Early victory on 2nd Bull Run?

[Wandering1]

Was it supposed to be possible to end the mission before Longstreet's Corps even makes it to the battlefield? Just did 2nd Bull Run doing the much less bloody option of swinging everything around the left flank, and the mission ended before any real fights began.

I mean, I'll take the 300k money and 13k recruits for barely any casualties, but still doesn't seem right that a major battle can be ended this simply.

[Koro]

It is too easy atm for sure for both sides actually. I made a rather long winded post about it a while ago, I'll see if I can find it. 

[Wandering1]

On my CSA playthrough, it was actually a quite long battle because I was actually using the fortifications instead of falling back to the trees. Didn't wipe out the Union army because I had too much ground to cover before the battle ended.

[Koro]

As CSA you only need to inflict more than 5 % of the casualties suffered so it isn't even necessary to counterattack. Causing 5% more casualties is pretty much default in that battle and as such, you just have to man the barricades with all of the reinforcements as well and watch the union die. I think that's really unfortunate, especially as the game tells you to attack the various places but it isn't even necessary. If you Henry Hill you still to inflict 5% more casualties so the 2nd victory condition is completely redundant. 

[Koro]

Since the post the union deployment zone has been reduced. 

[Wandering1]

It isn't necessary to counter-attack, if you're just looking to win, but basically I consider mastery of the map to mean complete destruction of all enemy units in the time limit (which, sometimes, the time limit is... quite restrictive, let's put it that way).

For my Union playthrough, so far, I've only been able to completely destroy the enemy on some of the minor battles, 1st Bull Run, Shiloh, and Malvern. Malvern actually had 15 in-game minutes left on the clock.

[Hitorishizuka]

1 hour ago, Wandering1 said:

I mean, I'll take the 300k money and 13k recruits for barely any casualties, but still doesn't seem right that a major battle can be ended this simply.

Well, you achieved the tactical victory and forced them off the field. That said, below a certain level of casualties you're actually hurting yourself because you didn't take the opportunity to blood your troops. Experience is more valuable than money and men after a certain point.

The flipside, of course, is not to be overzealous in pursuing them if they've retreated to good ground and you'd do more harm than good in trying to wipe them out.

[Wandering1]

1 minute ago, Hitorishizuka said:

Well, you achieved the tactical victory and forced them off the field. That said, below a certain level of casualties you're actually hurting yourself because you didn't take the opportunity to blood your troops. Experience is more valuable than money and men after a certain point.

The flipside, of course, is not to be overzealous in pursuing them if they've retreated to good ground and you'd do more harm than good in trying to wipe them out.

The point in this case, is that I actually wanted to keep fighting, but the battle ended prematurely. In the future, I would have to skirt the VP just to intentionally drag the battle out to get experience.

[A. P. Hill]

Geeze, as CSA, I just had my ass handed to me and lost my campaign at this point.    I'll have to try the fancy moved above mentioned next go round.

[Hitorishizuka]

1 minute ago, Wandering1 said:

The point in this case, is that I actually wanted to keep fighting, but the battle ended prematurely. In the future, I would have to skirt the VP just to intentionally drag the battle out to get experience.

Well, half that was in this case you did a rather unnecessary wide flank that either caught them completely out of position or forced them to withdraw without shooting. After the initial engagements their center and center-right are actually pretty weak and can be pushed straight through.

1 minute ago, A. P. Hill said:

Geeze, as CSA, I just had my ass handed to me and lost my campaign at this point.    I'll have to try the fancy moved above mentioned next go round.

You lost as CSA? Er...yeah I'd need to know more to help you there. Were you using the forward fortifications for some reason?

[clench]

2 minutes ago, A. P. Hill said:

Geeze, as CSA, I just had my ass handed to me and lost my campaign at this point.    I'll have to try the fancy moved above mentioned next go round.

You can play the map as intended, using the fixed cover, etc and have a pretty easy time..

 

But the treeline on the hill is massive. You can park your entire line up there and the AI won't be able to do anything since they have to climb up the hill under fire and then trade with your entire army in 100% cover. 

[A. P. Hill]

Welp, so much for playing historically where Jackson's troops held the railroad embankment against odds. 

[Wandering1]

2 minutes ago, Hitorishizuka said:

Well, half that was in this case you did a rather unnecessary wide flank that either caught them completely out of position or forced them to withdraw without shooting. After the initial engagements their center and center-right are actually pretty weak and can be pushed straight through.

You lost as CSA? Er...yeah I'd need to know more to help you there. Were you using the forward fortifications for some reason?

It may be unnecessary, but I believe the point in terms of reducing casualties was not to walk up the center and the right where you're stuck in open cover, and spending a lot of supply on guys in cover.

[Hitorishizuka]

4 minutes ago, A. P. Hill said:

Welp, so much for playing historically where Jackson's troops held the railroad embankment against odds. 

As is the usual refrain, fortifications are a trap. The forward fortifications happen to be a double trap.

1 minute ago, Wandering1 said:

It may be unnecessary, but I believe the point in terms of reducing casualties was not to walk up the center and the right where you're stuck in open cover, and spending a lot of supply on guys in cover.

After you crush the first brigades that moved forward to the railroad line they don't actually have anything left in the center. You take the center-right fields cover basically for free and use that as a salient to get into the trees and split the forces. The battle still ends soon after as you start moving down the treeline but you'll have killed 2/3rd of their force in the meantime outside of the skeleton guard in the left forest.

[Wandering1]

1 minute ago, Hitorishizuka said:

As is the usual refrain, fortifications are a trap. The forward fortifications happen to be a double trap.

After you crush the first brigades that moved forward to the railroad line they don't actually have anything left in the center. You take the center-right fields cover basically for free and use that as a salient to get into the trees and split the forces. The battle still ends soon after as you start moving down the treeline but you'll have killed 2/3rd of their force in the meantime outside of the skeleton guard in the left forest.

Kind of sad that if you can basically crush Jackson's Corp without incurring a boatload of casualties, you would intentionally leave one unit alive so the map doesn't prematurely end, and you would spawn-camp Longstreet's Corp. Wonder if you would have time to set up cannons in a fashion to instantly canister Longstreet's corp as soon as they walk on the map.

[Hitorishizuka]

20 minutes ago, Wandering1 said:

Kind of sad that if you can basically crush Jackson's Corp without incurring a boatload of casualties, you would intentionally leave one unit alive so the map doesn't prematurely end, and you would spawn-camp Longstreet's Corp. Wonder if you would have time to set up cannons in a fashion to instantly canister Longstreet's corp as soon as they walk on the map.

I am not 100% certain because I've never seen it from the Union side but I don't think you can spawn camp them because Longstreet's Corps doesn't show up until the 2nd day and everyone is back into their starting positions, more or less. It would still be a joke because you can just hold that one stretch of forest that runs N-S at the center-left as well as maybe the town right there (maybe, the angle is going to be a bit weird, might be better to fall back from that) as well as rush units over to finish off the last forces of Jackson in case anyone from Longstreet just runs over there and hold the forest against them before they come.

Edited December 30, 2016 by Hitorishizuka

[Wandering1]

2 minutes ago, Hitorishizuka said:

I am not 100% certain because I've never seen it from the Union side but I don't think you can spawn camp them because Longstreet's Corps doesn't show up until the 2nd day and everyone is back into their starting positions, more or less. It would still be a joke because you can just hold that one stretch of forest that runs N-S at the center-left as well as maybe the town right there (maybe, the angle is going to be a bit weird, might be better to fall back from that) as well as rush units over to finish off the last forces of Jackson in case anyone from Longstreet just runs over there and hold the forest against them before they come.

Well, since I didn't see Longstreet's Corps spawn due to the early victory, I was under the impression the reinforcements spawn as soon (or shortly after) as your main line corps spawn (as you might notice from the screenshot above, my 2nd and 3rd Corps that formed the main line didn't even spawn before the battle ended). As long as you never let Jackson's Corps enter the trees and sit in there, it would be trivial to grind down Jackson's corps if you had your main line units also.

[KaleRaven]

1 hour ago, Hitorishizuka said:

I am not 100% certain because I've never seen it from the Union side but I don't think you can spawn camp them because Longstreet's Corps doesn't show up until the 2nd day and everyone is back into their starting positions, more or less. It would still be a joke because you can just hold that one stretch of forest that runs N-S at the center-left as well as maybe the town right there (maybe, the angle is going to be a bit weird, might be better to fall back from that) as well as rush units over to finish off the last forces of Jackson in case anyone from Longstreet just runs over there and hold the forest against them before they come.

If you play as the Union, the Longstreet does show up mid battle, a couple hours after the Union 2nd corps enters the battle. Actually, I tried placing a division in those woods once (when I was intentionally dragging the battle out). The cover was good, but oddly Longstreet's brigades all noticeably outranged my own. It was on Hard and they were all 3 star brigades, so it may be that they all had the +10% range bonus, but it meant I took many more casualties than I would have liked.

Edited December 30, 2016 by KaleRaven

[Wandering1]

On 12/30/2016 at 0:53 PM, Hitorishizuka said:

I am not 100% certain because I've never seen it from the Union side but I don't think you can spawn camp them because Longstreet's Corps doesn't show up until the 2nd day and everyone is back into their starting positions, more or less. It would still be a joke because you can just hold that one stretch of forest that runs N-S at the center-left as well as maybe the town right there (maybe, the angle is going to be a bit weird, might be better to fall back from that) as well as rush units over to finish off the last forces of Jackson in case anyone from Longstreet just runs over there and hold the forest against them before they come.

As a follow on, just tried this on my max size Union playthrough. Turns out you can spawn camp Longstreet's reinforcements, but since it's in the open, you basically have to use all of your vanguard that was supposed to hit their left flank to properly contain them. They spawn shortly after the main corps arrive, so there's no chance you can use the reinforcements to spawn camp Longstreet. It's amusing to see a bunch of squads immediately flee from getting canistered by 24 pdrs though.

Afterwards, mop up of Longstreet's corp will likely take long enough for the rest of your forces to hit the field, so you can hit Jackson's corp with basically everything. Of note, it does beg the question of whether the 'optimizations' that were done on Fredericksburg should probably be done on 2nd Bull Run. My computer started slowing down when I was fighting Longstreet's corp and still duking it out with Jackson's corp.

[Andre Bolkonsky]

I can confirm a premature ending to Second Bull Run, inexplicably and for no reason. 

Edited January 9, 2017 by Andre Bolkonsky

[Commander_Rahl]

On 12/30/2016 at 3:24 PM, A. P. Hill said:

Welp, so much for playing historically where Jackson's troops held the railroad embankment against odds. 

It's very possible to hold the left flank, and the railroad track embankment.   Just expect a tough fight.   Be sure to leave some strength in the rear, and on your right flank is you choose to do this.   But those tracks can be held the whole fight if your placement is sound.   Even on hard difficulty.

[RoverGrover]

Does everybody really hate the forward fortifications?  I found them really easy to hold and took very small amounts of casualties. My artillery wrecked them horribly and they never managed a unified attack at all. I think all my batteries had like 6k kills and my ts whitworths were same. 

I might have to try the woods next time just to change it up and see if I can improve performance. 

[Wright29]

I defended the second line of entrenchments and didn't bother with the rail line of fortifications. The second line gives your artillery/ melee cav/ infantry reserve lots of space to deploy and plenty of open field for the Union to cross in front of the fortifications. I've found the problem with the rail fortifications is on the North end of the map, there is way too much cover for the Union to attack with. The forces in those fortifications end up taking as many casualties as they give out. 

[Wandering1]

As another follow-on, it turns out you want to delay until the 3rd day, because there are even MORE reinforcements to kill.

Among other things I learned when encircling these guys, it looks like surrenders can happen without melee contact. I tend to think the surrenders are probably just doing enough morale damage beyond a certain threshold (maybe -25?).

 

[Wandering1]

Another note would be look at how high those unit stats are, and this is on normal. Just think about what these guys are on hard.