[J & P Rebalance Mod by JonnyH13 and Pandakraut 05/06/2023 1.28.4]

On 4/23/2024 at 5:39 PM, watcher144 said:

I'm trying the Union Legend Difficulty, but I can't get past the distress signal and the following first Battle of Bull Run. I was looking for some advice, like how to deal with the devastating Confederate charge, on the distress signal, there are 4-5 3* infantry on the north side, each with 1500 men, while my friendly army only 1000 men.

I tried again and again for two days but could not win.

thanks!!!!

If you're still trying or want to get through, here is how I've done it. In this battle it's important not to go overboard with brigade size, since for every rookie you add - the enemy gets a veteran, making his army harder to defeat. I decided to compose my army like this: 

I made W.Scales's brigade larger than the others, since I planned to seat it on the defensive position in the upper supply depot and it was the largest brigade from the beginning. Also it had M1841 Mississippi rifles, so they would have greater range than the enemy and could control the area around the depot.

I also recruited 2 horses to either use them to countercharge the enemy cavalry or infantry attacking the depot. 

I positioned my army like this:

Here it's past the initial stage (where I deployed skirmishers from all brigades and sent them to the woods at the top (where Daniel is standing and slightly to the left. They can buy you some time and also delay the brigades of your choice so the enemy would arrive at their "charging positions" in piecemeal and there wouldn't be situations where 2 or 3 brigades are charging together).

I positioned my best brigade and a smoothbore gun at the corner of the depot. If the enemy is coming from the top, it always tries to charge Scales (since he is the "closest" to them due to his men sitting on the walls). Thus it gets some volleys from the 2 star brigade and some canister one the way. 

I left a lonely allied brigade in the lower depot and positioned the rest inside the first one as the "door guards". Once the charging enemy is close to reaching Scales and starting a melee with him, I timely charge with 2 brigades, so the enemy faces them exactly at the beginning of the melee (and additionally eats canister from Woods and some volleys from Walton). If the enemy is charging with one brigade and it's not oversized (like no more than 1400), it has no chance of winning. 

My horses ended up engaged at the bottom of the map together with Edwin - they captured an enemy horse that was cutting down my skirmishers delaying the enemy force coming from the bridge. 

Just wait till the enemy charges all of it's brigades, depletes them (some will get shattered or even captured in the process) and then you can make your own move. Better wipe off the map or capture everyone. 

To increase your chances of winning, you can:

1.Give Harpers-Ferry 55 to the brigade that will be defending the upper depot - these rifles have 80 melee and 125 fire rate - good for both shooting and melee infantry. They're expensive, however. And may affect your build-up for Shiloh. 

2.Restart the battle until you get all of the allied infantry brigades with melee perks.

3.Switch one or more of your starting brigades to melee perks in config and restart the campaign. 

Hope this helps. 

P.S. Also you might get unlucky and the enemy gets extra veteran reinforcements (check the intelligence report). This can push the skill of the enemy brigades up. If you got such report and can't defeat the strengthened enemy, consider loading from a save during the previous battle, finish it and hope they won't get such reinforcements this time. Or replay the previous battle from the beginning (try to wipe out or capture everyone, this might have an effect as well). 

[J & P Rebalance Mod by JonnyH13 and Pandakraut 05/06/2023 1.28.4]

Finally! After a week of tries (most time used to restart the campaign twice to test the career point setups and replaying battles before Shiloh to achieve certain results) I finally managed to beat the dreaded Union Battle of Shiloh on Legendary!  

Initial preparation

After trying some builds (tried a pure Economy build without Politics, tried a build with 0 Recon), I decided to go with Politics 3, Economy 1, Army Org. 1, Logistics 1, Recon 4. There are 7 more career points available until Shiloh, out of which 4 had to be invested into Army Org (the last point before Shiloh went there to give Army Org. 5) to field 20 units per Corps.

I invested 1 point into Logistics before the 1^st Bull Run to get more pistols for melee cavalry in the shop after the battle. Got enough to field 4 500-men melee cavalry units. They played a crucial role in capturing a number of prisoners in smaller battles by firing pistols and counter-charging the charging clowns. I supplemented this with throwing 2 more points into Economy to make these pistols a bit cheaper.

And thanks to 4 Recon I got a lot of boomsticks from these prisoners. Mostly Re-Bored muskets and Springfield 1842s, but, hey, I didn’t have to pay for them and could expand my army for Shiloh.

They key was to capture as many units as possible. Not only for loot, but to keep the virtual enemy army size near the bottom limit. I had to replay the ending of the 1^st Bull Run because I didn’t kill the last Confederate wave of reinforcements (my lazy bums got tired from standing in one place and firing at the enemy and couldn’t recover within the time limit, also the enemy chose not to surrender/shatter after ramming brigades into my line)) and this pushed the enemy virtual army size to 74K (yellow numbers) right before Shiloh, thus affecting enemy fielded army size.

So I had to try to wipe and capture as many units as possible against all odds (had 20600 infantry including the allied no-star units against 34600 enemy, some of them – with 3 stars. ) and succeeded. Got 44-46K enemy virtual army size before Shiloh.

Army Setup

After finishing the Crossroads battle, I had 15 units of varied experience: 2 with 2 stars (initial “Walton” infantry and “Woods” battery with 10 24-pdr howitzers), 7 1-star units, including 3 horses. And others had no stars. But I could field 40 for Shiloh.

The enemy initial army size was 40000+, it went to around 43000 after I reinforced my horses. The problem is that the enemy scales not only because of your numbers, but also because of the total number of your brigades. I added 1000-men brigades, and was at about 38000 men in total, when the enemy started to grow in numbers as my total number of brigades was reaching 40 (including the 7 allied brigades that arrive during the 1^st day).

I managed to circumvent this by fielding larger brigades. As I noticed, brigades below 3500 men (and a bit over that limit, but haven’t tested, how much room I still had left) don’t trigger the scaling. So I used my captured junk weapons to field some beefy brigades. I also bought all smoothbore artillery from the shop, so it would help me to deal with the charging clowns at point-blanc range. All in all, I managed to field 49000+ men and 117 guns in total against the enemy’s 43500 and 120 guns (rolled the dice by starting and not starting the battle (going back to camp) to get a more manageable number.

I distributed good weapons (2400 Lorenz from the Government, bought Harpers-Ferry 1855 and some Springfield 1861) among those brigades who could do something useful with them. I had to hire 2 colonels to lead my divisions + obtain Sherman for 3 reputation for this as well. Also I was lucky to capture 900+ Sharps carbines, so fielded 2x500 skirmish cavalry to shoot and join the dogpile when every extra saber matters. 

Battle

Shiloh Church stage

The first stage near Shiloh Church starts with 7 units – the whole first division and two first brigades from the second. I deployed the fresh fat brigades first to get more skirmishers from their size. I also deployed 2 horses to protect my skirmishers from the enemy horses and occasionally wipe out careless enemy skirmishers.

My goal was to lure the enemy to the left part of the map, to delay it from converging at the Hornet’s Nest together with the enemy forces coming through Larking Bell Field and Spain Field section. I was partially successful, the enemy did stumble and didn’t even bother capturing Shiloh Church during this phase. However most of its brigades turned and headed towards Hornet’s Nest once the maps merged.

Still, managed to buy some time with this and prevent a couple of brigades from joining the main fight. 

Larkin Bell Field and Spain Field phase

Here deployed 3-6 (or so) units from the first corps and a division from the second (arranged them in a way so they would have no slow guns, but had all of the remaining cavalry). Decided to mostly skip this phase. Left the Larkin Bell open for the enemy forces to pass (with a hope that some units will get careless and wander around alone to be picked by my horses and captured/shattered).

And concentrated most of my forces at the top of the map for a quick retreat once the map changes, screened them with a couple of skirmishers. Left some brigades (understanding that they will be captured or shattered) and skirmishers near Spain field to delay the forces coming through it.

United map phase

Here I formed the line from the woods at the top (behind the ditch) downwards towards the Hornet’s nest and then – to the right, with the far right spots mostly protected by skirmishers (the brigade charged by Statham is the last from the force that was delaying the enemy near Spain field and is going to get shattered in a second, the skirmishers managed to retreat). 

Due to my delaying actions the enemy was coming in piecemeal of sorts. So my main artillery from the last division of the 1^st Corps managed to spawn in time and take position.

However, the rest of the artillery from the 2^nd Corps spawned in the woods at the top, with some of the units spawning on the other side of the ditch or in front of my defensive line, thus taking fire from the enemy and losing a number of guns in a rout. This spawn actually caused me to “ragequit” during my last big walkthrough and simply skip attempts to win the battle since then. Seriously, this needs to be fixed! No, forcing to defend at the other side of the ditch is not a fix. 

Here luck came into play. The enemy mostly had smaller split units at the left side, thus wasn’t courageous enough for charging, so I felt mostly safe there. I was a bit wrong and someone charged me and even captured a brigade but I managed to recover with the help of my horses and in turn capture the enemy.

The Hornet’s Nest was manned by my beefy rookie brigades and any charging clown would have to face 6000+ men (even if rookies) and take fire from all sides while trying to chew through them.

The line to the right from the Nest was manned by whoever was available and not exhausted. The main battle took place there, with the enemy trying to charge me there with one or two brigades. Only to be shot with carbines and pistols from my horses, take canister and get counter-charged. I got very lucky as almost every counter-charge resulted in a capture or shatter. And the enemy mostly gave me time to recover and didn’t send another brigade immediately.

The enemy artillery presented me with some problems – I didn’t invest in long range artillery and the enemy guns were too congested to try to pick them from the rear by a few skirmishers/horses/a couple of my captured units that I managed to free by skirmishers in the rear. They also had a rifled Ordnance battery that kept shooting my batteries and I lost quite a lot of guns. All I could to was to cope with it, at least the line was holding.

As the timer was drawing to a close and captures/shatters kept coming, I was starting to feel confident that victory was around the corner. Still there was a big attack coming that would dislodge my brigades from the Nest.

Pittsburg Landing united map phase

I decided not to retreat to the Landing since half of my army was tired, the cannons had no speed perks and most skirmishers were either dead or reattached to said tired units. Thus I couldn’t really screen my retreat.

By the time I had like half of the guns remaining, no horses were in fighting shape (tired and less than 50% strength remaining), once I recaptured the Nest after a powerful attack, I had to man it with a brigade with Lorenz, because there was no one else fit enough to fill the role. However, the enemy already had much smaller number of brigades left, with my volleys keeping their morale below Heroic, thus they were in no mood to charge. And things went to a slow grind till the end of the timer.

2^nd day phase

Not much to say here – the enemy had like 13800 men left (1700 of them came with Forrest as reinforcements), I had 42000 with 26000+ of them being Buell’s army. I used this army to capture/shatter the annoying cannons and a couple of remaining brigades.

However, the time limit of 2 hours was too small. The new units coming from the Landing lost condition just by walking to the Nest and had to engage without time to recover. Meaning they did like 1 charge.

Anyway, I managed to wipe out most of the army with an exception of Forrest and two brigades (one was engaged in melee and I was winning while the timer ended) and the other managed to escape from the melee and I had no horses for pursuit. Generals and maybe a couple of skirmishers also escaped. Victory! 

Conclusion

All in all, the outcome of this battle is too dependent on luck. For example, in my previous try the enemy refused to surrender or shatter even if routed. Meaning my horses took a lot of enemy fire during pursuit and got depleted early. There is no workaround that some of the battles have, that allow to win with weak units.

There is no real way to level your units up for the challenge with only 5 battles until Shiloh. Most units will have even less, since they will be formed after you get decent money and captured/recovered weapons after the 1^st Bull Run. It’s possible to get Woods’s battery to 2 stars with placing John Gibbon to lead it. Maybe it’s possible to add a few more 1-star units by hiring Brigadier generals for 15-17k (and hope they won’t die). Still, that’s not enough. Maybe there is some crazy level-up XP grind strat that I don’t know about?

In comparison, the Confederate Legendary campaign has a serious difficulty spike only at the 2^nd Bull Run (like at 40% of the campaign) with plenty of battles ahead to shape your army the way you want for it.

Also the allied reinforcements (Ammen, Bruce and Hazen) may split (then you get more units to throw at the enemy) or may not. They may all get shooting perks (useless for infantry armed with Springfield muskets) and just get whacked in melee. I got a bit lucky that one brigade got a melee perk and it really helped (a lot!)

Also many of the captured enemy units had like 99 in melee stat (much less in others). How to stop these killing machines (when paired with a melee weapon like Springfield or Musket, even more - with melee perks) once they reach you (and they will, because your rookies can’t shoot) is beyond me.

[J & P Rebalance Mod by JonnyH13 and Pandakraut 05/06/2023 1.28.4]

12 hours ago, pandakraut said:

@Rubinfan Watched some of your latest stream. Interesting setup with the 2 cav and immediate retreat at 1st bull run. That has the downside of delaying Jackson. If you hold the stone bridge VP for most of the phase Jackson will arrive almost immediately in the 2nd phase. I usually hold the bridge until the last 15-30 minutes and start pulling back across the river at that point.

Edit: after watching more you came to the same conclusion

Ah, great to hear. I decided to make a new Legendary run, keeping the default mod values unchanged and adjusting the initial career point distribution and heeding some of your other advice. 

I ended up beating the 1st Bull Run with no cavalry at all eventually. There were multiple problems that forced me to decide this way:

1.Only one cavalry unit was up to the desired strength of 600 men. The other had 282, as far as I remember - all due to lack of Palmettos in the shop. So this unit was more like a liability - not enough numbers to melee anything more than cannons, single-shot pistols, even one infantry volley taken meant drastically reduced combat worthiness. 

2.The cannons were positioned in a way to incur volleys from close range from the enemy infantry nearby, should I choose to yolo-charge them. So had to make use of the pistols while shielding myself with the cannons from the enemy. This didn't always work and sometimes the enemy could shoot me through the cannons. Also took some losses from the cannons while running back and forth and eating some canister due to bad timing. 

3.Couldn't find any more meaningful ways to influence the battle after the cannons were done for. It was possible to kill the artillery supporting Sherman's and Keyes's brigades, should they take the route to attack Henry Hill from the rear, but not much more due to decreasing condition and enemy size.

4.The enemy spawned an insane amount of cavalry, totaling around 2500-3000 men. I couldn't risk bringing my cavalry closer and see it getting killed and also my infantry already had its hands full with dealing with superior enemy infantry. The last thing I needed were packs of enemy horses wrecking my lines. 

So I chose to disband my horses and add 2 more 1000-men infantry brigades. This helped me to get through. 

As for holding then retreating - I found it problematic to pick the right moment and retreat behind the river. All this extra walking makes my lazy bums tired and prone to rear flanking fire in the water. So chose to take my positions in peace at the beginning. 

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I don't think I changed anything so might just be perception?

Could be. But at CSA Shiloh you get a ton of loaned no-perk artillery. In my previous playthroughs I remember it getting hopelessly stuck in the woods, struggling vainly to reach the desired positions as these positions kept moving forward with the advancing army. But in my previous walkthrough they were able to keep up. Same with some of my own guns with other battles. 

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Antietam is one of those battles where the AI usually has lots of small brigades. This is the kind of battle where the average size scaling can really hurt as it will have more impact than battles where the AI normally has fewer larger units. It's good to hear that in some battles your approach is working well though, trade offs for different army setups is usually a good thing even if there are still spikes that need to get smoothed out.

In my new campaign I decided to keep my units around 1000-1500 at the beginning like during my very first walkthrough and expand, maybe, after Antietam. Let's see how it goes with the newest version. 

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I don't recommend the max training start anymore. Just too many trade offs elsewhere. But ~4 starting points or boosting up to 4-6 after Shiloh can workout decently. The recruit stats take time to increase, so after the first battle you won't see any changes to your recruit stats. Then after the next side battle you'll start to see the stats increase.

The training for out of battle units works basically the same way. If a unit not in a battle has a stat less than a specific amount(increases based on total points and current campaign date) then that stat will get increased by the specified amount. Usually doesn't do a whole lot, but it's useful to boost my melee stat for my early units that started with very low stats and haven't been in melee. This was mostly added so that people didn't feel the need to disband their non-participating units to try to get the training benefits.

Great. Tried to start with 4 in training and the recruit pool stats are certainly going up. This also eliminated the problem present in the earlier versions - if you pump a lot into politics early, you'll get a ton of low-stat recruits and once you start investing into training and get decent recruits, the previous recruits will keep pushing the skill average down until the end of the game. 

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In my opinion that 20k is almost always worth it because of how strong getting access to perks sooner is. I know that some other players are successful going with cheap officers though.

I usually go with the cheapest officers until pumping up Economy high enough - they level-up pretty fast on rookie units anyway. However, in the new run had to break the bank and hire some Colonels exactly for getting the first perk faster. All of my starting officers got wounded in the first battles and Kemper died (R.I.P). 

[J & P Rebalance Mod by JonnyH13 and Pandakraut 05/06/2023 1.28.4]

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What is your average infantry unit size? What is your largest infantry unit? What is the intelligence server army size in the top right of the campaign map? 170k sounds very high for Antietam with only 45k total men unless you are using 3k+ sized infantry. In my legendary campaign for example I'm only facing 110k with 65k in one save.

I ended up with my infantry being between 2 and 3k depending on funds and weapon availability. I have 3 units of 3000 men that are the largest. Tried to load again and tried clicking in and out of the battle map. 170k was probably a one-time extreme, but mostly I get an enemy size of 161-164k for my 44,5k. Tried to disband my army and form 850-men brigades, then I get 130k+ vs the same 40k+. 

I admit that my brigade swelling went out of hand, because there were battles where I managed to win strictly because some of my brigades were large. It makes the the AI less charge-happy and even if it charges - they don't fold as quickly as standard 1500-men brigades. Also there were battles like Cross Keys where I was outnumbered on the intelligence screen but managed to field a comparable force via adding men to my 1500-men brigades and forming some 850 men dummy units in the second Corps. Still took me 10+ restarts to win. 

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Seeing if I can get the AI to dismount is on my list to try, though even if I can I am unsure I can come up with any kind of reliable logic to tell them when to do so. Even as a player its very hard to choose good times to dismount since it's so much more useful to retain the higher mobility. The AI is pretty braindead with its cavalry usage though, so maybe even some poor logic might end up being an improvement.

Well, foot skirmishers seem more annoying to me than skirmish cavalry on horseback. Horses usually hide in the rear or stand foolishly in the front line and take severe losses from volleys since they don't have that foot skirmisher resistance. 

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Are you buying up the small amounts of better cannon in the early battles? By Cedar Mountain Cabell was not quite a 3* and I was able to switch him over to blakely's after Malvern Hill. By this battle I had 19 blakelys, 13 james, and 4 20pdrs with 3 points in logistiscs(don't recall exactly when I bumped up to 3.)

I would definitely recommend switching the starting perk to shot/shell for Cabell unless you are planning to switch him to smoothbores. Rifled guns really need multiple damage perks before they get going. I make a point of training up several units in earlier battles since they are so useful to have at Gaines and Malvern Hill. For some defensive battles 24pdrs can also work pretty well with rifled perks since you won't move much and they do decent canister damage as is, so you can swap weapons around to level up faster. Usage of veterans can also get these units off to a faster start.

I do, although I probably missed this once due to lack of funds. I also had only one point in Logistics and also buffed up Cabell to 15 guns fairly early while he was still relatively inexperienced. Switching perks seems like a reasonable advice, as well as reserving some veterans for cannons (they don't require many) thank you. In this version of the mod canons move faster without the horse artillery perk than in the previous version. Or it just seems so? 

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Depends on the battle how much time is available to recover, but you definitely want to try and preserve your condition as much as possible. Good positioning, limiting charge/melee time, and setting up favorable shooting conditions so you don't get stuck in drawn out fights all help.

I usually try to preserve condition but random moments still happen. 

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Investment in training can help a lot here. Improving your recruits reduces the stat loss when refilling units, and post Shiloh you can get some free training on units that don't deploy into battles. Another thing that helps a lot is keeping the AI focused on newer units while your more experienced units hit the flanks. I generally find that I can keep my stats gradually moving upwards on most units even after bringing them back up to strength. Sometimes if a good unit gets worn down too much I'll merge it with another unit instead and just create a new recruit unit to take up the free slot.

Investment in good officers also helps a lot here. I will always buy out all the BGs and high level colonels when I can to help boost a unit to that next star faster.

I tried the "7 in training" build, replaying the Potomac Fort when I got into problems at Newport News. But unlike the previous version of the mod, where I successfully used it as the Union, I got no improvement in the default recruit stats. Hiring a limited number of veterans with 20-30 stats didn't seem very expensive so I chose not to play down this path and stayed with 3 in Politics, 1 in Economy, 4 in Recon and something build. Didn't touch training after this. From the description I understood that it can increase stats of units that don't take part in battles, but couldn't understand how noticeable this buff would be. 

As for the officers, I did and do move the existing high-ranked officers to those units that are close to geting a perk. But I didn't buy any high-ranked ones during the last run since 20k for a brigadier general is way to expensive and the colonels offered weren't much better than those promoted from my captains. I also got free general Ruggles from Shiloh as well as Albert Johnston and two Tomas Jacksons. I'll probably need more officers should I wish to field more smaller units during the next run. 

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Towards the bottom of the unitModifiers file you can find the following. These values are unchanged from 1.27.4.3, it's more that the shorter timers, harder battles, and change to how veterans work have slowed down unit stat progression. You may want to consider lowering enemy size and xp a bit instead, or give MG a try instead of Legendary to see if that fits what you are looking for a bit better. Timers can also be extended, but that is a little finicky as there can be odd problems if the end of day time and the timers don't end up lining up correctly.

killsPerEffectivity,225
killsPerMelee,75
movePerStamina,1300
shootPerFirearms,7
timePerMorale,2900

For comparison here are the values used in the vanilla game. We made experience slower to gain across the board, so you can use values closer to the vanilla values if you want it to be faster.

killsPerEffectivity, 150
killsPerMelee, 25 
movePerStamina, 1000 
shootPerFirearms, 5 
timePerMorale, 1800

Thank you. I'll probably try the Vanilla values and see if this improves the gameplay for me. As for the lowering the enemy numbers or XP, it's just more fun for me to fight against larger and more experienced armies, just need my army to be up to the challenge. 

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I'll keep using all of those weapons as long as I have sufficient quantities available. I don't tend to buy all that many, but that's true of basically every infantry weapon if I can avoid it.

I see. So probably no reason to buy them more than enough to field the initial few brigades. 

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Hope some of this helps. If you have more questions please ask

It certainly does, thanks a lot!

As for the questions, I got a few new ones:

1.If the corps commander "dies" in battle and disappears from the field, will the units of the corps lose the buffs given by the first two commander's perks (they definitely lost the third in the previous version of the mod since it was command aura-based)?

2.Do the first two corps commander's perks (the third one used to work this way in the previous version of the mod) apply only to the units within the commander's aura radius? Asking because someone from outside of this forum mentioned this. 

[J & P Rebalance Mod by JonnyH13 and Pandakraut 05/06/2023 1.28.4]

Had previous experience with the mod, beating both campaigns on Legendary. Decided to try the new version and started a new Confederate campaign on Legendary. 

I managed to reach the 2nd Bull Run winning all battles one way or another. But ran into an obstacle that my forces don't seem to level up at all and none of my brigades were close enough to 2 stars. Having such brigades is crucial for holding the line at Bull Run and later - Antietam, at least from my previous experience. 

I could field around 35k in 1-star units and around 20k - as freshly formed 0-stars and perhaps even more if willing to spend some on obsolete smoothbore weapons. Now, I could jump over the 2nd Bull Run, accepting a loss with like 4 reputation remaining, only to be obliterated at Antietam by 170k+ of enemy against my 45k, number of enemies further increasing if I tried to increase my own army. 

There are some nice new things that I appreciate a lot, like:

1.Random enemy spawns/reinforcement routes

2.Increased government rewards based on Politics stat

3.Increased weapon recovery (does it apply to the captured weapons as well, including guns from prisoners or only to your own weapons recovered after battle?) depending on Recon

4.Enemy detachable skirmishers - because if the player can use a certain game mechanic, the AI should have an opportunity to do this as well. Any chances to teach the enemy skirmish cavalry to mount-dismount? 

5.Limited veteran pool and it's stats depending on your own unit skill. 

 

There are things I can adapt to and live with like:

1.Nerfed artillery - because the enemy's guns got nerfed too, allowing more freedom of movement on the battlefield. And increased government rewards allow getting more decent weapons for a more infantry and cavalry-focused game.

However, rifled artillery seems useless now - during one of my attempts to win at Cedar Mountain, Cabell's battery (the one from the Potomac Fort with a Horse artillery perk, Ordnance guns and still one star fired at the enemy cannons, inflicting 1 casualty per shot (that's for 100$ from my general's salary). I can't obtain any better cannons until the 2nd Bull Run (with 10 in Politics you can get 12 Blakelys for reputation) and there isn't much incentive to field this battery during previous battles.  Low-skilled smoothbore guns still have some use at canister range. 

2.Limited timers - at least I don't have to wage battles with the manual open on an adjacent screen to know how much time remains. 

3.All of my men turning into lazy bums being constantly tired and running away in panic for like 3-4 minutes, further reducing condition to exhausted (no, I don't have 30 minutes to let you to recover because of the aforementioned reduced timers). 

But since my forces almost don't level-up and the enemy constantly gets 2 and 3-star brigades for free sacrificing, overcoming such difficulties is beyond me. 

So I have a question if there is a way to adjust the config file modifiers to return the old experience level-up speed multipliers so my forces would level up like in the previous version? 

 

And another broader question to everyone familiar with the mod - is there any use in investing in low-tier rifles (that would be the Re-Bored Musket, Springfield M1855, Mississippi M1841 and MJ&G)? I can't get to use them to achieve profitable volley trade-offs with the enemy. My Mississippi-equipped units may enjoy some limited success until after Shiloh, but as soon as the enemy switches to Springfield M1861 they just can't kill enough and when I pass these rifles to rookies, they perform even worse. But even my rookie performance jumps up drastically when equipped with Springfield M1861 (the closest upgrade from the Union's shop) or Harpers Ferry M1855 (same from the Confederate shop). I'm interesting to know this because with low economy stat it is better to invest only in stuff you can successfully use later on. So if these rifles have no future use, better to buy the least amount possible and save money. On Economy 1 Mississippi M1841 costs 33$, on Economy 9 you can buy an Enfield 1853 for the same price. 

[J & P Rebalance Mod by JonnyH13 and Pandakraut 05/06/2023 1.28.4]

Hello! Finally managed to beat the Union campaign on Legendary. Took like 3 tries and a run on Hard to learn more about ins and outs. Had to accept defeat at Shiloh (ran away from the map without fighting) since I couldn't find a solution, how to stop 3000+ men 3-star charging enemy brigades with useless cannon fodder my army is at the beginning. So chose to take a reputation hit and forfeit 2 (or 3 career points). I know there is a way to beat this battle, but just chose not to waste my time and spend more money buying all the 6 and 12 pounder scrap, than the 100.000$ reward difference between the victory and defeat. 

Also skipped 2 minor battles - Siege of Suffolk, because the allied 1 star units break under 200+cannons firing and 2000 Lemat-equipped cavalry charging at them and 89000$ is not enough to cover the losses in my artillery. 

And the 2nd Winchester - that was winnable by beefing up my units, but wanted to avoid this before Gettysburg to keep the Confederate army smaller - it's much easier to canister 2000 charging clown packs than 3500. 

The other problematic battles were:

1.Secure River - outnumbered 2 to 1 and on the offence, needed the right timing to put the unit on the objective right at the end of the timer so the enemy couldn't countercharge.

2.Malvern Hill - got pummeled repeatedly until I managed to find a spot where the enemy had to cross the bridge to get to me and just evaporated them with canister while they were at 0 cover. 

3.Thoroughfare Gap - defended in the northern woods with my line along the stream, outnumbered 2 to 1 and with a limited number of units. Had to make several restarts to get lucky when the enemy sent most of it's army in the clearing near the flag. Purely lucky win. Also had to disband almost all of my skirmishers so to avoid 1000 men enemy skirmisher packs. 

4.Salem Church - got completely wrecked by the enemy reinforcements but managed to hold onto the objective with a routing unit. Technically - a loss. 

5.Chickamauga – day 1 in particular. The allied units were only useful at shooting the enemy on the bridges at 0 cover. Once out of their favorite spots, their battle value was reduced to 0. Also the enemy had 3 2000 LeMat horse packs that kept killing and capturing everyone in their sight. Had to disband all of my 5 units of 2-star cavalry to make their sizes more manageable and capture supply wagons on foot. Later in the campaign managed to resurrect 2 horse units and even level them up to 2 stars in the remaining battles.

6.Fort Stevens – usually send the rookie corps there so they could level-up while shooting the enemy from the fort, but faced a 75000 non-scalable force against my 42000 coming in piecemeal. So had to abandon my plan, replay Cold Harbor and reshuffle my army to include units with Spencers and Henries, as well as some more support with captured Whitworth rifles (infantry and sniper versions). Still had to abandon the fort, but my artillery saved the day at the end.

During the campaign I tried to stick with 1500-men brigades, 14-cannon batteries, horse and skirmisher count depended on the weapons available and officer rank.

The most widespread weapon was the Lorenz as the Union gets a lot of these through rep points, allied units (got some 2200 at 7 Pines and 5000+ at Salem Church) and captures as the Confederates usually carry Lorenzes until Chancellorsville. Although I find it somewhat funny that the side considered a powerful industrial nation had to rely on imports on such a scale.

The other notable rifles were:

Harpers Ferry – actually the only reasonable rookie option for me when I had to by the weapon, as the muskets are crap, Springfield 55 is useless at long range, Springfield 61 is good but the production stops after Chancellorsville. Also it wasn’t rare that a regiment levelled up with these guns up to 2 solid stars and I didn’t see the need to change the weapon. So these rifles make a good investment.

Tyler Texas – got 20000+ of these from the 2^nd tier Confederate units. Used for placeholder rookies.

Joslyn – broke the bank right before Richmond and fielded 17 brigades with them. Was worth it, but the rifle appears late and is a bit pricey.

Whitworth – captured enough to field 15 brigades for Richmond. The funny thing is that I’ll be probably lucky to field 3-4 in the Confederate playthrough.

Colt55, Spencer and Henry – ended up fielding 2 regiments with each, were the killing machines in defence – both on foot and from the trench, especially Henries.

As for the artillery, started with 3 Inch and Napoleons, but aimed for the high-tier guns, obtained 20 PDR Parrots for reputation, so ended up with 4 14-gun Siege Batteries, 3 – 12 PDR Whitworths, 9 – 20PDR Parrotts. James, captured Blakelies and some remaining 3Inch were relegated to rookie batteries. Napoleon batteries got eventually rearmed to 24 PDR since I captured a number of these, although the rearmament worth was questionable.

Horses got the cheapest carbines possible, although I kept bying Spencer and Colt55 carbine and eventually rearmed a regiment with each. Skirmishers got JFB and Sharps, later rearmed a regiment with captured Withworth TS – also a killing machine.

For the infantry, cavalry, skirmisher and corps commander perks I went with those giving accuracy, since I saw no reason for my regiments with 34 in melee after formation to try to melee 2000 men 3 star brigades with 100 melee and usually at least 1 perk in it. Cannons got the 1^st horse artillery perk and the later depended if they were smoothbore or rifled. Had to consent to weaker cannons since without the speed perk they are painfully slow and get stuck in the woods. Also I was able to move my cannons with infantry on offensive missions just like in Vanilla.

I haven’t encountered any major bugs related to the mod. However, there were issues.

1.At times my unit would stop firing from the defensive position despite the enemy being firmly in the range (not at the tip). Manual aiming stopped working as well. To fix it, had to unseat the unit, manually aim it and place it back (and get my share of whatever crap the enemy was sending towards it in the process, sometimes ending in a rout.). Happened frequently enough to notice, namely at Fort Stevens, Georgia Railroad and a number of earlier missions. Maybe 1-3 times during the battle, but if I failed to notice it, my unit just kept sitting under fire doing nothing.

2.Sometimes cannons refused to fire even when the target was clearly in range and kept telling they need to get closer. This either ended in the cannon driving towards the enemy (and getting shot if I failed to notice) or idling until I notice (sometimes with the Reload bar half-filled and stuck). Frequently happened during Harrisson Creek (failed an attempt because of this), but also sometimes at Gettysburg and a number of smaller battles.  

In conclusion I have a couple of questions, that more experienced players might have answers for

1.Second Tier Artillery perks – Fire direction drills gives +25% accuracy and +50% spotting. Does the accuracy buff make the gun 25% more efficient on all ranges? It might be worth to sacrifice the cover or stealth bonus then.

2.How does this 25% accuracy buff work? If a gun has 37% effectiveness on medium range, then with a perk will it get 46,25% or 62%? Do perks stack or each new is calculated from a default value?

3.I have maybe two detached skirmishers, a horse and a dedicated skirmisher regiment nearby. But they still can’t spot a nasty pack of enemy skirmishers firing at me. I detach one more pack from a random unit and the enemy goes out of stealth mode right in front of my nose. Magic or the spotting parameter stacks somehow?

4.Is it actually worth swapping Napoleons for 24PDR in the smoothbore artillery? Got an impression that the Napoleons kill better but the 24PDR more scare the enemy off forcing to rout.

5.What is the most effective number of cannons in the battery? I tried 20+ 30+ but haven’t noticed much difference with a 12-14 gun battery, except for the costs skyrocketing.

P.S. Since the guns have all that close, long, max range effectiveness, maybe it would be possible to rearrange the distance cones into 5 sections instead of 3? Same with infantry.

P.S.S. All it all, I'm happy with the mod, although it has some frustrating moments at the beginning and at the end. Thanks for the creator (or creators)!