Grimthaur

The Hammer and Anvil was first used by the greeks as far as i know. It depends on very mobile units in contrast to defending entrenched positions.in UGCW it is a bit like dancing on a razors edge, you have to constantly adjust your positioning anticipating the ais movements.If you let your guard done once your whole line will collapse

I wrote down, wich unit spawns where so i could distribute my forces the right way (unfortunatly on a piece of paper) but you can also watch playthroughs and write it down, dont have to speed through yourself. Edit: P1: I/I/1-6; I/II/1,2,4; II/I/ 1-4 (including midphase reinforcements); P2: I/II/3,5,6; I/III/1,5,6; II/I/5,6; II/II/1-3; P3 right side: I/III 2-4, lower left side: II/II 4-6, II/III 3-4, upper left side: II/III 1-2. For me, focussing my eltite units on P1 and deploying no guns in P2 was the key to success. Nearly wiping out the AI on P1 while not capturing church so you have enough time to reposition your forces before p2 starts and creating an arch from the east with your green units on P2 allows the simple hammer&anvil strategy once the map opens up. I prefer to hold as long as possible on P2 to deal more DMG and to recieve reinforcements in that phase already. Its still a very hard battle but if you manage to create a semicircle from the woods east to the church over hornets nest up to the elevated woods next to the coast you should be able to hold there. Imho artillery needs the movability perk to be efficient here, especially if you want to rely on Napoleons and 24pds. I would rather go for longrange to have effective antibattery because at least for me the biggest menace is ***artillery with 20 or more longranged guns.

As i stated, i was referring to 1.25 not the new patch. I hope, 1.26 will be a challange because up until now neither vanilla nor rebalance is if you know how to use dedicated (NOT detached) skirmisher-brigades. Skirmisher wih 600+20% range is equipped with WW(TS) and ***. I hate to play with Cav, it just doesnt fit my playstyle and its pathfinding is still unsettling to me. Just to illustrate, what evry battle looks like for me on 1.25 - without really tryharding:

Ok i will defnitly give it a try once im done with my campaign. Just to clarify: WW(TS) is nerfed from 1.25 to 1.26 (so fireing-rate down from 75?) and you also adjusted scaling between the two patches? The "charge-wave" sounds good although it would make certain battles on legendary extremely hard.

Hm. Detached and dedicated Skirmishers have been - at least for me - the one OP unit since the game was released. In the mod my armycomposition is 80% Skirmishers and 20% longrange Artillery. A ***Unit with WW(TS) flanking an AI-Advance is able to break 3-4 Infantry before they even reach their opponent. In my current CSA-Campaign most Battles are like shooting ducks, i only lose men, if i am too lazy and go for max-speed while watching sth. on 2nd screen. This also makes Napoleons or 24PDs completely useless since the AI never reaches their most effective range. Capping Skirmishers at 750 wont change that. The Spotting- and Stealth- advantages even on one star are way too powerful and since i dont deploy any infantry at all AIs armysize is quite small and even 1.000-***-AI-Skirmishers dont give challenge because they often equip 300-Range-Sharps. The visibility-Change could be interesting though, if it doesnt mess up the AI (dont see, how an infantry-unit can reach a Sharpshooter shooting from 600+20% range). Do you have a video showing the new effect, i think you called it stealth-penalty?

Hm, shouldnt the faster reload-rates be factored into efficiency aswell as cost-efficiency? The main challange i encounter is "LOW AMMO!" and fast firing Guns or Rifles should empty their own ammunition and the supply cart faster.

Fill up your corps then You get more brigades if you bring 24 brigades per corps. Since you can switch between days, this shouldnt be a problem. Easy way for D2 Victory is to have Snipers in your first division. They will reach LRT faster than Chamberlain. Dont bring more than 2 24pdr. you can hold LRT with 3 infantry brigades 1 sniper flanking from the southwest and 1 gun. Sneak 2-3 snipers through the gap between the woods and the eastern mapborder and wipe out the artillery up to the 2nd VP. Dont forget to prepare for sedgewick.

Im sure you will do even better in your next try! 14k casualties at Getty is not that bad, especially with your limited manpool at Gettysburg. Imho the problem in your playthrough is that you suffered heavy casualties in a few earlier major battles.I think you did very well in the first battles up to gaines mill. But then the casualties add up. If you are not against replaying a battle several times i think you should be aiming to minimize casualties, expecially at Malvern Hill, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Stones River and Chancellorsville. You should imho have at least 80k men (deployable + pool) right before Gettysburg (i had 110k without buying manpower). For getting there i would rather watch col. kelly and adapt his strategy to your playstyle and unitcomposition then follow history guys lead, i like his vids and his background information but he just suffers way to many casualties. Imho it is better to inflict slightly less casualties in some battles and perserve your own army then to inflict max casualties since scaling will erase your advantage anyways. For example: you won Antietam with 19,8 vs 62 while i only inflicted 52,2k but lost 8,6k (11,2k more men for future battles). I tried different approaches for several major battles. At Antietam in my first try i also managed to kill 85k union troops while suffering 21k casualties. KDA 4:1 but just way to many casualties. Some Questions: How did you spend your reputation points? I used evrything on rifles, especially on Enfields once they became available through points. Also 20 pdr guns since they are so rare and sharpshooting rifles. You have rather large brigades (2150 at Stones River), did you try to use 1800er brigades? From my experience they are easier to manouver and sometimes a 2nd brigade fits into a covered defensive position were 2 2k+ brigades wouldnt fit. Also 1800er brigades are more effective. You seem to rate 10pdr parrots highly, having 3 or 4 ***batteries. Is this moneycap-related? I would only use 10pdr parrots if i have to and otherwise upgrade to 24pdr or 20pdr. You seem to value cav (3-4 brigades), imho it is very expensive and - compared to 600-ranged skirmishers underperforming. What is your cavs killratio? You dont use dedicated or detached skirmishers to the same extend i do. Is that because you dont want to pause the game? I saw some very nice opportunities to flank with skirmishers in some of your vids.

Problem with 1k to 1,3k is that you cant really use detached skirmishers and they are too powerfull to do without imho. I think an average 1,7 to 1,8k would be best then. Btw the efficiency-cap for skirmishers is 250, someone tested that some time ago. And yes, you will have a small but elite force equipped with the best weapons available. But what to do with all those weapons captured and the cumulating recruit-pool (atm at Gburg with 80k recruits available), ignore them? Doesnt feel right :(.

Yes that is a problem, but either way (elite forces or ballast units). Either AI scales up and gets too strong or AI scales down and gets too easy to beat. I call ballast-units abuse because they disguise your real strength so that the game thinks you are a lot weaker than you really are and acts accordingly. It may address the upscaling in major battles, because decisive victories in small battles hurt the AI-armysize in major battles, but it is still using a game mechanics in a way it wasnt supposed to work imho. I watched your minimal playthrough (have watched quite a few of your vids, you deserve a lot more viewers imho) and at 2nd Winchester for example, you didnt want to play the displayed number of units so you added ballast units to weaken the AI. Thats as if you would use a slide controller for armysize, no offense. Same thing can be done in a variety of games and it allways makes the AI weaker or matches you with weaker opponents than you should get in multiplayer games (for example, in WC3, if anyone remembers that awesome game, you could leave the first 10 games and would be matched with beginners for the next 70-80 games cause you disguised yourself as the ultranewb, in other games you get the rating of the groupleader and can abuse that way, in some RTS you could intentionally stuck the AI and shoot it down without resistance, all that i would call abuse). @pandakraut My bad, i missed that. Your new tests are very interesting to me, AI seems to add on a 1 vs 1 basis on MG. As i mentioned, on leg i had 55k vs 67k (122%) at antietam and i was under the impression that i depleted the AI before (67-72k, 91-96% training, 39-44% armory). I reloaded the save and went in with 3 corps and 1.000-men brigades. With 39,5k i had to face 46,7k (118%). Second test: 1500 men, with 58k i had to face 70k (121%). Third test: 2.500er brigades, 90k vs 105k (117%). So it is at about 1 vs. 1,2 at least in my tests. I guess it will become more favourable in numbers the more units you field, because you will reach the cap finally. But you will suffer more casualties naturally and you will still have the same amount of rifles in your weaponry. So one should defnitly not field the most units possible since it will only hurt the player and not the AI. Fielding the right amount would be an armysize to wich the AI would scale to its minimum armycap, ergo you should specialise and field a quite low force to be most cost-efficient (if you do not want to (ab)use ballast units).

Yeah in the linked topic we discussed scaling on major battles. Im not sure, how reliable pandakrauts data is regarding upsacaling at these battles. At antietam he had at about 40k vs at about 41k in all tests and he gives no information about the AI strength displayed in the campaign-screen. Yes he may have varried in brigade-size and -composition but it would have been more interesting to actually change your armysize by quite a margin (for example: with 55k i had to fight 67k, why not test 40, 45, 50, 55, 60?) to try to find out tresholds or diminishing-return mechanics. Im still sure, scaling is based on numbers. There are just some mechanics that interfere. There is a minimal armysize regardless of how many AI-soldiers u have killed in earlier battles. This treshold will also prevent ballast-abuse to work on major battles if it is reached (and it should almost allways be reached). There has to be a max armysize since scaling is based on increasing or decreasing the AI-brigades size and not their numbers. The game seems to attribute a certain "normal" average brigade-size to you and if you go below, for example with ballast brigades pulling down your average, the AI scales down. If you go up, the AI scales up. The up-scaling can be justified by providing a decent challange if legendary is too easy. But it is just disheartening and makes your decisive victories meaningless and sometimes they even become phyrric victories. Atm (union legendary) my recruit-pool is 65k before 2nd Winchester with 3 fully equipped corps and i see absolutely no use in adding more brigades in my 4th corps. The problem is not that the AI brigades scale but that your weaponry doesnt. Ofcourse i could equipp my 4th corps with M42s and Tylers but do i really want to? And if i add more brigades with good rifles, i cant refill them even if i am not limited by gold or recruits because there simply arent any. So despite a big recruit-pool i am bound to field an average-sized army. The down-scaling is another thing. It does defnitly not work as intended, because it was - i think - aimed at players having a hard time and suffering way more casualties than normal players do. It is - at least imho - not meant for disguising as a general scratching togehter his last reserves while bunkering a big recruitpool and 50k rifles. Ofcourse one can "abuse" this mechanics with ballast-brigades but it is even more counterintiutive than the up-scaling and it just lowers your challlange. Imho one shouldnt need to cripple the AI outside of battles. If there would be another patch this could easily be delt with if scaling down is bound to your army and your recruit-pool.

@Aetius We discussed this in Oktober alrdy. On Legendary the AIs army scales up and down depending on your armies strength. My point at that time was, that you shouldnt use up all available menpower and weapons because the AI will counter the numbers. So if you scratch together your last reserves with farmers or M42s, you will essentially weaken your army compared to the AI cause it adds the numbers scaling to your troops but with better rifles. Obviously it works the other way around - not that that would be needed to win legendary. Problem is: You have to know the minimum army-size, the ai will deploy each battle, because the scaling only comes into play beyond that point. The displayed number between battles doesnt help, its almost always way too low. But if you knew these numbers, you could really abuse legendary (but why would you?).

From my experiance with RTS-games watching videos isnt a good substitute for learning a game. It can help if you are stuck at a certain point but where is the fun/challenge/learning experiance if you replay a strategy someone else posted? If you dont use your ingenuity, you just shorten your personal time playing the game. Watching videoguides can also "look" you in a certain path and you might overlook other - better - ways to play a battle. That is why most RTS-games are successfull on a "pro-level" for a short time and sink into meaninglessness, once they are figured out: they become dull.The good thing in UGCW is, that you can try different approaches. And at least for me its much more rewarding to see that your own idea of winning a hard battle works out or even to understand why it didnt work. If you still want to see legendary union, you could try Aetius. But he has his own very artilleryheavy playstlye plus he plays "ironman", resulting in draws or losses - and by that in a weaker army - where most would replay the battle. I wouldnt recommend History Guy (only if you are interested in the actual CW) or Benjamin, because - imho - they have too many flaws in their gameplay. For legendary CSA Col.Kelly is quite nice, or also Aetius. But of course - as LAVA said - its really fun watching how other guys approach the game.

The cost is based on the units actual experiance (displayed exp - leaderexp) afaik and not on its stars.

What a slaughter :D. Are you planning to stay at 12 guns or will you raise them to 16? You mentioned bugged cav, is it a charging AI cav. that you cant target but all your units in the area try to do, getting flanked that way by other ai-units? That happened to me several times now, only "work-arround" i know is hold position if you hear cav charging.

Since you are short on men, what do you think about a skirmisher-heavy build? For me results with 1 Skirmisher-brigade per Division (250 men, equipped with Sharps or Browns) are surprisingly good (im at Kettle Run now). The sniper-rifles may seem expensive but they have been extremely cost-efficient.They need at least the first star but you could ofcourse dissolve an infantry-brigade, that suffered heavy losses, if you get your pool to 0 before. They work expecially good on Gaines Mill

Wow 805 guns? How did you manage that? Impressive! Did you plan this right from the start of the campaign, stockpiling from battle 1? Ill give your approach a shot once i reach washington

You can also go 1. politics 2. medicine (20% less casualties is very strong) 3. AO (when suitable) 4. logistics (else you will run out of ammu in long battles) 5. economics 6. veterans 7. recon

Just out of interest, how far along the campaign did you get with 1250er brigades? I didnt think they were viable, for me it hurt when i had to go down to 2200er ***-brigades cause no more Springfield63 were available. I use skirms the same way, imho most people vastly underestimate what they can do. The reason to keep Skirms at 300 like Andre suggested (i think the optimal size is 250) is that their efficiency suffers from diminishing returns above 250, (i think) it is comparable to artillery above 12 (16) guns.

Huh, 1250 is quite low, didnt try that. Isnt 250 the most efficient skirm size?

Thats just not the case :). If you have reached the caps and prolong a battle, killing more will hurt you since you also lose men and it will have no effect on the AI since caps are already reached.

Nah, the battlereport was so long that the upper part was cut off

There is no list or table for the caps in armysize, training and weapons, right? Would be very usefull and would spare me so much time. I have to find out the caps by replaying the last minutes of battles again and again :(.

Hm, its difficult to give you advice when one doesnt know your army-composition and your difficulty. If you run an artillery-heavy lineup i guess its difficult to win on day 1 though i can only speak to MG and legendary. But if you bring mostly infantry to day 1 you can send brigades of 1st corps to bypass the Union on the southern flank and set them up in getty very early, killing of the reinforcements. if you reinforce them with detached skirmishers you can get ahead of your timescale. But... why rush to a day1-victory? Imho it is not only unnecessary but counterproductive. Going for a day2-victory has several benefits: you will lose way more men if you go for the last point instead of wiping the retreating forces only there are easy-to-execute strats (look up the getty-vid in the thread "Legendary CSA campaign") to rush to little round top on day2, it is even possible to get to the VP before any Union brigade gets there holding that VP is not difficult if you use elite-brigades and let them only shoot out of cover and set up a line up to the defensive position (house) east to the VP, maybe reinforced with 1 or 2 (max.) 24PD Howitzers or Napoleons since the Union often refuses to use the woods north of that house you can detach 2-3 skirmishers and move them along the eastern border of the map, first to the house east of the woods and then further, that way you can snipe the union artillery there and you will force several infantry-brigades to reinforce the artillery what results in almost no pressure on the VP defending against the Union-troops comming from devils den can be done with detached skirmishers (2, max 3) and you can even harass the entrenched brigade or the artillery positioned there with additional detached skirmishers from the house southwest from devils den anticipate, when exactly sedgwick appears to flank you from the east and set up a killingfield with the rest of your forces and 1-2 artys for cannister, sedgwick should be (depending on your difficuly) completely anihilated or will at least suffer losses of 60-70% and will rout to the north by that point Union will give up any serious plans of taking little round top and you will only suffer some casualties from artillery that isnt in cannister-range As you see i lost 8k men winning on day2 but i killed almost 36k, reducing the Union armysize significantly more for the battles to come compared to a day1 victory. If i finished on day1 i suffered at about 11-12k casualties, killing fewer Union men, 5,5k of my 8k casualties were from day1. If youre not on legendary you will easily be able to reduce casualties to 4-5k.

For me it worked well, mb i was lucky. A thing you do - as it seems with ease - and i am simply unable to replicate is the linedrawing or rather unitmovement in general. I have to try several times before a line even appears and i am used to RTS-Games with a much higher gamespeed that require way more and much more precise micromanagement, yet i really struggle with simply drawing lines in UGCW and cant find out why. Mb i got old and my fingers became clumsy... got any advice besides booking art class?