Those of us fortunate enough to be able to devote enough time, reliably enough, over a long enough period, to a PBEM game knows how great this game is when played against a human being.
However, many of us are stuck playing the AI. Athena definitely has her strong points, but she isn't as good at turning a given number of resources into a given offensive strength and tenacity as is a decent human player.
Lacking the skill to help Athena do better with the resources she gets, some time ago I decided to simply give her more stuff to play with. The below events are crude in the extreme, but if you want to see bigger enemy armies and get a much tougher game that is more difficult to win quickly, check 'em out.
Installation:
Copy and paste into an existing event file. Event files live in \ACW\events. Use "events to keep the CSA AI fighting.txt" when playing the Union, "events to keep the USA AI fighting.txt" when playing the Confederacy, and "foreign entry events.txt" if you want a guarantee that the Brits and French will join the party.
Comment: These events are balanced for a Union that can conscript as early as the Confederacy. This has changed in the most recent patch in the Grand Campaign with KY scenario, so you may need to adjust some values if you play that version and variant of the game.