Please lower the number of casualties

[Speedkermit]

With regard to the issue with so many casualties, and I think this relates also to the scaling issue.

While the player must carefully look after his core units, the AI has no such obligation. Which is why the AI Leeroys wave after wave of men at the player with no regard to casualties as it starts the next battle with a full strength army no matter what happens.. This breaks immersion, as well as resulting in the massive bloodbaths that we are seeing. Units tend to carry on fighting long after they are combat ineffective.

I want to be fighting against American civil war generals using period tactics, not soviet era human wave tactics.

Edited December 8, 2016 by Speedkermit

[Andre Bolkonsky]

The reason why casualties are so much higher in this game than on the battlefield is game commanders in general, and the AI in particular, ask their troops to do things you never see on a real battlefield. 

For example, get the AI dangerously close to losing, and they'll just Urra! their troops en masse across the battlefield and roll the dice. You shred 40% of them, then break due to the weight of numbers. 

You think real troops are going to walk slowly into canister shot? Only here and in Westworld is that going to happen; bring your behavior tablets with you when you get to the battlefield, the morale buff is incredible!

Like the rest of the game, it can stand some balancing and tweaking, but it is what it is. 

Edited December 9, 2016 by Andre Bolkonsky

[Alavaria]

What the AI doesn't know is when all its soldiers die your guys get experience from the turkey shoot and you pick up the dropped guns.

Either that or you've trapped its soldiers against the side of the map so it can't do anything either way

Edited December 10, 2016 by Alavaria

[Koro]

4 minutes ago, Alavaria said:

What the AI doesn't know is when all its soldiers die your guys get experience from the turkey shoot and you pick up the dropped guns.

Either that or you've trapped its soldiers against the side of the map so it can't do anything either way

This is always a problem in strategy games, isn't it? In total war, the fact that the player can completely wipe out AI armies is compensated for with the AI spamming a lot more troops than could otherwise be afforded 

[Alavaria]

Yes, instead of AI scaling, you complain about stack spam.

[Koro]

2 minutes ago, Alavaria said:

Yes, instead of AI scaling, you complain about stack spam.

Not sure I follow :). 

[GS_Guderian]

My casulties up to Antietam, heavily using save games while learning the game and deployment system.

Edith says: No slaughtering of the AI after the finish button appeared.

Edited December 12, 2016 by GS_Guderian

[RobWheat61]

On 25.11.2016 at 6:57 AM, Don't Escrow Taxes said:

The problem is, at the end of the day, it is hard to feel like you are accomplishing anything by racking up victory after victory in the campaign.  This is because the AI army scales with you and the very large casualty rates make me feel like i am not making any progress.

That is certainly not how I see it. How you use your limited resources, all your decisions in the army camp screen, which units you deploy in battle, your battle tactics etc. pp.

All these things give me a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment, if it works out in the next battle. Upscaling doesn't take anything away from that. On the contrary, because I know this mechanism is in place, I can be relatively sure that the next battle will be as challeging or hopefully more challeging as the last one.

about casualties: I think a lot  of the casualties derive from the fact, that the AI can't withdraw from the battlefield, when it is in fact already beaten. The following encirclement and annihilation of the AI troops is very often responsible for a good part of the casualty numbers mostly in the AI controlled army, imo.

Edited December 11, 2016 by RobWheat61

[James Cornelius]

First off, I think it's important to realize that the game uses "casualties" to account for killed and wounded. In the Civil War, many relatively minor wounds were quite severe, don't forget. And it was NOT uncommon for units to suffer 50% casualties in a bloody battle - this represented the men who were "not fit for duty" afterwards. However, despite this, many did make it back to the line some period after the battle. I think trying to scale down the casualties in battles is looking at it from the wrong end.

 

My counter-argument is that the Medicine feature in generals' career points might be underpowered. Currently each point gives 2% back. Should that perhaps be raised to indicate those only slightly wounded, but taken out of the battle while it is raging, returning to the fight? What if each point gave 3% back? Over 5 invested points, that's now 15% returning instead of 10%. I think that might be a step in the right direction, and along with the obvious benefit of retaining experienced troops, would help to make some other point investment strategies viable.

 

As a final aside, for any one really interested in casualty figures and pretty much anything else, I recommend the book "The Civil War Book of Lists" from Castle Books. Has some handy information.

[Alavaria]

2 hours ago, James Cornelius said:

My counter-argument is that the Medicine feature in generals' career points might be underpowered. Currently each point gives 2% back. Should that perhaps be raised to indicate those only slightly wounded, but taken out of the battle while it is raging, returning to the fight? What if each point gave 3% back? Over 5 invested points, that's now 15% returning instead of 10%. I think that might be a step in the right direction, and along with the obvious benefit of retaining experienced troops, would help to make some other point investment strategies viable.

I think the one that gives you just more cash and recruits and the one that gives you cheaper veterans is probably better by far than the medicine one, really.

[James Cornelius]

2 minutes ago, Alavaria said:

I think the one that gives you just more cash and recruits and the one that gives you cheaper veterans is probably better by far than the medicine one, really.

That is part of my point, but not really the issue I was addressing.

[Alavaria]

It's about how the benefits of mecidine accrue specifically to things you lose, if you're careful and only lose rookies being used as bullet catchers and carefully coddle your real killers then it's not that great. It's interesting because if buffed it would help people who lose a lot of veteran men, which... yeah....

Edited December 12, 2016 by Alavaria