LAVA's Legendary Union Campaign

[Mukremin]

52 minutes ago, LAVA said:

Battle of Crampton's Gap. Nothing special here expect that the audio came out okay!

 

Amazing how the AI can react differently, in my battle they came charging so i had to reorganize

You really got them out in the open there north east of the objective. CSA took heavy losses there. Another victory!

[LAVA]

40 minutes ago, Mukremin said:

Amazing how the AI can react differently, in my battle they came charging so i had to reorganize

I think you will find on many maps there is a point that if you cross, the AI will immediately respond. For example on 2nd Bull Run in the starting skirmish, if you move your troops anywhere close to the center of the forest, the Rebs will immediately start a vigorous attack. I figured the same thing was going to happen here so I did not approach until I had my entire force on the field and properly deployed. The messages and timers are also used to force the player into moving too quickly and placing himself into an indefeasible position.

For the Union, you must play very deliberately. Move when you have your men properly deployed and supported by artillery.

I'm a bit worried though, I won't have enough men for the major battle of Antietam which you really need to win big. Guess we'll see...

[Mukremin]

1 hour ago, LAVA said:

I think you will find on many maps there is a point that if you cross, the AI will immediately respond. For example on 2nd Bull Run in the starting skirmish, if you move your troops anywhere close to the center of the forest, the Rebs will immediately start a vigorous attack. I figured the same thing was going to happen here so I did not approach until I had my entire force on the field and properly deployed. The messages and timers are also used to force the player into moving too quickly and placing himself into an indefeasible position.

For the Union, you must play very deliberately. Move when you have your men properly deployed and supported by artillery.

I'm a bit worried though, I won't have enough men for the major battle of Antietam which you really need to win big. Guess we'll see...

I had 61000 men at Antietam, facing 80.000 Union troops. I killed 58.000 and lost 22000. On Legendary i think the Union force will be between 90-100k.

[LAVA]

I  am the Union force! 

And it looks like I will be bringing an army of about 54,000 men.

[Mukremin]

1 hour ago, LAVA said:

I  am the Union force! 

And it looks like I will be bringing an army of about 54,000 men.

haha getting confused because i am playing CSA now.

This is what i got with the Union:

[Hussar91]

4 hours ago, Mukremin said:

I had 61000 men at Antietam, facing 80.000 Union troops. I killed 58.000 and lost 22000. On Legendary i think the Union force will be between 90-100k.

In my legendary CSA campaign my force was 47k total, and Union had roughly 120k. So yeah... Get ready

 

Meanwhile interestingly in my legendary Union campaign I went heavy on quality and training over quantity, and at Antietam I had only 42k troops total, facing off against only 50k confederate troops. @_@

[LAVA]

Bad news...

Got the Black Screen of Death on my gaming computer.

Looks like I will be taking some time off from the game for awhile.

[Mukremin]

No! Shit.. bad news indeed... hope you get back to it soon.

[LAVA]

Just thought of something... if they have to reinstall my OS... there goes my campaign.

[Mukremin]

19 minutes ago, LAVA said:

Just thought of something... if they have to reinstall my OS... there goes my campaign.

Try getting your savegames, by unplugging your harddisk on a laptop or another computer as a secondary disk. Or maybe Steam saves it in the cloud?

[LAVA]

Turns out it was my video card. Sigh of relief.

Hopefully back on the campaign trail this weekend.

[LAVA]

With my puter fixed, I jump right back into my Union Campaign.

In this video I fight the Battle of South Mountain. It is another classic flanking action and although I rack up another win intelligence is reporting the enemy army size is now above 80,000!

As an aside, notice how I use a "swooshing" technique during the battle when things are getting really hot. By swooshing my cursor over my troops I can see who is firing at who and if I notice at least a 2 on 1 situation, I usually will then target my artillery on that unit.

Battle of Antietam next and I anticipate having approximately 54,000 troops.

[Mukremin]

9 hours ago, LAVA said:

With my puter fixed, I jump right back into my Union Campaign.

In this video I fight the Battle of South Mountain. It is another classic flanking action and although I rack up another win intelligence is reporting the enemy army size is now above 80,000!

As an aside, notice how I use a "swooshing" technique during the battle when things are getting really hot. By swooshing my cursor over my troops I can see who is firing at who and if I notice at least a 2 on 1 situation, I usually will then target my artillery on that unit.

Battle of Antietam next and I anticipate having approximately 54,000 troops.

Another great win mate, so statisfying isn't it to have few losses and inflict casualties. Too bad the timer is stopping from inflicting heavy casualties before Antietam.  Can't wait to watch the Antietam battle.

[Bramborough]

16 hours ago, LAVA said:

As an aside, notice how I use a "swooshing" technique during the battle when things are getting really hot. By swooshing my cursor over my troops I can see who is firing at who and if I notice at least a 2 on 1 situation, I usually will then target my artillery on that unit.

Nice.  I often do something like that to ensure units are firing at whom I want.  But I hadn't thought about that particular method.  Makes sense...have arty pile on to the guys who are already having a hot time of it.  Good idea.

[LAVA]

The Battle of Antietam... The Bloodiest Day in American history.

Close to 70,000 casualties as I repulse Lee and end his first invasion of Maryland.

A really tough fight which actually was beyond my abilities to control in real time. In so many parts of this battle I really could have used half time to make sure my artillery was well placed and firing on the folks I wanted. As it was, I was having a major struggle just to control my infantry. Having said that, I went into this battle knowing I had to beat on Lee's army.

The only really good thing to come out of this battle, expect of course I won, is that my infantry almost to the brigade increased it's efficiency by a great margin and given 400,000+ in money, I am left with a smaller but an elite fighting force across the board. I will be sure to show the differences in my next battle, the Battle of Luka.

Hope you enjoy the video.

[Hussar91]

I wonder how you manage to totally use the recruit pool, because I have over 50k recruits in the pool at Fredricksburg D:

Granted that my army is less numerous having on standard divisions 3xInf brigades, 1x12 3inch guns, with the elite 1st corp having only 2 inf brigades in their divsions - but I also have skirmisher's (300-350) with Sharp rifles attached to most of my divisions and few 250 men units with telescopic rifles, not to mention few cavalry units (500-750) with carbine's - all grouped in 4th division. Still, my army was only ~10k less strong than yours? And yet at antietam I had somewhere between 30-40k recruits in the pool. Just how I wonder XD

Still pretty nice win in my book. Whats even nicer are those HF 1855's you captured.

Edited January 28, 2018 by Hussar91

[LAVA]

Thanks Hussar!

Everything has its trade-offs. If you want a lot of elite troops or snipers armed with telescopic rifles, you are going to end up paying more for fewer troops. In my next video of the Battle of Iuka, I spend about 10 minutes up front explaining my strategy for army management and show the evolution of my army by using past saves. The end goal is to have a strong, fairly experienced infantry corps with a really good mid to long range artillery arm. By doing so, I almost always have troubles with getting better infantry weapons. I don't hesitate to use my reputation to buy them, but nevertheless, with about 54,000 troops half of them are still armed with the basic Springfield musket/rifle.

I guess it depends on your organizational goal, but in the end, you are going to have to have a pretty large army to attack Richmond... if I get that far.

[Hussar91]

Well perhaps there are also other factors to it. For instance im maxing politics and economy so actually buying or selling weapons can yield profits. For example i’ve uniformed my artillery onto 3inches, selling everything else for a profit (except 10pdr parrots that are playing the role of army corp artillery). Also i think that in general union gets more troops as rewards and reinforcements since in my CS legendary campaign my reserve pool rarely is bigger than 5k.

And of course, needless to say that at Fredricksburg im fielding already two tristar brigades of my own training (plus iron brigade) and my I corps is pretty much made of crack troops. But my 2nd aint that far behind despite it being bigger (3 inf brigades standard per division). U could say im lacking in 3rd corps but its on a good way to become fully fledged one after Fredricksburg.

Edited January 29, 2018 by Hussar91

[Mukremin]

The only battle where you need a lot of troops is the battle of Washington. All other battles can be won without a big army.

I can vouch for the buy and sell strategy, i even used reputation points to buy high class weapons i did not need so i sold and got anywhere between 20-50k for it. Sometimes you need to do that.

[LAVA]

I believe that after the battle of Antietam I have 9 2-star infantry brigades and pretty much all the rest at 1 star including 1 cavalry brigade. My artillery includes 11 batteries of which 7 are 2-star and the rest 1 star. My total army stands at 54,000 men. Politics is maxed at 10, Organization 6 and Training, Medicine and Economy at 4.

I use my reputation to buy weapons, but I never sell the ones I buy. Each round I use all my recruits. After awhile you start getting a feel for how far your money will go. For example, where I am right now it costs 20,000 to buy 1 brigade of recruits with your basic Springfield rifle and a Major. So I look at how many men I have, what I need for replacements and how many excess men I have to form new brigades. As a rule, I almost never spend more than 10,000 on replacements of any brigade. I also only buy the minimum necessary officers. If I have a brigade which looses an officer, I make sure I replace him with someone who has about an excess of 10 points above the units proficiency. I use a Lieutenant and put him into an artillery brigade as a place holder, and then I start shifting about officers to see what I actually need. So, for example, if I put one of my Brigadier artillery officers in charge of the brigade, it will show me what the brigade's efficiency level is. Once I know that, I look around at the rest of my army and see what level of officer I need to fill the the position. If a middling Lt. Colonel will do, then I buy him. You can waste a lot of money buying officers who have command stats waaay greater than necessary.

Also when I play a battle, I usually turn off infantry resupply. I will only turn it on if it is absolutely necessary. In the smaller battles I am playing now, I turn resupply totally off. Am not sure if this saves you on re-supply costs post battle, but I believe it does.

I fought the Battle of Iuka last night, but I ran into a big time sound problem with tons of feedback and when I watched the video it froze my computer. So I was working for quite some time to figure out how to fix that and I think I have solved the problem. Nevertheless I will have to re-fight the battle... probably tonight. That video will review the state of my army pre-Antietam and post Antietam... and you will see what a huge positive effect it had on my army.

[Hussar91]

7 hours ago, Mukremin said:

I can vouch for the buy and sell strategy, i even used reputation points to buy high class weapons i did not need so i sold and got anywhere between 20-50k for it. Sometimes you need to do that.

Yay no. I meant that with maxed economy, equipment management can become quite profitable. Like all cannon types that do not interest you can be sold for the same price as bought, and carbines or rifles are generally just a dollar lower than the price of buying them from the shop. So selling all guns that you never capture enough (or aren't that good enough like some cavalry carbine's or hunter muskets) to equip any unit for more than one battle can at least give you quite good cash now. With maxed economy I even found that actually sometimes it was better not to spent your rep points on particular guns anymore, since you'd wouldn't have to spent much to buy them from the shop - so I was taking the money then instead. There are of course guns that you'll never get enough of, like Fayeteville's for example - which you'll be always taking given the chance. Aside from that, with maxed economy you also can stockpile weapons without overspending yourself I feel. By which I mean that for example my goal is to have every infantry division with a 300-350 man strong skirmisher unit with Sharp rifles for reconnaissance (because it's plain stupid to send guys with telescopic rifles on recon to the forest and having them smacked in the face and decimated, not to mention those units are given different, "less recon'y" perks by me), which means that I need every rifle that appears in the shop each chapter as I might need it for reinforcements - if not in this chapter then in another, since already my sharp rifle users number 5 times that what appears in the shop per chapter.

 

48 minutes ago, LAVA said:

Also when I play a battle, I usually turn off infantry resupply. I will only turn it on if it is absolutely necessary. In the smaller battles I am playing now, I turn resupply totally off. Am not sure if this saves you on re-supply costs post battle, but I believe it does.

That is pretty interesting tactics. I perhaps should try it too, as my corp commanders do have the supply perk. I do however usually capture at least one supply wagon per battle, so it does kinda offsets?

[LAVA]

Careful... I believe the supply perk for Corp Commanders doesn't work as stated. Also the rate of fire of good sniper rifles is high indeed and in any battle of length they will need to be re-supplied, possibly more than once. Having said that, managing your supply wagons and turning infantry re-supply on when needed, is probably the best way to go.

[Hussar91]

I don't know about that. Maybe the stated passive of +20% ammo ain't exactly as high but in comparison to my first two previous campaigns (which I've stopped playing both at gettysburg finding my unit perk choices, and a lot of other stuff unsatisfying simply - so I've "restarded") I feel the difference? It's of course pretty empiric only, just a feeling in my opinion. But I noticed, especially on my skirmishers that they "last" that little bit longer without having to resupply as often as before. And no, I haven't yet invested in logistics beyond the starting 2 points I had there because I found the ammo count pretty satisfactory so far.

Even if the perk ain't +20%, since I'm taking bonus speed and stamina on my infantry anyway - I didn't regret the choice yet.

 

[LAVA]

Here is my latest video - The Battle of Iuka. It is a fairly quick minor battle which is leading towards Fredericksburg.

Unfortunately I have another sound malfunction and the ingame sound can't be heard. You do get to hear me breathing though!

Before the battle I chat a bit about my campaign, army management and the effect of Antietam.

Perrysville is next but I probably won't get to it for a couple days.

Cheers!

[Mukremin]

38 minutes ago, LAVA said:

Here is my latest video - The Battle of Iuka. It is a fairly quick minor battle which is leading towards Fredericksburg.

Unfortunately I have another sound malfunction and the ingame sound can't be heard. You do get to hear me breathing though!

Before the battle I chat a bit about my campaign, army management and the effect of Antietam.

Perrysville is next but I probably won't get to it for a couple days.

Cheers!

Great video, low sound lol. This is a nice little battle, little losses and good way to bump the ranks a bit before the major battle. The only difference i made was to send 2/3 brigades to the right and encircle them. Despite that i only managed to inflict around 4500 casualties on the CSA.