What Am I Missing?

[ChrisM]

I bought the game in the Steam Winter Sale. I fired it up and started the Confederate campaign on easy. 

I'm an experienced Total War player, so this isn't my first time in this kind of game. Honestly, the game feels like an early beta build of the first Total War from 2000. So many basic functions and quality of life features are missing. 

Enemy units skirmish away a few millimetres and so my units just stand there and get shot to pieces: it's all-micro, all the time. There's no way to see where units are going a few seconds after I send them. Movement is erratic: will they actually bother marching where I want them, or will they stop to attack some random enemy who could be flanked but no, we decided to stop to shoot them from the front instead. Units' morale breaks after about five seconds in melee. My reinforcements arrive across the map: I can walk them over, in which case my fort will be dead, or I can run them over, in which case my fort will still be dead and my reinforcements will be dropping dead of exhaustion. I could go on. 

I really expected to like this game but this first battle is an absolutely horrid experience. And this is the introductory battle, to show new players the ropes! I kept asking myself, what on earth were the developers thinking releasing a game in this state? Then I remembered it was years old already. 

Am I missing something? I must be missing something. Tell me what I'm missing.

[pandakraut]

The first battles for both campaigns are pretty universally considered terrible introductions. Both in that they are more difficult than they need to be and that they don't allow the player to customize their army at all prior to the battle. One workaround is to save and then load the battle right after starting. This results in the reinforcing units being larger which makes the battle a bit easier. The second link below also contains sample save game files if you just want to skip the first battle entirely and see if the rest of the game is something you are interested in.

Compared to total war I would say the battles are a lot longer, but also tend to be more interesting since you have different scenarios instead of mostly just having two deathballs slam into each other. Definitely not as slick as the TW games though, it's a much smaller developer. You don't have the open ended campaign, but there are a decent amount of different ways to build your army and this can make battles play out fairly differently so there is quite a bit of replayability available depending on what you're looking for.

For the first CSA battle, there are a few steps to make it easier. First, while you're crossing the river you want to send either your general, cavalry, or a detached skirmisher NW to get the attention of the two union infantry units heading towards the fort. If you get in their way they will either charge you or turn to fire at you, which gives you more time to get your units between them and the fort. Wiping these two units out will make taking the fort much easier. Second, try to preserve your cavalry unit for the 2nd part of the battle. If you send him NW in the second part, you can get behind the enemy infantry, capture his supply wagon, and keep his artillery distracted and perhaps kill it. Third is to send out detached skirmishers at the start of the second phase to slow down the enemy advance. You want to try and be in 100% cover, just trade shots if they'll let you, otherwise fall back if they charge. Goal is just to buy time for your reinforcements to come up.

The game is definitely very micro focused, pausing frequently can help until you get more used to the timing of when units can be left alone vs needing extra attention. If you are getting shot by a hidden unit or a unit out of your range, you'll need to move your units into position to counter this, they won't do it automatically. Though they will shoot anything that gets into range. You can give AI control over divisions, but you'll get infinitely better results if you give them orders yourself.

Units that encounter an enemy unit will take the most direct line of fire when targeting them. If you want specific flanking angles you'll need to manually position your unit so that the flank will occur.

After a unit has been assigned an order and the movement/attack arrow fades out, you can mouse over them to get the arrow to show up again.

A unit with a movement order will move to that position, but it will also fire at any unit that enters its firing arc that is encountered on the way. In between volleys the unit will keep moving forward while reloading. This can be used to fire and advance into melee or you can use the hold fire button to keep them advancing.

A unit with an attack order will move so that the target enters its firing arc, and then stop and fire as long as the target remains in the arc. Normally this order cannot be given if an enemy unit is between you and the target. If an enemy unit gets between the target and your unit, it will get fired at and your unit will keep moving forward to try and attack the intended target. This can result in frustrating situations where you want to attack a specific unit, things get jumbled up and your unit walks forward into an unwanted melee. There are mods that improves this behavior.

For melee, you want to make sure you have your charge available and preferably you want to always be hitting enemy units with 2 of yours at the same time. Your options are pretty limited at the fort, but detaching skirmishers and putting them behind your units so you can counter charge into melees can help.

Some introductory guides that may help:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/502520/discussions/0/1692659135921638188/

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1590910447

There are also a variety of campaigns on youtube if live play examples is more your preference. Hopefully some of this helps, if you have any follow up questions just ask.

[ChrisM]

This is good, comprehensive advice, thanks. I'll take another go in a while and see how I do.