blueakomoon

Tilt Shift? Too dark around the edges. And while the blurred effect is cool, it comes in from the edges too far and basically reduces the ability to see the map by at least 30%. I like the bright feel without the TIlt-Shift. If you reduced the blur a bit, brightened it up, I would play with it on all the time.

One thing I am glad to see. When a charge occurs, the two units get mixed up and when one side or the other retreats, it takes them a while to untangle themselves. I enjoy knowing that my soldiers are not robots that can immediately fall back into their assigned units, that it takes them a while to untangle and reorganize before they can volley.

Truth be told, I can wait for the Day-4 battles, and I can even stomach the shifting of units around (somewhat, it is very annoying when I have control of Culps Hill in the morning, but just because there is no VP on it, my forces withdraw during the night. WTF), but what really bugs me are my units morale and condition. As the Union, I of course wear out the 1st and 11th on the 1st day, but don't use them at all during the 2nd day. So, come the 3rd day, you would expect them to be nice and rested up right? Nope, 11th is still routed, 1st is still at 0% condition. I mean, what were they doing during the entire 2nd day?

To agree with Zelekendel, 1. I can't stand it when I have one or two brigades refuse to fire during the whole battle, unless given a specific target. So I have to micro manage those two brigades (as in manually ordering each and every volley) for the whole battle or pull them off the line. Annoying bug. No, its not caused by clumping my brigades or terrain, it happens on almost every day 2/3 battle on either side, more often the confederates. 2. When a brigade of over a 1000 fires a volley at an artillery battery and they hit nothing. NOTHING! C'mon!

There are many factors that go into the moral and retreat system. Most now depend on flank fire and cover. I believe that the conditions of units next to it (or lack of support) also influence moral. But I think the problem with Pettigrew specifically, is that because the brigade is so large, it is a massive target, thus many units can fire on it at the same time from multiple directions, where Pettigrew can only fire at one target at a time. Clarification: The starts under the portrait of the general in command of each unit indicate the quality to troops. 1 star are normal units, 2 stars are veterans, and 3 stars are elite. The quality effects not only firing rate, but how high the morale bar can go. Notice sometimes you will have a brigade fight not at all but it's morale just sits at 56% even though its condition is 100%, then look at the Iron Brigade. 100% morale and 100% condition nearly all the time.

Edgy, The 1st scenario is woefully unbalanced towards the Union. They have 10 movable units while the Rebels have half that. And historically, the Rebs were pushed back to Herr's ridge that morning. Granted, units not retreating in the right direction is a known bug and is actually greatly improved. I find that on that 1st battle, Just play it conservatively and leave a brigade on Herr's ridge. Yes, it's a handicap and an unnecessary one, but just some friendly advice.

There has been discussion in other threads of having the ability to wound or kill generals in game, then having other generals replace them in later scenarios. I don't know if the game developers have any plans on making that so.

I love the historical account of the battle by Sears. This historian not only talks about the battle, but about the conditions in which it was fought and uses references from the soldiers who fought there. Gettysburg by Stephen W. Sears. He has also done books about Antietam and Chancellorsville.

Hello to PiyRe, In using artillery for the Union, I have a trick that almost always seems to work. Put the batteries out in front of your line and force them to use canister. Attacking brigades will target the batteries first, usually by charging them. And even if under fire, batteries don't take nearly as many losses as infantry do (Patch needed?). This then brings the attacking brigade into range of multiple batteries all using canister and then your line of infantry. Unlike artillery, infantry can fire over/through batteries. Just make sure your brigades are on hold orders so they don't move when your batteries start to fall back through your lines. I've used this defensive strategy to obtain 5/1 kill ratios during battles. Unfortunately, this doesn't work well when on the offense or as the Rebels as their artillery is weaker than the Unions.

Yeah, pretty much. Sorry about that. But thanks for the reply.

So, it seems to me that there should be some sort of surrender option for retreating units like in Sid's game. For example, I had cut off Cutler on Oak Hill on the first day. I had Oak Ridge, then Rodes comes down from the north. I move both Davis and Pettigrew up from Oak Ridge and with 5 brigades (2 from Hill, 3 from Rodes) I surround Cutler. And what happens? Cutler retreats, then routed and plows clear through Pettigrew, routing him in the process even though he had <60% moral and condition. And he takes only a hundred or so losses in the process. Then reforms on Oak Ridge only to be surrounded again with the same results. Are there any plans to making it possible to force units to surrender?

Well what I'm saying is that historically, the batteries on Cemetery ridge could fire and see all the way to Seminary ridge. Yes, there is some slight ground swells in-between so troops could hide in those while out in the open, but that shouldn't stop the cannons from seeing all the way to Seminary Ridge and vice versa. I think the problem is the contour lines. Since the game has suck a gentle slope to Cemetery Ridge, the cannons have a short LOS.

Yay! Thanks for the heads up, looking forward to it!

Just to add to the bud of units being ordered to move to a corner of the map when trying to deselect. At the same time, commanders will not deselect at all. Restarting the game does not help. In fact, the only thing that seems to work (sometimes) is to rapidly click all three mouse buttons at the same time. weird.

So after playing continuously over the last couple of weeks, here are my conclusions about the way artillery operates now. 1. Troops do block artillery from firing, especially directly over their heads. This is correct historically as civil way shells were unreliable and gunners hated firing over the heads of their own troops for fire of friendly fire by accident. 2. Man made structures also block firing lanes for artillery. Again, historically accurate for obvious reasons. 3. Artillery condition goes down with firing. Think of it as its ammunition storage. Batteries only have so much ammo at a time, so conserve the artillery until it is most effective. I just stick all my batteries on shell and leave it. Solid shot does so little damage its just not worth it. BIGGEST PROBLEM The area of the map between Seminary ridge and all ridges to the west work correctly. Ridges block LOS, high ground allows longer range, etc etc. But once you get south of town, the terrain contours are less defined, even with the new contours layer. Thus the LOS program for artillery gives batteries much less LOS than they should have. Example, stick a battery on the stone wall on cemetery ridge, and its LOS won't even reach to the Emmetsburg road, less than half what it should actually be able to see. I think the problem is that the LOS program sees some of the open terrain types (fields, fences, crops) as man made structures that thus block LOS. This would explain why you don't encounter this problem west of Gettysburg because the area between ridges is simple grass. ADVICE Fix the LOS program so that it reads wheat fields, crops, etc as grass rather than mad made structures. This error is very damaging because all the fighting on days 2,3,4 all take place where right now, artillery is basically useless due to the LOS problems.