suggestion: army organization unlocks need re-arranging

[ajffighter86]

Not sure if this has been brought up, but, I think army organization needs to be re-worked a bit.

For the first few battles, you pretty much have to dump all of your career points into 'organization' or else by the 3rd or 4th battle you will find yourself simply not having enough brigades to max out your allowed army size for the battles.

However, you unlock the ability to have a 2nd corps very early even with low points in organization. To me, this is absolutely useless, since you are only allowed to send one corps into a battle for the first few missions in a campaign. (unless I am missing something, if someone knows how to select the 2nd corps to send into battle, PLEASE TELL ME, lol).

I think army organization unlocks need to be re-arranged so that you add more brigades FIRST, and then unlock additional corps. This will allow you to get the most use out of your corps and not have one corps sitting back at home while the men in the other corps are out getting all the glory (or punishment, lol).

{Hopefully that's not too confusing, but surely I'm not the only one who is frustrated because the process of expanding your army doesn't seem to match gameplay progression)

For example, I'm playing as the confederacy and I have to do a "stay alert" mission that allows 10 brigades. I have about a dozen brigades but I've had to put them into two corps and I can't even take the 2nd corps into battle. If the organization progressed so that brigades could be added to the 1st corps before that 2nd corps becomes available, then I'd be closer to full fighting strength by this point in the game.

It's not a huge deal as it is, but it pretty much makes putting career points into army organization mandatory, even early in the game.

 

Edited December 11, 2016 by ajffighter86

[Hitorishizuka]

Army Org in general is in a weird spot, as talked about elsewhere wrt to AI Scaling. If you don't have a certain mandated amount based on each Grand Battle you're going to be in big trouble, but if you have over that amount it doesn't actually do you any good. Feels very much just like a Career points tax.

FWIW, you can use that 2nd Corps as a stash early so you know exactly which Brigades you're bringing to which battle and don't have to guess if the battle is one where you get a deployment zone and can pick or it's one where you automatically were given a few of your units. Also useful for changing your comp around if you have too much artillery on an offense mission or something of the nature.

[Koro]

Career point tax.. Haha :). But yes, that's what they are. For the confederates, the 2. Corps probably shouldn't unlock until after shiloh but then a player might run out if space not not keep building his army.. For the union, it is more lenient, as they can bring two corps in each grand battle from the start. 

[Andre Bolkonsky]

2 hours ago, Hitorishizuka said:

Army Org in general is in a weird spot, as talked about elsewhere wrt to AI Scaling. If you don't have a certain mandated amount based on each Grand Battle you're going to be in big trouble, but if you have over that amount it doesn't actually do you any good. Feels very much just like a Career points tax.

FWIW, you can use that 2nd Corps as a stash early so you know exactly which Brigades you're bringing to which battle and don't have to guess if the battle is one where you get a deployment zone and can pick or it's one where you automatically were given a few of your units. Also useful for changing your comp around if you have too much artillery on an offense mission or something of the nature.

That . . . is a good idea. Use the second corps as a stash and cherry pick the brigades I want and the order I want them in. 

[RobWheat61]

For The Confederates 4 points in Army Organization at Shiloh is necessary, for the Union, 5 is better, in my experience. So you have still some points to spend depending on the choices you make, when you start your campaign.

Overall I think Army Organization is a good feature. I like it very much. Historically, the Union had only a small professional army and officer corps before the war and the civil war armies on both sides were mostly volunteer forces. So the organizational structure, which could effectively handle large bodies of troops had to be developed first and authorized by the governments and legislative bodies of both nations.

Edited December 11, 2016 by RobWheat61

[P-Dup]

I second OP, +1

[Grognard_JC]

All in all, Army Organization isn't worth the spending because of army scaling. I tested it to be sure. So something needs to be done about it (and Reco as well)

[ajffighter86]

10 hours ago, RobWheat61 said:

For The Confederates 4 points in Army Organization at Shiloh is necessary, for the Union, 5 is better, in my experience. So you have still some points to spend depending on the choices you make, when you start your campaign.

Overall I think Army Organization is a good feature. I like it very much. Historically, the Union had only a small professional army and officer corps before the war and the civil war armies on both sides were mostly volunteer forces. So the organizational structure, which could effectively handle large bodies of troops had to be developed first and authorized by the governments and legislative bodies of both nations.

Yep. I learned that the hard way on the first playthrough. As stated elsewhere, the game seems to force you to try to build up the biggest army you can (not exactly realistic for a confederate campaign, and I think there's another thread where someone mentioned that as well), so while you have the RPG element of spending career points as you see fit, in truth, you'd better just dump them all into organization because the rest of them are simply not important by comparison.

I would be happier if they would increase the starting cap on the number of brigades and divisions, but limit the size of each brigade to maybe 1,000 men. I don't know how that would play out but I think it would be worth testing.

Edited December 12, 2016 by ajffighter86

[RobWheat61]

On 12.12.2016 at 1:15 AM, ajffighter86 said:

Yep. I learned that the hard way on the first playthrough. As stated elsewhere, the game seems to force you to try to build up the biggest army you can (not exactly realistic for a confederate campaign, and I think there's another thread where someone mentioned that as well), so while you have the RPG element of spending career points as you see fit, in truth, s you'd better just dump them all into organization because the rest of them areimply not important by comparison.

I would be happier if they would increase the starting cap on the number of brigades and divisions, but limit the size of each brigade to maybe 1,000 men. I don't know how that would play out but I think it would be worth testing.

That's absolutely not true. You may be able to create a big army with many units, if you put everything into AO, but you still need enough weapons and the money to buy them. Furthermore, you only need 6 points in army organization, if you want to win at Antietam (end of the EA campaign) comfortably no matter which side you play. I had about 75000 men in my CSA campaign (6 points in AO) at Antietam and there was still room for more units, but I didn't have the manpower. That seems to me more than enough to get through the rest of the campaign, when the game is completed in a couple of months.

Edited December 13, 2016 by RobWheat61