The Barely Adequate Mod (BAM)

[GreatScots]

Barely Adequate Mod Overview- last updated 9.5.24
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I'm going to give up on updating the description of this mod. I think this is closer to an overhaul mod than just tweaking a few things. The old description (below) more or less tells the story, but I've tuned many more things. If you combat insomnia or seek to increase your boredom by watching any of my current mediocre-at-best YT campaigns, you should get a sense as to how the campaign is structured to play. I highly recommend you switch to the other side at the beginning of this campaign to get their subsidies and weapon orders right and switch back as needed, but the AI personality should take over once you set it on the right track.

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All files should now be compatible with the 1.10XX dev patch. Please let me know if that's not the case (it works for me). The CSA campaign still needs to be updated and that will probably happen in the next few days.

All the mod files are here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1aB2f_sG3082t21YhgyDdQyWxbxHWUWN8

Description:

The purpose of this mod is to provide a more challenging campaign experience by limiting the sub-optimal policy choices by the AI. I hope it creates more compelling dilemmas for players as they plan and progress through their campaign. This mod strives to be realistic (“It could have also happened this way”) but not historically accurate (“The ACW went like this”). National Support is supposed to feel more central in this mod than vanilla, and players may find themselves taking several of the projects from the Politics project selection. If this campaign feels like a grind, it’s supposed to. It should not be enough to occupy a limited amount of territory and then lean on campaign objectives to break the enemy’s morale with limited fighting.

This is a work in progress, but I’ve refined it over the last month to the point where it feels ready for others to test. Please let me know about issues you encounter and balance suggestions.


Top 13 Takeaways For the Barely Adequate Mod (BAM):

1. Both sides will have lower starting National Morale because National Support has been decreased. The effect will take about 3 months to level out.

2. Campaign morale break is now 45, and the Union needs to maintain support above 50 to win elections.

3. Custom AI “historical” (but not really historical) personalities that make more optimal decisions with respect to taxes, subsidies, act/policy/project priorities. Slight improvements to emergency recruiting and credit have been included.

4. Decreased morale gain and loss from completing campaign objectives and decreased both morale loss from being occupied as well as the Union’s loss for not invading the CSA.

5. Increased the convergence speed of National Morale and Support, so those two more quickly converge towards one another (you shouldn’t have National Morale of 51 and National Support of 85), except in the first few months.

6. Weapon projects (as well as Army Reorganization, Arty and Cav Reform projects) now only cost a nominal fee.

7. Fort garrisons are now ~2-4x larger

8. The subsidy skew for buildings is now gone, so buildings cost whatever they cost, and you can focus subsidies on projects

9. Larger armies will take more time to raise their Readiness

10. The policy/ act research times are dramatically different than vanilla. Policies take longer to research to represent the time it takes to forge consensus on that topic. However, once reached, each Act can be researched in one day. Since acts frequently come with their own downside, it didn't feel right to require the player (or ai) to additionally spend time to unlock acts. The hope is to make policy research lengthy enough to make players consider Administration Reform, which competes with all the support projects in the long-ignored Politics branch. Unlike vanilla, there is some advantage to researching multiple policies simultaneously, although it’s not very large, hopefully presenting players with an additional dilemma. Additionally, you are now allowed to research more policies/acts overall without paying for them.

11. Several project costs and benefits have been refined

12. European interventions should be easier to trigger if the player wants to. The AI could do it, but its personality is set to focus far more on the domestic side of things. Plus, the AI needs a major victory to get the intervention to trigger, and that probably won’t happen against a lot of you.

13. A revamped credit system that makes more sense. Also, you should pay attention to your credit rating and will probably have to pay to maintain it. I probably should have placed this higher in the list. Eh, you’ll figure it out…

There are many, many other changes, but those are the big ones.

One deserves special mention. I have modified the weapons mod the AOM team produced. The only changes are to mixed muskets, rebored muskets, and the Springfield musket. Their ranges and firepower were reduced but their accuracy increased. This was done to simulate the use of buck-and-ball. The entire AOM mod can be found here: A.O.M Mod 0.635.zip - Google Drive and there is a Steam page here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/654890/discussions/3/5733664933462449866/ . In my campaign, I also use their commander portraits, none of which are included here in my files. I highly recommend you include those in your campaigns.


Ideal Settings

You should make sure the AI's policies are set to "historical," or else the improved personality will not load.

This mod was designed for and only tested on the custom April 15 campaign, while on the development build, and playing on mediocre-mediocre. I played with all the optional files installed. I recommend installing those and playing this on the same difficulty/ aggression. To make sure these files work, I did a clean re-verification of files, deleted the files from the game that had to be installed here, and installed these files in those places to make sure it works. It did.

The default campaign should be Union. I have created another folder for a CSA campaign, although I haven’t playtested the CSA campaign on the last few iterations of this mod, but I did a lot of the early testing with it.


Known Issues (any edits about changes in this section currently only apply to the Union playthru. I still need to update campaignprefs for the CSA playthru)

-Naval action is still underwhelming, and likely will be so until things are fixed in vanilla.

Edit: the AI navy seems a bit more aggressive on dev patch 1.10xxx, but I have only been playing Union campaigns. The larger issue for me was playing as the CSA with a Union navy that did too little.

-Still need to figure out how to increase the campaign-level fog of war to make it worth it to build intelligence buildings and take the recruit agents project.

Edit: This is not possible. The campaign-level FoW is different than the battle FoW.

-This campaign is actually from a Summer 1861 campaign, so starting Readiness, training, and intelligence are higher for the existing forces than you would expect.

-The Union is able to order a ridiculous amount of Springfield R-M relative to every other gun in 1861. This might be the one area to impose a house rule. I tried to balance that out by slightly improving the quality of smoothbore muskets at close range.

-I’ve tried my darnedest to improve the battle AI while also trying to slightly increase the importance of holding the key ground. Once you remove a lot of the AI’s built-in buffs (which I have reduced to almost nothing), it’s really not much of a contest if the player is making reasonable decisions against balanced forces.

Possible Changes to Come (but NOT currently in the mod)

-Limiting each side to one take on Logistics Reform. It will be expensive but also have a significant one-time buff (maybe make it cost $25 million for a 20% reduction in supply costs). Edit-- not there yet, but now it costs $10M for the first take.

-Increasing the cost of the Recruitment Offices Project (or make it a similar, one-time, big cost, big payoff project like LR). Edit: Still not there yet, but it's now $4M for first take.

-Reduce fort upkeep costs

-Might re-balance research times with Admin Reform. In my playthrus, I kept all my politics subsidies for much needed Propaganda. It’s hard to justify the cost of Admin Reform where it currently is, but it’s more valuable than vanilla. Edit: This is being tested in the available Union version of the mod.

-May further increase readiness consumption when moving in states with low support. (Edit: probably not going to do this, but I did re-add the reduction in movement speed for low support)

-May edit the OOBs if I learn how

-Once this mod gets settled, I may see if more optimal battle settings can be identified, although I’m trying to wait until the developers announce they’re finished releasing content for the game.

[Jean]

Awesome to see more people tinkering away, will definitely give it a try for my next campaign!

[GreatScots]

Yes, indeed!

[drewmc2001]

Will try this out. Looks interesting. Thanks for sharing the youtube vids and the mod.

[stevebullpasture]

Does this make the campaign longer? I think it ends too early in vanilla.

[GreatScots]

Drewmc-- I'm happy to do it.

Steve-- In my experience, yes, although campaigns as Union can end in late 1862 or mid-63 in this mod.

I haven't updated the files for the 1.10 patch that was just released. Will try to, if necessary.

Edit: It appears to be compatibly with that latest 1.10 update, but I haven't played much campaign since it went up. Let me know if anyone had problems.

[GreatScots]

Okay, so for those who have watched Campaign 12 and want the settings for a Spring '61 CSA playthru, the files have now been updated with everything from that campaign. It is the April 15th Campaign.

[GreatScots]

Also, ignore the old description above. I edited the description in the Google Drive, and that more accurately describes the mod as it currently sits.

[Zelkova1224]

whenever i try to install this, the campaigns dont show up at all, i think new updates broke the mod

[GreatScots]

It's very likely. I haven't updated it since then.

[HighPvt.Davidson]

Hey GreatScots, Is there anyway you can update this mod? It was really good but now it seems broken.
Thanks

[GreatScots]

I am working on it. I'm not sure if everything will be compatible with the new update, but I'll try to release as much as possible.

[HighPvt.Davidson]

It would be awesome if you did.

[GreatScots]

I believe this is all set to play, if anyone is looking to. The default campaign is CSA, and this is what I played/ played against in Campaign 12 on my channel. If there's interest, I could dig up the files I used for my last Union campaign. You probably wouldn't want to use these for a Union Campaign because the CSA would try to out-recruit you, but maybe you do.

[danzig81]

Would be awsome to have these Union files if it's not too much of a hassle.
BTW, thanks for all your excellent Grand Tactician tutorials - I've learned the game watching your videos :)

[stgarrettjr]

I have a question. The current version of the mod specifies it'ss designed for the CSA, is there a Union equivalent? This thread has you playtesting as Union initially so I imagine you later tweaked for CSA, or does the Union side now need refinement due to patches?