Chancellorsville - Your casualties? (Union, normal difficulty)

[Lif]

Hi,

I experienced enormous losses in the battle of Chancellorsville (playing Union on normal difficulty) and wondered if this is intended or if I was just bad in this battle. I deployed 91k men and lost nearly 40k (cavalry, arty and infantry). Until now I hardly had losse >10k men so I was very surprised. So I wanted to ask you how much men you lost in this bloody battle? Even if I were pretty bad in this fight and normally you can win with 20-30k casualties, how on earth are you supposed to replenish your troops with just getting 11k men and 220k money (which is just enough to refill 4 2-star brigades) as reward? And the battle losses get crazier with each update. Since the grand battle before Chancellorsville my army is getting weaker. Not in menpower (until now^^), but in experience. While the enemy gets better troops in each battle your troops are getting more rookie, becausse you cannot effort expensive veterans. The rewards can't catch up to the casualties you get in the last battles, too. If this goes on I can't keep it up. Don't tell me this "You have to be cautious, use cover,..." I do! Anyway, until Chancellorsville it wasn't this much of a problem, just got more 1star brigades again. But now, how should I fill this losses up? What were your casualty numbers?

[Nuvag]

Hi

The trick is to know where the enemy will attack. In the first phase do nothing, the enemy will not attack.
In phase 2 put most of your army to your right wing and overwhelm the enemy, you probably should be able to whipe them out completly.
In phase 3 defend in the woods in the center what should be quite easy when there is nobody left on your right flank.
In phase 4 the enemy had only three thousand something soldiers left so it was really easy to capture the victory points.
 

I played on hard and lost only about 13k of my 50k army wile all enemies but one skirmisher where wiped out, captured or shattered.

 

[Nuvag]

Noticed something i suspect is an error on the victory conditions. Apparently you must not inflict to much damage to get a draw.

Instead of "inflict more the 5% more casualties" it is stated "inflict up to 5% more casualties", so i would not have gotten a draw because i killed too many enemies.

The enemy even fielded much stronger equipment, most used CS Richmond rifles and the canons where all 24pd Howitzers!

[vren55]

Deployed 108K infantry, 3750 cav, 89 guns

Losses: 30K infantry, 1300 cav, 25 guns.

Have you maxed medicine?

Edited February 13, 2017 by vren55

[Lif]

2 hours ago, Nuvag said:

Hi

The trick is to know where the enemy will attack.

Sure, a replay would probably end in less than a half of the victims. But this isn't the way I want to beat campaign. To know where the enemy will attack is more or less cheating, also I make Let's Play videos of the campaign, so my followers would be pissed. I have to live with the casualties. I have medicine at 8 or 9.

 

@vren; Yeah 32k is pretty bad, too. All I'm saying is that the rewards can't compensate the losses anymore. Not even half of them. Neither in men nor in money.

Edited February 13, 2017 by Lif

[vren55]

3 minutes ago, Lif said:

Sure, a replay would probably end in less than a half of the victims. But this isn't the way I want to beat campaign. To know where the enemy will attack is more or less cheating, also I make Let's Play videos of the campaign, so my followers would be pissed. I have to live with the casualties. I have medicine at 8 or 9.

hmm... i suggest you need to have maxed medicine by Fredericksburg/stones river b/c it does have a MAJOR impact on maintaining experience. Consider that for your next palythrough. 

[Lif]

It's a bit sad that so much depends on 1-2 skills, which are op compared to many others. I suggest the devs to balance the skills with priority to allow fair campaigns with diversified skill trees. But I will max. medicine after this battle. After all I also should get 2 skill points after Chancellorsville (at least if my defeat at Salem's church does not count, which I lost because I thought I just have to hold the flag. Did I already say that the display of the (often even changing) victory conditions is probably made the worst of all games I played so far?).

 

vren, please tell me - after the next update - if you managed to refill/replenish all your losses by just the 200k money and 11k men you get after the battle. I'm just curious.^^

Edited February 13, 2017 by Lif

[vren55]

2 minutes ago, Lif said:

It's a bit sad that so much depends on 1-2 skills, which are op compared to many others. But I will max. medicine after this battle. After all I also should get 2 skill points (at least if my defeat at Salem's church does not count, which I lost because I thought I just have to hold the flag).

Think the devs are looking into it, particularly the recon skill. Frankly though, politics and medicine were very important for generals and armies historically. Logistics could be offset by the state department, but hell... if you want to make a good army, you needed the polticial will and the medical tech to ensure experience.

[Lif]

Yeah, I know that and as I said I have medicine at lvl 8 or 9. Same for politics. And economics.

[vren55]

5 minutes ago, Lif said:

Yeah, I know that and as I said I have medicine at lvl 8 or 9. Same for politics. And economics.

Economics 8/9??? I'd go with Training to cut down on the training costs and therefore retain experience better. THis is b/c you can rescue and capture weapons from the CSA and can go with M1842s for most of your troops.

[GeneralPITA]

Economics is key if you want to buy up and top tier rifles and cannons. The armory reboots after every grand battle so you need to pump up econ ASAP (but not at the expense of neglecting army organization).

Medicine becomes exponentially more important as the grand campaign progresses. 

[Hitorishizuka]

On 2/13/2017 at 8:02 AM, Lif said:

What were your casualty numbers?

I don't have an accurate screenshot because I took advantage of mid-battle camp to refill guys which screws up the final numbers, but deployed 36k+4.5k+1.2k, lost 8k. Faced 40k+3k+3k, killed 30k+2k+1k+1k captured.

IMO:

Day 1 take advantage of your early force disparity to push hard on the western flag and then bunker in those woods. Positioning correctly there's a gap between those woods and the one to the east you can use to force the attacking brigades to sit in and you'll crush them down. There's some annoyance with them getting to rush into the fortifications to the west of that forest clump but you'll still outshoot them anyway with a couple more brigades offset. By pushing hard I was able to kill ~10k for 1k losses on Day 1, which basically wins you the map.

Day 2 you have a couple options, but assuming you did the above, you'll have mauled the forces on the eastern side of the map. Leave a token strong brigade or two on the VP with some artillery and have everyone else push hard to the SE and you should be able to take the flags and kill all the brigades there before the flanking force from the west starts putting a lot of pressure on the VP. At that point just rotate your troops back. You can use a N-S line stretching from the same forest clump you used in Day 1 and heading north to defend with and kill the attackers, because taking the SW VP and holding it will influence the AI to start sending more troops that way instead of rushing your original VP.

Day 3 finish killing everyone in the west, there's basically no one left.

Day 4 kill the remaining couple brigades in the SE and win.

17 hours ago, GeneralPITA said:

Economics is key if you want to buy up and top tier rifles and cannons. The armory reboots after every grand battle so you need to pump up econ ASAP (but not at the expense of neglecting army organization).

Medicine becomes exponentially more important as the grand campaign progresses. 

I would still favor Politics first because the other large portion of your expenses always is refilling Cavalry brigades, which take basically unavoidable losses and cost $30k per battle or thereabouts to refill.

[Viperlord]

My result for Chancellorsville on normal.