Hitorishizuka

3 wagons, I didn't deploy the 4th Corps and the 10th AO point is kind of a waste. But even if that's the solution, it means you still can't deploy troops from the 4th Corps (and you eventually probably will want to) so this doesn't really solve anything.

They do, it's called the Hold button, it's just a little sketchy about working half the time. If they didn't retreat and they were equipped with short range weapons they'd probably take return fire, though, which they're less equipped to absorb.

Take 2400x0.1 pounders and the AI gets 4800 6 pounders. This is a poor trade. ;P

Depends on whether you're offense or defense as to whether artillery is viable for minors (even on offense they still see some use). It's still worth bringing them because getting artillery leveled up to where they can effectively use high damage/low accuracy guns pays real dividends. Last time I played CSA @ Antietam I had a 2 star 100 Firearms artillery brigade at the Stone Bridge with 24pders rack up 3k kills just in the last phase of the battle.

Yeah I had a lot of cavalry as can be seen. *laughs* On top of that a lot of 24pdrs and other artillery, 3 squads of skirmishers with good rifles, and so on. Also ended up buying a fair amount of Harper's Ferry just to get that slight edge over 1855s.

Yeah, I was messing around with that, just too many guys, they stacked up and did that little shift that everyone complains about when units are in the same spot, then came in hot through the trees and the field at the same time anyway. I'll give it another shot at some other juncture. It's absolutely that blob of trees in the center between the two VPs that's the problem. By default they're going to largely path through it and not really hit the gully since they're coming from S/SE to start, not SW.

I always use detached skirmishers en-masse, they just had enough guys to ram it through unfortunately. Turn one brigade but the 3 next to him keep advancing anyway. Eh, not a big deal, it's final results that matter anyway, and giving ground is a valid strategy. I think the terrain at Spain/Larkin sucks frankly, so I don't usually like to defend there anyway.

Oh, no wonder, your coverage isn't nearly as wide. I had a line going from Hornet's Nest into the diagonal line of trees west of them, northwest of that to the corner of the other clump of trees (where the 1st phase guys fell back to), then east of Hornet's Nest stretching out as well. There's simply no room for them to sneak past so they just blobbed, melee charged my salient constantly, and eventually broke. I gave them some decent damage at the Church (well forward of it really) before falling all the way back basically off the map in preparation but Spain/Larkin, just too many guys and they actually pushed me off.

How well stocked was your armory? I just had piles of rifles and expensive cannon sitting around just waiting to be used for whenever the army actually needed to grow big enough to support it. I just started a new CSA campaign and I'm already buying up Henries and Whitworths pre-1st Bull Run.

You can always just rearrange on the deployment zone to put your big infantry out front and reserve smaller infantry/artillery/cavalry for later if that's what you wanted, you don't actually need to have the infantry together on the OOB if you're talking Grand Battle with a deployment zone. (That said, charging Marye's Heights is so lazy and wasteful even if you get away with it.) I don't see why you would ever really want to use division selection. Pause is there for a reason, just keep microing individual brigades as necessary. ;P

Ahh, okay, there we go, thanks for chiming in Koro.

I did see them charge multiple units at once, actually. XD And you can't both countercharge with cavalry and also say you're supposed to guide their retreats into waiting cavalry... Just flat out didn't have enough men on the first two maps to hold once they started streaming in and they weren't really coming in at those angles either. I had to fall back and hold at the Hornet's Nest level due to the giant mass of infantry just constantly pushing forward. Their artillery was almost completely ineffective due to my cavalry behind them, it was just the infantry being annoying and clumped up.

The CSA does actually outnumber you by a fair bit, I never really saw them getting isolated all that much. Getting them to rout for cavalry to follow up is also kinda sketchy given the sheer depth of units they possess for most of the battle--they simply don't rout far enough in a direction beyond where they're still in support range from other units. (And of course the more you spread the more vulnerable you are to the hammer charges they like to do with their manpower advantage.)

Are you just going around necroing every dead topic solely to chime in? That's generally pretty poor form. I've never been able to do explicitly what he said and combine another brigade into an already combined one. I also never said they should be far apart (and in fact have said the opposite elsewhere), just that they can be and they'll fix themselves.

I wouldn't mind seeing contour lines come back but it's only super important if artillery get nerfed back to being much stricter on LOS. As it stands now it's not excessively important--cover is usually more important.

Only if you don't care about your cavalry that much or they were already wavering. Cavalry being shot at by the 4 other brigades of infantry once they rotate is not a good thing.

Pretty much never saw any loners the couple times I played, just a giant neverending mass of brigades all clumped together. Settled for slowly breaking them on my lines before pushing only near the end.

Yeah, the majority of players don't manage that or choose not to take the casualties necessary for pushing that hard.

It's bugged right now, only do it for deceased officers. If you do it for wounded ones it doesn't flag them correctly and so the officer counts as wounded for command purposes (ie nonexistent) but doesn't get flagged appropriately at battle end so they never 'recover' from their wound. It's...not? It's multi-day on Union at least. Maybe if a Confed player is really slow and couldn't finish the battle they might get to see the second day.

You're going to pass on the thing that has the general actively make the people around him fight better instead of just buffing morale that is the additional flavor you want? Okay then.

Hung your brigades in the forest out to dry early. If you're going to take those positions (and I actually recommend that), you needed to have all of your troops along that line, with them slightly forward to take fire, but everyone else there to protect against charges or just getting massively outnumbered and pushed back. Actually, if you hold from the position that lone brigade was in that got overrun, you can actually bottle up 2/3rd of their army on the other side of the river and slaughter them piecemeal as they try to cross. Artillery too far back in general, they could have been a bit more forward. Guarding the right flank should actually be done way forward. Across the river you can sit in the trees at the far right where it narrows and bottle the entire flanking force there and stop them cold with just a couple brigades. You sort of screwed yourself scaling wise here by putting all of your big brigades in II Corps. Almost always lead with your biggest brigades in I Corps because that's what's hurting you for numbers, especially in a map like this where more of the enemy's numbers hit the field first. That's another reason why they were making better headway on you early. Guarding the left flank is fine but yes the units were too far back. If you're holding there, they should actually probably be across the river and spaced to be able to shoot the enemy right as they're crossing.

Try getting a 3 star general as Corps Commander. ;P

That's literally already what they're doing when your commander is in their radius, exhorting them to recover faster. It just doesn't make a ton of sense and is just making things easier to get a rally button on top of their fairly good passive morale buff. There is almost always terrain of some kind that can be used to gain an advantage, even if potentially it's negative terrain for the enemy. Digging in just makes it so you don't even have to read the map, which is practically half the point of playing.

Division commanders aren't on the field as a separate unit. They're probably associated with the first brigade IME. They only show up by name if you combine.

You don't have commissars. XD How/why would that even work? When a unit breaks, it's because they have nothing left in spite of officers being present, officers were necessary to even have them getting shot at to begin with. CSA's troops start off a lot better, though. Neither campaign is really that hard and it's pretty forgiving to limp through even with losing a brigade here or there.