Probably be the last time I post here but oh well, for posterities sake I leave this final account of just how lopsided battles can become if you abuse terrain and have luck on your side.
Me: Confederates.
Force balance: unchecked, after 2 lopsided battles I decided to just do away with it and if it decided to send 10:1 against me, so be it. And it did.
Division vs. Divison
Random Garnier map.
2 objectives
LOS
This was one of those "god help them" battles once it was fully developed.
----
Standard start, cant see them for all the forests on the random maps but no worries. Good roads for going around 3/4 of the battlefield to be. Mass forests, stone walls, high terrain, dips, etc.
I dont know what happened in this battle, probably never will. The AI is darn good at times for just throwing you a curve ball like sneaking a brigade around your flank or battering holes but this time it was a world of its own. Started out with the usual brigade going forward, aimed to seize some high ground to my front and as I looked around the map it was somewhat similar to the second battle in part 2 but also quite different. A great stone wall ran the whole length of the field and a road adjacent that joined both divisions.
Brigade A gets there... Union puttering around instead of advancing. Okay.
Call up the brigades, one to right and rest swing left. B brigade goes into forest beside A which is taking over the stone wall.
Batteries are brought up one and all, no reserves today. I have other plans.
Union deploys guns onto their right and far left along with what I assume was a reserve brigade on their left.
I watch their guns go just below a forest, all nice and tidy. My brigades are in a hurry and quickly seize part of the field facing towards that stone wall with designs in mind. First though, gotta push em off it as it sits dead center.
Batteries crawl through the forest, set up in the fields overlooking the union hoard and begin firing. They are picking at A and B, no general advance YET.
My left swings in hard, one brigade swiftly wipes out all their guns and as it was situated the were able to just keep advancing and up to a forest. Guns were brought with them and from my view you could see a great wall of infantry with guns in between regiments. ALL aiming DOWN on the blue hoard.
They advance in full. I have now seized enough ground that they are trapped in the open without cover of any kind, uphill, steep by the way, and into stone walls or forests. My guns have fanned out over a good area to back up the infantry and can fire at will straight down with canister onto their advancing hoard.
Now, at this point I did not fully control the wall but I remembered a quote by Napoleon as I watched them:
"Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake."
By god they made a mistake.
The battlefield looked like a giant bulge that was slowly becoming a sharp V. For whatever reason they were dead set on attacking my center at the base of the V and content to pick at the right of it but that blue hoard advanced hard down that V. As they did the guns both captured and my own began to fill that gap with a hailstorm of iron and as they got closer to the bottom of the V, canister.
One brigade after another advanced into the narrow gap only to be let loose upon from all sides by one kind of fire or another and as some peeled off to attack the left side of the V it only got more intense. Luck was also on my side as (of all things) the captured guns drove off the un-captured guns save a single cannon. Wild sight to see. Luck was on my side.
I decided to just sit and watch, did not want to entice them into a more thought out attack (AI but oh well, I have seen it change its mind but I did not want to disturb it) and just kept the ammo wagon moving.
Every single brigade I had was on the high ground along with the guns and as I looked them over one at a time they were all lit up with little happy markers of green. However, I shall summarize the battle by telling you this: At no point did it change its mind, doggedly it kept moving forward into the V to attack and what I saw is best summarized by reading "the charge of the light brigade."
Cannon to their front, cannon to their side... Onward they sped.
When the bulk had been thoroughly routed and their attack began to putter out I seized the stone wall... Which looked down on the next part of the battlefield. Now the V had gotten even narrower. It was no great V but quite acute and I closed the gap as they continued to rally in the great fields below, send their hoard back in and then watch them all die horribly.
From this point I moved a battery to my right so now they were getting shot at from 3 sides with canister as they advanced in which resulted in a giant cluster screw where brigades would advance en masse... Freeze up... Kind of like in the Red Badge of Courage? Exactly that. Exactly... Cannons would keep blasting canister into them, drive them off and they AI would advance more into the line only for them to panic and freeze. At no point did my own infantry move forward, they just stood on the wall firing freely or in the forests.
The most cruel act however, was late in the battle. Two large brigades that were still standing formed up in the distance and began their "fife and drum" advance right down the wedge again... Within canister range of the left flank. Onward they marched, blown to ribbons, shot at sporadically but they stayed in column and however the range worked out they were far enough not to be pulled in but close enough to get shot. Finally those blue lines stopped and rounds began pounding in one after another from all the batteries on the left and center. One crater after another sprung up with the audible popping sound along with blue bodies falling.
When it was over, there were no longer any brigades there. Just meat. Well churned meat.
The center of the old V was a nightmare to look at, thick sheets of blue in all directions but as the gates had closed it got worse. How worse? When the battle was over I discovered that not only had they brought over 8500~ to the battlefield against my 4000~ but here is how many of them remained: 1000~. My force had caused more casualties than there were men under my command, kills, honest kills. Granted, it was mostly the batteries that had done it but this was something I had never seen before.
Mechanically speaking I have no idea what happened with the program but good lord was it a bloody mess. Everything culminated into one giant cluster fuck of a battle that saw my own force march away with but a scratch and their own force wiped from the map. Never let it be said that massed cannons in the right place on the high ground are useless, they certainly proved themselves in this one as they carried the entire battle on their shoulders. So effective were they that one brigade on my left hardly even fought, the captured guns did all the hard work.
Well, thats the end of it, sad that the forums are dead but there it is. Three battles and they just got bloodier until I imagine those who would have watched a battle like this in real life would have cried. Total, absolute, unquestioning destruction of the union forces with scenes reminiscent of "the charge of the light brigade" and "the red badge of courage."
Final battle Part 3
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