Hitorishizuka

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.

I've never seen that personally. When I tried in my very first campaign sitting in the fortifications not knowing better the cannons still stayed pretty far back while infantry moved up. The infantry would have forced sharpshooters out if they were in the trees long before they would have been able to snipe the cannons.

If you go all the way north you get to move down in a straight line and not have to worry about flanking forces behind you if you had just created a salient or something. Also, there's house cover to use to outshoot the brigades there on your way in, so you take minimal casualties breaking their formation. The swamps block you only if you don't go far enough north.

I'm pretty sure the cannons will stop shorter since their targets have moved up. And yeah, I mean, you're going to eat cannon fire one way or another. It's not a big deal, it's like 1-3 deaths per volley, it only matters if they hit your cannons (you can see some chip damage already in the screenshot). My melee cavalry are usually too busy for the first part of the battle eating spare brigades for it to matter, regardless. The AI loves to keep brigades wandering around way far back as pseudo protection, so I don't think it's a clear shot.

I'll take a closer look the next battle I play but I am 95% sure when I did Fredericksburg I was applying flanking morale penalties to them. Maybe the AI had just did a dumb and started withdrawing their unit from the barricade (which they will do automatically if you threaten to pocket them, so maneuvering still makes sense).

There's still no reason to charge Marye's Heights. Circle around to the far north and push down and start enfilading their line. Even if they're resistant to damage they still count as being flanked when you get around and behind them so you'll push them out that way. You have more than enough time to get back to the heights but with your entire army behind theirs by the time the first phase ends on that portion of the map.

More or less like this: The two brigades on the right have decent cover and range to contest the river crossing. The AI gets bogged down and bottled up there. One brigade gets partial cover from the field on the other side to where they trade shots but your artillery is so much closer that you win that pretty easily. You can hold this position the entire map. Eventually you can bring the forces on the left forward, swing the gate in line with the river, then swing all the way around and crush them because their remaining forces will be trapped on the other side of the river.

If you take the right forests also, they're stuck at the river, so they never get weight of numbers to push you off. You can hold those positions the entire battle until you're ready to move offensively. Even if they do charge I'm pretty sure you can get 24pdrs by then so you just crush them.

As defense? Don't use the forts, move up to the forests. You can bottle 2/3rd of the Confederate army at the river crossing and the remaining 1/3 is easy to outshoot and play cavalry and skirmisher games with until you're ready to push to the other side and sweep them from the field.

The frontage isn't there, the fortifications block other units from firing. A prime example is Malvern Hill. The left side fortifications will focus a unit in good tree cover right in front of it while still being in range from 3-4 other brigades angling back and blocking anyone else from getting in to fire at them unless the unit comes way around to the side and in front of the fortifications and stands in open cover.

Well, no, 100% cover forest surrounded by fields is actually better. It has a multiplicative effect, that's why you see brigades in full woods cover take basically no damage from volleys, while fields they still take damage and can get pushed out by superior numbers. If they're in the woods, you're basically not moving them until artillery or cavalry gets there. Either way, he asked about fortifications, no cover in general. Fortifications have their own special brand of suck.

As currently implemented, use fortifications only for defending open ground with nothing in front of it that can be used to give the enemies cover to shoot at you and no equally good cover (woods, building) behind it that could have been used to not fan out your brigade. The change in cover was actually a bug, things mostly work as before. And correct, you only get a defensive bonus while actually in the fortification for the most part.

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

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

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.

No effect.

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.

Which part of the battle did you have problems with? My strategy's at the top of the page, didn't have any problems that way.

Hah. Seems a little backwards given how easy it is to level up cavalry and artillery brigades, honestly.

Yep. Just did Parker's Crossroads on Union, those fortifications were very obvious shmuck bait. Instead just pull back to the SW, the AI gets stupid and just stands in the open on the VP. Then you can come back in later from the woods on all sides and cut them to pieces.

That sounds new. I wonder if that portion of the code got broken because the AI would not replenish at all between days, only get access to fresh brigades as scripted. Technically you are able to refill your troops as before on the camp screen if you had money/men left to do so but obviously this is biased heavily against most players given the AI has no budget.

Heeeeeey, great to see. Awesome, I'll need to start buying Parrots on my new save now and put them back to use on my old save.

2. Yes, right click is how you do it. If in range they'll shoot them preferentially/rotate to do so. If out of range they will try to advance to shoot them. Be careful, especially with skirmishers they may get stupid and try to force melee instead. 3. See other topic: 4. Automatically decided based on range. 5. There's no such thing as too much supply, though you can get away with less by turning off artillery during long range fire and playing minimum size to avoid having to kill quite so much. 7. The fallback button but it doesn't quite control the direction they run in. The better thing to do is watch for when the enemy fires, then immediately afterwards toggle run and draw your unit back so they don't get shot in the back.

They're so rewarding once you do get to use them successfully. Maybe too rewarding? *laughs* Side battles are pretty much the ideal place to get work done using Ranged Cav and Skirmishers since you have all the time in the world to micro with them. You can even see the difference between my Melee Cavalry (Wickham), which had to put itself at risk and took a lot of damage for the good work it did at mauling a couple units and killing some skirmishers and artillery, vs the Ranged Cav (Fry) which took flank and routing shots all day, harassed and killed off artillery as well, but basically didn't have to put itself at risk. Of course, it's also reflective of their fragility--half their casualties were taken from a single volley by their last depleted unit when I was pursuing with them.

You're not factoring in the +accuracy, it's not straightforward. You have to simulate out whether +accuracy let you accomplish it in less volleys and save you a volley and was worth more/less vs getting another volley out faster over the course of the combat.