Crampton's Gap

[A Violent Fart]

I'm going to start this by saying I really like this game. I get it's EA. I get you need to think, be careful, and use strategy to win. Not all battles are designed to be easy or "winnable." There comes a point, though, where this unit scaling is out of hand.

Give me a break... 9 brigades? That's all I get? So when I play it, I get 9 brigades. Loaded to the max, I get roughly 16000 soldiers. This would be fine if the odds were scaled to the real battle rather than my ARMY alone (not the tiny division I'm sending). You know how many soldiers the confederates have? 16500. Right. Like I would REALISTICALLY send an outnumbered force of union soldiers UPHILL to assault a larger force of CRACK confederate soldiers.

Spare me the, "well the game has to be realistic and you need to use strategy to win." You can't win against that. The line stretches from end to end of the map. I did manage to sneak around through a tiny little hole on their left flank. However, what I encountered was a 3 star brigade. I quickly flanked it with 5 brigades. It was 1600 CSA soldiers to 6000 soldiers. As you can imagine, the obvious thing happened: I got destroyed. Granted, most of them were rookies (I lose generals and colonels in battle faster than a gambling addict loses free money in Vegas) but the CSA soldiers doled out a considerable amount of damage, with me losing more men. I lost the 4-on-1 flanking maneuver. It was 5 on 1 until they tried flanking me. I'd like to add that I noticed heir brigades receive a range bonus when firing uphill, putting their effective range out of range of you soldiers up hill. They also receive a range bonus when firing downhill....

I get that not all battles are supposed to be fought. You have to make the decision whether or not you are going to attack. Sometimes the loss isn't worth the battle. Paraphrasing.

The real battle was 6-1, roughly, in favor of the Union. If you are going to put a battle on the game, don't scale it EVERY time so that the enemy has a numerical advantage. The confederate army has a HUGE advantage with the hills.

[Koro]

Originally posted by RobWheat61:

I finally got around to play the Cramptons Gap scenario. Didn't know what to expect after reading some comments here, but it was actually a very enjoyable experience, despite the deployment bug.

I actually spent 45 minutes maneuvering my troops into position and with a bit skirmishing. Moved my initial three brigades around the Confederate left flank to their rear. After 30 minutes I got 5 brigades and 1 artillery battery as reinforcements and outnummbered the CSA by 6000 men. As the timer hit about 1:45 h, I started my attack on their left flank from the front, right and rear. When the timer was around 40-45 minutes I took the VP. As I said, very enjoyable... and certainly didn't use my best units with the exception of a 2-Star brigade.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=814377760

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=814367017

Hi Rob - it gets significantly harder when the AI has 14.000 men due to the scaling up. Your army might be bigger, causing this, but the men you can bring to the map stays the same.
Others have given some input though and will still go try it once I play another Union campaign.
Thanks though :)

[RobWheat61]

The question is, why didn't the AI had 14000 men in my playthrough (normal difficulty). I totally expected that after reading in this thread. Did the others played on hard difficulty or is there such a great variance in the scaling mechanism?

[Koro]

It depends on your total army size. Mine was at somewhere around 90.000 at that time.

[YoMamaMoto]

Hard difficulty...
Went in mass melee, drove everyone out of the forest, camped said forrest, won.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=814505557

Because of how the scaling works, I always try to keep my army as small as possible...
Thats y I went 18k vs 12k...

[RobWheat61]

Originally posted by Sukha:

(...) Because of how the scaling works, I always try to keep my army as small as possible...
Thats y I went 18k vs 12k...

Scaling is a not an issue for me. I build my army as I see fit and have resources available.

[clench]

I feel like South Mountain is harder than Crampton's Gap...

[[TFM]bobcat]

Originally posted by Chief clench:

I feel like South Mountain is harder than Crampton's Gap...

Im inclined to agree with you on that one though it can be a close one.

[tbassett]

On Normal playing as the Union I had 9,000 men Vs. 9,000 men. I think I either routed the enitre army or came very close to it. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=814584312

If you are having trouble with enemy armies scaling far in excess of your army size, try only creating and equiping the brigades you can equip well. The scaling mechanic seems to scale to your entire army size. As you can see in the screenshot, I usually have tens of thousands of men in my manpower pool unequiped. Most battles take a me few tries to figure out, but once I do that, I can usually win with at least a 3-1 kill ratio and less than 5 thousand casualties.

[clench]

Originally posted by tbassett:

On Normal playing as the Union I had 9,000 men Vs. 9,000 men. I think I either routed the enitre army or came very close to it. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=814584312

If you are having trouble with enemy armies scaling far in excess of your army size, try only creating and equiping the brigades you can equip well. The scaling mechanic seems to scale to your entire army size. As you can see in the screenshot, I usually have tens of thousands of men in my manpower pool unequiped. Most battles take a me few tries to figure out, but once I do that, I can usually win with at least a 3-1 kill ratio and less than 5 thousand casualties.

I oddly noticed the opposite on South Mountain.

I finished Crampton's Gap and loaded into South Mountain to see the enemy troops and I was shocked to see the enemy had 35,000 troops!


I went to camp and filled my troops up and my 3rd Corps in preparation for Antietam... and the enemy troops dropped down to 26,000.

[tbassett]

Enemy army size scales differently between scenarios to try to maintain a historical army size ratio between the two armies. But, it scales linearly for a particular scenario. For instance, I just went to my current Confederacy campaign prior to Malvern Hill and I added two infantry brigades for a total of 3500 men added to my army. The enemy army size went from 37,000 men to 43,000 men.

To test it yourself, go to deploy, check the enemy army size. Go back to camp. Add a couple of brigades. Go back to deploy and check the enemy size and you will see the differences.

[Koro]

Originally posted by tbassett:

On Normal playing as the Union I had 9,000 men Vs. 9,000 men. I think I either routed the enitre army or came very close to it. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=814584312

If you are having trouble with enemy armies scaling far in excess of your army size, try only creating and equiping the brigades you can equip well. The scaling mechanic seems to scale to your entire army size. As you can see in the screenshot, I usually have tens of thousands of men in my manpower pool unequiped. Most battles take a me few tries to figure out, but once I do that, I can usually win with at least a 3-1 kill ratio and less than 5 thousand casualties.

I would prefer paying without having to game the system. In all minor battles, there is a max limit for men and this one is simply too high imo :)

[tbassett]

I like the brigade number limits. It keeps the battles smaller, easier to manage and tactics are more important. I don't mind gaming the system because, well, it's a game.

[Kyle Reese]

on this particular map i find the difficulty to be the fact that every csa brigade is 3 stars. I focus fire 3 brigades and 2 artillery on 1 of them and they'll lose hundreds of troops without breaking. This is the only map in the game where I win with higher causalties than I deal out on normal difficulty.

[CrashToDesktop]

On Normal, I outflanked the enemy from the far right and just shoved all my men into the capture zone. If I remember correctly, this is a "secure and win" type map (same as the 2nd Battle of Bull Run), meaning all you have to do is Capture the point, then wait out the Secure timer and you'll win. Yay for game-iness.

Although, hopefully, the next patch (if it ever comes out) should help with this if you can defeat the enemy at each battle before.

[FireAbove]

I finished yesterday Union on Hard while waiting new patch. Well, totally different then playing with Confederate. Union really have morale issues. Only had 2 draws.
Regarding this battle I didnt find it too hard. I positioned 2 brigades in the woods down the hill occupying Confederate brigades. In meantime i rushed far left near border of the map with 4 infantry brigades and 2 cavalry brigades and I came behind their back. Last minute was a tricky, but I managed to charge them and get the flag.