LAVA

Having never played the campaigns, I've decided to jump in with both feet and try out the British Campaign. This will be a learning experience as I explore how the game works. The entire purpose of this campaign is to learn. Join me and we'll learn together. Feel free to comment. Recommendations are also happily encouraged.

I have just started getting into the game, but you are correct in that the fallback logic is at times pretty strange. I'll need a deeper dive to see what is going on here, but I think something isn't working correctly. We'll see.

From my little experience with the game, if there is no visible target, the guns won't fire. That is why, at times, it is important to maneuver units (preferably in cover) to a point where they can spot the enemy. Once the enemy is spotted, then all artillery can be used to shoot them.

In this battle the HMS Richmond is more than capable to take on the 2 Spanish sloops on her own (although I mishandle her at the beginning, allowing the Spaniards to fire on my troop ships). Once the sea battle is complete, I move the HMS Ceres to provide gun fire support for my amphibious landing. Your marines are then able to take the village, flank right and take the batteries. A pretty easy battle in which you should be able to destroy all Spanish forces in the scenario.

Ah! So that is why folks buy veterans for a ship and then reduce the crew. The amount reduced enters into a pool you can then use to man other ships. Is that correct?

Yes, I have seen folks add a bunch of men to an existing ship and then after having added them, reduce the amount of men to 0. I would assume this is how you add men to your reserve. My question is, how do you know how many men are in reserve and what quality are they or are they just added to the pool of recruits, given them somewhat better stats?

I haven't had time to play the campaign yet, just watch a bunch of videos. My impression is that when you give a new ship a Captain, he brings with him trained sailors. I think I have also seen something about reserves, but haven't figured that out yet. Hopefully, someone with some experience will jump in here and give us both some good advice.

Make sure you use your ships for artillery support in this double amphibious landing battle.

I fight the Fireworks battle with some spectacular results. One of my fire ships sets 2 Spanish Men-of-War on fire as I pin them to the coast. Though I am pretty lucky in this particular battle, the key to victory is maintaining a 2 vs 1 fight with the ships that must survive (HMS Richmond and Romulus). The fire ships can be used to either set your enemies on fire, or serve as decoys to prevent the enemy fleet from firing on you ships.

So before jumping into the campaigns, I have decided to play all the battles first. Here is the Sea of Gold Battle: And here is the battle Inconveniences. Don't think I've seem many folks complete this battle with a victory. As I finish the battles, I'll post them here.

Here is a video of the Sea of Gold Battle (in the premade battle section): Fun battle. The Medea was quite elusive and it took a couple tries to finally pin her down.

Hey folks! After the release of AOS on steam, I watched a bunch of reviews and videos and decided to buy the game (and DLC). One of things I thought received fairly superficial coverage was the mechanics of the Land Battle tutorial; especially for recruits. So this advanced land tutorial is aimed at these folks. It is fairly long, but I believe fairly in depth. Hope you all like it. For veterans of the Ultimate General Series only a couple of features have really changed, but you still might have some interest in having a look. If I messed anything up, please don't hesitate to let me know. I've only done the tutorials and have yet to actually dive into the campaigns (though I have fought a battle or two).

That's weird. I was always under the impression that the rewards were fixed based on the game difficulty and politics. I remember when I was posting one of my campaigns at the same time as Mukremin Gul, there was a point where we had the same amount of Politics, playing the very same next battle, and both of us had the exact same rewards.

Oh, just to be clear. It really doesn't bother me that the mod gives additional money and men for winning battles when playing Legendary. In fact, I was following a lot of your advice on my campaign as it is pretty obvious how good a player you are. I accidentally stumbled on the fact that in your campaign you were getting more rewards than I. It does not obviate the fact that you are an awesome player, but as the rewards are always a bit more than I receive, it does, in the long term provide quite a substantial bonus for playing with the mod in the long term.

Here is my video (awful as it is) of Potomac Fort on Legendary with no mods. At the beginning you will see I have properly chosen Legendary and if you go to minute 48:30 I then bring up the Strategic Map where it shows that the victory rewards for Newport News are 46600 dollars, 3300 men and 4 points. At 48:45 you see my career points and Politics is 0. Now look at your video at the beginning of Newport News. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrqIeFoNYfc&t=95s At the beginning of your video (minute 1:30) while viewing the Strategic Map you can clearly see the rewards for victory at Newport News are 49200 dollars, 3500 men and 4 points. That is a difference of an additional 2600 dollars and 200 men in favor of using the mod.

I am referring to the strategic map, and the quantity of money, men and prestige points that is displayed for fighting the next battle when you click on the battle icon. The only modifier of this amount is Politics. Given that you have 0 politics, and I have 0 politics and we are both playing Legendary, the awards shown in the box at the upper right of the screen when you click on the next battle on the strategic map should be the same. Thus, after fighting Potomac Fort, with 0 points in Politics, the amount of money, men and prestige points shown on the strategic map as awards for the next battle, Newport News, should be the same for both of us. For Newport News, mine (vanilla) shows 46600 dollars, 3300 men and 4 points. Yours (with the mod) shows 49200 dollars, 3500 men and 4 points.

Why did you increase the award amounts (money and men) in your mod for winning battles on legendary? For example, for the battle of Newport News (with 0 Politics) in your legendary confederate campaign you received 49,200 dollars and 3,500 men. In my vanilla campaign (with 0 Politics), I received 46,600 dollars and 3,300 men. For 1st Bull Run, you received 147,000 dollars and 9,900 men, while in my campaign I received 138,000 dollars and 9,200 men. So just for those two battles you received 196,000 dollars to my 184,600. That is a difference of 11,400 dollars (or 90 Whitworths or four 24pdr Howitzers) in your favor. In men you received 13,400 men to my 12,500 men. That is a difference of 900 men in your favor. In fact, a person will receive less award dollars and men playing on very hard Major General (47,900 and 3,400 men for Newport News) with the vanilla game compared to your mod (49,000 and 3,500) on Legendary. Given the change in rewards... legendary isn't quite so legendary with your mod, it would seem. Awards wise it is even more generous then Very Hard. Or perhaps I'm missing something here...

Well... I'm quite hyped. From what I can tell, this game will incorporate an Operational Level between the Strategic and Tactical levels. The Operational Level combines Strategic decisions (such as movement, supply and intelligence) and ties them to the Tactical Level (battles). If your troops don't have adequate supply (food) then you are going to lose men by attrition. You don't have adequate intelligence and you are going to blunder into superior forces. Many games have tried to incorporate the Operational Level in their games and pretty much all of them have failed. As an example, anyone play Grand Tactician: Civil War? I had high hopes for this game, unfortunately, it is a mess. It is so complicated that one cannot determine which features actually work. The battles take place on pre-constructed battlefields and not on the actual ground of the map. Movement of troops is so bewildering that it turns fighting a major battle into a major pain in the ass. UGAR is a sand box game, which means that where ever the combat occurs, that is where you will fight on the map. It will almost certainly use an already proven and easy to use UI for the movement of troops. This game will be a giant step forward in the incorporation of all levels of warfare into a playable strategic based game. And I can't wait to play it.

I'd fight it again... and see what happens. Nothing wrong with re-fighting a battle.

If you put more than 3 divisions in the first Corps, the 4th division will not show up for the battle. Essentially you have 2 principle Corps to attack with and they will only bring 3 divisions with them. The reinforcing Corps will only bring the first 2 divisions to the battle. That was a change to the battle set-up as long ago you could bring everyone you could muster and it was quite easy to outflank the Rebs with just the 1 Corps and win the battle. Yep, you can still win by outflanking the Rebs, but it is a much harder proposition as before you can take the main objective, the Rebs will receive reinforcements from the left side of the map... and thus you have to fight a duel front battle to do it. Here is my video of 2nd Bull Run from my Legendary campaign (I think for maximum destruction I should have pushed harder on the Confederate reinforcements at the same time as I was moving against the objective):

If you want to max out Yankee unit participation the best you can do is put 3 divisions in 1st Corps, 3 divisions in 2nd Corps and 2 divisions in 3rd Corps. There are a number of battles which were changed from over a year ago. So be careful which videos you watch.

Hi Mark! Been awhile... hope you are well!

Great use of your sharpshooters and artillery. Am pretty amazed with the amount and quality of these brigades and also your cavalry arm. What I found very interesting about this battle, and which I never thought about doing, was substituting brigades in multi-day battles. Lots of good information here for pretty much everyone to learn something. Well done!

By the time I got to Richmond in my Legendary campaign, I had a full division of cavalry. Though I used them mostly against skirmisher units, they were invaluable for destroying isolated brigades of infantry and artillery. Of course, they are also great for stealing supply wagons. I found in major battles it was nice to put them all into a single division because instead of having to "rope" or click on them individually for control, you only had to click on their division, and all units were selected, allowing greater ease of control. Never thought about trying to charge fortifications en masse, but there were times when I did charge individual units into individual melees (including fortifications) because of their speed of movement.

Blackwater Heights: 1st Franklin: I capture 4 3 star Yankee Infantry brigades at Blackwater Heights and 1 at 1st Franklin. In both battles I wipe out the Blue Belly armies with a K/D ratio of a bit better than 5 to 1. My army is heading towards Chancellorsville, but an elite group of 3 star Union cavalry stand in my way at Rio Hill...