Losenis

I'd recommend playing as Union, since a defensive playstyle would be better for a beginner. The true complication would be having to micromanage the skirmishers at first, but once you get a foothold on Seminary and Oak ridge with Iron Brigade and Cutler as they arrive, things will be easier. A rule of thumb is to always attempt holding the high ground that has woods in them, or avoid them if the enemy has them.

I see now, but though that removes some possible causes about it, I'm now left with no idea on what is actually happening. Attempting to play Union against a Determined Confederacy resulted in me steamrolling them to the ground the first day with just Iron Brigade and Cutler in Seminary Ridge and Oak Ridge respectively, and just adding brigades as they appear with the available artillery between them as they fit, with the remaining on the southern portion of Seminary. I keep seeing the confederate units having an awfully low killcount per volley compared to the union in most situations no matter which side I play. The disparity in killcount snowballs after each engagement. This is just an observation though. If it's meant to work that way, then I'll not press the issue any more. That aside, there's another issue with the AI itself that I have begun seeing. It's suicidal at times. I may have a strong fortified position in the ridges, and they send a brigade or two. I defeat it. No issue here. However, they keep sending them on and on and on despite having to walk through open ground while bombarded by most if not all my artillery, despite other attack alternatives existing, and the exact same attacks having failed yet now trying them again with lower manpower, morale, and condition.They don't seem to save their forces for the next round if there is just no way to attack safely either such as in the first day, instead keep pushing as if it was the last remaining chance they had, leaving them with horribly low numbers next round. At certain points it gets ridiculous, too, since a match that I had against a balanced confederate AI resulted in 4800 casualties for him the first battle, 6000+ the second, and 8000+ the third battle where I absolutely surrounded their forces specifically because of how weakened they remained, winning the game. It only gets worse when they leave their brigades out to be continuously bombarded and not having them back off when there isn't any threat that would demand they stay there in such situation.

I've been playing this game for a good while and, while it's fantastic and entertaining, I've found a few problems that sometimes even makes me ragequit a match and restart it. I haven't clocked in the triple digits in hours played in total, but I'm nearing that number, so I feel that this isn't a fault in what I do as a whole. Do mind that I am purely referring to single player, not multiplayer. I'd like to start this with the problem regarding retreating mechanics. Once a unit hits zero morale, it routs. I've been led to believe that it would rout AWAY from the closest unit or the unit it's being fired upon by, but as I kept playing it seemed to not be the case. That in itself isn't that great of an issue, but the actual problem is that, unless a clear line is formed as the game intends it, they'll even rout through your units. The routing unit will still be capable of fighting despite retreating, and since it's already routing, there's absolutely no way to dislodge it and instead you're condemned to see it running through your units. This lowers their condition and stops them completely as they're now stuck in a melee, along with suffering casualties because of it. You'd be lucky if you're not already in combat and need that unit firing. http://i.imgur.com/xs3tv8q.jpg In this picture you can see a unit of skirmishers routing. As can be seen, it's routing towards my main line on McPherson's ridge. Later it'd run through Davis locking it in melee and dropping its condition a bit, and also lock my cannons in melee. Before that, as it decided to rout towards my units instead of away, my cannons started shooting at them instead of Iron Brigade and Cutler. It overrided the new orders because the skirmisher unit was closer and closer each time. http://i.imgur.com/rLcHWXT.jpg http://i.imgur.com/bAum2A0.jpg http://i.imgur.com/sUlSItx.jpg Should speak for itself. Last picture also shows Archer unable to fire at Biddle and Cutler due to those routing skirmishers. There was another instance with videttes instead, but posting it would be redundant. http://i.imgur.com/QIZMWm7.jpg Same issue here, but with the AI on the receiving end. Pettigrew once was down there with the rest of 3rd Corps after a flanking maneuver, though it, for some reason, decided to retreat through the union lines that withdrawed to cemetery to defend it. I do not understand why, as there were no enemy units to the south of it to force it to retreat north. What ended up happening? Pettigrew received immense losses, and ended up cut off from 3rd Corps. It not only devastated it, but also left it out of the southern group to return and aid once it recovered morale, so in effect this retreat just costed me a whole unit for that group that isn't able to regroup with its corps. Issue here? The units retreat through other units, despite any sane person, or even the AI itself when it's not retreating, would avoid like the plague. A possible solution I can think of would be to actually have the routing unit's behaviour continuously refresh and change according to the closest units and actively run away from the closest ones instead of deciding for a direction and then ignoring all else, even units that intercept it despite being able to easily avoid them otherwise. I don't know the difficulty of this nor what it'd affect, I'm just a player without knowledge of coding or programming, so I'm just stabbing the dark. The second issue is the damage output of units. http://i.imgur.com/7agEdfq.jpg Here we see Archer shooting at Biddle from higher ground while in cover, while Biddle is out in the open with no cover whatsoever. Logic would say Biddle would suffer massive casualties in comparison to Archer, but what actually ended up happening was that both units suffered the same casualties in volleys. Archer would kill roughly five to twenty men each volley, and Biddle would kill the same. Condition didn't play a factor as both were extremely low after Biddle's retreat after retreat and coming back. I can't see the logic of it at all unless the amount of 'kills' a unit has varies depending on whether it's union or confederate. I know that the Union has a certain bonus on firepower, but if it does, why would it be damage output instead of, say, reload speed? Drilling would certainly affect the person instead of the musket's accuracy or power. This has been happening in other situations too. A two-star confederate unit could be placed on top of a ridge in slight cover firing at another two-star union unit down and in the open, and the confederate one would suffer massive losses. No matter which side I play, it always seems to be the confederates to take the greatest casualties in firepower, though not for logical reasons. In each battle played and won, it's either Union winning with negligible losses in comparison to the confederacy's massive casualties, even sometimes 3k in the first day, or the confederacy winning yet with far more casualties in comparison. The issue about damage also spreads to other units, namely groups. http://i.imgur.com/BkibLnq.jpg Here one can see that the union is completely bunched up, being fired upon by confederate units higher above that are well-placed. In a real situation, all those union units would suffer far more casualties due to the high concentration of units, since a round has far more chances to hit someone. It's only emphasized by the difference in ground level. What ended up happening? At best ten killed in each volley to a single unit. I'm not entirely sure what could be the correct number, and I'm not going to say something like a hundred kills each volley for all those four units would be sensible, but it was surprising to see that the damage was to a single unit, and so low too as it did the same damage to my units. Thomas could target Baxter, and it would take most of the damage, with the remaining three barely taking a single casualty at all. This was all happening for a while now. I'm not entirely sure if this patch fixed these things, but after playing around a bit more it seems it hasn't. As of this patch, though, another thing started happening. Namely, this: http://i.imgur.com/l0hHHjT.jpg A quick recap is that when one of the skirmisher units was at McPherson's ridge, I ordered to charge. Archer charged, and beat them back to the point it engaged the cannons too. I Corps arrived, so I decided to let the cannons rout out the man due to low numbers, and reposition Archer in the forested area. Part of it followed, but the other part kept chasing the skirmishers that routed to the south-west. Trying to repeatedly order Archer to move did nothing, and the fallback option at that point was grayed out, so nothing I could do. By the time they started answering, Iron Brigade and Cutler were already shooting due to part of Archer's brigade reaching Seminary Ridge. These were the issues I wanted to bring to light. I do apologize if this is the wrong forum or if this has been discussed to death already, but I enjoy this game and want to see it become better with each passing patch.

Tried a match. Archer had an awful tendency to split its brigade and have part of it chase a skirmisher unit all the way to seminary ridge. It didn't help that that part refused to return to McPherson's ridge despite ordering it to, resulting in Archer dropping to 0 condition due to being locked in melee. Just as Iron Brigade and Cutler arrived.

The game has a 'custom battles' section where you can choose any and all possible battles, historical or fictional (since through gameplay it obviously deviates by player action). Pickett's charge is included.

Ah, I was not aware the general also helped in replenishing condition faster apart from morale. Now my units don't drop to 0% condition as fast now that I have him around for that. Thanks for the answer.

Does condition drop considerably faster when walking through heavy cover areas like forests and hills? Or is it affected in any way by cover or terrain? My units seem to drop in condition awfully fast, though I'm unsure whether it's because of that or other factors I've overlooked. It's particularly noticeable when I see the iron brigade end up with 0% condition after being positioned in that small forest at McPherson's ridge, whereas positioning them elsewhere on open ground in other matches gave different results despite almost no differences otherwise.

As far as I know condition slowly drops when you move, and while running it drops far faster. By keeping them in one place with no combat they recharge that condition. I could be wrong though as I don't check that much on units on the move, so you could test it easily.

For the first and third I am not entirely sure, but for the second the penalty is a lower reload rate along with the already existing condition drop that moving brings.

Will anything be done about enemy bridages retreating through your units and causing them to rout? I'm fairly certain that, even if we disregard the faulty AI choosing to rout towards an enemy, a routing mob without formation would not do much to an organized formation shooting at them and ready to meet them. I've seen a brigade with over 80% in both morale and condition drop to zero in both and start routing because of an enemy brigade routing into them, even when that routing brigade was less than 50% its original strength.

It very well is worth the delay for that added change. Loving your work so far.

Happened again just now at the 'The Union looking Cemetery hill from below' phase of the second day. Pushed the Union all the way south as the confederates until the freeze happened. I am currently using Windows XP but I'll soon upgrade to Windows 7, so I'm not certain if it's a problem on my side. EDIT: Happened again in the same phase, same situation, pushed the Union so far south they retreated past the map boundaries, then it crashed. Hopefully this is fixed ASAP, as from a point of view this is pretty much the game actually forcing you to not do too well. Is there anything like a debug report that I can use to pinpoint exactly what happens? I can recreate the issue if needed.

I'd love to have this kind of information ingame.

The main change i would suggest to ease the difficulty in artillery placement is to improve the elevation map, giving it a slight colour overlay that is darker at lower altitudes and lighter at higher altitudes in addition to the lines themselves. As it is now to figure out the correct elevation of certain terrain you have to compare it with other parts of the map to see what the high ground and low ground is, and even then there's room for error. With the new topographic map it'll be just a quick glance to figure out the altitude and direction of the slope.

I've made a thread in the Support forum about this. Seems to be a common occurrence now.

Some units have turned invisible since the new patch. This seems to affect both enemy and own units, although not all. Took two pictures of the bug. http://imgur.com/a/8RI1t

Freezes have been ocurring to me lately. It has been the most noticeable in the 2nd day (haven't gotten to the 3rd yet to see) to a ridiculous extent compared to the first day, so I'm assuming it's somehow related to the amount of units in the map.

When a unit of mine leaves the map by chasing another unit, IE: Videttes chasing an artillery unit that runs so far it crosses the map boundary, the game freezes forcing me to kill it in task manager. I have recreated the problem and it freezes too without exception. Trying to move the unit to the edge of the map on my own does not seem to cause a freeze.

I have not, but I will try that to see how well it does.

I have just returned from another match where artillery that did not fire could've helped, if not saved my efforts. I am by no means implying that the artillery is at fault here, but my decisions are handicapped mostly by the elevation map itself that does not give enough information as it is. As I suggested earlier, a topographic map that gave a colour overlay to elevation added to the current elevation overlay would be very welcome. I can understand that my artillery may not be firing due to woods or allied infantry covering their firing line, or not having a proper firing solution, but when I can't immediately see a proper location replacement for the artillery, it breaks the game and adds a layer of artificial difficulty. It's made even worse by the fact that the computer knows specifically where to place artillery in an instant (I am not complaining about that, though), which means that most of the time I'm facing both infantry and artillery while pretty much only having infantry on my side due to most if not all my artillery pieces not firing at all.

I was playing a match with the confederacy against the union. I managed to push the union back to the immediate south of the town, and I was assuming that all I'd need to do is a slow and sure push to rout them. Well it didn't work as intended. First I thought that maybe it was my own fault, but after a quick check I found out that my cannons were not firing. At all. Not a single one. It seemed that all of them were without a proper line of sight to the union troops, leaving them unable to fire. Even despite placing them in hills and the like, not a single cannon had a line of sight to a single union regiment. Even later on when an union regiment advanced forward from its frontline, not a single cannon had line of sight for it, when I'm sure it'd be certain that it'd have had so, so that ruled out the possibility that in a sad coincidence I just had bad luck. Maybe it's a bug, maybe it's just bad luck on my part, but I'm still convinced that at least one of the cannons would've had line of sight to at least one union regiment. That aside, something that this game would desperately need is a better topographic map. Maybe adding a slight colour overlay that gave a darker colour to lower ground and brighter to higher ground instead of just lines, so as to make the elevation instantly recognizable and avoid several embarrassing mistakes, like how I placed those cannons in seminary ridge. Another thing that I'd like to know is how exactly is the line of sight mechanism handled. I've heard that the game is actually handled in 2D with several tricks that make it seem 3D, so the mechanism for line of sight is quite intriguing if it aims to work with 3D terrain. Despite all of this, I want to say that this is a very good game and I thoroughly enjoy it. I had my hopes when I heard it was from the one who created the darthmods for Total War, and I was not disappointed.