The game is not fun after Chickamauga

[Ladron]

Hi everyone,

i played UGCW a lot, i love this game. But everytime i start a new campaign, i fear the battles after Chickamauga. I don't have problem with assaulting fortified positions. What i don't like is that it's not worth it. The losses are just to high, for me to resplenish using the money i won (i have maxed the political, training, and economic trees). It kills the fun. This is probably due to the balancing issue. In several battles i had to defend a position while being outnumbered 2 to 1. This part is pretty easy, but then, i have to conquer an enemy position. How the hell am i supposed to do that?

 

I understand that the game is recreating historical context, but as a player, i want a chance to win the battle i fight. I don't want to go straight to the next grand battle because i can't win/it's not worth it to fight the minor battle.

 

Am i the only one feeling this way ?

[Major Grigg]

I share some of these feelings. 

[jamieva]

I agree.  It becomes a slog and the "fun" of the process of building your army is gone.

[Albert Sidney Johnston]

Perhaps I'm odd, but I kind of like the later battles. I like examining enemy fortifications, and finding weak points to attack, and trying to strategically breach their fortresses. Hall's Ferry Road is one of my favorite battles in the whole game! 

Again, it's just my opinion.

[CSX4451]

I'm fine with everything up to Cold Harbor. The main Cold Harbor battle is ok but the 2 side battles are a slaughter. The casualties are way too high. As for the final battle for Washington.......even on Colonel level I get smashed on Day 2 regardless of what I try. I have no idea how people can win this battle especially on BG and MG level. I voiced my opinion numerous times about restructuring the final battle to one day or at least let some of your troops that are on the upper part of the map move south to help the ones on the lower part .....at least on Colonel level for us wimpy folk!!   : ).

overall this is one hell of a game!!

Edited July 23, 2017 by CSX4451

[o Barão]

I still didn't play that battle ,  so i don't know what is going to happen. But i am having some issues trying to understand what AI thinks are my objectives.  I have just reach the Battle of Chancellorsville. My 50000 confederates vs 116000 union soldiers and i am expected to attack? Hell no.

Another thing that makes me crazy is to see the union army bigger when i finish a small battle with an victory. The first time i saw Chancellorsville available to attack the union army had an estimated  70k soldiers. Now after i won the 3 smaller battles and Chancellorsville is next the union army now haves 116k soldiers!? So it was not supposed to fight the smaller battles to have better odds in the great battle? I am guessing the trick is not to play the small battles and just fight the big ones to have an easier campaign, if that makes any sense.

 

[Dr Meat]

General, get with it. Belly up! General US Grant did not complain as much as you do. Just follow the wisdom of Sun Tzo: When you are 10-1 attack, when you are 1-1 defend; when you are 1-10 retreat. Try to attack a trench from the edge of the board, only a fool attacks headlong into a wde killing field. Use terrain. Use forest to advance 58 cal rifles, then at  close range melee with 69. They are your trench taking storm troopers. Then hurry Napoleon cannon into the breach. Think Blitzkriek General. Lincoln will be proud of you. Long Live the Union. Long Live President Lincoln. Hang Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree!

 

[veji1]

To be honest I agree with the OP, but to some extent it is normal and a testament to the quality of the game made by the developpers : battles after 1863 are indeed horrible slogs through defense systems where your soldiers die en masse for gains that don't seem worth it... indeed.  To make those battles fun they would have had to diverge greatly from the historical feeling of the game.

For players, 1861/1863 civil war is fun to play, after that it's just preWW1... It's just the way it is, actually to be honest to me the game pleasure curve plateaus or starts to go slightly downhill after Antietam anyway !

 

[HansGruber]

I absolutely love attacking or counter-attacking scenarios. It is the most rewarding of them all compared to just sitting back on defense. Just use proper maneuvering and force concentration. This is not WW1 or even pre-WW1. There are no machine guns or bolt action rifles (not a lot in the Civil War at least). There are weak points and edges which can fall with proper planning. I don't know but I just feel like my army is very vulnerable whenever I don't have the initiative.

[Fred Sanford]

Playing a BG CSA campaign, and I'm going into Cold Harbor with 103k.  All 2 or 3 star.   Intel says Union army has 44-49k.  So it can be done.  

[CSX4451]

You will need everyone....and then some for the Washington battle!!! : )

[Gsam]

I absolutely agree with the OP.

 

I stop playing this game every campaign when I hit chickmauga.  Its just not fun anymore.

 

This game needs to evolve and start looking at things intelligently.  Yes I understand that we are trying to keep it "historical," but the focus on victory points is absurd. If i destroy 55% of the opposing army and they hold the victory point, who was really the winner if i only lost 15% of my army?    Which army would you rather fight for, the one that lost 15,000 out of 100,000 or the one that lost 55,000 out of 100,000.

 

Give the player the choice or the alternative victory options.

 

Oh and please please please get rid of the timer or at least give players the option to turn it off.  Would be nice to have some more strategic options that are not currently possible due to time constraints.

[HansGruber]

12 hours ago, Gsam said:

I absolutely agree with the OP.

 

I stop playing this game every campaign when I hit chickmauga.  Its just not fun anymore.

 

This game needs to evolve and start looking at things intelligently.  Yes I understand that we are trying to keep it "historical," but the focus on victory points is absurd. If i destroy 55% of the opposing army and they hold the victory point, who was really the winner if i only lost 15% of my army?    Which army would you rather fight for, the one that lost 15,000 out of 100,000 or the one that lost 55,000 out of 100,000.

 

Give the player the choice or the alternative victory options.

 

Oh and please please please get rid of the timer or at least give players the option to turn it off.  Would be nice to have some more strategic options that are not currently possible due to time constraints.

Will you single out the battles where you had such problems? In my experience, the amount of time given in the battles are usually more than enough to take the victory points AND mop up the enemy. Are you saying the game should be conducive to camping and stalling? You seem to obsess over killing rather than taking objectives.

[CSX4451]

I would also like to see the ability to remove the timer. It would open up other strategic options that some of the battles won't allow. I mean basically we should be able to fight till dusk ... perhaps a little after. 

[Gsam]

2 hours ago, HansGruber said:

Will you single out the battles where you had such problems? In my experience, the amount of time given in the battles are usually more than enough to take the victory points AND mop up the enemy. Are you saying the game should be conducive to camping and stalling? You seem to obsess over killing rather than taking objectives.

Laurel Hill is the battle I had in mind when I was discussing the kill count versus victory points.

In laurel hill you are allowed to bring 1 corp and in my battle i was facing about 82,000 federals when playing as the CSA.  The way the battle is structured your forces come in piecemeal. You start with 6 brigades and it adds to them at 2 or 3 intervals The federals are hitting you with I am guessing about 62k men while 20k are guarding fixed defensive positions with artillery batteries numbering around 350-450 soldiers per.  Once the memo comes up that you should "attack if practical" you have about ~3 hours left to crack the defensive nut. Meanwhile, they are still attacking you nonstop so you cant abandon the defensive positions.

I have beat this battle once, but it was so costly that I would never do it again. The damage I inflicted upon my army literally zerging the defensive positions was so costly it ended up costing me over 300k above and beyond what the mission paid for the win. NOT WORTH IT.

 

I normally skip this battle because what should be an epic victory (killing 40k, losing 6k) actually damages my reputation (WTH?)  This is why I have been banging the drum for them to have 2 options for victory.  One would be capturing victory points. The other would be damaging  the army significantly (% killed victory)

[Gsam]

2 hours ago, HansGruber said:

Will you single out the battles where you had such problems? In my experience, the amount of time given in the battles are usually more than enough to take the victory points AND mop up the enemy. Are you saying the game should be conducive to camping and stalling? You seem to obsess over killing rather than taking objectives.

 

As for the other questions:

 

I am not suggesting the game be "campfest," but lets be honest, some of the biggest battles in the civil war were won and lost by stalling.   Look at Gettysburg. Buford's cav stalled the CSA long enough to get the high ground.  Then you would say the Union was "camping" on the ridges waiting. 

 

I dont want to turn this into a game where i can have one sniper unit and a supply wagon go across the map over a 2 week period and snipe the entire enemy army and get 60k kills. I do however want victory conditions to be looked at differently and to give us the option of how we play (timer or no timer).

 

Saunders farm is another example of a battle later in the war where it is prolly going to damage your army more than its worth to do the mission. it starts out you have to defend but morphs into you taking a secondary objective where the Union is packed in tight in tree lines with heavy arty protecting them.   I get it that not every battle is going to be a positive for the ledger, but when most of the battles from chickmauga onward are a bloodbath you need to have banked over a million dollars going into this stretch of the game to keep your army in good shape in preparation for washington and the immense amount of troops you need.

[Hitorishizuka]

4 hours ago, Gsam said:

In laurel hill you are allowed to bring 1 corp and in my battle i was facing about 82,000 federals when playing as the CSA.  The way the battle is structured your forces come in piecemeal. You start with 6 brigades and it adds to them at 2 or 3 intervals The federals are hitting you with I am guessing about 62k men while 20k are guarding fixed defensive positions with artillery batteries numbering around 350-450 soldiers per.  Once the memo comes up that you should "attack if practical" you have about ~3 hours left to crack the defensive nut. Meanwhile, they are still attacking you nonstop so you cant abandon the defensive positions.

Any battle where you get given troops that aren't your own you should take as few troops as possible to keep the scaling #s down (since their troops usually aren't configured how you like and you're going to try and get them killed. You came in with about twice as many troops as I did for that battle. I suspect you just weren't killing fast enough, between probably lower veterancy/worse weapons and just more #s to chew through. By the back 1/4 of the fight the Union should have basically nothing left outside their fortifications, in which case it's simple enough to have flanked around on the far north and walk down the entire line of forts to the VP.

In starting defensive battles like these, you have to sort of 'give up' some of your kill ratio to take the point at the end by switching to offensive. But if you do it right you shouldn't really lose -that- much.

[HansGruber]

16 hours ago, Gsam said:

Laurel Hill is the battle I had in mind when I was discussing the kill count versus victory points.

In laurel hill you are allowed to bring 1 corp and in my battle i was facing about 82,000 federals when playing as the CSA.  The way the battle is structured your forces come in piecemeal. You start with 6 brigades and it adds to them at 2 or 3 intervals The federals are hitting you with I am guessing about 62k men while 20k are guarding fixed defensive positions with artillery batteries numbering around 350-450 soldiers per.  Once the memo comes up that you should "attack if practical" you have about ~3 hours left to crack the defensive nut. Meanwhile, they are still attacking you nonstop so you cant abandon the defensive positions.

I have beat this battle once, but it was so costly that I would never do it again. The damage I inflicted upon my army literally zerging the defensive positions was so costly it ended up costing me over 300k above and beyond what the mission paid for the win. NOT WORTH IT.

 

I normally skip this battle because what should be an epic victory (killing 40k, losing 6k) actually damages my reputation (WTH?)  This is why I have been banging the drum for them to have 2 options for victory.  One would be capturing victory points. The other would be damaging  the army significantly (% killed victory)

You were most likely not routing them fast enough to make an attack. Units that should occupy fortifications are skirmishers (whether they are dismounted cav, skirmisher brigades, or detached skirmishers) since they can still fire full volleys while enjoying the cover bonus. Placing entire infantry brigades in them is very prohibitive and only lessens their effectiveness.

You mention breaking the bank. Well, three star brigades are not as strong as they were so getting as much two star brigades is slightly better in terms of effectiveness of the whole army in battle and much better in terms of cost to maintain. 

You also seem to be maximizing artillery brigades where the diminishing returns are harshest compared to other unit types.

There are many more things we probably can't see from the screenshot but I think this is more of you blaming the game instead of yourself. I think the only fault of this game is not being good at explaining itself to the player. Additionally, the only "practice mode" this game has are the custom battles.

[Gsam]

7 hours ago, HansGruber said:

You were most likely not routing them fast enough to make an attack. Units that should occupy fortifications are skirmishers (whether they are dismounted cav, skirmisher brigades, or detached skirmishers) since they can still fire full volleys while enjoying the cover bonus. Placing entire infantry brigades in them is very prohibitive and only lessens their effectiveness.

You mention breaking the bank. Well, three star brigades are not as strong as they were so getting as much two star brigades is slightly better in terms of effectiveness of the whole army in battle and much better in terms of cost to maintain. 

You also seem to be maximizing artillery brigades where the diminishing returns are harshest compared to other unit types.

There are many more things we probably can't see from the screenshot but I think this is more of you blaming the game instead of yourself. I think the only fault of this game is not being good at explaining itself to the player. Additionally, the only "practice mode" this game has are the custom battles.

I agree with some of what you said.

I stop using my 3* brigades once they get to 3* and put them in my "reserve" corp because they are not cost effective to use.

My most recent playthrough I have started using 12-14 gun brigades instead of 24.  It does seem to be more effective.  

Once I saw the research on the fortifications, I have been using the forest instead.

Like you said, the game does a poor job of teaching the players concepts and its only through trial and error that this stuff is discovered.

I still stand by my point though that there needs to be alternative victory conditions.   I am by no means a player thats ever going beat this game on legendary, but I certainly am not terrible at this.   The battle referenced above should be a crushing blow to the union and instead they get the bonus for "Winning" the battle.

Much of this goes back to the argument I have seen on here that the dev's want us to play the way they want it be played. Some players are pushing back and saying "this doesn't make sense."   The historical framework is great, but give us some dynamic options to make the game more engaging and fun.

[HansGruber]

6 minutes ago, Gsam said:

I agree with some of what you said.

I stop using my 3* brigades once they get to 3* and put them in my "reserve" corp because they are not cost effective to use.

My most recent playthrough I have started using 12-14 gun brigades instead of 24.  It does seem to be more effective.  

Once I saw the research on the fortifications, I have been using the forest instead.

Like you said, the game does a poor job of teaching the players concepts and its only through trial and error that this stuff is discovered.

I still stand by my point though that there needs to be alternative victory conditions.   I am by no means a player thats ever going beat this game on legendary, but I certainly am not terrible at this.   The battle referenced above should be a crushing blow to the union and instead they get the bonus for "Winning" the battle.

Much of this goes back to the argument I have seen on here that the dev's want us to play the way they want it be played. Some players are pushing back and saying "this doesn't make sense."   The historical framework is great, but give us some dynamic options to make the game more engaging and fun.

I think a good compromise for the Victory Points issue is to tweak or expand on the Mission Rewards.

For instance, they could tone down the Reputation penalty from getting a Draw. They can also make it an objective-based reward system where objectives corresponding to victory point control, inflicting casualties and army preservation give separate rewards. I do still think that the game is pretty balanced. It is a long campaign after all, and it is up to the player's discretion whether to skip some battles. Also, if you think you did not do damage at all by inflicting 30k-40k casualties you might have forgotten about the dynamic campaign. You just dealt a huge blow to their manpower and possibly took down their most veteran brigades (bringing their training % down). This has a more pronounced effect in the late game (especially if you consistently inflict casualties to them throughout the campaign) where you really see undersized brigades from the enemy late in the game. 

 

[NikolaKaleKonj]

Does anybody think that it would be a good to have Chatanooga campaingn as a sort of way to actually slightly repair a damage done after Chikamauga?It would have a small battle of Lookout mountain and a grand battle of Misionary ridge,together with it a smaller battle of Ringold gap.

    As to why I say damage,it's probably just amy personal thought,but I just recieved quite a whiping at a Chikamauga as a Union,I had almost 70 k soldiers at the start,and on the day 3,diference in numbers was (even though enemy got far worse losses than me) Union 61,000 vs. 93,000 Confederate.I had over 30,000 losses with enemy loosing over 60,000 but it wasn't enough to even pull a draw.

Edited August 7, 2017 by NikolaKaleKonj

[Hitorishizuka]

13 hours ago, Gsam said:

I stop using my 3* brigades once they get to 3* and put them in my "reserve" corp because they are not cost effective to use.

I have an entire corps full of 100 eff/stam/fire 3* brigades in reserve waiting for Washington built up across my current slow game and a giant pile of cash ($1.2m+) to get them back up to usable size. It's going to be pretty great.

[The Soldier]

14 minutes ago, Hitorishizuka said:

I have an entire corps full of 100 eff/stam/fire 3* brigades in reserve waiting for Washington built up across my current slow game and a giant pile of cash ($1.2m+) to get them back up to usable size. It's going to be pretty great.

It's better to bite the bullet and just fill them out with Veterans or mostly Veterans once or twice.  A Vet 3, 2500-man brigade with those stats is a murder machine in the hands of a player - once got 13k kills with a single elite brigade like that at Fredricksburg while barely taking 500 casualties in return because of how the AI blobbed up in the perfect spot - right under their guns.  If you've got an entire Corps work of those, then the Federals don't stand a chance trying to take back those forts at Washington on the second day (so long you don't get too many of them killed on the first day).

[Hitorishizuka]

Just now, The Soldier said:

It's better to bite the bullet and just fill them out with Veterans or mostly Veterans once or twice.  A Vet 3, 2500-man brigade with those stats is a murder machine in the hands of a player - once got 13k kills with a single elite brigade like that at Fredricksburg while barely taking 500 casualties in return because of how the AI blobbed up in the perfect spot - right under their guns.  If you've got an entire Corps work of those, then the Federals don't stand a chance trying to take back those forts at Washington on the second day (so long you don't get too many of them killed on the first day).

Eh, I don't need 'em quite yet (last side battle before Washington) and being cheap has let me build them up and keep that giant pile of cash. Most of the casualties I take tend to be in the combined divisions I use in the forefront, which falls mostly on rookie corpses, so I don't care much.

[Dixie]

I think Chickamauga,  and the pre battles before it, is where the game begins.  The battles up to Cold Harbor and afterwards are by far my favorite and the ones I've spent the most time on.

The key to this game is preparing your army specifically for these battles.  Granted they are extremely difficult especially on the 2 hardest levels but that is what makes this game so fun.  It would suck if you could just walk through them.  If calvary were a little bit more manageable this would be the perfect civil war game.