Skirmisher Scaling

[The Soldier]

So, as I've tested in the past (I have results on the Steam Forums, tested with Reconnaissance 10 over multiple engagements), enemy Skirmisher units scale directly with your own skirmisher units - that is, if you have one skirmisher unit in your army, and it's armed with scoped rifles, every enemy skirmisher unit will be armed with scoped rifles (not just one, but every.  Single.  One).  However, the game takes the average quality of your weapons - so you can reduce the overall quality if you have other skirmisher units in your armed with worse weapons like Hunters. 

 

What do you guys think about that?  I have two problems with this: First off, it punishes the player (heavily) if they have a single Skirmisher unit armed with scoped rifles.  For example, there's a Government buyable for 250 Whitworth (TS) right before Gaines Mill, and before that I had no Skirmisher units.  Equipped one unit with that, and then guess what?  All 10 or so of the enemy Skirmisher units had JF Browns.  Secondly - you can farm the hell out of whatever Skirmisher weapon you want with that tactic.  Due to how the cards fell on my road to Antietam (I believe I had one Skirmisher unit, just armed with Whitworths), the enemy skirmishers were all armed with Spencer carbines.  By time of Antietam, I had enough Spencers to arm fully two brigades of Carbine Cavalry, and they wrought hell.  You can do this with scoped rifles too, but they tend to cost more men on your end to farm.  Highly exploitable.  This system kinda has to be changed - just because you've got 300 men armed with scoped rifles doesn't give justification to arm the entire enemy Skirmisher force with scoped rifles, at least in my mind.

[Nicolas I]

I think you are absolutely right ! I already pleaded that scaling must be reworked, a limit to the number of rare weapons should be established.

I recently linked your very convincing demonstration with screenshots on Steam in the "why are enemy troops so beefed up" thread.

 

[Grognard_JC]

I read your post, but before starting discussiing it there are 2 important informations I need from you :

1) At what level of difficulty are you considering the issue ? (It's a question of challenge all in all, and you cannot simply ask the AI to adjust to the human brain)

2) Your propositions.

[The Soldier]

@Grognard_JC

1) All difficulty levels, since it occurs at all difficulty levels.  It's especially punishing on Major General and Legendary, since you've got far fewer men to play with (unless you're doing min-max micro munchkin stuff that's beyond my abilities).

2) Just make it so the first 2 or 3 Skirmisher units have reduced penalty on the "quality" level that determines the armament of enemy AI.  After you have more than 2 or 3 skirmisher units, the reduction in quality level should be reverted, and it's all fair game.

[Hitorishizuka]

13 hours ago, The Soldier said:

Due to how the cards fell on my road to Antietam (I believe I had one Skirmisher unit, just armed with Whitworths), the enemy skirmishers were all armed with Spencer carbines.  By time of Antietam, I had enough Spencers to arm fully two brigades of Carbine Cavalry, and they wrought hell.

Just for clarification's sake--you had skirmishers armed with the unscoped Whitworths and the enemy skirmishers ended up armed with Spencers in response?

[The Soldier]

2 hours ago, Hitorishizuka said:

Just for clarification's sake--you had skirmishers armed with the unscoped Whitworths and the enemy skirmishers ended up armed with Spencers in response?

Yup, they skipped right over the Sharps Rifle and went onto Spencer Carbines.

Edited March 1, 2017 by The Soldier

[waldopbarnstormer]

I have encountered endless skirmishers armed with Spencer's in my confederate campaign. It really cost me at Rio hill were I lost 3500 to the ai's 5000. I now have 1500 Spencer's in my inventory. I have 2-3 brigades of skirmishers 2 armed with hunters and my vets armed with whitworths or IFs whichever they are but unscoped.

[Wandering1]

As far as weapon scaling goes, it doesn't just affect skirmishers; it applies to all types of units. Just that there's very little room to scale on the sniper-end of things, whereas there are plenty of options in the carbine/repeater end.

I actually find sniper skirmishers to be much easier to deal with than Spencers; Spencers tend to group up and blast units not in 100% cover relatively quickly, whereas snipers tend to just sit at range and poke your brigades.

Lastly, proposed changes of affecting only 2-3 skirmisher units doesn't change very much; the later battles tend to have the computer field at least 10 skirmisher brigades over the course of the multi-day battles, not to mention the weird one-offs like Rio Hill. Heck, Gaines Mill has about 5-6 Union Skirmishers at least.

[The Soldier]

53 minutes ago, Wandering1 said:

Lastly, proposed changes of affecting only 2-3 skirmisher units doesn't change very much; the later battles tend to have the computer field at least 10 skirmisher brigades over the course of the multi-day battles, not to mention the weird one-offs like Rio Hill. Heck, Gaines Mill has about 5-6 Union Skirmishers at least.

I mean, the scaling affecting the player's units.  Not the enemy's - the enemy's skirmisher units will all be armed with the same thing, except quality level of the player's first 2 or 3 skirmisher units will be lower than usual  - so if you've got one skirmisher unit armed with scoped Whitworths and their quality level is 100 for example, that might get bumped down to 50, so enemy skirmisher units would be armed with Sharps Rifles instead.

Edited March 1, 2017 by The Soldier

[Wandering1]

14 minutes ago, The Soldier said:

I mean, the scaling affecting the player's units.  Not the enemy's - the enemy's skirmisher units will all be armed with the same thing, except quality level of the player's first 2 or 3 skirmisher units will be lower than usual  - so if you've got one skirmisher unit armed with scoped Whitworths and their quality level is 100 for example, that might get bumped down to 50, so enemy skirmisher units would be armed with Sharps Rifles instead.

I believe that still wouldn't change much, even if you were to flip where you apply the reduction; if you're playing min-size armies, you may only have 2-3 skirmisher units, but if you're playing all 5 corps, there's a pretty good chance you're going to have at least 4-5 skirmisher brigades. In fact, the more skirmishers you have traveling as a group, the safer they are against cavalry; one cavalry unit that charges one unit gets shot at by the remaining blob of skirmishers. Same thing applies if 3 cavalry units charge your blob; if you outnumber the cavalry squads, you'll still beat them back.

[The Soldier]

2 minutes ago, Wandering1 said:

I believe that still wouldn't change much, even if you were to flip where you apply the reduction; if you're playing min-size armies, you may only have 2-3 skirmisher units, but if you're playing all 5 corps, there's a pretty good chance you're going to have at least 4-5 skirmisher brigades. In fact, the more skirmishers you have traveling as a group, the safer they are against cavalry; one cavalry unit that charges one unit gets shot at by the remaining blob of skirmishers. Same thing applies if 3 cavalry units charge your blob; if you outnumber the cavalry squads, you'll still beat them back.

Once you've got more skirmishers, it's fair game.  It's not meant to make scoped rifles disappear entirely - only to delay their coming if you continue on the path of scoped rifles.  Facing 10 units of JF Browns at Gaine's Mill is not fun because I have 250 men with scoped rifles - that's the kind of situation I'm trying to avoid with this.

[Wandering1]

18 hours ago, The Soldier said:

Once you've got more skirmishers, it's fair game.  It's not meant to make scoped rifles disappear entirely - only to delay their coming if you continue on the path of scoped rifles.  Facing 10 units of JF Browns at Gaine's Mill is not fun because I have 250 men with scoped rifles - that's the kind of situation I'm trying to avoid with this.

I think Gaines Mill is not even the best example in the early game, because you don't even have to fight the skirmishers in the trees at the start; you can just take the long walk around the north and force the skirmishers to come to you in the open outside of the trees. Which makes them relatively easy to kill.

I've had to deal with JF Brown snipers at Shiloh on Hard, but even Shiloh isn't the best example either, because there's enough tree cover to make sniper skirmishers hardly effective.

[MikeK]

On 2/28/2017 at 7:45 PM, The Soldier said:

First off, it punishes the player (heavily) if they have a single Skirmisher unit armed with scoped rifles.  For example, there's a Government buyable for 250 Whitworth (TS) right before Gaines Mill, and before that I had no Skirmisher units.  Equipped one unit with that, and then guess what?  All 10 or so of the enemy Skirmisher units had JF Browns.  Secondly - you can farm the hell out of whatever Skirmisher weapon you want with that tactic.  

So this creates two synergistic distortions with a jarring result. 

[The Soldier]

26 minutes ago, MikeK said:

So this creates two synergistic distortions with a jarring result. 

Synergistic?  The way I play, giving every enemy skirmisher a scoped rifle is masochistic, not synergistic.  I'd much rather deal with short-ranged Spencers than scoped rifles that can pick at me from beyond sight range because I can blow away any Spencer-toting skirmishers before they get close.

It also doesn't help that skirmishers this update deal way too much moral damage overall, especially to targets in fortifications.  Another reason I don't want scoped rifles.

Edited March 2, 2017 by The Soldier

[Artyom15]

I'd argue more for delayed scaling if that is even possible. If I spend all my cash giving my Infantry M1855's, let me curbstomp the AI for a few battles. Maybe scale at or after the next Grand Battle.

 

Then again I dunno, just seems kinda pointless to upgrade my weapons if the AI gets the same thing instantly.

[Hitorishizuka]

11 minutes ago, Artyom15 said:

I'd argue more for delayed scaling if that is even possible. If I spend all my cash giving my Infantry M1855's, let me curbstomp the AI for a few battles. Maybe scale at or after the next Grand Battle.

 

Then again I dunno, just seems kinda pointless to upgrade my weapons if the AI gets the same thing instantly.

The AI doesn't understand how to maneuver around cover, which still greatly degrades the effect of better weapons. Upgrading yours will see large kill differentials in areas where you can arrange to be in cover when the enemy isn't, causing routs within a single volley as weapon lethality goes up. You can get to a point where your forces will rout the AI's as they approach for their first volley, so they basically never fire and you've gotten free damage in.

[Artyom15]

35 minutes ago, Hitorishizuka said:

The AI doesn't understand how to maneuver around cover, which still greatly degrades the effect of better weapons. Upgrading yours will see large kill differentials in areas where you can arrange to be in cover when the enemy isn't, causing routs within a single volley as weapon lethality goes up. You can get to a point where your forces will rout the AI's as they approach for their first volley, so they basically never fire and you've gotten free damage in.

Yeah, I completely get that. The AI makes a lot of dumb decisions and for how good it is? It really isn't as good as a person. My 10th Infantry Regiment managed to accumulate like 1,500 or 1,700 kills to like 40 deaths just from the AI being stupid at Shiloh. I'm still pretty sure that I put all the people who tortured small animals as kids into one unit...