pandakraut

2 or 3 star cav with the right perks can be very dangerous even from the front if they scale large enough. In my experience the losses from this are to high for the player to sustain, but the free AI troops can certainly get away with it. Given that this occasionally makes the AI dangerous my initial thought would be that it is ok. We are experimenting with some melee and morale changes though so it will probably get another look.

You can win on day1. Definitely have to wait for the contested timers to resolve though. I want to say that sometimes you have to let the end of day timer run out, but I don't think that is required here.

After the first time clicking finish screwed me I have taken to making a save before I try to end a multiday battle early Do you think any of the tactics you've tried before would work with a bit more luck or slightly better execution? Are you in a position where you could take the draw? I can't try for a few days, but it you want to post the save I'd be interested in banging my head against the puzzle for a bit.

Not sure where this suggestion falls within your personal rulesets for the campaign, so disregard if it bends them to much. This idea is based on a previous explanation by Lava that he always tries to expand his army to field as many brigades as allowed by a battle. If you expanded your amount of units for this battle to fill slots that effectively aren't used, those units could be disbanded. You're probably facing several thousand more troops than you would if the day1 and day2 slot counts were actually accurate to what will be on the field.

I rewatched Col Kelly's video and it turns out I used a bit different approach. I still split the center, but my 1st corps is entirely dedicated to holding that line, it basically doesn't move to attack the camp at all. Most of the union cavalry is allowed to pass to the north, I've found that once they get up there they don't tend to do much else. The center VP capture is delayed as long as possible to give the most time to get into position. Sometimes I won't take the woods north of the center VP that Kelly defended at either and will defend from the center VP woods, the confederate starting position to the east, and the available cover to the west with skirmishers interspersed. I think this approach requires heavy sniper usage to be able to wear down the mass of units from the south and convince any units attacking from the north to turn around though. Going further north might still be better in terms of getting the enemy units out into the open, would have to try it again. 2nd corps supports 1st corps initially and helps pin the union forces in the north, but towards the end of that phase nearly all of it moves to where the river crossing will open up. Then the divisions of 2nd and 3rd corps take the landing from as far north as possible. Clear the line of breastworks north of the river, split across the ford below the breastworks and the westernmost ford. I've found that this minimizes the time I spend fighting out of cover. Some units of 1st corps will eventually start to move north once the union troops in the south have been beaten down enough to stop attacking. I've tried enveloping them in multiple different ways, but I find they usually end up clumping in one set of woods or another and it's not worth the casualties to finish them off completely. I've never tried letting the southern units have free access to run north, maybe it's possible to just hold the original line with parts of 1st corps and send more divisions up to support 2nd and 3rd corps? Not sure if the AI will default to trying to attack, holding more of the middle of the map, or if those units will all just go sit in the camp. Good luck on finding a solution

Perhaps the flag was still contested when the main timer hit 0?

On the left flank I would recommend trying to take the northern VP that isn't surrounded by fortifications. I don't recall if it's required or not but I usually end up taking it.

The main set of changes in 1.3 will be replacing the damage curves that are limiting the usefulness of larger units. Along with this the weapons and perks will be getting a rework. Past that it depends what we get to.

I had the first left flank phase result in a loss once when it appeared the battle should continue, restarted the battle and the issue didn't reoccur. I didn't have screenshots or anything to really check why the first attempt might have failed though. On some other battles you need to make sure you're not completing any set of victory or draw conditions to continue, but I didn't think cold harbor was one of these. Best recommendation at this point would be to restart the battle entirely and to keep a save and a screenshot of a few minutes before the left phase should end so that you can check the conditions in detail.

No timeline at this point for when another major version will be ready. A minor release might happen in a few weeks.

There are no built in modding tools, but it is possible to modify the game dll and assets file. At this time no one has figured out how to modify or create new battle maps. Significantly altering how existing battles work by changing victory conditions, reinforcement locations, etc is also not currently possible. There are no text files for the game. Any changes you want to make would have to be fit into the assets file. I've never looked into changing the menu backgrounds so I'm not sure if that is possible.

To comment on the modding angle, removing the transitions can be done. But it causes all kinds of other problems unless the player basically knows where and how they happen and plays around it. So no good solution there either. All that said, I still think the game is well worth your time even with those issues. It can be very frustrating at times, but usually if you are getting stuck there is something that you are overlooking in how you are playing the campaign or a specific battle that can make the phases a non issue.

This is almost certainly the case. Comparing to my old saves with smaller unit sizes you both are already scaling up the AI infantry a decent amount. I only faced about 55k at Stones River with smaller units. Sorry, should have said larger brigades rather than oversized. Though sizes at Everettsville appear to be pretty consistent. With 1100 men brigades I was still facing units around 1800.

While technically there is nothing to prevent you from using an existing campaign, the rebalance mod changes are extensive enough I would recommend a new campaign instead. All of the perks and weapons are different, career points have different values, battle difficulty changes dramatically in some cases. If you're looking for a mod to apply mid campaign I'd recommend the UI and AI customizations mod. That one just fixes some bugs and adds some improvements to the tooltips and artillery range indicators. Also, just as an FYI this version with the merged surrender changes has been tested substantially less than either base mod, so there will probably be some issues to smooth out.

Do you have a general with speed bonuses? Are you capturing any of the VP flags? It's been a while since I've played it purely vanilla, but my recollection is that when setting all units in the southern deployment block in the top right and routing them around the trees I was able to get all of them up into CSA controlled woods and get at least 4 or 5 units into the woods above the northern union VP before the phase change.

Keep in mind they are both playing on Legendary which is arguably not what the game is balanced around. Both battles are very winnable with a variety of strategies on lower difficulties. Any of the battles with multiple phases can be a bit confusing until you get used to them. The battles are setup to somewhat mimic the historical progression which can result in some disconnect when the player's strategy or success does not line up with history.

Where are you having trouble with cutting through the middle? It's always worked fairly well for me in the past, though I'm also not dealing with the oversized brigades that you both are facing. I usually march everyone into the northern set of trees, setup enough of a defensive force to hold off any union attacks, and then leapfrog most of my brigades north along the map edge. Holding the line once the next phase opens up can be a bit tricky if any units from the northern force try to come down.

I only have limited experience with the surrender mod, but it definitely seems to speed up the wrap up routing units phase of a battle. It didn't seemed to significantly break or alter surrender rates in the early or mid phase of battles, though it seems you have to be much more careful of leaving units to engage enemies alone. I think there is still some room for improvement, but it does feel like a step in the right direction. My reading of the base game surrender logic is that one check is run continually any time a unit is in melee, and another check occurs anytime a unit is fired upon. Ranged and melee have different starting probabilities. Both units hp, morale, nearby enemy hp, nearby ally hp, commanding officer status, and ammo status all factor into the surrender chance. Additionally units will not even consider surrendering if a nearby allied unit has a morale status better than wavering. I've not checked any of those probability numbers directly, but could go look them up that is something people are interested in.

NOTE: This mod is not currently kept up to date. Thanks to @General WVPM for combining his Surrender mod changes with the J&P Rebalance mod V1.2. A few changes weren't included due to overlap or balance reasons, but the added surrender mod changes are below. Please see the main J&PRebalance post for details on its full set of changes. This will be kept as a submod of the Rebalance mod and will likely have additional balance issues, but for those who requested it please enjoy. Changes: -Units surrender based on the morale of nearby units as well as their fatigue and losses. This means that it's easier to cleanup a bunch of routing troops that are cornered. -Units surrender when surrounded with no allies nearby (a bit randomized and cav has a larger escape chance). -Units can't shatter from melee, they instead surrender. -Cav melee attacks give a big bonus to surrender chance. -Enemy troop estimates depend on recon skill. -(Optional) captives are returned to the AI before it gets post-battle reinforcements. Modify captivesToAI value in the Mod/AIConfigFile. -At the end of each battle, the results are logged to a file in your temp folder, so the Excel tool can make a nice Excel file of it. Get the mod here: https://wvpm.stackstorage.com/s/1yhVT3s3wYiL9Gs GoG version: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1WyZdV6-lkBFsLbW_2UWUNAhcRmUzg1q4 Install Instructions: Download J&P 1.2 + Surrender.zip and extract the contents of the J&P + Surrender folder it into your Ultimate General Civil War_Data directory. You will be prompted to overwrite Assembly-CSharp.dll and resources.assets Uninstall Instructions: Verify game files to restore the Assembly-CSharp.dll and resources.assets and delete Ultimate General Civil War_Data/Mod folder

Chancellorsville has 3 days for both sides, but it's possible to win the battle early and skip days. As the CSA, if you don't capture the union camp you transition to day 3 where you have to hold the two VPs again. This is the same on the union side where if you hold the camp on day 2 then you still have to capture the VPs on day 3. Often the CSA army doesn't exist by that stage so you just walk across a nearly empty map. Your best chance is to cause as many casualties as you can in exchange for minimal casualties on your side in the first 2 days. If you can weaken the union enough then you might be able to survive day 3 in reasonable shape.

I'm trying to keep any balance changes to an absolute minimum with this mod, so that's why you still get a MG here compared to in the rebalance mod. I think I have a solution for getting both perks selectable, just need to get around to implementing it.

What difficulty was this? That would be expected behavior if you are playing on MG or Legendary for this mod.

With how well you have been managing the AI size I'd expect you to hit around the minimum ratio which is about 2:1. When mostly wiping out the enemy in prior battles I've never seen the giant 3:1 type numbers that people have encountered. Haven't been able to watch recently, but it sounds like things are going well and am looking forward to catching up.

That's somewhat represented by the stamina stat increasing already. Custom perks are possible but it results in more hidden mechanics for the user and is more complicated to implement so we haven't taken that step yet.

I'll check if the draw length is moddable when I'm back from vacation. For skirmishers weapons the answer is part providing variance and part that cavalry can use carbines as well and that limits how good they can be.