Andre Bolkonsky

A very disreputable university, the scum of the internet.

@Mr. Mercanto I summon thee to the Stone of Erech! Read the text above; what say you? You have seen this hand before? How does a teacher handle plagarism?

I abhor human wave attacks. A well timed bayonet charge with a cry of Urrah! is one thing, withering fire from well entrenched enemy is another entirely. It is not necessary to waste valuable human lives needlessly. Hold the Rebels in place, nothing more. Put your effort on the far wing, and create a mobile reserve designed to break off from the southern engagement and hammer Telegraph Road from the other side. GL, HF.

My apologies for the delay. A brief vacation and back to school stuff has put it on the back burner. give me another week or so and it'll crank back up again. I appreciate the interest.

3rd Corps: I always like having a free, empty, corps I can use as a parking lot to help me rearrange the brigades in my different corps more easily. Makes putting together custom designed OOBs for the minor battles much easier. I alternate between Politics and Organization until both are maxed out. If I only need to deploy two corps, and I have three free corps to organize my infantry, artillery, and light troops; it's fun to custom build OOBs. Later in the game when you need to start stockpiling every unit you can for the last two battles is when those last corps get locked and loaded for good. Batteries: @The Soldier is our resident expert on cannon. I cannot recommend his dissertation on artillery highly enough. Quality guns want to be packed into batteries of 12 guns. Smaller batteries do ramp up XP more quickly, but 12 is a solid number. Rifles are for range, Smoothbores are for short range cannister. Try and keep a bit o' both in your corps, and tailor it between battles based on what their assignment is going to be. 24 Pound Howitzers are more precious than gold and are exceptional up to mid range. 20 Pound Parrotts are now solid and have a very long reach. 3" Ordnance Rifles are the jack of all trades, and Napoleons excel positioned close up behind a defensive line using cannister whenever possible. Those four guns should comprise the vast majority of your veteran batteries. There are different ways of handling secondary, cheap, beginner guns: 6-pounders, wiards, 12 pound howitzers. It goes without saying you should never pay money for them. But you're going to harvest a lot from the battlefield. If you have plenty of empty brigades you can make lots of small, cheap, FREE batteries. Or you can pack 'em into batteries of 16 and jam them up against the enemy, not caring how many casualties you take. When they get back to camp, battle scarred and with a bit of experience, upgrade their guns and give the cheap weapons to incoming, green artillerymen.

Gaines Mill and Malvern Hill are where artillery men are made. A hefty, timely, investment in quality cannon before these two battles will serve you well.

To repeat myself, shuffle your corps and put some veteran units in that second corps. Otherwise its dealers choice, you're going to have a problem on both end of the line so better to have firemen on both sides.

If you have the reserves, just push your corps supply up to 35K and leave it there. You'll need it more often than not. I would shuffle your two corps a bit and at least have one veteran division in that second corps. You are going to get pressed across the entire front line, if one end breaks you're going to have trouble everywhere until you pull back to the Hornets Nest and take the road north to the Indian Mounds around Pittsburgh Landing.

Day one in Shiloh, for the North, is a fighting withdrawal. Hold your objectives as long as you need to, withdrawing to the next point out when the computer changes objectives. Make sure your artillery is limbered and moving safley behind your lines before beginning to withdraw the infantry. Oh, big brigades. Always. Day Two, take Buell's corps of FREE troops and just RAM them down the Rebels throats. No quarter. Destroy both Buell's corps and the Rebel armies and feast on the leftover weapons while your mobile troops do end runs and take the objectives virtually unoppossed.

Divisional Brigades used to be very popular. They were nerfed several patches back and are not nearly as effective as they have been in the past. And they are very high maintainence, you can't really build them unless you want to spend a good chunk of the early game managing the micro to put them together. But, this gives me a chance to revisit my favorite UG:CW moment ever: A 2,700 man divisional brigade toting Spencer Rifles in the Devil's Den at Gettysburg. They ruled the day, breaking entire divisions that tried to cross the stream. And when the Rebels brought up artillery to blast us out of the rocks, they scampered up the hill and continued their devestation from above.

@Major Grigg appreciates your validation of his humanity.

20 Pound Parrotts have become killers. I have documented 1,000 man kills in one battle since the last buff

I'm stealing the State Division naming convention for my back end corps. It would be an excellent way to keep track of Green divisions.

You are 100% correct in this evaluation of era batteries and brigades regarding mixed arms. However, I can tell you with some certainty it's not going to change in this game for a wide variety of reasons. Sorry.

Soldier, I am reading your guide and got through Wiards. Seriously, very impressive the amount of work and research you put into this. Well done, sir! Edit: 3" Rifles. Fist bump.

Good question. Traditionally, I figure cheap men and cheap weapons are the only thing available for the first year of the war. So POLITICS and ORGANIZATION are the first two to leverage up to 10. After that, TRAINING gives you a nice large army of vets, and MEDICINE gives you back a nice percentage of expensive veterans and their quality weapons each battle. Then I worry about LOGISTICS and ECONOMY in equal measure.

Mobility is still a beautiful thing. The real value of cav is their ability to MOVE, quickly. I find their greatest value is out on the flank, in the saddle, helping turn an enemy line. But thereis definitely more than one way to skin a cat, and I look forward to seeing what you find out. Let us know.

Hans, your points are well taken. But, with all due respect, Hiro is like the original cavalry master of this game. one of the first posts I ever read when I joined this forum was his dissertation on shock cavalry way back when. He's been around a long time. How much he has played recently, I can't say. There was a time when Shock Cavalry reigned supreme and Dragoons were expensive recon units because they were good for nothing else. Cavalry changed dramatically over development. But he usually has a reason for saying what he says.

My gift to you, and anyone else who wants them. They're the hard copy of the build on the AAR I was doing. Well tested beginning to the Union Campaign. The prestige points are probably correct, but given the last tweak to the game might need to be revisited. To make it easy, you can download the files at the bottom of the graph

Start Campaign: Tactics Cavalry Business 4 Recce 3 Politics 1 Org 1 Econ 1 Logistics Phillipi (Train Station) Assault INITIAL OOB: Woods / Scales 2x 6 gun bde Loomis / Walton 850 / 840 man infantry +1 Org (2) + 4 = 28 -4 Palmettos 24 points Distress Call Meeting 1 corps of 8 Bde +1 Org (3) + 4 -4 Gibbons 24 points BULL RUN MAJOR Assault 1 Corps of 10 Bdes Assault +2 Politics (5) +10 (34) Crossroads Defense 1 Corps of 9 Bdes +1 ORG (4) 2000 man Bde +4 (38) -6 - 4x 24 PDR 32 River Crossing Assault 1 Corps of 12 Bdes +1 Politics (6) +4 (36) -4 Sherman (32) SHILOH MAJOR Defense 2 Corps 0f 20 Bdes +2 Politics (8) +10 (42) 7 Pines Defense 1 Corps of 6 Bdes +1 Politics (9) +4 (46) Rendevous Meeting 1 Corps of 8 Bdes +1 ORG +1 (5) +4 (50) Secure River Assault 1 Corps of 12 Bdes +1 ORG +1 (6) +4 (54) GAINES MILL MAJOR Defense 1 Corps of 20 Bdes 1 Corps of 10 Bdes (+2) +1 Politics (10) +1 ORG (7) +15 (69) MALVERN HILL MAJOR Defense 2x Corps of 15 Bdes each (+2) Medicine (2) +15 (84) Kettle Run Attack 7 Bdes +1 Medicine (3) +4 (88) Thoroughfare Gap Defense 10 Bdes +1 ORG (8) +4 (92) -6 Reynolds -6 20Parrott (80) 2nd BULL RUN Attack Max of Four Corps 2 Primary x 20 Bde each 2 Second x 20 Bde each +2 Medicine (5) +20 (100) -6 Meade (94) Crampton's Gap Attack 9 Bdes +1 ORG (9) +4 (98) -4 Burnside (94) South Mountain Attack 20 Bdes +1 ORG (10) Cap +4 (98) -18 Rifles -7 Cannon (73) ANTIETAM Attack 5 Corps of 20 Bde each +2 Medicine (7) +25 (98) -6 Patrick Kelly (92) iuka Attack 10 Bdes +1 Medicine (8) +5 (97) -6 Carroll (91) Perryville Defend 14 Bdes +1 Medicine (9) +5 (96) -20 1861 -15 Parrotts (61) FREDERICKSBURG Attack 5 Corps of 24 Bde Each 3 Primary 2 Reserve +2 Medicine (10) Cap Training (1) +30 (91) Parkers Crossroad Defend 10 Bdes +1 Train (2) +5 (96) - 10 Rosencran -5 Sheridan (81) STONES RIVER Defend 3 Corps of 20 Bdes Each +2 Train (4) +20 (101) (100) - 20 1861 (80) Supply Raid FREE CAVALRY +1 Train (5) +5 (85) Nanesmond River Attack 14 Bdes +1 Train (6) +5 (90) Siege of Suffolk Defend 18 Bdes +1 Train (7) +5 (95) -20 Parrott -15 Carbines (60) CHANCELLORSVILLE + Salem Church Attack 3 Corps @ 25 Bdes 1 Corps @ 15 Bdes +3 Train (10) +38 (98) BONUS!! -10 Sickles (88) 2nd Winchester Defend 13 Bdes +1 Economy +5 (93) -20 Spencer -5 Stannard (68) GETTYSBURG Defend 3 Corps @ 25 Bdes +2 Logistics +30 (98) AAR Union Campaign Table.docx Union Battle Deployment Tables.docx

Congrats on playing out the campaign! Blue Coats. I love the South, but the North is fun to play.

1. Captured troops are capped at 1,000, this happened very early in development when Rebel's were adding 5-6,000 in manpower after every major battle. 2. There is a formula for surrendered troops, based on when they are surrounded or in danger of being wiped out totally they will surrender. A lot of it has to do with morale, but the only two people who know the exact formula are Sterner and Dartis. What do I do? Keep killing them till they break, shatter or surrender.

I agree with you completely. I do think that is one of the things Dartis does very well. I've watched the process over the past few months as the play balance swung back and forth during development, and he is pretty meticulous in wanting things to behave properly in the manner that they should. And slowly and methodically the game has become more and more 'realistic' without losing the fun. Because who cares how realistic a game is if it is not fun to play?

when someone cracks the code on editing game saves, it will be a happy day.

Certainly, another game will follow this one. The leap from Gettysburg to Civil War was huge. I'll be interested to see what they learned from Civil War and how they'll apply it to their next game.