Tactical Civil War Occupation

After the Stormcloaks or Imperials take over a hold, the local guard uniforms disappear, replaced by dull, generic soldiers. Depending on your playstyle, the civil war can end early in your playthrough, sometimes even before you finish the main quest or start the DLCs. Eventually you would expect the loyalist towns to reinstate a loyal guard, but that never happens.

This mod restores the lost guard uniforms to the occupying soldiers. Occupying Imperial soldiers are styled after Solitude guards, while Stormcloak soldiers take their look from Windhelm guards.

If this sounds familiar, you might be familiar with Hold Guards Keep Armor uploaded by terrickson227 for Skyrim and Better Civil War Guards by Medizy for Skyrim Special Edition. I used those for years and tweaked them with TES5Edit & SSEEdit to fix some minor bugs due to their outdated nature, but recently I stumbled across a rather annoying bug involving the guards refusing to put on equipment. After failing to fully fix it in the both those mods, I built this one from the ground up, addressing not just that issue but also improving naming consistency, gear mismatches, and guard respawns. I was able to find a simple vanilla fix, although I could not find a streamlined method of fixing the problem.

Recommended to install this mod before you start Season Unending and the Civil War related quests.

If you install this mod after Season Unending or the Civil War quests, do the steps below to fix guards not wearing equipment: Without console commands:

Exit all holds, and enter a cave.

Wait at least 10 days and quicksave (in case you were a day short).

With console commands:

Exit all holds, and enter a cave.

Enter the following in console with the ~ key:

setgs iHoursToRespawnCell 1

setgs iHoursToRespawnCellCleared 1

Wait for 1 hour in game, and wait 1 minute in real life.

The issue should be fixed, however you need to put vanilla settings back with:

setgs iHoursToRespawnCell 240

setgs iHoursToRespawnCellCleared 720

All cells in holds should reset, and guards will be respawned correctly.

This mod was made from scratch using the Creation Kit, TES5Edit & SSEEdit, and addresses bugs fixed by the Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch.

Alternatives:

• []Guards Armor Replacer SSE Civil War Patch by K3VLOL99

  []Hold Guard Armor Unchanged by ikonomov

• Better Civil War Guards SPID by DEEJMASTER333