UGCW Feedack v0.74

[Wandering1]

This was as the Union playthrough.

Certain there was no captures on my supply wagons on the first day, because I parked the supply wagons on the last point after the map expanded to Nashville Hill.

I will note that I was playing max-size, meaning every corps has 24 brigades. Only 20 brigades of each corps spawned, as noted as part of the map, so it could have simply been that the game ran out of deployment slots.

Edited January 14, 2017 by Wandering1

[Col_Kelly]

43 minutes ago, Wandering1 said:

This was as the Union playthrough.

Certain there was no captures on my supply wagons on the first day, because I parked the supply wagons on the last point after the map expanded to Nashville Hill.

I will note that I was playing max-size, meaning every corps has 24 brigades. Only 20 brigades of each corps spawned, as noted as part of the map, so it could have simply been that the game ran out of deployment slots.

Could be but I can assure you that leaving the supply wagon far behind doesnt prevent it from being captured with the new patch. AI cavalry is now able to go wide around your lines and capture anything weak and exposed like arty and supplies. Happened to me several times already.

[Wandering1]

1 minute ago, Col_Kelly said:

Could be but I can assure you that leaving the supply wagon far behind doesnt prevent it from being captured with the new patch. AI cavalry is now able to go wide around your lines and capture anything weak and exposed like arty and supplies. Happened to me several times already.

Not a matter of leaving it far behind, but a matter of leaving it surrounded and me losing all of my artillery if they did try to go for the supply wagons.

I'll redo the battle and see if the same issue crops up again.

[Nox165]

Bug report!

found some small but annoying issues:

- battle of Shiloh, historical generals on the battle field are missing their historical names, general of first corps is named first crops and has no actual name.

- battle of Antietam, Burnside and Mansfield are in the wrong positions. Ie if you look historically at the order of battle their positions seem to be reversed.

- fredericksburg - clone units on Confederate side (phase 2) their are two lee Calvary units.

- fredericksburg - J.E.B Stuart is missing in (phase 2)

- fredericksburg - reserve corps cant be selected in the ui in (phase 3), they are on the battlefield but their units are not under a "resever" like longstreets corps is.

 

I feel like I have been reporting the top two issues forever now... dose anyone read the feedback here? lol

[Wandering1]

For Fredericksburg, is there a reason that you can bypass the second phase of Prospect Hill by capturing Marye Heights and Telegraph Hill as the Union?

Just replayed it after the hot-fix to reduce the number of casualties I took overall, but ended up ending the fight way too early by capturing Telegraph Hill. Seems like a new guy trap to skip the second pass at Prospect Hill altogether, when you could probably get more experience continuing to fight at Prospect Hill.

Of note, I did basically annihilate the entire Confederate army. There were just two routing squads fully encircled awaiting surrender, which I imagine I could have ended the map prematurely by wiping out the Confederate army also.

[Wandering1]

Just played through Stones River again. A lot easier with cover working. Didn't quite get to wipe out the entire Confederate Army on the first day, but this at least allowed me to reproduce the missing supply wagons.

Note the supply wagon in the middle of the hill on Day 1 (which none of my supply wagons were taken), and on Day 2, none of the supply wagons are spawned.

[Luckybluemoon]

Additional feedback after latest Update:

1.  Thank you for reinstating cover bonuses, but they seem to be back exactly where they were before the change.  I still recommend them being 50-75% weaker.  Another possibility is that just standing in woods provides 60-755 cover, while the only time you get 100% is in entrenchments, towns, or very very heavy woods.

2.  Concerning entrenchments.  they seem to have been beefed up quite a bit, especially the Stone walls on Maryes Heights.  However, there appears to be no flanking bonuses for Walls now.  I had a confederate Brigade of  1000 surrounded by 10 union brigades, on all points of the compass.  Yet no matter what direction I came from, the confeds enjoyed their deep fortifications. So I charged them all at once.  From every point on the compass. 10 - 1 odds.  and all my brigades were fought off entirely in melee.  And the enemy brigade only took 200 casualties.  Way way overpowered.

Thanks for listening!  Keep up the good work!

[Hitorishizuka]

Stones River down as Union. Poor, poor Confederates. I even brought my offensive army, not my defensive one based on the initial map briefing. Well, that probably worked out fine anyway.

Minimum size, so the CSA only had a mass of 800 man 3 star brigades. Repulsed the initial assault hard with 2500 man brigades sitting in the trees backed by 24pdr Napoleons with only a token force at the north flag. Mildly annoyed that I eventually lost a gun or two simply because the trees aren't deep enough to have artillery behind and in the trees still to stealth them so the enemy arty get shots on them. Started shifting forces into the center trees more while a couple big brigades sallied out to start rolling the entire right flank on their own.

Day 1 Phase 1 ended with them only having a few thousand troops left on the field after starting with a sizable troop lead. They had a small local advantage in the north because I was a little slow moving my south forces up there but not a big deal.

Phase 2 starts and the Union autoplaced troops badly needs to be revisited. The troops right around the VP in the far north are fine but the troops around where the former north VP are are stupid. It's an area you're already fighting in, so troops literally get dropped right on top of existing troops. Further, it placed my artillery brigade from that division right in the front in the open and within firing range of an enemy brigade already so I lost a gun from that brigade for free. Really dumb.

Eventually my south forces made it into the center and cut their staging forces to pieces before they could really get into the north. Then I swung east and then around and continued rolling the entire right flank, taking out the emplaced troops in the fortifications from behind.

Phase 3 starts while I'm finishing up down there. I didn't know where they were coming from so I left my elite undersized brigades around the left VP and watching the northern river crossing. As the artillery starts coming in across the river and nothing happens in the SW, I realize they're all to the NE. I rush half my southern brigades up to guard the river crossing and all my artillery, then the other half goes with the cavalry to the eastern crossing to sweep the entire bank. CSA gets blocked on the crossing where they're slow and have no cover and bad shooting and so gets indecisive and just sits on the opposite bank. Eventually watching the timer I realize my exhausted bank sweep isn't quite going to get there so I press the attack from the northern side and eliminate all the bottled up forces (with slightly more casualties than I'd like to my cavalry from forcing the attack faster) and end the day early.

re: supply. I Corps spawned at the start, II Corps supply spawned at the start of Phase 2 with the other troops, III Corps supply did not spawn.

Day 2 starts. III Corps supply is across the river but I and II Corps supply doesn't exist. Rather strange. Either way, played it mostly conservative since I didn't know if the enemy had a bunch more surprises. Nope, they just started with their last forces all on the field already (1/3 of my remaining force). I slowplayed it and didn't wipe them out but knowing that they didn't have anything else coming, I'm pretty sure I could have.

Hit camp...rather weird now to see that Harper's Ferry isn't available any more in the store. 1861s are available finally, at least, but only enough to swap a brigade or two compared to the bounty of Harper's Ferry I've been sitting on that I'm now going to have to ration since it seems I won't get more.

---

Other general feedback:

20pdr Parrots still grossly underperforming compared to 24pdr Napoleons. Granted the brigade that I had them on was less experienced but it had just as much opportunity to shoot targets and still basically did nothing with the opportunity. Still not sure what the issue is with these guys for their cost.

Still can't combine more than 2 brigades together into a super division, even though they're 3 groups of 800. The button just stays grayed out. Not sure what I'm doing wrong there compared to other people that report that they can do it.

[GeneralPITA]

Hitori have you tried pressing Y instead? Might help. 

[Hitorishizuka]

12 minutes ago, GeneralPITA said:

Hitori have you tried pressing Y instead? Might help. 

No effect.

 

 

[GeneralPITA]

You have to join them one at a time and add brigades to the superbrigade. You selected the whole division. 

[Hitorishizuka]

Just now, GeneralPITA said:

You have to join them one at a time and add brigades to the superbrigade. You selected the whole division. 

That doesn't work either. Don't feel like booting it up again, but take my word for it. The superbrigade won't combine with the third division either.

[Hitorishizuka]

Also @Nick Thomadis just noticed the thread title is misspelled. ;X

[Nox165]

Stones river bug and option.

Tried to combine two confederate brigades together and got.... this name.... SouthSR_Harde_Corps_mccownDivsion_division_name

 

Darth, the new format of breaking brigades into regiments is fine, HOWEVER, Please make it so when we scroll over those units we can see info on which brigade the unit belows too. Heres how I would change it right now for example its Hardee corps - cleburne ( which is tells us, the corps commander, division they are part of but no brigade info.) Please change it to Hardee, D2, brigade name ( tells us who the corps command is, tells us the divsion, tell us what brigade this unit belongs too.)

 

Ie change

Hardee corps - cleburne to Hardee, Div2, brigade name

[Aetius]

Scenario-breaking bug in Ambush Convoy (Confederates), start at 11:30 - unable to retake the supply wagons. I F11'd it as well:

Also note the 2000-man captured unit in the lower left of the video screenshot - I double-checked, and I did not receive their weapons at the end of the scenario. I'm not sure if that's an actual bug, a function of Legendary difficulty, because I routed them off the map, or because the scenario ended in a draw.

[RoverGrover]

7 hours ago, Hitorishizuka said:

Phase 2 starts and the Union autoplaced troops badly needs to be revisited. The troops right around the VP in the far north are fine but the troops around where the former north VP are are stupid. It's an area you're already fighting in, so troops literally get dropped right on top of existing troops. Further, it placed my artillery brigade from that division right in the front in the open and within firing range of an enemy brigade already so I lost a gun from that brigade for free. Really dumb.

Would like to echo this, though I was luckier and my 24lbers appeared with the correct timing/placement to instantly start routing the nearby enemy forces at will.

[RookCW]

Is the ability to change our avatar going to be something we can look forward to?

[Wandering1]

Wow, such a large difference going min-size to max size makes on enemy army size.

Thanks to Hitori though, it looks like I've uncovered another little minor bug in the history display. Notice how the gun display is missing the gun count for CSA on Stones River, while it is missing the gun count for CSA and the crew count on the Union at Fredericksburg.

 

[Wandering1]

@Hitorishizuka

Among other things, how many brigades did you have in I Corps and II Corps?

I suspect again, since it just takes some selection of 20 brigades (I noticed that I had fresh squads on Day 2, without messing with the Army organization), that for whatever reason, the supply corps may not be included in the selection.

[Aetius]

I'm up to Gaines' Mill in my Legendary playthrough, and the only artillery I've captured for the last several scenarios has been 20pd Parrot guns. It seems that on Legendary, the Union artillery from 1862 onwards is composed entirely of 20pd Parrot guns. While I'm grateful for the reprieve since they are still pretty ineffective, it seems like there should be more variety. I would suggest larger numbers of guns, and some AI tuning to reduce fire at extreme range that is ineffective.

Edited January 15, 2017 by Aetius

[Hitorishizuka]

1 hour ago, Wandering1 said:

@Hitorishizuka

Among other things, how many brigades did you have in I Corps and II Corps?

I suspect again, since it just takes some selection of 20 brigades (I noticed that I had fresh squads on Day 2, without messing with the Army organization), that for whatever reason, the supply corps may not be included in the selection.

20 in both I and II Corps, 1 (skirmishers) in III Corps solely for supply purposes. Parts of II Corps's 4th Div might not show up until Day 2, I'd have to take a closer look. Also what was interesting was that III Corps' General showed up by himself (no supply, no troops) at some point in Phase 1 or 2, so that was a thing.

4 minutes ago, Aetius said:

I'm up to Gaines' Mill in my Legendary playthrough, and the only artillery I've captured for the last several scenarios has been 20pd Parrot guns. It seems that on Legendary, the Union artillery from 1862 onwards is composed entirely of 20pd Parrot guns. While I'm grateful for the reprieve since they are still pretty ineffective, it seems like there should be more variety. I would suggest larger numbers of guns, and some AI tuning to reduce fire at extreme range that is ineffective.

In both playthroughs recently on Normal I've only captured 14pdr James, which amusingly are also rather ineffective.

Edited January 15, 2017 by Hitorishizuka

[Aetius]

2 hours ago, Wandering1 said:

Thanks to Hitori though, it looks like I've uncovered another little minor bug in the history display. Notice how the gun display is missing the gun count for CSA on Stones River, while it is missing the gun count for CSA and the crew count on the Union at Fredericksburg.

Yep, I've bugged that one and a few others (ranks on the disband dialog is especially bad). I think whatever they use to display their text decides what to display in a space delimited fashion. For example, if the field limit is eight characters, "123 56789" will display as "123", "1234567 9" will display as "1234567", and "123456789" won't display at all.

[vren55]

Stones river is impossible on CSA for me. I brought 2 corps of 35k, all 1-2 star veterans, along with 63 guns, but the position at Nashville Pike is just far too beefy for my tired brigades to storm. If I tried flanking, I would have likely gotten the same result as they have earthworks. 

 

Granted I may have messed up earlier in the confederate campaign as I took a godawful amount of losses on Antietam due to being outnumbered so badly. (around 40K confedrates vs 100K union) but if this is minimum size of Union there's simply no way for the confederates to beat this. 

[Hitorishizuka]

3 minutes ago, vren55 said:

Stones river is impossible on CSA for me. I brought 2 corps of 35k, all 1-2 star veterans, along with 63 guns, but the position at Nashville Pike is just far too beefy for my tired brigades to storm. If I tried flanking, I would have likely gotten the same result as they have earthworks. 

 

Granted I may have messed up earlier in the confederate campaign as I took a godawful amount of losses on Antietam due to being outnumbered so badly. (around 40K confedrates vs 100K union) but if this is minimum size of Union there's simply no way for the confederates to beat this. 

I haven't seen it from CSA side yet, but assuming Phase 1 is the same, push hard in the center and split the two VPs. That should let you pocket off the forces to the south entirely and be dealing with a lot less troops once you eliminate them. That also puts you into position to get behind on the left side and then prevent the northern troops from also retreating to the final VPs by cutting off their angle of retreat and pinning them against the river and your blocking forces. You should be dealing with a lot less troops by the time you hit the pike. Basically, don't repeat the mistakes that Bragg made of letting his forces peter out as the Union retreats in good order and tightens their lines until the Pike. You need to eliminate forces entirely and not let them retreat.

[Aetius]

Ran into an artillery unit AI issue today playing Antietam (my Union cavalry horde campaign, not the Legendary Ironman). The Confederate reinforcements that approached from the southwest towards Dunker Church led with their artillery unit, even after spotting infantry in the woods in front of them. Predictably, it was entirely destroyed in the first volley by the three brigades waiting in the trees.

I bugged an issue with giving orders at the division level. A division with five cavalry or five infantry will inexplicably send the fifth unit way off to the side when given orders as a group, instead of making a continuous line.

The AI apparently has trouble when being attacked by three or more cavalry skirmishers, and appears to stop shooting entirely while the cavalry rotate in and out, blasting away.

I bugged an issue with cavalry charges as well. Small brigades occupy only a portion of a fortification, and if you charge from the other side, the charging cavalry heads to the unit's flag ... which is over the middle, empty portion of the fortification. When they get there, they just stop and do nothing. If you order them to attack the unit, they will just stand there - they believe they are in the middle of the enemy force, but they aren't actually engaged. I suspect this could be exploited with skirmishers as well.