Harnis

Just played the same battle again. Confederates Approach to Attack Cemetery Hill. Playing as Confederates vs Cunning Union. I used the exact same strategy as last time. Sent Lane, Scales, and Perrin south to take the Cemetery Ridge objective. Sent Davis, Archer, Pettigrew, and Brockenbrough up Cemetery Hill from the west side of it, in line with Lane, Scales, and Perrin. I had Ramseur and Daniel on the Seminary Ridge hill, just west of Gettysburg. I had Doles, Iverson, and O'Neal advance south through the town of Gettysburg. I had Ewell's 1st Division advance from Benner's Hill to attack Culp's Hill from the north-east. I'll start by mentioning this: the game crashed right at the end. I was taking Steam screenshots (ctrl-alt-f12), and when I went to take the second one, the game froze, stopped responding, and had to be closed. But the battle was literally about to end in the next moments, so I still got solid results. Hill's 3rd Division (Lane, Scales, Perrin) advanced easily up the slope to the Cemetery Ridge objective, and were able to take it relatively easily. The arrival of XII corp and Stannard's brigade prevented me from using them to flank anywhere else though, and they were then stuck defending Cemetery Ridge from the attacking Union soldiers. Hill's 2nd Division (Archer, Davis, Pettigrew, Brockenbrough) were able to slowly push the Union soldiers back up Cemetery Hill. They were able to reach the crest of the hill, but were not able to reach the objective. Ewell's 3rd Division (Ramseur, Daniel, Doles, O'Neal, Iverson) did not make much progress. Over the entire battle, they were able to slowly advance and resulted in taking the town of Gettysburg, but they were not able get anywhere close to the Cemetery Hill objective. Ewell's 1st Divison (Gordon, Tigers, Avery, Smith) had a rough fight. They made absolutely zero progress against the Union brigades holding Culp's Hill. The Union general actually sent two brigades to flank Benner's Hill, causing me to need to relocate 3 brigades from Ewell's 3rd in Gettysburg to circle around and stop them on the east side of Benner's Hill. Note that once they flanked Benner's Hill, killed some artillery units, they just sat there on the east side of Benner's Hill. This was possibly due to their damaged condition and morale, but it just seemed like a waste of a flanking maneuver. Also note that this was an aggressive move, relocating two brigades from Cemetery Hill to attack on the Culp's Hill flank that was in no danger of falling, meanwhile I was taking Cemetery Ridge. Those two brigades would have been much better to relocate south to the ridge to defend it rather than making a useless flanking maneuver. Then again, hindsight is everything, and no general is ever perfect, so I can tolerate some mistakes as long as they are "intelligent" mistakes (meaning they were intelligent actions that were carried out well, they were just the wrong decision). The end result was me holding Cemetery Ridge, and the Union holding Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill. Not sure what the casualties were, but they seemed pretty equal. So I'd say a minor (possibly major) victory for the Union. Observations: Union artillery on Cemetery Hill was firing more, probably due to better line of sight for them in this patch. Confederate artillery from Seminary Ridge was essentially useless, however. They had absolutely no line of sight to anything going on near the objectives. I had to move them all the way up on top of Cemetery Hill to start getting shots on stuff (mostly on XII Corp reinforcements) The Union defensive position was centered on Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill. They did not waste brigades piled up into the town anymore, instead they actually defended the objective. There was a point about one third through the battle where I just zoomed out, took a broad look at the battlefield, and thought "well shit.......how the hell am I going to crack THAT defense....". It was actually a nice feeling. I felt the challenge. Melee combat definitely causes more casualties, but not too many. When I sent 3 brigades to stop the Union flanking Benner's Hill, they charged me and a melee ensued. The Union brigade broke, and took massive casualties for being a routing unit among two enemy brigades in melee with them. It seems like a good balance. Melee has more effect than before, but it's not over the top. Also, those flanking Union brigades easily mopped up two artillery units I had on Benner's Hill with a charge. So melee balancing seems much better. Overall, awesome patch. This game is getting better with every update, and the AI (which was amazing from the start) is only improving. edit: regarding the crash. Just started the same battle once again, took one screenshot, it was fine, pressed ctrl-alt-f12 to take another screenshot, and the game froze, exact same as before. Not sure how I can give more info about what happened. Is there a log file you'd want me to send?

the Tilt-Shift mode is.......interesting. Maybe too exaggerated though. It makes almost the whole screen blurry to the point where anything but what is directly in the middle is fuzzy and almost hurts the eyes to look at. It's definitely a cool effect, and gave it a pseudo-depth-of-field look, and it's certainly something to keep working at. edit: actually, now that I think of it, it also really darkens the screen a lot. I've decided to turn it off, because 1) I like the bright look of the game, and 2) I like to be able to see what's going on even on the top or bottom of the screen. Again, it's a cool effect, but maybe needs to be toned down a bit. Is it at all possible to have a slider, like with the Line of Sight Intensity and Fade? Other than that, awesome patch. AI is as sharp as ever.

Ok first of all, calm down. Secondly, up until the latest patch, the game was extremely biased in favor of the confederates. In the game, most confederate units still DO have better morale than union units. There is no pro-union bias Mr. "Jonyreb". This is a game made by Europeans, not Yankees. Up until the most recent patch, the confederate side was way overpowered.

While I'd agree that right now melees don't have enough casualties, I would also caution against too many casualties, since the total war approach where two units of 200 soldiers get into melee and one side only breaks after taking more than 75% casualties is also not realistic, and is more unrealistic than a melee resulting in 20 deaths. Soldiers are not berserker banzai charging suicide warriors. They generally don't want to die, and they generally dont want to die from a bayonet. Do not overestimate the amount of casualties that melee combat causes. I mean, we have historical medieval battles with thousands on each side fighting in melee for hours with only a few hundred dead. I dont want to see a brigade drop from 2000 men to 1000 in the span of a 5 minute melee.

Haven't had a chance to play it again yet. But i don't know if I allocated quite as many soldiers to the south flank. All I did was pretty much just march all the brigades forward in the positions they were already in. No major flank relocations. But I would definitely agree with your conclusion that the Union AI puts too much effort into defending the north, specifically the town. Like I said, my battle was only a draw because of the reinforcements that stopped me from taking the ridge objective. But the Union main defensive ring was focused too far north in the town. If it had been focused on the actual Cemetary Hill, they probably would have won, because since the latest patch, Union brigades actually can hold their ground. And yeah they didn't make too many of those foolish charges like the iron brigade did in your battle. In mine, iron brigade and ames brigade did a solid job of defending culps hill the entire battle against two confederate elite brigades from Ewell's corps

just did the same battle as you did long5hot, my outcome as Confederates against Cunning Union, I took Cemetery Hill, but they held Culp's Hill and Cemetery Ridge. Only reason why they lost Cemetery Hill was because they focused a large number of soldiers in the actual town of gettysburg rather than just slightly south on the hill. My attacks on Culp's Hill got nowhere, my attacks on the defending force in Gettysburg made very little progress, and I took Cemetery Hill because I flanked it from the south with 3rd Corp. Pettigrew, Archer, Davis, and Brockenbrough took Cemetery Hill and flanked city, while Lane, Scales, and Perrin faced south defending against the Union reinforcements. Those reinforcements were able to take and hold Cemetery Ridge before I could advance on it. If the Union had centered its main defensive circle on Cemetery Hill rather than in the town of Gettysburg, It is doubtful as to whether I could have taken it. As it was, the outcome was a draw. It was a hard-fought battle and some of those Union brigades were very hard to uproot from their positions.

eagerly awaiting the new patch! I will try to do some more testing on if the Union can hold Cemetery on the first day

feedback for the latest patch: well done. Very well done. This is possibly the best state the game has ever been to date. The Union infantry is much better at defending now. They don't run away at the first sight of a brown uniform anymore. Where before a Confederate player could just push his units forward and watch Union units flee in terror, and as soon as you took any advantage in a battle it resulted in the rout of the entire Union army, now they are much more resilient. It takes much longer to force the Union from positions they are defending. I guess this is also a result of the recent changes to terrain penalties and melee balancing. The AI is much smarter. They maintain their lines better, they launch more coordinated attacks, etc. For example, I just played the "Pickett Charges Union Left Flank" battle in my current campaign I have going. I sent Pickett's forces south to blast through to Little Round Top with McLaw's forces. It was a hard fight, and I eventually took just Little Round Top, but at a great cost. I took massive casualties which has screwed me over for the next battle, where I am basically outnumbered almost 2:1. And the AI made two coordinated counter attacks. One in the north, pushing down west from Cemetary Hill. They made coordinated pushes with multiple brigades all nice and lined up. I was just barely able to hold them off because my artillery had broken down their morale. The AI also launched a push on my right flank, south of Round Top. Again, it was a coordinated attack with his reinforcement cavalry and a brigade or two that broke my brigades there, and prevented me from also taking Round Top from him. This Battle of Gettysburg playthrough has been the toughest I've had so far. The first day saw a minor victory and a draw. The second day saw a minor defeat and I think a minor victory (although I took so many casualties that it was rather Pyrrhic). This last battle will likely be a loss, because I can't see how my 10 thousand or so men can make any successes against 20 thousand some Union defenders. Oh, this was against Cunning AI, by the way

I think that's a good idea. Add to that a "mood" selector for the division commanders. You could set them to "attacking", " defending", etc. And it would determine their overall behavior, such as when a unit falls back, whether they try to advance back to their old position or whether they stay back

I didn't even know the different types of guns were modelled in this game until I just read it here.....maybe there needs to be an easier way so we can say "oh that artillery brigade has longer range and accuracy, that other one has better canister, I'll use them accordingly" Other than that, I find artillery targeting is better now. They generally fire when I think they should and it's usually obvious why they're not firing when they don't. It makes proper artillery tactics important and not over simplified. It makes it really satisfying to get a battery in a great position and unleash hell on an enemy brigade to break a charge.

well I saw that, and today saw that there were like 50 people online, only 12 battles, but none of the battles had any open slots waiting...

that could be useful. Just a little popup window with the command tree, so when it says "General Doubleday's Division has arrived!" you can look at the tree and see how many divisions, and which ones, as well as maybe the number of men. And even something like you said about an approximate time of arrival would be nice.

I am totally on the side of gameplay > fancy graphics and details. I haven't played a total war game in months, but I have been playing UGG tons lately. Zooming in all the way and seeing a soldier make some facial expression, and seeing his leg hair underneath his tunic is all fine and dandy, but that level of detail is just visual fluff. UGG has unbelievably good gameplay, possibly the best gameplay of any RTS I've played in a very long time. The AI is simply the strongest I've ever seen in an RTS. Would it be cool to see different uniforms on the little sprites of the units? Sure. But if it's the choice between the devs working on that, or spending that time tweaking the AI, adding more detailed gameplay features, etc. I'd choose the latter every time. If I want to see pretty unit models I'll load up a Total War game. I am perfectly happy with the devs focusing on gameplay and AI primarily for this game. Same goes for enhanced graphics like longer lasting smoke, more detailed sprites, more sprites, etc. I like that this game can run well even on my laptop. Only thing that would be cool to customize is a sprite ratio, like Scourge of War has. So for someone with garbage PC's, they can set the ratio so that brigades are only like 10-20 men. Or people with powerful gaming PC's can set a 1:1 ratio so Davis' brigade will be >2000 men on the battlefield.

Hey Darth and co., love your mods for the total war games, and I'm loving this game so far. Sid Meier's Gettysburg was one of the first RTS games I played, back when I was maybe 10-12 years old, so this is bringing back memories. Anyways, here's my feedback so far: This Patch: artillery seem much much better now. Now they fire pretty much constantly if they have enemies in LoS, where before they wouldn't fire because of that friendly fire parameter you mentioned. LoS is easier to see now, although still a little buggy. Sometimes when you click a unit, it shows their LoS, but it doesn't disappear when you deselect the unit, and you have to wait for it to fade. Not horrible, but I don't think it's working as intended in that respect. Units do indeed hold their formation better and do less rotating around to face enemies I'm seeing the same issue as others seem to have, where the movement arrow that you drag from units is offset from the mouse cursor Future patches: the terrain elevation map thing, but I know you said you guys are already working on it I like what lotharr suggested, having a view mode where LoS would be drawn from the mouse cursor would be awesome and would let the player see where the high ground is and what positions can fire on certain areas. Also, surrendering units would be awesome