lunario

Yes, in real life it is very much so. But in this game I'm afraid I'm not capable for "ironman" campaign on legendary level. I'd probably be sacked or running out of money/manpower within 10 battles.

Thanks panda for your reply. After about 10th try I got through with acceptable lost. My final strategic is a modified version of your second option. With 2 4k meat shields guarding the fortification and I bring no artillery. Only infantry. Just grind through the 2 and half hours using fortifications. Once a brigade routed another fill in. After dozens of failed charges enemy units start to surrender or shatter and after that it's just waiting for your reinforcement to clear the enemy artilleries. Wiped the enemy with 8.2k lost, about 2-3k are friendly units. I guess it's a quite good result. AI has too many artilleries. Tried several times with counter artillery units, can't reduce their number quickly enough. And it seems the fortification melee bonus combined with 4k big unit works quite well. Oh btw I turned off unit splitting for this. I guess it helps too. Anyway, now I can prepare for the major battle. Thanks again for the great work you've done on this mod and your very helpful suggestion.

Anyone finished the Siege of Suffolk on the Union side yet? On my legendary run I'm facing 30k men and 131!!!!! guns. I can only field 9 units at the start. Tried multiple times without any hope of holding the flag till my reinforcement. Too many enemy guns I can't counter them quickly enough. My 24p howitzer got shot to pieces in minutes. And it's a really small map so no room for cavalry to maneuver(plus enemy got around 2-3k cavalry and skirmish, can't maneuver even it's a big map). Tried retreating back to the city but enemy just set up their guns and no unit can withstand so many guns. Any suggestions? Or should I just skip it.

IMO fireworks is easier than the first 3rd rate ship encounter on the US campaign. Because in fireworks there's shallow water and you get a AI ship to absorb damage. You can lure the enemy ship into shallow waters and just free shoot till it surrender.

Yes IMO both the enemy AI and friendly AI need to be smarter. Especially the friendly AI. Just finished the independent war of the US. In later battles there're too many ships. If I let ships controlled by AI there'll be chaos and many of my ships get hit on the stern and sometimes just running around can't hit anything. While when I control everything it's just too many ships, especially in the mid-late stage of the battle as both party's line breaks. You anchored and AI anchored you leave your ship there and attend other things for couple of minutes, switch back and find the AI sail infront/back of you and free shooting. Can't leave anything unchecked and had to play on normal/half speed for almost 2 hours to win the last battle. It's fun to beat the game once but I probably won't do it again especially the later battles.

I'm now playing the US campaign to where I've got 5 3rd SOLs. My main tactics is: 1. Lure the enemy with my best armored ship, with sails down and shooting each other side by side on mid range; 2. Other ships go to back of the enemy line and wreck the hell of their last ship in line at it's back. 3. Repeat until there's only one left. This tactics worked as the AI now is quite stupid, the whole line of ship will stop as the first ship of line stops and entering the duel with you. The last ship in line will get off the line when it wavers, just gang on it till it surrender or sink. My other tactics when the enemy ship is too powerful: 1. Cross T with your faster ships and destroy the frontal enemy ship's sail using chain shots; 2. The whole enemy line will run at slower speed; 3. Other ships trail the last ship of the enemy line and turn to port/turn to starboard and back, hit its stern till it waver; 4. gang on it till it surrender/sunk. 5. repeat 3.

Yes that many james just ruined my church defense plan. My initial plan was to use focused strengthened veteran infantry force to destroy enemy left and hold the church VP. Apparently it didn't work out but my loss is not great so I continued the battle. I used 1k men brigades several times, they just lose too many men to be of any use too quickly due to my poor micromanagement. I believe the extra number is due to my battle lasted to the second day. My initial number is about the same compare to what you're facing in the video(62-63k in the first day). Regarding to enemy cav scaling, the Jenkkins is 1.2k and the other 3* is a 0.7k unit(fortunately both are melee cav). I can manage that as I have 5 units and AI usage of cav is not good(plus Jenkkins got stuck on NE corner of hornets nest and get destroyed by my skirmishes).

Got through legendary Shiloh on the Union side, finally. Literally I have to restart the campaign twice to get better generals and troops. Watched panda's video several times, adopted the tactic with some adjustment. I do believe Shiloh is much harder on the Union side, mostly because it's a defensive battle and the AI is more aggressive. On 1.25 Shiloh of Union side on legendary is somewhat "impossible" in my opinion. I have to use the "save&reload" method to cancel charges dozens of times. What makes the battle so hard, after spent a week trying to beat it, I recon the following: 1. Enemy number and scaling. I brought only four infantry brigades, one 3* 2000 men(I reload on tutorial map to get this), two 2* 1500 men and one 1* 1500 men. All my other foot soldiers are skirmishes. I'm still facing 62k CSA with 60-68% training. 2. Enemy artillery and counter artillery AI. After the battle I captured 5 14pd james. That means AI got 50 of those deadly guns. Because of their counter artillery fire I was never able to hold a position when they got into range. And most other batteries of the AI is 12pd howitzers(mostly 25 guns squad), which make my troop "vanish" quite quickly even 100% covered and my skirmishes will rout in two rounds of their fire. 3. Their's not enough good terrain to defend. The only good defend terrain of Shiloh is the right flank of Shiloh church, left flank of map of spanish field(which is normally not useful, AI takes a lot of time to get there), south open field of hornets nest(which is only good when you can destroy AI left flank on phase one so you can cover the tree line left of that open field, that is impossible I believe), west of the landing(AI never goes there sadly). 4. The long timer of phase three. There's a two hour timer of defend hornets nest even the VP is took by AI, no phase change. Most of my losses are at this phase. To counter these, I adopted Panda's tactic with some adjustment: 1. First two phase, I put all my infantry on the church and abandoned the left flank, I simply don't have enough to defend there(since building up more infantry will make enemy number more big and skirmishes won't last two rounds of fire even in 100% cover), put two horse artillery on the church one 13 guns napoleon and one 13 guns 24p howitzer(which I lost 7 during the whole battle). This went OK, my troop on the church killed about 5k enemy before phase change. I got unlucky as the AI artillery has move perk so I have to retreat early. 2. I built up five cavalry unit, trying to catch AI artillery and wagons. Two on the church reinforcement and three on Spanish field(They wasn't able to sneak past enemy line, not until the landing phase). This is the key of my final win on the map I guess. I use them aggressively(use them charging batteries even enemy infantry is nearby) and destroyed all but two artillery unit and none of AI artillery is able to move into range in the final phase. All my cavalry unit are 400 men unit, most of them are around 200 men after the battle. I don't believe I can win if enemy guns got into range in the landing phase(they'll smash my line or arty really quick). 3. The hornets nest phase is a painful bloody hold out. I use Panda's defending position mostly. 4. The landing phase is again mostly a redo of Panda's approach. Got to day 2 and killed another 15k of enemy. My losses and kills are like this: Of which about 3-4k is from my core infantry unit, the 23 guns lost is very painful. I believe I can do better but after a week of fighting this I'm done and are not willing to do this again. I do believe this map is too rough on legendary and I have some idea making this a little bit easier and not too easy: 1. Reduce the number of friendly AI reinforcement on the landing phase a little(like reducing 2-3k), this'll reduce enemy number a little or make some room for your own infantry. 2. Make the timer of hornets nest shorter, this opens the map up quicker and there'll be more room for your cavalry and infiltrating skirmishes. 3. Reduce the quality or quantity of AI arty units a little. Pounding by a 775 men 3* arty surrounded by infantry'll make any none infantry line shatter in seconds(and due to scaling most of your line will not be infantry). Nevertheless, I make it through. Hopefully later battles will be easier. Thanks for Panda's video of 1.25, from which I learned a lot about how to manage officers and the tactics of this map.

Hasn't tried this before. When attacking I knock out AI arty first then fortified infantry one by one, one break through two infantry unit move in to cover flanks then main line move in to roll over. Assaulting maybe quicker but cost too much especially fighting late game three star infantry in a 60% melee bonus fort and supported with other troops. Maybe 24p can be useful after AI arty is knocked out, I'll try it on my Union run.

No I hadn't captured any siege guns nor have the chance of buying one, just had one 8 gun group bought by reputation. But only this one unit gave me great advantage. They can pick out AI arty at long range or scare off AI infantry at mid range, best gun without doubt. I found 24pdrs hard to use both on defense and offense late game, mostly because of the many 20pdrs parrott AI has, they're so many that my guns can't finish them off before 24pdrs are wiped out. Mid or early game 24pdrs and 12pdrs napoleon are great at defending.

Finally finished my legendary CSA campaign on 1.25. This mod makes the game much more fun and challenging. However the late game is a little bit boring and waiting game. Most of the I wait for destroying enemy guns and routing the fortified infantries with artillery. In my opinion the attacking battles(minor or major) are easier especially mid to late game since the AI is more passive. Most of my late game wins I rely on snipers(probably overpowered), siege guns and 20p parrotts, 24p howitzer has no use as when they came into range they get destroyed very quickly. And an advice to people who struggle in battle of Washington, do move extra units to south border before timer runs out on the first scene of defense, southern part of Washington is much more difficult to defend. Over all, great mod and big thanks for J&P to create this. I guess I'll try a legendary union run soon:)

Thanks Panda for your reply. I did what you suggest and won. Restarted several time, got one split of infantry and AI got many split cavs but no infantry split. I hold out till the timer runs out. I believe the key of winning this is luck and maybe bug of AI. I got good opportunities to wipe out all the skirmishes of the AI and after that my cavs have no challenge to kill all their southern guns. AI seems bugged as the southern 6k infantry never came to shoot at me, only harassment of their dragoons. I find the AI quite poor of using dragoons, their dragoons are doing fire and run all the time. Also the "Position" of the AI cavs occasionally drift from their image on the screen, quite annoying.

Great mod and very challenging. Currently on CSA legendary run and can't get through the "Brandy Station" minor battle. Anyone have some nice tactics to win this one? I only have two infantries, though they have good weapon and nice stats they're grealy out numbered, mine 1.2k each and AI have two infantry of 6k man. AI come from both north and south, northern part is more easy to defend because of the river, and the AI artillery will be moving slowly through woods. Southern part is more or less undefendable. AI has one 1k skirmish, two 0.7k artillery, three 1.1-1.4k dragoon, one 6k infantry and one 1.1k shock cavalry on the southern part. I have 6 artillery(6 pdrs) and 6 dragoons(good but not enough). Tried several times without success. Seriously need some advice.

Shiloh CSA, tested today. Letting timer went out at around 21:40 with landing secured won't give me victory(see my second last post with image). Have to finish previous scene like hornet nest earlier than the timer. So that at the landing when timer went out it's not night time(that's my assumption).

oh well. Reload again and achieved victory. Seem that you need to hurry on previous objectives so scene change trigger before time run out. Need to make the last scene timer run out before night and then capture the landing triggers the victory. Took half of my army to achieve this. This battle is really hard, your reinforcement just can't do the thing's like your army. I suppose it's because of the short range of their weapon.

OH my! Reloaded thousands of time to beat Shiloh on legendary, timer ends with green check of the objective but still going to the next day. Check the linked screenshot. I'm really confused.