Land combat

[Fishey55]

Land combat is a little more RTS click fest than a 1700- 1800's tactical skirmish. If this is the design intention that's fine just ignore any critiques that follow. 

First off infantry units swirl around at will with no fatigue penalties whatsoever! and they do so in almost any terrain type.These are not cavalrymen they are infantry and in both the campaigns poorly trained infantry at that, especially in the beginning of each campaign. If a unit in the Caribbean got cut off in a jungle somewhere chances were they would be gone for the day. In AoS routing units will run off into a forest then come back with the ability to launch haphazard attacks in anyway possible! Even if they surrendered they can be freed by a friendly unit and jump right back into battle. This is silly the battles of this period were slow and methodical chess matches and in the US campaign often watched by spectators. When a unit was routed they ran fast and towards their own lines where they could be rallied and brought back into the fray. If they ran for their lives looking for any cover anywhere as far away from the fighting as possible they were pretty much broken or shattered and most likely not coming back. In the US revolutionary war there are accounts of ambushes and flanking attacks but these were planned and coordinated and usually within range of the main body.
Formations were also a big factor, the weapons of the day were LOUD, smokey and inaccurate. A well disciplined line was far more efficient then spotty units doing whatever suited them. When the Spanish regular army would fire on the French the noise and smoke was so much they routed themselves. The British commanders started factoring this in during planning. Poorly trained units would often find weapons with numerous rounds packed into their rifles thinking they had fired. The troops sent to the Caribbean especially conscripts were the bottom of the barrel and had to be commanded Full time.  

I understand this is a game and needs play ability but can land combat get slowed down or made to look more the part? The run command should be a sprint and should be useful for a minute or two not an entire battle. Units that are shattered should melt away for the rest of battle and units that rout and rally should need sometime to gather up their courage while a officer is nearby.

Oh and artillery "I've never seen cannon move so swiftly" ~ Gen. Picton? or (Hollywood) Please if anything slow the cannons down! Limbering & un-limbering a 9lbs cannon then wheeling it around without horse over and through everything in its path is a buzz kill!

S

 

[WilliamTheIII]

As you mentioned, this is a game and having all routed units be put out of action for a long period of time would probably make them useless in battles with timers. As there is no general unit, I'd imagine the morale regain rate is a little higher than that of UGCW which is probably why you are seeing routed units return to the battle much faster. I'd imagine what you are asking is for morale to be regained more slowly when at low morale and faster when at high? The problem with sprinting is that units regain condition at a very high rate and currently regain it if they are walking which allows you to allows be running. Also, the units you are using are presumably well trained regulars apart of the Royal Marines (at least for the British) and are drilled constantly. And it would be incredibly frustrating if ranged combat was made even weaker than it already is especially if you couple it with a morale debuf when firing. Although artillery moves quite slowly, you still need them to keep up somewhat with your infantry or else you risk spending half the match walking your troops into position and has soon as you make an aggressive push, the artillery becomes ineffective again. Overall, it seems like what you really would like is for the game pace to be slowed down. Sadly, there is no half speed option like in UGCW but perhaps as development continues, we will get one.

[doublebuck]

The only thing I would like to add is this is a game and if you mess with the units that waiver and go away or slowly or not recover then in some of these battles you would lose half your army and may not be able to even do the objective specially if there is a mandatory timer on it.  I know the game is going to change. get balanced and stuff like that but I do like it as it is currently and I am not trying to compare it to UGCW standards.

 

 

[Fishey55]

I think you guys may be taking what I'm saying to far. I'm talking about during a battle if a unit is broken or surrenders then its done for the rest of that engagement. If the unit falls back towards its own lines then it should be able to rejoin. The unit commanders already have ratings, land combat is strength and fatigue, why not add an inspiration rating that determines how quickly they could recover during the battle. With the game in mind I'm talking 1 or 2 minutes not hours or days.
It's really if the AI that runs away then re-appears wherever it wants ready to fight again, it just feels silly.
In all cases the unit(s) would be ready for the next land battle and whatever happened during the days clash would be forgotten. It would actually make land battles a little quicker and make them seem a little more believable.
I stopped playing UGCW because the AI would act much the same way but with so many Civil war games to choose from it was easy to move on to something better. With Age of sail the options are pretty slim, especially for a single player game so I'm throwing it out there during early access.

S

[WilliamTheIII]

when referring to shattered units, they do retreat off the map and you will lose them for the rest of the campaign. It also make sense that if you were to recapture your unit, the men would be willing to jump back into the fight and be reinvigorated by their fellow troops. For an inspiration value, that is already represented in the command stat that officers are providing to men. In this case, the higher the officers morale skill, a larger boost to the morale stat the unit will receive allowing it to last in a fight longer and recover more quickly. I still am not quite sure what exactly you are asking here as your post seems to be contradicting itself. You mention having routed troops recover over a certain period of time but are complaining that ai troops reappear after you have routed them. Could you please give a more depth explanation of why you are upset with routed ai units returning?

On a side note, Sid Mier's Pirates is not only one of the best AOS games but arguably one of the greatest games of all time if you want to check it out. 

[JaM]

number 1 thing i dont like about land combat is how there are no proper formations for units... the fact that militia units are always spread out is kinda strange - tight formation was not just necessity for concentrated firepower, but mainly to keep the morale intact.. with troops spread out as in this game, men would just ran away from battlefield because they would not feel presence of other men in unit near them.. while this is not as big problem in broken up terrain, its huge problem in open terrain

[WilliamTheIII]

The loose formation is somewhat of a bug with the 3d models as each individual guy often gets a mind of its own and run away. The only units that are supposed to have a loose formation are skirmishers.

[Fishey55]

On 1/5/2020 at 3:52 AM, WilliamTheIII said:

when referring to shattered units, they do retreat off the map and you will lose them for the rest of the campaign. It also make sense that if you were to recapture your unit, the men would be willing to jump back into the fight and be reinvigorated by their fellow troops. For an inspiration value, that is already represented in the command stat that officers are providing to men. In this case, the higher the officers morale skill, a larger boost to the morale stat the unit will receive allowing it to last in a fight longer and recover more quickly. I still am not quite sure what exactly you are asking here as your post seems to be contradicting itself. You mention having routed troops recover over a certain period of time but are complaining that ai troops reappear after you have routed them. Could you please give a more depth explanation of why you are upset with routed ai units returning?

On a side note, Sid Mier's Pirates is not only one of the best AOS games but arguably one of the greatest games of all time if you want to check it out. 

When a unit breaks many times it will run behind my lines not their own. They then come back into the battle behind me or flanking me. As the battle progresses and routed units start returning to the fight it begins to look like a swirling cavalry scrap rather then an infantry skirmish. I'm saying if a broken enemy unit runs towards me and not to its own line it should be eliminated.
Historically there were different mental states of troops running away, routed units could be rallied. A unit that was broken or shattered  would gone for the day no matter where they got off to.

Agreed about Sid Mier's Pirates was a great game!

[WilliamTheIII]

I have never seen a unit rout towards me and through my lines and if they did they would undoubtedly surrender. If you are experiencing what you are describing, then this sounds like a bug as it seems eerily similar to ghost cav from UGCW.

Also, remember that this is a game and not real life so having routed take a long time to reorganize would make for really poor gameplay. It needs to be quick enough for them to get back into the action but not instant (ie balance).

 

[CajunNavy]

I have repeatedly seen my units rout in Crossfire, and cross the bridge into enemy territory.  I just finished losing Crossfire (again!) and 3 units did that.

I think I may be missing something.  I have 2000+ hours in UG:CW on all levels and cannot understand this combat. LOL  I tried the tutorial and I didn't get any videos. I sent a report. Is there a primer/guide on land combat? I need some help.  Often I can't get artillery to fire, sometimes even to move.  My units do not front to the enemy on their approach.  I hate to see guys just stand there while a small unit comes up behind them and rout them without any trouble.  They just let themselves be slaughtered. 

I absolutely love this game but land combat is a very real buzz killer.  I do not understand! 🤔

[WilliamTheIII]

I can explain how to beat Crossfire using the meta:

Setup: The first units you will meet will be skirmishes both on the right and left. Make sure you detach skirmishes to deal with them as they are a massive pain in the ass. Move one or two units (depends on how many you have) to the right flank in the forest across from the town. The rest of your forces should move under the hill where they can’t be seen. Send one unit to the far left to deal with their artillery. Your artillery should immediately move to the mid and prepare to fire on the village (make sure to protect them from enemy skirms if you haven’t already defeated them).

Village: The unit on the far left should progress up the hill and immediately rush their artillery. They will detach from the cannons long before they can turn the guns and shoot you. Once they’ve routed, capture the artillery and send it mid as well. At the same time, two units should advance towards the infantry unit in front of their artillery (your flanking unit should be behind it). Fire one volley and charge which should result in a capture. If you have spare units, use them to attack the unit in the field that will fire on the troops charging the infantry. If you don’t, then don’t worry about them. After capturing that infantry, use those units to then focus down the unit sitting in the field (remember volley and charge). After clearing the outskirts, the remaining units will be in fortifications and one near the bridge. Now, rest your troops and artillery barrage them for a while as you have until the timer winds down. Once ready, attack the village from 3 sides (the troops on the right, the left, and from south left). Volley and then charge each unit until all of them are either routed or captured. You will hold the village and the phase will change. 

Bridge and City: The two artillery you have should be set up near the bridge but also in range if the ammo. Once done, send a skirm to probe the other side of the bridge to find their artillery and start to counter battery. If you are unable to kill both units, then start focusing on the units in fortifications on the other side of the bridge. Also, merge your allied units as you’ll want to be using those for free weapons and reduced replenishment costs. Make sure to keep your troops hidden on your side of the bridge. If the ai attacks over it, volley and charge them which should capture them. Then fall back out of visibility and rinse and repeat. At roughly an hour and a half left, send your allied units across the bridge and try to keep them far left as possible. Attack the unit in the left fortification and capture it. After doing so, send them right to clear out the remaining unit. If you weren’t able to kill all the artillery, they will be positioned in the north east of the island and are crucial to kill. Quickly secure the city and hold out while the ai desperately tries to attack you over the other bridge. They should already be weakened and easily repulsed as they get massacred on the bridge and then captured by charge once they fully crossed. One note is that the ai will never attack you over the left flank crossing so you will never have to send troops over there to defend. 
 

I hope this guide helps and I apologize if it’s pretty rough with no vid or pictures. I’ll make a full campaign guide for ea release. Good luck! 
PS: there are some bugs with artillery but most of the time they work fine. Just watch their condition as it drains very quickly. 

[CajunNavy]

24 minutes ago, WilliamTheIII said:

I can explain how to beat Crossfire using the meta:

Setup: The first units you will meet will be skirmishes both on the right and left. Make sure you detach skirmishes to deal with them as they are a massive pain in the ass. Move one or two units (depends on how many you have) to the right flank in the forest across from the town. The rest of your forces should move under the hill where they can’t be seen. Send one unit to the far left to deal with their artillery. Your artillery should immediately move to the mid and prepare to fire on the village (make sure to protect them from enemy skirms if you haven’t already defeated them).

Village: The unit on the far left should progress up the hill and immediately rush their artillery. They will detach from the cannons long before they can turn the guns and shoot you. Once they’ve routed, capture the artillery and send it mid as well. At the same time, two units should advance towards the infantry unit in front of their artillery (your flanking unit should be behind it). Fire one volley and charge which should result in a capture. If you have spare units, use them to attack the unit in the field that will fire on the troops charging the infantry. If you don’t, then don’t worry about them. After capturing that infantry, use those units to then focus down the unit sitting in the field (remember volley and charge). After clearing the outskirts, the remaining units will be in fortifications and one near the bridge. Now, rest your troops and artillery barrage them for a while as you have until the timer winds down. Once ready, attack the village from 3 sides (the troops on the right, the left, and from south left). Volley and then charge each unit until all of them are either routed or captured. You will hold the village and the phase will change. 

Bridge and City: The two artillery you have should be set up near the bridge but also in range if the ammo. Once done, send a skirm to probe the other side of the bridge to find their artillery and start to counter battery. If you are unable to kill both units, then start focusing on the units in fortifications on the other side of the bridge. Also, merge your allied units as you’ll want to be using those for free weapons and reduced replenishment costs. Make sure to keep your troops hidden on your side of the bridge. If the ai attacks over it, volley and charge them which should capture them. Then fall back out of visibility and rinse and repeat. At roughly an hour and a half left, send your allied units across the bridge and try to keep them far left as possible. Attack the unit in the left fortification and capture it. After doing so, send them right to clear out the remaining unit. If you weren’t able to kill all the artillery, they will be positioned in the north east of the island and are crucial to kill. Quickly secure the city and hold out while the ai desperately tries to attack you over the other bridge. They should already be weakened and easily repulsed as they get massacred on the bridge and then captured by charge once they fully crossed. One note is that the ai will never attack you over the left flank crossing so you will never have to send troops over there to defend. 
 

I hope this guide helps and I apologize if it’s pretty rough with no vid or pictures. I’ll make a full campaign guide for ea release. Good luck! 
PS: there are some bugs with artillery but most of the time they work fine. Just watch their condition as it drains very quickly. 

Oh man, thank you! It will help!  A couple of questions: How do you merge units? and how do you get the arty to move.  I have no end of trouble getting anything.  I always insure the arty unit is in good condition, I will change units on the guns if necessary.  Hey, I wonder if that has anything to do with it? LOL  But I can't get captured arty to do anything most of the time and I couple them with a fresh unit from the start.  Do the units coupled with the arty have to be a special unit, or maybe infantry? Other those damn skirmishers, arty is a problem for me.

Thanks again!

[pandakraut]

I agree that land combat still feels clunky compared to UGCW. Unit facing isn't quite as consistent and there are a variety of movement bugs that the devs are working on fixing. The shorter range and far greater power of melee also makes it feel strange. That could be intentional since the weapons are different, but the devs have also mentioned that more balancing will occur once more of the campaign is in place and stable.

There is a known bug related to captured artillery that was either just fixed or is being worked on. You should be able to take basically any ground unit and have them take over the captured artillery piece and then be able to use it as normal

Regarding routing units, the higher surrender chance in melee makes this feel like a much more minor issue than in UGCW to me. Though in both cases you can almost always control the rout direction if you setup your lines to anticipate it. The AI unit basically tries to find the area with the least enemy units present to rout towards. So if you charge an enemy unit with 2 units and they get mixed up in melee, the enemy unit will try to go to an area free of units which can happen to be behind your lines. Double lines, supporting artillery, and such can all help contribute to enemy units routing in a specific direction. Though again, right now, just hit the enemy units with massed charges and they will probably just surrender anyways.

[CajunNavy]

1 hour ago, pandakraut said:

I agree that land combat still feels clunky compared to UGCW. Unit facing isn't quite as consistent and there are a variety of movement bugs that the devs are working on fixing. The shorter range and far greater power of melee also makes it feel strange. That could be intentional since the weapons are different, but the devs have also mentioned that more balancing will occur once more of the campaign is in place and stable.

There is a known bug related to captured artillery that was either just fixed or is being worked on. You should be able to take basically any ground unit and have them take over the captured artillery piece and then be able to use it as normal

Regarding routing units, the higher surrender chance in melee makes this feel like a much more minor issue than in UGCW to me. Though in both cases you can almost always control the rout direction if you setup your lines to anticipate it. The AI unit basically tries to find the area with the least enemy units present to rout towards. So if you charge an enemy unit with 2 units and they get mixed up in melee, the enemy unit will try to go to an area free of units which can happen to be behind your lines. Double lines, supporting artillery, and such can all help contribute to enemy units routing in a specific direction. Though again, right now, just hit the enemy units with massed charges and they will probably just surrender anyways.

Thank you sir! 😀

[ston5883]

@pandakraut I'm glad to see you feel the same way as I do about land battles feeling clunky. I thought maybe it was just me or I got spoiled from UGCW. For all the things I would have liked to see in that game it at least felt decent with moving and placing units exactly where I wanted them.

[Garm]

Okay, today the defense of Savannah in the British campaign totally broke on my. Like the Icons of the units where just fixed on the screen while I scrolled the camera. The units stopped moving or shooting and when I just sat out the time pushing "Finish" on the battle end screen just closed the battle summery but didn't let me leave the actual battle. 😅

[pandakraut]

10 hours ago, Garm said:

Okay, today the defense of Savannah in the British campaign totally broke on my. Like the Icons of the units where just fixed on the screen while I scrolled the camera. The units stopped moving or shooting and when I just sat out the time pushing "Finish" on the battle end screen just closed the battle summery but didn't let me leave the actual battle. 😅

They've been trying to quash that bug for a while now. If you didn't report it at the time you can start the game up again and report it now and they'll still get the logs.

11 hours ago, ston5883 said:

@pandakraut I'm glad to see you feel the same way as I do about land battles feeling clunky. I thought maybe it was just me or I got spoiled from UGCW. For all the things I would have liked to see in that game it at least felt decent with moving and placing units exactly where I wanted them.

The most recent update feels like it helped a lot. Still plenty of bugs to quash, but I'm sure they'll get there.

[Garm]

Is it just me or have they increased the condition decrease during running considerably? 

[pandakraut]

11 minutes ago, Garm said:

Is it just me or have they increased the condition decrease during running considerably? 

The latest patch reworked the fatigue system.

[Anthropoid]

On 1/4/2020 at 2:54 AM, Fishey55 said:

Land combat is a little more RTS click fest than a 1700- 1800's tactical skirmish. If this is the design intention that's fine just ignore any critiques that follow. 

First off infantry units swirl around at will with no fatigue penalties whatsoever! and they do so in almost any terrain type.These are not cavalrymen they are infantry and in both the campaigns poorly trained infantry at that, especially in the beginning of each campaign. If a unit in the Caribbean got cut off in a jungle somewhere chances were they would be gone for the day. In AoS routing units will run off into a forest then come back with the ability to launch haphazard attacks in anyway possible! Even if they surrendered they can be freed by a friendly unit and jump right back into battle. This is silly the battles of this period were slow and methodical chess matches and in the US campaign often watched by spectators. When a unit was routed they ran fast and towards their own lines where they could be rallied and brought back into the fray. If they ran for their lives looking for any cover anywhere as far away from the fighting as possible they were pretty much broken or shattered and most likely not coming back. In the US revolutionary war there are accounts of ambushes and flanking attacks but these were planned and coordinated and usually within range of the main body.
Formations were also a big factor, the weapons of the day were LOUD, smokey and inaccurate. A well disciplined line was far more efficient then spotty units doing whatever suited them. When the Spanish regular army would fire on the French the noise and smoke was so much they routed themselves. The British commanders started factoring this in during planning. Poorly trained units would often find weapons with numerous rounds packed into their rifles thinking they had fired. The troops sent to the Caribbean especially conscripts were the bottom of the barrel and had to be commanded Full time.  

I understand this is a game and needs play ability but can land combat get slowed down or made to look more the part? The run command should be a sprint and should be useful for a minute or two not an entire battle. Units that are shattered should melt away for the rest of battle and units that rout and rally should need sometime to gather up their courage while a officer is nearby.

Oh and artillery "I've never seen cannon move so swiftly" ~ Gen. Picton? or (Hollywood) Please if anything slow the cannons down! Limbering & un-limbering a 9lbs cannon then wheeling it around without horse over and through everything in its path is a buzz kill!

S

Totally agree. The Red Coats move around like Elite Viet Cong infiltrators zipped up on betel nut. Surrendered units somehow magically getting all their arms and ammunition back and becoming full strength units in the enemies rear end is ridiculous. Cannon do move pretty quick. The lack of any firm overall formations between companies is pretty inaccurate, particularly for the Red Coats.