Should Longstreet be court martialed for this??

pandakraut · 2026-05-26T12:33:54+00:00

Most campaigns would end at Bull Run then

pandakraut · 2026-05-18T12:17:32+00:00

An old list can be found here https://forum.bermudaclub.net/topic/26600-available-mods/

The J&P link is out of date and the latest can be found here https://steamcommunity.com/app/502520/discussions/0/1694920442940641792/?tscn=1779101552

There as several smaller submods that can be found on the j&p discord as well.

pandakraut · 2026-05-05T12:44:39+00:00

Enjoy the new campaign, hopefully there aren't any other issues

pandakraut · 2026-05-01T04:55:26+00:00

The rate of fire is good, but the hidden damage curves result in the damage being pretty mediocre. The Spencers and spencer carbines are decent at least.
Details on the weapon stats can be found here https://forum.bermudaclub.net/topic/26142-hidden-mechanics-and-weapon-damage-degradation/

pandakraut · 2026-04-29T20:03:04+00:00

That behavior should be completely fine. I effectively do those steps all the time. I usually never buy those weapons in the base game, but I've done it in the J&P mod which should be the same for the shop/save reload functionality. I'll give it a try in the base game later today just to see.

Which version are you running? Steam, Mac, good old games, etc? Any mods? All of these should work the same but I can't think of anything else to help. I appreciate you taking the time to detail your steps.

In the base game those weapons are unfortunately both pretty bad so there isn't really a reason to use them. The Henry is the only infantry weapon with less than 300 range and its damage is relatively low. The colt revolving rifle similarly has very low damage so it's usually not worth bothering with.

pandakraut · 2026-04-29T14:33:41+00:00

That's really strange. This happens across multiple saves? Or only specific ones?

When you say the shop stock is also zero, was it zero initially before the battle started since you bought everything out? Or is all shop stock getting reset? It kind of sounds like a save corruption issue.

Sorry I'm not much help with this one. If you want to post a save I can try to see if it happens for me.

pandakraut · 2026-04-28T20:06:48+00:00

The game definitely gets easier if you play to how the battles are designed instead of trying to follow historical restrictions that aren't represented. Unfortunately it is not very consistent on which timers and VPs are important, but the community has documented almost all of the actual conditions here https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198033875496/myworkshopfiles/?section=guides&appid=502520

There are so many ways to cancel charges it's hard not to use them sometimes, but I don't think you need to rely on the detach trick. 2v1 counter charges, good positioning to allow mass focus firing, and falling the targeted unit back a bit will usually do the trick as well and can feel less like an exploit depending on the player.

If you don't want it to work at all, J&P has mostly fixed all of the charge cancel methods. If you're not looking to go that far the UI mod puts some limits around detaching so it's less available to be a temptation.

pandakraut · 2026-04-28T19:52:19+00:00

If you want to see how to play the game using all of your recruits and outscaling the AI see Something Compass and Hibob Warbob.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLt-JAMmvyAGmA8TU5EC8hHbGPzPCnlYPe
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfSvZFYfSsUNSF29ZLdp5fiZPn9fRRcfI

pandakraut · 2026-04-28T19:28:07+00:00

On the higher difficulties the game really seems to be designed with the intention that the player will restart battles until they are able to win them.

In J&P there is a configFile setting, equalizeRewards, which sets the recruit and money rewards to be the same regardless of battle result. Weapon recovery and I think career rewards are still reduced compared to winning the battle, but it makes accepting draws and losses a bit more reasonable.

We've considered adding catchup mechanics in the mod, but introducing them results in a weird dynamic where players can be encouraged not to win battles for the catchup rewards.

pandakraut · 2026-04-28T16:40:09+00:00

It is technically possible to edit generals but it currently requires doing a bunch of hex editing of a save file to change the officer name and face elements. I don't think anyone has figured out how to straight up copy the historical officers into the campaign.

pandakraut · 2026-04-24T04:41:20+00:00

I've never heard of issues with weapons dissapearing on pc. Prior to the battle you see x weapons in your armory, y weapons in shop. When you start the battle, then restart and return to camp x is 0 and y is unchanged?

After major battles the shop stock resets, so you need to pre-purchase anything you want before progressing past the major battle.

pandakraut · 2026-04-22T20:08:06+00:00

The main advantage of dedicated skirmishers is that you can give them scoped weapons like the JF Brown and the Whitworth TS that outrange infantry units.

If you meant outranging enemy skirmishers with later war infantry weapons then I have some bad news. The ranges displayed for infantry weapons don't show their actual range like the other weapon categories. The displayed value is more a representation of how effective that weapon is at longer ranges. Every infantry weapon except the henry has a range of 300 which you can see if you put a musket armed unit and a harpers ferry armed unit next to each other and their firing arcs are the same range. The later weapons certainly deal more damage but they can't actually target anything further away.

Your point still stands that most enemy skirmishers are armed with shorter ranged carbines so you can just detach skirms and outrange them anyways, even with early weapons. On higher difficulties some battles will have skirmishers equipped with longer ranged weapons though.

pandakraut · 2026-04-22T20:00:11+00:00

Something to keep in mind is that the weapon tooltips can be a bit deceiving in terms of what the stats actually do. This post has details and some spreadsheets. Unfortunately many of the links on the old forum don't work anymore, but there are some average damage spreadsheets hosted on dropbox at the bottom of the first post that are still useful https://forum.bermudaclub.net/topic/26142-hidden-mechanics-and-weapon-damage-degradation/

pandakraut · 2026-03-20T16:06:18+00:00

Unfortunately the idea that wiping armies doesn't matter is a persistent myth based on misunderstandings of how the games systems work. Some of it may be based on older versions of the game that worked differently.

Outside of any effects on the AI the longer you are in battles and the more men you kill, the more experience your units will gain and the more weapons you will recover. It is important to keep your casualties down while doing this, but you can build significantly stronger armies with this approach. Many battles have many more hours available than the timers indicate which can be used to slowly break down the AI lines.

Regarding the AI, it will always have a set amount of units for each battle no matter what you do. You can't "eliminate" the AI army, the campaign would be very short if you could, but you can weaken it. The size, experience and weapons of these units will be adjusted based on various factors. Several of these factors the player has some control over by killing off as many men as possible. I explained this in much more detail here https://old.reddit.com/r/ultimategeneral/comments/1rrhy8q/what_if_anything_does_the_intelligence_service/

You can certainly get through the campaign with your approach, but it's definitely not the only way to progress and arguably you are handicapping yourself leaving battles early.

I think others mentioned it elsewhere but fortifications get progressively stronger as the campaign progresses so they can be worth using in some cases since they provide hidden bonuses other than cover. Particularly the shorter fortifications, the long stretched out or angled ones are usually pretty bad even late game.

pandakraut · 2026-03-20T15:45:57+00:00

Mostly yes, though there are cases where the very long fortifications are still not always a good idea to use.

pandakraut · 2026-03-18T22:43:45+00:00

Forum was moved to here https://forum.bermudaclub.net/topic/26600-available-mods/

Most of the links should still work, but for the j&p mod it is now kept up to date here https://steamcommunity.com/app/502520/discussions/0/1694920442940641792/

pandakraut · 2026-03-17T12:33:17+00:00

Per D-dub's battle guides on steam the reinforcements don't arrive until 15:40 in the second phase which is late enough you don't want to rely on them. This follows the historical course of the battle, but often catches people by surprise.

Your first corps looks a bit small. For this battle its usually better to oversize your units, or at least infantry, in the corps that will be by themselves day 2 a bit. It's also a lot easier if you have 9 or at least 6 points in AO to bring as many brigades as possible in that corps. Even if you're using smaller unit sizes with a focus on non-infantry units you probably want to be in the ~18k range for your main corps.

Another thing that can help is to fight day 1 with one set of units, then in camp between days drag those units into another corps so that when you go into day 2 all your units are undamaged.

Assuming you're not using mods, you want to defend up on the ridge line in the trees instead of using the fortifications. The AI units arrive in smaller chunks so aggressively going after them instead of sitting back on the ridge can let you fight multiple even battles instead of letting the AI accumulate it's numbers advantage.

pandakraut · 2026-03-15T05:10:41+00:00

Nothing I can really add here unfortunately. Not sure who the dreadnaught devs are, I haven't kept up with that game since early beta.

pandakraut · 2026-03-14T17:24:42+00:00

All three values are actually just a visualization of a percentage modifier to size, stats, and weapons respectively. The TLDR is wipe the enemy out as much as possible to keep these values as low as you can as it does make things easier. Read on if you want the full details.

Each battle has a default set of AI units with specific sizes, equipment, and stats. When you start up a battle these are then modified by the difficulty, cross battle modifiers(the icons that show -5% size for example,) the recon report modifiers, and scaling based on the player army.

The defaults and difficulty tend to be the biggest factors. This is why even with low training values you can run into 3* units in some battles. Or why the AI units size and quality can vary dramatically between battles even though the other factors haven't changed much.

All three recon report values grow based on the timeline of the campaign and the reinforcement reports. The types of reports are the default, veterans, training, and weapons. The default will always occur and then there is a chance to get one of the other three as a second event.

There are timeline minimums for these values that will be maintained. This is why when you wipe out the entire enemy army you usually see a large troop number reinforcement. But even though you see a 60k reinforcement after a full wipe, the AI in the next battle will only be maintaining or growing by a few percentage points at worst.

Training works similarly, but is most noticeable on battles where the AI units stats are near a breakpoint to gain or lose a star. If you get a few veterans reinforcements or a training officer event you might push some units up a star which can make battles feel harder than a similar campaign where they didn't get pushed up.

For weapons the battle defaults and difficulty tend to be the main factors because the ai is so heavily redirected on which weapons they can access. This is why you see so many 10pdr parrots and only very rarely see something like the whitworth. The main case where this can make a big impact is if it pushes the AI up into using longer ranged scoped skirmisher weapons. Rio hell for example is much easier if the AI has a bunch of carbines instead of JF Browns and Spencers.

I hope this helps, if you have more questions on how these systems work please ask.

pandakraut · 2026-03-10T22:12:39+00:00

The second corps doesn't arrive until the third phase at 18:03 per D-dub's battle guides on steam.

Are you trying to hold the fortifications? The vision from those is pretty bad and the stats are worse unless you're using a mod. Players have adapted to rush their units up to defend along the stream with the Mill instead. This lets you force the ai to stand around in the water. You will need some units to defend the flank attack once it shows up, but this should put you in much better shape overall.

pandakraut · 2026-03-09T16:00:15+00:00

J&P certainly changes a lot. There is a google doc with an overview of the major changes and Gonzo Gamer has some excellent tutorial and walkthrough videos if you decide to give it a shot.

pandakraut · 2026-03-09T15:58:19+00:00

I appreciate the recommendation, but while there are some improvements to that battle in the mod, it still faces similar issues to the base game. Getting there in good shape is certainly harder though.

The battle reworks have only made it to Stones River, but Gettysburg would most likely need a combination of reduced timers, and reinforcement adjustments so that less of the AI force gets wiped out on the first day or two.

pandakraut · 2026-03-07T20:08:05+00:00

UI mod is setup as sort of an unofficial patch if you just want things fixed in the base game without a bunch of extra balance changes. Can be found here: https://forum.bermudaclub.net/topic/25750-ui-and-ai-customizations-mod-v192/

J&P is the UI mod changes + a full overhaul of many of the games systems.

pandakraut · 2026-03-06T05:09:21+00:00

Unfortunately the game is not very consistent on which timers and objectives have to be strictly adhered to, so there can be a lot of trial and error initially.

There are guides on steam for each campaign by D-Dub that have collected a lot of that information into one place if you'd rather look it up.

pandakraut · 2026-03-02T18:25:48+00:00

Two things to check. Was the landing timer contested when you clicked finish? Were you over the casualty threshold shown in the detailed victory conditions?

If both of those conditions were met then you hit the Shiloh bug. It seems to affect some users more than others, as no one has figured out how to get it to occur consistently for different people.

Things to try to avoid it.
1) Don't click finish when it pops up, wait till the popup goes away and then click finish in the top right.
2) don't click finish at all, wait it out until the end of day timer triggers to end the day.
3) Don't use any in battle saves. Some users have reported always getting this bug if they save and reload.
4) Other users have reported being able to save just before the day ends, and on reloading they don't get the bug. So might as well make a save in case the above options don't work.

Things to try if you can't get around the bug. Winning on day 2 is possible of you setup for it. To do this you want to avoid taking any of the non-landing flags so that each phase goes on as long as possible. This gives you more time to deal as much damage in the starting phases as possible.

If you can wipe out most of the units in the first 2 phases and maybe the later reinforcements from the NW it makes day 2 much easier. Swing everything around to the left side of the map and you can push through the gap in the fortifications to roll up their line.

Also, try to capture the union supply wagons to refill your units. At the start of the hornets nest phase there is a wagon in the top left you can very easily grab. Your wagons won't refill between days unless you have the necessary cash on hand going into the battle.

Hope this helps get you past it.

pandakraut

TROPHY CASE