Corps Balancing?

[Stonewall47]

So, I have read some things about players only using a single corps for most of the game. I am guilty of this also, so I wanted to float some ideas about how to make the whole army viable. I fully understand that the caveat right now is the scaling, but Nick and Devs have said that's being addressed!

1) Random "blitz" missions - I am thinking these come up after a smaller battle where only one corps is used. Another corps, not previously used is automatically thrown into a skirmish. The AI army should be scaled in this instance and a handful of randomized scenarios could work. For example, hold this hill, ambush an enemy brigade, capture this town, protect point for "X" amount of time. I don't know how difficult that is on the technical side, but could be worth it. We are playing the same battles over and over again, anyway, so there doesn't really need to be a ton of variation in the random maps. 4-5 will do. 

2) Maybe create a side set of missions where a corps needs to be dispatched to a different theater. I'm thinking Longstreet in Tennessee, historically. Lets say you are fighting the Peninsular Campaign, but before the large battle, you need to dispatch a corps to help hold a rail junction that could out flank another army. Again, scaling would be mildly appropriate, along with a window of time to complete the mission. With that window, if player A doesn't have a second corps, but wants the benefits of that victory, maybe they play a skirmish and create one. Again, the player would be unable to dispatch their first corps. 

3) I would guess this would require a slight re-working of the AI XP progression, but if that was scaled back a little bit, then other corps could be rotated without feeling like the player is losing the "teeth" of their army. I would love to have 1 or 2 elite brigades that are in my 2nd or 3rd corps, but because the AI is throwing 2 star brigades at me after Bull Run, I feel like I can't risk the mismatch. 

These are just a few ideas I had!

Please leave any other suggestions or feel free to poke holes in mine! Still loving the game devs!

[vren55]

I see what you mean, but at the same time... I don't think it's as big a problem as you frame it. Yes you could win by using a single corps... but that would mean the veterancy of your army gets so concentrated the rest of your army is weakened... I also used a mostly one corps approach that worked well in 2nd Bull Run, but when I got to Antietam... it kinda bit me in the ass a bit b/c my 3rd corps was so crap that I needed to pull men from my 2nd and 1st corps to help them take Stone Bridge. 

That being said. I love those ideas. They are just fun and interesting mission ideas that could simulate what it means to be a real general.

[JaM]

I think it would be a good idea if certain small battles were linked  together, and would require you to assign your forces up front. This way, you would have to fight these battles with different units, as single Corps couldnt be at all those places simultaneously anyway.. there are few battles out there which are fought at different places practically same time (few days difference)

[Don't Escrow Taxes]

the game could force you to use your other corps on certain side missions.. like the union for example right before 2nd bull run, those side missions are back to back days if i recall correctly, but you can use the same divisions in both battles. 

[Lif]

Would be hard to balance these ideas I think.

[Stonewall47]

8 hours ago, Lif said:

Would be hard to balance these ideas I think.

I don't think they could all be incorporated. Just some different ideas that maybe could work!

 

8 hours ago, Don't Escrow Taxes said:

the game could force you to use your other corps on certain side missions.. like the union for example right before 2nd bull run, those side missions are back to back days if i recall correctly, but you can use the same divisions in both battles. 

That's kind of what I am thinking. The only "problem" would be making sure that there is a second corps available. 

 

13 hours ago, vren55 said:

I see what you mean, but at the same time... I don't think it's as big a problem as you frame it.

I don't think that it's by any means game breaking, I just think it may add some incentive to using the entire army.

[Koro]

Yeah, I think it would be cool if you had to deploy divisions for the side missions in advance, then fight them and then those divisions would be the ones coming in as reinforcements. It would give some sort of reason that the units are coming in as reinforcements other than just because. I mean, usually reinforcements came in because they were in a different area at the time the battle started. 

[JaM]

yes, precisely what i meant.. these side missions/minor battles could be linked more to the main battle, and player would have to manage his forces to participate in all of them, to get full prestige/money/manpower..

 

 

[Destruct1]

While it sounds cool these ideas can backfire tremendously. Imagine that you need to commit 3 corps to 3 different battles up front and realize in the 3rd battle that you overcommited on the second battle and undercommited on the third. Now you need to replay all 3 battles.

A complaint I heard fairly often was that the assignment of troops can only be done well if you know the battle. If you know Antitiam as the Confederates you put 11 good brigades  and all your cav to the top Corp, a few brigades to the south Corp and the main bulk in the middle Corp. If you never played the battle you might be tempted to split your army in 3 equal parts. This is disastrous because it traps valueable troops in the souther part of the battlefield. Similar in gaines mill: You put almost all troops into the "frontal attack" Corps and barely use the flanking opportunity. If you think flanking sound cool you spend valuable time waiting for the useless Corps.

Strategic campaign decision have the potential to be frustrating newbie traps.

[JaM]

True, yet even if you don't know the battle, you know optimum brigade requirement, therefore should be able to determine how many units you need to commit to each battle.  (and you can simply move brigades from one Corps to another)

Right now, once you have 3 Corps available, you end up using 1st Corps in every battle, while 2nd and 3rd only in the main battle.

 

 

[RobWheat61]

I certainly don't need any incentives to use my full army, but it's a great idea because it would force the player to put much more thought into troop deployment and strategy at the beginning of each campaign (Peninsula, Western, Maryland etc.). +1

In the last two minor battles before Antietam and usually the last minor battle before 2nd Bull Run I deploy my 2nd Corps to bloody them and give them some experience. Between 2nd Bull Run and Antietam my 1st Corps veterans don't fire a single shot, no matter wether I play Union or CSA. This strategy is even more relevant on hard difficulty as you have less money, to replace veterans and buy weapons.

@Destruct1 Antietam and Gaines Mill are perfectly doable with other strategies and deployments and far from disastrous .

[General Hancock]

5 hours ago, Destruct1 said:

While it sounds cool these ideas can backfire tremendously. Imagine that you need to commit 3 corps to 3 different battles up front and realize in the 3rd battle that you overcommited on the second battle and undercommited on the third. Now you need to replay all 3 battles.

A complaint I heard fairly often was that the assignment of troops can only be done well if you know the battle. If you know Antitiam as the Confederates you put 11 good brigades  and all your cav to the top Corp, a few brigades to the south Corp and the main bulk in the middle Corp. If you never played the battle you might be tempted to split your army in 3 equal parts. This is disastrous because it traps valueable troops in the souther part of the battlefield. Similar in gaines mill: You put almost all troops into the "frontal attack" Corps and barely use the flanking opportunity. If you think flanking sound cool you spend valuable time waiting for the useless Corps.

Strategic campaign decision have the potential to be frustrating newbie traps.

I guess I can see why you would want to know how to better place your units in order to win but doesn't that obfuscate the reason for playing the game in some ways? Let's face it, I already know who wins. 

[Speedkermit]

I tend to use my 1st and 2nd corps alternately in the minor battles, so as to give some experience to all my brigades. It's also a little immersion thing I just like to do, and give the men in my 1st corp some respite

[Hitorishizuka]

19 hours ago, JaM said:

True, yet even if you don't know the battle, you know optimum brigade requirement, therefore should be able to determine how many units you need to commit to each battle.  (and you can simply move brigades from one Corps to another)

Right now, once you have 3 Corps available, you end up using 1st Corps in every battle, while 2nd and 3rd only in the main battle.

 

Not quite as presented. Antietam has spots for 20 brigades in all 3 spots, there were definitely people on here who put scrubs up North and their best troops in the Center which didn't work out so well for them. (I would actually recommend that you don't need veterans, just large brigades, the AI seems charge happy recently for whatever reason and you can't defend charges of 3000 men with only 800 men veteran brigades.)