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Is the amount of Union brigades inside the Potomac fort reduced in the new update? I remember there to be two or three infantry brigades together with skirmishers defending the fort in the 0.80 version of the game. When do you think the full version will be released? I know it has been announced to be soon, but would be glad to have an approximate date so I know whether to continue with this new campaign or wait til the game is finished for the full release.

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I played the Battle of Shiloh as the union (campaign version). During the „Hornet’s Nest phase“ of the first day, Jenkins CS cavalry attacked one of my artillery batteries positioned at the Hornet’s Nest. Then the next phase of the battle started (where you have to retreat to Pittsburg Landing) and all of a sudden Jenkins CS cavalry was teleported to north of my lines, almost directly to the Pittsburg Landing victory point!
 
I reported this issue in game already, but I just wanted to bring this to attention. I hope the devs are aware of this and it will be fixed soon.
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Darth,

My final major issue with this game is that casualties in this game are ridiculously high. In battles like Antietam and Fredericksburg, my Confederate army wiped out 60k and 75k Union troops, respectively, while taking 26k and 24k losses. The actual Union casualties in those battles were 12,410 and 12,653 respectively, with Confederate casualties being 10,316 and 4,201. Even in battles like First Bull Run, the total casualties are climbing above the 20k mark consistently, when in real life the combined causalities were under 5k.

While I don't expect the game to be a 100% realistic battle simulator, I'd like at least a shred of realism. If the Union lost 75 thousand men in a single battle on a single day, the Army of the Potomac would dissolve, the Northern public would revolt, and Great Britain and France would immediately recognize the Confederacy. Lee would have his Austerlitz and the North would have to capitulate.

UGG managed to pull off realistic causalities pretty well: if you played against the dynamic AI competently causalities would end up in the high 30k range on the enemy side and the 20k range on yours, which, while being higher than history, was still realistic and not an absurd 600 or 700% increase. I am not you, so I do not know the exact causes, but I believe these ridiculous casualties are caused by a combination of 1) an overly aggressive AI, 2) absurd morale levels, and 3) high kill rates.

1) While the AI is one of the best I have played against in any game, it doesn't really recognize when to take a break, rest, and regroup. The first attack the AI conducts is always excellent: the battle has just started and its brigades are fresh and full strength. Then, if it fails and brigades begin routing, the AI keeps persisting and persisting, continuously pressing with exhausted and severely damaged brigades. It has no concept of falling back, and when routed brigades return to the field, it sends them back into the meat grinder piecemeal instead of regrouping multiple routed brigades together, letting them rest to high condition, and then attacking in another "phase." Programming the AI to make temporary retreat and regrouping/resting actions (while rear-guarding with a couple of brigades/skirmishers) for crippled brigades will reduce unnecessary AI casualties and add difficulty to defensive battles like Fredericksburg, where if you survive the first wave and reinforce your lines the game basically becomes a 4x fast forward grind.

2) On the note of those crippled brigades...morale is overall too high for brigades. I regularly have Zero star or one star brigades sustain 66% or more causalities and continue fighting instead of shitting their pants and running off the battlefield. Realistically, most units would've permanently retreated (or outright routed) after sustaining losses of 2/3 or more, whether their commanding officer ordered it or not (i.e. Buford's Division was wrecked on Day 1 in Gettysburg, so it was sent off the field to guard supply lines. Generals do not usually send 30% strength units back into the fight). While the Iron Brigade drew renown because it sustained 61% causalities at Gettysburg and kept fighting, it was an elite unit standing its ground. An elite unit. Not a unit of freshly levied recruits (aka zero star troops). 

3) Kill rates are unrealistically high. In the war, there was only 1 casualty for every 250-300 shots fired. While this obviously should not be the rule of thumb in the game, it is a reminder of battle conditions. The accuracy difference between rifles and muskets was somewhat negated by battlefield conditions (huge clouds of black powder smoke), so while a large brigade's first couple volleys could achieve 100+ kills, after the smoke starts building up its pretty hard to hit much. A "field of smoke" feature would be very nice, but I think it would be pretty difficult to program so a flat percentage reduction on accuracy could work too. 

If you read all of this, thank you. I know it's a bit late to ask for a casualty re-balance right before release, but I can hope :) 

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16 minutes ago, maojoejoe said:

UGG managed to pull off realistic causalities pretty well: if you played against the dynamic AI competently causalities would end up in the high 30k range on the enemy side and the 20k range on yours, which, while being higher than history, was still realistic and not an absurd 600 or 700% increase. I am not you, so I do not know the exact causes, but I believe these ridiculous casualties are caused by a combination of 1) an overly aggressive AI, 2) absurd morale levels, and 3) high kill rates.

Can only say that I've had more than 30k kills just after the first day of UGG.

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7 hours ago, Gusten Grodslukare said:

Is the amount of Union brigades inside the Potomac fort reduced in the new update? I remember there to be two or three infantry brigades together with skirmishers defending the fort in the 0.80 version of the game. When do you think the full version will be released? I know it has been announced to be soon, but would be glad to have an approximate date so I know whether to continue with this new campaign or wait til the game is finished for the full release.

My game had the same number of brigades as usual. 3 infantry brigades and two skirmisher units if I remember correctly.

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1 hour ago, maojoejoe said:

The accuracy difference between rifles and muskets was somewhat negated by battlefield conditions (huge clouds of black powder smoke), so while a large brigade's first couple volleys could achieve 100+ kills, after the smoke starts building up its pretty hard to hit much. A "field of smoke" feature would be very nice

More smoke on the field would be way cool. However, I'm not complaining that it's not there. 

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4 hours ago, maojoejoe said:

Darth,

My final major issue with this game is that casualties in this game are ridiculously high. In battles like Antietam and Fredericksburg, my Confederate army wiped out 60k and 75k Union troops, respectively, while taking 26k and 24k losses. The actual Union casualties in those battles were 12,410 and 12,653 respectively, with Confederate casualties being 10,316 and 4,201. Even in battles like First Bull Run, the total casualties are climbing above the 20k mark consistently, when in real life the combined causalities were under 5k.

I tend to divide casualties by about 4 for roleplaying purposes.  It isn't ideal, but it generally makes sense.

 

Quote

2) On the note of those crippled brigades...morale is overall too high for brigades. I regularly have Zero star or one star brigades sustain 66% or more causalities and continue fighting instead of shitting their pants and running off the battlefield. Realistically, most units would've permanently retreated (or outright routed) after sustaining losses of 2/3 or more, whether their commanding officer ordered it or not (i.e. Buford's Division was wrecked on Day 1 in Gettysburg, so it was sent off the field to guard supply lines. Generals do not usually send 30% strength units back into the fight). While the Iron Brigade drew renown because it sustained 61% causalities at Gettysburg and kept fighting, it was an elite unit standing its ground. An elite unit. Not a unit of freshly levied recruits (aka zero star troops). 

Putting this above your point #1 because my answer links with the above - from a game design perspective, morale loss is directly related to the # of casualties taken over a span of time. Further, routs are limited to individual units, so it isn't possible to get historical large-scale routs. Thus I think you have to see casualties as more of another unit condition stat than an actual number of men reporting for duty.

 

Quote

1) While the AI is one of the best I have played against in any game, it doesn't really recognize when to take a break, rest, and regroup. The first attack the AI conducts is always excellent: the battle has just started and its brigades are fresh and full strength. Then, if it fails and brigades begin routing, the AI keeps persisting and persisting, continuously pressing with exhausted and severely damaged brigades. It has no concept of falling back, and when routed brigades return to the field, it sends them back into the meat grinder piecemeal instead of regrouping multiple routed brigades together, letting them rest to high condition, and then attacking in another "phase." Programming the AI to make temporary retreat and regrouping/resting actions (while rear-guarding with a couple of brigades/skirmishers) for crippled brigades will reduce unnecessary AI casualties and add difficulty to defensive battles like Fredericksburg, where if you survive the first wave and reinforce your lines the game basically becomes a 4x fast forward grind.

Totally agree with this - the AI makes one extremely effective attack per battle - more if it get enough reinforcements to launch them. It's also quite capable of punishing me for miscalculations and even making feints (whether 'intentional' or not), all things I've never really seen in any other game. But it struggles to regroup, and there comes a point when the battle is definitely over and it could retreat from the field in good order, but keeps throwing itself at my lines to die. With the new update for AI attrition it might make sense at least to have the AI recognize defeat, but I haven't played far enough on the new patch to know how that would impact things.

 

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Still playing CS campaign on BG difficulty. On 2nd Battle of Bull Run. I am having an absolute blast with this patch. The devs and testing team really do need a huge thank you for putting so much effort into this game. I would, and have already, recommended this game to friends. Note: I am still Bug reporting, and I will probably post another comment similar to this when I get further through the campaign.

Edited by CaptainKanundrum
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Still missing some needed stuff even at this late date.

Restarted my campaign again, due to the latest release.  Just got done playing another version of 1st Manassas/1st Bull Run ... as CSA.  We still need the organization selection buttons for the other commands.  The only two organization buttons are my corps, and Jackson's.  We're still missing Beauregard's Confederate Army of the Potomac, as well as Johnson's Confederate Army of the Shenandoah.

Would be nice to see this taken care of.

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   The armypool system hasn't made a difference in my game. I'm still having the same problem where me and the CSA AI get into meat-grinders and they end up becoming to large for me to fight.
   They'll always suicidally charge my position until they lose almost their entire army. Then they magically regenerate to full strength. You have no idea how many times I've received messages saying the AI has received 50K+ reinforcements after I barely managed to scrap together around 5,000.
   You NEED to give the AI army a sense of self-preservation. At this moment in time they'll sacrifice an entire army just to kill 25% of the players men. Make their first concern be the continued survival of their own forces, like any sensible general.
   At the very least make it so that if the player inflicts a certain amount of casualties on them (say 40% with the player having taken 10% less casualties) the battle ends.
   In my opinion you should gut the army pool system, and replace it with a true carryover system. Make it so the AI has to manage their army exactlly like the player. They'll have a set pool of points and political power to spend on their army based on how they performed in the last battle. If they keep losing battles they'll be replaced by a better general with more starting political power. If at any point in the campaign the AI army becomes to weak the player will get to have a whack at the AI capital. Which would be guarded by heavy fortifications, the AI army, and a sizable garrision of elite troops. If the player wins the battle the campaign ends. If not the campaign continues with the AI army recieving a glut of men/money due to the surge in morale.
   This is important because it would make the player feel like he's actually affecting the war on a strategic scale. Rather than it just playing out the same no matter what happens.

Edited by Crazychester1247
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Regarding the intelligence reports on AI army strength:

I think the addition of the intelligence reports is definitely a good step as it makes you feel like you are having an impact in your campaign. My only gripe is that the intelligence report is drastically wrong sometimes instead of just being slightly off. For example for Antietam it said the Union should have around 54-57k men so I didn't expect much out of them. They ended up with over 100k in the battle which I was not expecting as that was almost double what the report said. I understand that its not exactly suppose to an accurate portrayal of the enemy strength, just an estimate, but I thought it might at most be 10-20k off, not 50k.

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One of the issue in the game so far, are the multi day battles. Whenever we enter the next day of a major battle, the units should have replenished their ammo. Also, they should have their morale and condition back at 100% (or aroud 80% to see the impact of the previous day). It's frustrating to see that my units are exhausted before the beginning of the day. An other example: In Chancelorsville one of my cav unit had routed juste before the end of the battle. The next day, it was still routing. 

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9 minutes ago, Ladron said:

One of the issue in the game so far, are the multi day battles. Whenever we enter the next day of a major battle, the units should have replenished their ammo. Also, they should have their morale and condition back at 100% (or aroud 80% to see the impact of the previous day). It's frustrating to see that my units are exhausted before the beginning of the day. An other example: In Chancelorsville one of my cav unit had routed juste before the end of the battle. The next day, it was still routing. 

I agree with Ladron, even under the most realistic of circumstances, if there is no overnight battle, units got to rest and re-supply at least. Maybe say 80% or 90% of your units get their morale and condition to 100% and full supply and the other 10% say bring their morale/supply to 100% as these units were on "guard mode" and their condition to at least 80%.

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1 hour ago, i64man said:

I agree with Ladron, even under the most realistic of circumstances, if there is no overnight battle, units got to rest and re-supply at least. Maybe say 80% or 90% of your units get their morale and condition to 100% and full supply and the other 10% say bring their morale/supply to 100% as these units were on "guard mode" and their condition to at least 80%.

Here is how I think this should work.

Morale and Condition should have caps to which they can recover based on losses.  I would do it this way roughly.

First 10% of losses have no impact.  Then your peak moral and peak condition are reduced on a one for one basis on each percentage point of men lost after that.  So if you lose 35% of your men in a unit moral won't go above 75% nor will condition.

Everyone should recover at night subject to these restrictions.

 

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@Bigjku

Morale already works like that. :) Units have a cap off around 60% morale (is it 60%?  Don't remember the exact number) if they've taken close to 75% casualties, i.e. close to Shattering.  That's a massive drop in morale because that leaves only a 10% morale shock before they become useless in combat because of disorganized volleys.

Condition, however, is just how exhausted the unit is.  Let them rest a while and they should catch their breath, regardless of how many casualties they've taken.

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Ahh, I don't always notice my exact bars during battle and absent a replay system can't always sort it out.

I do think condition should be progressively capped for long actions though.  It often took armies a couple days to really get themselves moving again after tough actions.

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5 minutes ago, Major Grigg said:

My one bad comment on the game is that I capture everything on the 1st day of a two day battle or the 2nd day of a 3 day battle and I still have to play the next day!

This is probably a great point and might help the AI not hemorrhage so many troops.  As the Union I just fought the CSA with less than 12,000 troops on day 3 of Chancellorsville and less than 3,000 ok the final day.  Below a certain number of effectives one should probably just turn and run away.

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Just now, Bigjku said:

This is probably a great point and might help the AI not hemorrhage so many troops.  As the Union I just fought the CSA with less than 12,000 troops on day 3 of Chancellorsville and less than 3,000 ok the final day.  Below a certain number of effectives one should probably just turn and run away.

True. Im playing as CSA and captured Chancellor Farm on Day 2 and still had to play day 3. Why?

 

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9 minutes ago, Major Grigg said:

True. Im playing as CSA and captured Chancellor Farm on Day 2 and still had to play day 3. Why?

 

I missed the second VP by a few minutes on day 3 as the Union so I get why it happened but we had killed basically everyone by that point.  Same thing often happens at Shilo.  It's just a matter of walking to the victory points.

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Diminishing artillery return still seem to be present, at least for large batteries above 20. I don't understand  why it's still there. If the returns start to diminish, then cap the max battery size to a lower number! It's annoying having to guess the optimal number of guns and having to run battlefield tests. More guns => More damage, please!

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6 hours ago, Draluigi said:

Diminishing artillery return still seem to be present, at least for large batteries above 20. I don't understand  why it's still there. If the returns start to diminish, then cap the max battery size to a lower number! It's annoying having to guess the optimal number of guns and having to run battlefield tests. More guns => More damage, please!

IMO the game already has an inbuilt balance for large artillery batteries by giving them lower mobility and thus making them vastly less effective at closer range. The payoff however should be that you can cram more firepower downrange and in tighter concentrations meaning massive 16-24 cannon batteries are highly effective at longer ranges but at closer range struggle due to constantly requiring to reposition themselves. I really don't see why artillery has any scaling at all bearing this in mind.

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