Bigjku

Proper DLC for this IMHO would be simply selling more maps and historical battle sets that you could play as standalones or fold into the campaign. I would pay $5-$10 each for the following. Grants river fort campaign Vicksburg Campaign Chattanoga campaign to follow Chickugama. Campaign for Atlanta Sheridan's valley campaign/confederate 1864 valley campaign Franklin/Nashville Campaign Petersburgh, Five Forks, Appomattox Campaign I recognize that each of those would take work, particularly to fold into the campaign properly, and would be willing to pay for that to be done.

You know, it's actually probably more realistic to handle things the way the system now does. Simply put it was somewhat rare to combine regiments for a number of reasons from political to moral of the troops. The Iron Brigade for example at Fredericksburg was made up of four regiments of veterans and one new regiment that comprised about half their total strength. There really wasn't a good replacement system in the Civil War for either side. It made things a lot harder than it needed to be.

Right out of the chute I routed two of the CSA brigades trying to come North across the bridge and they immediately routed to right behind my fortifications. Very frustrating. One of them even broke while on the actual bridge and moved on North rather than going South.

Overall I really enjoy the game and see a ton of potential as it moves towards final release and presumably continued expansion and improvement. I have organized my thoughts by area and tried to distinguish what I would say are improvements/expansions of scope from fixes that should happen. Combat Fixes The biggest thing left in my mind after the latest patch is sorting out the whole balance between the woods/terrain cover and fortifications. The cover/firepower balance still seems a bit off even though it seems improved. In general fortifications except for the relatively compact breastworks seem like deathtraps as near as I can tell. Units in heavy contact need to flee away from your line rather than through them. If they can't find a safe way back towards the mass of their own army they should be much quicker to surrender. Combat Enhancements It would be really helpful if in general units came onto the field as whole divisions, of if parts of divisions at least grouped together. Not being able to organize in this manner is frustrating. Maybe in some battles it is intended but generally I suspect it isn't. I would love to be able to have a couple of divisional formation options, particularly the ability to order a whole division to form column for a march and use the route drag function to move it in that manner. Equipment Fixes At least in the Union campaign things don't add up quite right. You simply can't buy enough high end rifles to equip your troops as they mostly should be towards the middle/end of the war. There is really no option to vary your equipment strategy. I think the solution to this is that the price of weapons should change drastically as the war goes on, for the Union in particular. In reality once production spins up 1861 Springfield Rifles are going to be cheaper than anything you could import. The CSA side probably needs to work a bit differently but I will address some thoughts on that later. There is the same problem with the Union and Cavalry carbines. I can never get more than handfuls of things like the Burnside Carbine, let alone the Spencer, but these things were around in pretty large numbers. It is frustrating in particular with carbines to have the option to buy 2-300 of 3 or 4 different models of the things. Strategy/Economy/Reputation Enhancements I think there is a huge opportunity to relatively simply address both some of the issues raised across these forums by making some changes here and to expand the scope of the game quite a bit for the player. As you add more battles I feel like you should make some decisions on the minor battles and even over each campaign season more crucial and difficult overall. Lets just say that eventually developers were to add enough battles to have a more fleshed out Western and Tennessee segment to the campaign. In my opinion the player should be given the option and suffer the consequences of making decisions on where to send some of their best troops. As an example of what I am talking about lets say in 1863 you open the year given the choice of assigning forces to the Army of the Potomac or to Grant in the west. First any forces sent to one place aren't going to be able to be recalled in short order to the other theaters so these decisions would have consequences. Secondly it would allow players to some extent to gamble. Do you concentrate all your strength in the East playing for a knockout blow at Chancellorsville? You could program things so that certain victories in the East by each side lead straight to a battle of Washington/Richmond and the chance to end the war. Or do you play the long game and send forces west knowing the a victory there hurts CSA moral, manpower and supplies over the long term. I just feel like having things like this both makes the game much more dynamic (each campaign would evolve differently) and it actually gives value to certain career traits like recon capability in that you would really want some insight on where your opponent was deploying. As a development issue its not minor but isn't as bad as it might first appear either. You would need to add some western battles and Tennessee battles to do it well. Everything else is done basically at the camp level. I think in the end it would more than pay for itself as it would make the game feel suitably grand in scale. Finally it solves the issues that many players are basically creating one "super corps" to handle almost every minor battle situation. This would give having balanced corps much more value. I think there should be more granularity in how you "recruit" soldiers as I again think this would add a lot of variety to the game and can be done simply as a function of the camp screen. I would give the player the option of setting recruiting at four levels. Militia/90-days, 1-year volunteers, duration volunteers, conscripts. These would each give you a distinct flavor of troops in both numbers and experience. Militia would be able to be raised in huge numbers but would be very low efficiency troops that would not gain experience as they would shortly muster out of service. 1-year volunteers would be around in large numbers and would essentially be zero star troops with average efficiency gains. If you elected for duration volunteers they would be available in lesser numbers but would start as 1-star troops and would gain efficiency at an elevated pace. Once you hit the conscription option you would be able to raise huge number of troops of average efficiency (equal to 1-year guys) but your army takes an overall moral hit that never really goes away. I know it sounds a bit complicated but I think it can all be accomplished within the settings already in the game and it would add a ton of granularity to the experience of the players. You could go for that professional, lavishly equipped army of volunteers if you wanted. Or you could with masses of conscripts from day one and try to swamp the enemy in bodies. It would also give the campaign more urgency in that if you lose tons of guys or can inflict tons of losses on the opposition they may have to change their recruiting methods to fill the ranks. Finally it would be a great way to make reputation points more important. Higher reputation should allow you to get significantly more volunteers than you might otherwise get keeping that a viable option. Defeat means you may have to go to conscription. Each play through would be a bit different if you implemented something like this. I think number 2 above being implemented for the AI may actually solve a lot of issues players have with the AI magically regenerating its capability no matter what kind of losses you inflict in the previous battle on it. I for one don't really care if the AI has tons of new troops so long as the war goes on. I just want to feel like if I decimated a veteran opponent that they at least have to replace them with green soldiers. As commander I would have the option to match such a strategy by going for conscription or militia myself. Or I could stick with my strategy of a smaller more elite force knowing that the enemy has been forced to call into service huge masses of largely untrained men. It would at least feel like there are consequences. In short I am saying I would rather see the odds evened out (which I acknowledge needs to be done for game enjoyment purposes) in subsequent battles by increased numbers of green troops than in historically proportionate numbers of highly experienced troops. It just makes more logical sense. There should eventually be an overall manpower limit for each side but I think this makes more sense than ever replenishing veteran brigades for the AI.

I agree the rewards badly need tweaking for crushing performances. I am finishing my first play through on easy (wanted to go to BG but wanted to finish it out first) and I just inflicted around 55,000 casualties on the CSA at Gettysburg. Basically wiping them out. I took around 20,000 casualties primarily because I swept around the left flank on both day 2 and 3 and routed dozen of brigades but took a ton of artillery fire in the process. It wasn't worth it in the end. The other area that needs a good deal of rework at least on the union side is equipment. Simply put I have captured more Fayettvilles (like 4,600) and Enfields (like 15-20,000) than I am able to buy Speingfields at any price. That makes little sense with a winning record in almost all battles. The price of weapons really should vary as the war moves along. Springfield rifles should by 1863 be cheap for the union player.

To make army organization more important I think they need to force some harder choices in the strategic screens where you pick where to battle. I shouldn't be able to use one corps to fight battles separated by a handful of days hundreds of miles apart then refit the same prior to each one. I think the mechanic itself makes sense but it and recon both should play out more on the strategic level than the tactical.

I have had a ton of success using 4 or so brigades of carbine cavalry to rush to and hold key pieces of ground dismounted. The keys I found were this. 1. They need heavy cover even more than infantry. They won't hold up to a pounding in the open. 2. Keep them concentrated, if they have high quality carbines they can kill a lot for you if they can let the enemy come into effective range. 3. Run away when it gets hairy then reoccupy the position or find another after breaking contact. Generally the AI seems to get frustrated and try to charge with infantry. Just mount up and run away in most circumstances. In general I use it to allow me to be places I otherwise wouldn't be able to be. I hardly ever have them fight mounted for any length of time.

I don't doubt that it was better but this is a fractional improvement on other similar rifles. It is using the same barrel and likely using ammunition of much poorer quality than most union weapons of the time. There really shouldn't be any noticeable difference between all the post 1855 muskets made in the US or CSA. The key dimensions and specs are all pretty much identical. Their performance is going to be pretty much identical. This really isn't ideal for game purposes I guess but honestly there should be no firepower revolution waiting for the CSA player. They just couldn't do it. The union player on the other hand should be able to, if they really wanted, cultivate a market in things like the Spencer or Henry by buying them aggressively. I generally have less of these weapons with the union than I capture playing as the CSA. I feel like one of the playing modes for a union player would be to have say one corps maybe two with repeaters if you focus on it and sacrifice by having your other forces not be nearly as well equipped. But that doesn't appear to work out.

Honestly I am not sure why the Fayetteville is such a good weapon in the game. It was really just another 1855 musket derivative like the springfields and richmonds. They should all perform pretty much the same.

I found it fairly easy too. I took about even casualties on my first play through last night in campaign but I found the Northern sector way simpler than I thought it would be. I pounded the front with like 60 guns and swarmed at it with skrimishers and then surged three divisions around the south side basically four brigades wide and three deep right on the boundary. Fixed the northern flank with 4 other brigades and dislodged their northern entrenchment with a bayonets charge. Was shocked I got it done because it was a beat up corps with 1842 muskets. Down south I again started by sweeping over the southern area. A two division wheeling movement to the north let me turn the road that runs east west near their supplies into a slaughterhouse as I swept aside their cavalry and got to the wood line with a third division before they could occupy it. The wheeling divisions then continued to extend around their caves in southern flank. Brought my second corps into action by putting pressure on their front, but not getting too close as the exchange of fire would be very uneven. Progressively caved in their Northern flank on the south half of the map and extended around back of the hill. Only surprise was that they abandoned telepgraph road entirely. I had pushed them so far off the heights opposite town in the north that they walked up behind me and retook the position for some of the worst fighting I had to do to reclaim it. As I had intended the fighting there as more of a holding action I had honestly expected any of their reserves there to head South. Reclaimed the supplies and victory points in a nasty fight. The heights looked like a slaughterhouse. With all that going on I took telegraph road with about 1,250 cav troops, two brigades of carbines and one melee unit who occupied the point and dismounted. They were driven back by two infantry brigades that appeared exhausted but did a ton of damage. Melee cav hit them in the flank the fields around the building and they ran for it. If I do it again I probably orient a division on the heights to face telegraph road because two moving north to roll up that line would be more than enough. Was an interesting fight.

I think this is the simplest way to do things. The reason I want something like an artillery division or cav division is more so I could move them quickly in a group during battle. It isn't an issue to spread them out but most of the time I like to concentrate my corps artillery at a good spot. Would be simpler if I could have it as a division, even if I only get 2 of 4 brigades in a scenario.

Grant and Sherman by Flood I found quite good as it gets into a lot of what made the Union war effort go. Crucible of Command is interesting in the contrast it gives between Grant and Lee. After reading these two books I reevaluated in my mind the relative merits of Grant and Lee. The one often considered the best general was almost certainly not in my view. Agree with Battle Cry as being the best on volume survey of the war and it's causes.

What I want to do is have Napoleons be the organic component for each infantry division and then have my last corps division have two units of 24 pound howitzers and two of ordinance rifles. But the way troops enter the maps doesn't let that work very well.

Does anyone have advice on making better use of specialist corps or divisions? I would love to deploy a cavalry corps or division or an artillery division but it seems to spawn itself in battles at the worst times and places. Do people just shuffle around units to match the scenario so they know what they will get? Have struggled with this and just gone to composite divisions so I don't have a division of artillery of cav appear isolated at some point.

It seems like a tweak is needed for the stealing of geographical victory points late in games. AI pulled that on me at one of the Seven Days big battles (can't recall which one) where I smashed the majority of its force to pieces and a few skrimishers and one shot to pieces brigade took a couple of victory points the rest of the force had no chance of getting to. I don't know if the engine is capable of counting troops in a given area but it seems like to really hold a hill or something you need to have some sort of substantial force on it. As a start I would say skrimishers should be unable to hold any victory locations period. I feel like the ideal solution would be that you have to put a substantial force near a victory point to change that flag. The issue is what constitutes a substantial force of course. Just as a ballpark I would say if you don't have say 15-20% of the enemies numbers within a reasonable distance of that point it shouldn't change. If we have two 40,000 man armies going at it having 6,000-8,000 men on a key position is enough that it could reasonably do something from there. Having just a single brigade does you no good really. You and the AI should be forced to capture points with enough men to have a reasonable prospect of doing something from that position. It would make things more balanced in the end.

I am not sure melee cav has been screwed up as opposed to fixed. Yes if they can press through a charge to catch skrimishers in the open they should crush them. But horses are huge targets for any rifled weapon. If you have 150 skrimishers or so that's a lot of dead horses to press over and continue a charge through. If they are in the woods or on broken ground forget about it. So far to deal with them my focus has been on making sure in push them all out of woods and cover and into the open. If I can't do that I just try to mask them off with my own skrimishers while I decide the real issue. It's fairly accurate historically. Sometimes line infantry had little choice but to stand there and suffer from such things.

The one issue with a pre-rifled musket era is going to be that you need a command to form square, line and column. In the civil war era it wasn't as big of a deal. But in the prior era it was very important and doesn't appear to be featured in the engine as it currently exist.

Long time Civil War Generals 2 player and Total War series player. Love the game. I actually think most of the combat dynamics are spot on with the exception of the melee creeping that can occur which is particularly annoying when you say to hold position. Things I like about this game so far. 1. You are forced to really think about how to use terrain. It plays a huge role in things which it should. 2. I think the game places a huge premium on keeping control of your units and issuing a limited amount of orders which probably throws a lot of Total War players off. It really seems to reward patience and planning which I love. 3. I think the battles are well paced. Units in cover aren't shattered in seconds and can hold on against big odds for an appropriate amount of time. Some suggestions for improving things. 1. Artillery controls and display could be improved (or I am missing something as I only have 15-20 hours of play so far). I think a more informative range display would tell me the range of roundshot, shell and canister when I am deploying. I would also be thrilled if I could set certain restrictions on what to shoot at within those ranges. For example I don't want my 12 pound napoleons wasting ammo firing round shot at skrimishers or other artillery. Would love to be able to issue an order at times that says only Fire shell and canister at infantry. Or my rifled artillery to focus on counter battery fire. The steel panthers engine at one point had a version of this. It was clunky but I think could be simple here as there are just four unit types. All you really need is the ability to restrict firing certain ammo types at certain targets. 2. The idea of corps supply is still a bit opaque to me. Just feels like more explanation is needed. 3. Moving Generals around in camp is a bit clunky. As far as I can tell I can't leave a unit empty while I shuffle around. That would simplify reorganization a lot.