Hitorishizuka

If your gun batteries are reliably taking damage at all, you're probably doing something wrong/strange. I would only throw cheapo Howitzers or 6pdrs away like that with a rookie brigade (there's an idea, wither them away on purpose on point blank duty with bad cannons). Even then it's generally possible to position even your point blank artillery behind the infantry in a way to shield them even from splash/chip damage from the enemy artillery.

If you order troops to a location nearby that is sideways, they will actually shuffle over and maintain facing instead of turning, getting shot in the flank, and turning back.

As stated above, 10pdr Ordnance are basically the bread and butter for your army, as they have solid performance at acceptable cost and are plentiful enough to outfit many brigades. You can do better certainly, but only at both greater cost and more limited supply.

I try not to pause -too- much as it makes videos/play sessions go a bit long (and I have more dead air to fill) but it's useful to occasionally take a step back and survey the battlefield, especially in the largest grand battles where you're probably fighting in multiple areas at once.

6) You have to learn the battles but in general time is generous enough that you can sit or advance through good cover and minimize casualties at first, then only move onto VPs and killing the AI after you've mostly broken their forces or at least achieved numerical parity. Obviously if you're still moving too slowly as the timer is ticking down you can acquire a sense of urgency. Either way, go for victory all the time, but sometimes you can opt to not destroy the entirety of their forces if they still have good positions and it'll cost more than you'll gain after the battle. 7) Use the lowest officers you can in small brigades to develop a wide barracks or else you risk running into that. 2 and 3* generals should only really be leading Max size brigade, divisions, or corps. You can use Lt Cols and below for small units. Cavalry units are also good for farming Colonels into Brig Generals.

My general suggestion is to push hard for the western VP and use it as bait to funnel enemy forces in as they try to retake it. The woods directly north of the point are a strong enough defensive point that you can effectively break the Confederate forces for the rest of the battle from there on the first day.

Interesting... Any more detail you can provide on what specifically was changed with combined divisions? Did you finally quash the 'free' weapons part of it? That was probably the last holdout, the stats were already balanced across. Poor Wiards, guess your day in the sun has gone. Hopefully good changes for Gettysburg, did feel a bit gypped with how easy it was to push for a Phase 1 win. Same for 2nd Bull Run for the North, though even with relatively sparse initial forces it'll probably be doable just because of the terrain and how much of the enemy forces it's possible to ignore.

All the way around to the far north, attack into the trees and push out the lone brigade there pretty easily, and then use that to flank the entire map. Maybe 1/3 of the first phase to move, 1/3 to start pushing over. By the time the first phase ends you should have cleared half the heights from the back. This lets you naturally keep your main forces together in the second phase when the map opens and all you need to do is have a force move south to block reinforcements along the river. They'll break along your reinforcements and you can eventually transition across yourself in the last phase for the complete wipe out.

I still think there's value in instead looping all the way around north but seems more people find success in just waiting on the next phase. Whatever works for you.

You can do it with a skeleton force in your 3rd Corps (1-2 divisions only) as if you play the battle well by the time they even hit the field everything's over. A long sweep along the forest and fortifications and you race ahead to pocket and pin them against the river on the east side. 3rd Corps only really shows up to contest the southern reaches which aren't even necessary if you've already taken all the VPs up north.

Glad to help, that's exactly why I bothered making these.

I shy away from charging a lot of the time (in a somewhat vicious cycle, I admit) as my brigades tend not to have more than 50+ melee and they're not equipped with CS Richmonds so their gun also isn't contribute. Combine that with fortification natural melee defense buff and being clumped up and even closer to grapeshot and it doesn't seem to work out all that great for me a lot of the time. IME if there's at least decent cover for a bait squad to not get trivially chunked out then focusing fire and outshooting the brigade on the edge has worked. This also works hand in hand with my strategy of going after enemy units as much as possible, provided the terrain is reasonable, so they don't have other units available to get back into those fortifications as I slowly inch my way up to take advantage of newly opened gaps. Fence fortifications are garbage, they'll get outshot by units in building or forest cover most of the time, so I considered that a good trade.

@The Soldier Noted! A little better long range performance is probably fine given the ranges I was actually using them at for counterbattery/general sniping at max range in this battle, since they weren't getting very close either. Definitely miles better than the tens of casualties they used to inflict in the same situation. The only other pick instead of Logistics would have been Economy--since I rarely needed to buy anything I devalued it. On the other hand, a lot of the work that I like to do tends to be with detached flanking cavalry and skirmishers picking up thousands of kills while nowhere close to resupply. I ran out of ammo all the time on those units (I recall even a couple times in these videos where I've had to just pull them back for resupply on purpose) so anything that helped that out was welcome. Some more money at the end probably would've been nice but I don't think I really ended up in a position where more infantry mattered.

All episodes of my CSA campaign are finally up, Washington was a blast. Finally got to take the limiters off and use all of my 3* 100 all stat units and spend all my money. Playlist starts here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns2AxiixpWI&list=PLWscnbIydjzQq5x0iAXgbA74XOBSGmJeY&index=25 Notable things-- As discussed elsewhere, army intel claims the Union should be limited to 125k only. I ended up facing a total of 60k+105k or so (rough estimates), which seems either unintended or non-obvious as to the way the mechanic works. (Is it supposed to be only on a per day limiter?) Sniper skirmishers are godly and properly micro'd will rack up tremendous casualty counts, especially useful for picking away at the artillery from their rear safely. Skirmisher cavalry are quite handy as well again finally, as the battle is wide enough and you get the opportunity to defend static defenses again instead of having to attack trenches with no place to flank. Probably doing a Union campaign after this, again learning/clear focused and not aimed at high difficulty. As said elsewhere, any and all feedback is welcome.

You can either take a wide swing around left and flank everything and come at the VP from behind or you can go up front. If you go up front, clear the railway with a broad first push (lots of trees to use as cover while you fight it out). Then stack a column up and attack the hole at the wheatfield on the NE half where there are no fortifications and a couple buildings and you can use that as a wedge to push into the back trees and then down to the VP.

If you have the advantage I'd fight the opening battle anyway, especially if you have relatively green troops. Every opportunity to kill the enemy and get your troops experience should be taken, so long as you fight smart.

If you're Union you can technically get away with only one fully-stocked Corps as it's easily winnable on the first day (with a minimum of bloodshed, even). Either way 4 divisions per Corps is very important, so yes I would say to put your points into AO.

Finally brought my ongoing CSA campaign to a close, pretty much a blast the full way through. Minor annoyance at how ineffective cavalry is once the trench systems really start existing everywhere but then they got to star a bit in Washington again, so that was fun.

If there are any, it's relatively insignificant. They don't have enough brigades to contest and flank you on the south as they will also hit you in the center (by that building across the river) and north more as well, so you can use skirmishers and pound them in the flank instead as they contest on that hill.

There are a few grand battles here and there where you get to deploy a second Corps to the same location. Theoretically you can give your first corps a bunch of artillery and shell the enemy locations with some scouting help for an entire first phase and then have the second Corps come in with a normal composition and clear out. This tends to work a little less well once real fortifications come on as you just really won't do any damage worth talking about to the infantry and may not be able to get spotting information on the artillery, generals, and supply.

Gaines Mill is pretty easy once you realize that, like most of the early fortifications, the ones that exist here are a trap. Move forward across the river half a foot into the trees and you can defend much more easily, then just extend your line following the tree line gradually to the NE. You can hold here the entire map with a token force to protect your backside and your reinforcements to protect the isolated flag.

You can make a hard stand between the VPs and pittsburgh landing, there's a line of very good terrain to do so. I wouldn't try and hold the western or far southern VPs, the terrain is very bad. Loose suggestion: Phase 1 - Bleed them by moving forward, then as time is getting close bug out and run. Make sure your artillery gets moving early so it doesn't get overrun. Phase 2 - Stay condensed and support yourself. You can't move forward fast enough to get to the good terrain to hold them. At best send some skirmishers into the center to harass them from the flanks as they try to push on you. Phase 3 and 4 - You can stall at the Hornet's Nest but it's hard and I would probably recommend withdrawing slightly north IIRC. Don't try to hold anywhere near the camps to the west, also withdraw north to the trees so you're parallel with your position north-ish of the Hornet's Nest. You can then hold this position for the rest of the map, switching back to offense as time is winding down. It's possible to wipe the entire CSA force on Day 1 but it's a little tricky to get the timing right. At all points getting skirmishers and cavalry deep behind the enemy lines will pay dividends. Their artillery is ripe for killing and you can threaten points to distract them and pick off lone brigades more or less with impunity. In particular they reinforcements entering from the far S/SE late Phase 2/early Phase 3 that are heavy artillery and a little bit of infantry that you can do a lot of damage to if you can get onto.

General map teaching + how to get your army to a stable point + microing skirmishers and cavalry in the flanks and rear + general how to read terrain + a little bit of historical intro on how the grand battles went.

For the record, the results are intended to be educational primarily and aimed at the audience who are having problems even on Colonel (or BG but still losing most of the army etc). I absolutely agree it's an exploit! I would not say it is the crux of the whole thing but certainly makes things easier. It should also be noted that it just affects weapons and the stats of the combined unit are proportionally averaged by the contributions of each unit. I'm probably going to do a Union playthrough for the sake of teaching after my last CSA video, so if you (or anyone else) have any feedback I'd love to hear it.

1) Rush Politics, then Medicine. Never lose battles, don't win battles while taking a lot of losses, periodically spend reputation on money. 2) (Almost) never spend money on infantry veterans, do a mix of rookies and veterans for cavalry, veterans only for sniper skirmishers and artillery. Infantry starts as rookies as fodder for combined division to protect a small elite brigade, only gets more men as veterans here to keep numbers to max combined brigade size between the shield+elite because it's so cheap, then graduate to veteran at 40~ firearms (and eventually elite) and stop spending money. 3) Use relatively small armies so that all the guns you need can be looted from the enemy army and you only have to spend shop money on the most expensive and useful weapons like Fayettevilles and 24pdr Howitzers. Periodically sell off all the excess weapons (mostly inferior cannon) that you will loot. 3a) Abuse of combined division to save even more on money by having 2500 men brigades on the field with the best weapons beyond what even the shop+looting would offer.