AJ McCully

Been giving Antietam a shot as the CSA on Major General and I'm finding the scaling of the Union army fascinating. Often when people talk about scaling, it's only in vague terms ("add a few thousand, lose a few thousand") and I haven't seen exact figures for how the game decides on the size of the army you face. Ideally, I want to find the optimal army size to bring to Antietam. Is it possible to look into the mathematics behind it? Has this topic of precise scaling factors been discussed before?

This is my experience as well. I typically bring maximum 1-2 cavalry brigades to capture enemy supply wagons but you'll always encounter a pretty big division of Union cav about half-way up the Union right-flank at Stones River. I can't say whether scaling actually impacts their size or number of brigades but they're definitely always present in some way. Just like Stuart's cavalry corp at Fredericksburg.

I'd say a lot of the major battles require a good deal of speed. On harder difficulties, seizing the best positions before your enemy is vital, especially on the CSA campaign (Stones River, Malvern Hill, Gaines Mill, Chickamauga). If you're on a Union campaign, I'd say Fredericksburg is a good example of the speed and determination you need at Shiloh x10. The timer can be pretty unforgiving and the distance between Telegraph Hill and your army's starting positions is quite far and full of danger.

The Union strategy, in theory, is as simple as delaying as much as you can, a bit like Antietam as the CSA. In practice, it's a lot harder. You really have to exploit the best defensive points and keep the attackers on their toes so they don't have an easy job of simply walking towards your VP. If you try to hold a line far in the front (i.e. the points you hold on the first phases of Day 1), all that's going to happen is a rebel cavalry unit will steal the VP as soon as the map opens up. Spain Field and Larkin Bell Field are not good points to hold for a long fight and, when you give them up, you leave all your brigades at Shiloh Church exposed. Hornet's Nest is a great point to hold for as long as possible as it takes a lot of pressure off your centre at Pittsburg Landing. Your centre is the weakest point as the enemy has cover leading right up to the fortifications and can take the VP just by routing the 1 brigade that can defend those fortifications. It's better to have a stubborn detachment of your army holding Hornet's Nest, at least for a while. Even if you allow some of the confederate army to skirt around, some of it will remain to fight you there and make their attack on PB less effective. If they do hit you hard in the centre, try to swing around on the flanks of their attack as the confederate advance is pretty chaotic and uneven, especially if you're stubbornly holding parts of the map. The right flank of PB is also pretty shit, so it's better to fight a series of delaying battles in the woods and farmhouses between Shiloh Church and PB. I think the two most common ways to lose Shiloh as the Union is to over-extend and stretch out your army across all the points, or to do the opposite and turtle up in PB.

I'm trying this battle on Major General and hitting a wall. Have you attempted this battle on MG and got similar results? My main problem does seem to be supply and being stretch insanely thin, the bridge choke-points mean nothing to the Union on MG so defending them is difficult even with a large detachment, which I can't really afford.

So far, I've enjoyed the challenge of every battle on Major General difficulty, managed to score a victory in every one but for some reason everything after Gettysburg feels oddly unbalanced. I'm aware that there's still a lot to work out before UG is fully released but it feels really odd to feel starved of materiel and manpower as the Union at Chickamauga and beyond yet, at the same point in the campaign, hardly struggle in the same departments as the CSA. It's hard to explain, but the desperate manoeuvring of limited troops and supplies across a large battlefield should be how the CSA player experiences Cold Harbour rather than the experience you get as the Union at Chickamauga. I could rant about the issues of this battle but really it's just balancing problems for the hardest difficulty which will probably get resolved, I just think it's part of a larger issue with how the late campaign works for both sides.

Actually read about this subject quite recently in James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom. Apparently similar attempts were made to settle freed slaves in Central America, some were shot down by countries in the area that didnt approve of colonialism and other colonies, like one set up on an island near Haiti, collapsed due to disease and starvation. It seemed that while many Americans supported the idea of these colonies, the number of black volunteers during the war was quite small and attempts at colonies beyond Liberia were pretty half-hearted. In defense of Lincoln, up to the Emancipation Proclamation, the consensus in the North was in favour of colonisation and most of his enemies rode the fear of the alternative, millions of freed-slaves descending upon the northern states, stealing jobs and women and other such fear-mongering. Only radicals openly supported full emancipation and Lincoln was trying to hold together a new and diverse party. Well aware of the damage political division could do to a party, we can theorise that Lincoln was probably picking the safest ground when he came out in favour of colonisation, just like when he came out in favour of compensatory emancipation or only limiting slavery in new territories prior to the war. Whether he was in favour of full emancipation and citizenship or colonisation during the war, we may never know because politically, he couldnt afford to openly support the former without lending ammunition to his enemies and his open support of the latter may have just been a tactic to buy time until he could achieve full emancipation as he obviously intended in 1862. I think it's key to understand how idiotic colonisation was viewed from the perspective of those who'd be subject to it. The assumption of the white abolitionist majority was that black people were Africans and therefore would be happier in Africa and that co-existence was impossible or dangerous. The view of most black people, echoed by Frederick Douglass, was that the USA was their home, they'd helped to build it and, once free, they'd stay where they were born and raised as free men. That seems like the most sensible outcome in the present but in hindsight, even the most progressive politicians of the time were still pretty racist and prone to fears over what black people might do with their freedom. What most did was keep doing what they'd done their entire lives, which is why many stayed in the South to the confusion of people who read about the history of their time there prior to being freed. But if you understand that much of the South's identity was tied to cotton and other agriculture and that a huge amount of this agriculture was facilitated by black people, then you understand that black people embraced this identity in their millions and werent willing to give it up simply because their ancestors had come from a land 3000 miles away. The best proof of this is in the experiences of freed slaves in Liberia. When they arrived, they shared nothing with the local Africans except their skin pigment. They didnt know the local African culture, language or religion and had little intention of learning, instead they treated the locals much the same way that Europeans treated Native Americans. They created their own colonial christian society based on American principles of liberty and democracy, spoke exclusively English and came to identify themselves as Americo-Liberians. Even when they were moved 3000 miles to another continent, it didnt change the fact that slaves saw themselves as Americans and no amount of colonisation would make them African again.

I still appreciate the insane amount of effort that goes into making Total War games and will probably buy every iteration they release, but playing more advanced strategy games (like HOI4, Stellaris, Crusader Kings 2 and UG) really makes the cracks show in the series. The most distracting crack I notice is the AI, they rarely seem to have a plan or do anything unconventional. On the campaign map, they'll B-line for whatever objective they're focused on and if they have none, they're quite content to do nothing until you arrive. In battles, there are no phases, there are no surprises and some unit types are made pointless by the dearth of strategy involved in the battle. Skirmishing? Artillery duels? Cavalry battles? Heros? Nope, right out the gate you're looking at 1 or more mobs of melee units fighting in predictable ways. The defining strategy for most of the total war series is to build a large cheap melee army with OP cavalry and flank attack your way to victory. You can predict the outcome of every battle, so every battle amounts to either "I can roll this stupid AI" or "retreat/autoresolve defeat". I appreciated Napoleon and Empire a lot for trying to get away from this format but when I make the mistake of remembering them fondly and go back to them, I see how shallow the campaign and battle mechanics were and all the wasted potential (Empire for awful UI and drawn out battles and Napoleon for it's insanely limited campaign map). I could rant for a long time about the hundreds of tiny things that irk me about Total War but it's only because I've sunk an unhealthy amount of time into them and got back a tonne of enjoyment. So I feel entitled to moan. Anyway, will support Total War for the forseeable future but whenever something as special as UG comes along or almost anything released by Paradox, it'll always get my money.

I foresee the Union army breaking through the centre and ignoring the flank attack. It almost always does for me.

Completely agree. I made the same point in a steam discussion but focusing more on the way the AI behaves with what it has. McClellan was a very cautious Union general in a war that could've been ended by one aggressive Union general very early on. At Antietam, he failed to pursue the confederate army relentlessly both during and after the battle. He never fully concentrated his forces, perhaps out of fear of high casualties that his superiors and the rest of the North wouldnt be happy about. The AI plays it completely differently. It uses everything it has and is happy to funnel tens of thousands of men under heavy and constant fire through one lane to take the city. That doesnt speak of a cautious commander concerned about losses. My main problem with this battle is that I can cause massive casualties to the Union army, leave 40-50 thousand dead Yankees on the field at a ratio of 3:1 with my own casualties, but at the end of the day I'm the defeated one. The AI doesnt care about the war beyond the battle, it doesnt care about the commander in chief, it doesnt care about crippling itself. So in the face of a flawless enemy willing to sacrifice everything to win, exploits and luck are the only tools left to you and I ultimately feel that the wisest course it to not fight at all.

Currently, the only options I have for this battle are Conventional draw by defending and retreating (and failing most of the time) Cheese victory by withdrawing to Sharpsburg, luring the Union army there and then sneaking individual brigades onto all victory points Retreating right at the beginning taking 0 losses and taking the reputation hit

Waiting to see how you approach Antietam. I want to see the struggle happen to someone else. (Dont embarrass me by making it look easy)

Exactly. If the game framed the campaign in line with a real continuous war (i.e. the Union army decreased in size after each battle or grew larger as you avoid it) then I'd be incentivised to fight at CH so that I'm not fighting a monster army in the next battle. I really wanted the Overland campaign to be like that for the CSA. You're facing this huge army to begin with that you can only defeat by wearing it down progressively at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and CH before it's finally defeated in some alt-history battle, and if you avoid the Union army then it'll just get stronger. Also, I tried the same thing at Gettysburg and had the Union on the run but my army was exhausted from constant fighting and walked so slowly up to cemetery ridge that I almost threw my keyboard out of a third storey window when the timer clicked down to zero. Luckily my next day reinforcements took Little Round Top and calmed the rage. Was not happy with Ewell afterwards.

The AI never really went for my point. Even just now when I went defensive to see what the rest of the battle is like. After playing through the rest of the battle, I've concluded that the first phase win is definitely the easiest outcome for CH. Even a Draw in the later phases is more difficult. Though I was handicapped by the fact that half of my left flank was artillery brigades and outnumbered 5 to 1.

I marched 16,000 men onto Old Cold Harbor and held it until the timer counted down, that meets the middle victory conditions and you can end the battle with maybe 4k losses. I had 4 brigades in the centre (double layered) blocking Wright from the point and 2 on either side of him doing morale damage with flank attacks. With a good rout of his leading brigades, you can hold him off long enough. If the timer was maybe 30 seconds longer or I started with a smaller force, I would have very likely been pushed off by Wright and decided to avoid attacking at all in future runs.

Having almost 50k is not a desperate situation. I think Antietam and the battles following it are a better representation of the difficulty levels I'm talking about. You make the decision to commit to these battles knowing that you might not be able to replace the soldiers you lose and that effects the strategies you employ. Post-Antietam, it can be hard to get back to your former glory but I think the Overland and Chickamauga campaign are pretty generous with recruits and it didnt cause me any problems on the field.

Only had the chance to play the campaign as the CSA (playing on BG) for now. I had varying experiences with the minor battles and a kinda anti-climactic experience with Cold Harbor. Mansfield was pretty great, no problem with it really that doesnt get into general mechanics issues. Laurel Hill was was pretty fun and felt most like the way the Overland campaign should feel, however the AI failed to take advantage of a massive hole in my right flank for the entirety of the battle. Towards the end of the battle, I managed to march 6000 men through a gap between the far left flank of the Union fortifications and the map edge which the AI made no attempt to stop until my men were massacring their artillery behind their lines. Even then, the resistance was pretty weak and I secured a victory by pulling back to the top right corner of the map and pushing onto the Union victory point in the last seconds of the battle. Fun but I cant help but feel that I was exploiting the game. I completely bypassed Saunders Fields after one attempt that resulted in a draw. It's one of those minor battles like Rio Hill where the cost of winning is greater than the reward, the main difference being that you're fielding a large force against an even larger force. The incentive to win, or even fight it in the first place, is so low that I wasnt interested in wasting valuable confederate lives on it. Won Cold Harbor on the first day by taking Old Cold Harbor and holding it for a very short time. Yet to see the rest of the battle. From what I've read, the Overland campaign was a pretty desperate time for the CSA, with shortages of just about everything and lines stretched thin. I dont feel any of that, I've got plenty of recruits, can equip everyone with weapons to spare and you can bring 8 brigades right off the bat at CH (8*2000 man brigades=16k men for the first phase). I think more thought needs to be put into the intended difficulty level of the CSA campaign at this stage of the game. Lee survived throughout the Overland campaign and months on a lot of luck and Union incompetence, using the bottom of the barrel. I expect to be outnumbered heavily, that's a given, but scaling up the enemy isnt good enough. The CSA should be a slog at this point, for recruits, for weapons, for constantly having to extend your line to avoid being flanked. That's what the Overland campaign should be about.

I did the same. Like a good Confederate general, I saw the overwhelming odds and charged straight at Old Cold Harbour on the first day. My first attempt failed as I was unaware of the size and direction of the incoming reinforcements. I lost the point in the last few minutes of the day. Second attempt, I literally ordered every brigade to march straight onto the point going through the enemy. Sure a few routed, a couple got involved in a melee glitch that left 2000+ confederates dancing in a field with 600 yankees for about an hour, but I captured the point. I then distracted the reinforcing army with single brigade attacks on its left and right so that the brigades attacking the point over open ground were a lot thinner and easy to rout. I'm not sure why the first day is so easy, whether it reflects the real event or if it's a balancing issue that will get tweaked later. Either way I'll probably go back in a couple of days and see what the battle is like if you leave the Union be for the first phase.

I'm currently tackling Battle Cry of Freedom and despite the rather dry subjects of the first few chapters, I'm enjoying it a great deal. I'm not American so the ACW was not something I came across naturally, like in school or conversation. But for Christmas 2015 my girlfriend gifted me 14 books in total, one of them just happened to be Bruce Catton's A Stillness at Appomattox. I was a bit put off by the fact that it was the third book of a trilogy and that I wasnt familiar with that period of history but once I started reading, I couldnt stop. He tells the story of the final years of the civil war from the perspective of the Army of the Potomac, from the commanders right down to the common soldiers, focusing on their experiences and interactions rather than dry politics and social trends. Battles like the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbour and Petersburg are recreated with fascinating detail. It is entirely focused on a single theatre of the war, on a brief time-period and only the Union perspective so it's not best to read it for a full understanding of the civil war but the narrative is so well written and such a vital piece of the time period that it's a fantastic read. It really highlights the reasons why the Army of the Potomac struggled for so long against a smaller force despite it's overwhelming resources, manpower and experience (mainly due to gross incompetence, confederate stubbornness and very bad luck). I've come to appreciate the desperate fighting that took place during a period that many assume was all down-hill for the Union. (btw, Bruce Catton has a real 'thing' for Philip Sheridan.)

So Gatling guns confirmed for next patch?

You actually want Butler? Grant and Lincoln sure didnt. I'd add Sherman (as a reward for Victory at Shiloh, possibly), Meade (for Gettysburg) and Sheridan (ideally from Cedar Creek, Trevilian Station or Third Winchester if they're ever added).

In reality, I think I'd have a pretty good reputation in the South for leaving Antietam with an intact army. It's more than Lee can say.

This is what happens when I try to retreat from Antietam. 0 losses but apparently there was no-one left to defend Richmond. I guess Jackson, Beauregard and the other 40k confederates just went straight home after.

Pretty sure you need to at least Draw at Antietam to avoid a game over. So that means holding Sharpsburg and keeping losses below 50%, a task that I've found harder than just cheesing the Victory conditions by taking the capture points in the final moments of the battle. I'd much prefer the option to simply retreat with my army intact and take the loss but I can see why it would be redundant to make an ACW game where the player can say 'meh, dont feel like fighting that major, decisive battle' and suffer no repercussions.

From what I've seen of the Ultimate General series so far, the developer(s) have a real passion for the ACW and the battles reflect that through the attention to detail in almost every aspect. They benefit from that fact that the battles of the ACW are pretty well documented for the time period. I wouldnt be surprised if they stick with this iteration of the game for quite some time in an attempt to get every detail precise, perhaps only straying to cover very similar conflicts related to the main game (like the Mexican-American War). If they do decide to utilise the engine in a new way, I can see it going one of two ways. Developing the skirmishing and artillery mechanics to better portray conflicts from the late 19th or early 20th century, or developing the cavalry and massed infantry mechanics to better portray pre-ACW conflicts like the Napoleonic wars. In my opinion, the latter option has more to work with but may have issues with accuracy. It would be harder to approach place names, commanders names and exact geography/locations and time-of-day events than it would be with the ACW. While it's easier to be accurate with modern conflicts, I dont think the engine is appropriate for taking on 20th century battles and would probably lose the mechanics we like most in trying to do so.