Hitorishizuka

I mean, okay, but get back to me when Ultimate General lets me land three dragons on my enemy's artillery. ;P (FWIW, I've heard it said that TW:W has finally gotten the cavalry/infantry/artillery balance down and is the first time that cavalry is really WAI)

I swear that it's not because I have past battles (literally just before in both 1st Franklin and Blackwater) where the enemy Skirmishers only had Spencers without me having to change anything. For this battle, they all had JF Browns unless I went and removed the JF Browns off one unit off in my camp screen (and a unscoped Whitworth for good measure), then they had the Spencers and mix of other carbines. Unless the difference is that for this battle they're only scaling specifically to skirmisher weapon quality whereas in other battles they are scaling to infantry and skirmisher weapon quality.

Rather late but my very slow CSA campaign finally got to Rio Hill. What a horrible mission. Two main pieces of feedback: 1) For whatever reason this mission definitely scales the enemy Skirmisher weapons to whatever is equipped on your entire camp screen, not just the army you brought. I am all but certain that there are a number of other missions previously that don't care and will only give Skirmishers Spencer carbines if you didn't bring sniper rifles on the actual mission, but this one will give sniper rifles if you had any at all equipped in camp. Rather irritating how this doesn't seem to be consistent behavior (unless I am hallucinating the previous ones). 2) LOS is very limited for reasons that aren't readily apparent. You can't see at all to the NE of the VP unless you are sitting on the observation point, but that thing is a bullet magnet death trap so good luck holding it. You also can't see at all to the S of the VP unless you have someone on the isolated observation point to the south, but good luck holding that also. Both combine to make not only skirmishers but the enemy cavalry more daunting than they really should be if you are trying to defend the VP.

It's moreso a big problem on the first playthrough when the timer is deceptive and you have no idea if there are more phases coming in the current day or if the timer is really the 'end' and you need to be in control by then. Or even if it's one of the battles where the timer is soft and you can keep fighting or if it's a hard instant end.

Depends on your style of play. If you play min, you basically always have enough officers, especially if you are diligent at rotating through to buy new Majors and Lt Colonels. I've had points in my current CSA campaign where I needed to force myself to use Brigadier Generals even when didn't need to because I just had so many and I wanted to get them promoted to 2 star.

The rewards you get from performing better in a given better are theoretically: more captured weapons (nerfed on Legendary) and more experience for your troops (technically matters insofar as the enemy scaling will soon put them at stat cap anyway while you then have room to scale up stat wise without being adjusted to). Otherwise, playing the campaign is more about husbanding your strength and developing your own troops while still winning battles.

Repeaters are amazing on units that can get into close range, I just wouldn't want them on every unit. Skirmishers on Hunter rifles so you don't get outscaled and enemy Skirmishers drop Spencers, which are one of the best Ranged Cavalry weapons. (The actual best Skirmisher weapons are the scoped rifles but you screw yourself if you use those.) Artillery is the 24pdrs and it isn't really close to the second place.

That's not being entirely fair to McClellan, his Corps commanders were fairly ineffective in their own right as well, even if he didn't enable them for success. A more aggressive general could well have lost the war early also just due to taking a tremendous embarrassing defeat and leaving DC open. Anyway, my strategy is in the last thread and I stand by it. There's enough good terrain that you can generally punish the AI with. All you need to do is withstand the opening phase's attack and the battle's pretty much won.

Courtesy link to the old thread, there may still be some good info for you there

Melee cavalry performance was very heavily nerfed in trees. ROF fixes/buffs were put in place which primarily affect Henry rifles and all relevant skirmisher and cavalry carbines to greatly improve their damage potential.

Eh, everyone turns kinda poorly, it's what cavalry are supposed to abuse. Keep them mounted and just make sure to approach from the right angles and have them 180 and back up and circle around to a different angle.

You want both, they have different uses. Mass melee are still worthwhile to force breaches (if expensive) and relatively safely wolfpack enemy formations to death by engaging each brigade and protecting each other. Ranged will do much, much safer damage in most other situations however and the high ROF carbines are incredible when you micro them to stay in range instead of cycle shooting. One or two brigades of ranged cav right on the flank of your line shooting into the flank of the enemy will do incredible damage over time/repeated engagements and can be used to pursue routing troops and keep the pressure up.

If you're wiling to micro, the buff a couple patches ago to reload speed makes the high fire rate weapons really, really good on cavalry. You just have to constantly order them closer and keep an eye on them to take advantage of it.

I sprinted around along the road the whole way, I -think- that's faster and better on condition than going straight through the forest but am not sure. Beyond that, yeah you need a solid core of troops in that small forest for the enemy to break on, especially their southern reinforcements later. You can still afford to have 4-5 brigades slowly push up and around through the northern forest and get to the point, though. If you play it right with skirmishers you can harass the enemy by attacking from the south while your northern forces are pushing and get them off the point in good order.

The AI just does so many dumb things at a strategic level that so long as you aren't completely outmatched numbers/stats wise on a local level, normal campaigns should be easy and I just want to show that off, basically. Especially if you use exploity cheese but even if you don't, because honestly artillery will make up the difference or you can just use veteran brigades instead of constantly training up new guys. The current normal campaign I'm youtubing generally doesn't have the high kill counts on artillery my previous ones did because cheese infantry kills everything so fast/hard but it well could. --- For example, the AI is still very bad at knowing how to defend its flank when the terrain really expands and it has to keep track of a lot of things. However, it was programmed to realize that it was getting flanked and that it should withdraw its frontlines in response...but it will do this more or less regardless of the current terrain position of its frontlines, the terrain of the position that it is forcing itself to withdraw to, or the size of the terrain it is trying to withdraw to relative to the size of its remaining forces. This means that once you start a flank, you can very easily pull the enemy into a ball on bad terrain and pocket them in a way that there literally isn't room for them to fight. At that point their units will either start doing the infamous side-shuffle that all of us know and/or rout from a volley into someone else's volley on the other side repeatedly and it turns into a shooting gallery. (The main problem seems to be that the AI cannot recognize that when a situation like that is occurring it needed to leave some units to defend in good position on one side and throw everything else at the other side to force a breakthrough in order to withdraw in good order, -not- slowly trying to pull everything back and get compacted.)

2. I have no idea. The Soldier probably at minimum popularized and published it. I may have been aware of it independently (I do not recall when I first started using it) but if I was I certainly didn't spread its knowledge anywhere near to the degree that he did. I generally only play on normal as I'm not playing all that much these days and just doing a casual blind normal leapfrog run (edit: by which I mean I played up to a certain point on one campaign, usually a patch boundary, then swap and do the other side...but I'm so far behind now that I haven't caught up) for recording purposes to show off/test things to help out others. A little cheese here and there mostly with combine division but mostly just work the fundamentals of movement and usage of terrain, not trying to game the AI's comp that much.

Quite late, but I've been slacking and lazy. My new CSA campaign only recently got up to this battle, so if'n anyone still needed a video for help with possible battle strategies, here you go.

Jamesk2 hits all the points for why I favor Marksman. IME on defense the AI tends to just sit their brigades at max range or charge you. In the former case, accuracy is preferred, in the latter case you'd get stuck in melee and wouldn't get the second volley anyway unless using repeaters. If you're really thinking ahead you could reserve a couple brigades in advance to take Firearms and dedicate them to using Henry rifles, you might maximize their uptime doing that.

Cavalry, only due to learning about the sniper weapon scaling if you actually field skirmishers of your own. I'm okay with sucking it up on certain maps if it's worth it but on some maps the AI just fields SO many skirmishers that giving your own good weapons is actually detrimental.

Probably. The battery is going to be more or less useless on balance once you consider scaling and disproportionate ammo used for mediocre results. You could also kit them with 6pdrs and deliberately put them on the front line so they take casualties on purpose (and change their officer to someone more expendable).

Be mindful, of course, that you can't replace all of your losses as you simply don't have the guns left in the armory. This is why we say either shield them with Combine Division or play very carefully with them as a flanking or reserve unit. High levels of Medicine will alleviate this partially but losses in general are still painful when you're using a singular unit like this.

Mixed my timeline up slightly by a battle. You only get 250 or so in the armory pre-Shiloh which isn't useful. Post-Shiloh/pre-Gaines you get another 250 or so in the armory and the 750 in Rep. At that point you can run a mid-sized infantry brigade fine, I agree. Even playing as a purist they would still be useful, though you would want to shield them very well.

...okay, sure, that's at just about the last battle available. That's not relevant to when we're talking about rep buying Fayetteville at pre-Gaines or whenever it is that you get them. The question is what you're supposed to use them for then if not with Combine. 300 guys with Fayettevilles aren't even really going to be killing that much, though, flanking or otherwise. If you really go out of your way to feed them the kills, sure they'll do okay, but if you let them do that even a 1k unit of Lorenz or something would have done just about as well and be more resilient.

Unfortunately they don't get the skirmisher cover bonus or have their auto-retreat AI, which while annoying occasionally does actually help keep them alive a bit. Without using combine division I don't see how you're practically supposed to use them, kinda making them a trap purchase. A 300 man infantry brigade can literally die from a single volley on open ground, losing all your guns.

Try this thread: