varangian

Which is even sillier, although at least the AI in the games I've played has never tried this. Add them to the 'can't capture' list as well. Maybe doing away with victory points altogether would be a better solution in the long term. Given the limits that an AI has in seeing the big picture it's inevitable that, if given an objective that's somehow more important than other locations, it will take decisions like this. So even if videttes etc. get deprived of the capture ability that will just be replaced by an infantry unit hotfooting it around the edge of the map in order to snag a victory location even if in the wider context of the battle it would make no real world sense to do so.

It's not a huge issue - it effectively disappears as a possibility after Day 1 - but it seems to me it would make sense to disallow skirmishers/videttes from capturing victory locations. Playing as the Confederates against a determined Union side their aggressive approach made for a good contest but the AI did have a bit of a fixation on victory points and, as there aren't so many units on the field in the opening engagement, it spent a lot of its time sending vidette units on the scenic route to Herrs Ridge. Since the Rebs have to hold that I therefore had to detach Archer - who hadn't routed for a change - back to clear them off. On this occasion it made no difference to the outcome but a slightly smarter AI (or a human opponent now we've got MP) would be able to exploit this to good effect. Whilst a Union infantry brigade or two on Herrs Ridge would indeed be a problem for Confederate reinforcements coming along the turnpike they'd be able to brush videttes aside easily enough so they couldn't really be said to have captured the location.

It isn't your system at fault as I get the same problem with that same scenario on Windows 7 64bit. Was going to whinge about it but I see the devs are already on it so I'll hold fire.

I second point 1, it doesn't stop the game being fun the way it works now but it does cause a certain amount of frustration as I'd like to see how my AM tactics worked out in the PM. For example playing as the Confederates I had better than historical success in days 1 and 2. Day 3 started with my guys holding Cemetery Hill, Culps Hill and Cemetery Ridge with the Union holding the Roundtops and other hills to the south. At the start I had a problem with the artillery as most of mine was deployed on Seminary Ridge so couldn't hit a thing. Moving them to better positions took a while but once I had them there I started doing some damage and had cover for my guys so I started an advance in the east. This was developing quite nicely until the Health and Safety people decided everyone was getting a bit tired and enforced a mandatory lunch break. Turned out my guys all decided to picnic on Seminary Ridge and the Union unsportingly grabbed the vacated ground. Not sure how scenarios get picked - the one I started off with on Day 3 obviously wasn't historical though it didn't look totally implausible - but the afternoon session was close to the historical one except for the Confederates holding Culps Hill. If not a continous play through then some more transition scenarios would certainly be useful to prevent these abrupt changes in positions. Ideally I think each day should play through continuously and at the close of the day the player should get various choices - as already happens - as to the starting position the next day, e.g. do they try and hold all the ground they currently have, or go to whatever fallback positions would be plausible in the context.

I was going to add this to the 'Artillery LoS' thread but here is equally appropriate. Whilst there may be problems with artillery determining a realistic LoS in some parts of the map that's really just a bug. Once fixed I think making best use of artillery will still be difficult as you often can't get a good handle on what a battery will be able to see from any given location. I've found in some of the scenarios - fighting for Cemetery Ridge for example - that artillery over right at the west of the map (playing Confederates) will merrily fire away whilst batteries on ridges and hills just across the valley stay silent. Some of this might be explained by bugs with the LoS determination so may improve in time but the effect is that I spend my time micromanaging the placement of batteries just to find somewhere they could fire from. What would help would be a 'ghost move' type option. So instead of LMB click dragging to move a battery you'd Alt+LMB to drag a ghost version of the battery to a new position. Once you'd stopped moving for a second or two then the LoS for the chosen position would be determined and shown as a colourful overlay (red and blue for example) so you'd know whether moving a battery to that location would be useful or not. Conceptually someone in command has sent a staff engineer to survey the ground in order to get the artillery in a good location. Being the case it would therefore be fair to impose a speed penalty on the battery when it moves for real to reflect this, so you'd have a choice of making slower relocations to places you know should work or faster moves to places that might not.