LongstreetJohnson

Agreed, i have yet to think about any viable alternatives, and despite my rambling about this i think the game offers a fine experience as is. One suggestion i have is about the scaling in small battles where you can only bring a limited amount of divisions. These battles are extremely easy if you max out a few divisions in one corps, and difficult if you spread your manpower over more corps/divisions, because it scales with your total manpower not the divisions you are bringing. I find myself never spending my reserve manpower before these battles, just maxing out the divisions i will use there, since its such an obvious choice. This could perhaps be fixed with a preset amount, since the numbers wont differ that much in playtroughs. Example mission: 7 divison are allowed, scaling X 0.2 of total manpower My army :50 000 total Enemy army: 50 000 X 0,2 = 10 000. 1. My army 50000 men dispersed in divisions of 1800 = 12 600 men to bring 12600 vs 10000 2. My army 50000 men dispersed in divisions of 3000 = 21 000 men to bring 21000 vs 10000 So it might be a bit to easy to manipulate the game mechanics to your advantage. I would say a fixed amount is better then the alternative in this scenario, and that you have to use your army compositions as means to break the mission, and not manipulate it to your advantage. It might just be me that "exploits" or thinks about this, but i will post it anyways. Thank you for your answers.

Hi again guys, i have been away for a while, just wondering wether people still find autoscaling as a problem? I just started a new Union campaign and have inflicted 245 000 casualties on the CSA up until after Fredricksburg, yet they keep coming Im not gonna start up the same discussion again, just curious, wether there has been/going to be any changes regarding, difficulty settings,game mechanics wich adress this. Any answers are much appriciated thank you.

This is not how my comment was intended too be perceived. Was to highlight the importance of having two sides on a matter. Thank you for your detailed and tought trough feedback on the subject.

Its been good to have you in the thread as a drive to counter some of the points regarding negativity around scaling, it makes it a discussion not just a wall of complaints. But at the same time i am glad that you also identify this as a problem now.

I had one suggestion where concecutive battles also attritioned the AI, but when you play in another theatre/date its reinforced . Also i cant remember who, but one guy talked about maybe a manpower pool? Make it harder to create a huge army for the player. i dont know. i wont spend all day contemplating it either. Im not trying to start any fires , right now im just answering people in the thread i started.

You didnt misunderstand. I feel the same way, i dont necissarily want too end it as fast as possible. As it stands now it is a series of battles where the ratio of the opposing forces is somewhat set no matter what you do. What you can control is army composition. I lost all my drive in playing this game the more i discussed the topic. If you are a casual player wich love hard battles win or loose and dont care much what the enemy has, you are going to have a great time. If you are like me who can sit for hours in the camp screen and micromanage, play a battle again just because i made some bad decisions too preserve men. Then you are going to realise it doesnt matter in the big picture, only in terms of flavor and roleplaying. They need to find a middle ground/some other way to balance this. As i wrote before it all comes down to how big a portion of the player base feel this way. I think most players are just happy fidling away in the camp screen, and dont care that it is for (almost) nothing ,and that the raw numbers and equipment will be the same anyways.

Ok sorry, try saving before the battle of antietam. Check the battle screen. Play one of the small battles, loose men. Check battle of Antietam again. Report back if you are convinced.

This, you are completely right, this is the excact same thing i do. But from a flavor point not a tactical. Where you are wrong here is that game allows the AI to have enough frontage to use all its numbers (units firing on top of each other, cannons firing behind units, units firing behind units with no elevation behind) so the tactical advantage/flexibility you are talking about is only viable if the combat width/frontage doesnt allow the numerical superior enemy to use its numbers. Still i think the discussion should be diverted more towards "should the player be able to choose" then us discussing ways to work around/against scaling. For now i will just wait and see if this is something the devs deem as worthy, and stop spamming the forum with more

I agree a bad and maybe absolute example, but it was not an attempt to retell how it was in reality. But rather to make a point that comparing a game to real life is not necissarily right in some situasions. Yes you and others have answered my question. What i am after is a discussion wether scaling is the right mechanism to have. If you did read trough my tread you can see im making examples of ingame mechanisms that is rendered useless by the scaling. I also write that the size of your army truly doesnt matter just army composition and veterancy. So again im not saying i am right and you are wrong, me myself think scaling outweighs an "easy" endgame in terms of negative effects on the game, you perhaps dont. So that is what this feedback is for right? I think the scaling takes away the meaningfullness in what i believe is some of the core concepts of the campaign (building YOUR army). And it actually render concrete choices useless, this last one here i know is a mistake, no one would deliberatly make a feature in a game that is pointless. I havent seen anyone complain about the same thing but i still feel obligated to share it, so it might become an even better game in the end.

This is not my point I love loosing a great game, as i am all for historical odds (to some degree), but if you are going to drag history into a game as an argument, dont forget that army frontage,combat width,supplies etc works very differently in real life. Example ingame the AI pushed 40 000 men over a small stonebridge to attack my 3000 men where in reality this would be an equal if not favor the defender no matter the numbers. So dragging lines to the real battle could be wrong from a games perspective. Anyways as i said this is not my point you just sidelined me there for a bit. Check my post in general to see my point about scaling.

That is a good comparison Lincolns, atleast feelingwise. It all comes down to wether this is a problem for a larger portion of the player base. Because in the end the most important thing is that independent devs like this get more money to make more niche gems as ultimate general is. I do not have any insight in the game making process and what could be changed or not. But as i see it, if they could impliment it beeing the players choice (in terms of difficulty) everyone would be pleased. What concerns me and gives me hope that it will be changed at the same time, is the fact that it makes certain aspects of the game rendered useless. The most viable strategy with scaling is to keep your corps as small and elite as possible. Wich i believe is not the devs intention, everyting else will be from a roleplay point of view and not the drive to win. Its still in Early Acess, i for one hope they remove/change the scaling into an alternative, and i would be more than glad to contribute in the discussion if it something they view as a worthy problem.

Hi, first of all congratulations on the Early Acess and a great base of a game. I have voiced some of my concern on the general forum, please take a look. And any feedback on the subject would be much appriciated. Managed to build up a confederate army of 68000 troughout the campaign with careful planning and micro before the battle of Antietam, and it scales the AI forces up to 140 000!! infantery and 400 guns. I lost the battle ended up killing 79000 loosing 46000 and the whole campaign ended, because of the 100 rep drop. Please try to find a solution instead of AI force scaling. Thread: AI forces scale with your forces.

Ive done some testing as well now, looks like the antietam auto scale is about 2x. im sorry but i think this is a flaw in this otherwise excelent game, as it makes what you do in the camp screen basicly not matter at all, neither does trying to conserve troops troughout the campaign. And i do believe that is one of the key ingredients in the game, feeling that it is YOUR army and that you have carried it trough the whole war. This makes it just a series of preset battles with a false feeling of a continous campaign. All you really can control is your army composition. And it makes several features totally reduntant and useless, ref the example i made earlier (using rep to get more troops). Again i am sorry, i have 39 hours in this game since release and loved it, but this actually kinda took the fun out of it for me. But im just one individual, if others feel the same way i hope they remove the autoscale and rather try to balance it with perhaps: 1) The number of troops you get 2)AI preset amount of troops (historical?) 3)This could be changable by the player from difficulty settings. 4)Game over if you loose to many troops (not just downscale enemy) Too close off, my opinion is that autoscale of AI troops compared too yours ruins an otherwise amazing experience of an excelent concept in an Ultimate General campaign game.

Yup i agree 100% and the pool should be bigger for union. But im not saying it isnt fun with a challenge, i just feel its something wrong when i play a "perfect" union playtrough and get outnumbered by the rebs at shiloh. But the idea of AI casualities following them for an entire campaign is maybe not viable, it sure as hell would have made it more satisfying in a series of consecutive battles. To actually see that the great job you did had an impact. But the "scaling" still isnt confirmed it just looks an awful lot like it.

Let me make an example, lets say the enemy is scaling x1.3 And i have 10000 men so AI gets 13000 My reputation is 100 and i use 25 to get 5000 more men. now i have 15000 and the enemy has 19500 , but i have lower morale because of reputation drop. Ergo there is absolutely no reason to do this except from a flavor point of view. I agree with your point that you retain your "elite" brigades. But it still doesnt matter when you meet 40000 lvl 3 union brigades at bull run, when you have maybe 1 brigade at lvl 3. But the scaling still makes certain mechanisms redundant, example the one above. And yes if i do well in my early campaign it would be fun (to a certain limit) to crush the enemy later.