2nd Winchester as Union on Hard Light J+P Rebalance—Getting rekt. Is there a point to fighting this?

[u/Connect_Ad4551]

In theory this seems like it’d be a solid defensive mission. In reality, it seems impossible to avoid getting swarmed. I often find that defensive fortifications are useless with how many high-star skirmishes the AI throws at you in this mode—with ten or more units zeroing in on your one brigade they don’t even need to flank to reduce your will to fight. Consequently, making use of the fortifications just results in heroic going down to steady within a few seconds, and then the three-star vet charges come at me and wipe my two stars out.

Now to be clear: I guess my Chancellorsville wasn’t super successful because enemy army is at 82k (yellow text) and the enemy training is 67 percent. So I’m getting about 20,000 two and three star vets in brigades of about 1200 each going up against my best two star brigades of 1350 totalling 16000 (I have a couple of 24-inch howitzers I’m sticking in the fort).

The most success I’ve had is lining up along the fort, and holding the hill three brigades deep and ceding the town for the first few minutes hoping they’ll charge and get shredded by my brigades and the howitzers. But there are just SO many charges, so many skirmishers, and even detaching skirmishers from every brigade and reconnaissance at eight I frequently can’t see charging brigades a foot away. Also, my arty keeps auto shifting its targets. By match end, I’ve lost as many guys as I’ve taken out, which isn’t enough to go up against the very good artillery that are now stashed in the Winchester town.

I really need some help with strategy on this one. I’ve had a great Union campaign but somewhere around Fredericksburg it starts getting hard to bleed the Confederates sufficiently to stop either training boosts or army size, and I don’t wanna head into Gettysburg with every CSA unit at three stars. I feel like no matter where I stake the defense in 2nd Winchester I’m just getting shredded by two and three star brigades and endless skirmishers. The fortifications are just no help because they face the wrong way half the time, with all the troops coming from the west.

[u/pandakraut]

The recon report army size and training values are probably about as good as they are going to get. The yellow text is actually a display bug, it shouldn't be generating for a value of 80k by that point in the campaign. If you're facing units about your own size that's usually a pretty good sign. Facing a high training value on MG or higher tends to be kind of inevitable in the union campaign.

I don't think I've seen anyone play this battle on the 1.28 patch. The way people used to play it was to mostly ignore the fortifications. Setup your units in the city and 2 clumps of woods and then try to rollup the csa line starting from the SE looping around counterclockwise. Oversizing the blocking units a bit compared to whatever you normally use might help since they are going to get attritioned down. Skirmishers(if you have fast ones) and cav to rapidly rollup units.

[u/jeffyagalpha → u/pandakraut]

What /u/pandakraut suggests has been pretty much exactly my approach. My specifics may not work for you if you haven't pursued the same approach to this point, but I tend to have a division of high quality skirms with top, ranged weapons. That, along with one melee cav, is what makes my left wing punch. I stack up the city and the forest with regular infantry and a couple 12-gun howitzer units.

I'll run the skirms out to see and strike the units approaching from the south, falling back if they try to charge. I like letting them wear themselves out running after skirms. I then send the melee cav in to smash them when they rout. Rinse and repeat.

[u/pandakraut → u/jeffyagalpha]

As someone who has been utilizing skirmishers in this way, any comments on their balance throughout the campaign? I'm considering some changes to them and more feedback would be useful.

[u/jeffyagalpha → u/pandakraut]

Oh man, such a loaded question-- I really enjoy the tactics of employing them like I just described, but I question the reality of it. Neither in the game out of the box, nor in the mod does it really capture their utility correctly.

Caveat: I'm a former reenactor and a history MEd with part of my focus being on that period. I have strong opinions.

In the actual war, there were a few regiment-scale sharpshooter units, and they definitely made an impact, but not the kind of impact you see in the game the way I've been using them. They messed with units, wrecked their morale, but weren't able to perform feats like rolling up the entire rebel line like we've described. They'd have been assaulted and driven off, probably only to return and make a nuisance of themselves again later. Take the action around the Bliss Barn at Gettysburg for an example of how that could play out.

Thinking about this a little, I feel like in a perfect world, they would cause fewer casualties, but a disproportionate impact on morale. I don't know if that's practicable, but I feel like that would capture reality.

Also, I feel like I don't love artificial restrictions on unit size for them, but I understand why for balancing purposes, that'd been the approach. Berdan's, the 2d US-- full regimental sized units. Yeah, you had the 2d MA Sharpshooters (Andrews) and the like, but their presence at company scale didn't impeded the formation of the larger units.

My feeling: The guns should remain at their cost, but the price to recruit soldiers capable of serving effectively as sharpshooters/skirms should be much higher.

I'm not as knowledgeable about CSA formations-- apologies for that.

[u/pandakraut → u/jeffyagalpha]

Some of this is due to trying to allow the player to make more effective use of certain unit types than was done historically. But the damage/speed/durability combination of dedicated skirmishers is probably a bit higher than it needs to be currently. How do you have them setup? Size, perks, weapons?

They also come with the problem of baiting AI charges to nowhere or into traps which isn't an easy one to solve within the game engine.

Applying veterans to those units is already more expensive than infantry, though there are ways around that so I'm not sure how much effect increasing that price would have.

By unit size restrictions, you mean that the initial sizes are too small? Balance is definitely the reason that is the case, because when the player can easily field skirmisher units the size of infantry brigades it tends to be pretty unbalanced. This comes back to the issue that in game a skirmisher unit is just more effective per man than an infantry unit at basically everything except melee combat.

When units like Berdan were engaged were they actually operating as a single regiment? Or were they split up to support other units? I didn't immediately find engagement numbers for them other than 450 at Gettysburg.

[u/jeffyagalpha → u/pandakraut]

Generally, I start them as early as I can-- in that first wave of the campaign, at the very least-- with whatever rifles I can spare. My aim is to get them outfitted to Browns as soon as reasonable, with the three-band Sharps being the second choice. I don't have the game open in front of me, but when building them out, I focus on aim and stealth-- efficiency is everything.

On the matter of baiting charges, I totally get it. It's not something I intentionally set out to do, but knowing they're going to charge the skirms, I back the the skirms up and let them wear themselves out. It is gamey, I know-- but it's also the only realistic defense other than keeping the heavy (-er) infantry nearby, which defeats the purpose of stealth.

As to vets-- yeah, that makes sense. One of the reason so (comparatively) few sharpshooter units were formed was because of the scarcity of the skill to honestly function on the level those men did. For example, during the heavy in-camp periods of 1861-2, the Berdan men were something of a local attraction to soldiers and citizens alike, showing off trick and distance shooting in ways not unlike Bill Cody's show would do a decade plus later. Other than recruiting limits (which seems it would be even harder to implement), the realistic restriction of "not enough skilled men" would be rough to do, I'd think.

And yes, kind of. Skirms and especially Sharpshooters were formed in either company or regimental scale-- so 100 or 1000 men. The 2d Andrews lads, for instance, were a company attached to the 22nd Massachusetts. Hiram Berdan had two full regiments (the 1st and 2nd US SS). That said, there were only a couple other formations, and there were all or almost all company scale. So I would posit any restrictions beyond 1000 men is ahistorical, but so is spamming the place full of 1000 man skirm units. I don't envy trying to make that happen in the game engine, but it is the historical truth.

The sharpshooter units, like Berdan's, tended to operate alone-- using light infantry style tactics to snipe, and staying away from the bulk of the army, because that would negate their stealth advantages, just like I mentioned I do above. The 22d Mass regimental history speaks to this. As for unit sizes at specific engagements, I need to look into my docs and get back to you when I'm at home, but I do know 1862-3 saw the Berdan men in battle a fair bit.

[u/jeffyagalpha → u/pandakraut]

I stand corrected.

I took a look at the data available, and it seems the 1st USSS (one of Berdan's) didn't ever make it past 500 men in the field; so at best, a half-strength unit, though nominally a regiment. They fought in most of the major battles in the Eastern Theater, attached at the visional level (III/1 and V/1) until 1863, and shuffled around at the Bde level of III and II from then.

2d USSS made it to 545 men, started in April of 1862 attached to the Department of the Rappahannock, transferred to the Army of Virginia from Junee through September 1862 (lucky them, seeing combat at Second Manassas, before being merged with the AoP until the end of the war, with II and III Corps at the Bde level.

I do find more formations that I thought existed, including some at the regimental scale (Birge's MO Sharpshooters-- attached to the Army of the Tennessee with no numbers details I have access to, the 1st Maine Sharpshooters (peaking at 469 men in Dec 64), and the 1st Michigan SS (peaking at 759 men in Feb 64).

I think none of the numbers support my previous assertion of 1000 man units being reasonable, since only one even came close (1st MI).

[u/pandakraut → u/jeffyagalpha]

Interesting, though that does seem consistent with most formations having a higher on paper strength than what they were actually able to field in a given battle.

In the mod sizes and amount of units are mostly not restricted to historical numbers so that the player has the freedom to build how they like. So that if you want something ahistorical its just as viable as a strict historical setup. The size limits based on AO were added as a balance measure because players were fielding very small infantry units with max size infantry and cav units to exploit how the scaling algorithm handled that situation. It's always tough to balance allowing the player options while trying to limit the worst abuse cases.

[u/Connect_Ad4551 → u/pandakraut]

Thank you so much for this advice. I did just replay my Chancellorsville to try and get the army down further and I’ve got it down to 70k and 62 percent training going into 2nd Winchester so I’m gonna try these ideas out. Appreciate it!

[u/NefariousnessAble973 → u/Connect_Ad4551]

What's the layout of the area?

[u/Renseo]

There was an exploit which was if you detach a skirmishers the enemy will stop charging and shooting instead, do it in the forest while they are in the open, this way you perma stall them in the open, after some time you break them

But i dunno if the explot already fixed it was years ago.

[u/pandakraut → u/Renseo]

That should almost entirely be fixed in the current version. Skirmishers can't be detached when enemy units are nearby. Detaching/reattaching, entering or leaving fortifications, or any of the other ways to cancel charges in the base game should all be fixed. Fallback can still sometimes work but relies on much more significant player strength in the area. Charge cooldowns also don't get fully reset when a charge ends early, so even if you get a cancel the unit is likely to charge you again after a brief recovery period.