Wandering1

How many infantry brigades are you running total? I'm usually hovering around 5k spare troops.

The veterancy loss is more a symptom of not going max-size; I noticed that you had 23k spare troops left over. When I was running Laurel Hill on BG, I was using a max-sized army; i.e. every one of my infantry brigades was 2000 men. Meaning that all of the enemy brigades were around 2600-2950. Even so though, with training 10, replacing 500 2* costed me about $30k per brigade if I went with veterans. Which, depending on how much spare xp you have left over in the brigade, you don't even need to replace all of the casualties with veterans; you just use rookies until you hit 0 xp, which coincidentally makes the veteran replacements cheaper. I should probably note though that for the most part I keep my brigades at 2 star. Since the sharpshooter nerf, the only thing that 3* really gives you is more efficiency. Which the difference between 70-80 efficiency and 100 is not that dramatic unless you're using Fayettevilles.

Anderson's Corp that start out at the fortifications. The South Carolina brigades that you do not supply men, nor do you have to care about replenishing them.

I actually broke even manpower-wise on Laurel Hill on BG. The trick to the fight is forcing most of the casualties on the NPC brigades (which, conveniently, give you free guns). Even when you start losing the squads, you replace them with the npc artillery to sponge more shots (and get free cannons).

It would have to be a lot higher than 500 casualties for 1 Rep point if we wanted to have scaling rewards based on overkill; Fredericksburg as CSA would easily give you 100 rep if you basically annihilated the Union army. Maybe more like 5000 or even 10000; having too much rep from overkilling the enemy can basically ruin the Rep economy by virtue of being able to buy out the entire shop, generals included.

Until someone overcooks their marshmellows, or weiners.

I wouldn't necessarily call it friendly fire, per se, it is simply incidental fire. Incidental fire does not discriminate.

The scaling in Antietam is very large in general, to simulate the fact that McClellan had a huge advantage in total troop count over the CSA troops at Antietam. So, not losing the 7k men does give basically at least an additional 14k troops to the Union for Antietam.

To be clear, not in as direct a fashion as most players would like. Some of the battles create the -5% or -10% army size penalty for the opposing side, but this in general is a drop in the water compared to the numbers that are being fielded. ~140k troops versus ~130k troops is not going to make a big difference.

It's about how you manage the teleporting, in this case. You could essentially be aggressively using your condition, and then get teleported back to recover condition on the likely 0% condition units. By the time the opposing side catches up, you'll have recovered to conduct any condition-using manuevers (like running around) again.

Consider it another way; if that money could have been spent getting 24 pdrs, or other things that would cause the enemy line to break quicker, then you're also getting the net same effect of preserving your force, just with less loss of valuable rifles. Little differences in melee skill (around 10ish) don't really change the melee equation much; if the enemy is charging you with 5000 men, it's going to cause a break if you don't have anything to support the bullet sponges.

Lots have changed in the cavalry performance since 0.6. Since melee cavalry turned out to be the forest boogiemen due to how cover works in the game.

#2 is really the only practical way of getting a victory on Antietam as CSA on Legendary. Basically, if you can't hold both of the bridges where Burnside is attempting to cross, there's no point in getting rear flanked. And holding both of the bridges is going to be expensive either way; was only able to do it on BG/MG by parking my 24 pdrs at the bridges and micro-managing the shells/canister rounds when they attempted to cross.

Speaking from experience in the higher difficulties: you don't even run Palmettos and Lorenz's for bullet sponges. You just use Farmers or M1842s if you're Union. Because at the end of the day, you're not expecting the majority of enemy casualties to come from your bullet sponges. Among other things though, the max size CSA BG campaign I'm running right now, has all of my bullet spongers in the 70+ melee range, so that tells you pretty much how I end up using my bullet sponges...

I would point out; if you don't forcefully scale the enemy skirmishers to snipers on Rio Hill, sitting on the 100% cover on the capture point is going to be a lot more painful, because they just use Spencers instead. If they have snipers, they poke at your one squad on the capture point for about 5 damage each at max range. Spencers are more likely to cause a rout by virtue of faster firing rates and flank attacks.

At the end of the day, it's more what size army you're comfortable with, and take it from there; at most, again, you only need 3 corps for battles, and those 3 corps are provided to you regardless of whether you put more points into AO or not. Also whether your logistics strategy works out well enough for the higher AOs; on the higher difficulties, the reduced income and increased casualties (from larger enemy sizes) makes for even reinforcing 2000 man brigades difficult, before taking weapon replacements into consideration if you're not doing the optimal rookie strategy of just feeding the cheapest weapons to the meat sponges. As far as optimal AO if you don't want to handicap yourself for the big maps? You can get 6 by 2nd Bull Run, and you should be fine for the rest of the campaign. The first big map you really have coverage problems with is Antietam, and that's if you're going for a victory as CSA and not a draw or simply withdrawing at the start.

Shiloh is doable with 12 on BG; just have to be aggressive enough that the enemy doesn't get to concentrate all of his reinforcements before the initial brigades are more or less destroyed. As far as tactical options per point of Army Org goes though, you can pretty much stop after 6; not all battles allow you to field 24 brigades in 1 Corp.

You get free corps count from 1st Bull Run, and 2nd Bull Run, as Wright mentions. Which basically makes Army Org, by default, only if you want more flexibility in your formations (as in, actually be able to use cavalry/artillery and not be hamstrung by the fact that you only have a small number of brigades). It only scales the numbers of those brigades, but it does take total brigades into consideration on either side. For example, the Union has 59 total brigades for Antietam. If you only have... 17 brigades? 2x4 for 1st and 2nd Corps, and a token unit in the 3rd Corps, it means by default the computer will be between 1/4 to 1/3 of their original sizes. It won't scale downward beyond a certain minimum, if I were to recall. To make sure that having 0 skirmishers doesn't mean the enemy also has 0 skirmishers (as much as some people around here would prefer that...).

Concerning Army Org, it's not required that you put any points into it at all; the enemy will scale depending on the size of your army. Meaning if you put barely any points into army org, your 2 4-brigade divisions will only have to fight 600-800 size infantry brigades. Which is to say, within a 12-gun 24-pdr one-shot range. Clearly, whether that is easy or not will very map to map (i.e. Antietam's going to be a nightmare, whereas Fredericksburg will turn out to be even more of a joke). It does spawn the idea of trying a run with as close to 0 Army Org as possible just to see how the very large maps turn out...

Other things to remember when playing skirmisher cav blobs: make sure the entire division is skirmisher cav, so you can just hit the quick button to select all of them. Once you get up to 10/15 cavalry units, it starts becoming a lot more manageable to divide them to eat stragglers/lone units (e.g. on Stones River, if you cut off the Union from Nashville Pike).

Not sure why you even have to take the hit on the first day. You can easily clean sweep all of the brigades by walking the south bridge with all of your brigades; the computer isn't smart enough to relocate everything to the south bridge until you're all the way across, and once you're across, the entire zone is 100% cover, so you just walk up to everything and start clubbing people to death. Causing a surrender on the brigade in the town is one brigade you don't have to worry about at Maryes Heights.

Not even a matter of play balance versus historical reality; both can be satisfied, just that both sides have to play by the same rules; if Union can't get M1863s before 1863, there's no reason CSA should get Fayettevilles before 1862. When currently in the game, you can purchase a few hundred at 1st Bull Run.

It does bring one to wonder why they stopped at 25, considering 24 was used in the ACW. I mean, the Russians at least thought bigger was better.

It's not considered a stock Union weapon. They go up to 1861s and 1863s and not Fayettevilles. The point is, however, that through reputation purchases and the fact that you can buy enough Fayettevilles before 1862 is the main reason why the scaling is hitting M1863s. If Fayetteville purchases (mainly the 2x 750s through reputation at around Gaines Mill/Malvern) were pushed out to the Antietam time frame, people wouldn't have enough Fayettevilles to push the scaling to 1863s. Edit: If there was a sacking of the Harper's Ferry Armory prior to the Maryland Campaign, isn't that modeled as the CS RIchmond rifles that are present in the game?

The changes to Cold Harbor in 0.79, if I were to recall, only affected the Union side of Cold Harbor. Because it was easy to walk onto the point in the second phase, or just march 2 corps of men through 1 brigade at the very bottom for the third phase.