When I say hold, I MEAN IT!

[Hobo]

OK, I have developed a pet peeve in this game.  I maneuver my brigades in to tactically superior positions at critical points with 80+ cover and they will not stay there.  My skirmishers  retreat when the enemy advances even though they can get in several shots before being put at any risk.  My infantry will follow retreating enemy out in to the open and often in to an ambush where they get flanked by enemy on both sides of the retreating brigade.  Also, I have noticed if you put two brigades side by side in an area of cover that has overlap between the brigades, they seem to take it upon themselves to move sideways with one or both of them leaving the heavy cover.  I kind of understand this one but it sure is frustrating.  When the BG tells my guys to hold, I really mean it! perhaps I need to hire smarter brigade leaders.

[_Masterviolin]

Perhaps the mechanic is supposed to be designed to imitate how individual brigade commanders maneuver their own men both in competence, and incompetence. Realistically, brigades did not follow every single nitpicky order given by their general; there was no position micromanagement in that time period.

[jimcarrel]

I think at was maybe two patches ago that code was amended to try to alleviate stacking two brigades together, I don't think it totally corrected it, but many times you can see it in action. A brigade will sometimes try to adjust itself to "not be in conflict" with the position of the other.

Your right about when a brigade senses the enemy brigade about to break it will sometimes go headstrong push to get to them... 'tis the fruits of battle, you lose control and so do they. I kinda like it, I mean you did want something of an artificial intelligence. 

[Don't Escrow Taxes]

i do not mind the brigades shifting so they are not stacked onto each other, although the opponent seems to correct that stacking less than the auto-AI the players has.  I think it's a reasonable mechanic. 

skirmishers retreat, i think, because of the chance of being massacred by a volley if the linger in range too long.  So i think that retreat mechanic is reasonable. 

I agree on the brigade flowing forward after repulsing an enemy charge.  It has been argued they might be undisciplined and pursue the enemy, leaving the relative safety of their their cover or exposing their flanks.  I would argue they are thrilled the enemy is running away and might take a deep breath, counting their blessings to be alive and having survived the rebel yell and charge --- rather than pursue the enemy and exposing themselves to uncovered areas or flanking fire.  

Perhaps there is a compromise to be made here or the truth is somewhere in-between.  

For instance, I doubt the entire brigade would pursue the repulsed enemy - i imagine the troops nearest the combat would be more likely to pursue than others in the unit's rear.  

Also, I would think more disciplined / veteran troops would be less likely to pursue and more likely to follow the commanding officer's instructions. 

If there is a mechanic in the game that makes it less likely the brigade will abandon its cover and expose itself after repulsing a melee charge if the brigade has a higher degree of veteran status, or damage taken is somewhat diminished via a formula that might taken into account not all troops in the brigade abandoning orders and pursuing the enemy,  then I will consider my objection answered.  

[Andre Bolkonsky]

17 hours ago, Hobo said:

OK, I have developed a pet peeve in this game.  I maneuver my brigades in to tactically superior positions at critical points with 80+ cover and they will not stay there.  My skirmishers  retreat when the enemy advances even though they can get in several shots before being put at any risk.  My infantry will follow retreating enemy out in to the open and often in to an ambush where they get flanked by enemy on both sides of the retreating brigade.  Also, I have noticed if you put two brigades side by side in an area of cover that has overlap between the brigades, they seem to take it upon themselves to move sideways with one or both of them leaving the heavy cover.  I kind of understand this one but it sure is frustrating.  When the BG tells my guys to hold, I really mean it! perhaps I need to hire smarter brigade leaders.

I feel your pain. 

The enemy runs in to melee you in your forest stronghold, and you chase the enemy out. Why? 

Needs to be addressed

 

[Aetius]

The problem with the brigade auto-adjustment is that it needs to be smarter. I've seen a brigade start sliding to one side ... where it promptly runs into another unit and then keeps sliding in the same direction. I've seen a unit move from one end of Henry Hill to the other in a continuous search for a space to call his own, which is something no brigade commander would ever do no matter how stupid they were. What needs to happen here is that if the adjustment would run into another unit on the other side, the brigade needs to then move "backwards" (i.e., away from the enemy, using the retreat algorithm) until it doesn't overlap any more. That way he remains more-or-less in the line, but doesn't overlap and interfere with other units.

What's even more intensely frustrating about this behavior is that I cannot order the right-step-march the AI is clearly doing, the one that every recruit learns in the first week of training. I instead have to tell the unit to wheel, exposing its flank, and then guess at the position which will be correct when it wheels back. To do the maneuver safely, I have to have the unit fall back and then move forward again, which is time-consuming, condition-consuming, micro-heavy, and a little silly. It would make things a lot simpler and easier if we could just tell the units to shift left or right a bit to clean up the line.

6 hours ago, Don't Escrow Taxes said:

skirmishers retreat, i think, because of the chance of being massacred by a volley if the linger in range too long.  So i think that retreat mechanic is reasonable.

I would, if the skirmishers would then follow-up and keep harassing the unit they've been told to attack. The frustrating part of this is that it's clear there's already behavior in the unit AI for this - you will sometimes see skirmisher or cavalry skirmisher units move up, fire, fall back, reload, and then move up again to repeat. The issue is that the skirmishers seem to "forget" their orders at some point, sometimes quickly and sometimes after a couple of rounds. This is especially bad in groups of skirmishers - they will all rush forward once, fire, fall back and then stop for no apparent reason, which is intensely annoying when you are pursuing an enemy unit and need them to keep moving to stay in range. And it's not a function of movement, because snipers have the same problem with "forgetting" their orders even though they aren't moving. Skirmishers also have a foolish habit of retreating into open ground, instead of sticking to cover.

12 hours ago, jimcarrel said:

Your right about when a brigade senses the enemy brigade about to break it will sometimes go headstrong push to get to them... 'tis the fruits of battle, you lose control and so do they. I kinda like it, I mean you did want something of an artificial intelligence. 

What happens in the game goes far beyond that. I've seen a charged unit pursue the routed chargers for miles, using all of their condition and charging alone into the enemy line as if they think they are supermen. I can see pursuing the enemy for fifty yards, because you lost your head - not halfway across the map, especially when such pursuit is clearly suicidal.

[JohnReynolds]

Making small adjustments to a brigade's position can be frustrating. There have been many times I have tried to move a brigade and clicked on a location that shows heavy cover only to find out that it stopped somewhere else with little or no cover. Once under fire the unit can't be moved without it taking flanking fire. Moving a unit back 5 meters shouldn't result in it losing a big percentage of its men and breaking.

[Fred Sanford]

I would like a potential solution that had the brigades "Guide" on each other.  This is how it was done historically.  Say there was a brigade that had the Division commander attached (maybe show a special icon or flag for that brigade), and then have a button for a "Guide" command that when activated would cause another brigade of that division to position itself to the left of the Div commander's brigade (clicking twice would align behind, three times to the right).  Doing this for subsequent brigades would 'daisy chain' them together, allowing for a coherent front or column formation until dismissed or routed.  This would provide incentive to keep divisions together, and cut down on micromanagement since once the division is aligned as such, you could command all of the brigades by moving the division commander's, and they'd move in sync.  This would also fix the stacking issues.  AI units should use this as a default, and it would have the effect of reducing piecemeal attacks.

Edited February 8, 2017 by Fred Sanford

[A. P. Hill]

As long as any player uses the HUD at the bottom of the screen and selects the whole division, he can then, using the right mouse button,  draw a line where he wants the division to form, and the game draws the green brigade rectangles along the length of the line and the units assemble with adequate spacing between and do not over lap.  Once you get the division arranged then you can shift units as needed.

[Aetius]

3 minutes ago, A. P. Hill said:

As long as any player uses the HUD at the bottom of the screen and selects the whole division, he can then, using the right mouse button,  draw a line where he wants the division to form, and the game draws the green brigade rectangles along the length of the line and the units assemble with adequate spacing between and do not over lap.  Once you get the division arranged then you can shift units as needed.

This is useful, until one of two things happen - the game decides that what you really want is for all of your brigades in the division to swap places in line as they move forward fifty yards, resulting in a chaotic mess, or you order the division to attack an enemy brigade, at which point they point themselves at the enemy brigade and squeeze together, almost instantly causing the center brigade(s) to start sliding.

[Jamesk2]

36 minutes ago, A. P. Hill said:

As long as any player uses the HUD at the bottom of the screen and selects the whole division, he can then, using the right mouse button,  draw a line where he wants the division to form, and the game draws the green brigade rectangles along the length of the line and the units assemble with adequate spacing between and do not over lap.  Once you get the division arranged then you can shift units as needed.

It would have been a welcomed feature if not for the fact that 90% of the time your units would crisscross each other on the way to the final position, especially when you're moving long distance, instead of keeping formation and taking the shortest path.

[Don't Escrow Taxes]

7 hours ago, Aetius said:

The problem with the brigade auto-adjustment is that it needs to be smarter. I've seen a brigade start sliding to one side ... where it promptly runs into another unit and then keeps sliding in the same direction... What needs to happen here is that if the adjustment would run into another unit on the other side, the brigade needs to then move "backwards" ... That way he remains more-or-less in the line, but doesn't overlap and interfere with other units.

What's even more intensely frustrating abut this behavior is that I cannot order the right-step-march the AI is clearly doing, the one that every recruit learns in the first week of training[...]

[re: skirmishers] The frustrating part of this is that it's clear there's already behavior in the unit AI for this - you will sometimes see skirmisher or cavalry skirmisher units move up, fire, fall back, reload, and then move up again to repeat. The issue is that the skirmishers seem to "forget" their orders [...]which is intensely annoying when you are pursuing an enemy unit and need them to keep moving to stay in range. [...]

What happens in the game goes far beyond that. I've seen a charged unit pursue the routed chargers for miles, using all of their condition and charging alone into the enemy line as if they think they are supermen. I can see pursuing the enemy for fifty yards, because you lost your head - not halfway across the map, especially when such pursuit is clearly suicidal.

Yeah, I feel you on this.  You are raising good points.  It would be great if there was a way to have them shift behind a friendly brigade instead of adjacent to.  Your point on how troops should have a command for this since the AI does it in this instance is also reasonable. 

Agree on the skirmisher pursuit, it would be nice if they kept up with a routing unit for example instead of stopping cold, and it would be nice if they kept firing instead of falling back, unless the unit they were targeted pivoted to deliver a volley.  As long as they're not taking fire it's hard to justify their retreating and then having to micro them over and over, you're right. 

I haven't seen one of my brigades pursue a repulsed brigade as far as you're saying but I believe you when you say you've run into it. 

Good reply here definitely hear what you are saying.

Edited February 8, 2017 by Don't Escrow Taxes

[Don't Escrow Taxes]

2 hours ago, Aetius said:

This is useful, until one of two things happen - the game decides that what you really want is for all of your brigades in the division to swap places in line as they move forward fifty yards, resulting in a chaotic mess, or you order the division to attack an enemy brigade, at which point they point themselves at the enemy brigade and squeeze together, almost instantly causing the center brigade(s) to start sliding.

Yeah, I've run into both of these issues before too 

[A. P. Hill]

7 hours ago, Aetius said:

This is useful, until one of two things happen - the game decides that what you really want is for all of your brigades in the division to swap places in line as they move forward fifty yards, resulting in a chaotic mess, or you order the division to attack an enemy brigade, at which point they point themselves at the enemy brigade and squeeze together, almost instantly causing the center brigade(s) to start sliding.

7 hours ago, Jamesk2 said:

It would have been a welcomed feature if not for the fact that 90% of the time your units would crisscross each other on the way to the final position, especially when you're moving long distance, instead of keeping formation and taking the shortest path.

Both of these are true statements and I have noticed that as well.   I would have made a longer winded comment, but I hate posting on my cell phone.   (Not to mention I was at work at the time too.)

It would seem that there is no coding to say which Brigade is your first brigade and so on.  So, yeah, that would be a great help if Brigades actually formed as they are in the camp screen, and then remained in those positions with the Division movement.

Something else that's also needed, once I select the Division HUD I would like for all the units to remain selected and let me scribe the path using the left mouse button to the point that I want, then to use the right mouse button to scribe my line of front.

 

Edited February 9, 2017 by A. P. Hill

[jwsmith26]

It's my impression that the crisscrossing brigade paths occurs because the AI is trying to get all the brigades to arrive at their destination at the same time. As I said, it's only an impression, I haven't checked this extensively. If I'm correct it's a pretty lousy reason for this behavior. Regardless of the reason, it is extremely irritating and makes this potentially useful feature almost pointless.

Aetius, on the issue of pursuing a brigade for miles, I've seen similar behavior, but when I've seen this it occurs for the following reason. If you specifically order your brigade to target an enemy brigade your brigade will then continually attempt to keep the enemy brigade within firing range and will pursue it to accomplish this. It's easy for this to occur if you have set your brigade to fire at the enemy brigade as it charges in to attack and then you forget to turn it off after the attack is repulsed. I'm not saying this is what occurred in your case but that's been the situation when I've seen this behavior.

 

[Andre Bolkonsky]

On 2/7/2017 at 9:01 AM, _Masterviolin said:

Perhaps the mechanic is supposed to be designed to imitate how individual brigade commanders maneuver their own men both in competence, and incompetence. Realistically, brigades did not follow every single nitpicky order given by their general; there was no position micromanagement in that time period.

A fair point. But even the brigades from Wisconsin understand how to walk forward in a straight line; and if you are Brigade B, then keep Brigade A to your left, and keep Brigade C to your right. No? 

Edited February 9, 2017 by Andre Bolkonsky

[Aetius]

2 hours ago, jwsmith26 said:

It's my impression that the crisscrossing brigade paths occurs because the AI is trying to get all the brigades to arrive at their destination at the same time. As I said, it's only an impression, I haven't checked this extensively. If I'm correct it's a pretty lousy reason for this behavior. Regardless of the reason, it is extremely irritating and makes this potentially useful feature almost pointless.

It's possible - though maybe the algorithm is sometimes working backwards?

The command appears to be ignoring the current brigade positions, and arranging them 1-2-3-4 from right to left. This set of orders is pretty much guaranteed to take the longest possible time to get the brigades into position - look at the path 1/4 Rifle has to take versus how far it would have to go to get into position if it marched up next to 1/1 Rifle on the right. The only way it could have been worse would have been to send 1/1 Rifle all the way from right to left.

Also note that it took a few tries for me to get this screenshot - the other sets of orders were rational and sent each brigade forward on a least-distance path. Maybe it has to do with the brigades being in column?

[A. P. Hill]

Getting back to the "Hold" command.  If done early enough, a bar forms on the bottom of the unit shield. As long as that bar exists on the identifier, the unit will not rotate to face oncoming enemy units, and will hold fast until other factors apply. Reissue the command to remove the bar, and the unit will respond to proximity of enemy units. The "Hold" command sometimes require several attempts at issuing especially if your unit is actively engaged. The player should issue the command until he sees the word HOLD display over the unit. It will cause a meleeing unit cease the act of melee, and reassemble as a unit. But until the bar appears under the identifier shield, the unit will break the command. 

Edited February 9, 2017 by A. P. Hill

[Hobo]

That is helpful.  Thx

[Lif]

I agree that it's sometimes very annoying that Skirmishers don't hold their superior position, especially in buildings. Hopefully there will be a better or extra button to make sure that they don't retreat after shooting.

[Nuvag]

Until the last patch you could use space to force them to hold their position, but this has no longer any visible effect now.
I hope they will revert that, probably a bug i think?

[General Kazden]

This issue of the hold command and the general behavior of the brigades caused me a rage quit last night and near abandonment of the game (for the time being).  This has happened more then once despite patch notes saying it has been worked on.  However I will a give two of the incidents of what happened just 2 days ago. 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Example 1: A rebel cavalry of 260 strength charges head on into my line infantry of 863 men.  The cavalry takes little damage and starts to waver my infantry.  (This is frustrating because I have never had my cavalry do this for me and that's with me charging the rear or flanks of the enemy.  Anyway I tell my infantry to start falling back as I bring up reinforcements but soon they route and proceed to "retreat" towards the cavalry and enemy lines.  I lost an entire brigade in just a few seconds.  Unacceptable.

Example 2:  I pincer charge a rebel infantry of roughly 900 men with two brigades each a little over 1400 men.  The rebel infantry wavers and then routes.  Awesome right!?  Not so fast, as they route I tell my two brigades to halt and shoot the retreating rebs.  Well this doesn't work, my infantry keep chasing/melee the enemy.  Hold command does nothing, ordering my units to advance in a different direction does nothing.  What happens?  Well they in turn start to waver because of lost morale... you know because driving the enemy from the field would make me panic too.  Well the waver turns into a route and I bet you can guess which direction they choose to route in.  If you guessed that they routed straight into enemy lines to be annihilated then you win a free beer.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

How I still have an intact desk is beyond me.  Why do I take out my anger at my desk?  Because I can't punch the face of the dumb ass AI leading my men into unnecessary slaughter.  I do not need the AI's help in getting my men killed.  I make enough mistakes on my own to do that.  I just would like the few times something awesome happens to then not have it snatched away like that.  Well in my rage I uninstalled.  Not a big deal since it only takes a few minutes to install back but I hated doing it.  I really love this game and I want to really get hyped and excited for the big battles but I can't.  I can't do that when in my mind I know there is a really high chance that the brigade AI will do something so dumb, something that would get a commander executed for treason would do and cost me an entire brigade or worse, the battle victory.  Honestly I sometimes wonder if I don't have rebel sympathizers as commanders.   If I am going to lose let it be because I failed as a strategist/tactician not because the AI decided to screw everything up for me.  I'll order my own "Pickett's Charge" thank you very much.

 

P.S. It felt really good to vent.  I feel... better.  Guess I'll reinstall and start up a new campaign.

 

 

 

[Koro]

Hold is fully functional in the next patch and skirmishers won't run back and forth anymore if you put them on hold.