Jorlaan

More freeform would be absolutely amazing. So often I get frustrated by clearly having the physical space to place something, but I can't because "no one did historically"? Just feels kinda hollow.

This is actually directly contrary to my own experience. I selected design my own fleet, designed them, built a whole bunch and then hit "start campaign" and they were all built and ready to go on turn 1. It seemed to work exactly as you're wanting it to. A bug of some sort?

When moving the sliders, the tooltip completely blocks the percentage, making it harder to fine tune. Having the tooltip appear above, or below the slider would help. Also we need slightly better fine tuning or the ability to type in numbers the the %. On transport capacity in particular I find it impossible to get some even numbers. Selecting ports for every ship is very tedious. A way to auto-assign to a chosen port would be great, or even a way to assign more than one at a time. Things like this add to repetitive strain. Selecting "View Ship" from the fleet screen, and then from there clicking on one of the ship designs, removed the ship I was viewing and replaced it with nothing. I was then stuck on a screen I had no way of getting out of and had to hard close the game to restart.

Well I don't know what what up before but with a clear out of the old files and upgrading to the new version it's all working properly. I think I can salvage this campaign, my recon is now higher thanks to Shiloh points and I'll have enough to do what I need for Gaines Mill. I start campaigns that end at Shiloh so often, now that I'm past it I don't wanna start again. Turned things down to .8 for Shiloh and back up to 1 after. We'll see how it goes, it's only MJ but hard enough for me it seems.

That's the file I was changing. It didn't do anything time after time. I have actually updated to the new version and have made the change in the new file to test. I think it's working, I loaded the battle and they seem to be smaller I think. Most enemy units are now ? until I get MUCH closer than before though, is this intended to make recon more important or maybe a glitch of me using an older save upconverted? If it's the former then I can get behind that, recon was something I largely ignored early before. It has its uses but other things seem more important early. TBH I am considering a whole new campaign anyways with this new patch. Many little things have changed.

I am changing the AIscalingSizeMultiplier and AIscalingExperienceMultiplier. I was watching some Fisasco games and he set these to .85 down from 1 for his current campaign and I thought maybe this would help me past the brick wall of Shiloh. I'm just really done with this battle. However after saving and exiting, changing those two things down to .75 because I just wanna be done with it, save and exit the file, load it back up and the enemy numbers and experience have not changed. I'm definitely changing the aiconfig file in the Rebalance mod folder. I've only got the one mod. Checking just now they even have 1000 more men than last time. Admittedly I am using a slightly older version of the mod. Might that be a problem? I might actually update to the newest version and try again. Looking at changes it seems a good amount has changed.

I have been playing again recently and was trying to play with the two scaling numbers in the AIconfig file. I have moved them up and down but nothing seems to change. Do they only take effect on a new campaign or maybe after I play a battle?

For some reason a few days after I bought the game the money was refunded to my account and then re-taken out 2 days later. I am extraordinarily uncomfortable with Xsolla doing this as I made absolutely NO request for it. I am hoping this is a known occasional bug and will not happen again.

Excellent work, good bit of visual info. Now we just need one for the J&P mod 😛.

Lol I just realized how old the original post is.

I never actually try defending the fort anymore, as soon as the second phase starts I get my men running towards the river the enemy comes over. I can usually stop them at the river with my infantry and my artillery moves up behind them getting away from the Union ships blasting away. I usually take only a couple long range volleys from them before I'm out of range. I have not watched the videos linked above but Pandakraut has some good videos on this. Shame he has no time to make more I really like them.

I usually try and do what Panda says and inflict some casualties on day 1, make my job easier later. This battle in general is not overly difficult but can be made easier on day 1. Just keep your own casualties down and let artillery do the work. So long as you have money for the supplies those will refresh between days. You don't wanna be reinforcing brigades between days though or you'll lose exp.

Hammer and Anvil was a tactic that is attributed to Phillip of Macedon, Alexanders father. Very old indeed.

I had a lot of fun with the UI&AI mod before moving on to the Rebalance mod which is more challenging but also more rewarding I think. The commander skills also matter much more as they all do more, I really like this. Both are great improvements on the base game.

I have never taken any of the arty speed perks, I've felt that they need to be as effective as possible in combat so ignored them. There are really only a few battles where I've very much considered it, like Shiloh for the union in particular, that retreat from the church has caused me many arty losses in the past although in my current MG run I did quite well. I've had a bit of a hard time finding good use for the 24lb Howitzer. It is of course amazing in canister range but in just so many battles I can't get it positioned somewhere decent to do this. Very often they need to be quite close behind my infantry to be close enough to do proper canister shots, yet at this close they tend to be either arty bait for the enemy, or they simply take too many casualties from stray shots. I thought about increasing the range a bit more but then it would be TOO powerful. The 12lb Howitzer I don't use unless I have no other choice. It's range is just too short to be of much use in almost any battle. The Napoleon is great for mid/close range right through a good half the game (I'll use em probably through 2/3 of both campaigns, especially CSA) and along with 10lbers make up the bulk of my preferred arty forces in the early/mid game. The 10lb Parrot is good at range and I use for mostly counter battery, with the 20lb being an amazing upgrade.

So I got a quick question about the exp modifiers. I know that the two for officers were originally 1.0, and you set one lower and one higher. I am assuming lower than 1 makes exp growth slower and above 1.0 is faster?

I had noticed you had not updated in a while. Life happens I'll check out the other one though. Good to have others to watch.

Hey Panda, quick question that's probably been asked but I can't find it: Will you be doing a CSA run through with this mod after your Union run? I really enjoy watching your videos and gain a lot of useful information and ideas from them. The only CSA run you've got up right now is the other mod and it's wildly different, some battles I can adapt tactics, some I cannot. Would love to see your way of dealing with this mod CSA.

I have personally been finding that training is SUPER important in this mod, especially now. Quite simply you need good troops early and the best way to do that is to...have the best troops possible lol, that happens through training. In vanilla training was nearly useless, in this mod with each point giving +2 to stats, just 5 points gives a very comfortable +10 rookie stats. I've been playing with a 6 training start, so a nice cushy +12 rookie stats right off the hop. There are enough points to get another 1-2 in there quite quickly, so by Shiloh I'll have had 7-8 training for a while and my recruit pool is consequently surprisingly well trained. In practical terms as the CSA with 6 training you can recruit a brand new brigade with a high skill MAJOR and usually still have it be 1*; so with a colonel that brigade is sitting pretty and can be pushed to 2* in just 2-3 battles depending on the battle. As the Union with 6 training you can get 1* brigades with as low as Lt. Cols and once again they perform quite well under a colonel. Can usually get a small number of 2* by Shiloh.

Maybe you'd be someone to ask this of then. I've been doing a lot of Civil War reading over the last few months and I need a recommendation on good books on weapons from the war. Something that gives small arms and artillery would be amazing, but anything you know of would likely be helpful. I've only just realized in the last few days that I need such a book, as I'm nearly done with my standard history tomes 😁. Websites with good info is also great if you know any. I have yet to start my search for this.

For some battles yes I move divisions together, mainly infantry. For many battles I admit I use mostly manual, individual movement, but for some I move by division. There are a few battles where I use leapfrogging lines to push through the enemy. I do an infantry line with arty right behind them and 2 more lines of infantry behind that. Get in position, arty blasts away enemies, last brigade moves up, arty then re-position behind them and I have fresh infantry line with fully arty support still. Keep flanks clear with skirmishers or whatever else and just leapfrog forward. Been finding it works quite well in some battles where you want to attack on a narrow front. I usually use either 4 or 5 divisions per corps, 2-3 infantry, 1 arty and 1 support which is mixed skirmisher, cavalry and maybe more arty. Only in a few late battles do I use the 6th division, but by then I don't mind the point use. The 5th brigade is really only needed in this organisational system in battles where I need 15, as opposed to 10 infantry per corps. I had thought I had gotten an extra point or two along the way, I'm only just before Gaines Mill on CSA campaign right now and had wondered why I seemed to have more. I suppose this is mostly me being used to doing it a particular way and now having to adapt. With the extra points I'm sure I can make it work.

I've been playing the new version for a couple days now, I quite like most of the changes. I am a little dismayed by the changes to Army Organisation. I pretty much NEVER used the 6th brigade, but I did almost ALWAYS use the 5th division. That the 5th division is now locked away behind I think level 8 of AO is very bothersome, and I'm finding myself having to shoehorn support brigades like cavalry and skirmishers in to the 6th slot. More than a few times I've selected the division to move and forgotten the new brigade was attached... I don't think I ever even want beyond 6 AO before, now I have to invest 2 more points in the very crucial early game, which I find is stretches my points far more; OR I can deal with 24, instead of 25 brigades, but organized worse. I am very much in favor of the other changes but this one is quite frustrating. This is one thing I may have to ask for advise on changing myself.

1st Bull Run as CSA is one of my favorite battles of the campaign. I can usually hold the Union at the bridge tight up until their reinforcements from the west start getting too close and I pull back. I never try defending the hill in the east and always keep my reinforcements held back and use at least 1 of the brigades to help watch the flank of my bridge defenders. When the map expands I find I have a ton of time to set up an excellent line just back from the river and those Union brigades struggle and die attempting to cross. When the final wave of reinforcements come in I usually have the Union on the ropes. If I'm lucky my cav brigade managed to capture some supplies, kill some artillery/skirmishers/routing brigades and usually ends the battle with a good 1000+ kills. It's first thing in the morning so I can't remember names right now lol. On the flip side I'm actually beating my head against the battle right now as the Union, done it several times and can't quite beat em. I've done it before, quite effectively, but they keep doing something totally new and unexpected every battle. Also getting REALLY tired of watching a single 800 man 3 star CSA brigade charge and rout 3 infantry brigades and supporting infantry all alone. I'll get it though. I was very close my last run but I didn't realize the battle ended when the contested timer ran out in the last phase, since there was still lots of time left on the overall battle timer. I was meters away from the cap and thought I had time.

You can still load up the situation as it was before the battle by loading the battle auto-save. Or can load the auto camp save from just after the previous battle, so long as you have not yet finished Malvern Hill.

That is a very aggressive Union strategy on a map I consider to be quite good for defense. Be curious how it goes.