Captain Orso

*sigh* so I went back and while on the second day I had all VP's in my sweaty little hands, I started pulling back form Jay's Mill and Brotherton Road, a minor feat in itself, pulling back through the wood while your troops are pretty tired and your artillery takes forever to get through, and you need to keep a nice battle line maintained to keep the enemy at bay, while the line is in motion. The Lafayette Road defenses are pretty nice, but don't offer the great fields of fire the area around Brotherton Road and Jay's Mill do, and then the infamous "Day 3" starts, and the devs have F-ed with me again, throwing me back from the great defensive line, with the Lafayette Road just behind it, so that I can move the supply wagon quickly from point to point and move reinforcements quickly from area to area. Now half the road is behind the lines, most of my forces are pressed back to the creek behind the road, and to move any units from one area to another, they have to cross the creek and/or move through woods, and all this, although the Rebs did not earn it in the least. I guess they just need to cheat to keep up. In my company (large international computer and database manufacturer) we've had a saying for many years--decades--, if something just doesn't make sense, it's "just to f*ck with the Russians". Yeah, I feel very Russian right now. The positions on the third day are so bad, was lucky to keep a loss/kill ratio of 1 to 2 instead of the 1 to 3 I had earned on the 1st and 2nd days.

I'm a slow old man for RTS games. I'm always trying to keep up with getting my cavalry to chase down enemy cavalry to keep them off my VP's way behind the lines, and maneuvering skirmishers around flanks, and moving supplies to different parts of the battle line, and trying to get my couple of melee brigades into the right place for that one attack-breaking, enemy-slaughtering charge. A 3-1 kill ration on this battle is simply awesome for me. On a lot of other battles, especially where I'm defending, if can break the attack early enough, I spend the rest of the battle mopping up the battlefield, blocking retreats from the map, surrounding the enemy into a cauldron, and wiping them out to a man. Unfortunately, on Chickamauga, there's not enough time for such fun The Brock Road battle is great for this, because your best attack plan is to flank around the enemy's right--which is poorly held--with your reinforcing corps, hitting the enemy's reinforcing division, so it never get into a defensive position. Once it's been dealt with, I can push the rest of the way round the southern side of the enemy, at which time he's completely surrounded. I nearly always gobble up 1-3 supply units along the way, because the AI plays really lose and sloppy with these, so if I'm paying enough attention, none of my units ever run out of supplies, while the enemy is invariably on red. Then the only issue is pushing in and killing, constricting the circle of death smaller and smaller, until there's nothing left. At least that's how I do it

Hmmm..... I may have to go back to this battle and pull back from Jay's Mill and Brotherton Road to have a third day for slaughtering Rebs After winning on the second day and having taken about 13,500 to their 40,000, it sound like a proposition

The Battle of Chickamauga went from 18 to 20 Oct. 1863. The first day were the small battles for the bridges, the same as the first day in the game. The second day is also like in the game. But in the game there seems to be no way to get to day 3, at least as the Union player. At the end of the second day: If you hold all the VP's on the LaFayette Road plus both the Brotherton Road and Jay's Mill, you win and the battle is over. If you hold all the VP's on the LaFayette Road plus EITHER the Brotherton Road OR Jay's Mill, you get a draw and the battle is over. If at the end of the second day you do not have control over ALL of the VP's on the LaFayette Road, even if you hold both the Brotherton Road and Jay's Mill, you lose the battle and the battle is over. The Horseshoe Ridge VP never opens at any time, although it is listed in the Victory Conditions, so you can never control it, unless maybe if you lose both Brotherton Road and Jay's Mill, after having captured both, but that's never happened to me.

It sounds like your brigade is not IN the fortification, but only AT it. It enter the fortification left-click your brigade and then right-click the white shield above the fortification. Your brigade will then enter the fortification and remain until broken, or you move it to elsewhere.

You can always select each battery individually and then click the history button to show how many kills they scored and how many deaths they suffered, individually. I find it unfortunate that the battle end display isn't always displayable. That would be a really nice feature.

I'm actually okay with VP's being used to give the player an insensitive to hold certain areas for a given amount of time, but using those correctly can be very tricky. From the defender's perspective, if for example all the flank VP's have to be take for the battle to progress, the defender could simply pile all his forces around a single VP of his choosing. This would be unhistorical, because no VP actually had any more importance than any other. The defender should be simply trying to resist the attacker's advance. If the attacker leaves defenders in his hinterland--on his lines of communication--there is no penalty to the attacker, because there is simply no game mechanics to represent this, other than simple battlefield tactics, such as the defender turning about and attaching the attacker from the rear. In reality the dangers are far more reaching, beginning with the battlefield commander's ability to guide his forces being greatly hampered. Imagine that suddenly a large section of your forces are taken over by the AI for as long as there is not line of communication between your battlefield commander and that section of the battlefield. They would simply have to act on the last commands they were given, which the game doesn't actually represent--such as 'hold-at-all-cost', 'retreat', 'fighting-withdraw-to-location-x', 'counter-attack-if practical', 'counter-attack-at-all-cost', etc.--, so the entire concept is not available. The player is omniscient and omnipotent. He always see everything any unit can see immediately, and can issue orders which arrive and are carried out immediately. So it's to the attacker's advantage to bypass pockets of determined resistance, because most of the penalty of doing so is not given. If the defender comes out to counter attack, he's outside his chosen defensive position where he is possibly now disadvantaged. So, setting up the way VP's work optimally is not so easy, and certainly not simply going by a time table.

Not really. Even if there were a an actual supply line, and that were blocked for the time being, that should only mean that my units would not be getting more supplies while the line is blocked. I would still have time to open the supply line again and/or fight on with limited supplies. Otherwise it says, no supplies coming in, you lose. Then if my supply unit runs out, same thing, and that is by far not the case. Either or. I've been thinking about what would work better with Shiloh. The big picture is, at the end of the first day, the Union must hold Pittsburgh Landing so that the AoO can land and reinforce the AoT. Anything else that happens is ultimately unimportant. The VP's ought to simply be a measure of the Union player's ability to hold the Confederates back until the AoO arrives in during the night. One might simply leave all the VP's out of the battle except for Pittsburgh Landing and still represent the battle historically, but it is a game, so I guess there's nothing wrong with having interim goals. But the sudden death at Pittsburgh Landing is simply not a given and makes for a bad scenario. The Union must hold it at the end of the day. Nothing else matters. How long or often the South might control Pittsburgh Land before the end of the day means nothing, as long as the Union has it at the end of the day.

I haven't nearly watched all his videos. In fact only a couple of the last battles. So what kind of nastiness he got up to in the beginning I have no idea *ahem* if you post your YT channel it would probably make it easier to find your videos

Dang, was it so difficult to differentiate the rant from the suggestion? The flags are arbitrary measures of success used by the game. They ought to reflect that success. So instead of fixing the issue, the player has to do some strange things, like although the CS were still trying to get to the first set of flags, I should be sending brigades all the way back to Pittsburgh Landing just in case the "phantom rebel cavalry force" should appear. In this case, after holding left and right flanks, the Hornet's Nest section opened. Because one Reb infantry brigade had broken through my lines and simply left the rest of his forces behind to dash for the Hornet's Nest, the 3 reinforcement brigades I got had to defend the Hornet's Nest from this lone rouge brigade. This wasn't really difficult, because since the rouge brigade had to melee its way through my lines and then ran all the way to the Hornet's Nest to try to get their on time, they must have been completely spent by the time they nearly got there. But they didn't even have a chance to get one foot into the nest when my reinforcements arrived there, and after a single volley, it went skedaddling off. So I left one brigade in the nest and sent the other two to confront the rouge brigade and push him out of the way for the rest of my force, which I was currently trying to disengage from the first 4 flags in some semblance of order, when suddenly Pittsburgh Landing opened. So in this situation, I'm supposed to be thinking of withdrawing troops from my middle position, where only one rouge brigade in very poor condition is near by--and that really only per chance--to back to the last flag. I'm sorry, one has to do a lot of mental gymnastics to try to defend that logic. If this is such a know issue that it actually has it's own name ("phantom rebel cavalry force"), it's pretty sad that it hasn't been fixed.

Thanks for the elaborate replay LAVA. One of the biggest issues I was having, was trying to play catch-up. I started playing a campaign I had started months before, and didn't have a well built army. I had some pretty bad battles and just couldn't get up to strength really. Looking at the YT channels you suggested, it seems that Benjamin Magnus Games has the best grasp of the game. The History Guy obviously doesn't understand some of the concepts, although he isn't bad, but I'll not be looking at his play for advice. The one major thing about BMG, especially in the late war battles, he's got his army build to the max. 2500 man brigades in every division mostly with the best weapons, if not simply very good weapons, with some few brigades setup with Spencers, IIRC. Basically he's simply erasing the enemy anywhere they stop to fight. A few volleys from 7500 rifles and a defending brigade simply melts away. Rinse and repeat. From what I've watched, after the opening phase of the battle he simply leaves his artillery behind, not even trying to bring it along, because it would simply slow him down, so the rest of the battle he's wiping out artillery units with rifle fire with near impunity. While his brigades take 5 or 10 hits from artillery, 2 or three rifle brigades take the battery under fire, causing 100+ kills with each volley. In short, BMG wins every battle in the barracks long before the first shot is fired, which is how you're supposed to fight a war. Thumbs up to him.

[rant] Sometimes this game just makes me want to throw my computer against the wall!!!! I started a new campaign and I'm in Shiloh. I've held the onslaught of Rebs back so well that they haven't captured a single target by the time Pittsburgh Landing opens. And then a lone CS cavalry captures the Pittsburgh Landing flag and the battle is over!!!! WTF!!!! [/rant] Observation: If I have to attack and have a certain amount of time to take several flags and don't manage to do that, game over, too bad for me. If the AI doesn't manage, ah, well that doesn't matter, because... no reason, unless the AI needs special help. BTW something I've been meaning to mention, cavalry ranging around the battlefield is one thing, but lone brigades miles from the next friendly unit, where I have seen this happen in reality?... Oh, yeah, nowhere. Because the best way to have a small formation destroyed is for it to be all alone on the battlefield. A small formation all alone has no lines of communication, no way to ask for support, and no way for it to get there if anything where to encounter the enemy. There's something called mutual support. It's a thing because it works, and without it, you're just asking to be destroyed. Men understand this. If you actually did this in reality, even before seeing any enemy men will start to get nervous, because they can hear the roar of the nearby battle and know the enemy is about. At the first sighting of an enemy formation you'll see your formation start to falter, because men don't want to die for nothing. I'm not talking about being holed up in a fortified position. I'M talking about out in the field far from any supporting units, something I see all the time in this game. This should not be a thing. If a brigade makes a breach in the line, it should be attacking the flanks of the enemy, and not running for the flag. This isn't American Football. There's no touchdown in war. Suggestion: In a multi-part battle, unless ALL the AI has captured ALL the flags, the scenario should not end, the same way, if I don't capture all the flags, I can't win.

If I could prevent the catastrophic losses I'm constantly suffering I'd probably do better at building up my army These RTS games are really not my thing. While I'm concentrating on one area, so I know when to charge my melee troops in, or prevent brigades from being slaughtered, elsewhere everything is going to hell. The other thing the bugs the heck out of me, is that, especially on very large maps with lots and lots of woods, the enemy is constantly sending single brigades of infantry on suicide mission to capture some mission objective far behind my lines just before time runs out. So I've nearly wiped out the enemy army at the main objectives, but I lose or get a draw, because some rouge brigade is sitting way back behind the lines, waiting for me to turn a corps around and wipe it out... but oh, the clock just ran out

What do you mean by a "tier"? What does "harvest 'extra' XP" mean? The only thing I can figure is, if a Brigade lead by a Bde.Gen. has **75/100 (Experience bar tool-tip), you could replace him with a leader with less experience, while still maintain the two stars, and thus the training perks. Then take this highly experienced leader and give him to a unit with less experience to push it to gain an extra star. You might be able to get a few units an extra star, and thus an extra training bonus, but ultimately you're just shifting experience around. Where does the "extra" experience come in?

This is what I've figured out so far. This comes close, but it's not exact. Find out what Efficiency number new recruits get by building a brigade (you may have to make a save beforehand and reload it later to not mess up your army organization). Since I only just started looking into this, I've gotten new recruits with an Efficiency number of 13 after one battle, and 15 after the next. It didn't matter which corps or division I dropped this new Brigade into, their Efficiency number stayed the same. Find the unmodified Efficiency number of the Brigade you want to reinforce (subtract bonuses for unit training etc.--just look at the tool-tips of the training bonus) to get the unmodified Efficiency number. Calculate the Efficiency-Pool of the Brigade by multiplying the unmodified Efficiency number by the number of men to get the Efficiency-Pool. EG a Brigade with 1000 men with an unmodified Efficiency of 100 have an Efficiency-Pool of 100,000. Now when you add new recruits to this Brigade you get a lower Efficiency. Example: Recruit Efficiency-Pool: 500 x (15 x 2)* = 15,000 * Why the "x 2" is necessary I don't know, but it makes the calculation work, of comes very close to being exact, and without the "x 2" the calculation is way off. Veteran Brigade Efficiency-Pool with 1500 men and unmodified Efficiency 37: 1500 x 37 (-5 from listed Efficiency because Efficiency Cource training adds 5 to Efficiency) = 55,500 New size of Brigade: 1500 + 500 = 2000 New Efficiency-Pool: 55,500 + 15,000 = 70,500 / 2000 = 35 (35.25). The real value is 36, but this is as close as I've come so far. The other (bigger) problem is the Experience loss. In this example the Brigade starts with **28/100 (tool-tip) and ends with *96/100. To maintain the training perks you cannot reduce experience lower than **0/100, and in this case that means not more than 427 non-Veteran recruits. So, how to calculate how many Veterans and Rookies to add to the Brigade so that the Brigade does not lose an Experience bonus without having to fidget around with it.

Okay, what I didn't think of at first is that when you add veterans first to a brigade, they will cost more per man, but when adding rookies, the pool of veterans will be larger, and thus you will be diluting the brigade less, so you don't need to add as many veterans--less cost--to maintain the same level. I'm still trying to figure out how to calculate in advance without having to Trail-n-Error™ the heck out if it per brigade. Grimthaur said the cost of veterans is based on "(displayed exp - leaderexp)" but I have no idea what this means. I'm sure the unit's experience bar does not determine the cost of veterans, because if I have a Brigade lead by a Bde.Gen. and the unit has 3 stars with 43 experience to next level, and put a Major in charge, the unit's experience bar goes down to (still 3 stars) 16 experience to next level, but veterans do not cost any different. And some things simply don't make real sense to me. Trading leaders from higher rank with more experience, to lower rank with less experience changes the unit's experience(!!). Why should the unit's experience level go down, just because the leader is less experienced? Anyway, I'm still looking for what the cost of veterans is connected with.

Since I've almost only been playing the Federal side of things, maybe I'm missing something, but how are you giving traits to the CS leaders? About Longstreet and Jackson. Jackson trained and expected his men to be fast movers. He ordered them to leave everything in camp they didn't absolutely need so they weren't burdened by extra weight--I could look for the quote if you wish--and he marched them close to their limits. Until they were used to such hard marching, many fell out of formation on longer hard marches. But eventually they were trained to keep up with Jackson's pace. Longstreet has often been assessed as being talented at setting up defensive positions. However, IIRC, it was Jackson who prepared the defenses at Fredericksburg, of course Longstreet was in NC at the time, but I've heard the defensive positions Jackson prepared described as far ahead of their time. Jackson "earned" his moniker from his defense on Henry Hill at First Manassas. It is however debatable, whether Bernard Bee's using the term was praise for his standing-fast, or derogatory, because Bee had been begging Jackson to come to his aid at the foot of Henry Hill, and Jackson refused to move from his position. But since Bee was killed on his retreat from there, and people hear what they want to hear, Jackson became Stonewall. But again, he understood that his position on Henry Hill was the best defensive position possible and was able to maintain it, but often by receiving reinforcements just in time. Jackson was also know for has actions in the Shenandoah Valley during McClellan's Peninsula Campaign. With a smaller force he marched them hard from point to point, attacking sometimes larger forces and driving them back. IIRC overall his force was outnumbered nearly 4-1, but his speed and audacity allowed him to deal with each of the Federal forces peace meal. Often he pressed attacks which were very costly in casualties, but ultimately succeeded. Longstreet and Jackson only fought together on the same battlefield in a major battle two times that I can think of; Antietam and 2nd Manassas. And at 2nd Manassas, Jackson made his infamous flanking march, not to attack Pope's army, but to take the Manassas depot and then setup a defensive position, where he remained the rest of the battle. It was Longstreet's wing of the army that did the attacking. Jackson was very aggressive; it was his strategy to knock the enemy on their heals and once he dislodged them from a position to press them hard and never let them regain a defensive position before driving them from the field, killing as many as he could in the process. Longstreet understood defensive positions, but also to recognize where a weakness might be found and exploited. At Chickamauga Longstreet was simply lucky that Wood's division was erroneously pulled from the line right at the time Longstreet attacked. But during the Seven Days Battles it was Longstreet who did most of the hardest fighting, IIRC. So I really couldn't say either was better on the defensive or offensive. Both excelled equally well at both. Where they differed was in Jackson's aggressiveness. He was willing to trade excessive blood for ground to gain a tactical advantage. I can't think of anywhere that Longstreet did so voluntarily.

Damn! I didn't know I'd need to learn differential calculus to play this game ... Thanks for the answer Quicksabre. it is of course correct that since adding veterans to a brigade doesn't change any of its stats, but if I know in advance exactly how many rookie and how many veterans I would be adding to a brigade, it would possibly be cheaper, because adding the rookies first possibly lowers the experience of the unit, which would then possibly lower the cost of veterans. So, one would be paying experience for money.

Actually, I wouldn't be getting any officers. In fact, I had already lost two in just that one division. I would simply be making good use of the few officers and troops I have.

that's kind of sad. This game has only be out of beta for a few months.

I know. I thought I was clear in my previous posts. I want to combine a brigade, which has lost its leader, with a brigade which has a leader, so that the leader of the brigade with a leader is leading all the men of both brigades. I know that currently the combined-brigade is put under the command of the divisional commander. I'm arguing for being able to put the combined brigade under the command of the highest ranking leader of the two combined brigades, especially if there is only one leader between the two brigades. IF the combined-brigade and no leader at all, then it would make sense for the division commander to take command. But before that, there is a brigade commander who can do the job.

I know how to do the combining. My biggest issue is that I would like to create more than 1 combined brigade within one division.

Hi Grimthaur, thanks for your reply and info. So if I were going to add both veterans and inexperienced replacements, it would be better to add the inexperienced replacements first, because it will lower the experience of the brigade, making the veterans possibly cost less.

In July '61 the Federal Army was still trying to catch up to requirements in every way. So brigades were very often lead by full colonels and divisions by brigadiers. I could go on and on about how efforts to sort out good from bad leaders was taking place, and cases where good leaders were being sorted out, while bad leaders were advanced through political and personal agendas. But that's not the subject I'm focusing on. The game assumes that when a brigade leader is killed or wounded, that basically nobody takes command, or that whichever inherent leader who takes command is always completely incompetent to fulfill the role. This is historically not the case. The quality of many leaders shined through in exactly such cases. But I'm not requesting to spontaneously generate a good leader coming to light per random chance either. I'm also not asking to create "super brigades". I am asking to merge the command of a brigade missing a leader into a brigade with a leader while staying within the allowed size of brigades per the rules. I don't want to cheat nor circumvent reason nor logic nor reality.