Cavalry Brigade Sizes

[pfcjking]

750 men....? What gives?

There were much bigger cavalry brigades during the war.

[emcdunna]

First off, the way this game works, NEVER EVER EVER EVER Build your units to max size. Ever!!!!!!!!

Infantry should be max 1000 for elite units, maybe 1500 for 0 -1 star brigades. Cav should be max 400 - 500. Skirmishers max 300. Arty max 12 guns.

The extra men sometimes don't increase damage at all, and usually don't matter for melee either.

Don't complain about 750 cav, just take 2 or 3 units of 400 instead.

And don't think of them as "brigades". I know this game calls the units brigades but for cav, "squadron" would be more appropriate.

The ai will happily use horribly inefficient 1000 man cav units though. Don't fret over this either cuz that just means more kills for you.

The men you add after the min number I put above is basically just extra layers of fat that do nothing but eat resources. Always just take 2 units of smaller size.

Even in skirmishes when you have a small unit cap it's better.

[Sir Daubbles]

1000 for elite units? Later in the campaign, I regularly ran into Union units that were +2500.

Would that not put me at a huge disadvantage?

[emcdunna]

CSA campaign is showing me how smaller units are way more efficient. Also, on hard mode, the game forces you to use smaller units because you recover fewer guns from the enemy and from your own losses.

As union on easy/normal, sure you can just buy big bloated brigades but I don't think it's worth it. I think you can still get by just fine with small units.

[Bullero]

Originally posted by emcdunna:

First off, the way this game works, NEVER EVER EVER EVER Build your units to max size. Ever!!!!!!!!

Infantry should be max 1000 for elite units, maybe 1500 for 0 -1 star brigades. Cav should be max 400 - 500. Skirmishers max 300. Arty max 12 guns.

The extra men sometimes don't increase damage at all, and usually don't matter for melee either.

Don't complain about 750 cav, just take 2 or 3 units of 400 instead.

And don't think of them as "brigades". I know this game calls the units brigades but for cav, "squadron" would be more appropriate.

The ai will happily use horribly inefficient 1000 man cav units though. Don't fret over this either cuz that just means more kills for you.

The men you add after the min number I put above is basically just extra layers of fat that do nothing but eat resources. Always just take 2 units of smaller size.

Even in skirmishes when you have a small unit cap it's better.

lol

[CrashToDesktop]

Originally posted by emcdunna:

First off, the way this game works, NEVER EVER EVER EVER Build your units to max size. Ever!!!!!!!!

Infantry should be max 1000 for elite units, maybe 1500 for 0 -1 star brigades. Cav should be max 400 - 500. Skirmishers max 300. Arty max 12 guns.

The extra men sometimes don't increase damage at all, and usually don't matter for melee either.

Don't complain about 750 cav, just take 2 or 3 units of 400 instead.

And don't think of them as "brigades". I know this game calls the units brigades but for cav, "squadron" would be more appropriate.

The ai will happily use horribly inefficient 1000 man cav units though. Don't fret over this either cuz that just means more kills for you.

The men you add after the min number I put above is basically just extra layers of fat that do nothing but eat resources. Always just take 2 units of smaller size.

Even in skirmishes when you have a small unit cap it's better.

That's some real outdated information you've got there. :P

[emcdunna]

No i'm playing the maj gen version of CSA, and playing with small brigades is king. I take 1000 man units with farmers even and can hold off units of 2000 2 star inf with rifles as long as i'm in cover.

500 man skirmishers do maybe 10 - 15% more damage than a 250 man unit. It's not worth it when u buy whitworths.

2000 man inf brigades again do maybe 10% more damage than 1000 man units, except they are a little wider so it matters less.

In fact: best melee unit in the game is a skirmisher detachment. Charge it into melee to cause confusion while you pour on the missile fire, piece of cake. I've seen 60 man skirmisher units with farmers, 0 star veterency rout units of 1500 men with 2 stars in melee because I got some good care-free shooting into combat.

You do need to micro a lot, and you can't afford mistakes (even 1 volley that you didn't plan on taking can hurt you too much) but you can do it. Hard mode gives you way less guns and asks you to fight more enemies.

Fight with regiments, not brigades. That's my advice. Try it if you don't believe me. I learned this from the first campaign mission on the CSA campaign when you had to take on 9000 men with a few scattered units of 450 infantry. Those tiny 80 man skirmisher units are crazy cost effective if you don't get them killed in one volley.

2 cav units of 300 men easily beat 1 cav unit of 1000. Easily.

2 infantry unit's of 600 men with detached skirmishers can take on a 2500 man infantry brigade easily too.

Use more units.

[CrashToDesktop]

You really just need to add more men. You're gonna run out of brigade slots eventually, and besides, you're limited by brigade deployments anyway. Absolutely no harm in adding more men to a brigade, and nowaways there's even no harm in adding more than 12 guns to an artillery brigade.

[emcdunna]

When did they fix arty?

I don't have the money to add more men, really. Or the guns. It's not worth the insane amounts it costs. Like I could buy 500 vets with m1855s for a single unit of mine and it'd cost 20% of how much i'll make from the entire battle of fredericksburg.

Recruits with farmers are $8 each. My triple star inf with fayetvilles cost over $200 each man.

If I have to attack, I buff up my meatshield units to 1250 or 1500, but with recruits. I'm even starting to think that losing veterency is worth getting more units.

In skirmishes you do have limited units, however I have noticed that if you're heavily outnumbered, the ai rushes you like crazy. Farm the kills, level up, everyone's happy. Even putting weaknesses in your battle line can be an advantage if it makes them rush into cannister fire range or where I can flank them

[pfcjking]

Originally posted by emcdunna:

No i'm playing the maj gen version of CSA, and playing with small brigades is king. I take 1000 man units with farmers even and can hold off units of 2000 2 star inf with rifles as long as i'm in cover.

500 man skirmishers do maybe 10 - 15% more damage than a 250 man unit. It's not worth it when u buy whitworths.

2000 man inf brigades again do maybe 10% more damage than 1000 man units, except they are a little wider so it matters less.

In fact: best melee unit in the game is a skirmisher detachment. Charge it into melee to cause confusion while you pour on the missile fire, piece of cake. I've seen 60 man skirmisher units with farmers, 0 star veterency rout units of 1500 men with 2 stars in melee because I got some good care-free shooting into combat.

You do need to micro a lot, and you can't afford mistakes (even 1 volley that you didn't plan on taking can hurt you too much) but you can do it. Hard mode gives you way less guns and asks you to fight more enemies.

Fight with regiments, not brigades. That's my advice. Try it if you don't believe me. I learned this from the first campaign mission on the CSA campaign when you had to take on 9000 men with a few scattered units of 450 infantry. Those tiny 80 man skirmisher units are crazy cost effective if you don't get them killed in one volley.

2 cav units of 300 men easily beat 1 cav unit of 1000. Easily.

2 infantry unit's of 600 men with detached skirmishers can take on a 2500 man infantry brigade easily too.

Use more units.

Well, for the majority of the game, there are limits on the amount of units you can deploy. If you show up with 8 brigades of 1,500 men each, and I show up with 8 brigades of 2,500 men each, who would you say has the advantage?

[Caramirdan]

Originally posted by emcdunna:

CSA campaign is showing me how smaller units are way more efficient. Also, on hard mode, the game forces you to use smaller units because you recover fewer guns from the enemy and from your own losses.

So how salty will you be to find Washington too difficult for your tiny army?

[emcdunna]

The game isn't multiplayer. You don't get to show up to fight my army.

If it was: I would have 10,000 men in 10 units to your 10,000 in 5 - 8 units. I could then flank you and win.

You guys must not have played CSA on major general yet. You can get away with fattie brigades in the union campaign on normal (that's what I did in the past), but especially as CSA on hard you can see how smaller units can do wonders. At fredericksburg I can only take 3 corps at 25 units each. I keep my army org at 6 so I only bring 20 brigades. At that level I can only afford either a small number of fat brigades or a full roster of small ones. I choose small. Try it.

Also, to the OP, you should know that 2 units of cav get a huge bonus to melee compared to just 1 unit, 2 units of 300 saber cav would beat 1000 man saber cav that the ai gets

[CrashToDesktop]

@emcdunna
We're not talking about having an equal number of men in smaller brigades. We're talking about having more men in the same number of brigades. A bigger army is going to smash the smaller one nine times out of ten if both generals are competant. If you're limited by brigade count, make bigger brigades. You're deliberately gimping yourself if you don't.

[emcdunna]

Of course,

but you're only truly limited in brigade numbers in skirmishes, which I do fine on with small units. In big battles, you often get to bring 3 or more corps with 20+ units per corps. This is often undoable at max # of brigades with brigades that are max size. In THAT situation, I like small units.

of course since you cant switch back and forth too much, I just keep them small most of the time.

[TYRO3]

I use skirmishers a lot so I bulk up my brigades as far as I can go without losing efficeincy, then breakout a bunch of skirms and wreak havoc, a skirm on both flanks of an enemy brigade while my brigade is blasting them and they literally don't know which way to turn.