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So the good things:
- The early encirclement maneuver seemed like it paid off in the short term and you did wipe out a lot of union forces there
- defending the bridge near the sunken road looked like it went a lot better than it usually goes in my experience
The not so good things:
- I can understand if you didnt want to use the pause button too much because of how long the video already is but not using it definetely cost you a lot of casualties here from not being able to to take the time to properly order your lines or make unrushed maneuvers. If you don't use the pause button when not doing videos like this, then you are badly handicapping yourself.
- Although successful in the short term, the early encirclement maneuver appears to have done more harm than good since it put you out of position for the follow on union attacks and you suffered needless casualties on the retreat and you did not properly order your defensive line back in the tree line near the church and it forced you to dedicate a number of units to chasing the stragglers when they inevitably got out of control and retreated into sensitive areas where you wouldn't want them to be
- I feel like you did not use the terrain to your best advantage and you frequently had instances where you had units operating out in the open against high experience Union brigades even when they could have been in cover. Similarly, there were many instances in which the enemy was able to get into cover along with you and you were forced to exchange volleys on an even footing
- Because you did not order your lines very well, there were frequent moments I noticed in which you had units blocking the LOS of other friendly units and they were consequently either unable to fire or were forced to shuffle out of position and either into enemy fire or away from where they could have been useful. This also frequently put you at a disadvantage in terms of fire superiority as there were many instances in which you had lone units trying to fight against multiple enemy units with little support and even with good cover that is a losing proposition.
- You should have done more to draw the enemy south towards the Sunken road as opposed to towards Nicodemus Hill. Doing so would have allowed you to catch the Union in a cross fire between your 2 corps both with infantry and most importantly with your artillery. As it was, allowing the enemy to diverge towards the Hill led them into a poorly defended area that you did not really have the rescources in place to defend properly.
overall, you fought commendably and your results are certainly nothing to sneeze at for a legendary playthrough I can imagine but in my experience you could have cut your losses in half with these changes and still inflicted just as many if not more losses on the Union
Damn, Antientam is a hell on legendary.
Won all battles until this one - I have annihilated (like REALLY) whole Union army in the previous battle (21k losses for union, I have lost about 3k) so I was SURE that with 46 500 soldiers I will be able to beat the s.hit out of Union on Antientam.
Well, it didn't happen.
I killed as many Union soldiers I could before - I don't use scalling (IMO its cheating) so went with 2000-men brigades and detached skirms, but DAMN Union has there 121 000 soldiers.
121 000.
I have 46 500.
I look good until like 4th hour of battle :D at this point skirmisher units begin to dissolve and bridge bug seems to be fixed.
Gonna re-run with more aggressive strategy at the beginning (feel I need to hurt them more at the beginning when numbers are more even and I can achieve unit-number superiority).
The aggressive initial push that Col Kelly used is definitely the right direction, but taking it even further can lead to very good results as you can nearly wipe out the Union waves before the next arrives. Given your 3:1 disadvantage it will be hard to pull off without higher casualties than the examples below though.
Smaller unit size example(44k vs 75k): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy8J6qs9HZw&list=PLNFTAFys32_-N-fIfWJgRSJIhVtOZjEGe&index=24
Max unit size example(90k vs 77k): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb_zvLJJENU&list=PLfSvZFYfSsUP3chKRzX7peXsKWCnZKuEU&index=49
Max unit size example 2 (80k vs 85k): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_hLXtVTESQ&list=PLt-JAMmvyAGmA8TU5EC8hHbGPzPCnlYPe&index=35
I don't think it's legendary. I was facing 82 000 on Brigadier General. Besides I think it's scalled campaign - Union has 2950 brigades in my game vs mine 2000 brigs.
EDIT: None of them seems to be played on Legendary lvl. On LEG AI has 540 skirms units and 1800 - 2950 brigades => seems to be low diff level gameplay or very old/old game version campaign play
EDIT2: LOL Guy's plays modded game, it's MODDED Legendary, nothing to watch there imo, I didn't manage to bring more than 45k on BRIG GEN there (I still didn't know a lot how to play but bringing 90k on legendary to Antientam LOLOLOL on Vanilla? I say it's hardly possible).
EDIT3: Watched your game. No idea what mods you brought, it's scalled game and you tweaked with the game.
Anyone here plays the real deal?
There can be quite a bit of variance between different campaigns depending on random chance and player actions. You can find a summary of how scaling works here: https://forum.game-labs.net/topic/26142-hidden-mechanics-and-weapon-damage-degradation/
If you would prefer to discount the information provided here that's up to you. Best of luck in figuring out how to win the battle.
38k vs 97k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGDCVZtN6JA&list=PL6-2WZCqywMUvVOalOdQuzcQBxEASq-mp&index=17
45k vs 80k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJBp-NmH4jM&list=PL6-2WZCqywMWNyI4imucF1tSJjyaqs2qx&index=19
That said, I prefer a more defensive strategy. Hold the forest to the left where the Dunker Church is. when Sunken road appears, ambush the first wave of Union troops at the Bridge to the right and from there flank the union forces attacking the Dunker church but retreat from the Sunken road to Sharpsburg if/when the Union starts pressing the sunken road hard. Dont try holding the river against Burnside either, just hold Dunker church and Sharpsburg and then launch a counterattack to retake the sunken road just before the end of the battle With this method, you can defeat similarly large union armies with around the same number of troops:
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/85970162641641687/343401082445673DB94AB8F4E990AD530A595DB9/
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/923671943948077433/ED99F95DBD90624A0CB5746F256161CCB8073EA1/
For this last one, I was more aggressive about wiping out the Union in previous battles and it does yield results:
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1286290138426953459/5456A5C5DA592919F44FE6D67D013EB86AAFD05A/
Also, for this last one in particular, It was not that I could not have had more troops than I did here, it was a part of my strategy to build up the largest CSA legendary army I could by the end and I beat my previous record with 200k troops :P
my pre-Antietam camp screen:
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1286290138427148434/32AF0026BD82313526452476006206C599D88D40/
First game seems to be legit, second one - not sure about that (I have 2000-men brigades as well and AI Iron Brigade that makes first moves in the north is about 1880 men in my game)
Anyway, you are both right.
It's aggressive tactic at the beginning of battle + I simply need more troops, my previous choices regarding points used (taking historical commanders instead of more manpower/$) and not solid enough victories seem to be the reason why I lost this one as well.
I did destroy 21k in Cedar Creek (I think it's previous or 2 battles before; there's this weapon factory battle as well where you play with auxiliary force) however in the meantime AI received - respectively - 14k and 18,6k reinforcements - I received about 9k + 3,5k from points, lost about 4k men at Cedar Creek.
Report tells there's tops 104k Union troops but in fact it's 120k I am defeating them for about 5-6hours, for about an hour and half my firepower dwindles and after some time they simply decimate my brigades with fresh 2,5k destroying them entirely while I have nothing to cover the losses.
Thank you both for advice! Seems I need to re-run Legendary campaign to powerplay it a bit.
You mentioned that your intelligence report shows a size of ~100k. This is roughly double the minimum value possible at that point in the campaign of 50k. Note the displayed value is randomized by about +/- 5k.
A summary of how scaling works:
For every battle each AI unit has a default size. This size will increase or decrease based on several different factors. The following is not a complete list but is generally sufficient for most players purposes.
1) Difficulty: As seen at the campaign start MG and Legendary will cause sizes to go up.
2) Randomness: There are random size modifier that is generated for each battle that will apply to all AI units.
3) Intelligence report Manpower Pool: There is an AI Size variable which is where the intelligence report size value comes from. This is where snowballing can happen if you aren't killing enough units in each battle. I'll provide some detail as to how this can be controlled later on.
4) Your army composition: In every battle your army makeup is compared to the AI's army makeup. This includes any allied units you get in the battle and any units you do not deploy. This comparison basically uses the average size of each type of unit though infantry size can also affect the size of other units. In side battles this allows you to lower your average unit size by creating temporary ballast units of the minimum size in corps that don't deploy. This does not work in major battles, but can sometimes appear to work because there are minimum floors in the algorithm. If ballast units appear to be lowering scaling in a major battle you just need to add more men in any way. This is calculated at battle start so on multiday battles you can wait to increase men until day 2 to limit scaling as well.
Note: if the AISize is kept low enough and the player builds big enough scaling can hit a ceiling very quickly and the player can just keep adding men without the AI scaling further.
5) Historical force size factor: Each battle has it's own factor that tries to enforce a specific ratio of forces. For example CSA Antietam leans toward the player being outnumbered 2:1. Union Antietam is closer to 1:1. Other factors can definitely override this.
The main thing to compare when looking at other peoples campaigns is the intelligence reported size and their average unit size. The AI Size minimum is 50k for most of the campaign past the 1st 3rd. Here are the numbers for the Union Campaign minimum AISize, valid for all difficulties(CSA numbers look very similar): https://old.reddit.com/r/ultimategeneral/comments/95stw1/what_does_army_size_actually_mean_and_is_it_bad/e4499mf/
From battle to battle, the only damage you can deal to the AI is reducing the AI Size, indicated by the intelligence report size percentage. This is accomplished by killing its units. Capturing a unit is the only way to completely remove it's numbers from the AI Size. Men remaining in a shattered unit escape.
Lowering the AISize has an impact on training and technology. However, all three values have a minimum amount based on the current timeline of the campaign. For example, if the AI size is 60k prior to 2nd bull run. You inflict 40k casualties and then post battle the AISize is now 65k. The resulting size is lower than it could have been, but limited by the minimum. On the harder difficulties this means that it is not always worth it to kill everything if you take to many losses to do it as the AI always gets 'free' troops back. It is also possible to not get enough kills and then the AISize will start to grow beyond the minimum.
(inflicted around 42 500 casualties to Union and lost about 15 000 troops myself) which a solid victory considering I am able to replace most of the lost troops after this battle.
Pretty happy to defeat them w/o any scalling whatsoever, screenshots posted on my profile.