bonsainut

This is a fine suggestion, as are other ideas that would prevent player "steam-rolling" of content without relying on the AI scaling cheat. Some other examples: (1) Limit the availability of veteran troops of all types. (2) Limit the availability of horses. (3) Increase attrition due to disease. (4) (Your idea) Increase supply costs. Etc...

No. Right now it is a "campaign on rails". You fight the same battles, in the same order. You can decide to skip some or all of the side battles/skirmishes, but the main battles in each "chapter" have to be fought, and once completed you will advance to the next chapter. There is no real point for playing the game well (beyond a certain point) because the AI will scale up the difficulty to match whatever you bring to the battle. If you play the game poorly, the AI will not scale down to meet you, so you can lose if you don't keep up with a certain pace... but what that pace is and how you maintain it is based on an algorithm and there is no way of knowing if you are keeping pace or not. I'm waiting until the next big content patch because right now I have fallen out of love with the game because of this issue. The tactical battles are fun but the strategic game is really lacking.

Not from my perspective. What I am asking to see is NO correlation between one battle and the state of the AI army in subsequent battles. The AI battles should get progressively harder in a fixed balanced fashion (regardless of how well you fight or don't) with the outcome being that if your army doesn't get continuously stronger at the same pace, you will lose the game. What I object to is that I can save the game, and start a battle with 20,000 troops and the AI has 40,000. I reload to the save, sell some equipment, and buy 10,000 more troops, so I start the battle with 30,000 troops, and suddenly the AI has 60,000. So it doesn't matter how many troops I buy or don't buy, because the AI is giving me the same odds regardless. Therefore it doesn't matter how well I play, because the AI will always scale up (though it appears it won't scale down, not completely). So instead of enjoying the game, and playing to win, I find myself trying to figure out how the game system will cheat to deny me a hard-won advantage. Won't scale for premium gear? Ok so now I won't buy troops, but will spend all my money on equipment... Contrast that to a scenario where you know that the CSA will always have 80,000 troops at Shiloh. Play poorly in the earlier battles, and you might only have 40,000 troops and might not be able to win. Play WELL in the earlier battles, and you might have 60,000 troops and might win more easily. But you know the AI isn't suddenly getting extra troops because you just purchased some yourself. And if you find the gameplay too easy, you can just slide the difficulty up one notch, and the AI has the same number of troops, but they suddenly have 125% morale and do 125% the damage (for example). AI scaling is just a lazy way to say "I don't know how to game balance in my game design." They said as much when they said their concern was that a player would win big in an early battle and "steamroll" the rest of the content. I can think of a million ways to balance so this doesn't happen, so I hope that they will figure it out as well. The funny thing is... we can't even comment on the difficulty or ease of the different battles (as game testers) because we are all playing different games! No one can say "I won Shiloh on uber difficulty" because one person's version of that battle is currently different from everyone elses' versions - based on an arbitrary algorithm that doesn't take player skill into account. Not only are we bringing our own different armies to the battle - the AI is bringing a different army as well. It makes no sense.

Is anyone else finding artillery melee too powerful? Examples: (1) 300 unit cavalry with sabers attacks 300 unit artillery. Cavalry gets in melee without taking damage. Manages to destroy artillery, but cavalry takes 50% damage. (2) 375 unit artillery is charged by 1200 unit infantry. 1200 unit infantry gets into melee range without taking grapeshot. Long melee combat... infantry unit is eventually routed. Infantry takes 150 damage, artillery takes 50 damage. Seems like artillery is a little weak on ranged atm, but overpowered on melee?

I don't think calling peoples' valid feedback "a wall of complaints" is particularly constructive. If you look at the Steam feedback on this game, you have people rage-quitting and giving the game the lowest possible feedback score because of this very issue. The way the designers designed this game, it is more about learning how to "game the system" than about playing the game well. Right now because the game scales to the number of troops, but ignores the quality of those troops... you are better off having fewer, more veteran troops with better gear. That has nothing to do with your skills as a gamer - and everything to do with a one-dimensional game balancing system. When you have a strategy game that balances content difficulty based on how well you have played the game to that point you have to be REALLY careful that you have not just killed the entire reason for playing the game well. In my personal opinion, because this game is a set-piece series of encounters, you would be better off having fixed encounter difficulty throughout that assumes a certain level of unit/Army development and progression. Want to win? You have to play the game better than "average" and conserve your resources. Find the game too easy? Dial up the difficulty slider. Nothing worse than destroying the enemy in one battle... and the next battle you find they are twice as strong because you beat them so badly and got too many resources for the next fight(?) What? If you are worried about people "steam-rolling" the content, you haven't made it hard enough. Additionally, there are tons of ways you could cap how quickly someone's Army could grow without breaking the system. You could limit the numbers of veterans available, for example, or put constraints on how quickly you can unlock higher levels of perks and training, so that as long as you stayed within 110% (or whatever) of progression the cost would be reasonable, but increasing beyond that point and the costs become prohibitive.

I am having fun playing the tactical battle maps, but the game feels a little hollow without a strategic overview (to me). The way the campaign is linear regardless of whether you win or lose a battle takes a lot of interest out of it for me. I have over 2200 hours into Napoleon TW because of the amazing replayability. In many ways, this game represents what my dream Civil War strategy game could be... but the developers seem more focused on having you replay the Civil War (as it actually happened) over and over - with your result being how effectively you managed your tactics... versus how you fought the Civil WAR. As other players have pointed out... I find it completely unsatisfactory to push Grant into the Tennessee River at Shiloh... and have it not impact the progress of the war. At the minimum, I would love to see a branching campaign, where your success/failure at each major battle is what triggers the the next available set of scenarios. The only way you would play the Civil War "as it happened" is if your win/loss record was the exact same as what actually happened during the War. Each "chapter" could include two "skirmishes" or minor battles that would be for resources or to improve your troop experience... and one main battle that would advance the story line. Much more satisfactory... and a ton of fun for people playing as Lee - when he wins at Gettysburg and has to attack the Union troops defending Washington to win the war, for example. Or when Burnside flanks the Confederate line at Fredericksburg and drives the Confederates back to Petersburg... etc. There have been a million "what if" scenarios and this would be a great way to take advantage of them, increase replayability, and give the game a lot more depth.

So out of curiosity, I replayed Shiloh to see how it scaled. I doubled my forces to 16 brigades... First phase (Shiloh Church) the AI let me have 4000 infantry, 300 artillery, and 1 general to start (an increase of 2000 troops from when I started with 8 brigades). Halfway through I was reinforced with 300 additional artillery and 1 additional general. No supply wagon entire battle - and I was running low on ammo by the end. The AI, instead of attacking with 9000 troops, "scaled" and attacked with 16,500, with at least two units of cavalry and at least four units of artillery - plus at least one supply wagon. So the odds were 4 to 1 on the infantry, and 2 to 1 on cav and artillery. Second phase (camp), was even worse. AI started me with 5000 infantry, 300 artillery, and 300 cav - no general, no supply wagon. Halfway through the battle I was reinforced with 300 artillery, 1000 infantry, one supply wagon. These were all green troops I had just purchased for this battle. The AI scaled and attacked with 20,000 troops, 500 cav, and at least 4 units of artillery and supply wagons. At least three enemy generals. The final phase (Hornet's Nest) was a joke with a final reinforcement of 1000 infantry (one unit) and one supply wagon. I missed one unit somewhere, but it is close enough to get an idea of what is going on. So it appears on "normal" difficulty, the AI is scaling to at least 4 to 1 odds on the infantry. It seems strange (given what we know of the history of the Civil War) that I am marching 1000 unit full Union brigades while having to fight off waves of 2500 unit Confederate brigades... particularly after winning all the battles in the campaign to this point. Because of the way the game has been designed (almost more as an RTS than a wargame/strategy game) it is really critical for them to get this game balance right, because it represents the core of the game.

Yes and this is the problem I am having... It isn't playing like a strategy game at all. Win/lose/draw you will still fight the same battles. There is no strategic game play whatsoever. And so the game comes down to being as conservative as possible (tactically) so that you save resources so that you can increase your army strength faster than the AI scaling (whatever that is). From that perspective, the game is starting to feel very uni-dimensional (after 20 hours). I just played Shiloh for the first time (as the Union) and even though I had 8 brigades in 2 divisions, the AI only game me four for the first phase of battle - two 1000 man infantry and two 300 man artillery. Objective: protect Shiloh Church. Ok.... well this is going to be interesting. Encamp my two brigades on a creek bank in the best possible cover with skirmishers forward and on the flanks... when the AI advances a 300 man cavalry unit that outnumbers my skirmishers by more than 2 to 1. So I pull back my skirmishers... and here they come - wave after wave of infantry, over 9000 strong. No strategy - no flanking - they just charge straight ahead into melee one after the other - outnumbering me by more than four to one. This was normal difficulty, after winning every single battle prior to Shiloh. What the heck is going on? And if the AI simply scales based on your Army size and strength, where is the rationale for having smaller optional battles prior to a larger one? I would think the purpose would be for you to fight the optional battles to gain resources so you could win the larger battle... but that doesn't seem to be the case.

The other thing I will be interested to see is how the game handles morale. The flip side of unit movement is how supporting units had a positive impact on unit morale... and lack of support units had a negative impact. One of the reasons why you would advance in line is because your flanks would be covered by supporting units. I see in the game the penalties associated with being flanked (from a damage perspective) but I don't see anything associated with the impact of friendly units on your flanks, or friendly units behind you. Right now a lone unit in the middle of a field seems to have the same morale as the same unit in line of battle with friendly supporting units on the flanks and rear. Is this true?

I have only been playing the game for about 10 hours, but one of my first comments has to do with unit movement. It doesn't feel at all realistic to me. Now I know that we aren't shooting for 100% reality 100% of the time, but when I have a regiment moving in line of battle through a field... I expect it to look and feel like a regiment moving in line of battle, not a bunch of skirmishers scattered all over the place. Likewise troops moving down a road to approach a battle - they would be in column, not line of battle, and would generally move much faster, but not be able to respond well to attack. Even green troops would spend hundreds of hours practicing movement drills before being put into combat. They would learn how to shift from column to line, pivot, advance, retreat, close ranks, all while maintaining unit cohesiveness. Right now the game doesn't capture this feeling (to me). I have to be careful because there may be functionality in the game that I don't know how to use - I may not be using all the proper commands(?) but if so the game needs to little work (perhaps early tutorial) on unit movement. Civil War Unit Drill Additionally I am hoping we might see the ability to break from ranks in order to take defensive positions - in entrenchments, along sunken roads, among boulders, etc, or to command units to entrench in place. Perhaps this is currently in the game and I just haven't learned how yet These are all functions that were present in Sid Meier's Gettysburg and Antietam of 15-20 years ago