Union difficulty issues.

[killjoy1941]

I fairly feel this is something of an issue, and while it's very late in the general development iteration, I consider it to be a bit of a problem. It's not AI or general difficulty, or anything else, it's basic campaign difficulty.

To wit: One of the great joys of the game is army construction: I build brigades to accomplish certain tasks. I build divisions to suit the national flavor, then corps to suit command flavor, and so on... Very soon, I have an army. The problem is very specifically this: The Union in particular and the Confederacy in lesser significance, is forced into either a weapons program (Colonel, Brigadier General) or a total force preservation program (Major General, Legendary) by simple objective player intervention. I strongly feel that any player who has spent significant time with the game will, as a matter of course, be able to beat the game on lesser difficulties. That said, a means of retaining some (potentially small number of) players is entirely missing: There is no intermediate difficulty between Brigadier and Major General. 

Why such a game mode should not exist: Under the existing system, players are forced to choose between casualties inflicted upon the enemy and casualties inflicted upon their own men. Force Preservation becomes a dominant need. Army management becomes the primary driver of campaigns. Player ability, obviously including force wipes and force preservation, are key. Management is a crucial skill.

Why such a game mode should exist:  Players who wish to expand upon army tactics are left hanging with nothing. Any AI can be overcome, including this one. Far better to allow the player to create an army than to restrict their army builds out of a misplaced sense of a need for difficulty.

This is my request: If it be possible, in a simple way, to create a campaign difficulty between Major General and Brigadier General by simply applying the detriments of Major General with the simplicity of Brigadier General, I would love it to be done. (i.e.: Simply provide the Major General AI bonus modifiers to Brigadier General, but no malus modifiers to the player).

I think providing that particular check-box, just as Legendary does on the Brigadier difficulty, would put paid to a majority of the army wipe strategies we see and make cavalry as well as skirmishers more important over time.

Edited December 17, 2017 by killjoy1941

[LAVA]

Welcome to the forums.

Just as some background... I have won the Brigadier General Union campaign, failed the Legendary campaign, played about a third of the Major General campaign and am now back to playing the Legendary campaign. My last battle was at Logan's Crossroads and my next is Shiloh.

In my experience playing the Union campaigns I was rather taken back by the difference in play between BG and Legendary. But as I look back, that shouldn't be so startling because in fact my experience was only playing a single campaign on BG difficulty. While lots of folks find that campaign to be quite difficult and indeed it is pretty difficult, in fact, in hindsight, I believe it is quite forgiving in many ways. Thus, once you grasp the basic concepts that are needed to win the campaign, it allows you to go off on many different directions and reinforces your own beliefs that you have mastered game play when in fact, you haven't.

From my experiences I have drastically changed the way I play the Union. While I agree that army management is a crucial skill at the Legendary level, on the battlefield, force preservation is not, IMO, the dominant need, in fact, although I am still in the early stages of my second Legendary campaign, neither is force wipes. What is necessary is creating a balanced army which has the ability, endurance and skill to fight and win.

When you first encounter the Confederates on Legendary (and even on MG but to a lesser extent), what you are going to see is a far more aggressive AI opponent with higher skills in contrast to the forces you bring to the battle. Your challenge, just as in BG, is to not only to defeat that enemy but to do so on a considerably favorable casualty ratio somewhere in the realm of close to 3 to 1 and you must do this with fewer rewards in gold, recruits and weapons. While in BG you could send cavalry behind the enemy lines and steal the Confederates supply wagons, on Legendary supply wagons should be viewed as bait to lure you to a position where your forces will take a lot of losses... for nothing. While in BG, you can take your best units, engage and destroy your opponent and allow your recruit units to steadily gain experience, on Legendary the AI will push to engage your entire force and annihilate raw recruits. While once you could rout the Confederates off the field on certain critical areas of the battlefield now you will find an opponent who will regain their cohesion and fight until almost the last man.

In sum, on Legendary, as far as I can tell, your job (as I have said before) is to create a balanced army with a firm anchor of very good artillery units. You need patience on the battlefield and time your attacks. You have to be very deliberate in your movements making sure that your infantry is always supported by your artillery and that you have reserves if possible to plug the line when one of your units routs. You have to concentrate fire on crucial parts of the battlefield and whittle down your opponent. And then when he is weak... you strike... but with your entire force in a very deliberate manner.

So there is a huge difference when you move from BG level up to any higher difficulty level and IMO, you have to become a better general. And as you become a better general, you will appreciate just how cool it is to be able to take on that challenge and win.

[killjoy1941]

I 100% agree, and also disagree with your primary thesis.

Thus: Both Union and Confederate campaigns become a resource management system if one turns the difficulty too high, and I dislike that as an idea for all but the very top difficulty (Legendary, in this case).

I simply think the game would be best served by an intermediary difficulty which wouldn't be so bound to either force preservation or weapon upgrade potential.That might, perhaps, be something for a future game, but it's a simple enough implementation that it could see its way into this game, and not only do I dearly love this game, it's very likely to be the only tactical/strategic ACW game for the next several years to come.

Thus, I have desires and concerns, and you might say I'm invested as a player. 

Edited December 17, 2017 by killjoy1941

[killjoy1941]

To further the point, I challenge any player to come forward who has not built his/her army to specifically withstand the casualties they absolutely know they'll face in future battles, and furthermore, to refrain from wiping enemy forces in minor or specific major battles - I doubt it can be done.

If it can be done, I challenge such a player to demonstrate their system to be free of exploits.

What's the point of this? Again, to demonstrate that army organization begins to fail in favor of army optimization at higher difficulties. and that intermediate difficulties would absolutely "fix" the issue.

[LAVA]

I believe that Major General is an intermediate difficulty setting to Legendary. It is at this level that you find out a lot of your preconceptions are incorrect.

Note, I did not say that wiping out enemy forces was not important, merely that they are not as important as building a balanced army. And no, I don't build my army to withstand expected losses, I build my army to bring me victory with as few losses as possible.

Just being curious... what do you consider to be exploits?

[Mukremin]

40 minutes ago, LAVA said:

I believe that Major General is an intermediate difficulty setting to Legendary. It is at this level that you find out a lot of your preconceptions are incorrect.

Note, I did not say that wiping out enemy forces was not important, merely that they are not as important as building a balanced army. And no, I don't build my army to withstand expected losses, I build my army to bring me victory with as few losses as possible.

Just being curious... what do you consider to be exploits?

I prefer that too, a balanced army that can bring you victory with few losses. And when a chance occurs i go for the wipe out tactic.

Does it have a effect on future battles when you wipe out enemies? If yes maybe that would count as an exploit if it is easy to do? On easy mode maybe, but certainly not on Legendary and Brigade mode when watching the videos.

[killjoy1941]

You're considering my 'preconceptions' to inform my play, which they do not. I've been playing since March.

I can absolutely build a balanced army; please read what I write. The problem, and I'm absolutely not the only one who can have noticed this, is the way armies are built post-Shiloh. On higher difficulties, you're forced to consider your absolute strength in every single battle. Thus, at higher difficulties, you're managing army strength as the primary end goal.

At lower difficulties, you're absolutely emphasizing tech over skill. You're 100% promoting weapons over people every single time, because it's cheap and efficient. Thus, at lower difficulty levels, you get technologically superior armies. At higher difficulty levels, you get higher veterancy.

Here's the problem restated: At mid difficulty, you get two things... 1) a high veterancy, poorly equipped Confederate army, or a low veterancy, well-equipped Confederate army. Neither is bad. The real problem is the Union. At mid difficulty, you get a severely boring and ahistorical  Union with a few good weapons and a few decent veteran units.

In addition, if you select a difficulty higher than Brigadier General, you absolutely have to choose between higher veterancy or contemporary weapons. It's absurd. The Confederate campaign is pretty well served by Brigadier difficulty - it's just plain sensible. The Union campaign would be similarly served by a Brigadier+ campaign. I think it would be fun to build an actual army as the Union. I shouldn't be concerned with equipment or training. That's 100% it - you're making an issue out of nothing. I can win legendary either side - it's boring because it's symmetrical. If the devs see this and decide they need an intermediate campaign, then so be it. If they don't, then so be it.

I simply want them to see it.

[LAVA]

Okay, I guess I can see your point. At the MG and Legendary difficulty settings the game does become a-historical due to the limitations on manpower and weapons and therefore you want to see a tougher AI for BG. The way I look at these kinds of issues is that there is only so much a programmer can do to provide a tougher opponent. 

Personally, I've played 450 hours of the game and I still don't find it boring.

I guess I play the game a bit differently. By the mid point of the campaign I'm shooting for a fairly well trained army across the board with fairly good infantry weapons and fairly high quality artillery pieces. And I think that is a pretty historical way of approaching the game. I might not win the campaign... but I will have fun trying it.

Edited December 17, 2017 by LAVA

[Yogol]

To me, there is one piece of information missing: how does the AI determines their armies strength in the campaign battles. I tested this the past months, but the system changed and changed and re-changed, so now I don't know how it works exactly anymore.

There is a cap on the enemies army, so if you can, it's always the best way to bring the maximum number of troops allowed.

 

But details are sketchy at the moment...

- do 24 cannons, 750 horses or 500 skirmishers count the same as 2500 infantry? (they used to, then they didn't, then they did, then they did again, but I haven't tested after the last update)

- is there a difference between 8*1250  brigades and 5*2000 brigades? (there used to be, but it's unclear if it changed)

- does the veteran status of the units and commanders make a difference? (I think it doesn't, I never saw it during my testing)

- does the type of weapons that you bring make a difference? (I think it doesn't anymore, it used to, but I think it's taken out)

 

FYI, as background: I play on Major General at the moment, working my way up to legendary. Finished the Union campaign and just done with Gaines' hill for confederate campaign.

[killjoy1941]

@LAVA You'll absolutely see it once you move to higher difficulties - you'll strongly tend toward wiping enemy forces in all battles but a select few, and absolutely prioritize force preservation while doing it. It's a bit gamey and severely devalues skirmishers and cavalry due to their high expense and low brigade manpower count.

Being able to diversify is key to later enjoyment of the game, especially once you know you can win battles on higher difficulties. It's fun to play MG and Legendary until you know you can win consistently, then it's more fun to drop down a difficulty and get back the cavalry and skirmishers you can't realistically afford at higher difficulty.

@Yogol As for your questions:

- Brigade equivalency is a thing, to a point. If you take all skirmishers to a battle at Brigadier General or Colonel and your army comp in general doesn't exceed the enemy increase threshold, you'll face lower troop counts. This is almost never worth it when you can generally plug in 2,500-man infantry brigades and just punch up as needed using terrain, with artillery to pound the enemy out of forest or other tough positions. I almost always settle in at one cavalry and one skirmisher brigade per corps at Brigadier, because more is just not worth the cost if you fail to micro them effectively once. At difficulties higher than MG, you'll always want to bring as much infantry and artillery as possible because you're likely to be outnumbered or evenly matched and out-shooting the enemy is a primary concern.

- Objectively, no. Realistically, yes. You're far better off with the 2,000-man brigades because they're far less morale-brittle. Eight 1,250-man brigades might offer you more tactical flexibility than five 2,000-man brigades, but you can't afford any mistakes at that kind of organizational force level.

- No. Enemy veterancy is based upon difficulty and events, not the veterancy of your army.

- No. Again, difficulty and events control enemy equipment.