JInxed

Hello Husserl - Just a note to let you know that I'm an avid armchair historian and wargamer who has been enjoying ACW games and miniatures for many, many years. I began with TSR's "Terrible Swift Sword" and spent many a long weekend pushing cardboard counters around. I've got more than a nodding acquaintance with the era, the tactics, and the battle in particular. This hardly makes me special. Anyone willing to pay $10 for the privilege to be a beta tester has got to be enthusiastic about this kind of game, and reading through these forums I see that there are very knowledgable people here. My comments are my attempt to help. It would be very easy to shrug, accept the $10 loss, and make a mental note never to buy your products again. But there is enough here to make some effort worthwhile.

I purchased the game from Steam and downloaded it without issues. I then read the Quick Start guide to give me some notion of what was going on. Generally, I accept the fact that I'm going to make lots of mistakes early, so I set the difficulty to "Cautious" (that is the easiest, right?) and played as Confederates, since they had the initiative. 15 games later and the same issues keep coming up. 1.) Many small units are much better than a few big units This is a real problem. I watched Davis' brigade wiggle around like a worm on a hook to change their facing as various small skirmish units and videttes and what not fired into its flank. Even more frustrating was watching their morale sink like a stone from being shot in the flank. And of course, the fact that the Union starts with a lot of small units pretty much guarantees that all my arty gets ganked. I even watched those videttes pass in the 25m gap between Archer's brigate and Davis' to go kill my arty. Also, I suspect, though I don't know, that this also reduces effective casualties. I'm guessing that there is an attack vs. defense roll that results in a % loss, and that favors small units. I watched those dumb videttes get shot at by entire line brigades and take 2 losses. Very frustrating. 2.) Charging mechanism OK, so you've got the blue boys wobbling and its time to sweep them from the field. CHARGE! Fantastic, they break....and you just keep kind of wandering after them even as they pass through the Iron Brigade. In most simulations the Iron Brigade would have to either stand or break. But here, everybody just kind of passes through them without fighting. And by without fighting that's exactly it. I watched those guys take 0 damage even with 3 brigades mixed up with them. And the guys they charged? They didn't take much damage either. Meanwhile my guys were getting shot up as the Union troops miraculously managed to fire into the scrum and only hit guys wearing grey. 3.) Cautious? Like I said, I set the AI to cautious. But in every game *EVERY GAME* the Union attacks furiously whenever they have numerical advantage. And they always seem to win, so I guess its a good strategy. OK, I'm getting worked up so I'm going to put this away for a couple of weeks and hope you fix it, or else write a tutorial if I'm just being dumb.