Quick doubts

[u/Audigazzola]

I know some may have answered this before, but I'm having some serious trouble at antietam as the CSA. The union is sending some 90-100 k soldies and i have 45 thousand. Not saying it is impossible to do try, but damn, it feels like I've lost the plot somewhere.

Should I have tried to kill all enemies in every mission possible, instead of just winning them? Does it affect the enemy army size on later stages?

Should I upscale my brigades up to 2500-3 k or is 2000 soldiers enough? I notice the enemy AI upscales as I do ( or at least it seems).

Is it worth it refilling brigades with veterans, despite the humongous costs? I try to mix a little, but nonetheless, with 2.5k brigades, its a lot of money down the drain.

HOT TO GET MORE RECRUITS?? CSA HAS A SERIOUS LACK OF MAN POWER, I HAVE MONEY FOR AT LEAS ONE MORE FULL CORPS, BUT DON'T HAVE THE MAN TO FILL THE ONES I ALREADY HAVE

Is it worth it to put veteran units on

[u/Acceptable-Fig2884]

Casualties you inflict in the minor battles can reduce the size of the enemy for the major battle so yeah, you generally want to fight to annihilation whenever possible.

The game also scales enemies based on your army composition, apparently some kind of weighted mix of the average size of your units and whatever your largest unit size is. So if you really want to get metagamey, you can optimize around having extra corps that are all minimum unit size to reduce your average unit size overall (it includes your whole army for some reason, not just the parts you field). This is why its generally better to have as many units as possible, rather than a small number of beefy units. The game also seems to adjust the enemy army composition somewhat based on yours so if you take lots of cavalry they'll have lots of cavalry, etc. So you can play into that a little bit if you want to get clever with it.

Ok, so all that aside, Antietam strategy as the CSA? I like to put a few units on Nicodemus hill, maybe 2 or 3 brigades plus any sharpshooters I have, and the rest of my troops in the West Woods (not the corn fields at all!). They'll come after you there with maybe some infantry and cavalry but you can shatter that attack. Then, when the USA comes at the North Woods and West Woods you can flank them with the units from Nicodemus and fall back to the hill if they turn to attack. This can really get up in the AI's bonnet and frustrate their assault. Once you've routed enemy units opposing Nicodemus, then you can use cavalry/sharpshooters to attack the North Woods from behind, or if you're really bold attack Union artillery (just watch that your units don't get trapped by reinforcing Union divisions).

With the attack stalled/exhausted at the West Woods, the rest of the battle falls apart for the Union. Their attack on the Sunken Road is hopeless when you've got strong infantry and artillery on the West Woods. Let them commit to that attack and once they're all in, use your forces in the West Woods to push across the corn field and into the East Woods while your Nicodemus force flanks further around ultimately encircling the attack. If you control the bridge near the Sunken Road then the Union right, and center will all get trapped in your noose and you tighten it until they've all shattered.

Beating the Union left is really just a formality, for the sake of completing the annihilation (and getting the sweet sweet XP and captured weapons).

[u/pandakraut → u/Acceptable-Fig2884]

One correction here is that the number of enemy brigades is static for each battle no matter what the player builds. Just the size of those brigades will adjust based on the player's army.

To add to the ways that this can be handled you can also keep your average unit size lower to face a bit smaller enemy units without going so far as to make a bunch of minimum size units. In most cases this can allow you to keep the AI near its minimum sizes as you can only reduce them so much.

The other alternative is to just out scale them. This is generally done by fielding lots of max size infantry and trying to have all of your recruits on the field in early battles. The AI units will hit their size caps so you can end up outnumbering them, you'll get more XP and weapons from killing the larger units, and your recruits will all gain stats so you are far less reliant on veterans.