RadioRage

The regular difficulty dont remember what rank it was, no bonuses for me or handicaps for the enemy just the middle difficulty. Thanks guys I'm glad you appreciated the review!

Awesome game! played as the union and had a great campaign. A few special units carried over from the intro battle to antietam and boy was that satisfying to see the war weary but hardened 9th Wisconsin participate in the surround and destruction of the army of northern Virginia at antietam after fighting long and hard for 2 years. As for balance, i thought it was done very well. A few battles i found myself in a rough spot with new recruit brigades getting chewed up and annihilated by three star confeds , but that's war. i found if you focused on numbers in the infantry department and didn't obsess too much about the high quality equipment it made the campaign much easier. the number of brigades and men in the brigades is a huge metric towards winning, getting multiple firing lines on one enemy brigade is what makes the difference. Cavalry and skirmishers were huge, and buying a small amount of good weapons every time they popped up in the armoury and having Henry and scope rifle armed skirms at antietam was essential. frank and Wesson served the mounted rifles well also, give good equipment to most experienced brigades and cav/skirms and just pump out the conscript infantry. after replaying some battles and tinkering with army composition, i ended at antietam as the union with three corps, a total of 10 divisions, and about 70k men. i surrounded the entire confederate army and annihilated every SINGLE brigade between the sunken road and the church, the battle started with 72k vs 50k and ended with me as the union having 10k casualties and the confederates having 35k casualties. i hope when new battles are released my wiping out of their army will have some effect at least in the department of me not seeing the same brigades in later battles, having new units be called up to replace the stonewall brigade and texas brigade destroyed at antietam. just for immersion , because for gameplay having the enemy be able to scale to you every battle makes a lot of sense. Some battles were harder than others like i struggled very hard with thoroughfare gap against Longstreet, could never win that one with his 38k star brigades entrenched in those big forests. but again that is good, not every battle should be equally difficult and some should be downright almost impossible. the first time i experienced that side battle where the rebels come from every direction unexpectedly and you only have 3 brigades on the field in the open i almost cried, lost a veteran brigade and almost lost the battle, i never captured thoroughfare gap. Ai is basically awesome, the way enemy brigades would go into column and exploit flanks and gaps in my lines while all my brigades were tied up forcing me to maneuver and readjust at my expense was very very good. enemy cavalry ai needs work, often they will just stand in the open and eat volleys. in general ai awareness was great, at antietam i launched a wide cavalry flanking maneuver into sharpsburg and when it was spotted i could see the enemy divert brigades from the main battle at sunken road to cut off my flank, very immersive and possibly the best ai for a strategy game like this I've played, much better than total war FOR SURE. That being said routing and fallback needs a lot of work; and often times I'd find my brigades marching out of cover into melee with no charge order after i give them a simple click attack to an enemy well within their range. i do utilize the hold mechanic but I'd like my units to rotate to face but not march aimlessly to their deaths in the open. routing everyone else has complained about, fallback is very confusing. idk where my units fallback to and if i click move often they will get a rear flank penalty and get routed immediately. this is frustrating but not game breaking whatsoever, mostly bothersome when routing enemy units and having them slip into a completely secured objective five seconds before the battle ends, forcing a draw or defeat onto you even though you've secured all possible realistic flanks the random enemy routed unit the routed through your lines now rallies and snags the long forgotten initial objective. those are my only complaints, everything else i will wait and see what comes with updates and in the final package. am praying for head to head campaign, 2v2s or even 4v4s, or at least competitive multiplayer in historical battles with the armies we've made in campaigns, i understand that is hard to implement and like the game anyway, major requests are multiplayer in any form and names of geographical features on maps, loved that in UGG Overall loved the game and cant wait for more content to come out, am resisting a rebel play through until full release. absolutely gorgeous graphics and immersive sound, ai, and tactics just how i like my strategy games. customization in campaign was glorious, i cant wait to have my hardened union army with the lorenz-armed german division face off against Lee's army in Gettysburg, and conversely i cant wait to play as the confederates at gettysburg and fight it how it should have been fought, and then carry on to sack Philadelphia/DC. Thanks Darth, you're the hero we need but dont deserve!

I have seen in the list of what is to come that two of the battles are "the battle of Washington" and "the battle of Richmond" which makes me assume there will be at least some level of dynamic flow in the singleplayer campaign, and there is no reason I could see that would prevent these great devs from implementing a head-to-head campaign system at the very least. Unless its already being implemented I imagine there may be a lot of difficulty in implementing what yous uggest fallendown with maneouver and so forth, even though its a great idea and I hope it gets implemented. What I do expect is a campaign where I can play as union and my buddy confed, and if I win all the major battles that are historical the last two or three battles of the campaign would have something to do with taking Richmond and making Georgia howl, whereas if my buddy won all the battles there would be a Maryland campaign by the confeds and maybe they capture Pittsburgh or Washington, forcing the end of the war. And if its an even split in victories the campaign may end a bit more historically, with obviously an option for a less decisive confederate victory.

I have 3 friends in the pipe who will certainly purchase it but only if it has multiplayer capability beyond 1v1, just like many in this thread we love playing 2v2s and 4v4s etc... campaign coop and head to head would be amazing. I love the game and I would love it even more if I could crush my my friends over a long campaign, annihilating and capturing their favorite units