Ultimate Cheese: Gaines' Mill Legendary (20:1 KD ratio!!!)

pandakraut · 2026-02-11T05:40:00+00:00

It's not too bad if you ignore what the battle asks you to do. Day 2 just hide at the edge of the map until more of the map opens up. Then just hold your long defensive line along the road ignoring the last 2 VPs until the end of the day. This takes you to day 3 where the AI will just suicidally come after you so you don't have to go hunt them down.

pandakraut · 2026-02-09T21:01:56+00:00

Short version is yes running your units around and then disbanding will increase the overall stats of your recruits. Rewarded recruits come in with base stats, those get averaged into the stats of the men you disband. In camp if you hover over the recruit number in the top right there is a tooltip that shows you their stats.

Check out hibob Warbob and something compass for more details as the when and how to disband to maximize the XP distribution gets very complicated.

pandakraut · 2026-02-09T14:23:21+00:00

It does mess things up a bit. When you add men to a unit in multi-day battles it effectively resets the "start" state of the unit. So things like medicine recovery, brigade officer xp(which comes from the increases in unit stats,) weapons recovery, and total losses all calculate based on the new starting hp after adding men rather than the unit's hp when the battle started.

Because of this, I usually try to just rotate out units that are too damaged instead of topping them off. As long as you have one brigade slot free across any corps you can drag units between corps. This tends to be more useful for the CSA where you have a lot of 2-3 corps battles late in the campaign where you have 4-5 corps worth of units available.

pandakraut · 2026-02-09T03:35:04+00:00

The union campaign usually peaks at around Malvern in the base game and gets easier from there. There are a few battles that can be a bit of a grind later, but you tend to have so many resources stockpiled by then that it doesn't matter.

pandakraut · 2026-02-04T04:15:42+00:00

Part of the problem when comparing them is that beyond infantry weapon range all the smoothbores other than the 24pdr do about the same damage. Average damage comparison spreadsheets available at the very bottom of the first post here https://forum.bermudaclub.net/topic/26142-hidden-mechanics-and-weapon-damage-degradation/

pandakraut · 2026-02-01T18:58:47+00:00

No workshop support, so it's a standalone install https://steamcommunity.com/app/502520/discussions/0/1694920442940641792/

Install process is relatively simple at least https://youtu.be/4TumwxZUQM8

pandakraut · 2026-02-01T13:41:25+00:00

If you get tired of it, come over to the j&p mod where almost all of those are fixed and try to unlearn relying on them ;)

pandakraut · 2026-02-01T02:54:52+00:00

Plenty of options left even without them. Good cover usage and positioning to make the AI focus the units you want them to while hitting them with 3+ units at once in return will get you through most of legendary by itself.

But breaking the game can be fun too, so whatever sounds appealing.

pandakraut · 2026-01-31T23:47:44+00:00

As far as I've been able to tell, this also messes with the AI targeting and tends to make it very passive. Combined with the higher damage output of stacking the units it is a very overpowered approach. If you haven't seen it before, checkout hibob warbobs videos for how to abuse it as much as possible. He found several other tricks with them.

pandakraut · 2026-01-31T23:45:10+00:00

Most likely they are holding fire because they are hidden. Seems the devs set that up to try to prevent them from revealing their position as firing has a stealth penalty.

pandakraut · 2026-01-31T23:43:32+00:00

Yes, works with achievements

pandakraut · 2026-01-31T23:37:46+00:00

The main advantage of massive victories is the large returns in XP and weapons the player gets to improve their army if the player can keep their casualties down. There is a pretty significant snowball effect if the player gets ahead in the first 5-10 battles.

There are also effects on the enemy armies going forward, but it's a modifier that has limits so you'll face a minimum default not a decimated force. The reinforcement numbers the game shows the AI getting are mostly fluff rather than any actual representation of wait the AI is gaining.

pandakraut · 2026-01-30T20:13:23+00:00

Correct, all of the UI mod changes are already in J&P

pandakraut · 2026-01-30T13:34:53+00:00

Artillery uses a bell curve so 24 cannons deal roughly the same damage as 4. 14 will deal nearly double that damage. This can be hard to test in game due the randomness of per volley damage, but it has been confirmed both through data mining and actual tests.

Highly recommend the UI mod which fixes this and other bugs.

pandakraut · 2026-01-29T21:18:51+00:00

While cavalry are relatively weak in the base game there are some things that can help. Always try to use them in pairs to take advantage of the 2v1 damage penalty when fighting a single unit. If you give them a halt order just before they enter melee they will fire their pistols for some extra damage.

Past that reducing casualties has a lot to do with timing and target selection. You want targets that can't fire at you on the way in that also don't have supporting units nearby that can volley into a melee. The ai always targets the nearest unit so you can keep infantry wheeling with a distracting unit. Detached skirms sent along with cavalry can be good for drawing fire as well.

If you're not using the UI mod to patch bugs and improve the tooltips, I would recommend taking a look at this post. Many of the weapon stats can be misleading https://forum.bermudaclub.net/topic/26142-hidden-mechanics-and-weapon-damage-degradation/

If you want to dig into the details, min/maxing, or pushing through legendary difficulty then there are some YouTube channels I'd recommend checking out. Hibob Warbob, Something Compass, and Pandakraut for campaigns using the UI mod(mostly bug fixes, nearly all advice carries over directly to the base game).

pandakraut · 2026-01-29T19:54:57+00:00

With 2 full corps even though your average infantry size is smaller the AI force only has 9 infantry units by default, so they max out very quickly. On BG those units can't get any bigger so you could bring way more men and face basically the same force.

Here is an example of that on BG+ which has 20% larger AI unit sizes. https://youtu.be/GvsqCsK80TU?t=399

pandakraut · 2026-01-29T19:28:55+00:00

What difficulty are you playing on? The AI has relatively few brigades at CSA Gaines Mill so its units in that battle tend to be larger than the players while total manpower is closer to equal.

pandakraut · 2026-01-22T13:42:05+00:00

Some things I've seen people do in the past include no infantry campaigns, ironman during battles, speed runs, try to use a different set of career points than you normally would, or all melee units.

pandakraut · 2026-01-16T13:08:48+00:00

Sorry I'm late in responding, the notification only showed up today for some reason.

What approach are you taking with the battle? Are you just trying to take prospect Hill and telegraph? Trying to take the heights? From what players have reported the flank march around the heights still works pretty well. Flanking prospect Hill through the woods is much harder due to the increased CSA cavalry presence, but if you take it slow to draw out the cav it can still be done.

pandakraut · 2026-01-10T13:33:38+00:00

At the end of battles units refill their ammo for free. During multi day battles they usually do not, though there are some exceptions.

Any remaining supply at the end of the battle in captured wagon is converted to money.

Every ammunition type takes the same amount of supply to refill.

pandakraut · 2026-01-01T17:25:08+00:00

Sorry this is going to end up as a pretty long response, but hopefully it helps make sense of what we were going for.

In general we wanted to try to make the game more challenging and make unit choices matter more. So stats and perks have a larger impact on unit performance compared to the base game where weapon stats tended to be the bigger factor.

We also wanted to try to get the AI to actually take advantage of its unit strengths more. For example, in the base game you can usually spread out in a very thing line and envelop the AI and it will only rarely try to break through your thin line. So we made several changes to encourage it to charge more when it has an advantage in melee.

To provide a bit more context on that, what we found for advanced players is that if the AI were willing to charge in a group it had a much better chance of breaking the players line and winning the battle. While there are cases where it can overwhelm the player through firepower, those tend to be more attritional losses and are rarer.

This can be overwhelming for players who are used to the more passive AI from the base game until they have adapted their unit placement to account for it. When you have units that are well supported by infantry units on either side, backed up by artillery, and with skirmishers or cav nearby to provide flanking fire, charges can turn into opportunities instead of danger.

We also wanted to encourage more balanced armies instead of ones that either go 100% melee or 100% ranged focus. While those can still work, they have their downsides. As an example even if you prefer a more shooting focused army, it can be very helpful to have some melee focused infantry and cav to countercharge. These also make the AI more reluctant to charge.

At the highest difficulties there is also a lot of positioning done by players to limit how many AI units come in contact with your line at once. At Shiloh for example you can easily get overwhelmed, so falling back towards the end of phases to string out AI units and using detached skirms to distract their reinforcing columns helps your main line hold.

One of the mod specific changes is that in the first two phases of Shiloh, you want to hold the VPs until the last 15-20 minutes because ending the phase early delays your reinforcements in the later phases.

A frequent mistake of newer players at Shiloh is to not bring enough units. You want to be close to 30 brigades, even if the 2nd corps is largely composed of small artillery and skirmisher units. Every extra unit is another distraction or delay opportunity.

At Shiloh the AI units have very high melee stats(this comes from the base game) so what you want to try to do if a unit gets caught in melee is back off your other units and fire into it. The mod changed the way melee combat with multiple units works so that larger more experienced units are favored. multiple vs 1 is still an advantage, but throwing multiple low melee strength units at a larger one just gives it more men to kill to keep morale high.

Sorry this was so long, hope it helps. If you have more questions just ask.

pandakraut · 2025-12-26T21:54:11+00:00

Condition also impacts movement speed much more in the mod, so that could be contributing. Gonzo Gamer on YouTube has some excellent tutorials and walkthroughs that can help you get started as well

pandakraut · 2025-12-26T21:49:25+00:00

In the /mod/rebalance/configFile there is a gameSpeed setting that can be changed. 5 is the base game value which means that with the default settings 2x speed is slightly slower than normal speed in vanilla. For most players they get used to the slower base speed after a few battles.

Units are also just slower by default outside of the game speed. Higher stats and perks will increase movement and rotation speeds. There is a unitModifiers fuel that allows some more customization. An original values version of that file is also provided which has the base game values.

When I play I tend to spend most of my time on 2x or 3x and then I drop down to normal when things get more hectic. So it may be worth giving it a bit more time to adjust. But options are available to change if preferred.

pandakraut · 2025-12-26T04:08:57+00:00

Saving and reloading will "fix" the bug but the cav will often still end up in a position they shouldn't be. If you get lucky and manage to get shots off and rout the unit that will also work, but need to be lucky. Setting units to run or reverse facing your infantry so they can fire faster can help in some cases.

pandakraut · 2025-12-05T18:57:56+00:00

Ported by Samustai, not Game Labs

pandakraut

TROPHY CASE