Victory or Defeat?

[James Cornelius]

Hello all,

 

I am curious as to what seems to be the community experience with victory and defeat and what seems to be the catalyst in each scenario. It seems like it might be somewhat arbitrary. I played the Union campaign first. I found Shiloh unbeatable, but it was due to not realizing that Army Organization needed to be maxed as much as possible - I had assumed until that point that like First Bull Run, my corps would make up just a part of the army. When I restarted, and put points towards organization and went to Shiloh with two small corps, I was able to win. From then on, despite what I considered close calls, I did not lose a battle. By the time I reached Antietam, I had eight divisions in three corps and by the end of the battle was able to completely rout the Confederate Army.

 

I did the same for the Confederate campaign, but found by the time I reached Antietam I had clearly not done as well in minimizing casualties, as I had only six divisions in the three corps. I hoped this would be adequate (especially since while I had fewer divisions than historically, I did have more total men (41k vs 38k, and the North had slightly fewer (81k vs 87k).

 

In the battle, I did not even attempt to hold Nicodemus Hill, and was forced to abandon Dunker Church because I was being flanked as long as I held it. You can see from the final results of the battle in the attached screenshot I held all other objectives and inflicted just shy of twice as many casualties as I sustained. So, I was surprised when I was defeated. I could have at least understood a draw.

 

So it would seem that my failure to hold Dunker Church caused me to be defeated. What would have happened had I held it? A draw or a victory? Holding three out of four of the strategic points on the final map would, in my view, count as a victory taken with the lopsided casualty count, but even if it did not, should it not then be a draw rather than outright defeat?

 

Has anyone else experienced this? I welcome other thoughts.

[RobWheat61]

When you click on the icon on the right upper corner, you can see the victory condition of the specific battle. At Antietam you have to hold Dunker Church, Sunken Road and Sharpsburg, so basically, your left flank, centre and Sharpsburg, which covers (historically) your only route of retreat. For a draw, you have to hold Sharpsburg and lose less than half your army.

Edited December 13, 2016 by RobWheat61

[Andre Bolkonsky]

Agree with OP. At the Crossroads prior to Shiloh, my Union army dug in and shattered the Confederate army. However, they would not surrender even when I pushed brigades out and began destroying each enemy brigade I could find cowering on the edge of the map. Needs to be tweaked, at the least. 

[Tomakaze]

I felt that I played the battles fairly well (all victories and a few draws), but by the time I reached Antietam, I was in a similar situation as you.  By the end, I had inflicted similar casualties but shattered and only held sharpsburg.  My problem was that I realized I physically did not have the ammunition to fend off Union.  I am playing on hard difficulty, but the way the odds stack up, I would rather just admit defeat and preserve my army, or fight a scaled down version.  In previous battles I absolutely annihilated the Union, but each new battle, they show up with greater numbers and better vetted brigades.  It seems simply undoable, unless there is some secret formula for success. I think the game does not reward the CSA enough for a successful early campaign.  It feels strangely similar to the realistic outcome tho with a early Confederate success followed by eventual defeat to a greater Union. 

[Hitorishizuka]

1 hour ago, Tomakaze said:

My problem was that I realized I physically did not have the ammunition to fend off Union.

Bring less troops/invest more points into the Logistics skill. It's a design flaw with auto-AI scaling right now combined with capped Supply.

[James Cornelius]

16 hours ago, RobWheat61 said:

When you click on the icon on the right upper corner, you can see the victory condition of the specific battle. At Antietam you have to hold Dunker Church, Sunken Road and Sharpsburg, so basically, your left flank, centre and Sharpsburg, which covers (historically) your only route of retreat. For a draw, you have to hold Sharpsburg and lose less than half your army.

I get that. My point is that shouldn't what I did accomplish result in a draw? I did not hold the entirety of my left flank but did hold the right and the center as well as my escape route. 

[Koro]

12 hours ago, Hitorishizuka said:

Bring less troops/invest more points into the Logistics skill. It's a design flaw with auto-AI scaling right now combined with capped Supply.

It's simply a matter of putting your cannons on hold fire when they don't have anything to shoot at. They are the ones really burning ammo and a lot of time, they don't do any real damage and certainly not enough to justify their supply consumption.

Just putting all cannons on hold fire in the first stage of Malvern HIll allowed me to use only 1 supply wagon of 25.000 where before, I used 2 and ran out still.

My cannons did run out with about 30 mins. left of game time but I didn't feel like wasting any more supplies on them.

It's that simple :).

You can get through most battles, using surprisingly small amounts of supply just by playing it a bit carefully.

In my FAQ I got over it a bit more:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=810140368

 

[Hitorishizuka]

I assure you it's not "that simple". I was doing just that on 2nd Bull Run Day 1 but the enemy count gets high enough that they were literally in close range of my artillery for basically the entire time.

[Koro]

41 minutes ago, Hitorishizuka said:

I assure you it's not "that simple". I was doing just that on 2nd Bull Run Day 1 but the enemy count gets high enough that they were literally in close range of my artillery for basically the entire time.

Well, then you and I are playing very differently I suppose :). I have never even been close to running out of ammunition at 2nd bull run or any battle for that matter when I started to employ this.

[Hitorishizuka]

12 minutes ago, Koro said:

Well, then you and I are playing very differently I suppose :). I have never even been close to running out of ammunition at 2nd bull run or any battle for that matter when I started to employ this.

Union had 74k to my 46k at 2nd Bull Run, there's just too many guys. It's constant shooting once the Day 1 fighting starts in earnest across the entire line.

[michaelsmithern]

25 minutes ago, Hitorishizuka said:

Union had 74k to my 46k at 2nd Bull Run, there's just too many guys. It's constant shooting once the Day 1 fighting starts in earnest across the entire line.

I wanna see a Union player have 100k troops at a battle so the AI will scale their force to higher than the number of troops in the theater

[James Cornelius]

I didn't know about the box up in the corner to check the requirements. I played through again and while I did better, it was still the same result - unable to hold Dunker's Church but held every where else (barely). Perhaps I might try one more time and rearrange the corps on the left to be slightly stronger than currently. Casualties were higher this last time too by about 2000 on each side.

 

As I stated elsewhere, this is the first battle I haven't been able to win on the first try since the first time I reached Shiloh in my union campaign. I might just need to restart the Confederate campaign and husband my resources a little better.

 

Edited December 14, 2016 by James Cornelius
addition

[Koro]

Just now, James Cornelius said:

I didn't know about the box up in the corner to check the requirements. I played through again and while I did better, it was still the same result - unable to hold Dunker's Church but held every where else (barely). Perhaps I might try one more time and rearrange the corps on the left to be slightly stronger than currently. Casualties were higher this last time too by about 2000 on each side.

You usually want to try and copy Lee by having a strong force to the north and a taken force in the South. 

That way you can destroy the offensive capability of the northern union forces and then shift troops south towards the sunken road ans eventually to Sharpsburg 

[James Cornelius]

Just now, Koro said:

You usually want to try and copy Lee by having a strong force to the north and a taken force in the South. 

That way you can destroy the offensive capability of the northern union forces and then shift troops south towards the sunken road ans eventually to Sharpsburg 

Indeed. I had already done that in my initial dispositions, putting my weakest corps in the south that only had about 5 brigades in it. The two corps in the north - the one in the Sunken Road and the one around Dunker's Church were equal in numerical strength but the center troops were the most elite. I will definitely try a couple different things to juggle it and see if I can do a little better.

[James Cornelius]

I tried playing the historical battle for the first time as the Confederates, and while it did go better for me I noticed something and I'm curious if others have seen the same.

 

As long as Dunker Church is held by the Confederates, the Union ignores the Sunken Road. The entire northern attack focused entirely on the woods. In this playthrough, I lost Dunker Church about an hour (game time) before the end, and even when the battle finished the Union was still adjusting their lines and holding the church - they never even attempted to assault the road.

 

I also noted that in the historical battle, few of the Union brigades were more than one-star of experience. In my campaign, nearly all were three-star.

 

Elsewhere, things went as normal, though I while I was more successful in holding ground at the church, I was less so at holding Burnside's Bridge, which I completely lost.

 

Apart from the oddity of ignoring the road, I guess it's back to the drawing board.

Edited December 15, 2016 by James Cornelius

[RobWheat61]

On 14.12.2016 at 4:13 AM, Hitorishizuka said:

Bring less troops/invest more points into the Logistics skill. It's a design flaw with auto-AI scaling right now combined with capped Supply.

There is absolutely no design flaw involved, be it with supplies or scaling, IMO. I am in my third EA campaign now and the only instance I ran out of ammuntion, was as Confederates at Antietam in the last 20 minutes with 2 infantry brigades at the northern edge of the map. Unfortunately my supply wagon was at the middle bridge. But no harm done, because the battle was almost over.

[Kloiste]

On 15/12/2016 at 7:18 AM, James Cornelius said:

As long as Dunker Church is held by the Confederates, the Union ignores the Sunken Road. The entire northern attack focused entirely on the woods. In this playthrough, I lost Dunker Church about an hour (game time) before the end, and even when the battle finished the Union was still adjusting their lines and holding the church - they never even attempted to assault the road.

I don't think that's necessarily true based on my own experience with the battle a few days ago. The corps that started north did attack Dunker Church, but after I pretty much bled that Corps dry, the reinforcements from the East and South focused exclusively on Sunken road despite me holding Dunker Church, and all their remaining divisions in the north pretty much ignored the Church and marched south along the river and joined into the attack on Sunken Road, and the last 20 minutes of the battle consisted of the AI trying to drive a wedge between my forces in the city and at the Church by just massing infantry over again and again at Sunken Road.

If you look at the minimap below you will notice despite owning the Church, all their units rerouted to the right to middle to attack Sunken Road, there were 0 divisions up North, I had to constant move units down from the Church because I thought it was a feint once I realized they had pretty much abandoned attempting to attack through the North.

Edited December 16, 2016 by Kloiste
Forgot to reference the minimap

[Hitorishizuka]

9 hours ago, RobWheat61 said:

There is absolutely no design flaw involved, be it with supplies or scaling, IMO. I am in my third EA campaign now and the only instance I ran out of ammuntion, was as Confederates at Antietam in the last 20 minutes with 2 infantry brigades at the northern edge of the map. Unfortunately my supply wagon was at the middle bridge. But no harm done, because the battle was almost over.

This is kind of a meaningless statement without saying more about how you are playing the campaign. The situation described affects max AO with large brigades on battles where the AI is intended to outnumber you.

[MikeK]

Has anyone notices how quickly units resupply from a supply wagon in range as it travels by? It's hard to see this when too much is going on - keep getting distracted by combat.