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

[madmatg]

Campaign report (CSA, MG)

Starting after 2nd bull run I began to try the oversized blob charge infantry regiments (1 10,000 musket brigade per division) and they have been steamrolling through on all the attack missions. I just finished gettysburg on the first phase taking all of cemetery hill. enemy iron brigades were 1100 size and I charge one unit of my 2 star 10000 brigade straight into 2 of them (while taking some fire from another iron bg to it's left) and one disintegrated while the other retreated with around 400 men left, my 10,000 man unit lost around 400 men. I just slowly marched my 4 3 10,000 men brigades towards cemetery hill and basically ran over each group of enemy reinforcements as they appeared. I spent the last 2 hours of the phase just waiting for time to run out. (one of those 10,000 man brigades became a 3 star after gettysburg XD)

Edited June 21, 2018 by madmatg

[pandakraut]

@madmatg I actually thought we had capped infantry at 6k in the last version. I suspect that got missed when we reset everything for the 1.11 hotfix. Not that a 6k brigade would have resulted in much of a different outcome in your scenario. Do you happen to have a save from prior to the battle that you could send me? I thought I had modified the scaling algorithm so that using a few giant brigades would result in AI units of similar sizes, but you've clearly found another edge case. Are you the side battles at least sending large AI units at you?

Edited June 21, 2018 by pandakraut

[madmatg]

Well I had 5 brigades over 4000 and basically 3 corps full of 1600 size brigades so it might have gotten watered down

[madmatg]

I don't actually know where the save games are, I was thinking the steam folder for the game but don't see them

[pandakraut]

41 minutes ago, madmatg said:

I don't actually know where the save games are, I was thinking the steam folder for the game but don't see them

C:\Users\<YourUserName>\AppData\LocalLow\Game Labs\Ultimate General Civil War\Save\CampaignBattle

Save filenames are not human readable. Easiest way to get the right one is to just make a new save and sort the folder by date.

[madmatg]

zv4ed7g9.sx9

hee9xoaj.fx4

v18se6d1.7pu

One of these three

[pandakraut]

@madmatg thanks will take a look when I have time.

[killjoy1941]

So I started a new Union campaign with the latest files...

MG:

This went nowhere because you face 24,000(!) troops at Philippi. I'd imagine someone with a very deft micro hand and some seriously good perk rolls could make that work, but not I. 

BG:

Philippi is a very manageable 14,000. 1st Bull Run is... a bit easy, but it's BG. Shiloh, on the other hand, is a massive handful. I kept finding myself being very quickly pushed into the top of the Shiloh and Spain Field portions of the map. You definitely feel the level one general accuracy perk and artillery nerfs here, and I think the relative inability to hold lines is a direct result of disabling the detachable skirmishers. I pulled off a very narrow "victory" in the first two phases by going back to my camp save and adding no fewer than six skirmisher brigades in exchange for two infantry brigades (for 10 total), using every single available officer in the process.

I'd imagine a fair few players will want to wait for a balancing pass before starting new Union campaigns at the moment. 

[chemical_art]

Oh wow that is a lot! When I did mine a few versions ago I faced half that number at Philippi, so I wonder what has changed...

[pandakraut]

I don't think anything has changed on Phillipi in recent versions, those changes were just copy pasted. I checked my legendary save and 24k is what I faced there. Several thousand of those you rarely actually fight unless you let the phase 1 reinforcements reach the town. I think there is some randomness for brigade sizes, but the MG units are definitely less experienced.

What approach are you using for Phillipi? With the condition changes you can make things much harder for yourself depending how you complete the first phase.

At Shiloh having a good number of dedicated skirmishers with infantry rifles will be incredibly helpful.

Edited June 22, 2018 by pandakraut

[killjoy1941]

I generally push for the top of the cliff early and skirmish with the objective of baiting and tiring out the three brigades in the area. Once the rest of my forces show up, I'll immediately move on the town and drive the defending brigade out. I've found the enemy battery is within canister range of the southern bridge 9/10 times, so I usually use one of the brigades to distract while I deploy the guns north and push the northern bridge once the defenders rout.

Taking the town isn't that hard, it's holding it in the second phase without detachable skirmishers. There's limited space to fall back within the town, and whatever you guys did to the AI, it isn't dumb enough anymore to suicide on the bridges if you abandon the town, so you have to fight it out in the streets and to the north of the town. The new unit movement and timer speeds might still be messing with my mojo, but I can't micro that well enough to win without unacceptable losses.

Edited June 22, 2018 by killjoy1941

[killjoy1941]

I don't remember how many enemy troops there were the two previous times I tried it on MG. It may very well have been 24k, but I had detachable skirmishers and the previously OP artillery, so Philippi was still pretty easy.

I think limiting the charge range put a serious damper on the AI's taste for skirmisher blood. Under the vanilla system, the AI would instantly charge any visible skirmisher that was even remotely close and isolated. Now it just ignores them. The AI will still advance on and shoot at skirmishers if it has nothing better to do or the skirmishers are the closest unit, but they've seriously lost value as impactful distractions. I'm not going to say that's a bad thing because it isn't. However, it does have the potential to seriously upend the difficulty of several battles, and Shiloh does showcase that in rather magnificent fashion.

Edited June 22, 2018 by killjoy1941

[pandakraut]

I don't think any of the changes we made would impact the AI's interest in attacking across the bridge, though I've never tried that strategy. I usually just hold the northern edge of the town, fall back and concentrate fire on any unit that charges. I also rest my troops to 100% condition before attempting any crossing so that they are in the best possible shape to fight in melee in phase 2. Melee in the town will drain your condition very very quickly.

I just played a quick MG phillipi and faced 22k, apparently the first levels are counted as major battles so the scaling fix I put in possibly had some impact. I think it should still have resulted in no change to the AI size, but just in case I'll add some extra checks to make sure it doesn't. The battle is still entirely winnable at 22k though. 

The AI still loves to charge my skirmishers if they get in range, you'll have to work harder to bait charges now though

 

 

[killjoy1941]

Previously the AI would just headlong rush the Philippi bridges with every single brigade if you withdrew to the west side of the town. Try it in vanilla. It's a stupidly easy way to win that borders on cheese which I discovered in a "what if I...?" moment. It doesn't do that with the mod, so I'm guessing it's something to do with how the AI stages assaults and the reduced charge range as the culprit. It's not a big deal since I doubt many people ever tried that and I definitely try to win without it. I also try to maximize condition for the second phase since you need your men fresh to avoid the inevitable massed charges.

Yes, the AI will still charge your skirmishers, but you have to be within firing range. As I said, it's a change for the better since in vanilla you can lead the AI about by the nose if you dangle one or two skirmisher units in front of infantry brigades. Now you have to play a very delicate dance, which I prefer. The downside is the lack of detached skirmishers, so you're flirting with disaster if you don't micro them very carefully.

There aren't all that many battles that were dominated by skirmishers in vanilla, but Shiloh as Union was definitely one of them. I think you guys are probably going to have to look at that very carefully now that detached skirmishers are no longer a thing since forward defense is extremely difficult to pull off against fresh CSA brigades and static defense is right out at MG/Legendary. Battle balance is modding work that's probably at the end of your collective checklist, but it's worth mentioning for when the time comes.

[pandakraut]

1 hour ago, killjoy1941 said:

There aren't all that many battles that were dominated by skirmishers in vanilla, but Shiloh as Union was definitely one of them. I think you guys are probably going to have to look at that very carefully now that detached skirmishers are no longer a thing since forward defense is extremely difficult to pull off against fresh CSA brigades and static defense is right out at MG/Legendary. Battle balance is modding work that's probably at the end of your collective checklist, but it's worth mentioning for when the time comes.

You do get 4 extra deployment slots per corps on Shiloh now. Did you not have space to bring a lot of skirmishers?

[chemical_art]

1 hour ago, killjoy1941 said:

 Now you have to play a very delicate dance, which I prefer. The downside is the lack of detached skirmishers, so you're flirting with disaster if you don't micro them very carefully.

This is true, but it eases considerably once you get both economy and training to level 5ish. Once you do that, you aquire captains and later majors cheaply, and you can train 1 star skirmishers from scratch (they start with one star). One star skirmishers are vastly better then old detached ones because they get a perk. It is true the unit can break relatively easily compared to standard infantry, but the perk that gives speed and cover will make them very, very hardy. And even if they do break you lose perhaps 75 - 125 skirmishers and a captain/major? If you give them fairly standard equipment then the lost is not that significant. I regularly lose a two or three of 1 star skirmishers in a major battle, and it is really chump change in the grand scheme of things. Occasionally the officers live long enough to get their silver (Lt. Col) and then and shipped off to standard infantry as a bonus.

Edited June 22, 2018 by chemical_art

[killjoy1941]

6 hours ago, pandakraut said:

You do get 4 extra deployment slots per corps on Shiloh now. Did you not have space to bring a lot of skirmishers?

I had 10 skirmishers and used every single officer for a total of 35 units. I could've had 38, but I had three really unlucky woundings in River Crossing and Logan's Crossroads. I've never once hit 40, to say nothing of 48. I built them for nothing but the cost of the officers because I was using captured and recovered weapons.

It's more about the AI not prioritizing skirmishers as much as it used to in vanilla, so your line experiences significantly more pressure much earlier than it ever did before. Managing 5 or so 300-man skirmishers that can't be reattached and replenished, all while maneuvering on the edge of the firing range of 3,000 to 3,700-man brigades, is no easy task. Sooner rather than later you're going to make a mistake, and then you'll have a few ineffective skirmishers which allows the AI to start the charge/fall-back game with your infantry. If that happens too early, your army is going to get smashed on the northern edge of the early phase maps.

I'm not saying Shiloh is impossible - far from it. I'm saying it's a definite candidate for observation because it could easily tip into impossible depending upon what future changes bring to the mod.

5 hours ago, chemical_art said:

This is true, but it eases considerably once you get both economy and training to level 5ish. Once you do that, you aquire captains and later majors cheaply, and you can train 1 star skirmishers from scratch (they start with one star). One star skirmishers are vastly better then old detached ones because they get a perk. It is true the unit can break relatively easily compared to standard infantry, but the perk that gives speed and cover will make them very, very hardy. And even if they do break you lose perhaps 75 - 125 skirmishers and a captain/major? If you give them fairly standard equipment then the lost is not that significant. I regularly lose a two or three of 1 star skirmishers in a major battle, and it is really chump change in the grand scheme of things. Occasionally the officers live long enough to get their silver (Lt. Col) and then and shipped off to standard infantry as a bonus.

Yeah, it's really just getting past Shiloh. I was already starting to transition to dedicated skirmishers before the change because for actual scouting they can become nearly impossible to spot later on with the right perks. As above, they simply don't have the resilience that detachable skirmishers do, so it introduces a surprising amount of brittleness to your army if you're defending and heavily outnumbered.

Edited June 23, 2018 by killjoy1941

[chemical_art]

17 minutes ago, killjoy1941 said:

Yeah, it's really just getting past Shiloh. I was already starting to transition to dedicated skirmishers before the change because for actual scouting they can become nearly impossible to spot later on with the right perks. As above, they simply don't have the resilience that detachable skirmishers do, so it introduces a surprising amount of brittleness to your army if you're defending and heavily outnumbered.

That is why I recommend the perk for cover and speed. With both, 200 skirmishers give the durability of 350 detached ones. Remember that in this mod perks are king, and detached skirmishers come with no perks. Even if the home unit has 3 stars, detached ones have none. Detached skirmishers would be routed/broken by 2 star melee from either cav or melee specialists in this mod, because they run twice as fast and have twice the charge value in a worst case. They would just be as brittle, since they have no accuracy , reload, or cover bonuses either. So in early game the detached behavior is superior, but by mid game and later it would not.

 

To put it in other words, this mod makes early game much more difficult, but soothes the middle and late game. Find a way to push through, it does get better.

 

Shilo is by far the hardest battle I had so to fight so far as I approach Cold Harbor. If you can somehow not be wiped, you can have breathing room.

 

If I had to chime in on difficulty modding, I would say ease the path to Shilo for now. The mod has an uneven difficulty curve, in that early game is actually a bit harder then mid game. Once the mod develops things could be finer tuned, but I feel the mod due to the nature of perks hardest early game.

Edited June 23, 2018 by chemical_art

[killjoy1941]

I'm well aware of that as well as just how obnoxious you can make dedicated skirmishers with the mod. 

I'm simply saying it's become a much, much tighter game with the combination of the removal of dedicated skirmishers and the change to charge range.

There are five factors at work here:

1. The AI is generally less interested in chasing skirmishers.
2. Your skirmishers are fewer and a finite resource.
3. You have fewer infantry brigades.
4. The accuracy perks for your generals are less effective.
5. Your artillery is less deadly.

The bottom line is there is far less room for mistakes than ever before, which puts Shiloh in particular into the "play it perfectly" category. 

[chemical_art]

2 hours ago, killjoy1941 said:

I'm well aware of that as well as just how obnoxious you can make dedicated skirmishers with the mod. 

I'm simply saying it's become a much, much tighter game with the combination of the removal of dedicated skirmishers and the change to charge range.

There are five factors at work here:

1. The AI is generally less interested in chasing skirmishers.
2. Your skirmishers are fewer and a finite resource.
3. You have fewer infantry brigades.
4. The accuracy perks for your generals are less effective.
5. Your artillery is less deadly.

The bottom line is there is far less room for mistakes than ever before, which puts Shiloh in particular into the "play it perfectly" category. 

I will agree with everything you say.

 

But a mod that provides greater depth, greater room for success or error, but demands an overall higher quality of skill is not per se an absolute no no. It is up for the creators to decide if that is the direction to go with. I will say to pursue that approach requires an insane demand for quality...but they are the only mod in the market right now. So their word is pretty important 😉.

 

I speak frankly toward all modders, for I have spent 2/3rds of my life doing it. In my earliest days I made mods just for me, tailoring a game to my taste. I will always thus encourage any modder to pursue what they want. They ultimately sacrifice the most time making the mod. It requires a unique passion, purely for pleasure.

 

For this mod, I deliberately went down a difficulty value. I thus get the experience I expect. I am not good at early game..so I need to accept the easier difficulty. Sure, I am not always pressed to the absolute limit...but I see the rewards of me doing well. So I have fun.

 

Still, all data is valuable. All of it, as long as it is explained clearly, preferably with saved games. Saved games are really the gold standard for testing, just because so much already is in flux. Save often. You should be doing that anyways.

[killjoy1941]

Well said. If Johnny and panda want to go nuts with the difficulty, they're entirely free to do so. I've done a fair bit of modding myself, so I know what they're putting into it.

I'm just providing the feedback - it's up to them to decide if or how they want to use it. 

Edited June 23, 2018 by killjoy1941

[pandakraut]

The original goal in general was to make the game harder. If anything, if we could stay closer to the challenge curve going up to Shiloh for the rest of the game we probably would. But like most games of this type, once you overcome the initial barriers and get a decent army setup the rest of the campaign tends to just be a snowball. While we will be making some changes to try and get to that point, we will also be trying to leave some options available for players who aren't interested in that level of difficulty. 

One thing to note, detached skirmishers can be turned back on in the ConfigFile. Set disableSkirmishers to false, and deploySizeMultiplier to 1 and you'll be back to normal. If you prefer your experience with them in the game, don't let us stop you.

[killjoy1941]

I'm fine with no detached skirmishers, I'm just reporting what I'm seeing. 

 

So, since insomnia was a thing, I replayed through Shiloh on MG. I somehow managed to stuff up the AI coordination at Philippi with skirmisher play a Starcraft veteran would've been proud of.

Amusingly, Shiloh is actually easier on MG. On BG, the one-star AI brigades quickly break and run, taking much less damage than their two-star MG counterparts. I thought my small army was going to be a problem, but the AI brigades happily chased my skirmishers all over the map, where I left them in far corners all tuckered out. That certainly didn't help them break and run when they finally did come for me, but the resilience of two-star brigades is both significant and apparent, where they end up taking absurd amounts of punishment before they actually attain routed status. I would imagine the three-star brigades of Legendary would have no such issues, or at least they didn't when I played it in vanilla.

I carried it through Malvern Hill, and everything else played just fine.

I'll probably continue this campaign until I get some three-star artillery and at least one LTG just so I can compare the perk and artillery changes, then I'll change over to BG or COL and CSA so I can play with a maneuver focus, which is something I haven't tried yet.

[limith]

1) I noticed the new AI modifiers csv which has removeUnitCap there. I thought in the previous version changelog it said to put that in the general file instead? Which is the correct location?

2) What is the interaction between removeUnitCap and AIUNIT TYPE HERE SizeCap? I feel like the sizecap also affects players. Also the infantry one doesn't seem to work.

3) Edit nvm, I see aura range is increased by a ton

4) I actually never used the corps leader accuracy perk myself, I used the speed perk. I like the new tooltip on artillery, really helps me figure out which cannons I want to use, I understand why 24pdr Howitzer is good now.

5) It's really hard balancing when to invest in logistics as CSA. If you invest it too late you run out of guns you want in the armory, while if you invest it too early you can't afford any of the guns (have to also invest in Economy).

6) Both Cornith and Prairie Grove ended a full 30 ingame minutes early (Victory). I think the time remaining counter is wrong, since they ended at the full hour mark.

7) Training campaign perk probably could use a slight bump to the training cost bonus due to the in game veteran costs not taking into consideration your current unit stats (rookies vs veterans thing I mentioned a while back where the same stats can cost money when recruiting veterans).

8: Counterintuitive thought: based on my understanding of accuracy works, I feel like grabbing all of the +firing range perks for a Howitzer Brigade is the best strategy since Howitzers have such low firing range for canister shot.

9) Battle of Fredericksburg prelude should have 2 deploy slots instead of 1 for CSA since you don't have skirmisher detachments anymore. That being said, the AI is bad enough that it wasn't an issue, I was able to hold the bridge with only 1 unit. What happened to the flanking unit the AI had?

10) Funny situation where my canisters are losing ammo even though I have a supply convoy supplying it with ammo. The tier 3 general aura +100% increase seems to increase the supply convoy resupply range circle as well. Except in practice I have found that the supply convoy does NOT supply units outside of it's original (non 100% increase range) area. This looks like a bug.

Edited June 24, 2018 by limith

[pandakraut]

1 hour ago, limith said:

2) What is the interaction between removeUnitCap and AIUNIT TYPE HERE SizeCap? I feel like the sizecap also affects players. Also the infantry one doesn't seem to work.

I refactored the config files in the last release. If you don't want supersized AI brigades change removeSizeCap in the AIConfigFile. The MaxSize entries are reused for the player as well, but if you turn off removeSizeCap they aren't used for the AI. Player infantry size is controlled by your AO points.

1 hour ago, limith said:

Tier 3 general auras are really....nobrainer to choose in terms of opportunity cost

My rankings for those abilities are the reverse of yours  While cover does max out at 100% so the perk bonuses are less useful in heavy cover, where the perk shines is in lighter cover or in open terrain. No more need to micro units onto just the right pixel to get the maximum cover bonus, put them in any kind of decent cover and you're fine. Also enables all of your artillery to actually hit 100% cover without having to give up a damage perk. I would probably take the xp perk second, it just saves you money and with how hard it is to get xp in the mod it can be very nice. I don't care about morale bonuses at all. Basically if I need it I already screwed up(I mostly avoid melee which could change things). There are a few later battles where you have to hold defenses with crap units that the morale can be useful for though.

2 hours ago, limith said:

6) Both Cornith and Prairie Grove ended a full 30 ingame minutes early (Victory). I think the time remaining counter is wrong, since they ended at the full hour mark.

There appears to be a hidden timer that the mod isn't updating. My current guess is the end of day timer for the battle is getting hit as this happens for a lot of different battles currently. On the list to get researched/fixed.

2 hours ago, limith said:

7) Training campaign perk probably could use a slight bump to the training cost bonus due to the in game veteran costs not taking into consideration your current unit stats (rookies vs veterans thing I mentioned a while back where the same stats can cost money when recruiting veterans).

More of a general question, but do you feel limited in resources? My current impression is that it's far to easy to acquire far more men and cash than I can ever use. I'm sitting with a reserve of 500k/100k around Chancellorsville for the Union Legendary. I'm not sure if that matches other player experiences though.

2 hours ago, limith said:

8: Counterintuitive thought: based on my understanding of accuracy works, I feel like grabbing all of the +firing range perks for a Howitzer Brigade is the best strategy since Howitzers have such low firing range for canister shot.

I think the range perks are the best selection in basically all cases currently. Since they all come with +accuracy as well they give you everything you need. I hear speed and reload can be very good as well depending on play style. Currently I feel like there is little reason to take the non generic accuracy damage bonuses.

2 hours ago, limith said:

9) Battle of Fredericksburg prelude should have 2 deploy slots instead of 1 for CSA since you don't have skirmisher detachments anymore. That being said, the AI is bad enough that it wasn't an issue, I was able to hold the bridge with only 1 unit. What happened to the flanking unit the AI had?

I missed this one for the Union as well. Though like you noted it's entirely possible to hold with the current numbers. I will update them to be consistent though. The AI still have the same number of units, something must be happening trigger them to attack directly instead of flanking.