Aetius

Here's two attempts as the Confederates on Legendary to win Potomac Fort. Pros: Melee cavalry works well - probably too well. They are extremely deadly chasing down routed units, but will take a lot of damage hanging out in front infantry or skirmishers, and moderate damage on charges. I suspect that with some experience and at full size, they will be too powerful, along the lines of three brigades of cavalry being able to charge and completely destroy a 2,950-man brigade in one go. Condition seems to last longer and recover quicker. I'm not sure if that's the mod or not. Melee combat is indeed deadly, but causes routs so quickly that it doesn't really get a chance to do damage. Cons: The reduced range on the artillery means you can't target the gunboats in Potomac Fort, which means you are constantly taking artillery fire from the rear with no way to reduce or suppress it. Platoon fire from fortifications is almost entirely ineffective, I believe because it is happening at the old speed and not the new speed. Volley fire against fortifications seems way too strong, though it might because the return fire is ineffective. 6 pounder fire even at close range is ineffective at pushing back attackers - it does quite a bit of damage, but seems to have little to no morale impact. Shell fire from 6 pounders does very little damage (maybe normal?). Melee cavalry, when told to attack, acts like mounted infantry - they close, fire, and then wheel away. They will only close to melee if told to charge. (Should it work this way?) The rapid volleys interfere with movement. Not sure this is a bad thing. Fire from the rear and the flanks seems to have a much lower morale effect, perhaps due to lower damage. Skirmishers are almost invulnerable if they are in cover. What this battle ends up becoming is a slaughter - your units surrounded by enemies, taking volleys at point-blank range, and eventually succumbing to a charge once their morale has been wiped out. I think it might be possible to eke out a win on Potomac Fort by using skirmishers to delay and distract the attacking units, because the skirmishers are so strong. I think the biggest problem is the complete ineffectiveness of fire from the fortifications - you can't hold them off if you can't damage them, but you have to remain in the fortifications to have a chance in melee against their vastly superior forces.

Jonny, can you describe what your goals are with the mod? And a bit about how you're going about it?

There are a number of significant outstanding issues remaining, and the flanking bug is definitely one of them. I'm pretty sure after my last Union playthrough that it is related to the cavalry overrun bug, and the bug is a difference between where you see the unit on the screen and where the game thinks it is located. I've seen units flip around and fire backwards at a unit in front of them, and not just one unit but several. These are the most critical: Units being moved around between days. This is THE most annoying issue with the game, and it's not even a bug - divisions get scattered, prime defensive positions are lost, difficult attacks must be repeated. Stones River as the Confederates is probably the worst offender in this regard. The cavalry overrun bug, where cavalry can simply ride through your lines without engaging in melee. The flanking issues, which have multiple parts - being flanked by artillery at extreme range, being flanked by units that are shaken and not firing, and being flanked by units that cannot fire at you because they are blocked. Confusing and unclear victory conditions. The first phase of Cold Harbor as the Union is a perfect example - if you lose the VP for even a few minutes, you lose the entire battle, even though your reinforcements are pouring in. Chickamauga as the Confederates is another bad one - failing to capture ALL the VPs in the first phase results in an immediate loss, despite Wilder's historically successful defense. There is no indication of this in the victory conditions. No indication of how long a battle actually lasts, what the time requirements are for the VPs, and no labels on the VPs.

After some testing, it appears that the weighted average only applies to minor battles. For grand battles, the system only appears to consider the total number of troops, and possibly the number of brigades. This results in a pattern where you create and disband the ballast units as needed. Also, artillery is indeed a separate category, and works the same way.

The divide command is only for previously merged brigades. It will split them back into their constituent brigades. It's a percentage of casualties that you take, not a percentage of unit size. For example, if you take 10,000 casualties in a battle, a top-level Medicine skill of 20% will restore 2,000 men (and their weapons) to your army after the battle. If you take only 100 casualties (which can happen), then you only get back 20 men. And it's done on a unit-by-unit basis, so the units that take the most damage get the most men back.

My experience has been that there is a "guide" unit that the others will head toward to merge with. If you hit the merge button on that unit, it will go towards the nearest unit, or sometimes not move. Clicking the merge button on any other unit will cause them to move towards the guide unit. The simplest way is to hit the merge button on both (all) units, and they will eventually figure it out (you may need to do it more than once). The fastest way is to observe who the "guide" unit is, march the second unit up right behind them, then hit merge and they'll walk right up. You can have the merging unit run, but they will slow up when they get close, which is why you want them to be as close as possible before you actually hit merge. You can also run the units on top of each other, but bad things happen when you do that - LOS gets blocked, units get shot in the flank, etc.

Corps commander units provide a morale recovery buff inside their command radius (the yellow circle around them when they are selected). There's a Lt. General perk that makes the radius larger. Division commanders do not provide any "nearby troops" benefits, but will take direct command when brigades in the division are merged. This makes them more likely to be wounded or killed, but can keep severely damaged units from shattering - a pretty good reason to keep divisions together.

I don't think it does, but it's definitely worth investigating. I did some earlier testing while trying to figure this out. 4 two-star brigades with 1450 triggered scaling. However, disbanding and re-creating those units as one-stars permitted me to bump them up to 1750 before the scaling hit. It's definitely possible that the multipliers aren't fixed, but are instead just based on the unit's base xp. As near as I can tell, it works the same way, but I think they are siloed - at least, adding large numbers of infantry didn't add any additional guns in this video, and removing the one 3-gun unit did add a gun to the scaling. I think artillery might be harder because the units are smaller and more incremental, but I'll have to test it.

Someone may have already figured this out, but it's new to me and pretty important, especially for players on Legendary, so I thought I should post it. tl;dr - Add small, weak units to your army roster in order to reduce battle scaling. My hypothesis is that the "battle value" for each unit is calculated by multiplying unit strength by an experience multiplier. My initial, very rough guess on these multipliers is 0.8 for zero-star units, 1.0 for one-star units, and 1.2 for two-star units - not sure on three-star units. The scaling is based on the average battle value of all the units in your army. This means that a 2,000-man two-star brigade (bv: 2400) and a 500-man zero-star brigade (bv: 400) are treated by the scaling system as bv 1,400, or nearly half what the value would be with only the 2,000-man brigade. Thus by adding these "ballast" units, you can drag down your average battle value and remove thousands of troops from the enemy roster without firing a shot. These units don't even have to go into battle, although it would probably be beneficial if they did, because casualties would reduce their size, further pulling down the average battle value. With the caveat that these are still very rough numbers, and I haven't done a thorough investigation:

I don't know of any definitive information on it, but my belief is that it's relatively simple - the total damage is equal to the number of hits multiplied by the damage value, and then divided by some number that represents a "kill". This results in a dynamic where weapons like the Springfield 1842 have high damage at close range, followed by a sharp drop-off in effectiveness as the range increases. Rifles, on the other hand, have a flatter damage curve - not quite as good at short range, but their effectiveness doesn't drop off as sharply. It's a decent enough approximation of how the weapons functioned, at least theoretically - the smoothbore weapons, for example, could load "buck and ball" which gave them multiple projectiles at close range (this is also reflected in their melee values). There's significant debate about the real difference in effectiveness, however. There's evidence that many soldiers did not aim their weapons when firing a volley. Smoke often obscured the battlefield, which reduced sightlines to fifty yards or less. Many soldiers, particularly in the Union, didn't know how to shoot and received very little training. And finally, the terrain in the primary combat areas often shortened combat ranges - for example, looking north from the Sunken Road you can see less than a hundred meters (I was standing on top of the south side of the road when I took the picture). My personal belief is that rifles didn't make much difference in volleys but did make a difference to skirmishers. Skirmishers (and especially dedicated snipers) *could* shoot, and avoiding this demoralizing long-range fire was one of the factors that really encouraged resorting to fortifications.

It's a minor loss to the unit with the leader, and a great benefit to the leaderless unit. Leaderless units are slow to respond, move, and fight, as well as being more likely to retreat and break.

The primary reason is to prevent units from being destroyed. For example, if you have a unit that started at a strength of 2,000 and is down to below 1,000, they could get wiped out at any time. Merging them with another unit allows each unit to take additional casualties with less risk. Also, with inexperienced units merging them can give them enough firepower to be competitive against a smaller, more experienced unit. There are downsides, of course - if the combined unit is destroyed, all the constituent units are destroyed as well, and combined units are more likely to get your division commander killed. Combined units are also useful for leveraging low-availability weapons. If you only have a few hundred of a particular weapon, you can create or convert a "short brigade" equipped with that weapon and then merge them with another unit once on the battlefield. There's quite a number of battles where it is difficult to hit the brigade cap, so every brigade you can get on the field and fighting is helpful. This occurs more often on higher difficulty levels because of the lower salvage rates.

My experience has been that once you wipe out their pool, every time they reinforce they get replenished up to the minimum number of troops for the next battle. When that happens, they lose experience. This is modulo any experienced reinforcements they receive in your Intelligence briefing, so experience can still increase after a minor wipe (but less than it would have otherwise). The key thing is keeping them at minimum force levels, since this makes every battle easier and keeps you from getting steamrolled. Edit: In short, depletion is not only possible on higher difficulty levels, but required in order to have manageable enemy strength levels.

Yes, though it's still not a very difficult battle as the Union. Not only can the Confederates win pretty easily on the first day, but if they choose they can simply ignore the Round Top and Culp's Hill attacks and just take one VP on the last day to win. Because of the AI's aggressive behavior, as the Confederates you can bait Union troops out again and again and just slaughter them for very few losses. The Union has to fight every phase of the battle, and multiple phases re-use the same units. However, the defensive positions are excellent and the AI Confederate casualty rate is appalling. There can be some dicey moments, especially in the Round Top phase, but you have the advantage the entire time. Done right as the Union, it should be a TAK or close to it.

With Lee it is determined by whether or not you need a Corps commander. He comes in as a Lt. General, the highest rank, so he can be slotted into a Corps with all three perks right away. If you don't need a Corps commander, put him in as a division commander, preferably an empty one so the newly created units can get perks from his experience with lower-ranking leaders. If a new Corps becomes available and he's still alive, you can then move him over. With your own general there are two potential issues. One is that your initial random perk(s) may not be what you want, so you have to replace yourself with a general whose perks you can choose (or play the initial scenario over and over until you get what you want). The other is that you may not be promoted by the time you gain access to other Major Generals or Lt. Generals, in which case you might want to replace yourself in order to get the additional perks for the Corps. If you do that, put yourself in as a division commander so that you can eventually gain the rank, and hope you don't die. You can install yourself as another Corps commander, but xp gain is fairly slow as a Corps commander and you're likely to find yourself in the same situation again with an available higher-ranking officer.

As the war progresses, it becomes impossible to lose a grand battle and continue the war - the reputation penalties for a loss range from 80 to 100. Once you're up to Gettysburg feel free to spend lots of reputation, because keeping it won't do you any good and the morale bonus is quite minor.

In general, the highest possible. Corps commanders give bonuses only by rank, and obviously you want to maximize that as the bonuses apply across the entire corps. With divisions, higher-ranking commanders provide more of a command bonus and higher XP - you'll note that if you have a high-ranking division commander, you can form new one-star units with experienced Lt. Colonels instead of Colonels (This is harder for the Union, but still possible). On the low side, you want to avoid efficiency penalties for commanders who are ranked too low. The penalty depends on the size of the unit and the experience of the officer. For example, a captain can command an artillery battery up to 11 guns without an efficiency penalty. In general, avoid accepting the default commander of a new unit because he's the lowest (cheapest) possible commander and will almost certainly have an efficiency penalty if you want the unit to be a reasonable size. The rule of thumb is Lt. Colonel for infantry (~2000), Major for artillery (12 guns), Lt. Colonel for cavalry (750), and Lt. Colonel for skirmishers (500).

I use OBS capturing Full Screen, because that's what worked when I first set it up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp9iFzkZh18 This was back in May though - I haven't tested since to see if it was fixed. It is my suspicion that none of the +ammo perks work.

It's a function of the high lethality and the AI's no-retreat-no-surrender berserker mentality. As long as you have the time you can turn any battle into a TAW, but it tends to happen on large, long battles that have few enemy reinforcements in the latter half of the battle.

For me, it's worse. On Legendary there is little room for mistakes, and a slight issue with timing can result in your troops being teleported away and all your progress lost. For example, play the Confederates defensively in Chancellorsville. You'll be thrown out of excellent defensive positions again and again with your units scrambled to hell and gone for no reason - the Union units don't even displace your troops. It is the most *intensely* frustrating issue with the game.

You don't need to cross the river. Cram all of your units into the corner of the deployment box that's on the far side of the river. It's a pain, but it saves a pretty significant chunk of time and condition.

Gettysburg issues from my recent playthrough: 1) I have AO 9, so I have 24 brigades per Corps. Only one brigade from the fourth division of II Corps was able to join the fight in the last phase, and the entire fourth division from III Corps was left out of the battle. If we can only bring 18 brigades into the second and third Corps slots, they should say so - particularly since the reinforcement Corps slots don't show up until halfway through the battle. 2) The reinforcement Corps slots only show up halfway through the battle. 3) The Confederate armory rating was at 50-55%. Despite that, I captured 4113 Fayettevilles, which means they had at least 41k of 85k troops armed with Fayettevilles (this is on Legendary). If this is 55% armory, I'm curious as to what 95% armory would be - M16s and M203s? On Legendary, should the armory be up in the 90% range by Gettysburg? 4) I also captured 2766 Tylers and 452 C.S. Richmonds. Based on my playthrough, it appears that the AI Confederate weapon supply goes like this, from start to 55%: Re-bored Farmer -> Harpers Ferry 1855 -> Tyler Texas -> C.S. Richmond -> Fayetteville Which, quite frankly, makes no sense at all. The Tyler is a Tier 2 rifle, similar to the Mississippi and MJ&G - it should not be rated above the Springfield 1855, let alone the Harpers Ferry 1855. The Harpers Ferry 1855 is apparently available to the Confederacy in large numbers (and the Union as well). I haven't seen a single Enfield, which was one of the most common weapons used by real-life Confederate troops, and only a handful of Springfield 1855s. 5) The intelligence report had the Confederate force level at 64-69k. In previous battles, where the force level has been much higher, they've come in with fewer troops than the force level. This time, they came in with 85k troops, 16k more than they had available. Clearly there is a minimum troop level for each battle which ignores the manpower pool and grants free troops to the AI. It also didn't have an effect on experience as far as I could tell, as all the Confederate brigades were three stars. (The experience levels in the intelligence report did drop about 20 points after the battle.) 6) The aggressiveness problems of the AI really show in the major battles, especially here at Gettysburg and Chancellorsville. They just kept throwing themselves at my lines, even after it was clear they were heavily outnumbered and out-gunned. This eventually made it easy to surround their forces and destroy them almost completely for a very minimal cost.

Like this, only don't bother losing troops in Fredericksburg, just quickly move them all to the edge of the map from the corner of the deployment zone. I had Confederates units teleport through my troops between Telegraph Road and Prospect Hill, and ended up having to fight them with one brigade and a bunch of artillery - I was actually lucky that one brigade was there, as it had been chasing a unit that retreated through my lines. The AI also abandoned Prospect Hill near the end of the battle, which gave me the easy win.

I just ran into a serious bug. I played poorly in Supply Raid, and was wiped out. When I came into the camp screen after the battle, all my unit stats except for Command were -21474. There's a couple of secondary bugs - notice that I received $60k, instead of $41k, because I rescued supplies from my supply wagons ... that were captured by the enemy. I also apparently rescued 120 Springfield 1842s from an unknown source - I think one of my supply units that was captured. Essentially, the game results seemed to be treating me partially as the Confederates - possibly because units were captured on both sides? I'm going to try to fight the battle again, and see if it recurs.