Defacto

1st Bull Run really is a great 'General Repetition' for grand battles later in the campaign. The loan troops mean that as a newer player, one can do more mistakes without risking permament damage to their army from excessive losses or shattering. At the same time, the AI doesn't play around and poses a pretty significant challenge. You also learn to take objectives rapidly and efficently. If you haven't dug down your heels at Henry Farm or if your troops are exhausted when Jackson arrives, I find that his troops will swiftly turn your army into a fine paste along Henry Hill's northern slope! Especially at higher difficulties. Farmers might be a crappy firearm, but their melee rating is one of the highest for infantry weapons in the game!

Did you check the requisitions tab? AFAIK during some of the later campaigns, you have the opportunity to buy advanced weapons for reputation. I remember seeing Spencer Carbines, at least. If you don't mind using cheesy tactics, making sure that the Lightning Brigade 'fights hard' during the initial part of the battle of Chickamauga will allow you to salvage a lot of Spencer weapons. The infantry regiments use Spencer Repeaters, and Minty's Cavalry units use Spencer Carbines.

I've gone back to playing with just the UI&AI mod. Unfortunately, I find that there are some problems with this mod as it is currently, even though I really like a lot of the ideas and I certainly enjoyed the Union MG campaign I played (up to Cold Harbor). I really like what's been done to make perks matter more, but I think that it has been taken too far. Especially with the AI units always having random perks, which is suboptimal. For infantry you always want to go 100% Firepower or 100% Melee in perks. At three stars and with correct (good guns for firepower bdes and guns with 80 or more melee for charge bdes) equipment you can get 1200-man brigades that reload almost instantly while evaporating 200 enemies with every salvo, ending up at over 10000 kills in grand battles if positioned correctly (and if the enemy has that amount of troops available). Charge-oriented brigades I have not found as much use for. The Iron Brigade (gifted after Antietam) is completely useless in firepower and gets outgunned by one-star brigades with the 100% Accuracy perk. However, when charging, they catch up to galloping cavalry and insta-deletes anything they touch. They can charge three larger brigades and rout all of them. Because they are faster than other brigades, they can actually stay in melee when a unit flees, which often results in hundreds of melee kills or a surrendered unit. The AI seems completely unable to deal with any of this. Pretty much all battles look the same: First I get completely steamrolled by an enormous human wave of 5000-man brigades that stumble over themselves and basically cover the entire map. Then I slowly wear them down with my minmaxed 'space marine' units like the Iron Brigade, or '10000 kills' three-star firepower brigade, or my sharpshooters that routs any brigade with two flank salvos... then I completely wipe the enemy army. Every major battle since Shiloh has looked like this. It doesn't feel like the American Civil war, it feels like one of those total war mods where players run in circles around an absurdly buffed AI that doesn't know how to play the game. I hope all of this doesn't sound too harsh, I really like a lot of the work you people have done, and I understand that modding this game is not trivial (ironic considering the origin of the developer). I think that the type of mod experience I am looking for is something that combines the fixes in the UI&AI mod with increased authenthicity and realism, while making sure that the AI understand how to play and can pose a challenge without enormous AI buffs. I might have to start doing some hex-editing myself..

Is there some way to disable the commander in-battle replacement system for KIA/WIA commanders? I find it confusing and it also seems to cause bugs with unpredictably disappearing and appearing officers. On the topic of officers - is it possible to edit the namelist for genericMcGenericface officers? I find it a bit annoying when I have Grant (but not Grant) leading a brigade in the division lead by Jackson (but not Jackson) and supported by the artillery battery led by no one less than Meade himself. Captain Meade. Not specifically a mod issue, I know. How do you edit names and descriptions of weapons? It's just flavour, but I found them a bit uninspiring and think they could be greatly improved. I've found a lot of really nice sources on the internet (not an expert myself) and think that I could supply more informative descriptions, explaining both historical background, technical design, and ingame capability of various weapons, if this is desired. How are repeaters meant to work? They do not seem to have superior reload rate, firepower is just slightly higher than late-game rifled musket, and accuracy at long ranges are lower. I don't see how this is balanced, realistic or fun but I might be missing something. Despite these small issues (which I realize are mostly my personal opinion and not general issues) I really like this mod. I find it a great improvement over the vanilla experience, tilts the experience slightly in 'grognard' direction while still being pretty approachable. It feels amazing when you get your first three-star unit. At the battle of Stones River (Union MG) my three-star musketry-perked infantry brigade stood on that wooded hill just south of the HQ at the Pike and poured an eternal stream of Minies at any greycoat in the fields below, ending up at just below 10000 kills! (yes, that's ten thousand!!). Of course, the greycoats also have three-star units, and they can be just as nasty...