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


JonnyH13

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17 hours ago, pandakraut said:

10% may seem small but it's definitely enough to keep campaigns going. Even on legendary you'll end up with far more weapons than you can reasonably field and will end up selling off the excess.

Respectfully disagree with "far more weapons" ... which is in part why I've pursued this thread.  I inflict significant casualties, but the 'recovered' payback is inadequate imo.

17 hours ago, pandakraut said:

In most cases I never buy rifles except in very limited quantities and survive entirely off of captured and rep buy weapons.

ditto - but ... as noted above.  Now it's very tight.

 

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Wanted to give an update.

Way past Shilo now. Currently working on Chancellorsville. 

So far my only a few complaints. First is the a.i. never seems to take advantage if its numbers. 2nd is the a.i. never brings enough ammo. 3rd is the ai calvary and skrims will run away from you when you make an attack command with a unseen/hidden unit.

 

@dixiePig just from my play style on MG level i have not had any problems with equipment, except right after Shilo. Although i have noticed the AI loves to use Spencers, SF61 and 10lb parrot/ordinance. While it does stink to only recover 10% of the weapons, the current formula works and makes it a fun and a challenge to keep your men well equipped. Im drowning in cannons by the way. But my biggest problem is commander xp gain, but i know how to fix that now. 

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6 hours ago, Lach said:

So far my only a few complaints. First is the a.i. never seems to take advantage if its numbers. 2nd is the a.i. never brings enough ammo. 3rd is the ai calvary and skrims will run away from you when you make an attack command with a unseen/hidden unit.

Item #1 is currently highly dependent on the battle AI settings and difficulty. The battles where the AI is set to be aggressive can be pretty punishing. But when the AI is set to be passive it becomes possible to wipe them out nearly for free. It's something Jonny is trying to fix, but it's slow going.

#2 On the list to fix. I need to see if I can generically change this so that every single wagon doesn't have to be edited in the assets file.

#3 Nothing I can do about this one. You can somewhat get around it by moving a unit into range and letting them auto target instead of manually targeting. Not always feasible though.

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On 5/3/2018 at 10:21 AM, pandakraut said:

@quicksabre Do these steps work for you?

1) In your Steam games list, right click Ultimate General: Civil War and select properties
2) Click on the Local Files tab in the window that opened updated
3) Then select the Browse Local Files option, this will open a window to the location the game is installed at
4) Extract the mod zip in the Ultimate General Civil War_Data directory

Otherwise I think this is the path? I don't have a mac to test on. /Users/(YOUR USERNAME HERE)/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/(NAME OF YOUR GAME FOLDER)/Ultimate General Civil War_data

I'm having trouble installing the mod. I've got a mac, and I opened the zip in the Data folder, but I've still got the old version. Would you mind helping me out? 

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Hi! How can I replace the conditions of victory in Shiloh so that the battle ends on the first day? Over the KSA, the Northerners surrounded the right flank, and on their left flank reached Pittsburgh-Leding and captured it. However, the game believes that I lost and throws me away on the second day. What needs to be edited to make victory possible on the first day?

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2 hours ago, GeKeSich said:

Hi! How can I replace the conditions of victory in Shiloh so that the battle ends on the first day? Over the KSA, the Northerners surrounded the right flank, and on their left flank reached Pittsburgh-Leding and captured it. However, the game believes that I lost and throws me away on the second day. What needs to be edited to make victory possible on the first day?

Two conditions have to be met to win on day 1. You cannot lose more than 75% of your army(this includes the allied forces) and the Pittsburg Landing VP must be fully controlled(cannot be contested). 

It is recommended that you not click finish when the option pops up and let the battle run until it ends automatically. There is a bug where clicking finish can cause the battle to go to day 2 incorrectly. This is not something we can fix.

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On 9/30/2019 at 3:36 PM, Lach said:

@dixiePig just from my play style on MG level i have not had any problems with equipment, except right after Shilo.

Agreed, Lach:  Shiloh definitely is the tipping point.  It's also the moment when - as Confederates - you start developing an army which is larger than 1 corps. And after that you also no longer have "allied" troops on the field to help.

But that's all merely an artifact of 'growth' in the game.  You fight 2 major battles in the early going:

  • In Bull Run you contribute barely a division, yet control a huge army
  • Ditto Shiloh - where you contribute barely a corps.

Therefore: The 'spoils of war' you collect up to that point are disproportionately advantageous - You get lotsa guns while risking few troops, because your 'allied' troops (the overwhelming majority of your army in both of those major battles) contribute highly to your total haul.  You get an artificial bump.  Helps (a lot) with the army-building in the early daze.  Fun from a playability perspective (I love getting all those "free" goodies, too):  But the system just doesn't work well over the long term.

Smaller battles (River Fort, Newport News, and Ambush) also give you a troop bump - and artificially high spoils of war' during the early going.  In fact, Stay Alert, is the only early battle during the first 2 campaigns in which you fight with only your own forces. (BTW:  I'll wager that, if you received "spoils" from only the few troops that you have in your own Army during the early campaigns, there would be plenty of complaints about the percentages.)

It's true, Lach:  'Spoils of War' become a problem after Shiloh because the game isn't providing you with that artificial boost any more.

Best of luck in fixing this glitch.  I've already made a couple of reasonable observations.  Another way of looking at the issue is to view the campaigns after Shiloh as the 'real' game (when you're on your own, without artificial bumps) and engineer your rebalance to work well with that.  Then come up with some reasonable fixes to deal with the initial 'artificially enhanced' part of the game during the early build period between River Fort and Shiloh.

Edited by dixiePig
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On 9/9/2019 at 9:04 AM, pandakraut said:

In many cases I spent as much or more time in camp than I do on the battle screen when figuring out how to optimize my setup.

#meToo.  Setup & management can be frustrating.

I recently sent several units with extremely high xp into battle, on the assumption that a few of them would 'level-up' as a result.  Only one did (and only barely).  Perhaps just bad luck - but is there anything that will increase likelihood of an xp level-up? 

And I'll repeat the newest version of a previous observation: 

  • Just entering Antietam in a new game
  • Have army with 55 brigades in 12 divisions in 3 corps
  • Have 51 Active Colonels, 12 Lt Colonels, 3 Major Generals, and NO Brigadier Generals
  • This is a glitch

Update:

Just finished Antietam:

  • 25 new promotions
  • Plenty of new Colonels
  • At this point in the game (17 battles, 6 major battles) there have still  been no - as in zero - promotions to Brigadier General

I really enjoy your mod.  It has many great features and improvements.  But - Please address this issue. It is a real problem.

 

Edited by dixiePig
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Unit xp and officer xp is based on stat gain in battle. If stats are not increasing you will not see much xp gain for the unit and the commanding officer will also not gain much xp.

If you want to increase the stat gain rates those variables can be found at the bottom of the unitModifiers config file.

 

Edited by pandakraut
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Buying weapons for reputation has been critical in building my 1st Corp, but up to a certain point. Most of my 2nd and 3rd Corp have been built on hand me downs from 1st Corp or "spoils" weapons. I only have one brigade that still uses muskets which is for situations where i need to soak a charge. 

I attribute most of my sucess after Shilo to 3 types of units.

1) 400 man scoped Whitworth unit. Started off as my rangers with the 1st perk going into cover/speed. the 2 and 3 perks going into accuracy/stealth/range perks. Up to 2 of theses units. Currently at Chancellorsville.  These units can easily rake up 5k+ kills in a battle.

2) 1000 man grenzer units. Eventually evolved into 2 and then 3 and then 4 and then 5 different Grenzers/Ranger units. These units are borderline over powered. First perk is alway speed/cover.  These units are able to take so much fire with so little casulties. Allows your main line infantry todo the real damage while taking little to no damage. Later with accuracy perks or sniping they can become almost as dangerous as a dedicated snipper unit.

3) Whitworth, James and 4.5 seige cannons. These are just fantastic in all engagements. Need i say more?

@dixiePig i noticed i am actually getting more weapons after Shilo on my own and my casualty rate is way down. Even at Antietam i suffered less than 6k casulties. What are your casualty rates looling like? 

After Shilo the next battle that was rough was Cross Keys, until i figured it out. Took me like 10 tries. Being super aggressive does not work here. After Cross Keys it has been challening and fun. 

 

 

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7 hours ago, Radek said:

Doesnt work for me , got stuck on a black screen with a pointer  :D made me reinstall the game ... :D 

This means that the config files did not end up in the right place. They should be at ultimate general civil war_data/mod/rebalance

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On 9/22/2019 at 5:06 AM, dixiePig said:

Each historical commander has his own profile of strengths and weaknesses. Those should inform the perks that they bring to the units they command.

 

 

That was one of my biggest complaints about the base game, and one I was very sad to see never got addressed. There should be a large amount of different possible combinations of randomized traits that commanders had. (Faster marcher, cautious attacker, defensive expert, etc to come up with some examples). I think it would  have given much more character and flavor to the campaign where you created your own army. You might lose a division commander and be absolutely  horrified because he was your best general.


The other half of it, is that historical commanders purchased by reputation would have had historically accurate traits assigned. Now, there's a good reason to spend reputation points on generals like Jackson or Sherman, because they're going to be better than the officers you typically get.

 

I suggested this in feedback, but sadly it was never implemented.

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6 hours ago, Lord Robert Calder said:

There should be a large amount of different possible combinations of randomized traits that commanders had. (Faster marcher, cautious attacker, defensive expert, etc to come up with some examples). I think it would  have given much more character and flavor to the campaign where you created your own army. You might lose a division commander and be absolutely  horrified because he was your best general.


The other half of it, is that historical commanders purchased by reputation would have had historically accurate traits assigned. Now, there's a good reason to spend reputation points on generals like Jackson or Sherman, because they're going to be better than the officers you typically get.

Thanks for expressing some consensus on the issue, Robert. It's always nice to get an upvote on good suggestions. Both are needed here.

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On 10/3/2019 at 11:44 PM, Lach said:

 

@dixiePig i noticed i am actually getting more weapons after Shilo on my own and my casualty rate is way down. Even at Antietam i suffered less than 6k casulties. What are your casualty rates looling like? 

After Shilo the next battle that was rough was Cross Keys, until i figured it out. Took me like 10 tries. Being super aggressive does not work here. After Cross Keys it has been challening and fun. 

 

I've returned to playing 'moderate' level, @Lach , as the absurdly low 10% weapon recovery rate in 'difficult' level was annoying and did not result in superior playability, imo.  I believe that my analysis re artificially high weapon recovery in early campaigns leading up to Shiloh (due to large proportion of 'allied' units) is accurate, but have received no feedback on it as yet.  Kind of doubt that game behavior will change ... we move on

Your 6K casualties at Antietam sound low:  How many total troops did you have on each side? My most recent Antietam was my 56K confederates vs 115K Union.  I lost 25k and they lost 84K.

The battles themselves have become draining slugfests - which is historically accurate

As Confederates, I ramp up on artillery and assume a 'mobile defense' posture, so as to inflict max casualties, while incurring as few as possible and still fulfilling Victory conditions.  The ai abets me in this process by attacking stupidly/relentlessly.

My own 'aggressiveness' in most instances seems to be :

  1. seize advantageous position and then allow the enemy to deplete themselves
  2. use detached skirmishers to disrupt enemy formations by flanking and distraction
  3. use cavalry extensively as souped-up skirmishers, for quick response, and esp. to harass behind enemy lines (capture supplies & destroy artillery)

In fact, cavalry units were rarely used in historical set piece battles of the Civil War.  Mostly: infantry and artillery lined up and blasted away until somebody blinked.  Cavalry was reconnaissance and raiding.  Rarely was there a 'glorious charge' in the midst of a large battle.

It will be interesting to see if Pandakraut and Johnny alter the game dynamics by adjusting casualty rates & morale effects

 

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8 hours ago, dixiePig said:

 

I've returned to playing 'moderate' level, @Lach , as the absurdly low 10% weapon recovery rate in 'difficult' level was annoying and did not result in superior playability, imo.  I believe that my analysis re artificially high weapon recovery in early campaigns leading up to Shiloh (due to large proportion of 'allied' units) is accurate, but have received no feedback on it as yet.  Kind of doubt that game behavior will change ... we move on

Your 6K casualties at Antietam sound low:  How many total troops did you have on each side? My most recent Antietam was my 56K confederates vs 115K Union.  I lost 25k and they lost 84k

 

@dixiePig

If i recall the numbers were roughly 45k to 98k. I lost around 6k and union lost abput 60k.

I was able ro keep the union out in the open while my units mostly remained in cover. I was able to take out most of thier artillery right at the start of the battle and or before they got inro firing position with my snipers and rangers and my Whitworth battery. Whitworths have insane range. 

Again i cannot stress the importance of Snipers, rangers and grenzers. I was able to have a 3* sniper and 3 2* rangers/genzers for this battle.

At sunken lane i had a bunch of artillery which just melted the union infatry out in the open. At the bridge to the south of the sunken lane i was again able to stop the union dead in their tracks with 3 artillery , 3 infantry and 1 grenzer unit.

The part where i took the most casulties was the union counter attack east of the town. There having to mop up everything i tooe about 3.5k casulties. Having to move up hill out in the open in both directions sucked.

 

How large are your units? I only user 1.2k for.my rifle units and 1.3k for my muskets at this battle. I keep my artillery at 12 cannon each. Remeber the bigger yoyr units the bigger the randomly generates units are. The biggest unit i have encountered so far is around 2.6.

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On 10/3/2019 at 11:14 PM, pandakraut said:

Unit xp and officer xp is based on stat gain in battle. If stats are not increasing you will not see much xp gain for the unit and the commanding officer will also not gain much xp.

If you want to increase the stat gain rates those variables can be found at the bottom of the unitModifiers config file.

Am spending time with config files:

  • surprised to see that brigadeOfficerExperienceMultiplier was set exceptionally low at 0.8 - no wonder there was no advancement at Colonel level
  • Have also upped artilleryCanisterImpact because ... history & common sense
  • surprised to see nearbyUnitsMoraleRegenBonus set so low : "There stands Jackson like a stone wall!" (1st Bull Run) is not an isolated example
  • curious to see modest number on attackFactorFlanks - This was devastating, both psychologically and in terms of damage on units massed in line formation

Have scratched my head at sludge-like slowness of artillery units.  They move far more slowly than marching infantry - yet they were overwhelmingly horse-drawn units by the time of the Civil war.  Is there a justification for the low level of mediumArtillerySpeedMultiplier?  If anything, they should move far more quickly than infantry units.

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On 9/27/2019 at 11:04 AM, pandakraut said:

Weapon Recovery Rates
Colonel difficulty rates
    Win - supplyCapturePercent: 0.5 - weaponCapturePercent: 0.3 - weaponCaptureUnitPercent: .5 - weaponSavePercent: 0.5 - alliedUnitAlivePercent: 0.625
    Draw - supplyCapturePercent: 0.5 - weaponCapturePercent: 0.15 - weaponCaptureUnitPercent: .5 - weaponSavePercent: 0.3 - alliedUnitAlivePercent: 0.425
    Loss - supplyCapturePercent: 0.5 - weaponCapturePercent: 0.05 - weaponCaptureUnitPercent: .5 - weaponSavePercent2: 0.1 - alliedUnitAlivePercent: 0.225
Brigadier General difficulty rates
    Win - supplyCapturePercent: 0.5 - weaponCapturePercent: 0.2 - weaponCaptureUnitPercent: 0.375 - weaponSavePercent: 0.5 - alliedUnitAlivePercent: 0.625
    Draw - supplyCapturePercent: 0.5 - weaponCapturePercent: 0.15 - weaponCaptureUnitPercent: 0.375 - weaponSavePercent: 0.25 - alliedUnitAlivePercent: 0.375
    Loss - supplyCapturePercent: 0.5 - weaponCapturePercent: 0.05 - weaponCaptureUnitPercent: 0.375 - weaponSavePercent: 0.1 - alliedUnitAlivePercent: 0.225
Major General and Legendary
    Win - supplyCapturePercent: 0.5 - weaponCapturePercent: 0.1 - weaponCaptureUnitPercent: 0.25 - weaponSavePercent: 0.3 - alliedUnitAlivePercent: 0.425
    Draw - supplyCapturePercent: 0.5 - weaponCapturePercent: 0.05 - weaponCaptureUnitPercent: 0.25 - weaponSavePercent: 0.15 - alliedUnitAlivePercent: 0.275
    Loss - supplyCapturePercent: 0.5 - weaponCapturePercent: 0.05 - weaponCaptureUnitPercent: 0.25 - weaponSavePercent: 0.1 - alliedUnitAlivePercent: 0.225

Is there any way for me as a player to adjust these values? - other than by selecting easy/moderate/hard levels?

From what I see in threads here, no one really uses the easy level.  It appears that moderate and hard are the only practical options.

Edited by dixiePig
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What impact does capturing enemy supply have?

It is useful to disrupt and deprive enemy of their supply in battle (which the ai manages rather stupidly - the wagons often march directly into harm's way)

Captured Supply is listed among my 'spoils of war', Yet I see no net result in my army supply after the battle

...?

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On 10/6/2019 at 10:02 AM, dixiePig said:

What impact does capturing enemy supply have?

It is useful to disrupt and deprive enemy of their supply in battle (which the ai manages rather stupidly - the wagons often march directly into harm's way)

Captured Supply is listed among my 'spoils of war', Yet I see no net result in my army supply after the battle

...?

The AI units receive the same penalties for being out of ammo as player units. Reloading speed is cut by about 2/3 which results in much higher condition drain due to the increased time spent reloading. 

Captured supply is converted directly into money rather being added into your supply amount.

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On 10/6/2019 at 9:56 AM, dixiePig said:

Is there any way for me as a player to adjust these values? - other than by selecting easy/moderate/hard levels?

From what I see in threads here, no one really uses the easy level.  It appears that moderate and hard are the only practical options.

These values are not configurable and making them be so is prohibitively difficult for technical reasons. There are a few players who play on Col, generally players who are very new to the game. BG and MG is probably the majority of the player base with maybe 20% playing on legendary. Just my impressions haven't actually tried to come up with numbers. The mod is primarily designed and tested around legendary with some accommodations made for the lower difficulties to try and keep them mostly playable for those who don't enjoy the legendary experience.

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On 10/6/2019 at 9:33 AM, dixiePig said:

Am spending time with config files:

  • surprised to see that brigadeOfficerExperienceMultiplier was set exceptionally low at 0.8 - no wonder there was no advancement at Colonel level
  • Have also upped artilleryCanisterImpact because ... history & common sense
  • surprised to see nearbyUnitsMoraleRegenBonus set so low : "There stands Jackson like a stone wall!" (1st Bull Run) is not an isolated example
  • curious to see modest number on attackFactorFlanks - This was devastating, both psychologically and in terms of damage on units massed in line formation

Have scratched my head at sludge-like slowness of artillery units.  They move far more slowly than marching infantry - yet they were overwhelmingly horse-drawn units by the time of the Civil war.  Is there a justification for the low level of mediumArtillerySpeedMultiplier?  If anything, they should move far more quickly than infantry units.

The most important thing to remember here is that there is no context provided by the config files. 

brigadeOfficerExperienceMultiplier: As I have mentioned multiple times. Officer xp growth has been slowed down in the mod because it is far to fast in the base game. There are multiple mechanics available to gain xp very quickly but you appear to be actively ignoring them given the rate of promotion in your campaigns.

artilleryCanisterImpact: canister damage is already extremely potent with the right perks, but feel free to tweak as desired. I am travelling and don't have access to the code at the moment but this may be a morale damage only multiplier.

nearbyUnitsMoraleRegenBonus: While this number may appear to be small it is actually fairly significant when compared to other morale regen modifiers in the game. It also stacks multiple times which prohibits using much larger numbers.

attackFactorFlanks: These numbers tie into the overall damage from weapons, perks etc. A full volley from a well setup unit will often rout anything less than a 2* brigade in a single round so I would recommend being careful with how much you increase this.

Regarding artillery units: Keep in mind that movement speed perks heavily factor in here. If you want artillery to be faster than infantry take the horse artillery perk. Artillery is also extremely powerful in game and it's slow speed is one of the necessary downsides.

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