Karri

I won Malvern Hill because one of my brigades charging the line routed and ran half way to the second VP location through enemy lines. Charges/melee are very much broken at the moment, hopefully fixed next patch.

One solution to massive brigades is to allow more corps and more brigades to be brought in at different stages. Right now the campaign kinda pushes you towards a 20 brigade corps maxed out. There are far fewer changes to bring multiple smaller corpses than there is to bring massive corps in the scenarios overall as well. You could tweak that, and then with difficulty levels limit the amount of men players can bring. For example in easy you could deploy up to 3 to 1 advantage, whereas at hard you can't deploy more than 50% more men/brigades than the enemy(but would gain reinforcements with casualties?). I wouldn't aim to completely eliminate the massive brigades from player arsenal, as it is quite fun to play that way, but I would leave them at the easy difficulty. 2nd Bull Run could use a third victory point between Stony Ridge and Henry Hill Also, units in Nicodemus Hill get cut off from the battle when map extends to stone bridge. They should transfer back to battlefield.

It would be nice to have a multiplayer set up so that you can play with your own army like in the campaign. All players start with basic number of money and recruits and can build their first corps. Then instead of playing scenarios and campaigns players just play random/custom battles against each other, and like in the campaign you gain resources based on performance(win, draw, lose). You can then use these to upgrade your units, get more corps and so forth. This would of course require some kind of dedicated server system from Game Labs, which might be a tad bit out of the league at the moment.

Just finished easy playthrough as Union, and this time kept army organisation low. Had 3 corps, 12 brigades with max 1500 men per corps. All veterans and with best weapons by Antietamn. Won all battles. This time scaling worked quite well, with the exception of unit experiences. Casualties were again very lopsided, but I had to concentrate on the game a lot more as opposed to last time when I just maxed army org and built massive raw recruit brigades. If the AI units get shot to pieces I can understand almost endless limit of recruits and weapons, but not veteran recruits with best weapons. I was in no short supply of weapons and recruits, but money was all the time short(medicine and training at 8 or 9 by the end). Unit experience is still hard to max. I played most battles with the first corps, yet only had three or four 3 star brigades. There's a few scenarios where sudden unit spawning ruins a well fought battle.

A few playthroughs in, finished Antietamn as confederate for second time. Playing on easy difficulty and won all battles. Great game so far, but there's a few issues. In the last battle I had 60k against 120k(and about 250 vs 400 guns), and caused 80k losses while suffering 25k. This is pretty standard for all the battles, unless I outnumber the enemy in which case they are more. There were a few battles where I lost more as well. The main issue is that the game seems to be all about big units. This is because creating massive brigades allows you to charge and outpower any opposition. I broke Malvern hill with five 2500(0r 2k?) men strong brigades. Accidentally captured another VP because one of the units routed through the enemy line. It's the same issue with AI, because when it has those massive 3k men brigades it just concentrates 3 or 4 and breaks any unit on its way. Unless you have those same big brigades as well. The charge system is a bit broken. The hand to hand fighting at the moment is like some massive brawl, whereas it should probably be more like pushing in a line; there should be a frontage. This would mean that you cant just attack 1000 man brigade with 12 000 infantry, because those 12k will be blocking each other. Unit get in melee too often anyways. Sometimes the AI routs nearby and the whole line explodes because the routing unit catches one unit in melee. Cavalry charges are way overpowerd, at least when timed correctly. This usually leads to a strategy where I shoot the AI units to pieces, then charge and break them. Like I said 3 to 1 casualties are the norm, each brigade usually lasting 3 battles before it is down to 1000 men. Usually I just keep creating new units until the whole corps is spent(and has also become veteran), and then create a new corps. For the major battles I beef up as many veteran units as possible, all at least to 1500, and usually try to create one massive corps of raw recruits. The veterans then take up as good defensive positions as possible and aim to whittle down the enemy units from 3k to 1.5k men. Usually this happens because the AI gets stuck in the open. I also have quite a lot of artillery, as one 24-gun battery can cause 2-3k casualties per battle. They cause supply issues though. One the AI has broken it's units I bring in the big units, if any remain, and rout the enemy. This is quite repetitive though...and for example there is no other way to break Malvern hill than massive brigades because my 1.5k veterans cant defeat a 3k fortified enemy brigade in firefight. Campaign could use a big makeover. Scaling doesn't work at all. At the start of each campaign phase the player should see the composition of enemy forces, and all the small battles should have an effect on it(and perhaps give other perks as well). Even better if several campaign were linked. Instead of just giving the AI random units for each battle give it an OOB that unlocks gradually. On top of this after every grand battle the AI should get an x number of men, money, leaders and weapons. Even better if you can let player decide how much(or link to difficulty). The prebuilt oob could start at whatever nominal strength, and the AI could then rotate corps throughout battle. This way if several corps with 3k brigades get shot to pieces it will at least eventually run out of men, yet still retain lots of small brigades. Also, asking stuff from government should be at least half as cheap. Early access so I am sure lots will improve.

One way to balance things out a bit is to make the smaller battles before the grand battle have some effect on the actual battle. Ie. if historically it was a loss and win should give you some benefit like less enemy forces present, less quality forces present or something like this. I would also like to see what I am about to face BEFORE I reinforce and build up my units. Played one game(easiest level) where I managed to constantly cause 3 to 1 casualties, rout enemy troops and keep my own troops in high strenght. This only meant that in the grand battle I was facing a fresh and superb US army scaled to mine. If I beat them at every corner they should be weaker, or at the very least my forces should be stronger. Right now there is little to no advantage of actually winning.

I'd like to see more casualties returned.The medic thing returns 2% at a time, but there should be some autorecovery to go with it(and it should be a bit higher in general). When units rout and lose cohesion they should see stragglers and what not.