Jump to content
Game-Labs Forum

OlavDengs Union Campaign


OlavDeng2

Recommended Posts

Hello Everyone, I dont usually post in these parts since i never played Gettysburg, but im enjoying civil war so I thought id put my campaign videos in here! Be warned though, i am awfull at the game so tips will be appreciated!

Ep1: 

Ep2, Distress Call:

 

 

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, OlavDeng2 said:

i am awfull at the game so tips will be appreciated!

Only watched the first one, so some general comments:

1) Pay attention to cover, the terrain is one of the most important things that should be influencing how you move. Open field is only good for 1/4 cover, cropfields/tall grass is good for 1/2 cover, buildings and forests can get all the way to full cover, and river crossings have 0 cover. This drastically reduces the amount of casualties your troops take. I saw a lot of times you were maneuvering your forces either on the open field or abandoning good defensive positions and opening yourself up for a lot of return fire.

2) Move your artillery closer. A -lot- closer. Distant artillery sitting back bombards using shells and shot and basically doesn't do anything. Artillery should be always basically right behind your infantry to give them the opportunity to maul the enemy infantry with canister. The corollary to this is that your artillery should still be protected by using your infantry as a shield. If they're taking return fire from infantry, they're -too- close. And if you need to fall back, make sure to send your artillery off early because they're a lot slower and prone to being overrun.

3) Protect your cavalry and use them only in key moments. Cavalry is crucial for hitting enemy artillery and supply train in the back. You used yours up too early in unsupported attacks and had them basically at half strength before the part of the battle where they would have really helped you in the wide open.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

1 minute ago, Hitorishizuka said:

Only watched the first one, so some general comments:

1) Pay attention to cover, the terrain is one of the most important things that should be influencing how you move. Open field is only good for 1/4 cover, cropfields/tall grass is good for 1/2 cover, buildings and forests can get all the way to full cover, and river crossings have 0 cover. This drastically reduces the amount of casualties your troops take. I saw a lot of times you were maneuvering your forces either on the open field or abandoning good defensive positions and opening yourself up for a lot of return fire.

2) Move your artillery closer. A -lot- closer. Distant artillery sitting back bombards using shells and shot and basically doesn't do anything. Artillery should be always basically right behind your infantry to give them the opportunity to maul the enemy infantry with canister. The corollary to this is that your artillery should still be protected by using your infantry as a shield. If they're taking return fire from infantry, they're -too- close. And if you need to fall back, make sure to send your artillery off early because they're a lot slower and prone to being overrun.

3) Protect your cavalry and use them only in key moments. Cavalry is crucial for hitting enemy artillery and supply train in the back. You used yours up too early in unsupported attacks and had them basically at half strength before the part of the battle where they would have really helped you in the wide open.

Thanks for the tips! (Watching the 2nd one you probably will ahve a lot of similar tips xD), quick question. Is friendly fire from cannon a thing?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, OlavDeng2 said:

Ep2, Distress Call:

Streaming thoughts:

Don't forget to reinforce/rebuild your brigades between battles. An artillery brigade with only 3 guns isn't very effective and is vulnerable to getting shattered instantly on taking fire if you misposition them, wasting valuable experience.

It's not shameful to pause to reorient multiple brigades at once if you're having problems with the UI.

Keep skirmishers at long range and at flanks and keep an eye on them. The AI loves to charge them because they have so few men and you have to force retreat ASAP or else you'll lose them like you did. If they get caught in melee they will die.

Detach skirmishers (it's a button) from your largest brigades to give you even more options to maneuver and flank and extend your defensive lines with. Skirmishers also have better vision and better cover in open ground.

Like before, you have brigades just sitting out contesting in the open. Furthermore, you sent your largest brigade off to sit in the middle of a field while letting your smaller one sit in a fort and get mauled by a lot of return fire while being outnumbered. You didn't have to contest to the east at all yet (and if you had kept skirmishers alive/detached more you could have stalled even better) and could have been using that brigade the entire time to instead inflict damage in the north. At one point you had them standing in the open field shooting enemy brigade in the forest--almost literally the worst possible situation.

Watch the range on your troops. Your dismounted cavalry skirmishers were getting shot from out of their own range in poor cover, so they were basically taking damage for free. (Again, protect your cavalry, they should basically never be allowed to take return fire if you can at all help it.)

Watch the facing of your troops. It's rarely necessary to prioritize to tell them to shoot at something different, especially if it's to their left or right. Walton brigade wheels right to shoot at the cavalry (caused by poor positioning of your forces) and gives up a flank shot for free to the enemy it was already dueling (and losing to). In general it is far more efficient to use maneuver to effectively force your troops to shoot at what you want instead of constantly queuing attack orders.

Again, protect your artillery. Not only does having them sit at long range not really accomplish much, but as you saw they're vulnerable to being isolated and charged by random brigades if your battle lines aren't strong.

If you capture enemy supply, you can use it to replenish your own troops if you can manage to guide it around the battle lines to your own forces.

Attack or defend in groups, sending brigades off on their own rarely accomplishes much unless they're super elites or something and you really know what you're doing. You had a brigade on its own in the top left pushing an attack while your other nearby one was sitting in the fort secure. Either attack together or let them retreat while you consolidate your defensive position.

(Post battle)

Spend your Career points -before- you buy anything. Actually, first scout the remaining battles and see how brigades you're supposed to bring so you know whether you need to put points into Army Organization or you can take Training/Medicine/whatever. (Ideally take Politics before each grand battle if you can afford to.)

Don't reinforce your first brigades with recruits unless they were deliberately going to be a bulletcatcher brigade. Veterancy to give better skills is crucial later in the campaign. Fighting enemy 3 stars with only 0-1 star brigades is completely awful.

Don't ever use rebored farmers, they're complete junk. Go to armory and sell all of them.

Max size skirmishers is a questionable investment, doubly so with such a bad carbine. If you're going to use dedicated skirmishers, 1-200 men only and with one of the actually good rifles like Sharps.

Max size artillery is also a questionable investment. Better to keep size around 8-12 both for economics and so you can swap them to bigger/better guns more easily.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think you did an excellent job at Bull Run.

You coordinate your men to move in a line and make sure no-one stands alone.

Are you playing on easy difficulty? I think you'd be able to handle it later to go on normal! 

What you should be careful of, is when you make orders for large groups of units, that some of them aren't told to go backwards, which means they will turn their rear on the enemy firing on them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, OlavDeng2 said:

Ep3 is up! Took some of your advice(failed on some of it though :/) and it feels like I did a lot better, still need to improve a lot when it comes to the use of cover though.

Check to see how many brigades you're allowed to have in upcoming battles and spend your Career points in Army Org until you hit that max. I usually like to do that right after a Grand Battle and to check what the next Grand Battle requires. You'll note that you only brought 5/10 brigades to the fight. This generally should be avoided as it indicates you're going to be understrength.

Well, you basically realized, but there was no point in challenging the bridge at that juncture. You would need to cross the bridge and charge into emplaced infantry and superior artillery to do anything. Obviously with hindsight you should have sent your entire force to challenge the ford up north. Also you left a brigade back just sitting doing nothing which isn't ideal. They could have been sitting in the trees to the north and shooting at the skirmishers or even just went all the way around north to flank. Or forced the ford or...well, you get the picture.

Remember, artillery BEHIND infantry, not at the same level as. You don't want your artillery getting directly shot at. :)

Skirmishers, especially with Carbines, really aren't exceptional in melee. You can use them to tie up artillery but without other help they're just going to exhaust themselves and get shot at. You ideally should have had your main infantry moving in at the same time to take advantage of that. If you want melee Skirmishers you can just leave them crap rifles or detach them from your normal infantry brigades.

Surrounding an emplaced brigade is nice but be mindful of who they're shooting. Just sitting in the open trading against them isn't ideal. If you don't have cover for their primary target, even if you're surrounding them it's probably better to just charge and force them off the position.

Would recommend again using pause to give orders more. You're unfortunately hurting yourself by keeping things in real time while giving orders in multiple areas of the battlefield. You saw how you gave orders then weren't able to watch them go off and got a unit of artillery badly shot up because you were messing around with your lines in another part of the battle.

Similarly, at the bridge because you were again playing around in the West, you missed the opportunity to pursue the routing brigades while they couldn't do anything. By the time you looked back, they had recovered and taken the defensive position in the fortifications. You then missed what was happening with your cavalry (routing units aren't vulnerable if cavalry are too far away, they probably took a full volley coming in).

Like before, you still have plenty of brigades just sitting around not doing anything and not deliberately resting. You should be looking to flank or push combat in other areas or contesting good ground and so on.

Units can't charge with 0 Condition. You already exhausted that unit charging them at the artillery and they haven't recovered.

When you get the notification to hold position and advance further, you're still pushing brigades up into open field instead of trying to consolidate around good defensive positions. It works out since you still have such a manpower advantage but normally wouldn't be recommended.

You don't need me to repeat it but you continue to forget about units. Cavalry, you have supply and a couple artillery brigades in the back not doing anything, etc.

Again you started spending money without checking future battles or spending career points. : ( Well, it's less of a big deal since what you did you probably would have done anyway, but still.

Stamina is more useful on your melee squads, not the shooters you gave good rifles too. Should probably pick discipline for them.

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Hitorishizuka said:

Check to see how many brigades you're allowed to have in upcoming battles and spend your Career points in Army Org until you hit that max. I usually like to do that right after a Grand Battle and to check what the next Grand Battle requires. You'll note that you only brought 5/10 brigades to the fight. This generally should be avoided as it indicates you're going to be understrength.

Well, you basically realized, but there was no point in challenging the bridge at that juncture. You would need to cross the bridge and charge into emplaced infantry and superior artillery to do anything. Obviously with hindsight you should have sent your entire force to challenge the ford up north. Also you left a brigade back just sitting doing nothing which isn't ideal. They could have been sitting in the trees to the north and shooting at the skirmishers or even just went all the way around north to flank. Or forced the ford or...well, you get the picture.

Remember, artillery BEHIND infantry, not at the same level as. You don't want your artillery getting directly shot at. :)

Skirmishers, especially with Carbines, really aren't exceptional in melee. You can use them to tie up artillery but without other help they're just going to exhaust themselves and get shot at. You ideally should have had your main infantry moving in at the same time to take advantage of that. If you want melee Skirmishers you can just leave them crap rifles or detach them from your normal infantry brigades.

Surrounding an emplaced brigade is nice but be mindful of who they're shooting. Just sitting in the open trading against them isn't ideal. If you don't have cover for their primary target, even if you're surrounding them it's probably better to just charge and force them off the position.

Would recommend again using pause to give orders more. You're unfortunately hurting yourself by keeping things in real time while giving orders in multiple areas of the battlefield. You saw how you gave orders then weren't able to watch them go off and got a unit of artillery badly shot up because you were messing around with your lines in another part of the battle.

Similarly, at the bridge because you were again playing around in the West, you missed the opportunity to pursue the routing brigades while they couldn't do anything. By the time you looked back, they had recovered and taken the defensive position in the fortifications. You then missed what was happening with your cavalry (routing units aren't vulnerable if cavalry are too far away, they probably took a full volley coming in).

Like before, you still have plenty of brigades just sitting around not doing anything and not deliberately resting. You should be looking to flank or push combat in other areas or contesting good ground and so on.

Units can't charge with 0 Condition. You already exhausted that unit charging them at the artillery and they haven't recovered.

When you get the notification to hold position and advance further, you're still pushing brigades up into open field instead of trying to consolidate around good defensive positions. It works out since you still have such a manpower advantage but normally wouldn't be recommended.

You don't need me to repeat it but you continue to forget about units. Cavalry, you have supply and a couple artillery brigades in the back not doing anything, etc.

Again you started spending money without checking future battles or spending career points. : ( Well, it's less of a big deal since what you did you probably would have done anyway, but still.

Stamina is more useful on your melee squads, not the shooters you gave good rifles too. Should probably pick discipline for them.

 

Yeah, i realised the thing about spending money and career points when i did it :/ I have to say, im a slow learner with this but you sure as hell are helping i think, Thanks man!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Time is hours of in-game time, FYI.

The enemy might not have had tree cover but they still had fields vs your no cover. Thankfully you outnumbered them 3v1 w/ artillery backup but 1v1 would have actually been bad for you there.

re: weird maneuver--units can't side step. If you tell them to move left or right, they need to turn, walk forward, then turn back.

On your flank attack, you left your infantry brigade stuck in low territory instead of pushing them forward into the trees aggressively. At the same time, you can see how your lack of brigades and lack of additional detached skirmishers is leaving you vulnerable on your main side. Plus your cavalry still aren't doing anything (not scouting, not threatening the enemy rear, not safeguarding your flank.) You probably should have had a brigade more in the center of the map controlling the tree line to block off all the skirmishers and cavalry threatening your flank while you went on the looping attack against the VP.

Brigade sitting in the middle of nowhere getting outshot by skirmishers in trees. Given your axis of attack you should have wheeled them right into the tree line and swung the artillery right behind them and changed your 'rear'.

To recover condition, the unit needs to sit still and not be fighting. It can fight and recover condition only if in fortifications.

If you double right click that triggers a charge.

Pressing the attack is useful for giving your units more experience, so long as you're still killing more than you're losing at an acceptable ratio. Remember that the AI doesn't care about its casualties but you do about yours, so you have to trade getting more units killed for getting them experienced. You're Union so you don't care about captured weapons but if you were Confederate you would also use the tail parts of a battle to try and capture more enemy units intact to get their guns. Otherwise, there's no other bonus if you already achieved victory.

K:D of 1 is pretty bad, even on the attack. XD Though you are attacking outnumbered, so it mitigates that a bit.

That's not the charge button, that was the run button.

Oh dear. Not sure why you pre-bought all the good rifles and then gave them to the newly recruited scrubs. They don't deserve better than Springfield 1842 until they have a few battles under their belts...

Nooo. Stamina on dedicated skirmishers is not really that useful.

...and as you saw, pre-buying all those guns when you didn't need to means you're out of money.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Hitorishizuka said:

Time is hours of in-game time, FYI.

The enemy might not have had tree cover but they still had fields vs your no cover. Thankfully you outnumbered them 3v1 w/ artillery backup but 1v1 would have actually been bad for you there.

re: weird maneuver--units can't side step. If you tell them to move left or right, they need to turn, walk forward, then turn back.

On your flank attack, you left your infantry brigade stuck in low territory instead of pushing them forward into the trees aggressively. At the same time, you can see how your lack of brigades and lack of additional detached skirmishers is leaving you vulnerable on your main side. Plus your cavalry still aren't doing anything (not scouting, not threatening the enemy rear, not safeguarding your flank.) You probably should have had a brigade more in the center of the map controlling the tree line to block off all the skirmishers and cavalry threatening your flank while you went on the looping attack against the VP.

Brigade sitting in the middle of nowhere getting outshot by skirmishers in trees. Given your axis of attack you should have wheeled them right into the tree line and swung the artillery right behind them and changed your 'rear'.

To recover condition, the unit needs to sit still and not be fighting. It can fight and recover condition only if in fortifications.

If you double right click that triggers a charge.

Pressing the attack is useful for giving your units more experience, so long as you're still killing more than you're losing at an acceptable ratio. Remember that the AI doesn't care about its casualties but you do about yours, so you have to trade getting more units killed for getting them experienced. You're Union so you don't care about captured weapons but if you were Confederate you would also use the tail parts of a battle to try and capture more enemy units intact to get their guns. Otherwise, there's no other bonus if you already achieved victory.

K:D of 1 is pretty bad, even on the attack. XD Though you are attacking outnumbered, so it mitigates that a bit.

That's not the charge button, that was the run button.

Oh dear. Not sure why you pre-bought all the good rifles and then gave them to the newly recruited scrubs. They don't deserve better than Springfield 1842 until they have a few battles under their belts...

Nooo. Stamina on dedicated skirmishers is not really that useful.

...and as you saw, pre-buying all those guns when you didn't need to means you're out of money.

Ok thanks, well that clears up the time issue. Still fucking up with cover and unit positioning ;-; Cavalry... well im bad with them :/ Im too scared of using them :/

K:D of 1 im proud of since as you clearly see, im shit xD its getting better :P

Oeps... wrong button >.<

Yeah... I fucked up with the money bit...

And regarding the bonuses to units... i think im gonna need to find a proper break down on what type of units should get what since im just too stupid my self :/

 

Again, as usual, thanks for your advice man!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The game has a lot of factors to consider, for sure. I'm totally hooked. (and I see I'm not the only one who came over from Naval Action and didn't play Gettysburg.)

If I'm not mistaken, I think that the cone-shaped line in front of your units indicates their effective range. So when you flank someone, try to get within that range (tell your men to run if they have to), otherwise the enemy will just turn to face your flanking unit and you will not have gotten the most damage while the opportunity lasts.

So in that first video, the skirmishers you had on the ridge could have been told to move a bit closer while the enemy skirmishers were facing your larger unit.

Don't be afraid to use the 'double quick' for brief periods. Obviously you don't want to use it all the time because your men will become exhausted, but sometimes you need that boost of speed for whatever reason. Also, if your units are stopped and you plan to leave them in that spot, leave the double-quick button toggled on, because it also affects the speed at which they turn while remaining in position. This is good for quickly turning to face enemies that might be flanking them.

 

Now, if you learn how to use cavalry effectively without insane losses to your cav units, let me know, lol. Thanks for sharing your videos, I'm learning a lot about the game's mechanics as well.

Edited by ajffighter86
Link to comment
Share on other sites

31 minutes ago, OlavDeng2 said:

And regarding the bonuses to units... i think im gonna need to find a proper break down on what type of units should get what since im just too stupid my self :/

The main thing with Skirmishers is that if you have a dedicated unit, they were probably given expensive rifles and are there to kill things safely from the flanks/slightly behind a friendly unit and out of range of retaliation. They should get the Firearms training bonus at Rank 1 instead. Yes, they technically use Stamina up a lot with all their running around but it's very rare for Skirmishers to actually run completely to 0 given all the breaks they take unless you force melee'd them, which you should almost never do. They're okay with Discipline training but if they're getting shot at, you're not positioning that unit correctly. Skirmishers getting shot at should be the ones getting detached from your bullet catcher brigades instead because they're just there to be annoying and bait rotations of enemy brigades.

26 minutes ago, ajffighter86 said:

Now, if you learn how to use cavalry effectively without insane losses to your cav units, let me know, lol. Thanks for sharing your videos, I'm learning a lot about the game's mechanics as well.

A lot of people seem to have issues so I'll see about putting together a video or something at some point.

tl;dr is no more than outnumbered 1:2 ideally and look for isolated brigades where they won't get shot at by other things while they're in the process of meleeing. And if the combat is drifting back towards something else, pull them back and accept the damage done instead of sticking with it to try and wipe the unit out and risking the cavalry being shot to pieces. Much easier to use two+ brigades in conjunction to quickly chew through a single target -or- to kill two targets semi-isolated and effectively protect each other in the process.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Hitorishizuka said:

 

A lot of people seem to have issues so I'll see about putting together a video or something at some point.

tl;dr is no more than outnumbered 1:2 ideally and look for isolated brigades where they won't get shot at by other things while they're in the process of meleeing. And if the combat is drifting back towards something else, pull them back and accept the damage done instead of sticking with it to try and wipe the unit out and risking the cavalry being shot to pieces. Much easier to use two+ brigades in conjunction to quickly chew through a single target -or- to kill two targets semi-isolated and effectively protect each other in the process.

I'd love for someone to put together a proper tutorial on cavalry. One of my issues is that cavalry seem to go off on their own a bit too easily. Jeb Stuart seems to like taking his men off towards a corner of the map and becoming surrounded, even though I swear I told him to go wait in town. From what I've seen, cavalry requires a ton of micro-managing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh boy. Not sure why you needed all that money. Max size veterans on your most experienced brigades isn't really recommended, kind of a waste. Max size green brigades instead to catch bullets. Also again don't really recommend maxing artillery brigades, even if the player uses them better. (Also specifically for this battle the AI actually has its artillery kind of protected well and it's hard to get to them so you get pounded the whole time.)

Yeah I don't agree with that deployment at all. There isn't a lot of cover on the map so you do want to use that fortification (even if I actually generally don't recommend doing so) because you can use it as bait and then hit the attackers on the flanks.

Uh...yeah. You're setting up a crescent on basically completely open ground and gave up the fortification to the enemy uncontested. At least they insta-routed from the canister. You could have held it without needing to do that, though. The reinforcement and brigade movement timing will basically let your guys back you up before it's an issue of getting overrun.

Cavalry was routing because they got flank shot by the infantry on the right. Not going to have full success when there's another brigade in range to shoot like that. Then when you sent them in again they were too low morale to stay long.

You ignored the south too long. You should have had a brigade down there in the trees to contest that and keep it from being a high casualty open field slugfest, which is disadvantageous to the player.

Shouldn't really use small brigades to charge larger ones, even with morale bonuses. Size really matters in melee.

Pressing the attack with 0 Condition brigades into the teeth of their artillery is probably too bold.

You're going to run into problems later on with meeting minimum brigade requirements if you keep trying to max your old ones instead of letting them fade into smaller elite units. You shouldn't really be going into battle with less than allowed Brigades if you can do something about it. You had space for at least a couple more Brigades in both Corps that you probably should have done something with instead of maxing the old ones.

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry Hitori, I tried many times different strategies for that battle. That strategy was the only thing i managed to do to succeed.
 And yea i messed up at certain points...

in regards to the "elite" units, do you simply reccomend never topping them up or what exactly do you mean?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, OlavDeng2 said:

in regards to the "elite" units, do you simply reccomend never topping them up or what exactly do you mean?

I keep them at some kind of bare minimum size to keep them functional.

Green brigade: Recruit at 2000 (I don't like using 2500), don't refill unless they got crippled and didn't learn anything, then only fill with Rookies

Regular brigade: Transform from Green after a battle and given better rifles, ideally somewhere in 1100-1400 manpower range

Iron brigade: Transform from Regular when experienced enough/attrited low enough, good firearms stat, given best rifles, use Veterans to replenish only to around 800

 

The second thing I do is once I get multiple Corps going, I start stashing 2 star Iron Brigades in Corps I don't use to keep them as a reserve for big Grand Battles and final reinforcement push. This also protects them from taking a lot of casualties early and costing a lot of money to replenish.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey Olav,

solid work at the Crossroads scenario. One of the more difficult scenarios for the Union because it's head on and there's not much opportunities to outflank the AI unlike in many other battles. Good advice by Hitorishizuka, although personally I max out my Infantry brigades as early as possible, at best right after the first battle or before 1st Bull Run (1500, later on 2000 men). It's usually cheaper than doing it later on because they don't have acquired so much experience yet. And resources are usually no problem on normal. As the Union, you have loads of money to get what you wish for and as Confederates you can capture tons of weapons, to equip your army or to sell it.

Edited by RobWheat61
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...