Need clarification from McNaughton.

[gbs]

I admire the work you are doing on the various mods. It seems you are working on more than just the Leader Opt. Mod. Could you tell a little about what the others are?
Also, as you update the Leader mod, will using the updates effect any ongoing game one is playing? For example, I started a new April 81 game with your leader mod in place. I know you have updated it maybe one or two times since then. I am now in June '62. If I download your most recent update of the mod and apply it to my game will there be in odd effects due to changes that would have happened prior to june '62? I hope this is clear.
One comment. I always play CSA. It seems that most of your work concerns Union leaders. I find that with your Mod, it is now tougher to take advantage of the suposed Confertedate advantage in leadership ratings than before the mod. For example, I had to move Hardee to Virginia so that I could form my 2nd Corp in AOP. I never could get any of my * generals promotable to **. Jackson was close early on but he performed poorly in an early battle and lost seniority. It seems I have more *** than **. I currently have two Armys under Beauregard (AOP) and J. Johnston (AOT) with Polk and A.S. Johnson (a ***) as corp commanders in the west and A. K. Smith and Hardee as Corp Commanders in the east. At this point the only other ** I have is that useless Mansfield in New Orleans. My highest rated generals are Division Commanders at this point.
Is this what was intended with your mod?

[McNaughton]

I admire the work you are doing on the various mods. It seems you are working on more than just the Leader Opt. Mod. Could you tell a little about what the others are?
Also, as you update the Leader mod, will using the updates effect any ongoing game one is playing? For example, I started a new April 81 game with your leader mod in place. I know you have updated it maybe one or two times since then. I am now in June '62. If I download your most recent update of the mod and apply it to my game will there be in odd effects due to changes that would have happened prior to june '62? I hope this is clear.
One comment. I always play CSA. It seems that most of your work concerns Union leaders. I find that with your Mod, it is now tougher to take advantage of the suposed Confertedate advantage in leadership ratings than before the mod. For example, I had to move Hardee to Virginia so that I could form my 2nd Corp in AOP. I never could get any of my * generals promotable to **. Jackson was close early on but he performed poorly in an early battle and lost seniority. It seems I have more *** than **. I currently have two Armys under Beauregard (AOP) and J. Johnston (AOT) with Polk and A.S. Johnson (a ***) as corp commanders in the west and A. K. Smith and Hardee as Corp Commanders in the east. At this point the only other ** I have is that useless Mansfield in New Orleans. My highest rated generals are Division Commanders at this point.
Is this what was intended with your mod?

Well, the mods I am working on (nothing done, in fact nothing released yet), are...

#1. Graphics mod (adding more unit graphics).

#2. Artillery mod (changing artillery to make as many guns as possible useful, plus to lower physical damage and increase cohesion damage)

#3. Brigade mod (chainging infantry and cavalry brigades around, removing cavalry from infantry, changing artillery component, more infantry in brigades, etc.)

#4. Scenario mod (modifying the scenarios to provide different setup, such as more guns in forts,

I haven't done anything with the leader mod, am waiting for it to be done, and implemented, so I can have my mod based around that (since if I make it now, I will have to redo a lot of work due to UID spaces being already used). I really like what Hancock and Stonewall have done, and am, like others, adding my input.

All Leader Mod stuff is from Hancock (with input from numerous others), I haven't released a thing yet from any of my mods. Hancock is working on creating some auto-upgrades for Confederate generals, so there will be some Corps commanders in 1862. He will be releasing this soon. He primarily focussed on the Union side, with Stonewall on the Confederates (who is AWOL for the moment), so Hancock is now working on the Confederates. Expect things to be slightly unbalanced for the time being, until Hancock is able to get the Confederates as good as he got the Union.

[Black Cat]

McNaughton

Looking forward to your mods very much.

Is it possible to address any of the concerns some of us have on the organizational aspects of the forces, as well as the descriptions in the icons ?

Since the Devs are not around, and I didn`t see any info in the Modding Forum thought I would ask you.

Instead of a running list of division numbers, on the Div. CO`s Icons , as you have now in the Corps " envelope " like 33rd, 34th, 35th, etc. , have them as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc., repeating with each Corps...? or even the name of the General as the Division ID instead of a number, since both were used.

Also, any hope of introducing a Brigade Icon, generic, un-named, to be used within the Division " envelope " and to seperate the Brigades in the Div. If your Mod is seperating the guns and cav. out from the big mixed brigade reinforcements buys this would be useful, as well as looking right.

Thanks

[McNaughton]

McNaughton

Looking forward to your mods very much.

Is it possible to address any of the concerns some of us have on the organizational aspects of the forces, as well as the descriptions in the icons?

I was thinking about something like this, for example, to differentiate between the 10-lb and 20-lb (since they use the same graphic, and NATO Icon). A lot of stuff is 'hard coded'

Since the Devs are not around, and I didn`t see any info in the Modding Forum thought I would ask you.

Instead of a running list of division numbers, on the Div. CO`s Icons , as you have now in the Corps " envelope " like 33rd, 34th, 35th, etc. , have them as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc., repeating with each Corps...? or even the name of the General as the Division ID instead of a number, since both were used.

Well, I have some suspisions;

LocalStrings_ACW.csv (found in... <ACW\Settings>)

Line 238 and 239 seem to have the convetion of naming divisions and Corps.

You see...

238 = ¤'s Division
239 = ¤'s HQ
561 = ¤' Corps (Union)
571 = ¤' Corps (Confederate)

¤ = the name of the leader.



Here's where I think what you are looking for is...

0Union.fac
1Confederate.fac (both found in... <ACW\GameData\Factions>)

Here, I noticed that in the Confederate file, there is this line included...

"LdrNameInHQ = 1"

In my opinion, this makes the leader name of Divisions appear, over-writing default Division numbering (as seen in the line "LargeCombiName = 1st Division, etc.")

Also of note are the ways that army names are developed (Line "GHQInfos").

So, it is possible to mod divisional names, as well as army names here.

Also, any hope of introducing a Brigade Icon, generic, un-named, to be used within the Division " envelope " and to seperate the Brigades in the Div. If your Mod is seperating the guns and cav. out from the big mixed brigade reinforcements buys this would be useful, as well as looking right.

Thanks

Unfortunately no, the graphics here are assigned through the individual models (i.e., if most models are infantry, it shows infantry, if most models are artillery, it has artillery, etc.), with divisions having some sort of special attribute that gives them this NATO Divisional Icon.

[PBBoeye]

ImageID = symbol_heavyarty.png

Can we not create new symbols and make files with new file names for more specificity?

[McNaughton]

ImageID = symbol_heavyarty.png

Can we not create new symbols and make files with new file names for more specificity?

Yeah, but I think they are model specific (i.e., for each of the elements in a brigade we can modify their NATO symbol, but not for the brigade itself).

[tagwyn]

LOL!! Your mods are changing the way the game plays. I congratulate you on your effort but will not join supporting these mods. Tag

[Lonster]

Tag,

Thanks for your vote of un-support (sorry couldn't resist)

[Winfield S. Hancock]

I admire the work you are doing on the various mods. It seems you are working on more than just the Leader Opt. Mod. Could you tell a little about what the others are?
Also, as you update the Leader mod, will using the updates effect any ongoing game one is playing? For example, I started a new April 81 game with your leader mod in place. I know you have updated it maybe one or two times since then. I am now in June '62. If I download your most recent update of the mod and apply it to my game will there be in odd effects due to changes that would have happened prior to june '62? I hope this is clear.
One comment. I always play CSA. It seems that most of your work concerns Union leaders. I find that with your Mod, it is now tougher to take advantage of the suposed Confertedate advantage in leadership ratings than before the mod. For example, I had to move Hardee to Virginia so that I could form my 2nd Corp in AOP. I never could get any of my * generals promotable to **. Jackson was close early on but he performed poorly in an early battle and lost seniority. It seems I have more *** than **. I currently have two Armys under Beauregard (AOP) and J. Johnston (AOT) with Polk and A.S. Johnson (a ***) as corp commanders in the west and A. K. Smith and Hardee as Corp Commanders in the east. At this point the only other ** I have is that useless Mansfield in New Orleans. My highest rated generals are Division Commanders at this point.
Is this what was intended with your mod?

These are good questions GBS. What I am wanting to do with my mod is to make the game more model historical reality. One element of doing this is to increase the difficulty for the player (as Lincoln or Davis) in finding and placing the correct commanders in the field too easily or too early. Both the USA and the CSA were plagued by command inefficiencies during the first 12-18 months of the war, with the CSA the first to pull out of the problems in the East with Lee, Jackson, and Longstreet in the ANV, and the USA the first to pull out of it in the West, with Grant, Sherman, et al and the AOT.

One of the things I found in the vanilla game was that it was just too easy to build powerful, multi-corps armies with decent commanders in 1861. This was just not historic, and not conducive to good game play IMHO. So, the leader mod in general tries to make it harder. You have to fight and win battles with your 1 star leaders to make them promotable. No longer do a number of the good guys come in at a level to take corps command from the get go. Historically, most of the first men who were handed large field commands on both sides turned out to be duds. It took time for the better leaders, and more efficient organizations to emerge. Thus, in the game, if you are the Union and want to have Meade, Reynolds, and Hancock commanding your corps, you need to fight them and earn their way up in the ranks to supplant the Banks, Heintzleman, Keyes, and McDowells of the world who started out on top because of political connections or old-Army seniority. The same with the CSA. You should not be handed a 2 star Stonewall Jackson in July 1861 and have him commanding a corps running wild against a disorganized Union opponent. Truth was, even though Jackson certainly was a talented commander, the CSA didnt have the infrastructure developed yet to support a corps. And, there were other politically connected men who believed they deserved it more than him.

So, it is much harder for both sides to get 2 star leaders and form the corps of their armies. However, I didnt want it to be impossible, or too hard, especially for the AI. Thus, I have thrown in auto promote events -- four for the Union, which promote Sumner, Keyes, Heintzleman, and Porter, to their historic command posts in the AOP, and for the South, some new promotion events for them, because the game had become unbalanced without them in the mod. Now the CSA automatically gets Jackson and Longstreet at 2 stars in June 1862 to command the two wings of the historically created Army of Northern Virginia. Pemberton arrives at high enough rank to command an army. Bragg comes in at corps level, and gets his army in April 1862. Also, Hardee and Polk get promoted to corps command in April 1862, with a chance that EK Smith and John C. Breckinridge, two highly thought of men with political connections, could join them as well.

With these new auto promotions, each side gets the first seeds of developing their army structures during the first half of 1862, which is when the serious fighting really began anyway. From this start, you as the player (or the AI) have to do the rest by yourself. If you want to make sure talented men like Hancock, Meade, and Cleburne get promoted, you need to put them in positions where they are likely to succeed. Otherwise, you will be stuck with Erasmus Keyes or Mansfield Lovell leading your corps into 1863. As a compromise between accuracy and playability, I think the limited number of auto promotions I have done will work well.

[gbs]

These are good questions GBS. What I am wanting to do with my mod is to make the game more model historical reality. One element of doing this is to increase the difficulty for the player (as Lincoln or Davis) in finding and placing the correct commanders in the field too easily or too early. Both the USA and the CSA were plagued by command inefficiencies during the first 12-18 months of the war, with the CSA the first to pull out of the problems in the East with Lee, Jackson, and Longstreet in the ANV, and the USA the first to pull out of it in the West, with Grant, Sherman, et al and the AOT.

One of the things I found in the vanilla game was that it was just too easy to build powerful, multi-corps armies with decent commanders in 1861. This was just not historic, and not conducive to good game play IMHO. So, the leader mod in general tries to make it harder. You have to fight and win battles with your 1 star leaders to make them promotable. No longer do a number of the good guys come in at a level to take corps command from the get go. Historically, most of the first men who were handed large field commands on both sides turned out to be duds. It took time for the better leaders, and more efficient organizations to emerge. Thus, in the game, if you are the Union and want to have Meade, Reynolds, and Hancock commanding your corps, you need to fight them and earn their way up in the ranks to supplant the Banks, Heintzleman, Keyes, and McDowells of the world who started out on top because of political connections or old-Army seniority. The same with the CSA. You should not be handed a 2 star Stonewall Jackson in July 1861 and have him commanding a corps running wild against a disorganized Union opponent. Truth was, even though Jackson certainly was a talented commander, the CSA didnt have the infrastructure developed yet to support a corps. And, there were other politically connected men who believed they deserved it more than him.

So, it is much harder for both sides to get 2 star leaders and form the corps of their armies. However, I didnt want it to be impossible, or too hard, especially for the AI. Thus, I have thrown in auto promote events -- four for the Union, which promote Sumner, Keyes, Heintzleman, and Porter, to their historic command posts in the AOP, and for the South, some new promotion events for them, because the game had become unbalanced without them in the mod. Now the CSA automatically gets Jackson and Longstreet at 2 stars in June 1862 to command the two wings of the historically created Army of Northern Virginia. Pemberton arrives at high enough rank to command an army. Bragg comes in at corps level, and gets his army in April 1862. Also, Hardee and Polk get promoted to corps command in April 1862, with a chance that EK Smith and John C. Breckinridge, two highly thought of men with political connections, could join them as well.

With these new auto promotions, each side gets the first seeds of developing their army structures during the first half of 1862, which is when the serious fighting really began anyway. From this start, you as the player (or the AI) have to do the rest by yourself. If you want to make sure talented men like Hancock, Meade, and Cleburne get promoted, you need to put them in positions where they are likely to succeed. Otherwise, you will be stuck with Erasmus Keyes or Mansfield Lovell leading your corps into 1863. As a compromise between accuracy and playability, I think the limited number of auto promotions I have done will work well.

Thanks for the very detailed reply. Where can one find the lastest version with all the changes you mention here? There seems to be quite a few changes happening that may be creating what will feel like a whole new game. Might it not be advisable to put the game aside for a while and wait for the Devs to return and here there ideas on what the community has come up with? Your leader MOD makes a lot of sence to me. Also, I think any change from a weather MOD will be good for the game. Not sure about the artillery MOD and all but I can't see any negative effects in that.
Anyway what do you think?

[Prussian Prince]

GBS,

Look at the title Leader Optimization for 1.06.

You can download the Mod here. I have and it seems to work well.

Stewart

[Jagger]

"LdrNameInHQ = 1"

In my opinion, this makes the leader name of Divisions appear, over-writing default Division numbering (as seen in the line "LargeCombiName = 1st Division, etc.")

That is correct. Add the same line to the Union file and Union Divisions will appear labeled with the division commander name.

[Black Cat]

deleted. My error.

[McNaughton]

I just tried that in the ACW/Events/ USA leaders file and nothing changes, still get a # for a Division. In Keyes case, "3rd. Division"

Example:

CreateUnit
SetType = $uni_USA_Keyes
SetName = Erasmus D. Keyes
LdrNameInHQ = 1
Apply

Am I in the wrong place ?

I think this is what you are looking for.

Here's where I think what you are looking for is...

0Union.fac
1Confederate.fac (both found in... <ACW\GameData\Factions>)

Here, I noticed that in the Confederate file, there is this line included...

"LdrNameInHQ = 1"

[Black Cat]

Thanks !

that`s got it. Your fast......