waldopbarnstormer

I would also like to see the name of the objective listed somewhere, even just as a toolkit when you hover over the flag icon at the top next to the strength bar. Even though at the moment clicking the flag zooms you in to the objective it doesn't help me figure out which objective is which.

Just finished my first play of chickamauga as csa and I lost on day one because I ran out of time capturing the final crossing. I was very cautious trying to limit my casualties and dealing with the endless skirmishers. I think the visibility system could do with improvement because I found that my troops at the southern Ford could not see the entrenched defenders until they were almost on top of them ( I had to run my brigade across because I could not use charge until halfway across the Ford), my supporting artillery being useless with nothing to target. Not just in this case but also in other battles like at the start of gettysburg I find that I can be shot at but cannot return fire because my units can't see the enemy. This was a time before smokeless gunpowder had been invented so the act of firing would give away your position. Now by 1863 in the game all enemy units have long range rifles and seem to me to be able to see me before I see them. I find this really frustrating because I am trying to manage my army through battles where my losses are not being replaced and I am forced to get on top of the enemy before I can see them and return fire. At chickamauga and other battles like Fredericksburg I get bombarded by invisible artillery well within range of my own artillery but with no ability to counter fire because they are outside visibility/fog of war. Artillery are big noisy things when firing so should give away .their position. My recommendation is to increase visibility range and/or to make units that are firing visible because they give away their position. It is hard to describe the frustration of watching your carefully managed troops be cut down by a deadly invisible attacker less than 200 metres away from you. Also perhaps you could identify the presence of a unit but not its strength by having a plain unit symbol until you get closer to allow you to return fire but representing the unknown element of not being able to identify the unit giving away its position just from firing when in cover. You could make firing at unidentified units less accurate to represent your troops just firing at the smoke traces and not being able to pick out proper targets, this would prevent the feature being overpowered against skirmishers.

Nick, could you provide some more information on what is meant by fixed enemy strength please?

Cavalry should definitely be made faster, I have had instances where my cavalry have struggled to out run charging infantry, maybe give them a run button for short bursts of speed. For me melee strength in this game is not about whether an individual skirmisher is better in melee than a normal infantry man but it a more abstract concept, skirmishers should lose to cavalry and infantry in melee because of the advantages of close information, weight of numbers, and the weapons they are equipped with. Infantry should suffer a penalty in forests because they the close formation hinders them and the close ranks are disrupted by the trees and rocks, but they should still smash skirmishers because they have bayonets and weight of numbers. The skirmishers will have the speed advantage because of their loose order formation so should be able to run away but if caught they should suffer heavy casualties quickly.

I am a bit late to the party but here is my radical suggestion; give carbine cavalry sabres and pistols. Now I am not an expert on the acw but from what I have read cavalry were equipped with a range of weapons from swords and pistols to shotguns and breechloading carbines. Why not give every cavalry unit a standard sabre and pistol and then allow selection of different carbines. By the 1860s cavalry in the offensive role was overtaken by technology, see the battle of balaclava in the Crimean war for an example of infantry fighting off cavalry without forming square. A unit of rifle equipped infantry could decimate charging cavalry before they got to close for melee. I don't think the US army had the same tradition of elite cavalry as in Europe plus the mountainous and forested terrain was much different to the open fields of Europe. US cavalry was used like dragoons, fast moving light infantry which excelled at reconnaissance, raiding, seizing critical terrain and holding it dismounted until reinforcements arrived. In this game I use close combat equipped cavalry for 4 tasks 1. Scouting, they have good field of visibility and can get out of trouble fast. Can cover lots of ground. 2. Fighting enemy cavalry. 3. Chasing down skirmishers in the open. 4. Hunting artillery, I usually group them with carbine cavalry for extra damage and consider them successful if they divert artillery and a brigade or two of infantry to chase them away even if they don't inflict many casualties. I usually operate 2 carbine cavalry brigades and 1 melee brigade together, the carbine brigades can cycle fire and retreat then I send in the melee brigade or I keep them close to deter enemy cavalry. By 1863 I encounter too many skirmishers equipped with repeaters or other nasty weapons that cause me heavy casualties in my cavalry so I have started favouring ranged cavalry more for their flexibility in role over melee cavalry. To counter skirmishers in woods I use my own skirmishers, detached skirmishers or a good old bayonet charge to clear them out. Like I have said before cavalry should not be very effective in woods, even in Europe at the battle of quatre bras the fleeing British infantry sought shelter from the French shock cavalry in bossu wood.

Realistically cavalry are pretty useless in forests because the trees and branches impede the ability to form up and charge and hinder the individual attacking properly by preventing them swinging their sabre effectively. I have not yet had a chance to play latest patch but I would hope that light woods (one tree symbol) have less of a nerf on cavalry than thick forest.

I have encountered endless skirmishers armed with Spencer's in my confederate campaign. It really cost me at Rio hill were I lost 3500 to the ai's 5000. I now have 1500 Spencer's in my inventory. I have 2-3 brigades of skirmishers 2 armed with hunters and my vets armed with whitworths or IFs whichever they are but unscoped.

The Problem I am having with my cavalry in my confederate campaign is having not enough carbines to equip my brigades. I was only able to equip 2 brigades with sharps 1855s over 500 men as all I had in the other carbines was enough for 400 at most. After brandy station and Rio hill I have over 1000 Spencer's.

I have found cavalry to be hard to manage but definitely not useless, it all depends on what you expect from them and what you use them for. They are great for scouting out the map and countering skirmishers and artillery and for making flank attacks but if you try to use them in the shock role or to attack well supported units then you will suffer badly. I think with the way melee works at the moment even for infantry I try to avoid it because once engaged you can't disengage easily and are open to supporting fire.

Just noticed that following brandy station I can now bring 50,000 supply for each corps, when did that change?

I would like to ask the question, did either side use conscription during the war? Thank you

I think the victory system should be split along the lines Crushing victory, major victory, victory, draw, minor defeat, major defeat. The difference between crushing victory and victory could be capturing additional victory points or achieving a certain kill/death ratio, or destroying a set percentage of the ai army. Bonuses would apply for each type so crushing victory would mean in the next battle the ai gets 20% fewer troops over 10% for a victory and the ai has lots of green troops to represent militia and conscripts being drafted to replace losses. Also you could get a bonus to new recruits joining your force pool. For defeats the penalty could be a reduced loss of reputation because you decided to save your army in a minor defeat and reduction in resources. Losing chancellorsville for confederates is catastrophic for the player because of the 100 point rep penalty.

I agree with squadronHQ the ai army should have a baseline based on the historical army size and then it should increase to maintain the historical ratio if the player army is bigger than historical. Bonuses for winning battles can be added on top of this. I don't think it is right to use scaling as an exploit by playing minimum size and players should face some difficulty if they choose to not bring a large army. In practice I expect my suggestion to work in the following way. Take the battle of antietam historically union had 87,000 and CSA had 38,000, so 87,000 is the baseline. If as CSA I bring 50,000 then the scaling would take union up to 114,000 (ratio of 2.29) if you win proceeding battles lets say union is reduced by 10%, so the total union army would be 103,000. I won't go in to why I think the bonuses for victory should be bigger or the current system of career points as that is for a different thread.

I don't know if it is a bug or just a feature of the game but in the minor battles after stones river for my confederate brigade general campaign I am facing huge ai brigades of 2800 men with the biggest brigade in my army having 2000 and the average size being 1600. The battle of Rio hill is horrific I suffered so many casualties it is one of the few battles were the casualty figures between me and the ai was almost parity. I did capture over 1000 Spencer's though.

I have found that my ordinance battery's outscored my Napoleon's consistently. Also my parrots but not by much.

A feature that I would like to see added at some point is the modelling of actual artillery guns rather than the current abstract way of modelling through manpower. I have found in my games to date that counter battery fire is not very effective and this may be that in order to knock out a gun you must first kill all 25 men, which at long range is very difficult. If the guns were modelled then you could knock out the gun with a single hit rather than just whittle down the manpower. The spotting mechanism for guns could be changed to make them visible at longer range, I find there is no point buying long range guns because you very rarely get to use your range advantage because you can't see your targets and accuracy is so poor it takes forever to disable your target. This would make a big difference in battles like Malvern hill and Fredericksburg. I would also like to see cavalry be penalised when fighting in woods. They should suffer a negative combat penalty in melee in woods and forests to replicate the real life difficulty cavalry faced not being able to fight effectively because of trees getting in the way, breaking up formations, preventing effective charges.

I find that I have to press hold twice before they will actually hold. The annoying pursuit after melee has caught me out a few times to the point I try not to order assault unless necessary.

There is a bug that has been reported where if you have your first division first corps brigade set to recruit veterans then it charges you money to recruit rookies for all your other brigades. Just check that the recruiting is set to rookies on your first division and it should be free.

Hitori, can I ask what your strategy is to recruit and replace brigades because I see some of your brigades have a few hundred men and some brigades have over 1500?

I would like to know if it is possible to select which brigades merge if I have 3 or more in a division? Is it possible to merge brigades 2 and 3 or will the selected brigade always merge with the first brigade of a division?

The first time I played Harper's ferry I lost because the timer ran out just as I was capturing the victory point and I had the union flank turned. I also have run out of time on river crossing when moving on the vp because I sat back and used my artillery to whittle down the rebs. I think the timer should be increased for the minor battles as most battles the fight went on until ammo ran out or it got too dark.

I think artillery should be allowed to stack with infantry to represent guns fitting in to the space between regiments in a brigade. I also think that friendly fire casualties should be included for firing on units in melee. My view is that at the moment charging into melee is suicide for units because everyone can fire at the attackers without cause for concern to friendlies and the attacker gets quickly annihilated. This makes charging underpowered as a game mechanic. I have spent a lot of time reading about civil war battles and tactics because this game got my interest and I have seen multiple instances of lines being broken because of a well timed charge, chickamauga comes to mind. The defenders could not bring overwhelming firepower to bear in fear and reluctance of the commanders to fire on their own men. The effective solution was to have a reserve line to fire once the retreating units had cleared the field of fire or countercharge before the attackers had reorganised. This could be represented in game by using the blocked feature until the friendly brigade has broken from melee leaving the field of fire clear for a brigade behind. I would still allow flanking fire, and it might even mitigate blobbing and stacking by making the ai hold reserves back to cover breaches. I also don't like the ability to stack units onto bridges or Ford's because it removes the tactical use of such features as choke points. At antietam the union ai just swarms across Burnside bridge and swamps any defenders within minutes of spawning, if they were limited to one brigade crossing at a time it would allow the defenders a chance to delay them as was historical. They can always try the other fords and bridge upstream or use artillery to force defenders back.

Problem comes when you run out of meat for the meat grinder. In my first union play through of Fredericksburg I lost so many troops in winning I emptied the reserves pool and had to disband some units to be able to field 2 1/2 decent sized corps. It made stones river and chancellorsville much harder. I had to throw my green troops at jackson and bolster them with a few vet brigades to halt the charge at chancellorsville. At this rate my army at Gettysburg will be at most 2 corps.

I like the idea of using the endwar interface, that way you could replicate the western campaign in more detail without the map jumping from Fredericksburg to stones river and you get to reuse the army of Virginia in Tennessee. Another way to go would be like the close combat series later games like 4 and 5 with the campaign map split into sectors.

I have seen the ai withdraw troops from the battle line when outnumbered and the success of attacking is futile. At this point you can press the attack to get kills/xp or to capture weapons or you can leave them alone. It's the players choice to press the attack and suffer the extra casualties. In my current confederate campaign at Gaines' mill once I had captured Boatswain swamp and the rear hill vp I stopped at just let my artillery finish the job to save my troops.