Laurel Hill- A Step by Step Guide to Coming out Even

[Wright29]

Find yourself losing men, money, and generals to the Battle of Laurel Hill?? Follow this step by step guide to guarantee that you'll come out even from the battle!

Step 1: Look at the pretty map on the Deployment Screen. 

 

Step 2: Click the Laurel Hill battle icon. Take a good long look at the battle rewards and the -70 Reputation for Defeat. 

Step 3: Say this:

 

Step 4: Click Cold Harbor

Step 5: Do the Battle of Cold Harbor: 

 

In all seriousness, I cannot ever justify doing this battle on BG, MG, or Legendary. Absolutely terrible rewards for a battle that ends up wrecking veteran brigades and officer corps. Skipping this battle is the easiest decision in the game. 

[Wandering1]

I actually broke even manpower-wise on Laurel Hill on BG. The trick to the fight is forcing most of the casualties on the NPC brigades (which, conveniently, give you free guns). Even when you start losing the squads, you replace them with the npc artillery to sponge more shots (and get free cannons).

[Captain Jean-Luc Picard]

So your people are being killed by Lauryn Hill?

 

[Andre Bolkonsky]

1 hour ago, Captain Jean-Luc Picard said:

So your people are being killed by Lauryn Hill?

 

I laughed. Loudly.  

BTW, according to legend, which song was killing her? And what song inspired that song? 

It's a uncivil  war of another color. 

[A. P. Hill]

7 hours ago, Captain Jean-Luc Picard said:

So your people are being killed by Lauryn Hill?

 

Seriously? 

This song title was initially released while I was entering my freshman year of high school.

(1971)

 

Ow!  That hurt.

Edited April 19, 2017 by A. P. Hill

[william1993]

what do you mean by NPC brigades

[Wandering1]

Anderson's Corp that start out at the fortifications.

The South Carolina brigades that you do not supply men, nor do you have to care about replenishing them.

[A. P. Hill]

22 minutes ago, william1993 said:

what do you mean by NPC brigades

Think 1st Manassas.

You start out with your single division ... over time, you have a whole mess of units besides 4 or 5 to control.   All those units added by the game are NPC (Non Player Character,) units.  You can waste those with no repercussions to your division if you pull it back and use it in support roles.

[Wright29]

7 hours ago, Wandering1 said:

I actually broke even manpower-wise on Laurel Hill on BG. The trick to the fight is forcing most of the casualties on the NPC brigades (which, conveniently, give you free guns). Even when you start losing the squads, you replace them with the npc artillery to sponge more shots (and get free cannons).

manpower-wise I was fine with sacrificed scenario troops and with medicine. But the veterancy loss was not worth anywhere close to the money gained in my opinion. Even with the good rifles you get, I don't think the incremental increase from Springfield 55s is worth the veteran experience you lose. Also, there was the unusual situation where the enemy counter-bettery fire on the southern position was extremely effective. My 3* arty brigades had lost 50%. 

What really makes me despise this scenario is the drain on the officers. By the middle of the mission on Hard, I had lost 5 Major Generals before I even took the offensive. Decided to quit and skip. 

[Andre Bolkonsky]

1 hour ago, william1993 said:

what do you mean by NPC brigades

Not the term I'd pick, but think 'non player character'. 

They are 'free' units found in many battles that are deployed alongside your personal brigades, but which are not part of your personal OOB. Like Buford's cavalry corps at the opening of Gettysburg. 

They are our favorite kind of weapons factories, and the goal is to get as many of them killed as possible while still winning the conflict. Why? Easy, it's the free weapons gleaned from the fields at zero cost to you.  

[Wandering1]

1 hour ago, Wright29 said:

manpower-wise I was fine with sacrificed scenario troops and with medicine. But the veterancy loss was not worth anywhere close to the money gained in my opinion. Even with the good rifles you get, I don't think the incremental increase from Springfield 55s is worth the veteran experience you lose. Also, there was the unusual situation where the enemy counter-bettery fire on the southern position was extremely effective. My 3* arty brigades had lost 50%. 

What really makes me despise this scenario is the drain on the officers. By the middle of the mission on Hard, I had lost 5 Major Generals before I even took the offensive. Decided to quit and skip. 

The veterancy loss is more a symptom of not going max-size; I noticed that you had 23k spare troops left over. When I was running Laurel Hill on BG, I was using a max-sized army; i.e. every one of my infantry brigades was 2000 men. Meaning that all of the enemy brigades were around 2600-2950.

Even so though, with training 10, replacing 500 2* costed me about $30k per brigade if I went with veterans. Which, depending on how much spare xp you have left over in the brigade, you don't even need to replace all of the casualties with veterans; you just use rookies until you hit 0 xp, which coincidentally makes the veteran replacements cheaper.

I should probably note though that for the most part I keep my brigades at 2 star. Since the sharpshooter nerf, the only thing that 3* really gives you is more efficiency. Which the difference between 70-80 efficiency and 100 is not that dramatic unless you're using Fayettevilles.

[Wright29]

4 minutes ago, Wandering1 said:

The veterancy loss is more a symptom of not going max-size; I noticed that you had 23k spare troops left over. When I was running Laurel Hill on BG, I was using a max-sized army; i.e. every one of my infantry brigades was 2000 men. Meaning that all of the enemy brigades were around 2600-2950.

Don't wanna be That Guy, but my brigades on BG are at 2,300. I do detest the min-maxers that complain about autoscaling and the money rewards when they try to have a single elite corps of 3* 1,400 brigades. 

[Wandering1]

21 minutes ago, Wright29 said:

Don't wanna be That Guy, but my brigades on BG are at 2,300. I do detest the min-maxers that complain about autoscaling and the money rewards when they try to have a single elite corps of 3* 1,400 brigades. 

How many infantry brigades are you running total? I'm usually hovering around 5k spare troops.

[Wright29]

3 hours ago, Wandering1 said:

How many infantry brigades are you running total? I'm usually hovering around 5k spare troops.

Last screenshot on my post shows 35. 

[Wandering1]

2 minutes ago, Wright29 said:

Last screenshot on my post shows 35. 

So it does. It doesn't tell me whether all the brigades are running 2300; unless you were just buying the reputation troops after every major battle, I'm still wondering how you have that many spare troops unless you just kept them in reserve and formed the corps strictly for Cold Harbor.

Running 36 infantry, 9 Artillery, and 10 Cavalry in the current BG playthrough;

[Wright29]

Here's a shot of one of the corps after I repaired the damage from Saunders Farm. I don't use Rep to acquire more men, I just always try to come out ahead in every scenario. The third corps was actually bigger; since Fredericksburg I've wittled it down  according to the needs of the particular battles. 

Went through my career tab and recent casualties were close to this: Chickamauga 7500, Gettysburg 8500, Chancellorsville 13500, Stones River 15000, Fredericksburg 11000, Antietam 16000. Idk if that sort of helps explain it. 

[Wandering1]

1 minute ago, Wright29 said:

Here's a shot of one of the corps after I repaired the damage from Saunders Farm. I don't use Rep to acquire more men, I just always try to come out ahead in every scenario. The third corps was actually bigger; since Fredericksburg I've wittled it down  according to the needs of the particular battles. 

Went through my career tab and recent casualties were close to this: Chickamauga 7500, Gettysburg 8500, Chancellorsville 13500, Stones River 15000, Fredericksburg 11000, Antietam 16000. Idk if that sort of helps explain it. 

Ah, Chickamauga. That would explain it. I went for the day 2 victory, and netted about 20k casualties from doing that.

Also, I notice that not all of your cannons are at 12 guns. Not that artillery crews are manpower intensive, just that I'm surprised someone's actually bothering using 20 pdr Parrotts; I have about 220 of them sitting around in my reserve.

Anyways though, if I actually bothered to place more points into Army Org to go for 24 brigades per corp, I could have disbanded one of my infantry brigades to go up to 2500 men; I just wouldn't have any troops left in the bin.

Back on topic though; I've noticed that for the most part, officer losses are more a factor of how often the unit gets stuck in melee; when I ran it, I did lose some officers, but only maybe about 4 that came from my forces. The officers of the NPC brigades got shot, and got dumped in my hospital for the next major battle.

[Kloiste]

Laurel Hill is definitely doable, even on Legendary. On Legendary veterancy doesn't matter as much, if at all. What will be holding you back is manpower. Laurel Hill is a great opportunity to gain extra recruits. I came out of Laurel Hill with a net positive of around +2000 recruits after all the losses, which is really really good. On most "small battles" you barely break even on Legendary difficultly later on. Clever use of the free SC brigades allows you to have them soak up the losses by taking the brunt of the Union attack. When you counterattack, use them to spearhead the advance with your actual brigades on flanking and support duties, so they don't take as much casualties and get free experience.

Once you identify which part of the line the Union will be focusing on, you can be free to rotate your other SC brigades from the flank that is not getting attacked and have them sent as meat fodder down to the flank that is taking the heaviest pounding and manning their positions with your own troops, which will not take that much casualties.

Honestly, if you play it smart, you won't be losing veterancy at all and will most likely be gaining them on core brigades.

[Wright29]

9 hours ago, Kloiste said:

Laurel Hill is a great opportunity to gain extra recruits. I came out of Laurel Hill with a net positive of around +2000 recruits after all the losses, which is really really good.

that's impressive, mate

[Wandering1]

I would say with regards to the counter-attack, you don't even need to drive the Union brigades off the wall; you can just walk all the way around the North, use some spare SC brigades to distract the guys on the wall, and march past while the SC brigades are getting shot at. Just walk around to the cap point afterwards.

[william1993]

On 4/19/2017 at 8:57 PM, Andre Bolkonsky said:

Not the term I'd pick, but think 'non player character'. 

They are 'free' units found in many battles that are deployed alongside your personal brigades, but which are not part of your personal OOB. Like Buford's cavalry corps at the opening of Gettysburg. 

They are our favorite kind of weapons factories, and the goal is to get as many of them killed as possible while still winning the conflict. Why? Easy, it's the free weapons gleaned from the fields at zero cost to you.  

I never knew they had a name.  They were just 'not my troops'

[Mukremin]

On 20-4-2017 at 8:53 AM, Kloiste said:

Laurel Hill is definitely doable, even on Legendary. On Legendary veterancy doesn't matter as much, if at all. What will be holding you back is manpower. Laurel Hill is a great opportunity to gain extra recruits. I came out of Laurel Hill with a net positive of around +2000 recruits after all the losses, which is really really good. On most "small battles" you barely break even on Legendary difficultly later on. Clever use of the free SC brigades allows you to have them soak up the losses by taking the brunt of the Union attack. When you counterattack, use them to spearhead the advance with your actual brigades on flanking and support duties, so they don't take as much casualties and get free experience.

Once you identify which part of the line the Union will be focusing on, you can be free to rotate your other SC brigades from the flank that is not getting attacked and have them sent as meat fodder down to the flank that is taking the heaviest pounding and manning their positions with your own troops, which will not take that much casualties.

Honestly, if you play it smart, you won't be losing veterancy at all and will most likely be gaining them on core brigades.

This guy on YouTube won a victory at acceptable level of losses. I have tried attacking from the South and failed, attacking from the North also failed. But i had very few brigades used in the North. Going to go for another try now, i really want to get a victory there with less than 10k losses. Any other practical tips?

[Hitorishizuka]

Concentrate your forces right around the VPs only, get cavalry and skirmishers to harass the flanks of the southern artillery. Get your reinforcements in to protect the southern VP as they arrive as that'll probably see more enemy action, then pick either the far north or far south to counterattack. Once you crack one brigade in a fortification, you have free reign to roll up the entire line.

 

[Mukremin]

2 hours ago, Hitorishizuka said:

Concentrate your forces right around the VPs only, get cavalry and skirmishers to harass the flanks of the southern artillery. Get your reinforcements in to protect the southern VP as they arrive as that'll probably see more enemy action, then pick either the far north or far south to counterattack. Once you crack one brigade in a fortification, you have free reign to roll up the entire line.

 

I won, inflicted 30.000+ casualties on the Union. Lost around 12'000 myself. Lucky i had the resources to rebuild. I flanked them in the North with 1 arty and 6 brigades.