Infantry weapons are too powerfull

[BullGod]

I feel that accuracy and killing ratio of infantry weapons is far too great and it causes some serious gameplay problems.
First of all, cavalry armed with Sharps carbines or similiar fast firing weapon of reasonable range, especially fighting dismounted and in loose order, is unbeatable. It's not like they can try to slow down infantry. They will just stop and execute them.

Accurancy on longest range is too good. It actually doesn't make any sense to fight at closer range at all.

But most importantly, it does not allow AI to make any mistakes.
Weird manouvers in front of firing enemy, repositioning, marching through swamps, etc - AI does a lot of weird stuff that cost it greatly. Before whole AI division makes any move that could potentially threaten me, I will decimate and rout their brigades one by one. Before AI can actually do anything, they must retreat due to losses.

Reducing accuracy helps, in my opinion. I've made some modifications to config files to reduce kill ratio to about half of what it is now and I had some really interesting battles. I had river corssing battle for example, where one enemy division tried to cross the river at one point (where I met them), the other went further and crossed somewhere else - it's flanking force of 3 infantry brigades + artillery fought for couple of hours with my 2 brigades desperately trying to hold them off, while rest of the army attacked the crossing. I almost lost this battle - only night saved me (and arrival of the rest of my army). I think without those modifications battle would be over before AI flanking force would even enter action, because I fought many similiar ones that were much shorter and boring.

[heres johnny3112]

I think I agree with you - especially compared to how Cannons feel like pea shooters just plinking away at the enemy doing at most a few dozen casualties - with the rare good cannister round actually killing 10s of enemy troops.


I really don't see any reason - other than ammunition concerns if you have few units to hold a line and you need to do max damage - that one wouldn't always have the longest distance to engage enemy units on

[FrancisMarion]

Originally posted by BullGod:

I feel that accuracy and killing ratio of infantry weapons is far too great and it causes some serious gameplay problems.
First of all, cavalry armed with Sharps carbines or similiar fast firing weapon of reasonable range, especially fighting dismounted and in loose order, is unbeatable. It's not like they can try to slow down infantry. They will just stop and execute them.

Accurancy on longest range is too good. It actually doesn't make any sense to fight at closer range at all.

But most importantly, it does not allow AI to make any mistakes.
Weird manouvers in front of firing enemy, repositioning, marching through swamps, etc - AI does a lot of weird stuff that cost it greatly. Before whole AI division makes any move that could potentially threaten me, I will decimate and rout their brigades one by one. Before AI can actually do anything, they must retreat due to losses.

Reducing accuracy helps, in my opinion. I've made some modifications to config files to reduce kill ratio to about half of what it is now and I had some really interesting battles. I had river corssing battle for example, where one enemy division tried to cross the river at one point (where I met them), the other went further and crossed somewhere else - it's flanking force of 3 infantry brigades + artillery fought for couple of hours with my 2 brigades desperately trying to hold them off, while rest of the army attacked the crossing. I almost lost this battle - only night saved me (and arrival of the rest of my army). I think without those modifications battle would be over before AI flanking force would even enter action, because I fought many similiar ones that were much shorter and boring.

Originally posted by heres johnny3112:

I think I agree with you - especially compared to how Cannons feel like pea shooters just plinking away at the enemy doing at most a few dozen casualties - with the rare good cannister round actually killing 10s of enemy troops.


I really don't see any reason - other than ammunition concerns if you have few units to hold a line and you need to do max damage - that one wouldn't always have the longest distance to engage enemy units on

Not discounting your opinion, but that's part of why it is the bloodiest war in our history. They were using old tactics with new weapons. Artillery wasn't as great as what we have today. It did start to improve through the war but much of the killing was done with highly accurate rifles that could shoot further than smooth bore. I can't say that I can speak from experience yet, but I thought I would point out the historical aspect.

[crono900]

In my opinion you should mod all 3 cannon ammo types, so they kill at .2 higher than what it is originally set at. this gives cannons a good killing boost especially if you mod the units to only have 4 guns, with every gun showing on the map.( I just love the sound of cannon fire and the amount of smoke, that literally turns the battlefield into a cloud of smoky fog).

I think the infantry weapons are good. The point of the long range is that it is the effective killing range with all factors already calculated in. the guns can fire farther than what the lines say but they wont hit anything. If anything the devs could mod the ranges accuracy a little, but it should come to the experience and number of the troops firing them to determine that.

Pre-war I recruit all I can (infantry and artillery mainly). Then I cannibalize the armies they give me when the start of the war (this prevents the game from auto replacing officers. They exchange MG McDowel of DoO with a Lt), by replenishing the troops I recruited. Any more troops I recruit, I also use to reinforce my 12 month brigades and batteries. This way my fresh troop brigades have about 3000 men (12 month contracts) firing almost simultaneously.

And as for cavalry... I use 1 cavalry brigade as a scout attached directly to each corps, but since I'm beta testing the new patches I've seen more and more cavalry. They do seem over powered which is fine while they are on their horses, but they should have very poor accuracy (their firing while balancing on the back of a living creature). When they are off there horses though, they should have regular accuracy, but lower moral (because they left their horses behind them and stray shots can spook the horses. Which each soldier (IRL) was responsible for their own horse).

[BullGod]

Originally posted by HarryLee:

Not discounting your opinion, but that's part of why it is the bloodiest war in our history. They were using old tactics with new weapons. Artillery wasn't as great as what we have today. It did start to improve through the war but much of the killing was done with highly accurate rifles that could shoot further than smooth bore. I can't say that I can speak from experience yet, but I thought I would point out the historical aspect.

I haven't touched on historical accuracy because I wanted to enphasize gameplay reasons why too accurate weapons are not doing the game any favours.

When you lower kill ratio, in the end casualties caused by exchanging fire between two units remain similiar - it's just whole fight takes a little bit longer (which doesn't mean it's unrealistic). Sometimes it lasts long enough for another unit to join the fight, which actually can increase casualties.

Battles I fought with those changes were more bloody than those before, mostly because I suffered more casualties and the fight wasn't as one - sided as before.

[crono900]

Originally posted by HarryLee:

Not discounting your opinion, but that's part of why it is the bloodiest war in our history. They were using old tactics with new weapons. Artillery wasn't as great as what we have today. It did start to improve through the war but much of the killing was done with highly accurate rifles that could shoot further than smooth bore. I can't say that I can speak from experience yet, but I thought I would point out the historical aspect.

Artillery was an effective way of killing. If you got shot by a cannon it was extremely likely that you would die or lose body parts (taking you out of the war completely). So modding it so the kill rate goes up is not inaccurate historically, so long as you don't increase the accuracy or chance of hit. The moral hit from a death is higher than that of being wounded, or at least it should be (I personally don't know if that's true for this game yet, but it should be).

[W FIZZ]

Originally posted by BullGod:

I feel that accuracy and killing ratio of infantry weapons is far too great and it causes some serious gameplay problems.
First of all, cavalry armed with Sharps carbines or similiar fast firing weapon of reasonable range, especially fighting dismounted and in loose order, is unbeatable. It's not like they can try to slow down infantry. They will just stop and execute them.

Accurancy on longest range is too good. It actually doesn't make any sense to fight at closer range at all.

But most importantly, it does not allow AI to make any mistakes.
Weird manouvers in front of firing enemy, repositioning, marching through swamps, etc - AI does a lot of weird stuff that cost it greatly. Before whole AI division makes any move that could potentially threaten me, I will decimate and rout their brigades one by one. Before AI can actually do anything, they must retreat due to losses.

Reducing accuracy helps, in my opinion. I've made some modifications to config files to reduce kill ratio to about half of what it is now and I had some really interesting battles. I had river corssing battle for example, where one enemy division tried to cross the river at one point (where I met them), the other went further and crossed somewhere else - it's flanking force of 3 infantry brigades + artillery fought for couple of hours with my 2 brigades desperately trying to hold them off, while rest of the army attacked the crossing. I almost lost this battle - only night saved me (and arrival of the rest of my army). I think without those modifications battle would be over before AI flanking force would even enter action, because I fought many similiar ones that were much shorter and boring.

The game's supposed to be semi-realistic, like what HarryLee said, this war was deadly for a reason and this game accurately displays that. Also for the cav issue you're having, a large con for loose order is the poor melee. If you have a 1 on 1 with an inf brigade and a LO cav brigade, the infantry should charge and the cav would break easily due to the debuff.

[W FIZZ]

Originally posted by heres johnny3112:

I think I agree with you - especially compared to how Cannons feel like pea shooters just plinking away at the enemy doing at most a few dozen casualties - with the rare good cannister round actually killing 10s of enemy troops.


I really don't see any reason - other than ammunition concerns if you have few units to hold a line and you need to do max damage - that one wouldn't always have the longest distance to engage enemy units on

Civil war cannons are highly inaccurate by today's standards. They only accounted for ~2% of weapon-related casualties of an average battle. The point of arty is to break the morale of their unfortunate targets

[crono900]

Originally posted by Timfizz:

Civil war cannons are highly inaccurate by today's standards. They only accounted for ~2% of weapon-related casualties of an average battle. The point of arty is to break the morale of their unfortunate targets

If you have played games like War of Rights or Sea of Thieves with practice you can get pretty accurate. The ACW cannons may be "highly inaccurate by today's standards", but the artillery men were trained to fire accurately for up to a mile with Napoleons and 3-in rifle, there are articles, notes and letters that confirm this. The percentage of known artillery casualties is mainly based from hospital reports (that is, those hit and survived long enough to reach the medic tent), and does not represent the true numbers lost do to cannon fire. In the midst of battle and after battle not every body was autopsied to find cause of deaths. There are a lot of unknown soldier graves to prove this. Rest their souls.

[Olek]

I have read of many accounts where units have taken 60%+ casualties after only 15 minutes of fighting, sure the weapons were not that accurate, but when you consider that they were all lined up shoulder to shoulder, they didn't exactly make it hard to miss either.

[ArcWolf]

The moral hit from a death is higher than that of being wounded, or at least it should be (I personally don't know if that's true for this game yet, but it should be).

I don't know if that is true. What is more likely to shake you: 1) The men next to you getting hit and falling silently to the ground. Or 2) The man next to you getting hit, falling and crying in pain, saying " i don't want to die" and begging you to help them?

[ArcWolf]

Originally posted by Olek:

I have read of many accounts where units have taken 60%+ casualties after only 15 minutes of fighting, sure the weapons were not that accurate, but when you consider that they were all lined up shoulder to shoulder, they didn't exactly make it hard to miss either.

An extreme case, but look at the 1st MN at Gettysburg. 330 Men went into the fight, granted they were out numbered about 4-1. In about 5 minutes, 50 KIA, 173 WIA and 1 Missing. 67% casualty rate.

[Butch]

Isn't the title of this thread precisely why this war was so bloody? Rifled weapons being fired into tight line formations was always going to lead to carnage. The tactics lagged behind the technology for quite a while. I think infantry killing power is in a good place.

[A_Rude_Gesture]

While the new rifle-muskets did certainly increase the casualty rate compared to old smoothbores the fact is that, on average, a civil war soldier on either side burned off 240 pounds of powder and hurled 900 pounds of lead for every single man actually hit.

[crono900]

Originally posted by Butch:

Isn't the title of this thread precisely why this war was so bloody? Rifled weapons being fired into tight line formations was always going to lead to carnage. The tactics lagged behind the technology for quite a while. I think infantry killing power is in a good place.

I agree.

I was doing research on artillery and read that a single solid shot from artillery could rip through 40 men if fired straight into a infantry column. Just being to close to incoming fire could cause cardiac arrest from the shock wave and kill you. If hit by a cannon 'it's going to break all the bones wherever it hits you, along with tissue damage, plus additional damage from when you hit whatever it knocks you into.'

I also read some stuff about Battle of The Crater. Pretty gory

So I'm glad to live in this day and age. Were the only wars I experience are wars I read about and games to play. So long as we as human beings learn from our past we wont repeat it... unless we are insane. twitch twitch.

[BullGod]

As I said, it still remains bloody.
Two, similiar in size brigades (around 2,5k men) equipped in similiar weapons, shooting at eachother at middle range in open field:
After an hour (in game time) casualties are 600/450 (the one causing less casualties were equipped with mixed muskets, the other with springfields), which gives around thousand dead and wounded. I don't think it's unrealistic.
After an hour the battle is almost over for them - they have only a bit of resilience left to hold for few more minutes.

Before making changes the same firefight was over after 20 minutes of game time. If there's another brigade marching to join the fight, the first one is finished before the other can do anything.