Gsam

As for the other questions: I am not suggesting the game be "campfest," but lets be honest, some of the biggest battles in the civil war were won and lost by stalling. Look at Gettysburg. Buford's cav stalled the CSA long enough to get the high ground. Then you would say the Union was "camping" on the ridges waiting. I dont want to turn this into a game where i can have one sniper unit and a supply wagon go across the map over a 2 week period and snipe the entire enemy army and get 60k kills. I do however want victory conditions to be looked at differently and to give us the option of how we play (timer or no timer). Saunders farm is another example of a battle later in the war where it is prolly going to damage your army more than its worth to do the mission. it starts out you have to defend but morphs into you taking a secondary objective where the Union is packed in tight in tree lines with heavy arty protecting them. I get it that not every battle is going to be a positive for the ledger, but when most of the battles from chickmauga onward are a bloodbath you need to have banked over a million dollars going into this stretch of the game to keep your army in good shape in preparation for washington and the immense amount of troops you need.

Laurel Hill is the battle I had in mind when I was discussing the kill count versus victory points. In laurel hill you are allowed to bring 1 corp and in my battle i was facing about 82,000 federals when playing as the CSA. The way the battle is structured your forces come in piecemeal. You start with 6 brigades and it adds to them at 2 or 3 intervals The federals are hitting you with I am guessing about 62k men while 20k are guarding fixed defensive positions with artillery batteries numbering around 350-450 soldiers per. Once the memo comes up that you should "attack if practical" you have about ~3 hours left to crack the defensive nut. Meanwhile, they are still attacking you nonstop so you cant abandon the defensive positions. I have beat this battle once, but it was so costly that I would never do it again. The damage I inflicted upon my army literally zerging the defensive positions was so costly it ended up costing me over 300k above and beyond what the mission paid for the win. NOT WORTH IT. I normally skip this battle because what should be an epic victory (killing 40k, losing 6k) actually damages my reputation (WTH?) This is why I have been banging the drum for them to have 2 options for victory. One would be capturing victory points. The other would be damaging the army significantly (% killed victory)

I bought a game on GOG before but installed it on my steam platform. Did I defeat the whole DRM free thing by installing it on steam? If you buy on GOG, where do you play the games? Actually, it was Green man gaming. I think those you have to install on steam because it doesn't have it owns platform.

I absolutely agree with the OP. I stop playing this game every campaign when I hit chickmauga. Its just not fun anymore. This game needs to evolve and start looking at things intelligently. Yes I understand that we are trying to keep it "historical," but the focus on victory points is absurd. If i destroy 55% of the opposing army and they hold the victory point, who was really the winner if i only lost 15% of my army? Which army would you rather fight for, the one that lost 15,000 out of 100,000 or the one that lost 55,000 out of 100,000. Give the player the choice or the alternative victory options. Oh and please please please get rid of the timer or at least give players the option to turn it off. Would be nice to have some more strategic options that are not currently possible due to time constraints.