I bought this today, and I have to say its a lot of fun, its really unique and quite challenging (though I do suck at video games in general so that just might be my problem) even with the basic Balanced AI. I've played three attempts so far, two as the Union and one as the Confederate just to see how things worked from the Confederate side (lets just say that one didn't end well for me since I got curb stomped quite quickly). Altogether so far I've noticed the game has quite a bit of re-playability based solely on how you come out of the day losses wise even before they add in the decisions that you get to choose at the end of the day (usually) which is also based on how well you did. I'll just give a quick run down of my two Union runs to give an idea of how it works since my Confederate run didn't make it past the first day.
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My first Union run went poorly to say the least, you have your standard start on day one with Gamble, and Devin's Skirmishers and two groups of Vindettes along with the commander and the Artillery unit. For the first run through I thought a static defense along the river would work well, and for a short while even after the first group of reinforcements it was going well until the Confederates sent their skirmishers north, and got their artillery up unto the hill, solidly behind their troops preventing me from flanking with the Vindettes. From there the skirmishers kept striking me in my flanks while I tried to keep the main Confederate forces at bay all the while doing a steady retreat back to the hill. By the end of the day I managed to recapture the northern hill, but my losses up to that point and relatively low Confederate kills came up to a Minor victory at the end of the day.
This minor victory gave me three options, the first was I could hold all three hills at all costs to try and hold the advantage all the while with Confederate reinforcement coming from the North and the South meaning I'd put my forces in between the Confederate forces. The second was that I could focus my defenses on Seminary Ridge, and Oak Ridge which would leave my northern flank open as the XI would set up to defend Cemetery Hill. And the third option was to completely abandon the hills and the town to set up a full defensive of Cemetery Hill which I thought would give to much ground to quickly for a decent outcome for me. In the end I chose option two, and instead of leaving all of the XI down in Cemetery Hill moved to groups up to hold Barlow's Knoll while my forces from day one set up to defend the hills (minus one Vindette which had fully routed and left the map).
It took all of twelve minutes for me to lose as the forces from the east reached a stalemate with my defensive line along Oak Ridge, and Semitary Ridge long enough for the northern Confederates to shattered the 2000 men I had positioned to hold the knoll. The result was my forces on the hills quickly getting encircled as I tried to move my cannons to safety, needless to say they didn't last long either and the few units I had left at Cemetery Hill stood no chance of holding out. With that I lost on Day 2 of the Battle of Gettysburg.
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My second Union run went moderately better, and I managed to pull off a victory over four days despite losing more men than I managed to kill which I don't quite understand. I guess overall victory is based more on victory points than men lost sadly.
Any who this time around for day one I went with a vastly different approach using only two skirmishers to hold the line while i moved the artillery back to take position on the ridge. As the two skirmishers held the Confederate infantry I moved skirmishers and Vindettes in from the sides to harass their artillery taking out several guns before the I even arrived to reinforce me. Of course when the I arrived I took advantage of my situation and quickly spread out along the river continuing to harass the artillery when I could manage and also to move my cannons forward to begin bombarding the infantry. By the time the Iron Brigade arrived I had managed to weaken the Confederates enough to push across the river using a slow advance of infantry supported by flanking skirmishers, and artillery bombardment to steadily push the Confederates south east off of the victory point they start with control over.
By the end of the day I had the Confederates pushed against the map edge pelting them with arty and throwing back any pushes they made with hit and run strikes from the vindettes and skirmishers. This netted me an Epic Victory at the end of the day which causes you to get no choice in the starting position of day two, but instead places all of your day one forces in a defensive line across the river encircling the enemy though oddly enough this time around I had to wait for the XI to arrive on the map instead of them starting a Cemetery Hill which put me at a massive disadvantage. I had the current Confederate forces hemmed in, but my entire northern flank was unguarded with the XI still on their way in leaving me to pull two skirmishers and a Vindette away from my forces to setup a basic defense against the incoming Confederate forces.
I spent about fourth of day two very slowly pulling away from the eastern side back to Gettysburg to set up along the hills, when the XI arrived I immediately moved them north to setup a line but by then it was sadly way too late. The XI arrived in time to set up, capture the Knoll and then immediate get pushed back halfway to Gettysburg from the river as a good ten thousand Confederate troops curbstomped my northern line. The rest of the day was my line slowly collapsing backwards until I only held Seminary Ride and had my troops fighting the Confederates in the streets of Gettysburg itself (tip, apparently cannons get amazing LOS in towns, they could just fire everywhere.) with the end of the day bringing me a Draw.
Day three, and four were spent just barely holding Round Top, Little Round Top, and Cemetery Hill pulling off minor victories at the end of both days. My only noticeable achievements in the two days were when I managed to get about 5000 troops around their flank up north, and another 2000 down south routing about seven guns, and killing three more before they managed to get groups to hold back the assault. Then the end of the day where I was holding Round Top entirely with artillery pleting the infantry trying to come up with canisters while two cavalry groups (which I hadn't worried about because I'd misread and thought I was getting them) just chewed through some cannons while I threw two depleted units at Cemetery Hill to hold it long enough to win.
At the end of it my score was as follows,
My Victory Points: 50000, Losses: 23773
Confederate Victory Points: 6500, Losses: 20500
That second run took me about three to three and a half hours all things told, and it was a ton of fun, definitely worth 10 bucks for it in my opinion though I do find it a tad annoying that as Union your units just have the worst morale. At the end of Days Three and Four I was sitting there just struggling to keep my units in place as I dragged fleeing units back into the line before the Confederates could overrun me.
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Topic: Ultimate General: Gettysburg (Read 5488 times)