mod J & P Rebalance Mod by JonnyH13 and Pandakraut 05/06/2023 1.28.4

[lightningg]

3 hours ago, BCH said:

That depends upon  the perks.. I had a CSA 2* infantry brigade catch my 1* Cavalry brigade going up hill.

Were they running away from the battle? lol

[BCH]

On 9/7/2018 at 8:50 AM, BCH said:

Thoughts on Gaines Mill at MG level with ModV 1.23a

3rd play through - Victory by gaming it at the last minute (literally), sent the cavalry unit I had lurking in the CSA rear to seize Boatswains HIll when the Confederates moved out from there to make their final assault on McGhee Hill.

The match up was as follows:

Union Inf. 19,650 vs.  47,646 CSA Inf. (2.4 to 1 advantage for the CSA)
Union Cav. 500 vs. 0 CSA Cav.
Union Guns 132 vs. 227 CSA Guns.

Losses:

10,257 vs. 22,347 Inf.
52 vs. 87 guns
336 vs. 0 Cav.
0 vs. 483 Missing

CSA brigades were almost all 2*, with a couple of 3 * thrown in the mix. The CSA batteries were huge, 600+ to 1,100+ manpower. CSA skirmishers down to around 700 due to reducing total Union skirmishers by three units.

Tactics used:

Harassed incoming CSA units with two Cavalry brigades; the cavalry was basically ineffective against CSA batteries even when they rear flanked the batteries due to the large size of the CSA batteries.

Sent three brigades to the Southeast to flank and harass CSA units; those three brigades were then brought back to defend Boatswains Hill. One was cut off, but survived by retreating back through the swamp; it was able to rejoin the Union line toward the end of the battle.

Only set up a token defense at Boatswains Woods; I sent several brigades and batteries to defend McGhee Hill when it appeared as a VP.

I defended Boatswains Hill up until the  CSA brigades had more than a 2:1 advantage in total brigades in that area.

Pulled back every Union unit to McGhee Hill and defended it until the end. There was no chance to make a conventional counter attack from McGhee Hill; the Confederates had a 2.7 to 1 advantage in Infantry (all 2* at this point) alone and all but two of their large batteries were intact.

Big surprise was the capture of well over 2,000 '61 Springfields.

[BCH]

4 minutes ago, lightningg said:

Were they running away from the battle? lol

300 man Cavalry brigade vs 2,200 Infantry brigade; what do you believe the outcome will be if the cavalry stands and fights?

[RToy]

17 hours ago, pandakraut said:

Have a new fix for the artillery capture bug. Will get Jonny to post it tomorrow.

Thanks.  Playing through it again and making sure this time to stay far enough away so as not to make them surrender, I managed to get through the battle.

[pandakraut]

1 hour ago, RToy said:

Thanks.  Playing through it again and making sure this time to stay far enough away so as not to make them surrender, I managed to get through the battle.

Should be safe to capture them. In testing I was able to get all the way through to camp with them captured.

[BCH]

I decided to take a look a Malvern Hill before I replayed Gaines Mill.

I have to say 20 CSA brigades vs. the Union's initial 5 brigades is a bit over the top, especially with the CSA having seven 3*, and thirteen 2* brigades plus their artillery.

Might not be so bad, but the Union side has very little room to maneuver in Phase I. (I did win, by the way)

 

Edited July 4, 2019 by BCH
add'l text

[pandakraut]

1 hour ago, BCH said:

I decided to take a look a Malvern Hill before I replayed Gaines Mill.

I have to say 20 CSA brigades vs. the Union's initial 5 brigades is a bit over the top, especially with the CSA having seven 3*, and thirteen 2* brigades plus their artillery.

Might not be so bad, but the Union side has very little room to maneuver in Phase I. (I did win, by the way)

You only got 5 brigades at Malvern Hill? That doesn't sound right I thought it was 8?

I think you can fall back and let them capture the first VP to trigger the reinforcements and later phases earlier. It can be hard to push back to recover it though as that terrain is very open.

[BCH]

10 hours ago, pandakraut said:

You only got 5 brigades at Malvern Hill? That doesn't sound right I thought it was 8?

I should have been more clear; I had 5 Infantry brigades; plus artillery batteries, and 1 cavalry brigade to start.  The 20 vs. 5 was a comparison of infantry only. 

I did pull back almost immediately and set up a defensive line at the southern most edge of the map for Phase I.

The cavalry brigade was sent to hide in the woods on the western edge of the map. Eventually that cavalry brigade captures 4 CSA supply wagons and later retakes the Malvern Hill VP towards the end of the battle.

As you can see from the screen capture, I brought 119 Union guns to the battle (largest batteries had 12 guns); that evened out the disparity in veterancy. I found that 3* CSA  brigades are generally not too bright in regards to Union batteries; they will just advance time after time into the guns. CSA batteries at Malvern Hill were more reasonable in size, 300+ to just over 600+ (and only one at 600 was noticed).

Any way.. back to playing Gaines Mills for a while.

[BCH]

What is it, in regards to the mechanics behind cavalry, that keeps cavalry engaged in melee after a cease fire command has been issued?

In other words, why does the cavalry not disengage when given an order to cease fire and then move away in a different direction?

[pandakraut]

5 minutes ago, BCH said:

What is it, in regards to the mechanics behind cavalry, that keeps cavalry engaged in melee after a cease fire command has been issued?

In other words, why does the cavalry not disengage when given an order to cease fire and then move away in a different direction?

I can't say for sure but there seems to be some kind of stickiness mechanic when unit sprites are in contact. It seems to be more of a problem against artillery since sometimes all the sprites stack up on a single gun and once that happens player input basically gets ignored. I've tried routing my own units to get them free but that doesn't seem to work either.

I've tried messing around with various variables that seem like they are related but have not been able to make any improvement to the current system.

Because of this hit and run tactics with cavalry can be extremely risky.

[Dauntless07]

I'm experiencing a persistent CTD around Parker's Crossroads in my Union Campaign. It started with a CTD some time after my reinforcements got there, but now, I get a CTD shortly after clicking the button that starts the battle, and once, I even got a CTD swapping between the battle select screen and the army camp. If there's a log anywhere that can offer more information on what's happening, let me know.

EDIT: odd, I just attempted it again, and got through without incident. I've saved prior to the battle, but can progress for now.

Edited September 9, 2018 by Dauntless07

[pandakraut]

1 hour ago, Dauntless07 said:

I'm experiencing a persistent CTD around Parker's Crossroads in my Union Campaign. It started with a CTD some time after my reinforcements got there, but now, I get a CTD shortly after clicking the button that starts the battle, and once, I even got a CTD swapping between the battle select screen and the army camp. If there's a log anywhere that can offer more information on what's happening, let me know.

EDIT: odd, I just attempted it again, and got through without incident. I've saved prior to the battle, but can progress for now.

I've never encountered an issue with that battle. If you come across it again please let me know. If you can get an in battle save that consistently fails even better.

[Dauntless07]

Having fought past Stones River, here's my impressions to far.

*I love the revamp of the Career Points. There's finally a reason to invest in areas besides Politics and Medicine. I feel like Politics may still be too OP. It giving recruits, money, and government points just makes it way too good to pass. I can't deny though, starting with 6 in training was helpful in its own ways.

*I love the revamp of perks. Seriously, who's going to bother picking anything besides "Infantry" for every major general's perk in vanilla? This is much better.

*I love the devastating potential of a well executed charge. In vanilla, melee was the one statistic I found impossible to farm due to its high attrition, and redundant to attempt since it was cheaper and just as effective to field rookies with melee guns instead. Now, with some skill, a player can do a lot of damage in melee without taking too much in turn.

*I love the new artillery cone. It's so useful, since I can clearly see the range for each type of shot. This alone would make vanilla much better.

*I like the standardization of weapons in terms of range. I get what you're going for, generally speaking max range for artillery was anything you could see, a little less for smoothbore guns. Modern imported rifles were just as effective as S1861s, there was no linear progression of bad to good rifles like in vanilla. the standardized melee of rifles to 60 or 80 is a lot easier to follow. As far as I know, the only factors that might affect melee in reality are length of the rifle obviously, (mostly standard,) and the type of bayonet. (Sword-style ones can incorporate situational slash attacks.) It also improves the general gameplay. Giving the Union arbitrarily terrible melee guns in vanilla seemed like a cheat to make the campaign harder than it should have been. It's nice to have at least 1 great melee rifle in each game stage, even if it's hard to get lots of them.

*Damage makes less sense to me. 6.5 damage on a S1855, but jumps all the way to 9 on the S1861? Seems odd considering they are the same caliber; what am I missing here? 6 Pounders are utterly overpowered. I see little indication it is "rapidly becoming obsolete" when it's fire rate of 80 is 1.33x faster than the Napoleon's 60 while having the same range, damage, and ammo characteristics. Not sure what the "collateral damage" statistic describes, but it seems to be the Napoleon's only advantage. I've slaughtered thousands with "obsolete" 6 Pounders.

*I dislike the high attrition of corps officers. So far, I've had only 1 Colonel survive to be promoted to BG, and I'm past Stones River! I understand if they're leading a brigade directly and get hit often sure, but that no one else survived proves to me that investing in expensive leaders who will be killed before 2 major battles pass is just a waste. Maybe it's historical? IDK, but I still ain't paying for it.

That's all for now. I rate this at least 3x better than the vanilla experience. GJ!

[pandakraut]

Thanks for the feedback, glad you're enjoying the mod.

3 minutes ago, Dauntless07 said:

*I love the revamp of the Career Points. There's finally a reason to invest in areas besides Politics and Medicine. I feel like Politics may still be too OP. It giving recruits, money, and government points just makes it way too good to pass. I can't deny though, starting with 6 in training was helpful in its own ways.

I only start putting points in politics when everything else useful is maxed, so even if it's still really good the other options can work as well. I play with very small units though which influences things a lot.

6 minutes ago, Dauntless07 said:

*Damage makes less sense to me. 6.5 damage on a S1855, but jumps all the way to 9 on the S1861? Seems odd considering they are the same caliber; what am I missing here? 6 Pounders are utterly overpowered. I see little indication it is "rapidly becoming obsolete" when it's fire rate of 80 is 1.33x faster than the Napoleon's 60 while having the same range, damage, and ammo characteristics. Not sure what the "collateral damage" statistic describes, but it seems to be the Napoleon's only advantage. I've slaughtered thousands with "obsolete" 6 Pounders.

Collateral damage is the radius around the center of the unit that nearby units will take a small amount of damage in. Artillery is still probably to strong despite having something like half the damage it did at one point in the mod. In terms of the differences between cannon you'll want to take a look at this post http://forum.game-labs.net/topic/26142-hidden-mechanics-and-weapon-damage-degradation/. The spreadsheets there are for the base game ranges, but it should illustrate the differences. Not that the cannon damages all make sense currently, they are a compromise while we rework all weapon damage for a for a future release. We've both been pretty busy recently so it's going slowly though.

13 minutes ago, Dauntless07 said:

*I dislike the high attrition of corps officers. So far, I've had only 1 Colonel survive to be promoted to BG, and I'm past Stones River! I understand if they're leading a brigade directly and get hit often sure, but that no one else survived proves to me that investing in expensive leaders who will be killed before 2 major battles pass is just a waste. Maybe it's historical? IDK, but I still ain't paying for it.

This sounds like really bad luck. The officer wound/death rates are currently unchanged from the base game. The last time I went through Shiloh I think I had one officer killed though several were wounded.

 

[Col_Kelly]

The mod is great in many aspects and I really appreciate the work you guys did, especially on the various carreer and officer buffs. One thing though is the slow damage of early rifles. I've seen AI Union brigades 4000 strong being barely able to kill 12 opponents at (actual) point blank range (First Bull Run, Hard difficulty). Even with low efficiency this sounds a bit excessive and battles are prolonged unnecessarily.

I really enjoy the idea  of slower combat for many reasons (historical accuracy, bigger importance of smart planning etc...) but in my opinion it is too... slow at the moment. Adding a few points to close range damage to early rifles would really add some spice and also actually help the AI as it is quite easy right now to hold him off with two tiny brigades.

Anyway great work, I hope you keep improving on it.

[pandakraut]

35 minutes ago, Col_Kelly said:

The mod is great in many aspects and I really appreciate the work you guys did, especially on the various carreer and officer buffs. One thing though is the slow damage of early rifles. I've seen AI Union brigades 4000 strong being barely able to kill 12 opponents at (actual) point blank range (First Bull Run, Hard difficulty). Even with low efficiency this sounds a bit excessive and battles are prolonged unnecessarily.

I really enjoy the idea  of slower combat for many reasons (historical accuracy, bigger importance of smart planning etc...) but in my opinion it is too... slow at the moment. Adding a few points to close range damage to early rifles would really add some spice and also actually help the AI as it is quite easy right now to hold him off with two tiny brigades.

Anyway great work, I hope you keep improving on it.

Did you have the accuracy perk for the unit or the commanding general? Which weapon was that unit equipped with?

The early battles can definitely feel a bit slow though. The combination of low skill allied troops and muskets means I spend a lot of time on x2 or x8 speed. The base level of damage should probably go up a bit. If things continue to feel to slow you may want to try increasing the gameSpeed in the _Data/Mod/Rebalance/ConfigFile.csv by 1 or 2.

Thanks for the feedback and hope you continue to enjoy the mod. 

[Col_Kelly]

It was an AI brigade so I can't say for sure. I know for a fact that large Union brigades at Bull Run really suck in efficiency but that's it. I indeed use 2* and 3* speed a lot.

An increase in base damage level sounds about right, I'm sure you can do that without hurting the mod's objectives in terms of gameplay.

Kudos as well on the cap increase for skirms and cav. Having large units of those opens a lot more options for combined arms warfare while the vanilla game could someone force you into a infantry spam.

[Adventure]

Hello Jonnyh13, was excited to try your mod, but i'm getting a black screen when i'm starting the game.

(GoG version)

Any suggestions?

Edited September 11, 2018 by Adventure

[pandakraut]

1 hour ago, Adventure said:

Hello Jonnyh13, was excited to try your mod, but i'm getting a black screen when i'm starting the game.

(GoG version)

Any suggestions?

Unfortunately there seem to be enough differences between the steam and GoG dlls/install that the mod is not compatible with GoG. I have not had a chance yet to buy a GoG version and make the changes there.

Edited September 11, 2018 by pandakraut

[Adventure]

37 minutes ago, pandakraut said:

Unfortunately there seem to be enough differences between the steam and GoG dlls/install that the mod is not compatible with GoG. I have not had a chance yet to buy a GoG version and make the changes there.

I see, hope it would be made a priority. 

The mod sounds fantastic, can't wait to try it out.

[pandakraut]

3 minutes ago, Adventure said:

I see, hope it would be made a priority. 

The mod sounds fantastic, can't wait to try it out.

I can't promise anything, but I'll see if I can take an initial look this weekend.

[lightningg]

CSA MG Shiloh

A tale of two battles

Shiloh Church - trap & destroy the union army

To do this I maximise the available time by bypassing the church left and right until less than 30 minutes left

The CSA left flank takes a holding position, crossing the stream and staying south of the muddy area.

The right flank is more aggressive crossing the stream and forcing the Union brigades to give ground, with extreme right flank advancing the furthest to cut off Union access to rest of battle map

Union forces seem agreeable to this, do not counter attack so my losses are minimal and willingly fall back into the muddy area until they can barely move in slow terrain and will take fire from my forces outside of the bad ground, as shown below, while seeing to be in constant rout state.  The Union supply wagon is captured

My cavalry are kept in reserve to the south of the church which is still held by Union although no troops are there. At 30 minutes on the clock I take the objective and then use my cavalry to attack across the muddy ground against the remnants of the Union force.  No Union troops will escape from this side of the battle if I can help it

 

 

The map swaps

CSA Right Flank - hold ground, advance slowly, do not force Union to withdraw too early, while preserving my force and rotating forces.  CSA supply wagon is set for artillery supply only 

On the other side of the map I have a great deal of luck with the Mod.  All 3 divisions have a split infantry brigade (and not the smallest) and the 1st and 2nd divisions also get split artillery batteries - so 5 'bonus' brigades 

I deploy 1st and 2nd on my left flank, wait for my Reserve division to arrive and link them up across the map. 1st and 2nd will advance in turn with the larger Reserve division support on the right

 

 

I advance slowly engaging any Union brigade/battery as I  head north but stay below both objectives allowing time to run out

The battle swaps back briefly to Shiloh Church where I advance 2 divisions further north, continue to attack the last Union troops with cavalry and then set up the manoeuvre to move my remaining brigades close to the muddy area away and then north before the map swaps again.

My 3 divisions now advance at a quicker pace in this phase (in previous battles the Union has been very aggressive launching major attacks south but this time they withdraw to Hornets Nest leaving behind several batteries for me to destroy

I attack the forces south of HN exchanging musket and cannon fire, Rotating brigades but taking casualties.  The Union hold fast and still have a major force south of the objective with even more at the HN itself as the clock runs down

The map expands to full view

My flanking attack can now take place

 

I have a major force north of the majority of the Union Army and I am close to the Final Objective.  The cavalry destroy the last troops from Shiloh Church area so my entire left flank is clear.  I can move troops to support my right flank and also push towards the objective

I see two choices I can try to deploy my northern force across the map take the objective and try to hold it against any Union force that moves against me from HN.  My forces would be split and the northern troops would also be open to attack in the rear as more Union reserves arrive

I choose the more conservative route advancing left to right across the map, keeping my two forces in contact, with a safe north/south corridor to move troops up/down if necessary, engaging union brigades that come too close as they withdraw to the Landing.  I can still take the objective and moving my southern forces north can run down and destroy Union artillery

 

 

There is sill a major battle to fight as thousands more Union troops arrive (I am deeply suspicious that AI always deploys more troops in the major battles than the battle results table shows they had available)

I attack any Union forces as they arrive, drive the union troops into the two northern corners and more muddy ground.  I move infantry and artillery against the gunboats.  Artillery alone would be quickly destroyed, so I have to sacrifice infantry while the artillery fire from behind them

 

 

I destroy/capture all Union forces I can find, hold the VP and win the battle

 

Edited September 11, 2018 by lightningg

[killjoy1941]

4 hours ago, lightningg said:

CSA MG Shiloh

A tale of two battles

That's precisely how you should play CSA Shiloh. Learning how to break the center before the Hornet's Nest opens is the only efficient way to win in vanilla legendary, and I still use it in the mod. I haven't gotten much farther yet, but I would venture a guess that since the same tactic works for Stones River and Chickamauga in vanilla, it'll work in the mod too.

Well played.

[Kristoph420]

Panda, this is Kristoph42 from the discussion boards. I found the save game. It took me a while. This is in regards to the Chancellorsville skipping day 2 issue that I had. The "zz whatever" is the in battle save before the end of the first day. The "lu whatever" is the in camp save after day 1. Aslo, I decided to play through the battle anyway. When Salem Church came up, the game gave me a defeat and I didn't even get to move a unit or anything, the game just gave me a defeat.

zzo8cy8l.s7i

lu59avrj.9m7

[pandakraut]

2 hours ago, Kristoph420 said:

Panda, this is Kristoph42 from the discussion boards. I found the save game. It took me a while. This is in regards to the Chancellorsville skipping day 2 issue that I had. The "zz whatever" is the in battle save before the end of the first day. The "lu whatever" is the in camp save after day 1. Aslo, I decided to play through the battle anyway. When Salem Church came up, the game gave me a defeat and I didn't even get to move a unit or anything, the game just gave me a defeat.

I just tried both saves with the 1.23a dlls and couldn't recreate. Also tried restarting the entire battle from one of the saves and again didn't get the bug. Did not get the endOfDay bug with Salem Church with your saves or an old save of my own.

It's not entirely clear to me from your other comments if you've tried restarting the entire battle yet. That is normally the best chance to resolve issues like this. If you've already tried that I'm not sure what else to attempt.

I'm going to check with Jonny and see if the bug happens for him.