Bigjku

Yes, this is another way to deal with it. Penalize accuracy for ships pilling in on one target all at once. Either way the proper historical way things were done was generally to match up against targets up and down the line.

Long time player of Ultimate Generals Civil War. Finally got this game and am a long time naval enthusiast so its right up my ally. Has a lot of good stuff but the movement controls, particularly when working with mixed fleets need a lot of work. Formation Controls There is a lot that needs to be done here that really is hard to do with the current controls but should be able to be fixed relatively easily. I suggest the following commands are needed. Lead: This is a command primarily for cruisers that would allow the player to control the fleet through the battleships but would order a cruiser division to take a lead in the specified formation. This would retain control of the line at the battleship level which is historically accurate and would force the cruisers to comply with the speed of the battle line which is also accurate. Screen: Screen as it is implemented appears to be largely useless in the present build. The screen adopted is more appropriate to repelling an all sides torpedo boat assault or as an anti-aircraft formation none of which seem to develop. I think it is the right idea with poor implementation. I would suggest you have Screen as an option and then have sub options of screen forward, screen rear, screen port, screen starboard. This would assign the screen to that segment of the battle line (basically the 90 degrees the player ask for, ie 45 degrees each direction off the bow for forward, 45 degrees each direction from the midpoint of the ship starboard) and make the command far more useful for quickly getting ships where you want them. Movement Controls All Ship Turn: We badly need this command to be out there. Its a famous movement order (for the German fleet at Jutland of all places) where instead of following the leader to execute a large reversal of direction all ships turn at the same time and the trailing ship becomes the leader and the leader the trailer. For the purpose of the game it would be a simple button press command that orders this turn either to starboard or port and turns the fleet onto a new direction 180 degrees from the present course and swap leaders. Lead Ship Fall Back: This isn't really something that is ordered but it seems to happen a lot that my lead ship upon taking lots of damage moves out of line and to the rear of the line. But the way they generally do it is nonsensical. They turn away from the enemy, engage their engines to move in the opposite direction of their line and circle around to the other side. A more logical way to do this would be to sheer out of line away from the enemy and reduce speed to allow the rest of the line to pass and then resume place at the rear of the line. Fire Allocation Issues The tendency of the AI to concentrate all fire on the lead ship of a division is historically inaccurate but seems to provide the best results in the game. I believe this to be a result of a missing factor in the shoot calculations. The game needs to award large bonuses to ships for being unengaged by an opponent in terms of their shooting accuracy (again look to Jutland, ships that were unengaged due to British mistakes during the battle cruiser action shot much better than those that were being shot at). This should hopefully coax the AI and player into dividing its fires in a more reasonable manner. If not I would simply force the AI battleships to generally not double target a ship until everyone is taking fire from at least one opponent. An engage enemy division option might help with this too if it would automatically match fire across a division. Like the start. These are just some basic things that I think would make the action much more controllable.

Here are some shots of what I did. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=956628087 That is my initial defensive position for my troops. You can see the Cav division kind of lurking off to the edges. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=956628210 You can hopefully see what I mean by using the cav against the flanks to disrupt attacks. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=956628252 http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=956628306 http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=956628442 You can see the results. There are broken brigades that have to reform and then a division worth of infantry chasing around against troops they have no hope at all of catching. This relieves all sorts of pressure against your infantry. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=956628497 http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=956628544 As the numbers build up you can see the use of the Cav as a screen in town to buy me time to get redeployed south of town. With their cover bonuses getting the cav out of those spots isn't all that easy for the CSA. Here you can see the ultimate final position I tend to occupy on day 1. You can eventually see the Cav division retreating through my lines. Beaten up but having served their purpose. My units get a good amount of time to rest while the CSA units march and fight. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=956628594 http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=956628776 I like this picture just to show the crap pile of CSA bodies I can make in that position. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=956628645 http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=956628976 They finally come in and attack. Reserves move in at times when there are threats to the line. Some cover to the east gives us holding power there. Guns to the west really hurt the enemy badly if they move in that direction. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=956629050 http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=956629087 We are able to cave in their right side by massing for a counter attack on that open ground. Look at all the dead traitors. Warms the blood really. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=956629016 There you can see the final act of the cavalry division. The guns are left exposed. Might as well trade that division for some dead artillery. Will pay off later. I would say don't be overly aggressive when you are unsure. If the CSA starts breaking your units they can and will pressure you enough that its hard to rally anyone. Don't get flanked through town or to the East of town. When its time to pull back do so.

The difficulty is going to be day 1 really. After that IMHO it's very hard to lose unless you really screw up. Day 1 he is gonna get piled into with superior numbers. Day 2 is cake. Just bail on the forward exposed positions down south and run everyone back to the roundtops and cemetery ridge. Day 1 will be a struggle. My short advice. Don't sacrifice much of Buford's fire power holding seminary ridge. Make a demonstration and fall back North of town and out of sight. You need to hold them so your corps can hold a line running Southwest anchored by town to the East. Establish a strong line there backed by artillery and make the opposition fight on open ground. When they try to swamp you near town cave in their flank with Bufords cav in dismounted actions on their flanks. Then have the cav disappear again. You will need to fall back as the map progressively opens to the East because they will get around you. The cav division can hold them for quite a while in town. Ignore the fortifications south of town IMHO. Secure a line far enough South to defend the VP but not fight the enemy in the cover of town. Pull the surviving cav behind your lines. Usually you can work it around your west flank to really disrupt their artillery support which they don't often bring through town but instead move down the ridge. Its going to be messy. No way around that. If you have a full up 40,000 man corps you can often go on the offensive day one and each subsequent phase. If numbers are in the 20,000's per corps I would be worried about that.

http://a.co/gywA099 That should be a segment from Catton's book that covered the immediate post battle state of things. I and III corps were basically destroyed. II corps was down by a third. The army would recover and one can argue it should have attacked when it had Lee cornered during his retreat. But I am not so sure it wouldn't be a blood bath pressing up against prepared fortifications. Obviously if you could wipe out the AoNV it's probably worth it but again he was relatively new to high command and I believe all his senior commanders at the time advised him not to attack. I can forgive the mistake there that I won't in Mac simply because Meads command tenure at that point had basically been one ongoing crisis. As for McDowell he didn't handle his troops particularly well at Bills Run and frankly soldiers just had lost confidence in him. Leaving him in command was probably impossible post Bull Run and certainly after 2nd Bull Run. He was just seen as bad by his troops.

Meade had days to take control of the army prior to fighting. Could he have moved more quickly at Gettysburg? Sure. But the AoTP was in very poor shape after that fight compared to its condition after Antitem. All Mac needed to do at Antitem was commit his forces in a coordinated fashion and then put in the reserves and he could win on the field. Meade couldn't do much differently until day 4 really. At that point the army was down to around 55,000 effectives IIRC and had lost its two best corps commanders. Yes he wasn't aggressive there but his situation was far more excusable than Mac's. McDowell was a big part of Second Bull Run and Union forces weren't well handled there. I don't see him building up the army needed to actually win the war.

I don't see that Lincoln had much choice but to change commanders when he did. The burden was on the Union to attack. McDowell had lost confidence from the army and frankly Mac was a fantastic organizer and trainer for the AoTP so he wasn't a know poor choice at that stage. Really that army was probably better organized and equipped than almost any army fielded elsewhere except for the fact it had too many corps for much of the war. The troops were also well trained and really did hold their own just fine until general confidence was lost in commanders. Even then it was more a grumbling problem than a willingness to follow orders thing. Bringing Pope East wasn't insane. In theory the government should have released McDowell to come down to join the Penninsular campaign rather than shield Washington but I don't see any reason to suspect that Mac wouldn't have decided that he was up against yet more CSA troops and adopted the same posture. Post Antitem Mac had to go. His failure there was abject IMHO and Lee should have been destroyed. His subsequent actions didn't show he understood the urgency of the Union being seen to fight. Burnside lost the confidence of his commanders and either you had to let him clean house or fire him. Hooker you could make an argument for keeping but Chancellorsville was very poorly handled and should have been a war winner. Meade did fine. Once Grant was in place Lincoln largely let him alone. Grant realized in a civil war that one of the key issues is continuing to fight. Time wasn't on the governments side if it was being inactive. This makes the presidents claim that all he was looking for was a general who would take the tools he was given and fight ring true. Once he had that he left the war mostly to Grant to conduct.

The missions can be beat. The real question is why at least for the Union which I mostly the first two missions need to be as difficult as they are while also having basically nothing to do with gameplay in every battle that follows. They are just very poorly designed missions. They add nothing to the game and risk turning players off to the product before it starts to shine in later missions.

It's interesting to watch you at Shilo. I have thus far only played Union in campaign and talked to people mostly about how to have success with that battle. The first thing is to not get split. The flank marches are too long and can be dealt with with skrimishers or falling back. But if you get split you are screwed as the Union. In general I think it's the biggest thing the AI needs to learn is the risk of not concentrating its forces. That disposition was basically suicidal. Fighting the CSA at Gaines Mill they never made any attempt to unify their forces and let me sit right in the middle even though I only had one division holding the critical crossing against two corps worth of troops with one on either side. A simple attack from both sides, or even showing the intent to do so, would drive me out and let them move south in mass. They never showed any interest in anything other than objective points.

With the full release there just needs to be an unlimited resource and manpower option if the player wants it. Just to let them play around. There is no reason not to do it really.

There was innovation and movement late in the civil war but it may just be beyond this engine to simulate it. To me the big tactical change that really would get the Union forces moving was the reorganization and equipment of the cavalry when Wilson was the Chief of that part of the army. Making them pretty much all into mounted riflemen with Spencer's gave the Union the ability to strike over a wide area with forces that could very much outshoot equal or greater numbers of infantry. Under Sheridan they unhinged Lee's positions around Richmond. Under others (and Wilson eventually) they played a large role in the final campaigns in the West for the Army under Thomas. By the end of the war they were moving offensively as detached cavalry armies and were able to seize entrenched positions when they needed to. I would love to be able to experiment with having a force of 15-20,000 cavalry with Spencer's in the late game as the Union. But I am not sure the engine or the maps support what one would want to do with such a force. And I know damn sure you can't get that many carbines no matter what you do.

I did say slightly overrated, not horribly so. Gaines Mill and the whole 7 days campaign kind of falls into the problems I mentioned elsewhere that Lee suffered on the offensive. At Mechanicsville he intended an attack with 60,000 men and got less than 1/3rd of that into action. At Gaines Mill while Lee won but didn't achieve the large scale result he wanted as the V Corps got away and gave better than it took really. The Seven Days battles are interesting in that it seems Lee beat the man McClellan more so than he beat the AotP really. But it started a mental slide for the army that wouldn't be fully dealt with until 1864-5 really. Lee set out to destroy an isolated and outnumbered part of the Union Army and couldn't get it done. Second Manassas was a strong victory but again Lee set out to destroy an isolated piece of the Union Army and didn't quite accomplish what he wanted. The late war battles once people started digging in I view with less credit to both sides. The side of the tactical offensive generally started losing if forced into action on a certain timeframe as the war moved along. Lee was very good. But despite a few good chances to isolate and destroy parts of the Union Army at 7 Days, 2nd Bull Run , Day 1 at Gettysburg and North Anna he never got the job done. We can make up any number of excuses as to why the facts to some degree speak for themselves. It is really the one thing missing from Lee's resume is that he never forced a major enemy formation into surrender or outright rout. He was never even really able to put himself in a position to do so. A large part of it comes down to he was usually on the wrong end of numbers. But even when he had local superiority it didn't get done. And often the reason was a common fault he did not seem to correct during the war. Ambiguous orders due to poor staff work, subordinates who didn't act in concert with his plans and movements that left his forces dispersed rather than concentrated during many offensive actions were problems in 1862 and never really got solved. Those issues are also directly attributable to his major personal fault which was an unwillingness to deal with personal conflicts directly. It's fair to be critical of these things. There is no Donadlson or Vicksburg for Lee. There is no Rossbach. No Austerlitz, Ulm or Jena and Auerstadt. No Saratoga or Yorktown. Yes the odds were generally against him but they weren't absurdly tilted most of the war. Other generals won strategically critical victories against odds. Lee really didn't. He traded casualties in varying proportions to the enemy for time. When finally pressed by a Union general that had a clear strategic objective and determination to fight the issue out Lee would fight hard but be maneuvered into an unwinnable position that was guaranteed to destroy his army in the long run.

Honestly I think blaming sickness gives Lee way too much of a pass. He moved aggressively in invasion of the union twice and both times he ended up with his forces scattered and was forced into battle not in accordance with his plans. In general I think his tendency towards vague orders and nebulous suggestions (plus poor staff work) came back to bite him in the ass every time he didn't have the advantages of fighting on his home turf. To me an interesting what if is the one regarding Hooker at Chancellorsville. Take that victory away and Lee has Fredericksburg and....nothing else all that impressive. And Fredericksburg was more or less a product of Burnsides stupidity. I think Lee is slightly overrated.

The dirty little secret is the South, while it had a lot of initially quite effective brigade and division level commanders had very few people with talent above that level and did a piss poor job of finding and cultivating anyone younger into those roles. In the West it was a pretty much constant clown show of commanders. I can't indeitify any senior level commanders at the corps or army level that were ever all that effective. Maybe Johnson would have been good. Maybe not. You need depth on the bench. In the East Lee's appalling people management failings are often overlooked but that had a huge impact on the war. He wouldn't run poor officers out of the service but just out of his command. Inflicting them elsewhere and causing problems. One would be hard pressed to name a significant officer that served under Lee that would perform any role on their own with much distinction. Contrast this with what came out of the camp of Grant. Numerous officers that would go onto army level commands with success. Numerous technical innovators promoted. Bad officers were routinely sent home entirely. Grants willingness to deal with personnel issues was a huge plus for the North as his influence spread. Lee's unwillingness to do the same was a huge hurdle for the south. Many of the crap officers in the West were his cast offs after all. The Union won in part because it had more men and resources, but so did the British in 1777 and they didn't win. The Union also won because they were simply better led on balance from the top down as the war moved along. The AotP would achieve parity enough with the AoNV for efficiency that its superior size held them in place. Everywhere else Union armies were pretty much better across the board by 1863 and beyond. Better commanders, better supplied, better equipped and once Grant was fully in charge much more precisely directed in their operation than CSA forces.

I can do the big kill numbers with 24 pounders but the emplacement of the guns is critical and they can support maybe two to three brigades across a front. 10 pounders main advanatage is that they can probably effectively cover 2-3 times the frontage.

I like Stones River as the Union and Chickugama as the Union which many seem to hate. I love Shilo as well.

What kind of muskets are you carrying in your first few brigades? I am guessing pretty high end for this early? You have a lot of idle troops in the reserve pool. I would get them deployed soon even with 1842's or even Farmers as the game scales quickly in terms of troops needed over the next several major battles.

The animation may look about that way but with that command they do retain their facing. Generally to reposition its best to fall back a bit behind your intended position and the order them to move slightly back up to where you wanted them.

I would split the 24 pounders into 12 gun units. Lets you spread them around more. I always like the ordinance rifles. They have enough range to cover a good front and to allow you to mass them in packs so you can do good damage on any charging units over range. Napoleons have to be close and can be isolated or swept up in melee.

Agree with this and also think in general that if your remaining forces outnumber the enemy 5 or 10 to 1 you should basically be done if you want. While it's fun to march a huge wave over remenants it doesn't really add a lot to things. Have experienced this as the Union on Shilo, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg (where you always have the opt out to be fair). Chancellorsvile can be particularly frustrating as I felt like I captured the same points multiple times.

Touching artillery for infantry is basically death to your stamina regardless of if you win. Something is off there. Ideally the gunners should just run away and abandon the battery. Then be able to reoccupy it later if not caught and killed.

Very true. In the actual armies brigades were generally referenced by number or by their commanding officer. I use state numbers for fun and feel really.

I name my units either as regulars or volunteer units. My first corps units are regulars and 1st Division is 1st thru 4th US Infantry paired with 1st and 2nd US Artillery. I name second division as 11th thru 14th US Infantry and artillery as 11th and 12th. This way I can keep the divisions straight on the field. For the volunteers I have whole states comprise each division. It's not realistic but is simpler. For a while I considered adding battle honors to the titles and having things like Guards, Regulars, Volunteers, Militia designations to go with each star level but changing it got old quickly. I give them names and designations once they hit one star of experience generally and not before then.

I would say better shape than your average overweight person of today. Nowhere near what modern soldiers or someone who exercises fairly extensively in modern times in terms of fitness. They were quite adept at walking distances, particularly after some time in service. They likely weren't great runners and would tire quickly if the level of exertion were increased too much.

Napoleons are fine but I have found have to be right up on the line to be effective. I use my 10 pounders in grand batteries both on the offense and defense. Usually I congregate 36 or more guns in close proximity and use them to hammer away at anything that comes into range. The other side can't bring smoothbores up close without me first having a chance to drive them off. Offensively I will often concentrate all my ordinance rifles for a corps in one area to support my attack and their range lets them continue to provide fire effectively without me having to slacken fire and move up the guns. Defensivley I am still pretty close up on the lines but it's so I can have over reach and prevent the AI from really organizing itself in peace. In the big killing battles for the Union I often kill 2-3k with the Howitzers and 1,500-2,000 with the rifled cannon. This is with batteries of 12.