have an army of all rookies.

MG and Legendary you will basically not be able to completely deplete the enemy forces. That is intended. Also keep in mind that the intelligence report number is not the exact same as the actual number of enemies you'll face in the next battle.

The frustrating part of Richmond is the opening day and how reinforcements just pop up in random places on my rear. I've beaten the damn thing on every level, but my first time on Colonel was probably the hardest just because I didn't know where to spawn camp.

Shiloh is the one people rage about the most I think.

Thing is you can end a battle in the middle of a melee, a rout, with AI units in your rear. There aren't always static battle lines. What happens then? Do you just pop right back up exactly where you left off with literally everything in the exact same place?

People freak out about the autoscaling but it's pretty reasonable on Colonel. Fixed Strength can be quite difficult in battles where your side historically lost.

That is not true. The Fixed Strength is set for every scenario regardless of player performance in past scenarios. It does not scale to the player's army like it does in the other modes.

From what I understand, in this patch the numbers in the Fixed Strength are basically exactly what they are in the Historical Battle. If you play the Historical Battle of Gaines' Mill, you will see similar numbers. A basic issue is that this sort of ignores the player's progression or "ramping up" over the course of the campaign. This makes the beginning part hard and the ending part far easier than the regular campaign. Fixed Strength is very far from being a Very Easy mode. In many ways it is harder since rewards are 25% less, you can get creamed quite easily by overwhelming numbers, and if you start to lose battles you can fall behind macro-wise.

That makes sense now. Yes there's little point to doing the fourth day of gettysburg in the campaign since you've gotten the majority of loot you're going to get. But in the historical battle it's super fun to crush the AoNV so that you see how foolish Meade was for not attacking.

Thing is I don't think shattered units count towards casualties. If a 2000 enemy unit loses 1500 men and then you shatter it, the remaining 500 will not count as casualties. On the unit tab, it'll still say 500 men remaining and will contribute 1500 toward the casualty tabulation. So when you shatter a unit, their loot disappears with them. Not only do you not get a bonus, but you get nothing at all.

The fortifications are intentionally very difficult to reflect the historical improvement in trenches that occurred in 1864-1865. Washington is definitely on the hard side, but in general this game is all about hammering home the realism that the Confederates were not meant to ever assault Washington with the Army of Northern Virginia. It's pretty brutal, but it should be difficult after an easy first two-thirds of the campaign (except malvern hill and antietam), much better recruits, and superior officers. In contrast, the Union campaign is incredibly difficult in the first half, but much easier after Stones River.

Caps on weapons drop? Never experienced that. Legendary and Hard drop levels are very low but not capped.

Actually all unit types lose efficiency like artillery, but not to the point where there are negative marginal returns. As an example, 750 sized skirmisher cavalry will not do twice as well as a 375 sized brigade. However, unlike arty, it will not be completely outperformed. When I talk about diminishing returns, I mean a 16-gun arty brigade will very likely do better than a 12-gun arty brigade. But it will be better for the player to have a 12 gun brigade and a 4 gun brigade. However, a 12-gun battery will likely do 1.5 times better than a 8-gun battery. The patch did give 12.5% damage increase for large arty brigades, but did not structurally change the way the artillery returns work. A side note on the diminishing returns- larger units are always better in melee, have better "morale resistance", and are more difficult to shatter. This is a lot more practical for infantry and especially cavalry. But it is definitely relevant if you are bold with your artillery placement or if the enemy counter-battery fire is heavy (which is more prevalent in the current patch). I guess I still haven't answered your original question- probably no given that increasing size costs you money and you're better off making additional arty brigades.

What's the difference between the normal screen and the decisive victory screen? I've never noticed a difference.

The optimal army size at Antietam is whatever you'll need at Fredericksburg... Because all you should be doing at Antietam is running away Monty Python style.

Fixed enemy strength on the harder levels would likely end up hurting the player. In order to be fixed, it needs to be challenging for those with a "lean and mean" army, so it needs to be high experience. In order to be challenging for players who max out the brigade sizes, the enemy needs to be large. So the total result is that it needs to be both large and high experience while the player can likely only achieve one of the two. In Colonel, they put the Fixed enemy strength on the lower end of both spectrums and they countered this by making rewards about 25% less. So on harder levels if you wanted the same relative number of troops but on Normal and with some more experience, the rewards would have to be like 40% less. At that point, you're really restricting what the player can do and how flexibile he can be. Options are extremely limited and defeats are punished even more harshly. Auto-scaling saves the player after a pyrrhic victory or bad defeat. Without it, the enemy keeps getting relatively stronger if the player can't keep up with the increase in macro that the fixed enemy strength would give on harder difficulties. I know it's not perfect and can be incedibly frustrating, but I am firmly a believer that auto-scaling saves the player on Legendary, Hard, and even Normal.

really gotta win on the first day

In my opinion, fixed strength would hurt the player on Hard and Legendary. The Devs would have to make enemies on the upper end of Experience to counter players that go plan and mean. And then they'd have to make the units big to counter the players that go for mob tactics. The result would be large, very experienced units in every battle regardless of player performance. Lose a battle? Enemy is as strong as if you had done perfectly. People comment on how they do you like autoscaling. But I view it as a necessary evil to help those that choose/ are forced by losses to keep their army size small and their veterancy level on the higher end.