LAVA

Antietam, it appears, turns out to be a turning point. There are two reasons why. First, is that at Antietam you have the opportunity to wipe out a large amount of very experienced brigades. After that the AI appears to be trying to recover and I see that in the minor battles of Iuka and Perryville where I am faced with lots of one star artillery, 2 star cavalry and only a handful of 3 star infantry. At Iuka I wiped out all the infantry and artillery brigades and at Perryville I wiped out at least 2 artillery batteries and 4 infantry brigades. The trick now is to wipe out individual brigades whenever you have the opportunity. By denying the enemy the ability to reconstruct their army (you see this reflected in the Training Level of the Intelligence Report) you may face larger forces, but because they are of poor quality, they are easily destroyed. Normally, one would do this in the Grand Battles, but what I have found is that even in the minor battles you must make your priority completely destroying enemy brigades, and the higher they are rated, the better. In the Grand battle of Fredericksburg I bring 72,000 men and wipe out 90% of the Confederates I encounter in the center and right flank. At the next battle, the minor battle of Parkers Crossroads, I wipe out their entire army and their composition is almost all one and star units. I will post these videos later after I fight Stones River. The other important reason why Antietam is a turning point is because after this battle I have max'ed out both Medicine and Economy. Medicine returns 20% of your casualties (with their weapon) so that even if you have rather high casualties (less that 3 to one) in fact you are suffering far less attrition even if your results would be say 2.5 to 1. An example, at Antietam I lost 19,609 men to the Confederates 51,927 men; an attrition rate of 2.65. But if you factor in the fact that 20% of my men will be returning to my army, the real attrition rate is (20% return of losses equals 3922 men for a real loss of 15,687) 3.31. So given you are averaging somewhere around 3.0 overall, in general, once you max out Medicine your overall attrition rate is much greater and therefore, you should fight relentlessly to destroy individual brigades at every point, even though it may cause you higher then normal perceived casualties at the moment. With Medicine and Economy at 10 your weapons are now the cheapest they can be and your cash now goes far father in equipping your army. With a 25% discount on weapons, you now can afford an army in which the majority are armed with superior rifles and excellent artillery consisting of 24pdr Howitzers, 10pdr Ordnance and 20pdr Parrots. At the same time, given that you are thumping the enemy on the head, their artillery is inferior in both training and equipment. This is what is reflected in the Armory Report of your Intelligence Report. I am now always keenly watching these numbers and my general goal is to keep the enemy below 50%. For the battle of Fredericksburg I went into the battle with 3 full Corps of 20 brigades each. Infantry was maxed at 2,000 per brigade and the artillery for 1st and 2nd Corps contained 5 batteries of 12 guns per battery. I had a small Cavalry Corps of 3 Cavalry brigades of 250 men and 2 batteries of 6 guns, but in trying to manage 60 brigades at once, I sent the Cavalry off into the unknown where they ran directly into the enemy and had one brigade totally destroyed, 1 routed and 1 captured. Oops! My army organization is still at 6 with 3 Corps of 5 brigades of 2,000 men. After Fredericksburg I started to hit Training with my Career Points because this reduces the cost of veterans by 2.5% incrementally and I plan to increase Training continuously up to 10 given that I don't have to increase my army size. There is really no reason for me increase my army organization at this point, especially as for Stones River I can only bring 3 Corps of 20 brigades; which I plan to do. After Stones River, the Grand Battle of Chancellorsville allows you to bring 4 Corps of 25 brigades each and at this point I will up my organization to meet the requirements of the battle. I'm pretty sure that I won't be able to bring 100 brigades to this battle, but I will be expanding my army to meet this goal at the earliest possible time. So there you have it. My priorities are eliminate enemy brigades whenever I possibly can, even if that is costly to keep the Confederates Training and Armory levels low; build my army to the maximum levels allowed, arm them with the best weapons I can get my hands on, and increase the proficiency levels of my entire army across the board. For Stones River I will probably do a camp video first and when that battle is completed I will release the videos of Fredericksburg, Parker's Crossroads and Stones River. Cheers!

I played a So-So battle at Antietam, but the rebs offer me the opportunity to annihilate their army, so I took it. I suffer 19,609 casualites but the rebs lose 51,927 men and 109 guns. The mayhem begins around minute 45. I then began the Fredericksburg campaign with the Battle of Iuka and I was looking to see if the Reb quality went down. Sure enough I saw lots of one and two star units. Though a couple small Cavalry units escaped me, I demolished the Confederates at Iuka. Feeling like General Grant, I then follow up Iuka with the last minor battle before Fredericksburg at the Battle of Perryville. The Confederates lose 11,710 men and 32 guns to my 2,247 casualties. Once again, lots of one and two star units, but the folks on my right were 3 stars... so I cut them off and tear them to pieces. One of better minor battles with my best K/D ratio of 5.21. I also chat shortly about my strategic analysis of the campaign and my army organization before the battle. So at this point I am quite pleased with my progress. We'll see if it continues.

Okay... will try again. Thanks! Edit... yep, working as advertised.

Hey guys, I used to be able to simply place the link to a video in the text of my thread and the video preview would show up right away. That doesn't seem to be working anymore. Any idea how you post a Youtube video so all the people have to do is click on the video and it begins playing? Cheers, Lava

Here is the Battle of Crampton's Gap in 2x speed: I have made a video of what I did to my army after this battle and how I build it based on what I need for future battles. I'll post it later.

Let me give you the present situation. After 2nd Bull Run (where you have to have at least 2 Corps) the next grand battle is at Antietam. At Antietam you must bring 3 Corps. At 2nd Bull Run I had 40 brigades so when I saw that I needed a third Corps at Antietam I immediately started building the 3 Corps. I believe the first step was 6 1000 man infantry brigades, 2 6 gun artillery units and 1 150 man skirmisher unit... 2 divisions more or less. Now I know I don't need a full 3rd Corps to win Antietam, so I will concentrate on beefing up the 3rd Corps to 2 strong divisions. The next grand battle after that is Fredericksburg and there having 3 full Corps is going to come in quite handy. So the long term plan is to have 3 full Corps containing 60 brigades to bring to Fredericksburg (though I doubt I will be able to do so). Therefore, after Antietam I hope to immediately fill out the 3rd and 4th divisions with a minimum of men while at the same time reinforcing the rest of my army back to strength including 1st and 2nd divisions of 3rd Corps. It will depend on the previous battles whether the plan works out or not. If 3rd Corps ends up with 3 strong divisions instead of 4, that's okay too. You must also take into account how I am building my units. I am trying to build brigades with strong combat power, but not elites. So if after a battle if have a brigade who is eligible for a second star I look at it's proficiency first. If I can maintain a brigade with say 40 proficiency and one star by bringing it back to strength with recruits, I will do so. I then use the money I save to buy veterans for say a brigade with 30 proficiency and a better weapon. The long term goal, of course, is to have at least 4 corps of 25 brigades each. I don't just want to win at Richmond, I want to crush them. Now while the whole discussion of scaling and its effects on minor battles is interesting I believe it distracts from the purpose of the Union Campaign. The purpose is to build up a large army while slowly chipping away at the Confederates ability to field a strong army of elite units armed with excellent weapons. I'll give you an example of what I am saying. At my last battle at Crampton's Gap I played the battle and won with a really nice K/D ratio. After the battle was finished, I looked at the intelligence report and it told me that the rebs were sending 9,000 battle hardened veterans to replace their losses. So I re-fought the battle again using the same forces and this time was determined to wipe out the Confederates... what-ever it took. My K/D ratio wasn't so good in the second battle but I wiped out the Confederates and captured 2 regiments. Afterwards, when I looked at the intelligence report it said that due to high losses the Confederates were only able to send 10,500 recruits as reinforcements. So, my feeling is that while scaling is an interesting concept in understanding how the AI generates numbers in minor battles, it actually distracts the player from building a large strong army filled with units that have excellent combat power. So after I fight a battle, when I look at the intelligence report, I am not just looking at raw numbers as one is so inclined with scaling, but also their training and weapons levels. As the Union commander, my job is not only to win in battle using good tactics, but to chip away at the confederates ability to field an army filled with 3 star brigades who are bringing long range rifles to the battle. That is my approach. I am not concerned with scaling. In fact at this point, the more men the Confederates bring to a minor battle, the more I can kill.

Like I say, I don't see it as dealing with scaling. I see it as maximizing my Combat Power. What I'm doing is plotting my next major battle and building adequate forces to be able to have sufficient troops available when the time comes. I use the minor battles to increase the efficiency of my troops and use the major battles to increase the efficiency of my Volunteers (recruits). After a major battle, if I know I need more brigades for the next major battle, I will reinforce my regulars and then start filling out the new brigades. Because I don't have enough money to do that, I use the money I gain from the minor battles to slowly build up my new brigades to fighting strength for the next major battle. So I have to make a fairly large guess at what I can afford concerning brigade size, weapons and men after each major battle. That is why I start with 1,000 man brigades and then work up... hopefully to 2,000 for my next major battle. Interestingly at 2nd Bull Run I was at the same quantity of troops as the Rebs and they were for the most part 3 star brigades with some 2 star brigades. I was running brigades of 1,700 men and so was the AI. The battle I fought was fairly bland and I got a 2 to 1 victory. On the next minor battle, Crampton's Gap, I actually had more troops than the Confederates (13,000 to 10,000) and they were mostly 2 star brigades of around 1,000 men. In my first campaign they were 3 stars and very aggressive, this time around they held back in defense and were pretty docile. I whipped them out and I did so quite by accident with the speed at double time. Perhaps I will put together a video of how I put together my army from Bull Run to Antietam, to give you all an idea of what I am doing. As for my videos... I'm a pretty boring guy. I have, I think finally figured out how to make sure the audio comes out fairly clean but I usually end up talking in too low a voice. I think I need a better mic. Overall though, I wish we had a replay save option as that is far and away the easiest way to make a video and provide much better insights into what was going on.

At Malvern Hill there were 2 stars and some 1 stars (artillery). In the next minor battles (Kettle Run and Thoroughfare Gap) they were also 1 and 2 stars and I wiped out their forces. For the next battle, 2nd Bull Run, they were all 3 star units. Go figure.

As I was going through my campaign I decided I needed to give both my infantry and artillery equal emphasis. In fact, the artillery kind of takes care of itself given that you give them good guns, so I became more focused on providing good rifles to my infantry brigades. Because of this I decided to start using a naming convention so that I could tell what brigade had what weapon at a quick glance. Folks who were armed with the standard Springfield were called Volunteer Regiments... so, for example, the 1st NY Vol. Folks with slightly better muskets had the volunteer tag removed and were called, for example, the 1st Penn. Troops who had rifles that could fire at least 340 meters were called Regulars. So once again, for example, the 1st US Reg. From an army organizational standpoint I have decided on a standard composition for a 20 brigade Corps to be 13 infantry, 5 arty, 1 skirmisher and 1 cavalry brigade. The artillery is composed of 3 10pdr Ordnance, 1 24pdr Howitzer and 1 20pdr Parrot. My philosophy is do whatever is necessary to bring the maximum required to a major battle. If, therefore, I have a major battle where I am required to bring 2 Corps, I will do everything I can during the minor battles to bring my army up to 40 brigades. Now at the same time I have this "idea" which I can't quantify called Combat Power. Aetius touched on this in his experiments on ballast units and scaling. Therefore, what I do is instead of building little units to minimize the AI's quantity of troops it brings to minor battles, after a major battle, I will look at the next major battle and determine what I need to create IOT meet the maximum number of brigades I can bring to that next major battle. Thus, for example, I might start by creating 6 Volunteer units of 1,000 men each and possibly a small artillery battery because I need 10 additional units. At the same time, I am spending my money to upgrade brigades which have at least 35-40 proficiency to rifles. So it is a balancing act in which I am trying to create strong units with impressive Combat Power while at the same time building up my forces to allow me to bring the maximum men to a major battle. In doing this, during the minor battles, I will bring a mix of forces (experience wise) such that when the battle is over, I will have upgraded a recruit brigade or more to at least a 1 star category (somewhere around 25 proficiency). These recruit brigades are reinforced up to at least 2,000 men and after the battle they will probably get knocked down to say 13-1500 men, but with at least one star. You can see this in action at the minor battle of Kettle Run leading up to the major battle of 2nd Bull Run. In this battle I bring 5 infantry regiments, 3 of which are Volunteers (one totally recruit) and the 2nd Penn and 3rd NY. (So no rifle equipped troops.) They are accompanied by 2 batteries of artillery (1 24pdr Howitzer and 1 10pdr Ordnance) which need experience. I annihilate the Confederate force as it is also necessary to keep the Rebs on their heals for numbers, weapons and training. It should be noted that at this point my army consists of 12 US Regulars (rifles) out of 26 infantry brigades. So while I would like all of my units of have rifles and high experience, IOT bring the maximum amount of men and brigades to a major battle, that is impossible. In this new campaign, my problem is not men... it is weapons. Accordingly I have used my reputation points to max out medicine as that not only returns men to your army after a battle... but more importantly the weapon he was carrying. I am also now working hard at maximizing economy, as that will reduce the cost of weapons. Of course, as the campaign continues, the major battles will require more and more men and that will require a mix of units. I expect to always have lots of Volunteers, but I also want to create a core of high powered Regulars armed with rifles and 40+ proficiency. Here is the Battle of Mulvern Hill (a battle I drew on in my first campaign). I have 8 US Regulars out of 17 infantry brigades. Though my artillery was a powerful influence on me winning this battle, it was the Regulars who held the line and brought me victory. As a side note... the rebs are all 2 stars. In my first campaign they were all 3 stars.

Here is my first Major Battle of the campaign: Bull Run. I wipe out the Confederate army and this time let McDowell take a much greater brunt of the assault therefore minimizing my own losses: For those few folks who have subscribed to my channel I hope you enjoy the content. I am trying really hard to improve my presentation and commentary. Please don't hesitate to comment or ask questions. *Waves THANK YOU at 4 new subscribers*

Exactly! I was just trying to say that pretty much all the unit characteristics will effect actual damage done one way or another. And as you say, unless we have access to the equation, it's impossible to be precise.

By the time I got to Chancellorsville it became obvious that my Union Campaign was not going to succeed... So I did a lot of re-thinking about the campaign, how I conducted it, used my Career Points, equipped my army and watched a lot of videos. I watched a lot of videos, premier of which were those of Aetius and decided to relaunch my campaign yet again. In my first campaign I put a lot of emphasis on Politics and artillery and in the end my infantry just didn't have the power to meet the challenge. Now I am trying a much more balanced approach with an emphasis on rifles and artillery. I have also started using sharpshooters. I also started renaming my units just before playing Seven Pines so I had a much clearer understanding of which infantry units were carrying what kind of weapon. The results have been pretty good so far. Here is a comparison of my 2 campaigns (I restarted my second campaign at the Battle of Bull Run): 1st Campaign 2nd Campaign Battle US Losses CS Losses K/D R. US Losses Cs Losses K/D R. Train Station 2,467/06 4,965/05 2.01 2,467/06 4,965/05 2.01 Distress Call 1,915/00 6,662/22 3.48 1,915/00 6,662/22 3.48 1st Bull Run* 11,515/02 23,162/34 2.01 7,479/05 23,312/32 3.11 River Crossing 2,888/02 9,851/20 3.41 3,900/03 7,129/17 1.82-- Crossroads 4,478/02 11,874/19 2.65 1,094/00 9,160/18 8.37 Shiloh* 19,257/19 42,511/120 2.21 12,687/11 41,199/115 3,24 Secure River 3,260/02 6,007/14 1.84 1,971/01 7,052/17 3.57 Rendezvous 3,413/00 9,745/00 2.85 1,429/00 6,522/00 4,56 Seven Pines 4,776/06 12,780/10 2.67 5,105/03 10,506/10 2,05-- Gaines Mill* 7,891/01 23,254/27 2.94 5,035/02 23,633/03 4.69 Mulvern Hill* 10,757/08 25,718/08 2.39 12,552/07 32,859/12 2,61 Kettle Run 3,514/00 10,649/16 3.03 4,903/00 10,127/16 2.06 Thoroughfare Gap 8,869/03 22,234/32 2.50 4,562/02 16,131/29 3.53 85,000/51 209,412/327 2.46 65,099/40 199,257/296 3.06 * Major Battle -- Less well than 1st campaign The really big difference so far is not only a far better K/D ratio, but far less losses with far more troops armed with rifles. I also won Mulvern Hill this time around instead of the draw in my first campaign. For those who have subscribed to my poor channel, they already know that I have published 8 videos of my new campaign. I will soon post them all here. But for a taste here is the video I informally call "The Slaughter in the Water" (The Battle of Gaines Mill). Hope you like it.

There are a number of reasons why this could have happened. The first and foremost is whether of not your 3 star unit had a Brigade Commander with sufficient command points to use the maximum efficiency of the unit. So the first thing to look at is the commanders involved and their command points. This is especially true in combat as if the Brigade Commander or the Division Commander of the 3 star unit was wounded or dead, his command points fall off a cliff. Another reason could have been morale. If the unit the 2 were engaged with was firing on your 3 star sharpshooters and taking casualties then their morale was dropping while your unit of 340 was firing away without any negative impact. I have found that the AI, when given a choice will normally choose to fire at the higher ranked unit, so probably your sharpshooters were taking fire and at Malvern Hill, possibly artillery fire as well. Stamina will also effect unit efficiency. So if, for example, the 340 man rookies were at 100% and the sharpshooters were tired (having run into position or have been in the fight for a long duration), then the rookies will have another advantage. Each unit has tons of stats, but they all are important to know when you are trying to compare what the heck happened in a given situation. And yes, forum wise, folks seem to believe that the most efficient skirmisher unit has a cap of 250 men.

I think you will find that accuracy is a function of the units firearms rating and efficiency the ability to use the weapon to its maximum potential. Weapon stats are just that... what the weapon is capable of. So if you want to determine how much damage a unit will deal you have to look at all factors combined (weapon, efficiency, firearms and cover). How you quantify that... I have no idea. And stamina and morale also play a part in the mix because if a unit is very tired or it's morale is very low, it effects fire rate.

Though not directly applicable to your question, remember that the command points you see listed are not just the command points of the Captain you want to put in charge. They also include command points from the Divisional Commander. Though I am unaware of the formula of how much the Divisional Commander contributes, when he gets killed in battle you can look at his brigades and you will see a red bar indicating the command points lost due to his death. My "guess" is that is somewhere around 20-30 percent of the total based on how senior an officer he was. While I agree that a Captain should be able to command a unit of 100 men (and indeed he can in the game) when looking at command points think more "experience" than rank. A Captain is, therefore, very inexperienced and his lack of experience would be squandered on an elite unit. As such, as an officer gains more experience the bar under his name increases. That bar has nothing to do with rank and everything to do with experience and as that bar increases so will his command points.

Would you not have achieved the same effect by, for example, creating a Cavalry Corps? Since I am an avid viewer of your videos, I also noticed your preoccupation with minimizing the amount of artillery that was brought to the field by the Confederates. Why is that? Union artillery is far superior to Confederate artillery so their numbers really aren't that important. Your quality will trump their numbers any day. My feeling (perhaps incorrectly so) is that because you were building an infantry centric army, that the AI merely responded in kind, as it also brings lots of cavalry and skirmishers to the major battles. I'm wondering (because I was guilty of the same sort of army creation) that if one brought a more balanced force perhaps the issue of scaling disappears.

As I have said before, until they get the Zombie mode functioning correctly, they are not going to be making any announcements.

When you target a unit make sure that you see a red line indicating that it is targeted. The red line is the visual cue because if you don't actually click on the unit you want to fire at the imprint of the battery's movement is normally so small (little circles) that you don't see it. Practice makes perfect.

In this video I fight the Battle of Nansemond River. I bring 3 of my best batteries to beat on the Confederates and their fortifications only to find in the end that I was not only outnumbered, but the Confederates were armed with some of the best weapons in the game (Fayetteville rifles, 24pdr Howitzers and Lemat armed cavalry). Nevertheless I take the fortifications and 3550 prisoners (of which I only receive 1000 recruits in return ). Most of the game is played at double speed as I let my artillery hammer my fortified opponent and my artillery accounts for 13,000 casualties of the 28,500 rebs in opposition. It is a bloody and drawn out affair costing me 9,000 casualties...

My campaign moves into 1863:

I arrived at the same conclusion concerning costs of replenishment. I also keep in mind (for the Union on Legendary at least) that, in general, it costs me 20,000 for a 2,000 man brigade with a new major. Knowing how much a basic recruit unit costs helps me a great deal when I am trying to determine if I will expand my army and how much it will cost to do so. I also only give good rifles to 2 star units and muskets to one star or below; unless I receive better weapons after a battle and that is very seldom. With such rules of thumb you can look at your money, recruits and army and have a pretty good idea what is doable for reinforcement.

And here is Stones River: Bragg eats 60,000 casualties and I think my campaign is back on track.

I send my best into Parker's Crossroads and kick some Reb butt. But the casualties incurred and the upcoming battle of Stones River force me to spend my reputation on recruits for the first time in the Campaign.

Sorry, Just speculation.

Agreed, customization weapons wise would be limited. The Napoleonic era does offer 3 types of infantry (light, line and guard), 3 types of cavalry (light, line and heavy) and 2 types of artillery (line and horse). Cavalry and artillery can also be given a further customization as guard. So while weapons customization is limited, unit customization is quite varied... which would be especially nice if you could see the difference on the battlefield.