Lately I've been placing skirmishers in the fortified positions and letting the main force of the brigade back them up. This seems to work particularly well when the position is in the woods, which isn't the case here. They seem to hold up quite well and soak up artillery and any charges while the brigade pours fire into the attackers. When the skirmishers get low on men or ammo I pull them back, have them rejoin then split them off again refilled of men and ammo. This also allows the main brigades to maneuver as needed to focus fire.
Do you find the casaulties you inflict are less due to the primary line only cointaining 10% of the standard strength of a brigade? i can see how it would work and as somthing i havn't really considered doing is kinda brave trusting your front line to a fraction of the army but I'm not convinced about the casaulties that you would inflict so how do you find your tactic from that perspective?
Delogros I'm sure to a degree initially they do inflict fewer casualties and I primarily use that tactic when the entrenched position is exposed and there is good wooded cover just behind it. When the charge happens I have a nearly full brigade, or brigades, pour fire into the attacking units. In places like Marie's heights where the positions cover is strong I will put full brigades in. I started using the tactic when there were positions I would have normally ignored in favor of better cover further back, i.e. when the line formed a significant salient.
Very interesting about joining skirmishers back to parent unit...wait a bit and re-deploy them at replenished strength/numbers and ammo. Great Tip!!!! (:
Its a difficult balance to reach, especially with praire grove, in the majority of defensive battles you want to hold the good ground, grind down the enemy for a bit and wait for an opening... praire grove is an oddity because it is impossible to round up all the union troops into one ball you can easily destroy and you simply don't have the time to eradicate them. So pretty literally the only thing i did differntly was I didn't hold the bottom of the cornfield instead I used 3 infantry to extend the line into the woods in the south and had Jacksons Brigade in reserve behind the left side of the cornfield defensive position - allowed me to use all 4 of those Brigades in a coordinated flank attack which ended up involving all my forces except the 2 Brigades holding the left most side. Lost 2,000 less men but also killed 1,000 less of them.
I pulled back on the right and gave it to them had two cav brigades there and two arty and one inf and one skirm I ran to left lost some troops of course but was good took 7 arty into the marysville heights and only two 10 lbr ord of them and some arty units gave 6000 casulties to enemy won the center by using my troops from the right to take the goal in the center and used troops in the center to destroy what I could of their center while my troops on left killed off their right flank..
Not sure it will be same for you but Fredericksburg was the first battle I really noticed decreased enemy strength. I actually came down off the heights and had a brigade in the town. Not due to fancy strategy or tactics just no union troops. So I guess we will see if that is true for you too.
Yeah when I reached fredericksburg, I destroyed the union army prior to that battle so hard that they only have 40k troops and most are undermanned and ill-trained.
exactly. I just finished Chancellorsville and the same was true there. First time I ever took that place without there being a huge glob of union troops all standing on top of each other at the victory locale. Also is it me or are you noticing a decreased will to fight on part of enemy? Is that the training factor?
It might just be that Union morale is so low that troops are fleeing much more - unless the programmers have been able to give the enemy commanders different AI behaviours based on training, which would be really cool.
It's also that the Union Brigades are much smaller, fredricksburg average Union infantry brigade was only 900 or so, since i believe morale and the will to stay in a firefight is partly dependant on the percentage damage you do to a brigade the smaller scale of the brigades might explain a lot. You got a screenshot for your Fredricksburg results? When I was done with the Union they only had 3 cavalry brigades (600 men) left on the field :) though maybe now the game isa little easy.
Lately I've been placing skirmishers in the fortified positions and letting the main force of the brigade back them up. This seems to work particularly well when the position is in the woods, which isn't the case here. They seem to hold up quite well and soak up artillery and any charges while the brigade pours fire into the attackers. When the skirmishers get low on men or ammo I pull them back, have them rejoin then split them off again refilled of men and ammo. This also allows the main brigades to maneuver as needed to focus fire.
Do you find the casaulties you inflict are less due to the primary line only cointaining 10% of the standard strength of a brigade? i can see how it would work and as somthing i havn't really considered doing is kinda brave trusting your front line to a fraction of the army but I'm not convinced about the casaulties that you would inflict so how do you find your tactic from that perspective?
Delogros I'm sure to a degree initially they do inflict fewer casualties and I primarily use that tactic when the entrenched position is exposed and there is good wooded cover just behind it. When the charge happens I have a nearly full brigade, or brigades, pour fire into the attacking units. In places like Marie's heights where the positions cover is strong I will put full brigades in. I started using the tactic when there were positions I would have normally ignored in favor of better cover further back, i.e. when the line formed a significant salient.
Very interesting about joining skirmishers back to parent unit...wait a bit and re-deploy them at replenished strength/numbers and ammo.
Great Tip!!!! (:
Its a difficult balance to reach, especially with praire grove, in the majority of defensive battles you want to hold the good ground, grind down the enemy for a bit and wait for an opening... praire grove is an oddity because it is impossible to round up all the union troops into one ball you can easily destroy and you simply don't have the time to eradicate them. So pretty literally the only thing i did differntly was I didn't hold the bottom of the cornfield instead I used 3 infantry to extend the line into the woods in the south and had Jacksons Brigade in reserve behind the left side of the cornfield defensive position - allowed me to use all 4 of those Brigades in a coordinated flank attack which ended up involving all my forces except the 2 Brigades holding the left most side.
Lost 2,000 less men but also killed 1,000 less of them.
can not stress enough 7 batteries of arty on your left mary's heights
I pulled back on the right and gave it to them had two cav brigades there and two arty and one inf and one skirm I ran to left lost some troops of course but was good took 7 arty into the marysville heights and only two 10 lbr ord of them and some arty units gave 6000 casulties to enemy won the center by using my troops from the right to take the goal in the center and used troops in the center to destroy what I could of their center while my troops on left killed off their right flank..
Not sure it will be same for you but Fredericksburg was the first battle I really noticed decreased enemy strength. I actually came down off the heights and had a brigade in the town. Not due to fancy strategy or tactics just no union troops. So I guess we will see if that is true for you too.
Yeah when I reached fredericksburg, I destroyed the union army prior to that battle so hard that they only have 40k troops and most are undermanned and ill-trained.
exactly. I just finished Chancellorsville and the same was true there. First time I ever took that place without there being a huge glob of union troops all standing on top of each other at the victory locale. Also is it me or are you noticing a decreased will to fight on part of enemy? Is that the training factor?
It might just be that Union morale is so low that troops are fleeing much more - unless the programmers have been able to give the enemy commanders different AI behaviours based on training, which would be really cool.
It's also that the Union Brigades are much smaller, fredricksburg average Union infantry brigade was only 900 or so, since i believe morale and the will to stay in a firefight is partly dependant on the percentage damage you do to a brigade the smaller scale of the brigades might explain a lot. You got a screenshot for your Fredricksburg results? When I was done with the Union they only had 3 cavalry brigades (600 men) left on the field :) though maybe now the game isa little easy.
yeah I do actually
steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=960847069
Its pretty crazy how much I killed
each brigade only had like 700
F1IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!RST!!!!!!!!!! DO I GET A MDEAL?!?!?!??!?!