HansGruber

What the hell are you saying? Sit there and distract? If you used skirmisher cavalry to shoot at the front then they are dead anyway. They are used for mobility to get good ground or shoot from the flanks. At that point even the Enfields can do great (much more with the very accurate Frank Wesson). The point is there are carbines that have good range that you don't need to go too near all the time. The fact that you have an assumption that they will be standing their ground and go muzzle to muzzle is a bit funny. You probably have that habit. lol I'm done.

Pattern 1861 has 300 range. Frank Wesson has 275. Infantry brigades max range is fixed at 300.

If you're really intend to use earthworks then you should occupy them with skirmisher-type units (for example, you want to get kills with you dismounted skirmisher cavalry) and place infantry brigades behind them. This lures the enemy into charging the weak skirmisher units and you can fire full volleys at them when they are at melee range. Never occupy fortifications with full infantry brigades.

Resources and recruits are the biggest difference. The Union will have more available equipment and manpower (whether bought from the armory or the government). However, their recruits are only half as good as the CSA i.e. CSA rookies will have stats around the 20's while USA's rookies have stats around the 10's.

If I were to take a guess, it would end on the "historical" date and time or it's totally arbitrary. What you can do is play a battle and record the date and time at which each battle will end.

The upper left side of the UI shows the date and time. Some battles can be played until it reaches a certain date and time.

I think a good compromise for the Victory Points issue is to tweak or expand on the Mission Rewards. For instance, they could tone down the Reputation penalty from getting a Draw. They can also make it an objective-based reward system where objectives corresponding to victory point control, inflicting casualties and army preservation give separate rewards. I do still think that the game is pretty balanced. It is a long campaign after all, and it is up to the player's discretion whether to skip some battles. Also, if you think you did not do damage at all by inflicting 30k-40k casualties you might have forgotten about the dynamic campaign. You just dealt a huge blow to their manpower and possibly took down their most veteran brigades (bringing their training % down). This has a more pronounced effect in the late game (especially if you consistently inflict casualties to them throughout the campaign) where you really see undersized brigades from the enemy late in the game.

You were most likely not routing them fast enough to make an attack. Units that should occupy fortifications are skirmishers (whether they are dismounted cav, skirmisher brigades, or detached skirmishers) since they can still fire full volleys while enjoying the cover bonus. Placing entire infantry brigades in them is very prohibitive and only lessens their effectiveness. You mention breaking the bank. Well, three star brigades are not as strong as they were so getting as much two star brigades is slightly better in terms of effectiveness of the whole army in battle and much better in terms of cost to maintain. You also seem to be maximizing artillery brigades where the diminishing returns are harshest compared to other unit types. There are many more things we probably can't see from the screenshot but I think this is more of you blaming the game instead of yourself. I think the only fault of this game is not being good at explaining itself to the player. Additionally, the only "practice mode" this game has are the custom battles.

There's not much use in increasing brigade sizes without having enough equipment. Overall firepower is increased through better weapons and not number of guns pointed at the enemy. You can look at it this way: For ever 100 men you add a brigade you get 1 up to 4 kills inflicted (in plains / 25% cover) in a single volley i.e. 2000 men brigades shooting frontally would inflict around 20-80 kills depending on the quality of rifles. The main purpose of increasing brigades is morale resistance. It is generally more cost efficient to increase the overall quality of equipment than increasing the number of soldiers in a brigade.

Multiplayer is the only saving grace of Total War as of now. Even if we overlook the fact that it's Battle and Campaign AI are both crap (it's not easy to program a good one anyway), their previous releases still have the issue of being a bare bones streamlined game. On the other hand, Paradox games are still one of the better gaming companies out there even with their expensive DLC practice (they still support their games with free patches though. For instance, EU IV came out in 2013 and was given a treatment of an MMORPG in how the devs continue to support it until now 2017).

Will you single out the battles where you had such problems? In my experience, the amount of time given in the battles are usually more than enough to take the victory points AND mop up the enemy. Are you saying the game should be conducive to camping and stalling? You seem to obsess over killing rather than taking objectives.

Before you do improvements to your game, just finish your campaign first. Just take yourself as far as possible whether you get a Victory or Defeat. If manpower is your problem, then do this: Fix your army size for different stages of the campaign and try to win your individual battles from there. Recon will not improve your army and only serves as crutches. Rush Army Org 6 first to get 20 brigades in a Corps. For battles before Malvern Hill, you can go with size 1000 infantry brigades. During Malvern Hill, you can opt for size 1200 until Antietam where 1500 would be good. Use size 2000 brigades only during or after Gettysburg. Then, you can stop putting points to Army Org to rush Politics (more manpower). Don't be afraid to spend reputation points. Morale is easily increased through participation in battle so spend your Reputation as long as you don't get morale penalties. Of course these numbers are somewhat arbitrary but it will help you manage your manpower well. For instance, if you lost 20k men with 1200-1500 size brigades then you probably lost the battle. Therefore, you have to teach yourself how to win that battle and not rely on looking at numbers. Note that, increasing the size of your brigades DO NOT significantly increase their firepower. Increasing brigade sizes is practically for increasing MORALE. You improve firepower through better weapons. Don't mind the scaling that others say. It's mostly been fixed and enemy numbers largely depend on the Difficulty you chose at the beginning.

Says the guy that Antietam is not a hard battle. You are an unbelievably stupid hypocrite. Also, since you are too stupid to understand my question here: Why not take Politics to max as fast as possible (after Army Org 6) to get maximum rewards from it? Each mission that passes by means one less mission to get that extra bonus from politics. The same goes for Medicine which conserves more troops and equipment (accumulated) the earlier you take it? Then same goes for Training which conserves money. If you know the game then there is not much reason to take Recon before them and by the time you have extra to spend, the game is almost over anyway.

Well then I guess it's not my fault you have less initiative or instinct to perform maneuvers on your own. Unit movements are well done in this game and a simple fall back (F) command helps stabilize your lines before you overextend. Numbers don't mean much in an oblique attack so I have no interest in knowing numbers. I only want to know which way their line is facing.

Why would you always want to know the actual numbers? Are you sending your army in waves?

If you are that lazy to micromanage and safely poke their lines (there is a fallback command after all) then yeah you should stick to Recon. Let's say you play CSA on Antietam, the Union is attacking from the north and you want to know when to go for a counterattack. You just have to probe the sides with cav provided with infantry support to know how much more reinforcements they are entering the map. Another way is when you rout several brigades who have their backs turned at you, sending skirmishers to run after them (holding fire) and then falling back at the first sign of trouble is good enough to probe them.

Actually they can, especially the skirmisher cavalry which can cover a lot of distance very fast. Recon matters most on the first few playthroughs but becomes the lazy way out later on. It needs a rework. It should just increase line of sight, spotting and stealth for units. Slight increase for infantry and artillery brigades and moderate increase for skirmishers and cavalry.

You only need skirmishers (detached from inf brigade, ranged cav or skirmisher brigade) for that. You don't need to check their actual numbers to mount a good attack. It's more a matter of finding out where they are and which direction they are going. Those can be done well by skirmishers as they have the mobility to patrol the sides or poke the front.

I think this is the most important part. In general, a player should only attack in as many directions as the number of corps he has. Against fortifications, it's all about presenting the narrowest possible combat width to the enemy while maximizing the firepower against a single area, which is mostly done on corners or edges of their defenses. I do have a question. Is spending career points on Recon really necessary for a player who knows how the missions play out? Even then, a player can just load a save instead. Taking that out, making use of skirmishers and cavalry for spotting enemy positions can do the job as well. Wouldn't the player be better off rushing for Army Org 6 or maybe a mix of Politics and Army Org?

I'm not so sure about that. The entrenching might not be that useful in most missions and might be redundant with the fortifications/earthworks. Also, fortifications as of now are not very reliable anyway. I would rather have something like a "Hit the Ground" mechanic which will provide some cover bonus but immobilizes the unit. It would be useful in a shootout in open terrain with no cover. Whether this will be available to infantry brigades or to skirmishers only is up for debate. For longevity and replayability, a multiplayer mode may be good. Historical battles with 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 (with each player controlling 3, 2 or 1 corps each) would be very fun.

I absolutely love attacking or counter-attacking scenarios. It is the most rewarding of them all compared to just sitting back on defense. Just use proper maneuvering and force concentration. This is not WW1 or even pre-WW1. There are no machine guns or bolt action rifles (not a lot in the Civil War at least). There are weak points and edges which can fall with proper planning. I don't know but I just feel like my army is very vulnerable whenever I don't have the initiative.

I did notice that if you continue to annihilate them especially at Antietam, they don't recover as much in terms of manpower.

In terms of the amount of resources, which are money, manpower and equipment availability, the Union has a slight advantage. Otherwise, there is no "easier" campaign. The time limit is not bad at all and it really does a very good job in controlling the pace of the missions. If you had a bad time at Shiloh as the CSA, then you don't want to play the Union on Fredericksburg. Besides, attacking is so much fun rather than just sitting back and defending which is very boring. Seeing well prepared defenses crumble with a well organized assault is so satisfying in this game. It's often in attack or counter-attack missions where you get to wipe out entire armies and get insane amounts of equipment. To me, that's where the joy of this game is.