pandakraut

You are definitely not the only player struggling with the current version. Legendary feels much harder than on 1.24. Artillery used to be so strong that it took over the game in 1.24. It's still quite good now, but it's harder to just rely on it to win battles for you. Different cannon types have different ranges now and the AI's rifled artillery will try to shoot your artillery first if it can hit it. There are a lot of different options that can work for career points. I'm not sure more than 4-5 points in econ is worth it early on though. An extra point or two in logistics or training can help a lot.

Some examples of legendary campaigns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX_R-M_I33I&list=PLf-5UH5bavljXCN7db_CAVuzchZ8iuboP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei4xSa3HIBo&list=PLNFTAFys32_8_OFQir6FNqGoo0y13UZMm With the union campaign you want to Jump to Shiloh as that's when I switched over to 1.25. There is also another minor patch in the works that will improve the allied units a bit at Shiloh and provide a benefit to keeping allied units alive instead of suiciding them for their weapons. A test version has been posted in the discord, probably will have a release version sometime this week.

Just a note that in the unmodded game, you will be taking damage penalties if certain units types get to large. This is most important for artillery and snipers where there are severe damage penalties for going over 14 guns or ~375 men skirmisher units(applies to dismounted cavalry as well). See this post for supporting data: https://forum.game-labs.net/topic/26142-hidden-mechanics-and-weapon-damage-degradation/

Unless you are using one of the mods you really don't want to be using 24 gun units. They'll only be doing about as much damage as a 4 gun unit. 12 or 14(for a slight boost) is as large as you want to make artillery units. For myself, I've generally found that it's not worth the trouble of getting vision on the gunboats to try and sink them. Though I'm usually going up the middle left of the map so I'm nowhere near them anyways.

If an AI supply wagon is empty it will leave the map. The standard way to avoid this is to use cavalry to capture all 3 wagons while there are only 2 union infantry units on the map.

This is an issue from the base game that I'm unable to fix. The perk works if you create a new unit and immediately start a battle. It stops working as soon as you restart a battle, go back to camp, load a save, etc. I considered replacing the perk entirely since it's not reliable, but there isn't an obvious bonus to replace it with, so I left it as is. Unfortunately just not picking the perk is the solution at the moment. Maybe I should just update the description with a big does not work warning message...

Should be more than enough to win the battle day 1. Not sure about the full clear as I've never tried it with only 15 units.

2nd day adds more union units and will allow officers wounded on the first day to heal. If you're looking for kills it is strictly better, but in practice it really depends on if you can keep the casualties to your own units down. Also, finishing off the Union on day 2 will mean more time spent getting fired at by the gunboats. It's not that dangerous but it does add up. I'm assuming you won't be going into Shiloh with any spare money, but if you do you will be charged to refill your wagons on day 2.

An optimum brigade size doesn't really exist anymore. There are diminishing returns the larger you get, but adding men/guns always adds damage now. I don't think a consensus has really formed yet, people are still experimenting with what works well. The officer replacement system should help out, the officers aren't good but you still get them for free. The increase is also smaller than you might think. .0025 to .0035 is the type of numbers you're looking at.

Maybe, will have to look into it. I think the messages don't time out if you pause?

Big or small can both work. A decent rule is to try to bring the recommended number of brigades to every battle. If you have the men and weapons to make larger units as well you can give it a try and see if you like the outcome.

The 20pdr will just be better for counter battery. The 10pdr is more of a stopgap solution. If you're the Union you get enough 20pdrs that there is no reason to bother with the 10.

Sometimes the tech level causes the AI to use those instead. I had one campaign with them and one without.

Scaling applies slightly more on BG but still not all that much. Starting perks for your avatar and your starting brigades are all randomized. Changing them would either involve restarting the first mission until you get the perks you want, or disbanding and recreating your units. Unless you have cleared out your recruit pool entirely when you disband the unit your stats will get averaged with those of the pool though. Being able to choose the avatar perks is something else that has been modded in.

That's the lowest level carbine weapon in the mod so that is pretty normal.

When playing on easy you can really just not worry about a lot of these mechanics. Scaling especially barely has an impact before Major General difficulty. Getting your allied troops killed to recover their weapons is an option, but not necessary. Due to a bug, shattered units gets you more weapons, surrendered gets you more recruits and hurts the AI's army strength more. Though the army strength is also not a mechanic that needs to be worried about on easy. The UI & AI Customizations mod does fix the weapon return so there is no weapon recovery downside to capturing units. Equipment scaling based on your troops weapons was a feature of earlier versions, but is no longer in the game. 8-10 points in recon lets you see what weapons units before a battle, but is usually not a good investment of career points. Most people just find out what the AI was using in the post battle screen when they see what type of weapons they captured. Maximum damage for artillery is 14 guns. Skirmishers is ~375. This is also fixed by the UI mod.

No key press necessary. Select a unit, right click nearby and then you'll get an indicator that will let you change the facing of the unit. As long as you select a location near enough to the units current location the unit will move to the new spot obliquely.

In the game, more expensive is generally better in terms of rifles. The repeaters are a bit underwhelming though.

10# parrots can be effective for counter battery work. They will be most effective when firing at their maximum possible range. 20# parrots and 24# howitzers are generally considered the best artillery in the game so spending reputation on them can be worthwhile.

Every point provides a percentage reduction. The medicine tooltip currently don't display the correct percentage until you actually assign the point unfortunately.

The gunboats account for 3-4k kills in my battle which is more than any single artillery unit that I was able to field. I think they are about in line with where they should be as opposed to ridiculous like most artillery was in the prior version. On MG the AI likely fields more muskets than on Legendary which is going to make it a bit more charge happy. Since most of your units are going to be smaller you need to keep them in tight formations to have any chance of convincing the AI to not charge or to stop charging. Baiting charges with skirmish units that have the speed perk and then running off to the side to allow for flanking shots and dragging the AI through bad terrain might also help. If you had a run where you lost a lot of officers you may have just had bad luck and another attempt might go better. Bad luck with variance rolls, AI perk selections, etc can all make certain attempts very likely to fail.

This will occur on all difficulties. I thought it occurred in the base game as well, but it's been a while since I looked into it and don't remember for sure. No idea why it is happening, but having a built in exploit for people who would prefer to never play the starting battles again isn't that bad either

Unfortunately this isn't a bug I've figured out how to fix yet. So it's still best to use other corps when possible.

First one is always the hardest. You'll get the hang of it. Thanks for posting the video, definitely some new ideas in there

That sounds like the mod is at least partially installed incorrectly. Most of the weapon names should be modified, so check that the resources.assets file was overwritten. Also, if the dll is installed correctly you should see the mod name in the main menu version. While likely not the main issue, make sure you have at least one infantry unit in your army before trying to give infantry weapons to skirmishers. The mod relies on that infantry unit for it to work.