Hitorishizuka

I'm pretty sure I had II Corps's general hanging out around there because I didn't need him around the Sunken Road FWIW. Porter crosses with a division at first of like 3 infantry brigades and a couple artillery, that should be beatable. After that I'd probably want to retreat before the next 2 divisions come.

FWIW, an alternate approach: Stack your biggest brigades at Dunker Church with Napoleons to back them up. The AI will be most likely to mass charge during phase 1 because of a manpower advantage and fresh troops. If you can survive that, you're pretty much clear. Use the vertical line of forest at Dunker Church, bend towards the fortifications around the Sunken Road, then keep some extra brigades watching the flank on that side and just break the Union troops along that line, they have terrible cover and just walk forward to get murdered. If you are bold, you can put 3-4 brigades watching the eastern bridge with artillery backup and shred Porter's Corps as they spawn in, but it's a gamble. They should fall back south slightly ASAP once the map expands but before then they can sit in the good cover and keep that defended. Eventually once numbers even out you can just do a swinging gate starting from Dunker Church and sweep them off the field by crushing them against the river. Your cavalry will have the most play in the North picking off their artillery and starting to clean off routing brigades starting on the northern flank and freeing up your advance from there sooner. Make sure you rush artillery down to the Stone Bridge once III Corps spawns in and maybe even rotate a couple brigades down there from the Sunken/Dunker area if you only had light brigades there normally, as the AI will also start mass charging the fortifications there and artillery will be needed to push that back and rack up the casualties.

FWIW finally had campaign adjustments kick in for Fredericksburg. Very odd. I do think the Prospect Hill phase of the battle needs revisiting. If Maryes Heights timer extends into a second phase, it feels like it makes more sense to me to then switch back down south to also continue fighting that battle rather than just glossing over it with "our forces on that flank are holding". CSA doesn't even get their reinforcements from Jackson onto the field in that area, I was expecting to fight a lot more.

Episode 9: You forgot to pull your southern starting forces back a bit into better cover. They're just sitting out in the open but thankfully the AI is dumb and just charges. Also from experience the northern forces being pushed up too far just lets them get outflanked if you can't push the center fast enough...which you're about to see. Given that the North is the one getting meleed and losing morale, you should rotate your general up there since the Center isn't doing anything. Need to move your cannons up. Your general is still sitting way in the back. As you see, blindly drawing multi-brigade moves just has your units wander into melee... Other than in-battle Supply, I've heard that capturing will reduce the amount you'll have to refill at the end of the battle from cash to get to your normal Supply value. Uh...as you can see, lateral movements with brigades is currently not recommended. It's far better to adjust by tightening your line on the advance and then drawing one brigade back and all the way across and around your formation as necessary. You could have pushed and used the free brigades to absorb losses while getting free kills on your personal brigades and more loot capture and more experience gained, honestly. And at the end is how I usually yell at you to check battles before assigning points, you need AO badly for Gaines Mill.

Made it through my newest Union campaign all the way to this battle with the strategy of minimum men to avoid auto-scaling, best weapons everywhere. It's kind of laughable how much cash you can have lying around with nothing to spend it on. That's just before fighting the battle. Take my word for it that I had also been buying all the silly expensive Skirmisher rifles, a lot of the Cavalry weapons, and even started buying the Henry rifle in Infantry just to have them. All infantry using Springfield 1855s, even Green recruits, with all of the experienced guys getting Harper's Ferry. Most Skirmishers using the scoped rifle, with a max size unit on Sharps to test it. Had a couple units of ranged Cavalry actually getting work done with Smith rifles, and lots and lots of artillery brigades with 24pdr Howitzers. As you can surmise, I actually ended up bringing less men than I think I even could have because I didn't even bother fielding a 3rd Corps beyond a token Skirmisher brigade. About 1k of my casualties also came from getting caught flatfooted by Jackson's reinforcements walking right in off the map into the flank of my I Corps center force that snuck in onto the final map. I would've inflicted more casualties if the game had let me finish playing through Prospect Hill, as I was only just started to turn through and wave push them off the map.

I think they already do all of that except 3, which is the annoying one. Well, 4, not exactly sure what you mean by area X, like everything else they autotarget closest unless you give them a specific attack command.

It's specifically the 20pders that seem like garbage for their price/stats IME. I'm half wondering if because they're so rare for most playstyles that they didn't get tested enough and there's something wrong with them.

Episode 8: Haha, oh dear, this battle. Yeah, this is going to surprise you if you didn't know what is coming. As always, detach skirmishers for flanking/scouting. Brigade sitting in open ground to shoot isn't very good unless you catch the enemy on a crossing. Enemy brigade charging with less men--yes you will win but it was the ideal time to swing the cavalry in to countercharge. Oh, good you do, little late though and they retreat far enough that you can't finish them. Aaaaaand yep, now you're surrounded with brigades all out of position. You didn't know this coming in but the best play was instead to fortify the woods on the right (killing the skirmishers for free as they walk in) and wait for your reinforcements to hit, then sweep the map. Never put your own troops in a crossing to fight, they take big penalties. Charging at 50% condition isn't very effective. Cavalry with 0 condition (or <80% really) shouldn't be used to charge. Just stash them somewhere and wait for condition to recover.

10pd or 20pd Parrotts? Just popping back in to report that my 20pd Parrotts are VERY underperforming for their price. I hope the devs maybe take a look and see if there's something going on. They're getting outperformed by 24pd Napoleons and 10pdr Tredegar of all things and only competitive/maybe even outperformed by 10pdr Ordnance and 12pd Napoleon.

They have high damage also and so you'd think stat-wise they should be within the same ballpark as the Napoleons. For whatever reason I just haven't seen mine perform to that degree.

Anyone messed around with the 20lb Parrotts much? I brought them out for one or two battles and I haven't actually been that impressed for the most expensive cannon available.

Supposedly they actually already do, from other posts I've seen.

That's not what he wants. He wants an easier ability somehow to individually route brigades through roads/clear terrain to get them to the front faster. I feel his pain.

Oh, well that'll help, I've been wondering about that. The AI has been withdrawing en masse when faced with parity and so it was very easy to just walk across the map, hem them across a border, and shoot them down almost unconstested.

See attached...literally just beat Kettle Run and Thoroughfare Gap.

Are you sure about this? Old campaign, but since the patch I beat all the battles prior to 2nd Bull Run and I have no adjustment.

FWIW, fortifications do give a bit of melee defense which can discourage the AI. You'll see the same if you try to melee through the forts on, say, 2nd Bull Run that the CSA takes early. You can do it but the first unit you send in there at equal strength will probably also rout (and if you're unlucky, rout towards the Confeds 'cause things are dumb like that).

I feel like there needs to be more support for shooting cavalry + horse artillery in one Corps in general as showed up later in the real Civil War. Maybe guns later on in the war will change it but as it is now shooting Cavalry is like a more finicky and expensive version of skirmishers that still loses to infantry after you get it into position due to getting out shot at range or just getting charged if you try to dismount them.

Fortifications in general are a trap and should almost never be used unless there's no other alternative. They're usually in bad spots where the enemy has cover to shoot back at them anyway, the units fire gets strung out instead of firing in volleys, and they widen the line so they take return fire from 3-4 brigades and lose the firefight and get pushed out anyway.

I love the micro you can do in small scale battles to really jerk the AI around with skirmishers and cavalry that gets a little lost in the wayside in big battles where you're watching an entire front.

I would also note that I wouldn't consider them strict upgrades...accuracy of the gun does factor in given the experience of the brigade. Giving inexperienced brigades Napoleons is probably only about as effective as having given them Ordnance anyway.

The most important role is to get 2 star and higher generals as your Corps Commanders because they unlock additional skills that benefit everyone in their Corps. Afterwards get them into your Division command because they give the largest bonus to Command vs just helping a single brigade.

FYI, this is actually more of an economic issue. It's very expensive to keep veterans going for elite brigades so it's better to let them draw down to a manageable level and create new massive brigades solely for the purpose of learning and eating bullets so your veterans don't have to. If you had the money to use max size veterans and you didn't have anything else to spend it on you're welcome to do so.

Are you only seeing that for your units or also the enemy? I don't feel like I've been seeing more enemy surrenders FWIW.

The Union Army does when the Confederates have been reduced to only a Division strength after the first day and there's a lot of empty ground to cover