maniacalpenny
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Posts posted by maniacalpenny
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Watch out for Crossroads. One of the hardest Union battles on Legendary from what I can recall.
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20 hours ago, bzm3r said:
Well, what about these notes from patch 1.06:
It seems to me that the AI is unbounded by "Cash", so it can utilize its entire manpower. I have 120k soldiers unutilized because I simply don't have the cash for it. This doesn't make for very fair battles. It seems the more I win, and the more I take risks to decisively destroy an enemy army, the more I suffer in the next battle, because unlike the AI, I can't utilize everything available to me, unless I have the cash for it.
You have the cash to utilize your soldiers, you just poorly use your money. Don't spend millions of dollars on veterans, buy some hello kittying guns for your rookies.
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I believe its possible to give divisional commands, and leave it up to your commanders to figure out the specifics.
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10 hours ago, The Soldier said:
Most of my brigades reach Vet 1 after their first battle - consider it their rank up from Rookies to Regulars. They might also gain between 5 and 10 points in most of their combat skills, depending on how well they did and their positioning. Not sure how a small brigade might affect that rate, however - it might take fewer kills to get their skills up, but at the same time, they deal less damage over time.
Fairly sure it only seems like it takes less time for smaller units to get EXP because EXP is per unit, and they have less units. I'm not exactly sure what the formula for EXP is, but if we assume its purely based on kills then getting 1000 kills on a 1000 man brigade will get twice the EXP as 1000 kills on a 2000 man brigade, which totally makes sense since there are twice as many units in the 2000 man brigade. I'm not sure how it works with losses though, for example, how much EXP a 2000 man brigade will get with 1000 kills if they are depleted to 1000 men.
Smaller brigades will get more kills per man so in effect this does technically make them easier to level up, but then you are either stuck with small brigades or spend a fortune enlarging their brigades so like you I don't really see the point. If I REALLY wanted more elites I could just recruit rookies to 0 left, disband an elite brigade and split into 2 new brigades, and then disband the rookies and use them to fill out the new elite brigades with veterans.
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2 hours ago, LAVA said:
Here is a note on supply.
At the very beginning of the campaign I try to get at least 25,000 into the supply slot. This works very well as long as your Corps is using predominately smooth bore weapons and you will rarely have problems with supply.
Once you start getting rifled weapons, the firing rates start increasing fairly dramatically. At this point I drive the amount in my Corps supply to the maximum of 35,000 and supply problems are local issues which are easily solved with your supply wagons, even in the bigger battles.
Though I have in both my campaigns taken 2 slots of logistics, I do believe that there are far better ways to spend your career points, however, in doing so, you must not skimp on bringing lots of supply to the battlefield. In quite a few videos I have watched, folks end up shutting down their artillery and that IMO is a mistake unless it is a battery using a Napoleon, for example, firing at maximum range. Artillery, well positioned are freebie kills.
Don't shut them down by not bringing enough supply to the battle.
“My logisticians are a humorless lot … they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay.” – Alexander the Great
There are many times that I question the utility of firing even rifled artillery into lategame entrenched positions. The kills are not really free, you pay for supply and sometimes in the lategame even for minor battles that can be $70k drained from plunking at entrenched infantry. The exception to this is having a critical mass of artillery that can break entrenched brigades, as you can then get enough kills to be worth it by hitting them while on the run.
Also, even with max supply, there are battles in which you can run out of ammo by constantly firing your artillery. So sometimes making the artillery hold fire is the best choice.
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1 hour ago, The Soldier said:
If you ask me, you've got no reason whatsoever to not have 2,500 man brigades if you can do it. They have the same efficiency (granted you have a properly ranked officer of Colonel or above with a Colonel as a Division commander), deal more damage than smaller brigades, reload at the same rate - all brigades reload while moving if that's what you're thinking - and can take a bigger pounding in terms of moral hits and sheer losses. Furthermore, if you properly keep reserves and cover the line, you won't need to rotate the brigade to hit units flanking yours - either your reserves will deal with the threat or you'll have your flank anchored somewhere proper. The *only* reason you wouldn't have 2,500 man brigades is a shortage of small arms, manpower, or properly ranked officers (all three of which are rare for a Union playthrough). Even as the Confederates, if you properly plan out purchasing weapons while you can (all the M1841 Mississippi Rifles) and rotating out officers to rank them up, you can avoid the first and last problems neatly, even on higher difficulties.
I'm fairly sure infantry brigades also suffer from the same kind of inefficiencies that artillery suffer when having too large of a brigade. eg. a 2500 man brigade firing straight on will do less damage than 2 1250 man brigades. Also despite reloading at the same speed, larger brigades take longer to volley and thus will fire less frequently. Of course I still think brigades should be on the larger side and certainly not as small as 1500 for workhorse brigades, but there are some advantages to having smaller brigades.
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5 hours ago, Hjalfnar_Feuerwolf said:
My thoughts exactly. The only thing that drops with bigger units is the efficiency rating, at least in my experience. Yes, it takes longer for a 2500 men brigade to finish firing and start reloading, but the reload is still way faster then with any other gun.
The damage is also inferior though, and when firing at max range does not really do more damage per second than a unit using a high tier rifle. Yes at closer ranges they will outdamage the musket-rifles but this situation is somewhat precarious especially for a large brigade that cannot react as quickly.
I'd much rather use the Spencer in a small infantry brigade, or not at all. I prefer not to field any small brigades so I simply ended up not using them, as I felt like the significant cost increase over the 1861 and 1863 was not worth it. It was too hard to use a 2k Spencer brigade when most of the combat I was seeing was at max infantry range (300) and the Fayetteville armed Confederates would beat the Spencers out at this range. Perhaps I had an unrealistic fear about committing them to closer range combat but at their high cost and the massive firepower loss of putting them in a large brigade, I would still recommend not to use them in large brigades.
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3 hours ago, quicksabre said:
Great thread, thanks for all of the info! One question - Are spencers really not worth it? I made a brigade of ~2k spencer-armed infantry (elite-3 stars, with all fire-related perks) after Chicamauga as Union, and they were absolutely brutal.
The large brigade size will cause the rate of fire to drop drastically compared to similar guns on cavalry or skirmishers, which volley very quickly. Since reloading cannot start until firing is finished, this causes a 2k Spencer brigade to fire much slower than it would as a very small or skirmisher unit. I tried it once and immediately switched back to 1863s as the Spencers were not really more effective.
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1 hour ago, Andre Bolkonsky said:
M1855 and Enfield are the best bang for your buck as Union. This does not stop me from buying as many high end accurate rifles as I can get my hands on.
Lorenz is only preferable when you are building an assault brigade.
Personally, I focus on the 'wall of fire' to shred and soften the enemy until they begin to break, and will only use the bayonet when a sure victory is at hand. The caveat is when you have a fortified position you know you have to assault and then a two star Lorenz brigade is just peachy. But before they fix bayonets and charge, a line of 2-star line infantry with quality rifled muskets have softened them up 9 times out of 10.
I can't tell for sure, but I think the effective performance of the Lorenz is barely under that of the Enfield or the 55. In terms of reload/accuracy it is about on par with the two (they actually all sum total 125 reload + accuracy), its real malus is doing less damage: 11.5 vs 12.5. This isn't even a 10% difference, however, and the price of the gun is significantly cheaper. Additionally, although its reload and accuracy sums are similar the Lorenz has higher accuracy while sacrificing reload. Accuracy > Reload however, so this is a slight edge that the Lorenz can help combat its lower damage with.
IMO the Sprinfield 1855 is actually quite a bad weapon for its cost, performing worse than the slightly cheaper 1853 in meele and the same or worse in ranged combat. For its price, the Lorenz I think is easily better than either and has a great meele stat to boot. Yes if I didn't have to pay anything for my weapons I would probably choose the 53 over the Lorenz, but this isn't really the case so I tend to try to get all the Lorenz rifles I can (which isn't a massive amount, as either side. But dammit I'll still buy them).
On the other hand, the Harpers Ferry 1855 is a decent step up from the regular one for only a small increase in price. This rifle is easily superior to the Lorenz in ranged combat, albiet a decent penny more.
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No love for the Lorenz? IMO one of the most cost efficient guns in the game.
Also, you can buy thousands and thousands of CS Richmonds as CSA. Possibly the best all-round rifle in the game, although purely in shooting is outclassed by the 61/63 and of course the Fayetteville. Very good cost efficiency though, for a few bucks more than a Harper's Ferry you get better firing and much better meele.
I'm not sure about other difficulties, but on Legendary Union I looted tens of thousands of Tyler Texas rifles and later on tens of thousands of Fayettevilles. Both are pretty decent for selling, though of course you can use the Fayettevilles if desired...
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5 hours ago, LAVA said:
Here is one for you...
I always put my best units in the 1st Division of the Corps and my worst in the last. I've noticed in several battles when your second Corps comes in to reinforce, it is usually the first Division followed by the second, etc. By placing my best folks in the 1st Division I make sure I have my best units getting to the fight first.
This is actually often undesirable. Sometimes a vital point must be held at all cost and your best troops are needed up front, but fielding them there every battle will inevitably cause high casualties which is costly. Many people will hold their most elite troops in reserve, or may not even commit them to the battle, until it is absolutely necessary.
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5 hours ago, Grimthaur said:
I managed to win Antietam (current patch, legendary) with 22k vs. 85k losses with a classic pincer movement, using skirmishers to flank the infantry-core and bind the union artillery, my cav took almost all their supply waggons. I used all available forces in Phase 1 to beat their first assault and drive them into the open, enveloping them and using canister manually to break charges. My skirmishers drove the union reinforcements to the same open ground by pressuring their flanks, so this open area (screenshot) became a killing field, the only retreat for union troops beeing one patch of forest. Since their artillery was isolated and couldn't participate in the main fight, i had no problems to hold my envelopement. In the last phase the union troops in the north were already so weakened that i could pull off one third of my infantry brigades to bolster my defenses at Sunken Road and Sharpsburg where I managed to break their final Iassault. I was really surprised, when I saw the scorescreen, cause my 24PD Howitzers only took 8th and 9th place in kills with 4,5k and 4k beeing in a very good position to canister almost the entire time while my infantrybrigades with Enfields and Harpers did 5k, one Enfieldsbrigade even an absurd 8,6k kills. Even my Richmondbrigade of 1,5k men got 5k kills.
I watched some playthroughs where the confederate defenses held bravely but were routed ultimatively and my own playthrough on BG was a victory only because of my army size. Imho the biggest mistake you can make as confederate on Antietam is to play passive and defend the woods around dunker church. If you manage to beat the first assault coming from the north decisively and keep fighting them in advantageous terrain, you will have a superior kill ratio with less casualties.
In conclusion this was the most entertaining, most challenging battle yet, constantly under pressure by a much larger force, one mistake equalling the loss of a cavbrigade or even the union breaking through the envelopement. Well done devs!
I agree that being too passive will cause too many losses, but IMO you should let the Union extend farther south and crush him mainly with a left wing envelopment. Even after being repulsed from Dunker church and being threatened on the left, the AI will still send its forces towards the sunken road in the phase change and that is the best time to crush the AI.
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On 8/7/2017 at 4:32 PM, Albert Sidney Johnston said:
560,000 new troops, 20,000 Fayettevilles, and 26 three star brigades later...
If you have 560,000 new troops, why do you only have 20,000 Fayettevilles?
To be honest besides the troop numbers, those are reachable numbers for Union Legendary campaign.
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3 hours ago, Thiem said:
Chickamauga has 3 days for the Union. On the first you only fight the skirmish at the bridges, on the second you get to counterattack before Longstreet is on the field and on the third the Confederates attack you in force. Longstreet arrives "overnight" though, so you won't see him if you win on the second day.
Oh right, I forgot about the first day entirely.
So yeah, there is also a problem with the Confederacy where you cannot get to the 3rd day if you own certain objectives, you will get a draw or even a loss(?) if you own some of the Union camps (I think I owned all VPs except the top one and the battle ended on the 2nd day)
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I honestly didn't even know there was a second day to Chickamauga.
If there is a similar bug to this on the Confederate side, this would explain why a Confederate commander isn't getting all of the elements of his 2nd Corps (Despite the game telling you "Longstreets Corps" is about to arrive, the battle ends before those units arrive).
I also had an issue in one of the final Union campaign missions where half of the units of my 2nd Corps assigned never arrived.
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On lower difficulties it is very easy to cripple the Confederate army playing as the Union, and it isn't even that hard to outnumber the Confederates during the Overland and Final campaigns on Legendary as the Union.
As the CSA on the other hand outnumbering the Union consistently is much harder, especially on Legendary. So as the Confederates being outnumbered is just part of the job, which is historically pretty reasonable.
That being said, even on Legendary many of the minor battles are worth fighting, although there are a few that are questionable. As for whether or not the AI feels pain... They definitely do. Depleting the army size of the enemy makes a real difference and managing the Union army size is a very important part of a Legendary CSA campaign.
15 hours ago, LZRD WZRD said:Now the limited supplies thing makes sense and is a good thing (especially as CSA), but the way scaling works as I understand it, means that the AI never feels pain of these battles. I've heard that if you have even one unit equipped with higher level weapons, then the enemy will have that too, in fact even in much greater (or universal?) quantities. I don't mind a challenge at all, but it seems to me that the whole bit about managing your army's logistics is rendered totally useless. It is impossible to get a leg up on the other army regardless of side (unless I've been misinformed). In fact, improving your army at all triggers the AI to do so twofold is what I've heard from other players, can't confirm myself.
You are misinformed, in an earlier build the AI would scale its size and weapons purely to your army composition. In the current build, the way it works is the AI weapons and experience are based on its training and weapon levels, and the army size is either based on the minimum deployment size (based on battle and difficulty), or scaling based on your army size up to the max army size the army intelligence says.
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You can push through the undefended right and set up shop behind rebels and await their reinforcements in the cover of trees in the south and a combination of trees + river on the left. When the phase changes the rebels will push out against you can you can hold them in the northern treeline and right VP area, inflicting heavy casualties as you close in from behind.
The southern reinforcements is pretty spawn campy though (the distance between the treeline and the entry point is almost nil), and you can't really set up the left area without spawn camping the south reinforcements, so if that's not your jam you shouldn't go with this strategy. If you do choose to do so, you need to get there quite quickly and due to the nature of the 2-pronged spawn this is definitely one of the messier camps. If you leak on either side of the southern camp, try to get them to leak to the left so you can set up a comprehensive defense at the river. Your right flank holding at the river may also get harassed by fire from the Confederate main body, which can be quite a hassle, and Confederate reinforcements might choose to circumvent your defensive line by going to the north.
Still, I would guess this is the most soldier efficient strategy for Brock Road, if not a rather cheesy one.
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18 hours ago, civsully1 said:
Hope you can continue this great series CK!!!
Yep, same. I'm super interesting in watching him tackle Washington. 330k men AoP is no joke.
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The reason why its 25 brigades as you can get 1 free brigade per campaign, and if you don't have space this can "extend" the size of a division. This means you can have a 7 brigade division, and it also means you can have a 25 brigade corps.
I skimmed through the fight, seemed fairly reasonable. My big suggestion would be when you have a 2 layer defense, to let your less veteran troops (preferably with good meele guns) stand behind the trenches and switch out with the men that are shooting when the enemy hits your lines. This will conserve your veteran troops a little better if properly timed. If there are a ton of enemies shooting at you like on the left side of the battle this can be risky though, and with so many enemies concentrating on one place I'd rather actually just cycle through less experienced troops and let my veterans man the trenches on either side of the hot zone, as they are best off shooting enemies rather than engaging in meele combat.
Another small nitpick, on the right side of the battle you had a unit outside the trenches inbetween the gap between the salient and the far right (your left flank). You moved this unit up too aggressively, he should be staying in the woods unless he can move forwards to get free flanking shots. Otherwise he is just taking more damage than necessary due to lack of cover, or even worse is getting hit by the river penalties.
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6 hours ago, galoon said:
That's true, detached skirmishers do cause confusion in some of my battles, like Chickamauga! Sometimes I find that they and cavalry units get in the way when I need to plug a gap in the line with fresh infantry. I've found that skirmishers require a good bit of micromanagement too; you have to tell them to hold if you don't want them wandering all over the place!
I mostly meant in the vein that when all your brigades have the same name (e.g. 1855) then when you detatch skirmishers you can't tell where they are from easily...
Skirms do take a ton of micromanagement though, and in the late game I mostly use them for artillery spotting.
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5 hours ago, Buford Protege said:
I have actually found that there are two ways to crack the nut that is Marye's heights that don't ruin your force.
Option A: Swing wide to your right and take the more lightly defended hill and sweep the defenses from the reverse. Dilemma here is the amount of time and exhaustion on your troops to do so. Not always the best if you aren't snappy with your movements. Cavalry can come in handy big time here to help open the engagement and adding enfilade fire anywhere possible. (note, I love using carbine cavalry to devastating effect whenever possible)
Option B: 1 quick charge with 3 brigades on the Confederate brigade on their far right (your left). The 1st brigade will not succeed but the 2nd or 3 one always will. I usually build up an assault brigade or two during my play throughs and move them to the Corps I decide to put against Marye's Heights. These are used here, usually as the 2nd or 3rd brigade as I use one for the start to get the rebels out of the entrenchments. Then peel back the layers accordingly. I like to use carbine cavalry to exploit the breech and decimate artillery from the rear. Also its easy to repulse the enemy counter-attack if you utilize the creek and only requires 2-3 somewhat coherent brigades to hold them back easily. Always love using water to ruin an enemy charge.
I do a combination of both. Sweeping the Confederate left and as the flank develops breaking though on the Confederate right, and ending in a full encirclement.
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39 minutes ago, Shigemori said:
The command points determine the size a brigade may have without getting a penalty on efficiency. This depends not on the experience or efficiency of the brigade itself but only on its size. So your small 3* unit can be lead by a Major without any penalties. You didn't need a Major General as brigade commander at all, as there is no sense for more than 60 command points. Off course later in game you will have a bunch of high ranking officers and you don't need to think about this, but in the early stages when you build your army you want to use your limited officer pool to the biggest effect.
I didn't ment the efficiency of weapons. As this value is some measure for its deadliness. The efficiency of brigades determine how good the unit is in reloading, shooting and melee.
I'm not talking about weapon efficiency at all.
Under efficiency on the unit tab it says "The largest possible efficiency is achieved according to the Command level of the unit"
This implies that efficiency cannot exceed Command.
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On 9/7/2017 at 6:07 AM, Jamesk2 said:
1. If there was nothing changed, the range of engagement for infantry brigades are the same no matter what weapon they use.
2. The general consensus is that accuracy is the better choice over rate of fire.
3. How you combine brigades into division does not matter. Only thing matter is the structure of your corps and what part of it you bring to the battle.
4. My own opinion is that one more infantry brigade is always gonna be better than one more ranged cavalry brigade. As you play more and gain more experience, you'll spot the weak points that need to cover on your line or exploit on the enemy's beforehand and move your forces accordingly.
5. The minor bonus to morale in the 1st infantry perks rarely make the difference. Most of the time you don't want your troops in positions that will need that perk in the first place.
Carbine Cavalry fill the role of artillery hunters much, much better than infantry does. Infantry is surely the backbone of the army but not having at least 2 cav brigades is probably a mistake. Their use as mobile infantry should be secondary at best. That is a much more niche role that is often not vital.
Meele cavalry require an insane amount of micro because the best part about meele cavalry is rapidly firing your pistols into fleeing enemies, and this can be annoying and/or hard. It doesn't help that meele cav weapons are nonsensically expensive. Obviously you can use them to hunt artillery as well but in practice using carbine cavalry is more flexible as the superior range makes it more likely that you can hit your target without retaliation from nearby enemies.
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8 minutes ago, Shigemori said:
Two Colonels close before their promotion can give a maximum of 58 command points (19+39). That is close enough under the needed 60 points that you perhaps won't see an effect on efficiency. But if you hover the mouse over the efficiency stat there will be that red text stating that the unit is to large for his commander. You can simply test this by exchanging the officer in-game, especially after battle when the position is vacant.
You shouldn't underestimate efficiency as it seems to influence the performance of a brigade in whole. The strength of a division commander is that he gives command points to every brigade in his division. Thus lower ranking officers will be able to lead the brigades efficiently. But honestly I don't understand the math behind efficiency in detail.
I dont underestimate efficiency, I just think that it works differently. The penalty for command is worthless as you have such an abundance of high level officers that this sort of penalty is entirely avoidable for the vast majority of the game, and units that do get efficiency debuffs are probably fodder units that weren't expected to actually kill anything anyways. This means that the primary use of the command stat is to raise efficiency caps for high efficiency units. It's not uncommon for 3* units to have 100+ efficiency stat and in this case every command point counts, which is why people suggest to use high level commanders for division commanders. Otherwise your high level generals would be better served as brigade commanders once you pass a threshold where minimum command (penalized for unit size being too large) is no longer an issue.
For the unit size, I will concede that I don't know exactly how that works and it is very probable that you are correct. But like I said for most armies I think that becomes irrelevant, as most high-efficiency brigades are not max sized and many 2 and 3* brigades have high efficiency that require high command to be met for optimal performance.
Training/Armory %
in General Discussions
Posted
But higher weapon % means better loot for you!
Although I only really cared about this when the enemies started dropping Fayettevilles...