Enemy unit size scaling strategies

[Kay of Sauvage]

As I understand scaling, the size of enemy units present at a battle (but not number of units) is affected by how large your units are, up to some minimum and maximum. But there's a lot more I don't know about it.

1. Does the quality of your troops and weapons change anything?

2. Does the enemy maintain their same ratio of weapon and troop quality as they scale up, or are they forced to reduce quality in exchange for having more men?

3. If I force the enemy to scale up, and then beat them soundly, does it hurt their manpower, training, and armory more than if I soundly beat a smaller army?



My overall strategy is based in part on the idea that scaling is not just a game balancing feature, but that it also represents the enemy responding to your army size by shifting resources away from other sectors and operations in the war so that they have enough to win against you in the battle (or so they think). I mean, if they didn't have enough men for a battle to believe they could win it, they wouldn't fight it. And nor would they take more than they think they need either. So I would hope I could gain an advantage by aggressively expanding my army and forcing the enemy to bleed resources to match me.

So with that in mind, my strategy has always been to maximize unit size, always try to take all the units that are allowed into battle, and get all the best equipment I can (except for my few rookie units I'll take into battle to be meatshields so I don't lose many valuable troops or weapons), and sacrficing unit training in favor of more troops.

But does this actually work as I would think? Has anyone tried playing through multiple campaigns both with smaller armies and larger armies and can see a difference in the enemy manpower, training, and armory numbers?

[pissy*****acct]

one of the things i been wondering about, in this same vein is, does amount of captured weapons fluctuate at all, with a victory over a "grown" force?
stand to reason they enlarge and you beat them, you'd recover more eeapons for your armory.
but do the mech even take that ito consideration?

[Kay of Sauvage]

Originally posted by pissy*****acct:

one of the things i been wondering about, in this same vein is, does amount of captured weapons fluctuate at all, with a victory over a "grown" force?
stand to reason they enlarge and you beat them, you'd recover more eeapons for your armory.
but do the mech even take that ito consideration?

That part I think I do know. I read somewhere that you get 30% of the weapons from killed enemies (the men that run away when shattered don't count as killed) on the easy and medium difficulty, while you get only 10% on hard difficulty level. Looking through some screenshots I have seems to confirm this. I think you may get the 30%/10% from the whole surrendered units since they don't shatter and you get the all as prisoners.

Also looking through my screenshots, it seems at first glance that you get 50% of your own weapons back as rescued weapons after casualties on medium difficulty, and 25% on hard. Though I noticed early on that this creates a bit of a strange incentive to get your allied troops (not your own units) killed so they cough up more rescued weapons for you to use. I sometimes find myself aggressively charging my allied units into battle or moving them up to point-blank range after I've gained the upper hand, so I can both kill more enemies and lose more allies.

[Cockpuncher]

I've just started playing but already seen a difference. Played Shiloh as Union on normal.

First attempt - I've started with big brigades (2000), thinking that as the Union I should go for big units (got something like 15 brigades). I won a battle, but with high losses, exhaustion and no ammo in most units, so counter-attack would be nightmare.

Second attempt - I've restarted campaign, prioritized Politics, build 1500-man brigades (I had 24 brigades, nearly 20 infantry). I won the battle with ease, including enveloping and total annihilation of CSA army (only 1 arty and 1 cav survived to second day).

So in this case larger numbers of smaller units made considerable difference - from tough victory with heavy losses to overwhelming victory during second attempt.

At first I've thought that bigger units will be better, but since enemy army size scales with your own - I'm not so sure. Currently I'm after Fredericksburg and don't know if I should go for 2500-man brigades or not - current 2000 works pretty well.

[Mindfield]

Yep, had the same experience.
With 1500 men Shiloh is pretty good, but with 2000 it gets very bloody and the CSA will be better afterward.
That is one big flaw in UGCW that as a player you simply dont have a clue how big you can make your army at what certain time except for replaying and taking notes.

I still dont know, if it depends in AO skill level or the actual numbers of men you put in your brigades.

[draqsko]

Originally posted by Cockpuncher:

I've just started playing but already seen a difference. Played Shiloh as Union on normal.

First attempt - I've started with big brigades (2000), thinking that as the Union I should go for big units (got something like 15 brigades). I won a battle, but with high losses, exhaustion and no ammo in most units, so counter-attack would be nightmare.

Second attempt - I've restarted campaign, prioritized Politics, build 1500-man brigades (I had 24 brigades, nearly 20 infantry). I won the battle with ease, including enveloping and total annihilation of CSA army (only 1 arty and 1 cav survived to second day).

So in this case larger numbers of smaller units made considerable difference - from tough victory with heavy losses to overwhelming victory during second attempt.

At first I've thought that bigger units will be better, but since enemy army size scales with your own - I'm not so sure. Currently I'm after Fredericksburg and don't know if I should go for 2500-man brigades or not - current 2000 works pretty well.

I've found it depends on your officers' levels. Once you can actually have brigadier generals commanding brigades, and higher ranks commanding divisions and corps, you can start to push past 1500 men or so per brigade. At the start of the war you are basically understaffed and have to consider your brigades as merely regiments since that is all you have the officer ranks to command. If you put too many men under them, those units lose combat effectiveness and cost you more casaulties as you've seen.

[draqsko]

Originally posted by Mindfield:

Yep, had the same experience.
With 1500 men Shiloh is pretty good, but with 2000 it gets very bloody and the CSA will be better afterward.
That is one big flaw in UGCW that as a player you simply dont have a clue how big you can make your army at what certain time except for replaying and taking notes.

I still dont know, if it depends in AO skill level or the actual numbers of men you put in your brigades.

Number of men put in brigades. I kept 10k in reserve, was opposed by roughly 35k troops to my 30k or so and roughly even guns around 75ish. Switched my division structure from 2 Inf, 2 Art to 3 Inf, 1 Art and CSA opposed me with 42k versus 39k and about twice the artillery, 108 vs 53.

So they get a gain based on total number you deploy, and that gain is a set ratio of infantry to artillery.

[Didz]

According to my tests the enemy army size is directly influenced by your army size.

As far as I can tell the game sets a 'Threshold' for every battle based upon what it considers to be par for the size of the players army. If your army exceeds that threshold value it then scales up the size of the AI brigades to compensate.

What i haven't been able to determine is whetehr the 'Threshold' set is influenced in any way by player performance in past battles or whether is just fixed.

[Cockpuncher]

Originally posted by draqsko:

I've found it depends on your officers' levels. Once you can actually have brigadier generals commanding brigades, and higher ranks commanding divisions and corps, you can start to push past 1500 men or so per brigade. At the start of the war you are basically understaffed and have to consider your brigades as merely regiments since that is all you have the officer ranks to command. If you put too many men under them, those units lose combat effectiveness and cost you more casaulties as you've seen.

I know that and it was not the case - but still worth mentioning, some people might don't know about it. My brigades were efficient. I've just simply didn't have enough men to field more brigades and it limited my tactical flexibilty.

For example - with 2 smaller brigades one can take enemy head on, second can flank. That's impossible with one big brigade. It's also easier to survive infantry charge with two brigades.

And in Shiloh you need flexibility, otherwise your brigades will involve into slugfest and lose all stamina and ammo. With small-scale manouvers you can greatly increase their efficiency and avoid such problems.

[Kay of Sauvage]

Originally posted by Cockpuncher:

For example - with 2 smaller brigades one can take enemy head on, second can flank. That's impossible with one big brigade. It's also easier to survive infantry charge with two brigades.

Yeah, I get that having your army spread out into all the available unit slots for a battle is more efficient than having all the men put into a few big units. And also that smaller battles where you don't force the AI to scale up are generally easier to win. But my original question was about whether there were any effects on the long term strength of the enemy by pushing a larger unit size, which probably could be seen intelligence report where it states the army size, training, and armory quality.

Originally posted by Didz:

According to my tests the enemy army size is directly influenced by your army size.

As far as I can tell the game sets a 'Threshold' for every battle based upon what it considers to be par for the size of the players army. If your army exceeds that threshold value it then scales up the size of the AI brigades to compensate.

What i haven't been able to determine is whetehr the 'Threshold' set is influenced in any way by player performance in past battles or whether is just fixed.

Maybe if we had a collection of screenshots from people's intelligence page (where you choose which battle to go to) towards the end of the game, we can see how varied the numbers are (Army size, Training, Armory) and figure out how each player was playing to get to that point.

Or maybe people can describe their experiences regarding what type of weapons the enemy was bring to battle over the course of the campaign for whatever difficulty.

For example, I haven't gotten too far into a campaign yet, but I was playing as Union on normal difficulty and I was pushing maximum unit size as much as I could, and I was wiping out the whole enemy forces in battles, and I got as far as completing the 1st Bull Run. Almost every CSA weapon was the weakest. I capture 2500 farmer rifles, and 680 re-bored farmer rifles. Their cavalry had cook & brother rifles, and skirmishers had hunter rifles. Artillery was 6pounder field guns. After the battle, the intelligence minimums said 51k army, 27% training, and 9% armory.

Playing as CSA on hard, after Shiloh, the intelligence says 44k army, 28% training, and 31% armory, and their best line infantry weapon was the Palmetto (3750 captured, compared to 843 Springfield M1842. Are you guys seeing similar quality levels in the enemy weapons at that point?

[limith]

I've written about scaling before but a few things are new while most things are the same.

1) On hard: AI max brigade size goes up by 500 each army org point you have. This is regardless of if you are using brigades of the size or not. I think this is a bug since a few patches back they made AI use smaller brigades but all I see now are max size brigades. So in other words don't invest in army org unless necessary. Army org 3 has 2000 men on hard. Brigade size is independent of men, so higher max brigade size means fewer AI brigades (which is better for avoiding charges but worse for firefights)

On normal (havn't tested with latesr version of game): AI max brigade size is always 500 above your max brigade size.

2) AI will bring same equipment as you if yours is better than their armory level (except on Easy). Aka no point to out armor the AI (except on Easy). You can use this fact on normal to capture more of some rare weapon though. ;)

3) Attrition is bugged (see my post or emcdunnas) on hard and the AI army manpower is ignored. In otherwords no point to try and bring large armies since you can never outnumber the AI.

4) AI will mirror your army but have more than you. So you can bring 1 useless melee cav and the AI will bring 3. You can bring1 sniper and the AI will bring 3. AI artillery brigades will tend to be 3x or higher number of guns as your brigades. This is why I personally stick to size 6 art brigades so the AI has killable art brigades. Otherwise they can get art brigades with thousands of men in it that doesn't die in melee fast enough.

[Kay of Sauvage]

Originally posted by xhh2a:

2) AI will bring same equipment as you if yours is better than their armory level (except on Easy). Aka no point to out armor the AI (except on Easy). You can use this fact on normal to capture more of some rare weapon though. ;)

I don't know enough about the other things you wrote to confirm or deny the, but this point about equipment seems to not match my experience. As I mentioned with some numbers in my previous post, in the Union normal difficulty game, the CSA were getting worse in terms of equipment quality that seemed to match the intelligence armory numbers, while my units were steadily getting better. Similarly on hard as CSA, the Union infantry's best gun is still the super inaccurate Palmetto, while my infantry units (2000 men) were 1 lorenz, 4 mississippi, 1 palmetto, 2 m1842, and a half unit of enfield.

[Cockpuncher]

Originally posted by xhh2a:

4) AI will mirror your army but have more than you. So you can bring 1 useless melee cav and the AI will bring 3. You can bring1 sniper and the AI will bring 3. AI artillery brigades will tend to be 3x or higher number of guns as your brigades. This is why I personally stick to size 6 art brigades so the AI has killable art brigades. Otherwise they can get art brigades with thousands of men in it that doesn't die in melee fast enough.

Just checked my battle record for normal union campaign and in every historical battle I had more men than AI. From minor difference (all numbers infantry only) in Gaines Mill (over 42k vs nearly 42k) to big difference in Fredericksburg (100k vs 46k). And never I have seen more than 600 in arty brigades.

So if you are talking about older versions it might be true, but in current version it looks totally different.

[Didz]

I've just been through and checked my battle records for both my currrent Normal campaigns and I've got pretty much the same results as follows:

Union Campaign
Distress Call - Player: 2,479 AI: 4,551
Distress Call - Player: 3,750 AI: 4,551
Distress Call - Player: 4,030 AI: 4,551
Distress Call - Player: 4,180 AI: 4,551
Distress Call - Player: 4,200 AI: 4,551
Distress Call - Player: 4,230 AI: 4,586
Distress Call - Player: 4,780 AI: 5,252
Distress Call - Player: 5,282 AI: 5,330
1st Bull Run - Player: 22,773 AI: 19,742
River Crossing - Player: 16,000 AI: 11,394
Shiloh - Player: 38,575 AI: 35,551
Gaines Mill - Player: 29,737 AI: 33,204

Confederate Campaign
Potomac Fort - Player: 3,327 AI: 4,307
Newport News - Player: 5,553 AI: 6,538
NewPort News - Player: 5,496 AI: 6,482
1st Bull Run - Player 23,816 AI: 16,002
Malvern Hill - Player: 51,995 AI: 29,174
Shiloh - Player: 37,499 AI: 36,418
Manassas Depot - Player: 6,638 AI: 5,467

So, as you can see with the exception of the first two battles in both campaigns and Gaines Mill in my Union Campaign I've always had the numeric advantage.

[The King of Spades]

Originally posted by Kay of Sauvage:

Originally posted by pissy*****acct:

one of the things i been wondering about, in this same vein is, does amount of captured weapons fluctuate at all, with a victory over a "grown" force?
stand to reason they enlarge and you beat them, you'd recover more eeapons for your armory.
but do the mech even take that ito consideration?

That part I think I do know. I read somewhere that you get 30% of the weapons from killed enemies (the men that run away when shattered don't count as killed) on the easy and medium difficulty, while you get only 10% on hard difficulty level. Looking through some screenshots I have seems to confirm this. I think you may get the 30%/10% from the whole surrendered units since they don't shatter and you get the all as prisoners.

Also looking through my screenshots, it seems at first glance that you get 50% of your own weapons back as rescued weapons after casualties on medium difficulty, and 25% on hard. Though I noticed early on that this creates a bit of a strange incentive to get your allied troops (not your own units) killed so they cough up more rescued weapons for you to use. I sometimes find myself aggressively charging my allied units into battle or moving them up to point-blank range after I've gained the upper hand, so I can both kill more enemies and lose more allies.

^^ This. And make sure your playing on a save later than 1.0

[pfcjking]

I have seen to pros and cons of large and small brigades. The best answer is to DIVERSIFY.

When you get to a big battle, such as Stones River, having a 65,000 man army full of 1,000 to 1,500 man brigades can create a problem. It is not easy to direct 52 infantry brigades, plus 12 artillery units and 6 cavalry units.
But... if you make you brigade average bigger.... mush less little arrows flying around the screen.

I try to base my unit size ideals around my divisions instead of my brigades. I want 7500 men in a division, whether that is 3 - 2500 man brigades or 2 - 1500 and 2 - 2000 man brigades or whatever.

Bigger brigades also pay off when you are only allowed to bring 8 brigades to a small fight. 8 2000+ brigades are much better than 8 - 1250 man brigades. Who is going to break out skirmishers from a 1,250 man outfit? not me.