Leader Mod for 1.09

[runyan99]

I thought it was about time for a new thread.

Here is a leader mod compatible with 1.09. It is for the April 1861 long campaign, but will affect other scenarios as well. The mod is intended to be a more historical treatment of the generals of the Civil War as compared to the basic April scenario. The mod reevaluates all leaders in the game, using new ranks, stats and traits for many leaders, and adds new leaders as well. Often, the mod tends to reduce leader stats and add traits compared to the basic game.

I have decided to do without a blow by blow list of all changes in the mod from the basic game, but the following are the most significant changes to gameplay:

First is the McClellan paradox. With McDowell in command of the army, and with better stats than McClellan, most players are not sending McClellan to the east at all because they don't need him. So, McClellan has been getting sent to Kentucky or Missouri most of the time by most players.

In this version of the mod McDowell, Butler, Banks and Fremont have been reduced to two star rank. Thus, there are only two Union generals eligible to command armies in 1861, and they are Halleck and McClellan.

What this means is that now when the Union player forms his first army, he will NEED McClellan to come east and take command of the eastern army, and McDowell can assume his historical role as a corps commander in McClellan's army. McClellan becomes The Indispensable Man that he should be in 1861.

On the Confederate side, theirs is an army of brigades at first. The Confederates are not allowed to form their divisions until October '61. To partially compensate for this, the Confederate player has early access to 4 important leaders from Bull Run - DR Jones, Early, Ewell and Longstreet.

Many important corps commanders will automatically be promoted to ** rank on an appropriate date.

The radius for army HQs has been reduced. Most armies will have a 2 region radius, and the best leaders like Grant or Lee will have a 3 region radius. The reason for this change is to encourage the use of more three star leaders as army commanders, and to reduce overlap between army radii. With this change, the player should need two armies in places like east and west Tennessee (Buell/Grant or Beuaregard/Johnston) as was the case historically.

Misspelled names corrected, and all generals now have full names instead of only first initials.

Coefficient for leader casualties is now 1/50. Note however that the game protects leaders attached to units (i.e. division commanders) from casualties at this time.

This mod is designed to be played with the Activation option set on Standard (the second check box). You could play with the new option that can fix inactive leaders, but with the new lower ratings for many leaders in this mod, you may find that leaders are fixed too often.

Johnston's army now appears in Winchester where it was historically located.



Installation instructions for the mod are as follows.

Patch the game to the latest version. Then go into Ageod's Civil War/ACW/Gamedata and delete the Units and Models folders. Replace them with the modded Units and Models folders. Then copy and overwrite the modded events files into ACW/Events, the Alias files into ACW/Aliases, and the settings folder into ACW/Settings.

NEW Additionally, this edition of the mod includes Jabberwock's portraits which are unofficial as of this date. They are contained in the attached graphics zipfile. Copy the Armies&Fleets files into ACW/Graphics/Armies&Fleets and the Units graphics into ACW/Graphics/Units.


P.S. I do not recommend updating the mod during an ongoing PBEM, as leader stats may change from update to update, as well as the alias files. In the worst case scenario, this could possibly cause a crash or corrupt your PBEM. I recommend finishing the game, then updating before starting a new game.

[Ian Coote]

Thanks runyan99

[Eugene Carr]

Thanks.

Good idea! now post Banks to California and Butler to where there's nothing worth stealing and thats 2 problems taken care of!

Seriously
Having to earn promotion to *** for the Union while the CSA get their 5 ***'s possibly better reflects the differences in the 2 ranking systems than vanilla does.

[Pdubya64]

Patch the game to the latest version. Then go into ACW/Gamedata and delete the Units and Models folders. Replace them with the modded Units and Models folders. Then copy and overwrite the modded events files into ACW/Events, the Alias files into ACW/Aliases, and the settings folder into ACW/Settings.

Runyan:
As a suggestion, you might put some extra emphasis on the bolded text for installation. All sorts of strange things happen to the game when you overwrite instead of delete and replace.
FWIW,
Pdubya
p.s. thanks for the new update!

[soloswolf]

Runyan,

So far great stuff!

I have only played as far as Early Jan. '62. But on that turn, a leader event fires that is titled something like csa_nashville_generals, but they spawn in Memphis.

Obviously not a huge deal, just something I spotted.

Great work!

Thanks,
Aaron

[Jabberwock]

Hi Cory -
Absolutely loving this. Thanks for all the hard work.

In this version of the mod McDowell, Butler, Banks and Fremont have been reduced to two star rank. Thus, there are only two Union generals eligible to command armies in 1861, and they are Halleck and McClellan.

That really wasn't necessary for Butler or Fremont. Any Federal CinC who gives the AotP to either of 'em over 'lil Mac deserves the consequences.

[Linenoise]

Hi Cory -
Absolutely loving this. Thanks for all the hard work.



That really wasn't necessary for Butler or Fremont. Any Federal CinC who gives the AotP to either of 'em over 'lil Mac deserves the consequences.

I would agree with this. Moreso, if it were possible, make them senior to lil Mac and give them negative politic points. Thereby you gain some NM when you promote McClellan over them.

[runyan99]

I doubt that the program would accept a negative political value.

Originally, I left Butler and Banks as *** leaders, but I still found that I would rather have a 2-0-1 Butler or Banks in charge of the eastern army than a 1-1-2 McClellan. The reason is that a leader with a 2 Strategic rating passes down less of a penalty to his corps commanders than does McClellan with a 1. I wasn't happy with that result.

Making McClellan the only man for the job was the only way to solve the problem, and I think reducing Banks and Butler to ** is okay considering the size of the "armies" that they commanded later in the war, which were not large compared to the main armies in Virginia or Tennessee. They can be modeled as large independent corps in the game.

[Evren]

So, basically it is much better to appoint McClellan as the army commander of New England or Michigan instead of ANV, since his "1" strategic rating will do no good to corps commanders, they'll always be inactive and won't be able to march to the sound of guns. Or am i wrong with the concept of the marching to the sound of guns at all?

It seems better to make independent corps with many commanders and start praying to god to have a good 3* general as soon as possible against the superior CSA generals.

Any suggestions?

[beefcake]

You pretty well hit the nail on the head. McClellen makes it hard to do anything offensive with your army. Not impossible, but definitely hard. And if he's not in command of an army, then you take a serious hit to your VP level if you put another general in charge.

While not historically correct, it is easiest to form an army around Little Mac, create corps commanders, then put as much distance between him and his army formations as possible. Corps commanders stacked near him take a serious hit, but outside of his influence they are more likely to be active. When another 3* general appears worth using, you can reform the corps under the new army you create.

In Runyan's leader mod, Nathaniel Lyon is an early candidate to get to 3* status. He's not an elite general, but he's available and he has a pulse. I usually try to get him into an army command as quickly as possible. US Grant also should be ready for 3* command sometime in early 1862. As soon as I can create the new armies, I reassign his corps and let Mac play in a sandbox with toy soldiers for the rest of the war. It wastes an army command, but it is effective.

[Jabberwock]

Same goes for Halleck. Buying an extra HQ is better than taking an NM & VP hit. There's more HQs than leaders to use them in this mod. At least for the first year. So I use them both to create corps, then send Mac to Missouri and give Halleck an advisory position up north. Redeploy/Undeploy as needed to create new corps.

In my latest game, I've got an extra HQ sitting in Thomas' stack, waiting for him to do something extraordinary.

[runyan99]

Celibrating 100 downloads today.

As for Banks and Butler, I may add some autopromotion events for them to *** rank, Banks on 12-16-62 and Butler on 11-1-63.

[Coregonas]

Hope I am the 101!

Hope this turning into vanilla...

[arsan]

Hi!
I was the 105!
Finally i have made a double ACW installation to try the Mod on 1.09.
I'm only on june 61, but it looks and plays great!
Still, i would like to mod the mod and give Joe Johnston at least a 3 strategic (on par with Beuregard)
But i don't have a clue on modding. leure:
Could Runyan or some other expert modder give me some basic instructions on how to change a leader stat?
What file should i look for??
Its difficult?
Could i continue my ongoing campaign is i change some leader stats?

Thanks in advance!
Regards

[Primasprit]

Hi arsan!

It is not difficult. The best way to modify units is to use the source files, which come in form of xls-files. For the stock AACW these are available to the public, you can download them, in the mod section of the forum. The model files is called AACW_DB_Models.xls the unit file AACW_DB_Units.xls. You will find all parameters for the various units of AACW in these files. To the first row are notes attached which describe the meaning of the columns.
After you modified the values you need to export the models and units with the csv-splitter. At first you need to export the spreadsheets as cvs-files. For further instructions please take a look here: http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?t=7819

Could i continue my ongoing campaign is i change some leader stats?

Yes, this should be not problem.

Cheers
Norbert

[arsan]

Hi
Thanks for answering Norbert!
I know about the .xls files and had done some work with the localstrings ones translating some texts for the Spanish version of the game.
But had never used the csv splitter and this export thing looks very scary and difficult to me leure:
I was looking for an easier way, changing just some file on my installation as this is intended as just a tweak for personal use.
Following your clue about the units and models xls files i had checked the models and units folders on my installation and found that on ACW\GameData\Models
there is a .mdl file for Joe Johnston with all his stats.
Would it work if i just changed the stats on this file with notepad??
Should i need also to modify something else??

Thanks!

[Franciscus]

Yes, Arsan, you can use notepad. Simply go to ACW\Gamedata\Models, find Johnstons file, and open it with notepad or other text editor. In the last lines, simply change the strategic rating of him. Note that some leaders have more than one file, one for each possible rank (not the case of Johnston, if I remember correctly; but inside the file the text should read Johnston3).
That's hpw I have been doing my modding.

Hope this helps.

[arsan]

Thanks Franciscus!
I will try it later. I was worried there was need to edit other files around for the change to work.
If its only the .mdl file it would be easy... even for me

Obrigado!

[hawklegion]

When I try to mod, I get an "Access Denied" message. Is it my security settings, Vista, or the game ? Any thoughts would be appreciated !!!

Thanks

[runyan99]

Sounds like security settings, or you are trying to replace folders that are set to 'read only'. Check your file access settings.

[hawklegion]

Got it to work, thanks ! Anxious to see how the mods work out !

[Ian Coote]

Hi Runyan99, I'm not sure but I think the leader mod overwrites the new horses and gun feature on the 1.09a beta patch

[runyan99]

I will update the mod when the patch is official.

[Evren]

Hey,

I'm trying the mod with the RR Accuracy mod against the A.I. as the CSA. Thomas Jackson, Bragg and Polk are all 3* Generals. In june 1862, Longstreet is promoted to rank 2 automatically, and Jackson is 2* again without a reason. Also, Hardee earns a promotion and his seniority is 1 among all others, but i cannot promote him. Not taking the game so seriously, since AI is not a good opponent, but i'm gonna try it in a PBEM game soon.

Am i missing something here? Is there a specified number of 3* generals you can have so that's why i cannot promote Hardee? Or Jackson is back to 2* because he hasn't earned any promotion since he became a 3*?

Help please.

[runyan99]

The autopromotion event for Jackson reduced him to ** in your case. There isn't any safeguard in the code to prevent his demotion if he is already a *** in June of 1862.

Hardee isn't promotable to *** at the moment. He had the seniority to potentially be an army commander, but avoided the responsibility historically.

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[runyan99]

I don't play the AI so I cannot comment.

[Clovis]

runyan99:

I was planning to use some of your historical starting locations (in the vanilla scenarios) for Leaders as in your Leader MOD, but it was pointed out (by PhilThib) that they were deliberately set to show up in a central location in the vanilla scenarios in order to help out the AI in its distribution of them. I was curious if any gamers were seeing AI difficulties in this respect when using your Leader MOD.

Using for my mod a modified version of the leaders mod, I have to say I didn't noticed for AI difficulties. I've seen Western leaders coming to Eastern theaters on a common basis. I suspect AI is now much clever for moving leaders since some patches.

[arsan]

Hi!
I installed the leader mod for the first time last week and i´m now on oct 61 with my first campaign as the CSA.
I must say that i have experienced a very poor AI USA performance, compared with the one i'm used to with the vanilla game (with the last patches installed).
The worst news is that, after six month of war, with the leader mod the USA still have not formed a single army nor corps.
On the east they have only a big stack under Banks with 35% penalty near 0 cohesion and no organization. With it they have not make any attack at all.
It just move form north of harpers ferry (this is the first time i manage to hold on HF with the CSA since several patches ago Lately vanilla USA Ai is very aggressive on the Valley ) to Alexandria.
The biggest battle on the east was when i encountered east of Manassas a stack of northern wagons and support units who decided to take a stroll towards Richmond by themselves
On the rest of the fronts, USA have been a little active on east of Kentucky but no more: nothing around the Mississippi, little on Missouri and nothing on Texas.
That last is particularly strange: with the last patches the vanilla AI is very active on Texas, trying to overrun the place with all the forces of the far west boxes (i fear this happen since Gray changed the links maybe the travel time between boxes is too low??)
Also, the mod ai likes to run fleets pass my coastal forts for nothing and get pounded.. something the vanilla ai doesn't do lately
Now, its my first game with the mod, so maybe i´m getting very bad luck... leure:
Anyhow, i don't know it all that has something to do with the redistribution of leaders... but i fear it doesn't.
But there must be some kind of change on the setup that upsets the Ai, as her performance feels much worser than on the vanilla.
Just my two cents
Regards

[Franciscus]

runyan99:

I was planning to use some of your historical starting locations (in the vanilla scenarios) for Leaders as in your Leader MOD, but it was pointed out (by PhilThib) that they were deliberately set to show up in a central location in the vanilla scenarios in order to help out the AI in its distribution of them. I was curious if any gamers were seeing AI difficulties in this respect when using your Leader MOD.

Continuing a bit off topic but in relation to points being discussed here, I am using with my "simple" mod the same "historical" starting locations as the leader mod, but strictly with the vanilla leaders. I am currently playing as CSA. It is early 1862 and the AI has not yet formed any new army (I do not what is the reason), although she is very active and "aggressive" (with normal aggressiveness as option), in all theaters. In the east, due to a blunder of mine, Jackson's corps was even wiped out !!
I have also noticed the problems pointed by Arsan in relation with Texas, which is one of my most active theaters now due to the AI aggression via the farwest (more than 15.000 men are actively threatening Texas, under Fremont and McClernand).