Hitorishizuka

Just remembered to report this one: Extra recruits from captured enemies appears to be capped at 1k/battle, no matter how many people you actually captured. It seems roughly 1:1 in terms of captures-recruits until then but going over seems capped. Not sure if intended, just seems weird.

I don't think they hit the field yet. I was at the start of phase 2 and didn't see them either.

Army Org in general is in a weird spot, as talked about elsewhere wrt to AI Scaling. If you don't have a certain mandated amount based on each Grand Battle you're going to be in big trouble, but if you have over that amount it doesn't actually do you any good. Feels very much just like a Career points tax. FWIW, you can use that 2nd Corps as a stash early so you know exactly which Brigades you're bringing to which battle and don't have to guess if the battle is one where you get a deployment zone and can pick or it's one where you automatically were given a few of your units. Also useful for changing your comp around if you have too much artillery on an offense mission or something of the nature.

I don't think I've ever seen a unit of mine charge when I didn't order it. Are you sure the enemy didn't shift and they came into contact with each other and trigger melee mode instead? As for melee pursuit--yes, you need to watch your units and force command them to stop if you don't want them to pursue. They'll do that naturally because they can pick up more kills on the rout without of course knowing that they may be overpursuing (your job as an officer to stop!). They typically won't chase too far if they were in defensive melee, though, and they'll return back to where you had them originally stationed. If you were on the offense, that's the part of the battlefield you should have been watching.

The main thing with Skirmishers is that if you have a dedicated unit, they were probably given expensive rifles and are there to kill things safely from the flanks/slightly behind a friendly unit and out of range of retaliation. They should get the Firearms training bonus at Rank 1 instead. Yes, they technically use Stamina up a lot with all their running around but it's very rare for Skirmishers to actually run completely to 0 given all the breaks they take unless you force melee'd them, which you should almost never do. They're okay with Discipline training but if they're getting shot at, you're not positioning that unit correctly. Skirmishers getting shot at should be the ones getting detached from your bullet catcher brigades instead because they're just there to be annoying and bait rotations of enemy brigades. A lot of people seem to have issues so I'll see about putting together a video or something at some point. tl;dr is no more than outnumbered 1:2 ideally and look for isolated brigades where they won't get shot at by other things while they're in the process of meleeing. And if the combat is drifting back towards something else, pull them back and accept the damage done instead of sticking with it to try and wipe the unit out and risking the cavalry being shot to pieces. Much easier to use two+ brigades in conjunction to quickly chew through a single target -or- to kill two targets semi-isolated and effectively protect each other in the process.

Time is hours of in-game time, FYI. The enemy might not have had tree cover but they still had fields vs your no cover. Thankfully you outnumbered them 3v1 w/ artillery backup but 1v1 would have actually been bad for you there. re: weird maneuver--units can't side step. If you tell them to move left or right, they need to turn, walk forward, then turn back. On your flank attack, you left your infantry brigade stuck in low territory instead of pushing them forward into the trees aggressively. At the same time, you can see how your lack of brigades and lack of additional detached skirmishers is leaving you vulnerable on your main side. Plus your cavalry still aren't doing anything (not scouting, not threatening the enemy rear, not safeguarding your flank.) You probably should have had a brigade more in the center of the map controlling the tree line to block off all the skirmishers and cavalry threatening your flank while you went on the looping attack against the VP. Brigade sitting in the middle of nowhere getting outshot by skirmishers in trees. Given your axis of attack you should have wheeled them right into the tree line and swung the artillery right behind them and changed your 'rear'. To recover condition, the unit needs to sit still and not be fighting. It can fight and recover condition only if in fortifications. If you double right click that triggers a charge. Pressing the attack is useful for giving your units more experience, so long as you're still killing more than you're losing at an acceptable ratio. Remember that the AI doesn't care about its casualties but you do about yours, so you have to trade getting more units killed for getting them experienced. You're Union so you don't care about captured weapons but if you were Confederate you would also use the tail parts of a battle to try and capture more enemy units intact to get their guns. Otherwise, there's no other bonus if you already achieved victory. K:D of 1 is pretty bad, even on the attack. XD Though you are attacking outnumbered, so it mitigates that a bit. That's not the charge button, that was the run button. Oh dear. Not sure why you pre-bought all the good rifles and then gave them to the newly recruited scrubs. They don't deserve better than Springfield 1842 until they have a few battles under their belts... Nooo. Stamina on dedicated skirmishers is not really that useful. ...and as you saw, pre-buying all those guns when you didn't need to means you're out of money.

Just posted in the other topic, but combine division is IMO primarily used for protecting wounded Brigades at risk of shattering when you still need them to contribute (any defensive battle where you're outnumbered 2:1 is a good example) and cannot afford to force retreat them off the field to protect them. And yes, it can also be used on two otherwise healthy mid-size divisions if you want them to make the most use of long emplaced cover that they would otherwise not be able to fully garrison.

You should use Combine division when you have one or two badly wounded brigades that you need to keep in the fight but cannot risk shattering. You must select two similar brigades from the same division at the same time, then select Combine. For example: I have Iron Brigade 1 that has 600/800 men. It's getting a little undersized but can still fight. I also have Iron Brigade 2 that has 450/800 men and is at risk of shattering the next time it takes serious casualties. I only have two real options with Iron Brigade 2 in order to protect them: Force retreat them if the battle was going well enough that I didn't need them on the field -or- combine them with Iron Brigade 1 to create a 1050 man Brigade that is still useful.

Medicine is underrated. You have to equate its value against both the cost of the Veterans to keep the unit at a certain strength at the cost of the guns you would have needed to buy. The best way to use it is to buy brigades one time as max size bulletcatchers and as they gain experience convert them to regulars and iron brigades as appropriate. This way you only spending Veteran money to keep your Iron brigades around at minimum strength. Agreed, it's nonintuitive. Would seem to make more sense that the shop stock is increased from previous values, not reset.

You may have just won before they showed up. How many phases did you take before you got to the VP?

And would they be doing anything if we were staying quiet like you have continually advocated for?

What? Please read more carefully. I'm saying that right now extending the campaign is currently only a linear extrapolation that will do nothing but complicate future changes further by being in place. It's quite possible to balance a dynamic experience without the rest of the content because the very nature of it being dynamic means you don't -need- that content for extreme scenarios and moderate scenarios don't require much change. This type of thing is never going to happen if I just stay quiet like you seem to keep advocating for.

Completing the campaign is a matter of adding maps and expanding the minimum size of the enemy and is a fairly linear extrapolation from what is currently on offer. It's an entirely different effort compared to needing to get the balance right now for what currently exists because of how complex it can be with the different ways of doing it. In fact, fixing balance now while there are less things to worry about is a much easier task than putting it off for the future.

No, you stated that the campaign wasn't finished and that they needed to add more battles. More battles is completely meaningless for the mechanic we're talking about. Changing the fundamental structure is separate and we already knew was coming, we are discussing what we think the actual nature of changes needs to be. Saying they've beaten it with maxed AO is meaningless without knowing their actual army composition. I've beaten it with maxed AO but I sure couldn't staff 5 Corps; I could barely staff 3 before flat out running out of guns available in the store of the reasonable ones to buy. The AI simply doesn't have that concern and will continue not to unless we actually speak up about it.

Hard to say what exactly is the cause without being able to watch your battle. Can you provide at least the post-battle screenshot for numbers involved? 5.5k shouldn't overwhelm 2 brigades + artillery or 3 brigades instantly, the AI is reluctant to charge without a large manpower advantage.

To start, one brigade in the building, one brigade slightly south of them, artillery directly west and south of the building. When you get your reinforcements, I sent two brigades north, remaining south. Hold the N-S line using the building, then put one brigade in the south group of trees to flank from and distract the AI. If you're fortunate you can push the enemy off the small clump of trees to the north and use that for better cover, otherwise anchor around the build on the E-W line also. If you took cavalry, send it south to fight the enemy cavalry and then slip around to the east to kill their artillery.

Yes. The campaign should actually be a campaign and not a theme park stop through notable battles. Afterwards the player should realize they're playing on too easy a difficulty and crank things up. It's 100% a disadvantage once you factor in the opportunity cost of having not spent money on raising veterans and bringing green brigades that you had to pay money for all of their weapons. You've paid money to get more inferior troops when the AI is going to get more veteran troops for free as a counter. Further campaign battles are simply more content and don't presage changes of this fundamental a nature.

No, that isn't the complaint here. The complaint is that it's entirely artificial whether brought 60k men or 80k men to a given battle provided you met basic minimums. You're in fact getting doubly screwed by AI auto-scaling because you have a harder time getting enough guns to staff those divisions and less opportunities to train your fresh brigades whereas the AI gets free veteran brigades as necessary. Bringing more men than intended through Army Organization or oversized brigades should be an advantage, not entirely negated/a disadvantage as it is in the current system. The second complaint is that because the AI auto-scales, it heightens the lack of continuity between battles. Currently optimal play involves getting as much XP for your brigades in as safe a manner as possible, so long as you meet the minimum necessary strategic goals to keep playing. There's no advantage for taking risks or willingly taking higher casualties to completely eliminate enemy brigades because you're actually hurting yourself when doing so because the AI won't have to rebuild after those losses, but you do. If the game is then too easy, then players should be encouraged to turn up the difficulty.

Use your infantry first to break up the enemy formation and then watch for a unit to be open for a flank and/or running away unsupported in a bad direction. Then charge that unit and then cavalry will crush them. In general never send cavalry in to a charge if their target can still be covered by other units, they'll just get shot to pieces. If you can't find targets like that, have them circling into the side/rear and kill enemy cavalry and skirmishers basically for free and pick off supply. If the enemy is attacking, cavalry might be able to get around to their artillery and take them out enmasse if they're not able to support each other. For best results, use 2 cavalry brigades together so they can tie up two units adjacent to each other and effectively protect each other -or- so they far more quickly overwhelm one brigade and preserve their condition and members. See below, I had two units of cavalry, circled them all the way around to the north in the first stage, and feasted on routing/exposed units as my infantry attacked from the south. Then I used them to chase down and eliminate enemy cavalry as opportunity presented itself. You can note that they were basically able to feast while taking very few casualties in return. Afterwards, I then babied them and kept them mostly in reserve and out of the pursuit meatgrinder. Ranged cavalry instead need to play the flanking/shooting game against units already engaged...basically treat them as skirmishers you have to babysit constantly. Not a fan, just got Forrest's 3 star unit and I have no idea if I even want to bother using them. Definitely have to give them a different gun at least if I do...

Yeah, the mouseover tooltips for general terrain are either inaccurate or deceptive; they might be right for Skirmishers but are wrong for Infantry. The ones for emplacements seem to be accurate. In general for infantry: River crossing/ford: 0% Open field: 25% Crops/tall grass: Up to 50% Forest/buildings: Up to 100%

My rough observations are that it needs to be about to shatter, needs to have its retreat path cut off by other enemy forces, and needs to be outnumbered by some factor that I'm not certain of. Usually has to be in melee but I've actually seen cavalry surrender after having gotten shot in the back (positioning was very weird).

Check to see how many brigades you're allowed to have in upcoming battles and spend your Career points in Army Org until you hit that max. I usually like to do that right after a Grand Battle and to check what the next Grand Battle requires. You'll note that you only brought 5/10 brigades to the fight. This generally should be avoided as it indicates you're going to be understrength. Well, you basically realized, but there was no point in challenging the bridge at that juncture. You would need to cross the bridge and charge into emplaced infantry and superior artillery to do anything. Obviously with hindsight you should have sent your entire force to challenge the ford up north. Also you left a brigade back just sitting doing nothing which isn't ideal. They could have been sitting in the trees to the north and shooting at the skirmishers or even just went all the way around north to flank. Or forced the ford or...well, you get the picture. Remember, artillery BEHIND infantry, not at the same level as. You don't want your artillery getting directly shot at. Skirmishers, especially with Carbines, really aren't exceptional in melee. You can use them to tie up artillery but without other help they're just going to exhaust themselves and get shot at. You ideally should have had your main infantry moving in at the same time to take advantage of that. If you want melee Skirmishers you can just leave them crap rifles or detach them from your normal infantry brigades. Surrounding an emplaced brigade is nice but be mindful of who they're shooting. Just sitting in the open trading against them isn't ideal. If you don't have cover for their primary target, even if you're surrounding them it's probably better to just charge and force them off the position. Would recommend again using pause to give orders more. You're unfortunately hurting yourself by keeping things in real time while giving orders in multiple areas of the battlefield. You saw how you gave orders then weren't able to watch them go off and got a unit of artillery badly shot up because you were messing around with your lines in another part of the battle. Similarly, at the bridge because you were again playing around in the West, you missed the opportunity to pursue the routing brigades while they couldn't do anything. By the time you looked back, they had recovered and taken the defensive position in the fortifications. You then missed what was happening with your cavalry (routing units aren't vulnerable if cavalry are too far away, they probably took a full volley coming in). Like before, you still have plenty of brigades just sitting around not doing anything and not deliberately resting. You should be looking to flank or push combat in other areas or contesting good ground and so on. Units can't charge with 0 Condition. You already exhausted that unit charging them at the artillery and they haven't recovered. When you get the notification to hold position and advance further, you're still pushing brigades up into open field instead of trying to consolidate around good defensive positions. It works out since you still have such a manpower advantage but normally wouldn't be recommended. You don't need me to repeat it but you continue to forget about units. Cavalry, you have supply and a couple artillery brigades in the back not doing anything, etc. Again you started spending money without checking future battles or spending career points. : ( Well, it's less of a big deal since what you did you probably would have done anyway, but still. Stamina is more useful on your melee squads, not the shooters you gave good rifles too. Should probably pick discipline for them.

Depends on the unit. Cavalry are at risk of breaking below 2/5 IME. Higher rank units also seem to have a lower threshold above which they won't shatter.

It's actually kinda realistic, you do read about units managing to hold the line against silly odds in the Civil War being in great defensive positions. If you were all shooting them from the front-ish then they may be able to hold out for awhile if they're just not taking large casualties. If you need to dislodge them you have to flank or rear shot them or, frankly, just charge them.

I was a bit more surgical than your video. After pushing them back from the first line of defenses by using the forest cover, what I did was mass on the CSA left with undersized veteran brigades and stayed in cover around the buildings and shot it out for awhile. This influenced the AI to reorient its brigades and pull them over to that side to prevent a push. Then I pushed hard and made a salient specifically at the wheat field that separates their left flank from the center, using it to provide cover, then used that to flank and roll over the very sparse forces in the center, push them off, and take the cap a little bit into the 2nd stage. The forces on their left were kept bottled up by the other side of the salient and all my decoy brigades. I also had skirmishers making spoiling attacks on the CSA right in that forest area to keep them from rushing those brigades back to the center as quickly.