Bill the Bold

That would Gladden me. My toaster broke last week but thats ok, I like the Burnside.

Do you actually do that?

That would be Pleasant.

Hazen 't anyone else got a pun?

Victory at Malvern Hill with AO 3. I was shocked by the wall of veterency that I ran into. They had five 3* inf brigades (1200 to 1300 men each) the rest were 2*, all their cannons were one or two star vets and I don't recall the cav levels. I only captured 1855s and sharpshooter rifles so they were all geared up. About half my inf were 2* with good rifles the rest were 1* or raw inf with 1842s. I'm not sure how the enemy veterans scale up so I was pretty surprised (and more than slightly annoyed) by their forces being well beyond anything I could have hoped to field. Luckily Mr. Canister does not care how many stars you have. So its pretty easy getting to Malvern Hill as CSA with AO 3 but if I were to do it again I would consider getting AO 4 or 5 after Gaines Mills to try and dilute their veterancy levels a bit. I bumped up to AO 5 after Malvern so I can bring the full 14 brigades to Cedar Mountain.

I'm curious as to which skill people consider more efficient for each side. 01/27/17 interesting, not as clear cut as I'd expected

Thanks for your input, it was reading some of your other posts that made me try a min size campaign in the first place. I was surprised when you said you had AO 7 by Gaines Mills, guess I didn't read your posts thoroughly enough lol. This is essentially the force composition in my other campaigns. My main guideline with this play through was to keep the army only as big as it needed to be in terms of brigades and corps (I never went into a skirmish with less than max number of brigades) and to make those units as elite as possible. So far it seems to be working out, I fought Gaines Mills last night and pulled off a victory with just over a 3:1 loss ratio. The initial attack corps were seven 2* inf with lorenzes or better (mostly better), a battery of eight napoleons and eight of 10pd ordnance with 350 melee cav. I needed roughly 500 more veteran inf soldiers to fill 1st corps completely so basically full strengths of 1500 men. That force had no trouble securing the first two VPs and were in defensive positions by the time union reinforcements arrived. When the raw 2nd corps came into play it wasn't 2500 vs 1000, more like 1500 vs 900 but they still swept all before them. Observations of AO 3, It makes for fast paced games, your guys don't last long but neither do theirs, good when you have to hit VPs before reinforcements show up bad in that if you're not paying attention your guys get mauled pretty quick. I'm not sure about their cav but the enemy skirmisher units were the same size (350 odd men), that sharpshooter unit the union gets at gaines mills did the devils work on one of the brigades I had parked in the woods while the other guys took the right flank VP (wasn't paying attention haha). Not putting points toward AO allows you spend them on other things, I had politics maxed well before Gaines mills. Overall I'd say the scaling at the low end works pretty good, I've not felt hampered in any of the battles so far by having fewer brigades per corps than I'd normally have and 1500 vs 1500 doesn't really feel that different than 2500 vs 2500. Its been interesting anyway, we'll see what happens at Malvern Hill.

True but you get the two additional corps as rewards, as it stands now I have two full corps with an open slot for the third. Interesting, I hadn't considered the leveling of recruits. I thought that scaling kicked in when you had bigger brigades though? I've kept it at AO3 because most of the battles you fight you're only allowed 10 or 12 brigades anyway. I thought I might have been in trouble at Shilo with only 12 brigades in my corps but it was no tougher than when I beat it in my previous campaign with a fourth division in the battle order. Also its been much easier to equip them, only one brigade in first corps still have Mississippi rifles. The second brigade is all 1842s and 12pdrs though. edit: i meant the second corps has all 1842s and 12pdrs

Try to preserve your forces better. You simply can't take 40% loses every battle and expect to maintain an army, I believe this is intended. Generally speaking try to keep your guys in cover as much as possible, double team and flank enemy units when you can and don't hang around in front of cannons when they're firing canister. Easier said than done though right haha.

I'm trying a CSA campaign on normal difficulty using minimum army sizes, I'm up to Gaines Mills with an AO of 3. Is there any reason to push it higher? Will there be a point in the future when I'll need more AO?

That would sure be a Polk in the eye.

True, but without puns we'd be left in the Wilderness.

Good pun, I'll Grant you that.

After character creation I think you should start in the camp screen with no money, no manpower and no reputation for the sole purpose of choosing your perks. I hate when my arty gets a stamina boost or my general in chief doesn't have trainer.

I think that multiplayer campaigns would be awesome but short and short is not a bad thing. For me the main appeal of an MP campaign is how it would change tactical game play. Playing a historic battle I don't care if I take 80% casualties as long as I win in the end but in campaign mode that same battle you have to consider the next battle. In an MP game you have to consider every nasty tactical surprises that you just know is coming from a human opponent as well as any surprises in his army build (lots of melee cav or an insane amount of arty). To my mind this takes tactical game play to the next level. As for how long the campaign would actually last would depend on the relative skill of the two players and how the balancing between rewards for winning and losing worked. I think eventually there would be a decisive battle in every campaign where both players realize the loser has pretty much had it. Depending on balancing and who is the better general maybe that battle is Shilo, maybe that battle is Fredricksburg, maybe its a skirmish in between and I don't think that's a bad thing. I wouldn't want to see a campaign be artificially dragged out to the real last battle of the civil war with little tricks like cherrypicking battles or giving a losing player extra rewards just to keep him alive. The real action is going into a battle (whichever battle it happens to be) knowing that your campaign is on the line. If you whip me in five battles so be it, GG for you buddy. Maybe we could choose to start our campaigns in early, mid or late periods of the war so we wouldn't be fighting the same 5 battles over and over again.