I made this an hour episode to try and compensate for falling off the grid for so long. Sorry for the delay, guys! Don't forget to crank it up to 1080p if you want a clearer vid!
Okay, let's do some lessons learned. In the military we have a thing called IPB, Information Preparation of the Battlefield. Before going into battle, you want to know everything you can. In game, you can get some of this intel by clicking the stack you want to attack with and hitting the "7" key. Then just cursor over the region where you want to fight a battle. You get a pop-up menu of the terrain and weather there with a breakdown of how this will affect that stack's elements in combat. So from what I could see from the screen, the CSA crossed a river and attacked into a clear region during snow which is Harsh Weather. The menu also tells you how many days it will take to get there, which might have been day 7 from what I could see. That's seven days crossing a river and marching in the snow, which eats up the unit cohesion. Finally, the menu shows how many elements will fill the frontage for the battle. You can stack your whole army into one region, but only a certain number of them can fill out the battle frontage. Harsh weather restricts this frontage. Basically, the battle in MD forced Lee to re-enact Napoleon at Borodino after crossing a river. I would strongly advise always doing as much IPB as you can. Once you have the IPB, you set up your forces. Divisions crossing a river should have one marines/sailor element and their stack should have pontooneers. It's just a game of inches. Good luck, gentlemen!
Morale from battles I think is based a lot of units destroyed. As battles rage on less casualties can result in bigger morale swings because more units were destroyed because they had previously been weakened. I think having an army HQ destroyed gives a big morale penalty as well (not saying it happened to you, just noting it).
I made this an hour episode to try and compensate for falling off the grid for so long. Sorry for the delay, guys! Don't forget to crank it up to 1080p if you want a clearer vid!
Okay, let's do some lessons learned. In the military we have a thing called IPB, Information Preparation of the Battlefield. Before going into battle, you want to know everything you can. In game, you can get some of this intel by clicking the stack you want to attack with and hitting the "7" key. Then just cursor over the region where you want to fight a battle. You get a pop-up menu of the terrain and weather there with a breakdown of how this will affect that stack's elements in combat. So from what I could see from the screen, the CSA crossed a river and attacked into a clear region during snow which is Harsh Weather. The menu also tells you how many days it will take to get there, which might have been day 7 from what I could see. That's seven days crossing a river and marching in the snow, which eats up the unit cohesion. Finally, the menu shows how many elements will fill the frontage for the battle. You can stack your whole army into one region, but only a certain number of them can fill out the battle frontage. Harsh weather restricts this frontage. Basically, the battle in MD forced Lee to re-enact Napoleon at Borodino after crossing a river. I would strongly advise always doing as much IPB as you can. Once you have the IPB, you set up your forces. Divisions crossing a river should have one marines/sailor element and their stack should have pontooneers. It's just a game of inches. Good luck, gentlemen!
Drat. And here I thought it was my Napoleonic-like mind that caused those results =P As always, thank you for the input!
Morale from battles I think is based a lot of units destroyed. As battles rage on less casualties can result in bigger morale swings because more units were destroyed because they had previously been weakened. I think having an army HQ destroyed gives a big morale penalty as well (not saying it happened to you, just noting it).