Hardin Pike

[Hitorishizuka]

Didn't see many posts about this little side battle, figured I might as well make one so as to post this:

 

I took a look on youtube, didn't see many people successfully taking the victory while not having high losses and/or a bad casualty ratio, so I thought I would show this as a guideline. This is how you can win while still losing far less than the manpower and cash reward, dealing more casualties to the Union forces than you take, and all while being far outnumbered when there's a lot of unused scaling where one should actually have the manpower advantage.

The crux of it being form your troops in in a hammer, take the north fort first, then after you push that down your second Corps can begin assaults on the south fort while more troops cheat over from the north to assist. You can also choose to attack both forts simultaneously but only if you have max size brigades--else you risk petering your attacking out in both forts before your 2nd Corps can make it to the front line.

[Meagre Heart]

Thanks for putting up a video! I found the switch at the end of the campaign to battles focusing around forts to be a struggle. The first time I ran this one and won I took about 35 brigades to the northern forests, then barraged/sniped until the outer perimeter guards started to run. After that it was an intense leapfrog to the flags. Also, I'm curious about your Camp screen. How is it you've managed to hoard 1.5 million dollars?

[Hitorishizuka]

6 hours ago, Meagre Heart said:

Also, I'm curious about your Camp screen. How is it you've managed to hoard 1.5 million dollars?

1) Rush Politics, then Medicine. Never lose battles, don't win battles while taking a lot of losses, periodically spend reputation on money.

2) (Almost) never spend money on infantry veterans, do a mix of rookies and veterans for cavalry, veterans only for sniper skirmishers and artillery. Infantry starts as rookies as fodder for combined division to protect a small elite brigade, only gets more men as veterans here to keep numbers to max combined brigade size between the shield+elite because it's so cheap, then graduate to veteran at 40~ firearms (and eventually elite) and stop spending money.

3) Use relatively small armies so that all the guns you need can be looted from the enemy army and you only have to spend shop money on the most expensive and useful weapons like Fayettevilles and 24pdr Howitzers. Periodically sell off all the excess weapons (mostly inferior cannon) that you will loot.

3a) Abuse of combined division to save even more on money by having 2500 men brigades on the field with the best weapons beyond what even the shop+looting would offer.

Edited August 16, 2017 by Hitorishizuka

[maniacalpenny]

14 hours ago, Meagre Heart said:

How is it you've managed to hoard 1.5 million dollars?

He plays on BG when he is a player capable of playing much harder difficulties, and in addition he abuses the brigade combining exploit.

 

His strategies from 2-3a) do work and are perhaps "optimal" for play but rely on what is literally a game exploit that turns his tiny yet elite brigades of <500 men with the best possible weaponry and combines them with 2000 fodder rookies with farmers which turns it into a 2500 man brigade with the best possible weaponry. Best of all even when when his combined brigade takes casualties it only effects his elite division proportially: losing 500 men from the combined division will only result in 100 casualties for his elite troops/weapons and the cost of replacing his rookies with farmers is negligible.

 

You will certainly find success replicating these strategies and if you enjoy playing in this manner then all the power to you. But keep in mind that this is by no means a conventional strategy and relies on a game exploit that makes no sense and most people agree should have been removed from the game.

[Meagre Heart]

8 hours ago, maniacalpenny said:

... he abuses the brigade combining exploit.

 

... literally a game exploit that turns his tiny yet elite brigades of <500 men with the best possible weaponry and combines them with 2000 fodder rookies with farmers which turns it into a 2500 man brigade with the best possible weaponry...

 

I had no idea this was a thing! I was looking at his camp screen and astonished to see he had a few brigades with only a few hundred troops each! Some less! This makes much more sense now. I can only manage to scrape together a few hundred Henry rifles in the Early/Mid CSA game, but if I mash them into a 2.5k Farmer unit I could really make some magic happen. I've never used the feature before as my only experience with a 'Unit Combining' mechanic is from the Total War games, which deletes one unit to reinforce the other.

Thank you for explaining what was going on. An exploit like that would sap the fun away for me since it somewhat reduces the excitement of having some units with fancy rifles and others being fodder out of necessity, but I'd be lying if I told you I'm not going to try it out at least once!

[Hitorishizuka]

15 hours ago, maniacalpenny said:

You will certainly find success replicating these strategies and if you enjoy playing in this manner then all the power to you. But keep in mind that this is by no means a conventional strategy and relies on a game exploit that makes no sense and most people agree should have been removed from the game.

For the record, the results are intended to be educational primarily and aimed at the audience who are having problems even on Colonel (or BG but still losing most of the army etc). I absolutely agree it's an exploit! I would not say it is the crux of the whole thing but certainly makes things easier. It should also be noted that it just affects weapons and the stats of the combined unit are proportionally averaged by the contributions of each unit.

I'm probably going to do a Union playthrough for the sake of teaching after my last CSA video, so if you (or anyone else) have any feedback I'd love to hear it.

[maniacalpenny]

3 hours ago, Hitorishizuka said:

For the record, the results are intended to be educational primarily and aimed at the audience who are having problems even on Colonel (or BG but still losing most of the army etc). I absolutely agree it's an exploit! I would not say it is the crux of the whole thing but certainly makes things easier. It should also be noted that it just affects weapons and the stats of the combined unit are proportionally averaged by the contributions of each unit.

I'm probably going to do a Union playthrough for the sake of teaching after my last CSA video, so if you (or anyone else) have any feedback I'd love to hear it.

I haven't seen many of your videos (I've watched all of Col Kelly's though) so I'm not that familiar with your style. What kind of playthrough are you going to do/what audience are you aiming for? e.g. teaching players how to beat each mission, general tactics/strategy/army building, using specific types of units (I've heard you are a cav expert)?

[Andre Bolkonsky]

11 hours ago, Meagre Heart said:

I had no idea this was a thing! I was looking at his camp screen and astonished to see he had a few brigades with only a few hundred troops each! Some less! This makes much more sense now. I can only manage to scrape together a few hundred Henry rifles in the Early/Mid CSA game, but if I mash them into a 2.5k Farmer unit I could really make some magic happen. I've never used the feature before as my only experience with a 'Unit Combining' mechanic is from the Total War games, which deletes one unit to reinforce the other.

Thank you for explaining what was going on. An exploit like that would sap the fun away for me since it somewhat reduces the excitement of having some units with fancy rifles and others being fodder out of necessity, but I'd be lying if I told you I'm not going to try it out at least once!

Divisional Brigades used to be very popular. They were nerfed several patches back and are not nearly as effective as they have been in the past. And they are very high maintainence, you can't really build them unless you want to spend a good chunk of the early game managing the micro to put them together. 

But, this gives me a chance to revisit my favorite UG:CW moment ever: A 2,700 man divisional brigade toting Spencer Rifles in the Devil's Den at Gettysburg. They ruled the day, breaking entire divisions that tried to cross the stream. And when the Rebels brought up artillery to blast us out of the rocks, they scampered up the hill and continued their devestation from above. 

[Hitorishizuka]

5 hours ago, maniacalpenny said:

I haven't seen many of your videos (I've watched all of Col Kelly's though) so I'm not that familiar with your style. What kind of playthrough are you going to do/what audience are you aiming for? e.g. teaching players how to beat each mission, general tactics/strategy/army building, using specific types of units (I've heard you are a cav expert)?

General map teaching + how to get your army to a stable point + microing skirmishers and cavalry in the flanks and rear + general how to read terrain + a little bit of historical intro on how the grand battles went.