fancylogic

It's interesting to see how differently people approach this game. At first I followed army compositions similar to this for my union campaign, kept 4-5 infantry brigades with at minimum 1 artillery of say 10 pc max. Other than my "light infantry" division (which I used quick tactical artillery (with the 2 star buff) and skirmishers). My initial forays with cavalry and skirmishers always ended poorly and kept the "infantry is the backbone of my army" mentality proceeding due to the constant loss of specialty units. Unfortunately as Union, you face increasing numbers of well trained skirmishers that just box in your flanks leaving you immobile in the forests, even with the detached skirmishers, my lack of cav to exploit weakness became apparent as well. I became so frustrated with this issue I decided to ditch my campaign and begin fresh, taking some ideas I had seen floating around and meshing with in-game experiences. However on my second play through, I have really put myself into a more flexible army mentality. Each of my corps are a little different but follow a fairly similar pattern. 2 Divisions of "traditional" infantry (more later), a "Lights" Division, and then a 4th division specialized to the corps role in my army. Example my "guards" corps contains some 5 3* brigades before Stone's River (one being the free Iron Brigade) kept at around 1800-1900. A lights division of two infantry 2 star with 2k troops approx and 2 skrim of 300-350 using sharps rifles (these guys are real killers, probably average 1k kills for sub 100 deaths, with a peak of almost 3k kills in a grand battle). Rounded out with a traditional division of 1 stars and a cavalry division comprised of 5 brigades of 450 melee cav each. Here's where things have changed for me in composition strategy. Artillery I've bumped up. For my "traditional" division aka my new "backbone" I built them out of 4x 2,000 brigades with two artillery brigades, lights 2x 2,000 and 2x skrim or 1x 2000 and 3x skrim + 2 artillery. The artillery I break into two mindsets. One for close quarters "tactical" artillery support. These I keep very close to the line infantry to punch nice shock holes in enemy formations. The second I consider my "strategic artillery" which provides my overlapping fields/counter battery duties, and can cover a retreat or movement of my army. The former I use "cheap" artillery and have slowly built them up to between 12-15 guns. I'm particularly fond of the howitzers despite what others say, netting usually a minimum of 300 kills with my most engaged breaking the 600 range. For strategic I employ ordinance rifles, parrots, napoleons, etc. Again in 12-15 gun batteries. This results in me having almost triple the amount of guns the rebels field. For instance the union battle attacking the fort in the Stone's River Campaign, I brought 5 brigades of artillery along with a full complement of infantry. I had enough artillery to dislodge the rebel brigades in a matter of minutes with concentrated fire. Cavalry again is something where I've slowly begun to exploit their usefulness. You touched on mobility and yes that is important. You can quickly maneuver to the flanks etc. But I don't believe (at least in the amount I'm willing to invest in them) into only having two brigades and maxing their size. The reasoning for myself is that 4 brigades of ~450 allow flexibility. Your 750 are stuck attacking only one unit, and while the moral shock against artillery/skrim with a volley can offset this, I'm a firm believer in maintaining the flexibility of my units. For example with my cav I can attack and swarm enemy units from multiple angles. Have my infantry pin a few exposed units withering them with fire until mid-battle and then commit cav to start shattering these units. I can break 3-4 units simultaneously due to the amount I had. This was an early expense I took on for that capability. And it rewarded me with countless captured artillery, troops, supplies, etc. Granted the cav take sometimes 50% losses in this fashion but I trade say ~1k losses for 3-4k kills + the captured goods and the shattering of an entire flank. The timing is everything and knowing when to withdraw the cav. A good portion of my losses are entirely due to mishandling. Finally skirmishers I have come to love after hating them so deeply trying to keep them off my flanks. With sharps rifles (very limited in numbers) you can do some real damage due to the range bonus with supporting infantry as mentioned above by others. These guys just pour withering fire into the enemy formations, while giving you again additional flexibility. But because of the limits (at least for the union) of decent long arms, most of my light troops fall into the "assault" style. I mass skirmishers on the flanks and use them as a constantly rotating organ, or push them out ahead like at 2nd manassas to flank the left. The benefit is in woods fighting with 3x ~300 skrim units they weigh enough in the AI mind to turn slow infantry to engage them, even if sometimes engaged frontally by infantry. After the volleys go off an my skrims fall back the AI unit exposes its flank to my infantry getting all of those moral shocks, slowly turns back to me and gets harried again from the skrims. It keeps them off balance while your own army is a rock of fire. I won't lie, I have no understanding of the finer game mechanics so I could be completely off the mark with my army builds. I think I am perhaps "underpowering" my infantry which is the biggest issue by not maxing them to 2500.

I've read a lot of discussion regarding cover bonus (or lack of bonus) or troops that are practically invincible. Would it be possible to code destructive scenery? Things like woods catching on fire like in the Wilderness Campaign, etc would lower the cover buff or actually hurt your troops.

Yeah my rig is a bit older, but with CF I could bump up my graphics again. Right now I'm at 99% duty on one card and 1-2% idling on the second. It's unfortunate that it hasn't been addressed. I know a few of my friends that play also use CF or SLI would also benefit from this addon.

I made an account today to pursue this issue as well. From my understanding its a quick developer option in unity5 engine now to enable "exclusive" fullscreen which is required for ATI crossfire. Not sure about SLI. But that being said, would it be possible to see this quick patch in the system come out? My rig is a little bit older but with CF/SLI support I can run this game much better. This link here explains it for devs. https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/4ifmu7/since_when_do_unity_games_work_with_crossfire/ thanks!