veji1

Antietam is the most intense, passionnate, struggle for survival where a small confederate army is a blast to play with the feeling of fighting for survival, it really is superb and the devs have really hit a home run on this one, it' just utterly gripping. To be honest I tend to prefer the battles at the beginning were there is more manouvering. After Stones' River ite becomes a lot more brutal and it's less fun. I suppose this is also a testament to the devs in how they have managed to emulate the more direct and attritional style of fighting later on.

Agreed, Too much ambition could backfire badly. A similarish game on a different period would probably be the best bet.

Indeed this engine is made for linear combat, so it probably cannot really work well before 1660/1680 and after 1880.. That's still a good 200 years worth of good stuff !

Fair enough, to me weapons' choice, just like for infantry or artillery should have an influence on the best abilities of a cav unit, some units being better at melee and some shooting faster and from further, but what I meant is that all cavalry units should be useable to charge at arty or skirmishers with a massive ratio of success, and all cavalry units should be dismountable to play the skirmisher role, just with variable efficiency. Separating cav units in two very distinct subgroups is excessive imho.

I have advocated it earlier : there actually should only be one type of cav, mainly for scouting/dismouting and fighting at the end of the line or in the woods, etc.. and good at meleing arty, skirmishers or routing infantry but that would be very brittle when meleeing non broken infantry. Of course depending on the weapon it would be more or less good at everything, but all in all it should fit that mold. the division between rifle cav an shock cav is interesting in terms of gameplay but doesn't really make sense (imho and the game is great !!!)

Well there is a problem with the thread's title straightaway that sort of makes it lose much of any credibility : Sun Tzu and tactics in the same sentence... Sun Tzu isn't tactics, his are more philosophical principles and axioms applied to war, more akin to a book of proverbs and parables on war. It's completely different to what Jomini or others did which was more based on actual study of wars being carried out in their time.

Of course infantry is the core unit but I do find that Arty is actually quite useful in more ways : Nappys are really solid close range weapons, ie perfect to accompany infantry when you don't have enough 24s, which is always the case. And I find a few long distance batteries useful too for some counterbattery fire at least in the earlier to middle part of the game.

wow you don't use much arty.. I use a lot more than what you do, really have about 1 arty brigade for 2 infantry brigade, it gives them a lot more punch and staying power to always be back by an arty nearby.

This would be great. A few adjustments to camp would make life a lot easier : - give the player the option of increasing unit size to the hundreds. Like many players I think I like to start the battles with my brigades at a roundish number, so say after a battle I have quite a few units at 1123, 1673, 941, etc... manually upping them to 1200, 1700 and 1200 for example doesn't take ages per se, but is a bit annoying, being able to make the unit go to hundreds in a single click would be great. So for a brigade at 1123, first click brings you to 1200, second to 1300, etc.. and you still have to confirm at the end. - Combining brigades in camp would be great as well. sometimes you have 2 veteranish units at 652 and 847 men after a big nasty battle, you don't want to dilute them into rookies and bringing them back up to 1200 or 1500 is really costly. merging them would be the preferred option but it's not possible; Great game anyway and looking forward to the next ones !

You mean Robert Lee's civil war ? Yes very much so, the campaign engine is very similar but of course battles are completely different. But yes I thought of it immidiately

Thanks devs, you are just awesome... going on a long work trip next week and will play a lot !! yay !

Agreed, the only valuable DLC for this game was if they did a DLC to retrofit a major new development on the strategic engine for example. imagine their next game is a napoleonic game with a much more dynamic strategic game rather than just a linear "Robert Lee General 2" chain of battle, then yes, retrofitting that would be well worth a DLC.

This doesn't work that well : If you don't want to recruit any officer manually, when you create a division the game will "autorecruit" a colonel with the most basic experience which will cost you exactly 3000. For brigades you will automatically recruit shittier leaders (majors or captains) that will cost you minimal money, but still money. Add to that that you will have shitty command stats for many units until you get enough promotions, and it's not a winning proposition imho.

To be honest I still don't quite understand how they work in many cases. For example my limited understanding/feeling at this stage is : - good old wall like in Fredericksburg that get attacked head on : really good defensive position, stay in it and defend. - reinforced fence in the middle of a plain à la Antietam : hummm... well it does give you cover so it's better than being standing in the plain by yourself, but I have the feeling bein in the woods in your regular line formation might still be better. - forest fortifications like in Chancellorsville... No clue but I have a weird feeling too that because of the slowed down rate of fire, or at least completely different without that "first volley effect" they might not be that better than just being in the woods which already gives you solid cover.

Don't do a DLC, do more games with the same engine adapting it to the times... do a "War of XIX europe" where the player gets to play the crimean war, italian war of independence, austro-prussian and franco-prussian war. Do a Napoleon game, do a War fo Louis XIV/18th century europe game, etc... those are called new games on the same engine, not DLCs. That's what I want to see !

exactly, at least make the players sweat by having to micromanage that, otherwise it's just too easy...

In the peninsular campaign and later battles like Waterloo it's true, but earlier in the period infantry shock formations had a somewhat bigger role. But overall the point remains, Usually once a infantry unit charged another one with bayonets, at the moment of contact one was already about to break, so the shock combat didn't last long nor cause that many casualties, but it did cause units shattering as we would say in game term, whereas fire phase could have lasted a while longer.

With armies that aren't too big (45k CSA soldiers against 100k USA more or less) Antietam is both a massive pain and fantastic fun to play as the CSA player, so much manouvering falling back then back forward, etc... My last play I had held the north pretty easily by puttin brigades in Nicodemus Hill woods, goading the Union into focusing its attack there and when I fell back to the wood lines behind I could hold it wiht infantry and arty. This meant that pressure on the cornfield wa manageable (no 4/5 brigades melee blob). I withdrew from bridges which was a mistake because the Sunken road hill focused all the Union's activity and was a bloody mess, I fell back in the plain between Sharpsburg and Dunker church but what allowed me to countercharge was my arty taking horrible loss fighting from the front and most of my northern front bigares making the switch south and charging through the fields east of Dunker church allowing me to retake the Sunken road 3 mins before the ticker expired... It was an exhilaratingly bloody mess and I had great fun.

oups double post

To be honest the reputation generals bug sucks big time as well, I don't want to have to restart a campaign...

Well there wasn't much of a battle though.

I like to have a fair bit or arty, and don't like massive army organisation. My ideal corps is 4 divisions and 20 brigades, and on average I like to have per standard division : - 3 infantry brigades with 1 elite infantry brigade (2 or 3*) and 2 bigger more basic ones (say 1500 and 2000/2000) + 2*12 cannons (one smoothbore and one rifle) Usually one division per corps will have a rifle cavalry unit in lieu of an arty and sometimes I have a division with 4 infantry brigades instead of 3. Then in my second corps I usually have one all cav division (with 3 rifle and 2 melee for example) led By Stuart to play that big sweeping cavalry movement to distract the ennemy or pick up stragglers or arty. It works better in the second corps as it is more often comes as reinforcement or plays in more open ground (Sunken road and plain in Antietam, southern part of Fredericksburg, etc).

Denser brigades does, imho, lead to a more frontal brutal game, but again it's all a matter of what the player finds enjoyable !

My point wasn't necessarily on what gives the players the best results, it was just in terms of fun. Antietam at 60/120 is just a lot less fun to play than at 40/80, that was my main point !

Indeed it's a matter of tradeoff, but basically as the player, you are better of on any given battle fighting with 15k against 30k which will allow you to move, choose terrain, be more fluid than with 80k agaist 160k ! With smaller armies you can still have flexible troop composition : a few 1500/2000 brigades to hold the choke points and withstand fire, smaller elite 1000 brigades to put the hurt to the ennemy and the cav units that become very useful in that context to hold your flanks. I just find that with massive armies the game loses some of its fun with more frontal blob assaults. But it's a matter of opinion. Play historic Antietam or "campaign beefed up Antietam with bigger armies" and the first one is going to be more fun, well at least for me !