Capturing weapons

[scorehouse]

total newbie here. any secrets to getting the enemy to surrender without being totally decimated so as to capture the most weapons?  how do you see an enemy units equipment before you engage that unit? what 3 traits do you assign to Lee, Jackson, etc? thanks

[pandakraut]

No way to see enemy equipment ahead of time without very high investment in recon. Which is not worth it in most circumstances.

Best way to capture units is to surround and isolate them. If there are multiple stacked on top of each other you need to manually target each individually so that they are all routing at once or none of them will surrender. 

Note that unless you are playing a modded version you're actually better off not capturing units and killing them all instead. Captured units return no extra weapons in either a bug or an overly harsh balancing choice.

For generals, experience or speed then infantry damaged then cover or morale is basically the best choice in all cases. XP for training up, speed for rate cases where you really need to rush a position. Infantry damage because that's the majority of your army.

[scorehouse]

thanks. do you know which Union units always carry the best rifles? I watched a Youtube BR2 battle. the CSA captured lots of Harpers Ferry rifles . my playthrough, I had better states but captured very few HFerry rifles so I was wondering if knew in advance which units had them. thanks with the tip about surrender. scorched earth , it is!

[scorehouse]

maybe the battle was Antietam.  I dealt out almost 3 to 1 casualties but captured vry few Harpers

[pandakraut]

Weapons quality can vary quite a bit depending on difficulty. The reinforcement events also impact this to a lesser extent. So compare your difficulty and recon report weapons value to those in the video.

[scorehouse]

I'm running 1 recon?

[pandakraut]

The recon report is in the top right of the campaign map. It shows you a value for the enemy army size, weapons, and training. No extra points in recon needed.