Aetius

Started a Legendary campaign over the weekend as Confederates. Took me three tries to win Potomac Fort, and I'm not sure I could do it again. I ended up ignoring the gunboats and going for a forward active defense to buy enough time to win the scenario. Casualties were heavy.

My experience (1920x1280) has been that box-selection works, but usually you must include the entire unit in the box - if the box edge cuts off a few stragglers, it won't select that unit. Conversely, in some cases all you need is a couple of stragglers *in* the box and the unit will be selected. If the units are far away from the camera position, they become unselectable no matter what you do, and also it becomes very difficult to draw an arrow for them - it tends to deselect the unit instead. Since the camera position appears important to this process, I'll bet at higher resolutions the camera is farther away, which exacerbates the problems.

I can totally imagine that, and it sounds like a better game. Having artillery rabbit and outrun attacking infantry, while pushing their cannons and losing no Condition, is ridiculous and shatters immersion.

Yep, it's a big problem. The latest beta 0.72 patch is better about it, but I still had a couple of runners in Harper's Ferry - two Union units routed through two solid lines of infantry, meleeing the whole time, and then kept going all the way to the river. I've bugged every instance I've seen in 0.72. I have a little theory about it - it appears that routed / fleeing units get maximum speed and ignore Condition penalties once they start running, which is how they are able to move so far so fast without getting bogged down in melee.

Already submitted that as a bug. It seems silly you can rename corps and brigades, but not divisions.

Units routing through other units isn't entirely fixed. I had it happen multiple times on Harper's Ferry over the weekend. In one case, I had two Union brigades rout into my front line, melee, slip through, continue running into my second line, melee, slip through, and continue running until they reached the river crossing ... where they promptly regrouped and attacked a brigade I had there who had been chasing another runner. I have a theory about this, based on that behavior: I don't think fleeing units are subject to Condition limits. This is why your pursuing units can't keep up - they are still burning Condition, and slowing down as it drops, while the fleeing units continue moving at maximum speed.

I'd definitely like to see this, but perhaps as an optional "Realism" setting - I think it's extremely likely this would drive a large percentage of people crazy who might otherwise like to play on harder difficulties, but it would be really neat to have to anticipate what the battle is going to look like in a few minutes and give orders based on that. Same with a more realistic reporting of enemy locations not in direct line of sight of the commander. Another realism option that I'd really love to see would be smoke. It would change the battle rather drastically if all the smoke from the gunfire blocked LoS until it dissipated or was blown away, and units in smoke took a Condition penalty.

As far as I can tell, there's a chance when any of their brigades take fire. If you merge two brigades into one and the division commander takes over, it seems like the chance for them to get wounded or die is significantly increased.

They have a portrait as well - you can see it on the Army screen if you click the division header, instead of one of the brigades. It would be nice to see exactly how they affect the division - right now you have to swap out division commanders and then look at the brigades.

Yes, always. It's routine for snipers and artillery to run out of ammunition, even with the +ammo perks. In 2nd Bull Run, my snipers run out before the Union attack even starts. On Cedar Mountain, I keep the supply wagon with the snipers the entire time, as they are firing continuously. And more to the point, there are essentially two things that will kill your units in this game - running out of ammo, and running out of stamina. The CSA cannot afford to be sloppy.

In my experience, this is indeed what it does and it seems to work. The main problem with it is that it doesn't allow the unit to turn, and thus makes them very vulnerable to flank attacks - they will just sit there and take it until they break. I believe, however, that if the unit is engaged in melee the Hold will be broken.

I had the game freeze bug occur twice near the end of Shiloh. On my third run I saved every few minutes, but didn't experience the bug. I did reboot between the second and third runs.

So, we're both wrong and / or it's definitely bugged - at least on Brigadier General / Normal Difficulty. I played through Shiloh saving every few minutes, trying to get a save that would reliably trigger the freeze bug. That didn't work, but it means I had a save right before the end of the battle. Money promised for the win: $165k Supply left in my wagon: less than half of 7993 Captured wagons: 1, mostly depleted Other wagons: II Corps, about 90% depleted (stupid Pit) Supplies captured on the AAR screen: 769 Total money received: $165,769 So not only did it not subtract the money for replacing my supplies, but it added the captured supplies to my take on a 1-to-1 basis. It's possible that the II Corps wagon was added to my take, but as it was almost empty I don't see it replacing 4k+ of supply - it was barely able to reload the three brigades holding the edge of the Pit.

It must be bugged for me, or maybe it's a function of difficulty level? I have a before-and-after set of saves on Malvern Hill. The Battle Screen said it would give me $180k, and it gave me exactly that much, even though I had 32k in supply and I'm pretty sure I burned it all and then some. I'm fairly sure I only captured one wagon, empty - skirmishers like to shoot them instead of capture them.

You can also use the supplies in captured wagons, if there are any left. The "does nothing" part refers to the Army screen after the battle.

Politics is the best perk right now, simply because the money can be used on anything, plus it adds additional recruits. Everything else is up to your playstyle. Artillery goes through ammunition like there's no tomorrow, so if you want a lot of artillery go Logistics. Many people swear by Recon because it allows them to see when the AI scaling starts to kick in. If you're looking to equip a lot of specialized units, Economy is helpful - it not only reduces costs, but makes more weapons available. For infantry / skirmisher unit perks, by default I take whatever boosts Stamina unless I have a very specific reason to do otherwise. Condition is easily spent and relatively difficult to get back, particularly on the attack. For Artillery, I take the ammo perk and then either accuracy or fire rate, depending on their role. For cavalry, shock cavalry should always take +Charge damage - nothing else is really relevant for them. Other cavalry choose along the same lines as skirmishers, for the most part (although I tend to take mounted speed instead of foot speed). For filling veterans, I like to spread things out. I'll put veterans in the unit up to a certain level, usually based on available money and the number of units, and then top them off with 100-200 recruits. This reduces their abilities by a couple of points, but to me it's worth it, and means I have more experienced units available. I agree with Wandering1 on vet shock cavalry - they gain Melee experience so fast that you can fill them with recruits and they'll be back up to 100 by the next battle. The only thing to watch there is to make sure you don't drop them down a star, particularly at the two star level, which has a perk that grants an additional +25% charge damage. The answer to the skirmisher question is "yes". Dedicated skirmishers are definitely worth it in certain circumstances, snipers being the most common one. When you're faced with a battle like Gaines' Mill as the CSA, where attacking frontally is suicide, snipers are one of the most effective units you can have. Detached skirmishers are also useful in a variety of roles, primarily screening your flanks and providing flanking fire. For example, at Shiloh the only units that should enter the Pit (the creek valley on the CSA right flank) are skirmishers - anyone else will just get bogged down. Howitzers aren't the way better than other artillery. As Wandering1 noted, they are best at defensive short range canister fire, which is valuable because it's one of the ways to quickly defeat mass charges and keep your other units alive and fighting. The 12 pound howitzers are mediocre, while the 24 pound howitzers are excellent. 6 pounders and Napoleons are the "medium" artillery, decent at short range and ... not completely useless at long range. The various rifled guns are primarily for long-range counter-battery fire, to destroy the enemy howitzers before you run your infantry in front of them.

As of right now, no. Your supply wagon for each corps has what you've set in the Army screen for supply, and it replenishes for free between scenarios. Also, captured supply current does nothing.

The scenario brigade limits are the main restriction on using support units of all types. I've had great success with sniper units, but they require a lot of micro-managing because their skirmisher AI likes to run away into the open instead of hiding in cover and they are often reluctant to fire without specific orders. Ranged cavalry works the way it did historically - they provide high mobility units to plug gaps and exploit flanking opportunities. Melee cavalry, on the other hand, is pretty ahistorical - in this game, they are brutally effective at turning routing units into dead units and shattering infantry charges. For example, I've had Crocker's 235-man cavalry unit in the Potomac Fort scenario get over 1,000 kills from running down routed units three times their size. Skirmisher units with rapid-fire carbines are sort of a special case. I've had a lot of success placing them behind the main line, usually right on top of the objective. Their job is to sit there and pour fire into any melees around them, which shortens melee engagements and saves a lot of lives.

I build 2-3 divisions comprised of 3-4 infantry brigades, and one division per corps that contains snipers, artillery, and cavalry (split evenly between shock and ranged). If I'm far enough along, each type gets a dedicated division. Sometimes I'll build a shock division - melee-specced infantry and cavalry. Adjust as necessary to bring the forces you want to a particular scenario. The reason I do this is because I tend to maneuver at the division level - this provides better line organization and reduces the irritating tendency of units to ignore orders and wander off when things get tight. It also means the divisions tend to stay together, which makes combining easier in the face of casualties.

I built a general like this: Tactician (AO +1, Recon +1) Infantry (Training +3, Recon +1) Army (Training +3, AO +1) and he got the Trainer trait (+10% xp) - that's the first time I've seen it. My normal build is this: Logistician (AO +1, Logistics +1) Artillery (Logisitics +2, Medicine +2) Politics (Politics +3, Economy +1) I've got four of those builds in different campaigns, split evenly between Tactics and Strategy. I just tried a Tactician / Cavalry / Politics, and he got Strategy. So I'm leaning towards random, but possibly weighted by certain skills.

Updates to my previous post from play last night. I dropped back to 0.71 and did a new Normal difficulty Confederate run through to the end of First Bull Run, then reloaded 0.72 and did the same again for comparison. For my general I chose Logistician / Artillery / Politics, and put a point in Politics after each battle. Notes: 1) 0.72 still feels better, terms of pressure from the AI during attacks. However, I was able to adjust my tactics a bit to compensate for the AI's increased willingness to roll up and exchange fire, which resulted in my casualty levels remaining about the same and sharply increasing for him (0.71 - 13k to 5k, 0.72 - 16k to 5k). My casualties also shifted from my personal units to the units I was given for the battle (in particular, Hampton's Legion got hammered pretty hard). The increased AI casualty rate meant that my 0.72 First Bull Run game ended with Johnston chasing down the last few Union brigades in the upper right corner of the map. The old AI was reluctant to get into it, but the new AI seems unable to close - he rarely charged, and apparently prefers to stand in the river and shoot. 2) The AI pushing a unit across just to the north of the bridge happened on my 0.71 run, as well as my 0.72 run, so that's eliminated as a possible change for 0.72. 3) I noticed that instead of starting 2500 supply, in 0.72 I started with 0 supply. This may be why I felt that supply was more of an issue in 0.72. However, during my 0.72 run I used up my wagon (~5k supply), a captured wagon (~2k supply I think), and half of Johnston's wagon ... with 8 guns, one 500-man sniper unit (Hunters), and two Mississippi-armed infantry brigades. 4) My ability to see AMMO warnings on enemy artillery was there in 0.71 as well, so appears to be an existing bug, rather than something added in 0.72. 5) I need to run some more tests, but I think fortifications may not be working, or aren't working as intended. In my 0.71 run I didn't use any fortified positions except for the artillery positions in Potomac Fort. In my 0.72 run, I did put a brigade in the fortifications in front of the bridge in First Bull Run. In the 0.71 run, the unit that was in the same position was strong enough to counter-attack across the bridge and destroy some artillery; the 0.72 unit was hurt significantly worse by the end of the battle, despite being in the fortification; however, he did endure a significant melee attack, so it's hard to tell. It seemed to me anecdotally that the unit's firepower was reduced, and this resulted in longer exposure to fire from attacking units. 6) In my 0.72 First Bull Run game, I had two Union infantry units across the bridge just ... stop. I sent my snipers across the river and killed the artillery behind them, and they didn't respond at all. I then sent my snipers in to shoot at them. The first unit routed, came back to the same position, routed again, came back again, and then actually shattered under the sniper fire. The other unit routed once, and then began maneuvering and fighting again. 7) I filed a bug on an issue with the Battle Map screen - when you first look at the Battle Map, the dollar values for the battles are calculated at that time, and cached. If you add a point of Politics and then go back to the Battle Map screen, the values are the same as before. If, however, you add the point of Politics first, the values that appear when you first view the Battle Map screen are increased. 8) The foolish cavalry behavior DID occur in 0.71 - two cavalry units suicided themselves on a 200-man skirmisher unit at the ford just north of the bridge in First Bull Run, so that behavior is not new to 0.72. The behavior happens like this: cavalry unit approaches a hidden unit. When they spot the unit, they stop. The unit shoots them, and then they run away. Then they return to the same spot, and the pattern repeats. Sometimes the cavalry will get a shot off, so I think they may be trying to shoot but it takes longer than it takes the skirmishers to fire. 9) In my 0.71 run, I had two enemy units rout through my lines, one on Potomac Fort and one in First Bull Run. In my 0.72 run, it did not happen, even during a large swirling melee on my side of the bridge in First Bull Run. Yay! 10) In my 0.72 run, McDowell died again standing in the river in front of Henry Hill.

I did a couple of runs through 1st Bull Run on Normal (BG) difficulty to gauge the AI changes. Overall, I like it. The AI feels stronger in some respects. It's better at attacking, for sure. On my second game of Bull Run, the AI bypassed Henry Hill entirely and drove into the rear of my bridge position, overrunning it. At the same time, he threw a brigade across the northern ford, and two brigades across the bridge. It came fast, and one of my brigades was caught, routed, bounced back and forth a couple of times, and then surrendered. In other words, the weirdness with units routing through your lines seems to be fixed. The AI also now deals correctly with units in the little woods north of the bridge. Instead of ignoring them and soaking up damage, both times the AI maneuvered a unit to attack them from the north. This seems to represent a more sensible way of dealing with units that can't be seen, but whose location can be inferred from their fire. This is a very, very good improvement, although it may result in problems down the line against sniper units - the AI might be tempted to send out units to attack them, and fall into a trap. My notes: 1) This is a big one - lethality is increased. Playing essentially the same strategies I did before on Normal difficulty, everyone took roughly 50% more casualties. The two Bull Run games were 12k to 6k, and 11k to 6k. In the first game, I lost two units entirely - my baby snipers and my artillery. In the second game, I lost one infantry brigade entirely and took took nearly 2/3rds casualties on the other. The snipers made it out with just over 50% casualties, and my artillery with two guns (out of six). The two earlier scenarios, Potomac Fort and Newport News, had similar levels of casualties, so much so that I couldn't get Mississippis for both units. I believe that this is because the changes made units more willing to move up close, stand and fight, and take more casualties before breaking. This works up to a point, and makes the AI a better attacker. Unfortunately, it also drains him of troops and units. In both Bull Run games, about 2/3rds of the way through the game (about when Johnston shows up) the Union was completely shattered and scattering across the map in an attempt to escape. (This behavior, by the way, is much better than before - it makes the kill box much harder to construct and close, which is good.) What I suspect is going to happen is that in later scenarios with larger units and better weapons, attacks are just going to dissolve in a bloodbath. Standing and fighting in front of a couple of one-star 1500 man brigades with 1842s and Mississippis is one thing - doing the same to a couple of three star brigades with 1855s or Enfields, backed by 24lb howitzers, is going to result in immediate and massive casualties for the attacker. What the AI needs is a better, more coordinated rush to melee - particularly for the Union, because they have superior numbers but inferior troops. And to be fair, the AI did better in these Bull Run scenarios than I've seen before - the coordinated attack on the bridge area was evidence of that. 2a) I saw several instances of serious cavalry stupidity. In my second game of Bull Run, the cavalry that tries to cross the ford north of the bridge made repeated frontal approaches against my skirmishers until the cavalry was destroyed. I think the AI, for some reason, didn't track the last known location of the skirmishers, and thus kept trying to path right by them instead of going around further north. I also saw a cavalry unit repeatedly try to rush Henry Hill right in the center - it hit the water and got blasted from ~200 to ~75, and then wiped out. 2b) I also saw two possible cavalry bugs. Stuart at Newport News got pushed over against the right side of the map, and when he routed, the unit froze in place. I suspect the routing logic was trying to go further right, but the map edge wouldn't let it, so it just sat there. This happened twice - he routed, froze, recovered, started to head south, got hit again, routed, froze, and then was destroyed. The second possible bug was on Potomac Fort, during the initial attack. I charged the left skirmishers with my cavalry. They routed, and the cavalry started running them down. In the course of that, the cavalry actually got ahead of the skirmishers, and it looked like the skirmishers were chasing the cavalry. This apparently confused the AI, because the cavalry then gave up, and wandered off, leaving the routed skirmishers still alive to turn around and shoot them a few seconds later. 3) Also on Potomac Fort, I was forced to manually turn a couple of units in order to get them to fire on their target. Not sure what that was about. 4) The unit AI apparently got a dose of merpeople genes in this update. Everyone loves the water. Skirmishers falling back? They'll stop smack in the middle of the nearest creek, and sit there. Unit got routed? They'll run half a mile to the nearest river, and stop for a bath right in the middle of it. Unit maneuvering to attack? If being in the water is an option, they will choose it. Units attacking across a river will inevitably stop right in the middle to exchange fire with the defenders, instead of pushing across into open ground or cover. General needing to recover a routing unit? He'll do so from the river. (This is how McDowell died in both my Bull Run games.) I suspect this is occurring because to the AI, the water is just a "slow spot" that consumes the equivalent of movement points. This means that as units are moving, and especially running away, the slow spots tend to snag them. The AI really needs to have a aversion to the water - it shouldn't stay in it unless specifically ordered to do so, and spend as little time as possible there when crossing, even if it means not shooting. 5) Still have to manually force skirmisher / sniper units to fire about half the time, even when it's the same target in the same position. 6) Unit AI appears to handle being out-ranged correctly about half the time. My Mississippi-equipped brigade was able to kill several hundred Yankees at the bridge without a single shot getting fired in return, most of them on a couple of units that just stood there and took it without responding. Other units would quickly withdraw about 50 yards back to avoid the fire, and artillery backed out of view to avoid counter-battery fire. 7) The increasing amount of firing puts an increased drain on logistics. My wagon had 6700 supply on it for the Bull Runs, and was cleaned out about halfway through both scenarios - even though in both cases what little artillery I had was destroyed or severely damaged, and in one case I had lost nearly 2/3rds of my personal troops. The attacking Union artillery at the bridge ran out of ammunition before Beauregard arrived at Matthew's Hill (and, as a likely bug, I knew this because I was able to see the red AMMO warning on enemy artillery). In Potomac Fort, the continuous fire of the two 4-gun batteries drained the 1000 supply in the fort in less than five minutes - it essentially required 1000-1500 supply to reduce the two ironclads and fire some canister at a couple charges. 8) The crazy wandering of the AI supply wagons seems better. Stuart almost caught one of them during my second Bull Run game, but it turned out to be too close to a skirmisher unit and he got a face full of bullets instead. We'll see how this goes in some of the known trouble scenarios, like Gaines' Mill.

Yep, I've lost my General unit several times - it currently has no effect, other than losing his abilities on the battlefield. It usually happens when he and I are engaged in a battle of wills - my will to keep him close enough to the fight to do some good and his will to run away from any fight inside his command radius. Sometimes he runs the wrong way and gets gunned down. I've also had him get overrun by skirmishers and cavalry.

The Reputation system is ... not working well at the moment. The sole benefit of accumulating high Reputation is a small Morale bonus to all of your units. Since Morale increases quickly with experience, the bonus is essentially ignorable, and in some cases can actually have a negative effect (ultra-high morale units with relatively low skills who stand and die instead of sensibly running away). Since there's little point in having high Reputation, you're spending it all to get additional equipment, men, money, and officers. This part works, more or less, though contrary to the description there's no apparent impact on the rest of the war. The downside is that the options are always the same, and you can base your army-building strategy on when certain weapons are going to appear. This is probably more important for the Confederates, because they desperately need decent rifles early in the campaign and there are none in the store to buy.

What messes with this is not so much Army Organization, but the complete disconnect between what you configure in the Army screen and what actually shows up on the battlefield. To a certain extent, the Army screen lets you build wide (more corps) instead of tall (larger brigades), but there are numerous scenarios where the hard cap on corps and brigades means those extra units cannot be used. And more confusingly, the number of brigades the battle setup map says you can deploy is often not the number of brigades you can initially deploy - and the rest of your units may or may not even show up, depending apparently on the whims of the scenario. It goes the other way, too - Gaines' Mill, for example, just won't start unless you have two corps to deploy. Then, the initial deployment is only 8 brigades, so if you don't build right and select the right corps you may be forced to twiddle your thumbs through half the battle with a force that can't accomplish anything. Worse, your "right flank" corps arrives in three groups, none of which you control and only the first of which has time to actually reach the battle - two thirds of the map appears dedicated simply to making sure that your second two "right flank" groups have too far to walk before they can get into the fight. Honestly, I think they should ditch AO entirely and the corps/brigade limits and give you the freedom to design your force as you see fit. If a cap has to be implemented on scenarios to keep them from being too imbalanced, it should simply be on the number of men. You should also have control over what units appear in what order, not just the initial deployment. This is even realistic - screwing up who to send where and when is one of the things that cost McDowell the battle at First Manassas. You could also implement stronger penalties for units that are too large for inexperienced commanders, and include the corps / division level in those penalties - this would provide more incentive to purchase higher ranked and/or more experienced officers.