Guide to Side Switching in Career Mode

[ShovelMonkey]

As we know, side switching via save editing is crucial to maintaining an orderly game, and managing ones OCD.

The biggest hangup I had on playing career mode was the inability to remind the enemy that OOB cleanliness is next to godliness via side switching.

I'm going to assume you already know how to side switch in campaign mode. If not: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBhx2mhg2E4&t=128s

1. Navigate to the folder of your save. Edit scenario.dat as you normally would.

2. Open commanders.txt, search for the CIC of the opposing army. For example in my file George B. McClellan appears to have a character id of 957. Take note of that number and the 2nd name listed for the character.

3. Open DLC_WL.dat, change line 1 to the number of the character from step 2, and change line 11 to the name from step 2. Not sure if you have to do the name thing, just know it worked for me.

4. Tidy up the OOB's, save your game. Repeat steps 1-3 only this time search for your previous character in commanders.dat and plug in his info to switch back.

Make sure you save it all, reload the autosave and voila you are George McClellan. I was initially excited that I could use this to play whoever I wanted...wanna RP as Longstreet from brigade commander? You can using this method. It is kinda wonky though. Some character pictures won't match, flavor text about camp life references the wrong character. Maybe some with more experience with the files can take this further...

For now seems to function at least as a way to side switch in career mode.

Also someone feel free to TLDR this and make it more usable as a guide.