Aetius

Try it on Legendary - it's one of the most difficult battles in the game right now, due to the scaling changes they made in the last patch. My nomination for easiest battle in the game is Port Republic. Your reinforcements exceed the cap, and the Union only gets four infantry brigades. It's a turkey shoot, even on Legendary. Of the major battles, Confederate Gaines' Mill is by far the easiest, because you only need to take two objectives - a wide swing around the Union right is almost impossible to screw up and very casualty-light.

The general rule of thumb is to ignore the briefings entirely. The advice is often deadly, especially at higher difficulty levels. The one thing you need to watch out for is when they say things like "you must take this objective!" - about half the time, if you don't take the objective, you will immediately lose the battle regardless of any other victory conditions. I've been meaning to start a thread for my own use with the actual battle timers and objectives, but haven't gotten around to it. It's definitely needed, though, because the game is just awful sometimes at telling you what you need to know to win (or avoid losing unexpectedly).

I've never actually tested it, but my feeling is that the Corps commander units gain a certain amount of XP from being present on the battlefield, and more from giving their bonuses to engaged units inside their command radius. It's always seemed to me that the Corps commanders leveled faster if they were helping with a "hot" battle than if they just sit alone in the back.

Roughly, each gun = 25 men. If an artillery unit has taken less than 25 casualties, click the replacement bar once. It will move a bit, and you'll see a count of men at the bottom of the replacement dialog ... but the number of guns won't go up. One click will replenish the damaged crew. Clicking twice will replenish the damaged crew, and add another gun (and another 25 men). Essentially, it goes in increments of 25, and the first one can be less than 25 based if you've taken damage. This is really, really important. If you've taken 24 losses, and go into the next battle without replacing them, you will lose a gun the first time you get hit. Do this too often, and you'll find yourself running out of guns.

No - mine were 1050 men. >:)

Yep, as rookies (but now with higher stats). Veterans assume the stats of the recruiting unit, and I believe their cost is based on the difference between the rookie skill levels and the current recruiting unit skill levels ... which is why buying veterans for a 3-star unit is so ridiculously expensive.

This does happen, kind of. When you disband the unit, they get mixed into the recruit pool, increasing the recruit statistics proportionally. If your recruit pool is at zero, you can add them right back to another unit with their original stats. If you have the resources and space, you can temporarily put all the recruits into cheap brigades so you can disband and re-assign veteran troops with no loss in effectiveness.

This is actually more realistic than it might seem at first glance. Many charges failed to reach their objective. In Pickett's Charge, only Armistead and Garnett (and a handful of others, I think?) actually reached the Union lines and engaged in melee. I've read before (can't recall where) about the dynamics of infantry charges - the attacking troops often wanted to stop and shoot back, and when they did it was very difficult to get them moving forward again. It got to the point late in the war where attacking Union soldiers would be ordered not to place percussion caps on their rifles, so that they wouldn't be tempted to stop and shoot back, and thus break the momentum of the charge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeH12fW_1Qg I just F11'd an issue on Stay Alert that permits the player to bring more brigades into the battle than the scenario cap permits. It appears to be because reinforcements are based on division. I'm allowed ten brigades total. The initial deployment is six. If I initially deploy most of 1st Division, one brigade from 2nd Division and one brigade from 3rd Division, the rest of 1st and 2nd Divisions still deploy as reinforcements ... giving me a total of 11 brigades on the field. I believe I've seen and mentioned this issue before, on Port Republic, so I'll be keeping a lookout for more instances of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3xlQJX2CvM There are two moments I want to highlight: 34:30 - 34:55: I didn't catch it directly in the video, but watch the 1st Ohio and the 1/2 Rifle on the Confederate right. You'll hear me complaining about the 1st Ohio charging, and then a few seconds later the 1st Ohio no longer exists. The AI is now so aggressive that it performed a suicidal charge, with a unit that was at less than 40% strength. 55:30-55:40: Watch Wilcox and Jackson on the left. Wilcox, despite being heavily outnumbered, almost surrounded, low morale, and low condition, makes another suicidal charge into Jackson - except this time, Wilcox is in such bad shape and takes so much damage that he gets captured. The recent buff to Morale recovery for AI units is leading to ... poor decision making on charges when units are retreating, at low strength, and / or surrounded by enemy troops. I'm happy to get the extra troops from the capture, but this is probably something that should be fixed.

I'm going to be livestreaming the battle of Antietam tonight at 7pm EDT, as part of my current Legendary Ironman Confederate campaign. All are welcome to come watch me get hammered again. My plan is to attack on the Confederate left, encircling and destroying the initial attacking brigades. This should allow me to relieve the pressure on the northeast corner of Dunker Woods, and possibly permit me to attack into the rear of the Union main force, destroying the Union artillery and reducing the pressure on the Sunken Road and Dunker Church. Edit: A link would help, wouldn't it? https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEwRYnMw8pyZ6oOf1fow0jQ

Heh, don't worry - I've been steamrolled as the CSA at Antietam every time I've tried so far. I think I managed to pull off a draw once. I have a new plan for this time, but I had a plan last time too.

6 points is also where I normally stop. One more point will get you 2500-man brigades, but you can't fill them on the higher difficulty levels, and 20 brigades is pretty much the most you'll ever take into a small battle. I should also add - it's because it's generally better to have more brigades, up to a pretty large number. Flanking matters, and two 1250-man brigades shooting at a 2500-man brigade will easily win if the target small brigade is in good cover and the other small brigade is flanking. And especially in later battles, having a 1250-man brigade in two locations is decidedly better than having one 2500-man brigade in one location and nothing in the other.

I've got a Legendary Ironman Confederate run going: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLl9g3AKsEm20uIM8vM9rb6O2vRZgq7H0r I restarted because of the store issues, so I believe it's all on the 0.79 hotfix so far.

There are no speed differences between the artillery units, so having the lighter guns doesn't help - they can't keep up with the cavalry. 6 pounders are most effective at extremely close range, which is very difficult to pull off when cavalry battles are constantly moving. If you can get them in place, they can help keep the skirmisher cavalry from being overrun, but since they lag so far behind this is rare. It's better to position them where their canister can help break infantry charges.

Also be aware that skirmisher cavalry on horseback currently has an extremely slow turning speed, and will mill around in front of their target for a while before firing. It's best to dismount them and fight as skirmishers.

You could have it set up that if you prevent your artillery from firing, you automatically win the war.

1st Bull Run seemed normal enough - the brigades were larger (the initial Union brigades at the bridge were 2000+), but the infantry had Palmettos and the cavalry were 500-man units. In Ambush Convoy, however, things reverted back to maximum - all the Union units were two-star 2950 man brigades and 1,050-man cavalry. The infantry were all (!!) carrying Harpers Ferry 1855s, and the cavalry had Wessons. It looks like the scaling is different for the Grand Battles, and still relatively sane, while the small battles got huge buffs.

You do. In my last Legendary Union playthrough I received +9 Reputation after Salem Church, even though my Chancellorsville was a draw - I'm not sure what the exact number is though. Everyone has pretty much hit on the strategy; Get your troops across and into the forest south and east of the VP. If you push out skirmishers and overrun their skirmishers, you can tie up the incoming units to the southwest and southeast and get an easy victory. It's a pure-gravy scenario in Legendary because none of your own troops are involved and its a fairly bloody fight.

I do not believe so. I played Gaines' Mill after the patch at the end of my last round, before we knew about the store bug. All the Union infantry were 3-star 2950-man brigades. The sharpshooter brigade was 750 men, and all the other skirmishers were over 600. There was another 1,050-man cavalry brigade in that fight, and I received only 20pd Parrots from the 600-man artillery units. The only reason I was able to win was because the forces were relatively even, manpower-wise. I suspect that what they've done is remove all limits on equipment, manpower, and experience, except for some hard limits imposed by the time period (i.e. no Springfield 1861s in 1861, no 3-star units in early 1861). The only scaling factor for Legendary now is the number of brigades. This is going to make some battles MUCH more difficult, like Newport News and Distress Call, because it more than doubles the number of enemy troops and you only have a few green, poorly armed brigades because you just started. Compare my Round 4 video above with my previous Round 3 Newport News battle, which was already a hard fight:

Eight, except for one 24pd howitzer battery with 7 (because that's all there was available in the shop).

Yeah, so Legendary is now beyond absurd - there's no scaling, everything is just cranked up to the maximum possible. Confederate Newport News is unwinnable, your green troops simply can't shoot fast enough to put a dent in the Union forces. They have two 576-man skirmishers, a 1050-man LeMat melee cavalry unit, and seven two-star 2700-man infantry brigades armed with Springfield 1855s. Enemy units that are routed don't flee, but remain in place and fight in melee. The cavalry unit can simply ride over my units without stopping to engage in melee.

Based on limited experience with one unit in one battle, the 20pd Parrots are still underperforming for their stats. My unit was moving in company with two 24pd Howitzer batteries, both of which out-damaged the 20pd Parrots by more than 2 to 1 - and one of the 24pd Howitzer batteries was completely green, with only the base stats.

I'm ... I'm not sure what to say. The enemy armies in Legendary were too small?

I use Marksman primarily because of my aversion to running out of ammunition. I had several bad experiences in my early Legendary campaigns where units were doing great, and then suddenly folded as they ran out. I also found that a lot of the time, the Firearms Training units tended to drive enemy units back quickly with fewer casualties. This can be desirable, but not often, especially in Legendary where you want to maximize strong firepower deficit situations to do as much damage as possible. There's no better target than a damaged high-morale brigade - they won't fall back and they can't shoot back.