Enemy scaling in campaing

[Spicy Camel]

I've read a lot about enemy force size scaling to player force on these forums, but looks like all of that was related to older game versions.
What's the current situation on enemy scaling?

[[TFM]bobcat]

Scaling is very minor on Colonel and BG, to the point where if you are careful to wipe out the enemy in battles you will notice enemy numbers decline very considerably. On MG, There is scaling that basically ensures that there is a gauranteed floor to enemy numbers that keeps them a significant threat but you can still trim enemy numbers down to an extent. Legendary is basically Early Access levels of scaling in which the AI gets ridiculous numbers of troops pretty much no matter what. That is my understanding

[Spicy Camel]

Thanks for clarifying.

And about weapons, does bringing better rifles forces AI to have better weapons too?
In my BG CSA campaign it looks like 90% of union troops are armed with harpers ferry rifles (Antietam - Fredericksburg battles), no matter what weapons I give to my men.

Another question, does creating cavalry/skirmisher brigades force AI to deploy more brigades of that type too?

[Americus Wickey]

Originally posted by ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥:

Thanks for clarifying.

And about weapons, does bringing better rifles forces AI to have better weapons too?
In my BG CSA campaign it looks like 90% of union troops are armed with harpers ferry rifles (Antietam - Fredericksburg battles), no matter what weapons I give to my men.

I just finished Antietam in a BG Union campaign. I've been giving my troops the best weapons I can afford, to kill as many enemy as possible in each engagement. I've also lost fewer troops per battle, overall, than in my previous BG campaign.

At this point, I'm surprised by the low quality of Reb weapons - I'm still capturing mostly smoothbores, with 1841s, Lorenzes and Enfields just beginning to show up in captures. If the AI was equipping the Rebs to match my troops (now almost entirely 1855s & Lorenzes), I'd expect to see these dominating the captured haul.

It's happening for artillery and cavalry, as well. I'm using 24# Howitzers, Naps, Ord Rifles & 20# Parrotts, but am only capturing 6# Field, 12# Howitzers and Naps (primarily Fields). In cavalry I'm using 1855 Sharps and melee weapons, but am only capturing Sawed-off Shotguns

My guess is that my high kill ratio is influencing what the AI supplies the Rebs.

[Malkor2]

Here are the results of some testing i just did on BG difficulty using cheats. Wouldn't have been possible without cheats, at least not right from the start.

I started a new Union BG campaign for this, so the first battle to fight was Distress Call. Enemy Army size was estimated at around 28k-33k. So at first i went in without using cheats. Three units of Infantry at 1500 men each and two units of Artillery with 5 guns each. End result was that the Rebels brought around 7100 men in total to the battle. That is Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery combined. Average unit size for the Infantry was at around 900 men. Biggest unit had 1000 men in it.

Then came the cheating and thanks to that i now went in with 8 units in total. 6 Infantry at 1500 men each and two Artillery with 12 guns each. End result showed the Rebel force at a total strength of around 11500 men. Average unit size for the Rebels was 1400 men for the Infantry. Biggest unit was at around 1650 men.

Last but not least i went in with 8 units again but this time i had actually 12 units in my Corps. The end result showed the Rebels total strength at around 15000 men and the average unit size for Infantry was at 1850 men. Biggest unit had around 2100 men.

Of course, that was only at the beginning of the campaign and just one battle. Except for Phillipi there were no battles fought yet. Guess i'm gonna have to do the testing for 1st Bull Run too so we can get a better idea how scaling on BG works. I wonder what that will look like. And Americus, the equipment that the AI uses probably depends more on the difficulty level than scaling. On Colonel and BG the AI will mostly use crappy equipment, even when you're already using much better equipment. That will most likely change on MG and definitely on Legendary.

[[TFM]bobcat]

Originally posted by ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥:

Thanks for clarifying.

And about weapons, does bringing better rifles forces AI to have better weapons too?
In my BG CSA campaign it looks like 90% of union troops are armed with harpers ferry rifles (Antietam - Fredericksburg battles), no matter what weapons I give to my men.

Another question, does creating cavalry/skirmisher brigades force AI to deploy more brigades of that type too?

On BG scaling of all types is significantly reduced compared to MG and legendary. That said, as I undertsand it, the AI does scale based on your weapon choices but it can only do so based on what weapons are available and will choose weapons based on the time period of the battle. As such, The union doesn't have much choice for weapons in 1862 beyond the Lorenz, the Enfield the 1855 and the Harpers Ferry and they will always tend to favor the Harpers ferry and the 1855 so the impact of trying to manipulate the scaling here is not as significant. It is somewhat more so in the later battles when the 1861 and 1863 come into play and using worse weapons will see you capturing more 1861s vs 1863s but beyond that the AI Union does not demonstrate as much of a response in weapon scaling compared to the AI CSA.

As far as skirmishers go, to my knowledge, the number of enemy skirmisher units does not correlate to your skirmishers but the enemy's cavalry does seem to resopond to some extent to how much cavalry you yourself bring.

[Kristoph42]

Originally posted by Malkor2:

Wouldn't have been possible without cheats, at least not right from the start.

How did you cheat????

[Americus Wickey]

Originally posted by Kristoph42:

Originally posted by Malkor2:

Wouldn't have been possible without cheats, at least not right from the start.

How did you cheat????

My question, exactly.

[UnicornPoacher]

At the expense of necro I'll put in my two cents seeing as it seems to be difficult even today to get a straight answer to this question.

I can speak to the state of this as of 01JAN19 based on an experiment I ran as the union using Antietam (grand battle) on brigadier general (medium difficulty).

To be clear the below is strictly in terms of army intelligence report on enemy strength. I cannot speak to how this works under other conditions but at least it may be reasoned that this is worst-case for someone playing on BG difficulty.

Short answer: yes, enemy scaling occurs as you add more troops to your army.

Long answer:

At base, I started with 60,000 infantry and 126 guns then raised my army size to 72,500 with 126 guns.

The enemy army size went from 37,500 infantry, 110 guns to 45,000 with 110 guns.

Here are the conclusions that can be drawn from this result:

1. The enemy army scales to the player's army by the total percent that the player increases his army's size. In the example, my army size was increased by 17%. The enemy army size also increased by 17%.

2. The scaling appears to occur according to brigade type. Notice that the number of guns on each side stayed the same in case 1 and case 2. Enemy guns did not scale up as a result of increasing infantry, or moreover, the overall percent increase in army size.

Hope this helps folks out--

[pandakraut]

@UnicornPoacher you're close, but there is a bit more going on behind the scenes. Below is my writeup on how scaling works currently.

The scaling algorithm itself is rather complex but I'll try to summarize it. 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) 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.
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.

Tips:
You can have a significant effect on the AI's average unit size by keeping your own small. For example, I play most of either campaign with units around 1k. Units will get a bit larger as it goes own but rarely do I go much about 1.3k. Even without ballast units this will largely keep AI units as small as they can be given other factors.


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: 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 accomplshed 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.

Also note, the AISize is not actually a limit on what you will face in battle. A variety of scaling factors can push that number higher or lower as described above.

Some old test data for Union MG Antietam: https://old.reddit.com/r/ultimategeneral/comments/83vcfg/how_to_maximize_total_number_of_men_while/
This was from before I was able to look at the algorithm so some of the speculation and conclusions are outdated but the test cases are still useful for showing how smaller unit sizes allow you to bring more men and guns without moving scaling.

[CivWar64]

Originally posted by ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥:

I've read a lot about enemy force size scaling to player force on these forums, but looks like all of that was related to older game versions.
What's the current situation on enemy scaling?

I think the best advice I got was from @pandakraut, who told me that for Minor battles, you can reduce enemy army size by adding ballast units (500-man infantry brigades) to decrease your brigade average size. For Grand Battles, overall size of your army influences enemy army size (so get rid of ballast units as they don't help). Antietam is an anomoly to this, I've found.

Overall in my own experience using Recon=2, the above seems to work. (I play the vanilla unmodded version). I put some examples in my Newbie Guide in an appendix chapter recently.

[Hugh de Salle]

Scaling is shocking on MG and above , I think its done on the total amount of troops inc arty and cav , inf all added together not just infantry.

Multi day battles can still bypass scaling by having a smaller force at the start and then increasing it when you get the chance , However lots of micro management is needed to do this as it could end in tears.

Cannon are my biggest bugbear when it comes to scaling the rifled cannons arnt powerful enough to deal with the huge batterys the ai gets and playing the rebs makes this worse as rifled cannons are scare.

You could fire at a 24 gun ai battery for hours and not dent it even focus fire is ineffective.

When playing the rebs my average brigade size on MG and above is around 2100 i contstantly fight 2950 brigades with 24 cannon batterys and around 600-900 cav brigades even a thousand in some battles.

MG and Ledge were hard anyway but it seems they got harder but im not really moaning it keeps the game a challenge.

[pandakraut]

Originally posted by Hugh de Salle:

Scaling is shocking on MG and above , I think its done on the total amount of troops inc arty and cav , inf all added together not just infantry.

Multi day battles can still bypass scaling by having a smaller force at the start and then increasing it when you get the chance , However lots of micro management is needed to do this as it could end in tears.

Cannon are my biggest bugbear when it comes to scaling the rifled cannons arnt powerful enough to deal with the huge batterys the ai gets and playing the rebs makes this worse as rifled cannons are scare.

You could fire at a 24 gun ai battery for hours and not dent it even focus fire is ineffective.

When playing the rebs my average brigade size on MG and above is around 2100 i contstantly fight 2950 brigades with 24 cannon batterys and around 600-900 cav brigades even a thousand in some battles.

MG and Ledge were hard anyway but it seems they got harder but im not really moaning it keeps the game a challenge.

Infantry units have a larger impact on scaling than other unit types and can cause cav, skirmishers, arty to scale as well if large enough. You can largely bypass scaling by just always using smaller unit sizes. For more details see my comment a few posts above this.

Unless you are using one of the mods 24 gun artillery actually does far less damage than smaller artillery units. Focus firing with the right types of experienced rifle artillery, even 10pdr parrots, will bring down even a 24 gun unit in a reasonable amount of time. While easier as the Union due to timers and artillery availability, even as the CSA you can eliminate enemy artillery entirely before moving on objectives in many battles.

[Hugh de Salle]

Originally posted by pandakraut:

Originally posted by Hugh de Salle:

Scaling is shocking on MG and above , I think its done on the total amount of troops inc arty and cav , inf all added together not just infantry.

Multi day battles can still bypass scaling by having a smaller force at the start and then increasing it when you get the chance , However lots of micro management is needed to do this as it could end in tears.

Cannon are my biggest bugbear when it comes to scaling the rifled cannons arnt powerful enough to deal with the huge batterys the ai gets and playing the rebs makes this worse as rifled cannons are scare.

You could fire at a 24 gun ai battery for hours and not dent it even focus fire is ineffective.

When playing the rebs my average brigade size on MG and above is around 2100 i contstantly fight 2950 brigades with 24 cannon batterys and around 600-900 cav brigades even a thousand in some battles.

MG and Ledge were hard anyway but it seems they got harder but im not really moaning it keeps the game a challenge.

Infantry units have a larger impact on scaling than other unit types and can cause cav, skirmishers, arty to scale as well if large enough. You can largely bypass scaling by just always using smaller unit sizes. For more details see my comment a few posts above this.

Unless you are using one of the mods 24 gun artillery actually does far less damage than smaller artillery units. Focus firing with the right types of experienced rifle artillery, even 10pdr parrots, will bring down even a 24 gun unit in a reasonable amount of time. While easier as the Union due to timers and artillery availability, even as the CSA you can eliminate enemy artillery entirely before moving on objectives in many battles.

Scaling has changed you can get over a thousand man ai cav and skirm brigades now even if you have 400 skirm and cav brigades.

Just played secure river as the union not one of my brigades was above 2000 all around 1800-1950 by cannon was 8 guns each and no cav or skirm.

Ai
----------------
Inf = 2950
Skirm = 798
Cav = 900
Arty = 600

Me
---------------

Inf = 1900
Skirm = None
Cav = None
Arty = 200

Scaling has changed its got tougher no doubt about it , It seems to be worse in Minor battles than the Main battles but like i say it keeps the game fresh and challenging.

[pandakraut]

When you say it has changed, which version of the game are you comparing to? The scaling algorithm hasn't changed since at least 1.09. I don't have access to the game dlls prior to that, so I can't comment on how it worked in those earlier versions.

As you noted, currently infantry size has a large impact on the size of other units. This is a combination of the way the algorithm considers only infantry in several parts of the calculation and their much larger unit size compared to everything else. Since a single army size modifier gets applied to all units along with the unit specific modifiers, the larger infantry will cause them to scale even if you don't have large units of that type yourself.

If you're having fun facing a larger army, by all means enjoy. But from the perspective of not triggering scaling, 1900 is going to be to big until at best the very end of the campaign. You would need to be using units around 1000 at Secure River to avoid it.

Side battles can be harsher in scaling because all of your army is considered not just those units deployed to the side battle. Since the AI only counts the units it actually deploys in a given battle the comparison against your entire army will not be favorable to the player.

[Hugh de Salle]

Originally posted by pandakraut:

When you say it has changed, which version of the game are you comparing to? The scaling algorithm hasn't changed since at least 1.09. I don't have access to the game dlls prior to that, so I can't comment on how it worked in those earlier versions.

As you noted, currently infantry size has a large impact on the size of other units. This is a combination of the way the algorithm considers only infantry in several parts of the calculation and their much larger unit size compared to everything else. Since a single army size modifier gets applied to all units along with the unit specific modifiers, the larger infantry will cause them to scale even if you don't have large units of that type yourself.

If you're having fun facing a larger army, by all means enjoy. But from the perspective of not triggering scaling, 1900 is going to be to big until at best the very end of the campaign. You would need to be using units around 1000 at Secure River to avoid it.

Side battles can be harsher in scaling because all of your army is considered not just those units deployed to the side battle. Since the AI only counts the units it actually deploys in a given battle the comparison against your entire army will not be favorable to the player.

Yea it has changed ive always played on MG or above , But the rest your spot on with minor battles have always been more about the scaling , not really noticed much in the main battles they seem to be the same.