ug_might

Hey guys Antietam Union Legendary 1.82.2 So i think this is the last modified battle in the mod? Antietam is not too difficult if you adjust for a stupidly aggressive AI. I played this campaign with no more than 2k infantry brigades, for this battle i increased it to 2.2k and added three 3k meat brigades to my I Corps. Then is just a matter of holding the line, get the artillery to work and use cavalry to collect charging enemy brigades. You dont want to stretch out too much (especially not to your right) and maintain a strong double line in front of your massed artillery. The AI usually moves up its artillery in piecemeal and you should have no trouble reducing them with counter battery fire. Eventually you need to push forward, but dont go to early even if the enemy position looks weak. They've got tons of reinforcements and you want to break through to Dunker Church in one sustained movement once you get going. Took me a couple of attempts, but what worked best was a combined attack of my II and IV Corps through the woods east of the cornfield. Once the woods are cleared and the positions stabiliuzed (always move your artillery up with the infantry, there is so much distance to cover) I Corps advanced through the woods on Dunker Church to meet little resistance. The rest is just cleanup. I chose to end the battle before Hills reinforcements got into the fight since i didn't think just another hour of gameplay (the battle ends early at 14:00) would be of much benefit. Quick OOB I Corps - 12 line infantry brigades at 2.2k and three at 3k, 8 artillery brigades with 90 guns (all heavy or howitzer) II Corps - 8 line infantry brigades, 2 sniper units and 10 artillery brigades with 160 guns III Corps (east of the Antietam) - 10 Cavalry brigades (1st & 2nd Division), 8 reserve infantry brigades (come in late) IV Corps - 9 reserve infantry brigades, 3 reserve Cavalry brigades, 3 skirmisher units

[quote]I didn't think you could clear the blocking unit at the ford and get the Ohio units across without triggering the phase change. Was this with carbine or melee cav? Did you only try it once or is it consistent across multiple tries? […] [/quote] You can clear the blocking unit with Cav from behind. Getting the Ohios across trickers the phase change as does crossing the road with any unit. This is how it looked, consistent with multiple tries: https://imgur.com/a/42HoNIr [quote] Overall this battle seems to have a rather wide range of difficulty depending on what the AI does. If things go well early and you end up in good position on the Hill before the counter attack arrives, it's easy. If you're a little slower and you aren't in control of the hill before the counterattack arrives it can be quite difficult. I think I had a bit of bad luck when I was testing this so the battle is a bit easier than it needs to be. [/quote] You can choose to not be in control of the Hill when the counter attack starts? I never tried it, might be even worth it staying behind the river. Bull Run is always an easy battle in my mind since it doesn’t really matter how many computer-generated units you lose. It’s definitely the easiest main battle I have played so far (stuck at TG again lol and no real time atm). [quote] I recently discovered a flaw in the reinforcement selection logic where basically if you get lucky early you're more likely to continue to get lucky. But if you get unlucky early you are more likely to continue being unlucky. Will be getting changed for hopefully a bit more consistent experience. This ended up being a bit of a componding problem later on in my testing since it turns out I was hitting the top end of what the AI could have as opposed to something more in the middle. [/quote] Interesting. How is the reinforcement determined anyway? This is after Malvern Hill, forefalls first attempt compared to mine: https://imgur.com/a/cvMvLH1 The enemy forcer was pretty similar on both sides and it did better than him on this run. He got a very good reinforcement draw with just 33.8k men. I tried multiple times to get a somewhat similar result but the best I can get is the one listed – 39.6k men. Am I being punished for getting a better result?

So, I decided to start over, playing again Union Legendary, this time with TAC/CAV/POL. 4 points in recon, then going for max politics. A clearer emphasis on Cavalry this time around (without going overboard though) and aiming for a wipeout wherever possible, even if it means taking heavier casualties than it should. I’m much happier with this run, mostly because I now know what works and what doesn’t. Screens and some thoughts on battles up to and including Shiloh below. Train Station: https://imgur.com/N2IgTcV I had a good start at first, with capturing the CSA brigade north of the city and another one in the woods southwest. But I almost failed to bring in my reinforcements from the west quickly enough to hold against the counter offensive from the east, since I didn’t mange to clean up the CSA elements on the left in time. Time is pretty much the only challenge in this battle if you know what you’re doing. There is an interesting thing you can do if you get the horse artillery perk on the reinforcements from the West – deploy an artillery brigade on the lookout hill to the southeast. It’ll confuse the AI and delay their storming of the city noticeably. I wish this battle was longer tbh. You’d suffer more casualties defending the town, but you also would have the opportunity of routing the final attack from the east. Would make it more interesting. Distress Call: https://imgur.com/QAiFz5X During my first run I defended the southern fort and pushed up later. Works well enough if the AI is attacking you in the south. This time I defended the northern fort and managed to delay the eastern force with the split skirmisher unit for the majority of the battle until I generated enough cavalry forces to wipe them. Cavalry is king on this map, if you know what you are doing you can easily annihilate charging individual units with flanking fire and counter charges. Complete wipe with a minute of playtime to spare. If you have issues with this one, just restart for a more favorable unit split. 1st Bull Run: https://imgur.com/k3hwHb2 Very fun battle and very stupid AI. I managed to cut of and destroy the CSA element defending Matthews Hill by first clearing Farm Ford with cavalry from the rear and then setting them up as a blocking force a couple of minutes before the timer expires. If you understand how the phase change is triggered, its pretty easy to do. The enemy had a triple split and his units were very small, so they shattered quickly. Warrenton Pike was only very lightly defended and was cleared with minimal losses. Not really sure what happened there, for some reason the AI redeployed its infantry in the direction of Matthews Hill and only some Skirmishers guarding Artillery remained. Nonetheless, the AI then decided it was necessary to relentlessly attack the steep hills at Warrenton with like 75% of its remaining combat power. No issues holding of course. As a result of this attack and me destroying the Matthew Hill contingent, the enemies left was basically undefended and my whole ring wing basically swept in unopposed. I charged the Artillery always hanging out far south (what’s up with that?) supported by my cavalry coming in from the southeast in a beautiful pincer movement. Took Herny Hill from the south in a big cauldron and wiped everything with 30 minutes to spare on the timer. I do like the positioning of the computer-generated Corps in the west, but I think the original version is more challenging since you couldn’t just create a center of gravity on his left basically immediately, or block him all along the river. Anyway, the next enemy wave spawned in the south only and I had no issues holding, outflanking and counter attacking since he was very focused on my center and didn’t try to outflank my lines. Complete wipe just as the timer reached zero (would have had lots of bonus time too though). Crossroads: https://imgur.com/sptE8bQ I got a pretty good result there. I set up the Corps in a tight, two-edged knife formation with the houses east of the farm as the point. The bulk of my forces was oriented northward to stop the first waves out of the woods but essentially the formation was so tight, the infantry brigades could just turn around to cover the other side. The key was for my four Cavalry brigades crush the flank of the southern CSA brigades once they were charging my thin right wing infantry screen. Timing was everything but I managed to annihilate the southern flank by destroying everything infantry and skirmisher unit. A very beautiful sight. After that redeployment to face the reinforcements in the east and mopping up the units in the North was a trivial exercise. Complete wipeout with 35ish minutes left. Rivers Crossing: https://imgur.com/PwNicVX I played this battle a couple of times between my two runs in 1.28 and I still have no good idea on how to approach this. I got a wipeout within the extended time limit and the result is decent enough, but there was no finesse to it. Just meeting the enemy head on, blasting him away with artillery, breaking up charges with cavalry and pushing once he is exhausted. Blunt and boring. I really wanted to do some flanking action with 3ish infantry brigades supported by Cavalry but even with multiple attempts I couldn’t get anything to work. The eastern flank is luring but terrible, since their artillery commands the thin woodline on their left flank. You just get shot to pieces there. The western flank doesn’t offer you anything with the river and the steep hill to climb. What you can do there is play defensive in the swampy river area. I did that but meh. The AI is playing pretty smart here by always rotating infantry back, never leaving the artillery uncovered. Assessment before Shiloh: https://imgur.com/YKAGIRO https://imgur.com/bxBXHKH https://imgur.com/Th7dj65 https://imgur.com/bXYJlvB https://imgur.com/BZTJ8L7 I went into Shiloh with 45k / 103 guns vs 39k / 128 guns with the CSA at just 36k – 41k on the overview screen. My previous run I faced 48-53k with translated to 44k/128g against my meager 41k/89g. My overall approach is definitely working out fine. I’d like to have two more two-star infantry units but besides that I’m in very decent shape. I could have fielded even more troops but decided to buy some sharpshooter rifles and heavy artillery instead. I have had zero issues with weapons for my guys, the four points in recon are a good investment. But the greater factor to my success so far is the enemy reinforcement RNG. Even with my campaign going well so far, 36-41k is a very low number to be at from my experience. Shiloh: https://imgur.com/tjungEz The battle went very well. I played pretty much the same as last time, but as already hinted at the enemy was considerable weaker. 200 rifles more on my side and 200 less on the enemy’s side makes a huge difference. I also got the impression that the AI played a little less aggressive than during my last attempt, maybe because he couldn’t field really overwhelming numbers. In any case, the first phase holding the Church was a cakewalk this time around. I was able to field two Cavalry units there (one for breaking charges the other for artillery hunting) and hold them off with few casualties and multiple broken brigades. Easy when the AI pushes individual units forwards and isn’t able to do generate a mass charge. I briefly toyed with the idea of holding at the Church for an immediate flanking maneuver, cutting them of at the Nest. I even attempted to do it, but while it works, the position just isn’t worth the additional casualties compared to retreating north. Which is the key to battle. Retreat and trade ground for time whenever and wherever possible. In my mind there is no use defending the Nest itself. I set up my temporary line well north of it at the very edge of the map and to the west in the dense woods. This works well since a) the ground is quite favorable, b) the line is very small, allowing for massed musket and artillery fire against individual units and c) reinforcements spawn directly at the front line. Timers aren’t an issue since you can always take the Church victory point with cavalry. Which is the other major factor to achieve a good result at Shiloh. The massed small front in the north only worked because the enemy only managed to bring up one whole artillery brigade in 2 hours. The rest was taken out or delayed by some 3000 Cavalry operating in the rear. You also need Cavalry to disrupt and confuse the AI. Merely delaying individual infantry brigades might not seem important and costly, but is vital to prevent the AI from setting up mass charges. It’s a pain to do it right, the majority of actual play time is spent directing individual Cavalry units. In my game the enemy attacks had essentially passed its culmination point when the map opens up to the final lines at Shiloh. I retreated nonetheless since again more favorable ground and forcing the enemy to set up entirely new attacks is always hugely beneficial. Anyway, the battle was essentially over at that point and I completely wiped the enemy on day two with some 30 minutes left on the timer.

New attempt, teaser: I'll write down some thoughts tomorrow.

I played up to Thoroughfare Gap before 2nd Bull Run on Union Legendary. It all went decently enough but frequently timers were too tight for me to wipe out the enemy. As a result at TG he's at 59k in the overview screen and 32k and 56 guns at the battle itself. At this point my divisions are simply to small, i can field 20k and 12 guns or thereabouts. I dont think this will be sustainable even if i win TG. Going 3 into training at first probably was a mistake. I did end up with an not insignifcant amount of veterans, but to use them you end up with rather small brigades, less than 1.8k. If i had to do it again i'd focus entirely on Politics and start out with TAC/CAV/POL.

I guess the issue I have is going from one reload to the next and face 20, 30 up to 50% (feels like) stronger enemies just based on bad rolls is bad variance. Random spawn locations are fine but going from easily winning to basically losing without being able to do anything about it is not. This approach may or may not work fine on lower difficulties (I don’t bother, so no idea), but if you’re not some uber player and are *just* able to play/enjoy legendary with average rolls (like me), you just find yourself reloading until you get lucky. I get what you are trying to do, but sometimes it feels a bit much. If had to make a suggestion I’d focus more on different spawn points and tone down the maximum increase of the enemy strength through splitting. About charging, I think your approach has merit but it’s just not to my taste. I was playing Shiloh the last few days and I was basically facing more charges than volleys. This has no basis in reality IMHO and can be exploited to the point of ridiculousness if you know what you’re doing. I had two fresh brigades charging Skirmishers in full rout more or less in parallel to my main line straight into a stream. One shattered, the other surrendered. The best part? Their main army is still miles away and those brigades just charged blindly ahead into the positions of the main union army to try to get some Skirmishers. Yeah. So guess what happened next. Those poor Skirmishers were sent right back out again and lured in the next brigade. They didn’t reach my lines. So it is playable, sure. But less enjoyable in my book. If I could choose between this charging simulator and the more traditional - blast away until something gives - approach, I would choose the latter. Anyway, Shiloh. This has been one of the most challenging fights at that scale i can remember. The new battle flow requires an even higher degree of micro management and that’s not really my strong suit. Definitely involved some reloading. But I tried a new (to me) army setup with significantly more Cavalry and Skirmishers and I figured out a very nice way to defend the Hornets Nest, so that was fun. https://imgur.com/a/HXltRVG

It's not like i'm helpless and don’t know how to counter charges. Individual units charging is always a great opportunity to remove them permanently and thanks to the AI charging like crazy an almost common occurrence. But i do think they charge far too often at this point. It feels like the AI doesn’t even want to bother engaging in an actual firefight (which comprised what, 99% of infantry combat during the actual Civil War?), instead its units marching up, firing one volley if that and charging. Against well prepared positions with dug in infantry supported by Artillery. Who in their right mind would do that? And after they get utterly broken at the first attempt, suffer 20, 30 even 40 percent casualties, they just retreat out of firing range and try again after a couple of ingame minutes. This is just not plausible, doesn't feal right IMHO and at least the early game its like all I’m doing is stopping charging units. If I had to make an suggestion it would be that after a unit reaches to broken status it should take much, much longer for moral and condition to rebuild itself. About splitting. I give you one example. I played 1stBull Run. Some of the CSA reinforcements after you take Henry Hill spawned at the new locations in the Northeast. I wasn’t prepared for that, but fine. Legendary is not punishment enough, so some variety is appreciated. Only the two brigades in the north split – into five brigades. Yes, they were somewhat smaller but I couldn’t hold against 6-8k slamming into my rear. At least not with acceptable losses. So I lost and reloaded. No units in the north this time around and zero splits on the reinforcements. I wiped the enemy off the map as per usual. So one game ending loss and one decisive victory. Not because of anything I did. It could have played my best Bull Run effort or far below average, wouldn’t have mattered. It’s just win or loss based on a random roll. As said, not a fan of this approach. I don’t plan on changing any settings unless I encounter a gamebreaking bug this time around. Suffering is what legendary mode is all about afterall. Also I think I’m getting the hang of it. As you said, Cavalry used effectively can be quite devastating. Screens of BullRun and Crossroads today: https://imgur.com/a/eKG2y0P I guess I lucked out on camp reinforcements, the enemy infantry was armed with Muskets and Rebored Muskets and did stupidly little damage.

Hey getting my feet wet with Union Legendary on 1.28. Quite challenging version, made it to Shiloh in decent shape but i wasn't happy with in and decided to start over. I still think charging is way overpowered and i'm no fan of unit splitting. Some variance and randomness is fine, but units tripling paired with random spawn locations more often than not tend to devolve the game into a you win/lose now because of good/bad roll situation, no matter what you achieved on the field. I don't like that. Anyway. Whats the meta on career points? I didn't obesess with minmaxing before, but difficulty is definitely getting to a point where i need to play really close attention. I did a Politics/Training focussed build on my first attempt up to Shiloh but kinda run out of weapons. I still think Politics should be a main focus early on, so the POL pick at the beginning is a no brainer. Do i want any training at first? Looking at the numbers i'm not sure. I definitely want 3, ideally 4 points in Recon early on. But 2 in the first battle is also fine, so TAC/INF/POL with the first points going into REC and AO seems a good, balanced option. Something like TAC/CAV/POL seems too radical, since i still think playing as Union you just need to invest in getting your units into shape no matter what. LOG will definitely become a factor fairly quickly as well, but i dont feel the need to invest in it at the start of the game.

@pandakraut The main issue with Gettysburg is the lack of AI reinforcements for Pickett's charge. If you know what you're doing you wipe out the enemy on day 1 and hold the Union left on day 2 without much trouble. After those engagements, the enemy is just spent when it tries to attack the center. What's needed there is another 10k fresh infantry. I mean this happened in reality too. Two Divisions of Longstreets Corps arrived at the Third Day of the Battle ot attack the Union left and join the attack on in the Center. Another factor is scaling. As discussed at length, the AI had 5k brigades at Chancellorsville, while at Gettsyburg i faced just 3k brigades. Probably in part to my crushing victory at Chancellorsville but it makes a huge difference if you need to rout brigades 3 or 5 times to make them combat ineffective. Anyway, Chickamauga. No bugs. Poor game performance again, actually worse than Chancellorsville when the map opens up at day 2. Luckily all you need to do is to put the infantry on the line, watch out for skirmishers and let the artillery do the work. Final result was victory on Day 2 (as always, i have never advanced this battle to day 3). Confederate strength 97k infantry and 550guns vs Union 60k and 400 guns. 66k vs 11k (including starting units) losses. Not difficult just annoying as hell to play. The dense woods are one thing, but the enemy 3star Skirmishers/Sharpshooters were somehting else this time. Usually i can handle them pretty well in a non moded game but this time i took horrendous casualties when trying to hunt them down. I settled for a very passive play style, sneaked in some recon units and blasted them with artillery. Eventually the AI gets very passive and just marches around the Brotherton victory point, so you can bombard the infantry to destruction. I played with duplications off. First day is way easier if you get a lucky with your starting units. More and but smaller enemy Skirmishers are also easier to handle compared to 750 men units...

I’ve seen no real improvements on performance. Once you have say 150 to 200 units in total on the map performance degrades. Anything smaller is fine. Maybe the new version gave me 5% to 10% better performance on those bigger engagements, but it’s not a noticeable difference. Yeah so Gettysburg. No changes there, the battle remains a joke on legendary. Potentially because the AI had bad reinforcement rolls after Chancellorsville and had maybe 70k on the Army Camp screen. I did a quick, unoptimized playthrough with duplications turned on again – the enemy deployed some 90k infantry total. Translates to 3.5k enemy infantry at most. No respawn bugs. I destroyed the enemy on day 1 by defending in downtown Gettysburg and Cemetery Hill. Day 2 Union left was somewhat tricky since my units spawned in very unfavorable positions and I kinda had the wrong Artillery types deployed there. Didn’t try to defend Round Top Victory point but hold the line in the Woods North of the position. Couldn’t get to the enemy’s artillery, took maybe 3k too many casualties there. Lost too many guns too. But it really doesn’t matter since the rest of the battle is just running down the clock on max speed. My artillery kills everything on the Union right and Union center. No Pickett's Charge happening, just mop up duty. I had 11k infantry dead in the end, think I could get it to 8k without much effort. Chancellorsville was way, way more difficult - no comparison at all.

@pandakraut Yeah sure. Camp before battle. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ftaiZdMUC5zPuJ6nkoJMKzY6qge3-1qC/view?usp=sharing Just ignore the Lt. Generals, as said i messed with the Multipliers. -------------- Sorry for the long post. Yeah so. You just can't beat Chancellorsville playing fair. But I beat it without duplications. It's considerable easier, but after I played the battle three times in a row, you know what's what anyway. In my last attempt I destroyed the enemy completely on day 2. The only red units left on the map were Cavalry units. I'm still in near perfect condition, lost about 11k (and one whole gun - yay). When I push to day 3 on this save it get 83k and 171 guns against me. Another save, with more enemy units left on day 2 had 78k and 193 guns. Yet another 68k and 302 guns. 78k, 182 guns. 76k, 171guns. It's actually beneficiary to not go all out on day 2 - if there are more enemy units left, those units just get teleported over and don't respawn at full strength. At least that's what I think is happening. Another factor is if you take the victory points and tbh, just reloading and letting the game a couple of minutes longer gives you a different result without anything happening on the field. Maybe it’s just random after all. So onwards to day 3. It ultimately doesn't matter if you're facing 83k or 76k. There's just no time to set up properly. I can try and defend at the farm but even if I manage to hold a charge of 30k units spawning more or less directly on top of me, I get destroyed once their artillery joins in. Maybe I could beat it, but the losses would just be catastrophic. Can’t walk away from this in legendary. So, I thought about alternatives. The timer is 3:26 on this battle and the thing is - it doesn't matter if you lose the victory point in between. You just need to hold on at the end. One obvious strategy (and done before, I just never needed to) is not defending the farm at all, set up in the dense woods to the east, destroy the enemy with artillery and move forward with ten minutes to spare to capture the point. This would work, only for three issues - first it's incredible hard to get all your units to the eastern woods without being overrun by charging infantry. They attack incredible fast. Just 5 more ingame minutes would do the trick here, but unless you get very creative with save/loading to stop them, it probably can't be done. Second, there is a southern front problem. A fourth of my units is set up south of the farm and there definitely isn't time to move them up. Especially not the artillery. You could try and set up on the southwest hill on the map, but you just end up getting charged and overrun by 12k infantry sooner or later. Third – ammo. Stocks are very low after two days with 500 guns on the field So luckily there is a solution. Not about ammo but the rest. Its cheesy but I don’t give a damn at this point. Rearrange the whole Army. Not before battle, although that would be possible, but between day 2 and day 3. Long story short, I picked a save, made careful note of which division spawned were on day 3 and adjusted everything accordingly. Fast, fresh units west and south, everything else as far east as possible. Then run east like hell and use some unlucky units as tide breakers. This is how it looks like setting up in the east. https://imgur.com/iwX9DiD I never had to do this before and I don’t really like it but I didn’t have any other ideas. I mean you could try some really weird strategy and play super, super passive on day one and two, essentially moving on to day 3 with an untouched army on both sides. At least you wouldn’t have to waste ammo and kill all units twice. So how did it go? All this considering, it went great. I got very lucky, the AI decided to park all of its artillery in the southwest, completely away from the fight. Thus, almost no counter battery fire needed and I put every single gun I had on the infantry. Not 500, since you’re one Corps short and I didn’t have the ammo left, but enough. The slaughter was intense, the enemy could barely hold on. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen solid lines of 3-star 30k infantry to break apart that fast. At one point I had a 3 star 3.5k unit charging me completely destroyed barely into rile range. Destroyed - not just routed. That was fun. One trick you need to do is to set up additional threat vectors on the flanks for the AI to refocus on. Once he regroups, he won’t charge you en masse anymore and he is done. But of course, it’s not just about killing the enemy, the goal here is not to beat him but to have an army left when the dust settles. And I manage that – total losses amounted to 17k and 8 guns. After you held the farm when the time is up you can continue to play and just wipe out the enemy. You transition to phase 2 but he just spawns with whatever units survived day 2 and weren’t used in day 3 so far – no respawn bug there thank god. So just walk up to the victory points and you’re done. So this was pretty difficult to find a solution for the respawn bug. Execution more so. If the enemy charges your line with more than two brigades at once you’re done. You need to be very careful about where you place your artillery. Also, lots of work with Cavalry and Skirmishers to go after Artillery behind the lines. Micromanagement hell and very poor game performance. Took me an awful long time. Think I sunk 15hours into doing day 3 the conventional way alone. Lockdowns are fun I guess. Could you do it without turning duplications off? Probably. This victory was far from perfect, I guess a run with under 10k infantry casualties wouldn’t be impossible. But I’m not good enough for that. With duplications on I guess I’d be looking at 20k casualties. If I had gone into this with more ammo at least. So on to Gettysburg I guess.

@pandakraut https://imgur.com/aTRfAIK 1.27.2 duplications off I'll share some of my experience later. What a battle.

@pandakrautlate reply but Officer Experience: Yea I already played with those multipliers. Worked like a charm. Battles Led: I definitely move officers and units around a lot. I checked and it seems to work as indicated. I guess it’s fine if you know what’s going on. Charges: I’m definitely guilty of pretty rigorously building for ranged combat. My average Melee stat was ~29 at Chancellorsville. Thing is, I don’t think I had much choice. My infantry already came across as pretty weak as explained previously, I felt like I had to push Accuracy and Reload Times come what may. In the end I broke charges with massed Artillery anyway. If you have 500 guns on the field you can break anything. Resulted in pretty lopsided kill counts. At the end of Day 2 at Chancellorsville, most of my main Artillery units have 3k to 6k kills while most of my line infantry has at best a 2-1 kill ratio. All while engaging the enemy in an open field form perfect cover. Very different from the base game and as said, this just result in a passive artillery grind. Scaling: https://imgur.com/e1RzL7c They weren’t all this big of course but it came across as a bit extreme. But deploying all my 20pound artillery with 1st Corps did the trick. This guy will break after sustaining 1000 casualties in one volley since he’s out of cover. It’s only a problem if more than two of them charge and get into the woods. As you can see, most of my infantry is well below 2k. I have one meaty unit there to soak up damage. I had one 3k and one 3.3k going into Chancellorsville, resulting from Brigade merging in Camp. Couldn’t get them to unmerge. Everything else had 2k or less. I think the scaling is just the result from having a very high unit count. My line infantry is on the small side, but I fielded 100k men and 513 guns in 111 brigades. The enemy scaled from 76-81k pre battle screen to 127k and just 336 guns. In the end it’s not that big of a deal if the artillery is well supplied. But is it fun? I’d much rather see two 2k units and smart AI gameplay… … honestly the only really challenging thing about it (apart from the game performance) was the duplicated 1.2k artillery units. Those take time and a lot of ammo to destroy. Thinking maybe I’ll try turning off duplication and replay the battle. Should be doable, even if I run into the respawn bug again.

So yeah, a quick update from Chancellorsville - i decided to play it, but i run into the same bug as at 2nd Bull Run. This time its gamebreaking. I pretty much annihilate the enemy on day 2. I doubt he has more than 20k infantry left on the map and most definitely no artillery. On day three however, the enemy respawns again with no less than 55k infantry and 300 (!) guns. Again including many units already killed before. Espeically the freaking 1.2k artillery units. There's just no way this can be countered on Chancellorsville day 3. I'm still in decent shape - 82k infantry, 500 guns, down from 100k - but there just isn't enough ground to hold and have an army left when the dust settles. I'm out of options. I even pushed forward, taken the two vicotry points on day 2 but this doesnt give you the win, the game just proceeds to day 3 anyway. Did cost me some 8k, otherwise i would have been in very good shape going into day 3. Not that it would have made a difference. So I guess this ends my run with the rebalance mod. Sucks but it was a great while it lasted. I have more than 1.000 hours on this game (kinda frightening) and this mod managed to provide a very novel experience. So thx @pandakraut

Thank you for the response, some more feedback. Officer experience gains is just too slow for me. Limiting the number of higher ranked officers is a good idea, but with your settings, I’m just ending up with an army led by Colonels for most of the Campaign. I’d prefer brigades being led by, well, brigadiers, but it’s looking like I’d need to advance past Gettysburg to make that happen. Playstyles vary of course, so maybe I’m just not that into maximizing experience gains. I take it the ‘Battles Led’ has no impact on anything? I do switch officers around quite a lot. At Chancellorsville, I have two guys with 5 Battles led. The vast majority has 0 or 1 battles. But the system does seem to work like you describe. About the 2nd Bull Run bug, I’ve tried going back to earlier save but that didn’t work either. It wasn’t an issue in this specific case, since I just ended the battle on day 2 and 30k kills instead of 40k or 45k. Later on, this might be definitely game breaking though. I routinely play legendary, but I’d be hopelessly lost without saving. So anyway, I progressed up to Chancellorsville and tbh I’m not sure I want to continue. The army is in good shape and I can field 100k and 500 guns, but playing is getting less and less fun as of late. Basically, it already feels like I’m playing the grind game post Chickamauga. The major issue I’m facing is performance of all things. On day two at Chancellorsville, when the map opens up and I’m have 3 Corps and 120 brigades on the field the game slows down significantly and gets very sluggish and unresponsive. My PC is fine (5800X, RTX 2080, 64GB 3600MHz) - the game just doesn’t seem able to cope. Somehow this was way less of an issue playing without the mod, dunno whats up with that. In any case, I just hate playing this way and with performance as it is I just can’t perform at a level good enough to beat the AI on this map. But back to mod related issues I’m facing – I don’t really like how the combat is shaping up at this point in the game. This is entirely subjective of course. Basically, everything is fine but the line infantry. It’s both overpowered and severely lacking at the same time. It feels like the enemy infantry is either close to unstoppable when charging or can be ignored when just firing at me. I don’t know if its true or not but the AI seems to charge every chance it gets in your mod. Way more than in the base game. And it’s hilariously effective. I’m sitting there in 100% tree cover with two brigades at 3k men total in good condition with interlocking fire and artillery support – get charged by a lonely 3-star (what else) 2k brigade over open field and my line just freaking gone if I cant stop them before melee. On the other hand – put two units into even just semi decent cover and they can blast at each other for the remainder of the battle without any significant result. In the base game my units would suffer considerable casualties in sustained rifle combat, even in good cover. You could only hold on for so long before being grinded down. This just doesn’t seem to be the case in the mod. Unless you get charged, everything is fine. Just hold the line and blast them to pieces with your artillery. What I frequently end up with is extremely high kill counts on the artillery while my infantry sits at meager 3 to 1 kill rates. The issue here is not that artillery is too effective (ok maybe it is) but that line infantry just can kill shit, especially on lower stats. And that’s before scaling hits you. On the first day at Chancellorsville, I’m facing 5k infantry 3-star brigades for some reason. 90% of my line infantry has 2k or less and at best 2 stars. I can’t hold them. I mean I can – easily enough even, since they are completely ineffective when just firing at me – but when they charge there's not much stopping them. Those 5k 3-star units charge through intense artillery fire and can easily take 1.5k to 2k casualties before finally routing. Scaling difficulty is fine and all but at some point, it’s either gaming the system to high heaven to achieve remotely manageable results, or facing odds way past the point of ridiculousness. What to do about it? I don’t have any idea if that’s even possible, but here are some thoughts on how I would change combat: 1) Make the AI charge far less and reduce the effectiveness of a charge. Maybe double the time it take to get a unit ready to charge 2) Improve overall infantry rifle damage. Especially lower stat units should be considerably more effective. Really high stats units are probably fine but you only have very few of them anyway. 3) Improve cover effectiveness. Or rather – cover itself is probably fine. But units on open field with next to zero cover should be decimated by sustained enemy fire. Units caught in the open should retreat sooner. Advancing against prepared positions over open ground should result in extreme casualties. 4) Reduce Artillery effectiveness while increasing range by at least half. I could write pages on artillery but an increase of damage of the infantry should be met with a nerf of the artillery to keep casualty counts manageable. To counter this nerf, range should be increased. 5) Cap brigade sized at 4k at most. Alternatively give the player the funds and rifles to build up similar sized units or reduce the number of deployable brigades in battles. Cap Skirmishers and Cav similarly. Higher numbers doesn’t equal a better game. 6) Reduce condition/morale buildup after combat all across the board, but especially after routing. It should take hours for a unit that suffered high casualty rates to regain combat effectiveness. To be clear i do think the mod is great. The early game is much more interesting than the base game and especially the focus on condition/morale is awesome. But progress beyond a certain point and it just expands into a grind fest in which artillery slaughters everything. Thats true for the base game as well, but the mod amplifies it considerably. Some other random points: I don't really like that basically every rifle has the same range. They differ in effectivness of course but in reality you end up blasting at each other at max range anyway. That's just how the game mechanics work. It was considerably more interesting to have rifles with varying ranges and dps. I seem to have way less money than usual in my Union game. Granted, i put only started investing in Politics after 2nd Bull Run, but usually i'm drowning in money at this point in the game. This time im limited to buying the best artillery pieces and some scoped rifles. Can't even afford all 24 pound howitzers. If it were up to me i'd make weapons considerable cheaper and but strictly limit their availbility. The splitting units on spawn feature is great at times and sucks at others. Overall i'm not a big fan. I just end up rerolling spawns to get a decent enough result.

Hey So i’ve been playing the J&P mod for the very first time. I’m enjoying it so far, but I have noticed some annoying oddities. Union Legendary on JP 1.27.1a - I’m up to 2nd Bull Run 1) Officer experience gain As this is my first run with the JP mod, I don’t know if its intended, but officer promotions are glacial slow. I fought all the way through Malvern Hill and ended up with only about 10 Brigadier Generals and no Major Generals. I can get officers to full bird Colonels reasonably fast but not beyond. I (temporarily) adjusted the officer experience settings in the config file to get around this (perceived) issue. 2) ‘Battles Led’ doesn’t work I think this is a J&P addition? Been a while since I played the base game. I doesn’t work – nearly all my officers show only 1 or 2 led battles, even when I used them since the start of the game. I suspect this could be related to the perceived experience issue mentioned above. Random thought, could a reload screw this up? I usually save and reload quite often during a battles. Maybe the game doesn’t account for experience gained before a reload and only counts battles if there aren’t any reloads? 3) Full Army and 2nd Bull Run third day I’ve been playing this battle the default way, ie blast everything with artillery on the second day (when the map first opens up). Works as per usual and I almost completely wiped out the confederate army. About 30k casualties. However, on the third day of the battle the enemy kinda just respawns again and I’m facing another full blown CSA army, including many units wiped out the day before. For comparison, pandakrauts playthrough had just 15k and 55 guns on the third day (39:25), while I’m at 45k and 159 guns. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G5WWMUvsE0 I can still beat this army easily enough or just win on the second day outright of course, but I’m wondering if this is caused by the mod or some other random occurrence I haven’t run into before.