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

[watcher144]

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!!!!

[pandakraut]

That sounds like you probably have the wrong folder. Make sure you're in ultimate general civil war_DATA

 

Here is an old install guide video that should still work as well

https://youtu.be/QQr4BN3i8zw?si=HcLHCOYig9Zbi0Zn

 

[Rubinfan]

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.

Edited May 13 by Rubinfan

[Rubinfan]

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). 

Edited May 18 by Rubinfan

[pandakraut]

On 5/12/2024 at 11:02 PM, Rubinfan said:

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. 

 

Congrats at getting through Union Shiloh on legendary at all. Not many people have been able to.

Giving up the VP early in either first or second phase results in your reinforcements being delayed by however much time was skipped when the phase ends early. So in both phases you want to try to hold the VP for the majority of the time limit. I tend to fall back behind them with around 15-20 minutes remaining.

Unfortunately, it's not possible to adjust the spawn points based on where the player has positioned their units and this specific spawn cannot be made to have units walk on from the map edge. So it is necessary to delay the AI units long enough for these units to make it to the field and be repositioned to wherever you want to defend from.

On 5/12/2024 at 11:02 PM, Rubinfan said:

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.

This is one of the downsides of not retreating to the landing as it leaves the AI units further away from where your reinforcements arrive. You were still able to nearly wipe out all of the AI units and that is how the timers are generally setup. Enough time to get close, but short enough that you are under pressure to get a full clear and have to judge if the extra casualties are worth doing so. As opposed to prior versions of the mod where you had so much time that you could cleanup for basically free.

On 5/12/2024 at 11:02 PM, Rubinfan said:

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?

I buy every single BG and high level colonel officer the game offers in the leadup to Shiloh. These officers allow you to get more 1* units which is one of the biggest power spikes you can get early game. I'll use the rep buy officers for this purpose as well. I rarely spend money on infantry weapons this early except what I need to top off units.

For Shiloh getting another 1* is usually better than keeping command high enough for 10 or so points of efficiency, so I'll put the bare minimum officer in div command if it gets me a better brigade.

Another thing you can do is disband Walton, or one of your other starting brigades, and use those veterans to create multiple strong units of other types. Since it's not possible to get Walton to 3* by Shiloh anymore, this is what I'll often do.

For comparison Forefall went into Shiloh with four 2*s and ten 1*s.
I went into Shiloh with three 2*s and 18 1*s

Forefall's campaign is on a slightly older version, so there will be some differences, but he also plays ironman so that evens things out a little bit https://youtu.be/lqW-75A5zrA?list=PLF9w8nYzOAnweSC1uRFura2d0d_Mzm7d-

If you haven't seen it already, Gonzo Gamers videos are also full of good information on how to min/max unit xp. Though he plays on MG so you'll have to adapt things a bit since it's harder to be as precise as he is with keeping casualties down. down. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl4SUThfUcx1nI0f7fm9Hcw

 

Edited May 22 by pandakraut

[Mr. Jan]

Good afternoon guys and thank you very much for all your work on this mod. I have already played the campaigns for several times, never facing any serious problems (however, I am no professional player, typically playing just the middle difficulty - brigade general).

Nonetheless, not long ago I have started to go through the separated "historical battles" and I am quite astonished by the huge quality gap between the Union and Confederate army at Stones River. Most units in rebel forces are 2- or 3-star while the Union army does not have a single unit other than completely green (zero-star). In middle difficulty (BG) the confederate army at Stones River seems to be by far better than any other rebel army in all the previous battles.

Am I wrong in thinking that this is, historically, very incorrect? Or am I missing something?

I do not consider myself to be expert in American civil war, but Stones River was technically the first major engagement for B. Bragg´s army which itself was probably never considered to be a great battle force.

Or is it some kind of bug?

I am avare of the fact that historical battles are not the centre of your focus, but still, I am asking out of curiosity.

Thanks!

Update: and the other way around, the battle is ridiculously easy if you play as CSA. I completely destroyed the federal army (20 000 captured + 21 000 other casualties), losing only around 3500 soldiers. Nonsense.

Moreover, army numbers do not seem to be fine, either. Reliable historical sources agree that Bragg´s army consisted of around 35 000 soldiers, in the game, however, confederate numbers go even up to around 47 500.

The design of the battle is screwed up, obviously.

 

Edited Tuesday at 08:15 AM by Mr. Jan
Adding some new information.

[TFL117]

In the original game environment, the cost of veterans is equivalent to purchasing troop attributes.

In your mod game environment, veterans mainly come from disbanded participating troops and wounded soldiers who have been medically restored, and do not purchase troop attributes.

I think veterans should be free, or at least there should be a setting option.

The time span between campaigns is very long, and it is reasonable to reorganize the troops. Why pay so much money? AI can always get a large number of experienced and balanced troops, but I have to use troops with very different levels. This is an unnecessary restriction.

To let a line infantry who is good at melee combat transfer to melee cavalry, you need to pay extremely expensive veteran fees. And using useless recruits to form melee cavalry makes people feel at a loss.

At present, the training income is too low, especially the upper limit is too low, there is no desire to add points, and the upper limit of the training soldier's attributes should be increased.

[pandakraut]

Adding veterans to units is still extremely strong, especially transferring them from one unit type to another, so I think a cost is reasonable. Investing in training allows you to reduce this cost considerably as well. You can also merge units for free by dragging a unit of the same type and equipped weapon onto another unit in the same division at no cost.

High investment in training and medicine can be very strong. Gonzo gamer is working on a video series of it currently.

In the config file there is a veteran cost multiplier. I believe that only applies to the non-infantry veteran costs, but you could lower that value to reduce the costs overall.

The aiconfigfile also provides a variety of options for lowering the stats of ai units if desired.

[Berni_1986]

Hi. pls help me.

i played Civil War 661 hours, with mod and without.  I played Confederates at difficulty Brigadier General, at the beginning it was hard, then it goes easier. No problem to finish.

So i decided to play Unions on Major General  "light difficulty" Malvern Hill was the End for me (no change coming from every corner ).

 

Played it again, better mission outcomes, yeah nice. Now im at Shiloh, tried it 2 times, i cant even reach pittsburg landing without wiped out completely! They charging  me to the ground, like conditions are not existing. 

i cant flank because there are everywhere 😒

is this that difficulty or is that too hard or is there a bug? is there anybody making videos too learn or whatever.

 

i want to win because i love this game/mod and i freaking out about failing.

 

in vanilla i finished it at majo general, so i want du succeed with the mod at least at major general "light difficulty"

 

greetings to the great team, thanks for your work.